The Best Places to Nap in the Parks

On this week's episode, Jared shares with us the best places to catch a quick nap in the parks. 

Transcript

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On this weeks episode of a Dryer dose of Disney, Jared shares with us the best places to take a nap in the parks. Intro Music Welcome to this week's episode of a Dryer dose of Disney. I'm your host, Jared dryer. And today we are back with another episode for you. I apologize. It has been a while since we talked to you. As I stated in some of my previous episodes we've covered over 80 different topics out there on our podcast. So we encourage wherever you're listening to us, whether it's on the podcast format or if you're watching us on YouTube, because we do have both formats out there. We do wanna encourage you click that pause button and find the subscribe button. So that way you're going to get this content delivered into your inbox each and every single time that we record an episode and drop it. But if you've listened to some of our previous episodes, you do know that with over 80 of them out there already, we have covered a lot of the really cool topics out there. And so we're looking for some new topics to cover as well as we're planning to travel internationally. So we are right now at the end of may, we're only a couple of weeks out from our trip to Paris. And we are so excited. We've got everything all ready and set to go to Paris. And we're going to be checking out Disneyland Paris as well as Disney studios out in Paris. And we're just super excited. So we will have episodes on that when we get back. We're going to talk about the parks. We're going to talk about our experience. We're going to talk about the hotels. We're gonna talk about the restaurant. So we're going to give you all of the cool details about Paris, and then we're going to look to see if we can plan another trip sometime in the future. We'd love to go to Tokyo, especially since they have their new fantasy Springs opening up next month. We'd like to do that probably sometime in the fall or next year. But we're going to start planning that and we'll have episodes dropping on that as well. So a lot of really cool things coming. So you're definitely going to want to subscribe. But as we're planning for all that, we're trying to pepper in episodes on different topics that we haven't quite covered yet. So we're real excited this summer for the reopening of Tiana's. Formerly splash mountain. And we're going to give you a recap on Tiana's Bayou, adventure, as well as the restaurant. That's going to be opening up there. We hope in Orlando. And if not, then our next time out to California, we'll give you a recap of it out there. And we're going to be giving you updates as new things come or as new festivals happen, or as we find new restaurants and we're going to keep those coming to you. But like I said, they're going to be a little bit fewer and further between just because we do not have a lot of topics to cover that we haven't already covered, but. Nonetheless, we have an episode for you today, and we're going to be talking today about the best place to take a nap in the park. Now this episode. Is recommended by one of our listeners. So thank you, Cynthia Millard. For recommending this on our Facebook page we put a post out there when we did our restroom episode and said, Hey, we had a fun episode coming for you. That's a little bit off the wall and asked for other ideas or other guesses on what that episode would be. And Cynthia contributed this one and we thought, yeah, let's talk about taking naps in the park. And we're a good place to take a nap would be and what that might look like. So we're going to be covering that for you today. But before we dive into that, we've already told you to subscribe. If any of our episodes though, has saved you time or money, we do ask for you to find us over at Patreon. That's down in the podcast description below and support the show there. You can do it with just a couple bucks or you can become a regular subscriber. And then at our very top tier, we have our very best, I can do this all day tip of the day on Disney. So this is specific to Disney parks on how to get to the front of the line. This is a really cool tip. We didn't want it getting out there. We didn't want it going and ruining it for everyone else that knows about this tip. So we definitely wanted to put it at our highest tier. So that way you have to pay to get it because this is our very best tip. Now I will tell you regarding that tip my daughter and I went out for her birthday just a couple of weeks ago at the end of April. To Orlando, we stayed at our condo. We just did a quick weekend trip. But we hit three of the four Disney parks. We hit one universal park in our time out there. And we use that tip or trick at least. I'm thinking real quick, six or seven times. I can think of six right off the top of my head. And I think there was one more. And it worked every single time. So this is something that you're definitely going to want to try out if you want to skip lines and get to the front of the lines and not have to pay for genie. Plus. You could pay for one podcast episode versus paying for genie plus for your entire family. And it could save you a lot of money right there. So again, that's over at Patreon on our very top tier. If you do pay for it, we do ask don't give out that secret to everyone else. Because we don't want to ruin it and it is a really good one. So you can check that out over there. But for Cynthia's topic on naps, we're going to dive in and we're going to talk about naps in the park. And the first question I have is, do you really want to take a nap while you're out at Disneyland and universal parks? And it's a