How to get a higher score on Toy Story Midway Mania

Arguably the most popular attraction in Walt Disney World these days is Toy Story Midway Mania at Disney's Hollywood Studios.  Wait times here regularly exceed an hour and often can be as high as two hours or longer!  So with wait times like these, you'll want to ensure when you actually do ride, you score as high as you can and this week we've got some tips for you to get a higher score on Toy Story Midway Mania (and show your kids who's still got "it").

Teamwork

It may sound like the opposite of what you expect to hear, but playing with the person you’re seated next to will actually get you a higher score than if you both try to undermine each other.  Toy Story Midway Mania was designed to embrace team play and there are plenty of opportunities to get a higher score on any level if you work as a team.

Hidden throughout the ride are secret ways to score higher.  Disney’s Imagineers included these “easter eggs” as a way to really get your score higher and quite honestly; it’s the best way to compete with the high scores you’ll see.  The hidden secrets that yield the most points are definitely the ones that require team work.

Spray and Pray

The ride will tell you how many points you scored and how accurate you were during each scene but the accuracy rating is, well, useless.  It means nothing!  So don’t hold back;  Shoot your darts, rings and balls as furiously and quickly as possible.  The more you shoot, the more likely you’ll hit something in your “carpet bombing” of the map.  Basically, you should never stop shooting.

The Secrets

Each scene on Toy Story Midway Mania includes at least 3 or 4 ways to score higher.  You don’t need to hit all of them, but you should figure out which method works best for you.

The first scene is Hamm and Eggs and my favorite trick here is to simply shoot the fox that is on top of the hen house and then shoot the chickens that exit the hen house and then repeat.  Simple enough, right?  If you just do that all round you should end up with about 25,000 points.

Next up is Rex and Trixie’s Dino Darts and here is where team work comes in handy.  You and your teammate should shoot the lava flows that are spewing from the volcano above.  Once you hit them both, balloons will erupt from the volcano and you can both go to town.

In the Green Army Men Shoot Camp scene, you’re going to need a talented team mate to pull off this trick.  There are two plates thrown up in the air at the same time on either side of the scene.  Both of you need to hit both plates to activate a special way to earn lots of points!

My favorite trick for Buzz Lightyear’s Flying Tossers is to work with your partner to shoot your rings at all of the aliens in the space ship so that they are all gone before they can respawn.  If you do that, you will reveal the coolest hidden trick in all of the ride and a great way to score a lot of points.

There's plenty more secrets to find on Toy Story Midway Mania and you can check out our list of Toy Story Midway Mania secrets to see the entire list.

Practice

Like everything in life, practice makes perfect and the more you play, the better you’ll do.  Once you master these secrets, you can easily score upwards of 300,000 or more points.  Being fast is the name of the game and knowing about the secrets helps, but you’re going to need to execute quickly to be able to unlock multiple secrets per round.

Good luck out there!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Matt Hochberg is a Disney's Hollywood Studios super fan and runs StudiosCentral.com, a site dedicated to all things Hollywood Studios. Matt also hosts WDW Today, a free Walt Disney World planning podcast that offers trip planning advice, strategies and tips. You can find Matt on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.

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