Disney Magic Kingdoms is a theme park simulation game by popular video game developer Gameloft which has been around on mobile ever since 2016.
Like it’s the case with games in this genre, you’ll be in charge of building a charming theme park in order to attract as many visitors as possible. Your main tasks include adding new rides and bringing all the characters we know and love from the Disney franchise to your park.
At the same time, you’ll also have to invest time and effort into warding off evil and taking a stand against popular villains such as Pete, Mother Gothel, and Zurg in order to make sure your theme park does not fall into disarray.
New characters are constantly being added to Disney Magic Kingdom, ensuring that you won’t get bored easily of playing this game. Disney Magic Kingdom’s most recent updates brought the characters of 101 Dalmatians on board, as well Luca from the 2021 hit animation who features a boy mermaid who dreams of exploring the world beyond the ocean.
Unlocking new characters takes quite a bit of time, however, so as to ensure you don’t get frustrated we’ve put together this comprehensive Disney Magic Kingdom guide, updated for 2021, in which we detail some strategies to ensure you get to welcome your favorite Disney hero as quickly as possible.
1. Keep Your Characters Busy
During the initial stages of the game and beyond, you need to make sure you have enough Magic to sustain all activities in your budding park. You can do that by keeping the characters you’ve unlocked so far busy. Doing so also ensures that you can move the story along at a reasonable pace.
The way this works best is you delegating tasks (or quests) left and right. Even if a character isn’t currently involved in a mission, it shouldn’t be sitting idle and not doing anything productive. Instead, tap on it and select one of the tasks from the list. You will probably notice that all of these missions return EXP, as well as Magic. Both are basic necessities in Disney Magic Kingdoms, so you can’t have enough.
Of course, you should prioritize missions pertaining to story mode. For instance, at one point, Mickey Mouse starts missing Minnie and in order to put things in motion so that she can eventually join the theme park you’ll need to perform a series of dedicated tasks. Focus on those first, as opposed to working the “for-fun” missions which, for example, have Mickey “search for friends”. Quests such as these will always be around, and you can embark in them any time your character has some spare time on its hands.
Further on in the game, you’ll get the chance to put your characters to good use by sending them out to harvest “Happiness” from park visitors. Some tourists have special demands and so it’s your crew’s job to see that they are fulfilled. These needs manifest in the form of tiny speech bubbles that hoover over a person’s head as they are walking through the park.
As soon as you see one, tap on it and send the visitor to meet up with the character they wish to engage with (it only works if the character is free and not working to complete another quest). Once the tourists gets their fill, you’ll see a happy face floating above them.
Now, a lot of these quests you’ll have your characters do, take a long time to complete (we’re talking several minutes to full hours). Keeping this in mind and make sure you log into the game every few hours to redeem the rewards of each completed mission and assign new tasks to your crew. Naturally, quests that take longer to finish will yield the more generous rewards, so they are totally worth taking up.
2. Keep An Eye Out For Quests That Yield Special Rewards
Most quests will give you Magic and EXP, but not all of them. Some might tease the possibility of getting extra items. You’ll need those down the line as you’re trying to upgrade your characters, so whenever you’ve spotted one and your magic creatures aren’t doing anything else with their time, direct them towards taking up one of these missions.
Collecting special items of this sort in advance will be beneficial when a new character upgrade becomes available, as you’ll be able to do it right away. You can read more on this topic is section 4 of this guide.
3. Level Up Your Park
You gain EXP points mainly by completing quests, and once enough has been collected your park will upgrade to the next level. You’ll receive extra Magic and some Gems when you do so, the latter being a very scarce resource in the game.
Gems are super helpful commodities, but it takes a LONG time to put together a decent amount. Levelling up your park is one of the methods for getting more, although the quantity you get to grab each time isn’t that great. Upgrading your park also helps you move the story along, which will get you closer to unlocking new characters and rides.
4. Upgrade Your Characters
Every so often, character upgrades become available and it’s important that you perform them as soon as possible. In exchange for your efforts you’ll get Magic and Gems (!) – you can actually score pretty generous bundles as they evolve to a certain level – so we encourage you to focus your efforts on improving your magical creatures.
Levelling up your characters will bestow the ability to perform new tasks on them which in turn can bring more Magic and EXP to your inventory. On top of that, upgrading characters also moves the story along, so the sooner you do it the better. As you read in section 2, try and be proactive with this in mind. Prioritize sending your characters on quests that can win you additional items (such as tokens), as they will be needed when it’s time to upgrade.
A quick note here. Not all characters are essential to the development of the plot line. For example, Tinkerbell is not really worth spending resources on to upgrade. She really has no bearing on expanding your park, so keeping her at level 1 won’t affect developments too much.
5. Upgrade Your Buildings
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that you can also upgrade your theme park’s rides. Each of them produces rewards over time including Magic, EXP and some additional items. Now, attractions in the park can be enhanced in order to increase the bonuses they provide.
Of course, none of these upgrades come for free. You’ll have to collect a host of required items in order to increase the power of the attraction. At the same time, the ride will take less time to produce the rewards.
Upgrading or “enchanting” (as the game calls it) these buildings should also unlock new things for your characters to do at the location. The problem is that getting the items you need to perform upgrades will take you a LOT of time. You usually need a variety of tokens and some additional items plus Magic, but the hardest to come by are the former. That’s because they are usually contained in Chests.