loaded question that I would ask it that way, because yes, there are some people in your party, especially young children who are going to need to take naps. And of course, if you have a stroller with you, it's probably really easy to lie them down in a stroller, and they're just going to fall asleep on their own. And you're going to be able to keep navigating the parks. But as your kids get older, should they take a nap or maybe as an adult, you're getting tired. You've had a few days in the park. You need to relax a little bit. Then this episode is for you. Cause we're going to tell you the best places to catch a quick couple of Zs. Or maybe if you want to sit and get a little bit of longer nap, you can. But we're going to walk you through on where to find that at each of the parks and where to go. But as we talk about naps today, I do want to talk about, there are two different types of naps that we are going to talk about. So number one is what I would call a passive nap. And the reason I called a passive nap is because. You may be riding on a ride, especially one. That's going to be a little bit longer. It's in the dark and you may fall asleep just passively you weren't planning on it. You just happened to fall asleep. We're going to give you a list of the best places to do that as well as then an active nap. I actually need to go sleep. I need to go find somewhere to go. Maybe the rest of my party's going to keep going. I just need 30 minutes, maybe 45 to fall asleep, and I need to go find an active place to go sit and just relax and take a quick little nap and get some Zs and that way I can keep going the rest of the day, especially if I'm going to be staying late, watching the fireworks and staying till park closed. I may just need to get a couple of these throughout the day. So we're going to walk you through each of the parks. And today we're going to start out in, California, in Anaheim, and we're going to start over at Disney land. So at Disneyland there's a lot of different places. You can get a couple of quick Zs over there. For the passive ones, the ones that I'd recommend are it's a small world. This is a good boat ride that goes in doors. It's going to be out of the sun and it's going to take you about 10 to 15 minutes to get through this ride. Once you sit down on the boat. So if you're able to sit up and. And to just nod off right there in the boat. That's a great place to go. If you need a place to stretch out maybe a little bit more than I'm going to encourage you to go to our next place, which is moments with Mr. Lincoln. This is out on the front of main street. It's a great show and actually a great historical show. So if you've never seen it, I do encourage you to go watch it in its entirety. But if you need a place to go sit, that's going to be a little bit dark that you're going to get maybe 20 to 25 minutes of a nap out of a moments with Mr. Lincoln is a great place to go. Our third choice, and this one's not as high as the other two is the storybook canals. And that's because you're still outside. So if it's a hot day, you're in the sun. The story book canals, probably about an eight to 10 minute ride where they're going to take you through the canals and the person's going to be talking on the microphone and you may be able to doze off there for just a moment. Now, if you need an active place to go sit, I will tell you a Disneyland. Your best bet is going to be to go to any of the quick service restaurants throughout the park and just go find a table in the corner. Where you can go sit back, maybe lean your head against the wall or to the side, or maybe even put your head on the table and that's going to be a great place to go sleep. You're not going to want to go to any of the table service restaurants. They're not going to let you sleep there because they need to keep that table open. And even at a quick service place, I'd recommend don't do it around the lunch hour. Sometime between two and four in the afternoon is going to be a little bit better when people aren't actively looking for a table to eat. But you can do it at any quick service. I will say again, there's not one quick service. That's better than the other in this park. In our other parks, we do list ones that are better. So we'll get to those in just a moment. But at Disneyland, they're all about the same. Now let's walk across the pavilion over to California adventure there in Anaheim. And this one is a little bit of a tougher park to find a place to passively fall asleep. And that's because all of the rides are so active or so aggressive. So you've got like the Incredicoaster. You've got mission breakout for guardians of the galaxy. Even like the monsters Inc. Ride. Though it's a dark ride. It moves around pretty quick. There's loud noises there looking for boo in that ride, that's going to be a tough place to fall asleep. So the only passive one that's really available in California adventures is going to be aerials under sea adventure. As this is a continuous load bride, similar to haunted mansion. They do have music playing throughout the whole thing. But it is cool in there. It is relaxing. And that's going to give you maybe a five to seven minute nap. If you're able to get in there and fall asleep. So that is our only recommendation at California adventure, but for an active nap. Now, this is what I'm going to go sleep for probably 20 to 30 minutes. Your best bet is going to be the Hyperion theater. And so they run shows throughout the day. So the last show that was running, that when I was there was the frozen show and that shows about 30 minutes long. That is a great place to go. It's indoors. It's dark, especially if you sit in the upper levels in the balcony. You can just doze and fall asleep really