As dawn breaks this morning in Central Florida at both Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando, two small teams of arguably crazy theme park aficionados will be lined up at the parks’ respective gates ready to do the (almost) impossible.
Their mission: Ride every ride in all four Disney World theme parks and the two Univeral Orlando theme parks before the parks close that night. At Disney, that means the team is targeting 52 moving attractions across all the parks. At Universal Orlando, it means that team is doing the same thing in the quest to complete all 33 moving attractions at those parks.
TARAH CHIEFFI/THE POINTS GUY
This is being done not just to test the limits of Disney’s Lightning Lane and Universal’s Express Pass wait-time-reducing systems — and see which of the two is more efficient in a day — but also, more importantly, to raise money for an amazing cause.
TPG’s Tarah Chieffi, Nick Ewen, Senitra Horbrook and Summer Hull will join forces with many friends of the brand — including regular TPG contributor Edward Pizzarello and some new-to-the-challenge theme park influencers such as Molly from Mammoth Club and Michael from Michael Does Diz — to tick off as many rides today as humanly possible to raise money for Give Kids the World Village.
Our team tackles the ride challenge in 2021. SUMMER HULL/THE POINTS GUY
Give Kids the World Village is an 89-acre village located in the Orlando area, and is where the majority of the children on a week-long, cost-free “Make a Wish” trip to the theme park capital of the world stay during their memory-making vacations. GKTW is a top-rated charity, and since it first opened in 1986, it has hosted more than 177,000 families.
SUMMER HULL/THE POINTS GUY
Of course, those cost-free trips to the families aren’t free for the village. So, for the third year, we are riding as many rides as possible in one day to raise as many dollars as possible for this amazing charity.
If you are interested and able to support this effort, you can donate directly to our Give Kids the World team donation page. We would love it if you could donate per ride we complete today, bet an amount on the team you think will be able to ride the most in one day or just make a flat donation.
TPG will match up to $10,000 in donations made directly to Give Kids the World via that page.
When we have attempted this challenge twice in the past, we hit 38 and 41 rides at Disney World. Last year, we raised more than $20,000 in the process. We’re pushing to beat that total this time — and see how far the Universal team can get.
You can follow along on the journey today on social media with the hashtag #RideMoreRaiseMore as we push ourselves — and the theme park’s express riding systems — to the limit. We’ll also be back here next week to share a recap on the fundraising, as well as answer the question of where you can ride the most theme park rides in one day.
