The ten attractions with a minimum height

Of the fifty attractions we plan around in the two parks, only ten ask for a minimum height — and those ten group into just five numbers. Knowing them by heart, and knowing what to suggest to someone who isn't there yet, is what avoids the worst moment of the trip: the queue done, the excitement built, and the sign at the door saying no. Here are the five, one by one, with what to do in each case — and the two things that genuinely help when someone is a centimetre short: measuring properly, and baby switch.

81 cm — Autopia and Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop. The lowest bar of the ten. Autopia has a nuance almost nobody mentions: from 81 cm you can drive with an adult on board, but you need to reach 132 cm to drive it alone. Below 81 cm there's no exception on either — but the rest of the catalogue, forty attractions, stays open with nobody checking a tape measure: It's a Small World, Peter Pan's Flight, Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Pinocchio's Daring Journey, among many others.

102 cm — Big Thunder Mountain, Star Tours and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. The biggest jump of the five: three attractions at once, and among the longest queues in the resort. Anyone a centimetre short can still ride Autopia and Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop if they've already reached 81 cm, and has the whole of what we plan at intensity 0 and 1 ahead of them — which is most of the catalogue.

107 cm — Crush's Coaster. A single attraction at this number: the Ratatouille rollercoaster, in Disney Adventure World. Between 102 and 106 cm, everything in the step below is already open; only this one is missing.

120 cm — Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain, RC Racer and Avengers Assemble: Flight Force. The second big jump, and three of the fastest rides in the whole catalogue. A child between 107 and 119 cm already has Crush's Coaster, Big Thunder Mountain, Star Tours and Tower of Terror — not a small consolation while that last centimetre grows.

140 cm — Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril. The final bar, and the only one at this number. It's by far the one that frustrates most the people who fall just short, because at that height they've already ridden the other nine. There is no comparable-intensity alternative below 140 cm: it's the strongest of the ten, and there's no way around it.

How it's measured, and why the measurement from home doesn't count. Each of the ten has its own measuring stick at the queue entrance, and that's the one that counts, not the tape measure at home: it's measured with shoes on, the ones the child will actually be wearing that day, and a thick-soled trainer can add exactly the centimetre that decides it. A Cast Member checks the height against the stick before letting anyone through — you can check it yourselves against the same stick before joining the queue, so there's no surprise at the end of a long wait. How to measure at home so the number is already right the first time, with the one-centimetre band that genuinely decides it, is in Measuring a child before the trip.

Baby switch: which of the ten has it, and which doesn't. Of the ten height-gated attractions, six also offer baby switch: Big Thunder Mountain, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain, Crush's Coaster, Avengers Assemble: Flight Force and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril. One adult queues and rides, the other waits with whoever can't ride, and they swap when the first one comes off — without queueing again. It costs the length of the ride plus the swap, not a second wait. You ask for it at the entrance itself, with the whole group present, and it's free; the mechanics vary a little from one attraction to another, so it's explained there. It has a limit that rarely makes it into the guides: at most two people can take the second ride, so with three adults and a little one, one of the three misses out on the free second turn. The other four — Autopia, Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop, Star Tours and RC Racer — have no baby switch: if you don't reach it, nobody rides it with them on that particular attraction, and it's worth deciding before you reach the queue, not in it. The step-by-step for how to ask, attraction by attraction, is in Baby switch, step by step.

Your Route already counts the heights you give us, person by person: if someone in the group doesn't reach one of these ten, the attraction stays in the itinerary anyway — unless you tell us otherwise — because wherever baby switch exists, it costs one queue and not two. This article is the why; the decision to include them or not is yours to make in your client area.