easily. The seats are pretty comfortable, but they're a little bit narrow in the rows. You're not going to be able to stretch out your legs at ton. But that is a great place to go. And that is our number one recommendation at California adventure. Next we're going to stay in California and we're going to go to universal Hollywood. Which as you guys know is as much smaller park it doesn't take as much time to get through this park. And because of that, it's, there's a lot of restrictions when it comes to napping, meaning you're not going to have a lot of great places to go fall asleep. So the two best options that I have for you to take a passive nap are going to be probably either the backlot tour. That's going to be on the trams. You're going to be out there for about 30 to 40 minutes. That's a great place to fall asleep because they do have the covers of the tramp. So you're going to be in the shade, but you're going to go through the fast and the furious. You're going to go through Kong. You're going to go see JAws. You're going to see a lot of these other elements. Where it's going to be maybe a little bit louder and it may wake you up. And I really loved the backlot tour. In fact, I think that's probably the best experience at universal Hollywood. So I'm going to recommend to stay awake and watch that as much as possible. But outside of that, you can go to the animal actors show that is also outdoors, but it is covered. But at the animal actor show, you can sit in the stands. You're going to get a good opportunity to fall asleep real quick. Hopefully bird doesn't land on you because they do use birds flying around the auditorium in that show. But that's going to be your most relaxing place in the park at all. There is no great active place to go take a nap. There are a handful of benches throughout the park. There are a few indoor quick service places, but they're loud. They're crowded. And if you can find a seat, great. Go ahead and take one. But there's not a place that we prefer over anywhere else. And it's just going to be a challenge at universal Hollywood, just because it's a smaller park. With that let's hop over now to Orlando and we're going to go to everyone's favorite park and that's magic kingdom. And there are four different places that you can find a good passive nap. And they start with it's a small world. Like we had over at California in Anaheim. I same format of a ride. It's almost identical. This is a great place to fall asleep. Second here is going to be pirates of the Caribbean. And the reason that we put this one on magic kingdom and we didn't put it over at Disney land is because Disneyland actually has multiple drops in this ride. So if you're falling asleep or nodding off chances are you're going to be woken up very quickly with the multiple drops here in Orlando. They only have one drop on the right and it's early on after that, you could fall asleep for maybe five to seven minutes. Before you get to the end of the ride. So again, just a quick little catnap, just a quick shut eye there on pirates of the Caribbean. Our next two at magic kingdom are actually really good opportunities. Number one hall of presidents, this is a 20 plus minute show. Similar to moments with Mr. Lincoln at Disney land, where you're going to be in the air conditioning. It's dark, it's easy to fall asleep in there. It's very comfortable. So that is a great one to go do. And then probably everyone's favorite is the carousel of progress. If you've never ridden the carousel of progress. It's actually a really cool attraction. This was invented back for the world's fair similar too. It's a small world. But they talk about the different stages of innovation and invention throughout the park. And this one's awesome. So carousel progress is you're going to be in there quite a while. It's gonna move around. But that shouldn't wake you up and that's a great place to take a nap. Now, if you need to actively take a nap, I need to go sit and find a place for a little while. There's two quick service restaurants that I recommend. We also talked about these on the best places to work episode, and that's going to be upstairs at the Harbor house or in Pecos Bill. Now Pecos bill does have two levels. They usually rope off the upper level at the ramp. So if you can find another spot and Pecos bill that would work just as well, but they do have an upstairs that harbors house. And that's going to be my top recommendation for you. Now over at Epcot there are three different places. You could do a passive nap here. And first is the icon right out at the front of the park. And that is spaceship earth. If you've never been on spaceship earth, it is a continuous load ride that you get in your little car and you go through the history of innovation and as you go through it, it's very dark. It's a very slow ride. There's no loud noises and you're going to be in there for about 10 minutes. So that's a great ride that you can fall asleep on. You also have living with the land at the land pavilion, and this one is indoors, but you do go through light and dark spaces. So that may wake you up a little bit. But this one, likewise is more than a 10 minute little boat ride. It's fairly comfortable. And this one has a little bit more room to stretch out on it. Than some of the other boat rides. So that's a great piece of it. But this one for a lot of people think is pretty boring. I actually enjoy, I think it's fascinating to watch everything from the growing of the plants there to using the fish and the recycle of the water and all that. I think it's really cool. So that is a great one. The third place over here at Epcot is going to be in the very back of the world, showcase at the American pavilion and they have the show, the American adventure, and