How to Rider Switch at Walt Disney World? This comes up a lot. A lot of people have heard of rider switch or rider swap or baby swap. I think some of the books used to call it Baby Swap, but now, officially, Disney calls it Rider Switch, whatever you want to call it. Rider Switch, baby Switch, rider Swap, baby Swap, whatever you want to call it. Let’s talk about how it works.
What is Rider Switch at Walt Disney World?
If you have a family that has a child that either is too short to ride, reluctant to ride, doesn’t want to ride, but you still want to experience the attraction and you don’t want to stand in line twice. (Makes sense.) There are several rides at each park that have a “Rider Switch” option.
How Rider Switch Works
To experience Rider Switch, your whole party goes to the FastPass entrance. At that point, you will be given a ticket, a Rider Switch ticket, then all of the party except for the child that doesn’t want to ride and whatever part of the party that wants to ride goes ahead and rides. The other party that’s staying with the child that wants to ride later, stays with the child.
Now, the important thing here is that the second group can only include two people. So if you’ve got a group of 10 or 12 people, you can’t have 5 go at the first time, 5 go at the second time. Only two people can go with the second round of Rider Switch. Take your group and get your Rider Switch pass. Everybody goes except for one or two and the child that doesn’t want to ride.
The first group takes the Rider Swap ticket and goes and rides the ride. Now, you can either go through the regular line, or, if everybody, including the second group, if everybody has fast passes, you can go through the FastPass line. You don’t get an advantage by doing Rider Switch. The first group won’t get to go through the fast past line if you don’t have a FastPass.
The Rider Switch Attractions
Here are the attractions where you can experience Rider Switch at Walt Disney World.
At the Magic Kingdom
- The Barnstormer
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
- Space Mountain
- Tomorrowland Speedway
- TRON Lightcycle / Run*
At EPCOT
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
- Alien Swirling Saucers
- Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster
- Slinky Dog Dash
- Star Tours – The Adventure Continues
- The Tower of Terror
Animal Kingdom
*All Rider Swap participants are required to be in a Virtual Queue boarding group or have an individually purchased Lightning Lane entrance for the attraction prior to boarding.