this one very similar to moments with Mr Lincoln or the hall of presidents. Is one, that's going to be about a 20 minute show. You have very comfortable chairs in there. You can go sit in there. It gets dark. You can relax, fall asleep, very easy. So those are your best passive places to sleep. Now for your best place to go actively take a nap. I have one location and this one's actually different. Then when we did the best places to work episode, and the reason is this place is actually the Odyssey events pavilion. It is located between test, track and Mexico. So on the left-hand side of the park, as you're going into the park or looking at a map you're going to see this little walkway that pops up behind test track and cuts over to Mexico. And there's a pavilion in there. And the reason I like this place is it's not super busy in there. There's not a ton of tables, but it's very dark and it's indoors in an AC. So if you can go find a table back in that area you're going to be in a very dark environment. It's going to be very easy to fall asleep and you can hang out there probably as long as you want. Because no, one's going to ask you to leave from the events pavilion back in there. So that is going to be our go-to place over at Epcot. Now. Let's go over to Hollywood studios, similar to universal. Hollywood is a little bit of a tighter park. There's not as many great places to sleep here, but we did find three really good opportunities for you. So for your passive nap, if you're just going to fall asleep during an event or a show or a ride. We have two good recommendations for you. And the first is the beauty and the beast show. Now the beauty and the beast show is a large auditorium. It's all on bleachers. It's outdoors, but it's covered. So you're not going to get rained on. You're not going to be in the direct sun. But this show goes on for quite a while and it's very easy to fall asleep in there. I've done it multiple times myself. And that's partly because we've seen the show so many times, so we always. I like to take friends with us and they may not have seen it. And so we'll go take them to the show and because I've seen it, Hey, it's great chance for me to catch a couple Zs while they're enjoying themselves. The other one here is back in the middle of the park. It's a little bit tucked away and that's Walt Disney presents. This is a very small theater that you can go into and it talks about Walt Disney's history and how he got started. But similar to the hall of presidents and all the other theater shows you're in the dark, you're in the AC, it's a movie. This one's a little bit shorter. It's about 15 minutes long. But you can go watch Walt Disney presents and catch a couple of seats there. Now, if you need to take an active nap, you're going to zonk out for a little while, your only best place to go. And we did talk about this on the best places to work episode is going to be at Rizzos pizza. So this is over in the Muppet section. It's between star tours and then the Galaxy's edge spot. There's a little New York section back there. And in Rizzo's pizza, there is an upstairs. I definitely encourage you to go upstairs. You can go sit in a booth. It's, fairly quiet up there and it's going to be a great opportunity to be inside and in the AC. And you're going to be able to sit up there as long as you like. Next over at animal kingdom there are three different places. You can do a passive nap here at animal kingdom. Of course the first two are the two shows. So you have the festival of the lion king, which is a great show and we absolutely love it's my wife's favorite show at all the Disney parks. And I have fallen asleep in it multiple times. Again, we've seen it a lot. It gets dark in there and it is nice and cool. And then likewise, the finding Nemo show. Over on the other side of the park is a great place because that one even gets darker. And festival of the lion king. And I fall asleep almost every single time that I've been in that show. So that one's a great one as well. And then Kilimanjaro, safaris, you could potentially fall asleep. If the bouncing of the truck, doesn't wake you up. It's really fun to go see all the animals. I definitely encourage you. Stay awake for the shows and the animals. But if you'd need it to, those are your three best options for a passive nap over at animal kingdom. For an active one, if you're going to find a place to go sit for a while like our, where to work from in the park episode, I'm going to tell you to go behind the flame tree barbecue, which is on discovery island, that's in the center and back there, there are all these different pavilions, a wood table. So it's covered, you are outdoors. So it's going to be humid. But it's not super busy and less. It's a heavy lunch hour. Or something like that. So you're definitely going to be able to find a place to sit off the path there and you're going to find a place to relax. So I will call out real quick. Oh, in the places to work episode, I called it bangled barbecue. That's because that's at Disneyland. I'm so used to the barbecue over there. But it's flame tree barbecue at Disney world at animal kingdom. So I apologize that I misspoke on that episode when I mentioned this place. At a universal Orlando. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of great places. So both islands of adventure and universal studios, there aren't any good passive rights to fall asleep by being maybe Jurassic park the river boat tour, if you wanted to do that. But again it is a really cool ride. There's a drop at it. It's very aggressive towards the end. You're probably not going to fall asleep on it. That is the steadiest ride you can find in this park. Over at islands of adventure, even in the Dr. Seuss land cat in the hat, it's going to be spinning you. The carousel in the trolley rides aren't long enough. So I don't think that I would do it there. So there's not a great ride to fall asleep on over at universal studio. So it's probably not going to happen. However for an active nap. If you want to go find a place to sit and get out of the sun for a little bit at islands of adventure, your best place is going to be fantastic four pizza. That one doesn't fill up as often. And we actually had some pizza and salad there on our last trip when my daughter and I went. And we were the only people in the restaurant when we were eating at that point in time. So I can say that places doesn't fill up. It's nice and dark in there and it's nice and cool. So it's very relaxing and fantastic four pizza. Over on the universal studio side. There's no good indoor place. And we talked about this on the where to work episode as well. That it's a little bit of a challenge to find a place there. So our best place, and this is honestly our best place to, if you needed to sit down for a little bit and fall asleep is going to be in the back by men and black between men and black and Diagon alley. There are some benches, there's a restroom back there, but there are some benches out there on the walkway that are always open. And we have always been able to find a seat there if someone needed to relax. And that's where I'm going to direct you go find one of those benches you're going to be outside. you're going to be exposed to the elements. But if you're able to sit in a bench and fall asleep, you could do that for a few minutes back there and no one's going to bother you. So that is going to be your best place now. In every single episode. Let me take that back. Almost every single episode we have our, I can do this all day tip of the day, and today is no different. And I'm going to give you our, I can do this all day tip of the day when it comes to taking a nap in the parks and it's going to be don't. Your best bet is going to be go back to your hotel. Go take a snooze for a couple hours there. Lie in your bed, lie in the AC. Get in the dark. Actually take a good one to two hour nap. You're going to feel a ton better. And then come back to the parks and keep enjoying your day. Your pass is good, whether you come into the park at, rope drop at 9:00 AM or 8:00 AM, depending on when the park opens. If you leave at one, come back at three, your pass is still going to get you in. And I can tell you when our daughter was younger. We did this a lot when she was bigger and in the sense of a toddler age where she wouldn't fall asleep very easily in the stroller, she wanted to be up. She maybe got cranky. We would stop in the middle of our day. We would leave the park. We would go back to the hotel, take the shuttle, take the tram, take whatever we needed to go back to the hotel. We would take a nap for an hour or two and don't get me wrong. She was upset. She didn't want to leave the park, but we would say we're going back. Like we promise you, we will go back. This afternoon after we take a nap. But we would get a little bit of a rest there in the hotel room. We'd fall asleep for a couple hours. And it was beautiful because then she was rested. We were rested. And then we'd go back into the parks three, four in the afternoon after we took a nap. And especially in Orlando. With the rain and all that, the parks may have started to empty out a little bit. The crowd levels are going to be a little bit lower and then we would be able to keep going all the way till. park close at the end of the night. So we would watch the firework show. We'd watch whatever the entertainment is. Or maybe if we'd been there multiple times and already seen it, we'd keep doing rides at that point in the night. And then we'd stay in, closed down the park and go back to our hotel and sleep all night and go do it again. The next day. That is really going to be your best bet. And I know a lot of people say, I want to maximize my time in the park. I don't want to do that. But trust me when I say. Like people like us. So we roped drop, especially in Orlando because we have our condo there. We will rope drop. We will be in the parks till maybe two, three in the afternoon and we'll leave. And a lot of locals do that. So they're going to leave at that point in time. People with little kids or people with elderly people with them, they may tire out and at two to three in the afternoon, there may be done for the day. And they're going to go relax and have a nice dinner. They're going to leave. So the park levels are going to change throughout the day. Of course, the busiest time is going to be that 10 to two hour. So if you're able to rope drop, get a couple of rides in leave at noon, come back after two or three, you're going to start to see the crowd levels drop. You're going to have shorter wait times. You're going to have a great time and you're going to have be well rested because you took a nap. So it's totally worth it. It's not worth running yourself, ragged and running out of gas before the end of the day. Especially if you have a little kid with you. So do go back to the hotel room, take our advice. You're not missing out on that much, and you're going to have a more pleasant afternoon. If you do that with that. We wish you a magical week as you're planning your next vacation. We have some friends actually coming over tonight that we're talking about vacationing and where we're going to go next with. So we're real excited about that. But we want you to have a magical week as you're planning your next vacation. And we will talk to you next time, which more than likely will be after we get back from Paris and we have all the cool Paris updates. So we'll talk to you then. Bye. Bye.