Now Chests can give you access to all kinds of useful stuff. They can even bring new characters on board, but there’s a big problem with them. They cost A LOT of Gems. Given that the influx of Gems is extremely limited in Disney Magic Kingdoms, you’ll have a really hard time trying to gather enough to spend on chests. The game does offer the chance to crack some chests for free, but honestly these opportunities are not enough. Not if you’re looking to make progress at a reasonable rate.
6. Find The Hidden Chests In The Kingdom
Free chests lay hidden throughout your kingdom, and all you have to do is identify them quickly. Cracking them open might reveal the kind of tokens you need for upgrading your attractions, but it’s not always the case. There are usually 2 chests hidden on the map, and once you locate them you’ll need to wait for a prolonged period of time before they resurface again in your kingdom.
Additionally, you should check the Chest section in the Shop and see what free offers you can find available. Twice a day, you’re given the option to watch a few ads in exchange for a series of Bronze and Silver chests. The latter has a higher chance of containing rare items, but they are also more limited in numbers. Moreover, once a day you can collect a free Bronze and Silver chest, no ad watching involved.
Unfortunately, the more generous chests are very expensive. A simple Resource chest will take you back with 40 Gems, while an Attraction Enhancement Chests is worth 75 Gems!!! As for character chests, the Aladdin Chest, for instance, costs 60 Gems. We honestly don’t recommend investing in anything other than the Attraction Enhancement Chests and perhaps the Resource ones – depending on your needs. If you do give into the urge of buying a Character chest or a Decoration chest, it will be extremely hard to win all of those Gems back.
Since we’re on this topic, our advice is stay away from Decoration chests, you’ll just be spending Gems in vain. Decorations are basically useless in this game. Sure they’ll make your theme park look a whole lot prettier, but they don’t offer anything besides aesthetic points. You won’t be able to harvest any Magic or EXP off them, so save your Gems for something better.
7. Ways To Beef Up Your Gem Stash
Getting more Gems quickly becomes your most stringent task as manager of the Disney Magic Kingdoms theme park. Therefore, being aware of all the methods available to get more should be on top of your list of priorities. We’ve listed them for your convenience below:
- Level up your park – as we explained in the dedicated section, levelling up your park yields a couple of Gems every time.
- Level up your characters – at the same time, leveling up individual characters is also rewarded with a small gift of Gems. Keep improving your magic creatures to get more precious stones.
- Complete character sets – your characters are grouped in sets in your Character Book. For example, in “Mickey and Friends 2” you’ll find Goofy, Donald, Daisy and Pete. Unlock them all and you’ll receive a prize worth of 15 Gems.
- Watch some ads – once a day, you get the opportunity to watch a couple of ads in exchange for 1 Gem rewards. Don’t miss out on them! Tap on the movie theatre building in your park to start viewing.
- Run a Parade – Parades can yield Gems in Disney Magic Kingdom, as well as Magic. You can link up multiple parades together, which you first need to purchase using Magic. Keep in mind that to make a longer chain of Parades, you’ll need to spend Gems in order to unlock a new slot. The first slot is free, while the second doesn’t cost a lot of precious stones.
So don’t rush into buying more slots, not until you’ve put together a sufficient Gem collection because they tend to be expensive. You can always remove a Parade from a slot and replace it with something else as well, so you can acquire more of those and simply switch between them according to your needs. - Play daily – if you want to make progress in Disney Magic Kingdoms, we suggest that you log into the game on a daily basis. The game serves up daily rewards and some of them might turn out to be Gems. On top of that, ads are refreshed on a daily basis, so make sure you take advantage of them constantly, not just once in a while.
Even with all these methods at your disposal, Gem acquisition is still going to be small. The truth it, you need to be super patient if you want to get far in this game. So going into Disney Magic Kingdoms, you should be prepared to spend quite a lot of time grinding at it, before being able to unlock a new character or attraction.
8. On Concessions And Decorations
Concessions are a type of non-attraction buildings that aren’t really essential to the development of the plot in Disney Magic Kingdom. You unlock them gradually as you level up, but mostly they tend to slip under the radar.
However, we recommend that from time to time you check the Concession/Decoration section in the Shop and see what’s new and free. If buildings are available, go ahead and place them around your park. Like attractions, concessions can also yield Magic, as well as some EXP. For instance, Mickey’s Waffle Shop can produce 29 Magic and 3 EXP in approximately 2 hours.
You need Magic for almost everything in this game, so we suggest you make good use of Concessions in order to quickly boost your energy reserve.
There’s another way you can put Concessions to good use though, together with Decorations. We told you in a previous section that Decorations tend to have no real value if placed in the park, well apart from making your kingdom look a little bit prettier that is. So our advice is to hold on to them until you unlock Merlin’s laboratory where you can prepare spells.
Basically you can drop all your Concessions and Decorations in Merlin’s cauldron and create Elixirs. These can then be used in the wizard’s shop to purchase all kinds of things. For example, a Character Scroll will take you back with 600 Elixirs, while a Blue Moon Fabric costs 375.
What are these Fabrics all about, you might be wondering? Well as you progress, the game will unlock the Costume shop where you can buy extra outfits for your characters in exchange for fabric and magic. Sometime, creating new pieces of clothing for your creatures will be part of the quest list, so you’ll receive rewards for doing so.
Also note that characters dressed in new costumes might be able to perform unique activities. Give it a try if you wish to see how it works, but you’d best wait for a quest before you go ahead and spend the Elixirs. You don’t have unlimited access to free concessions and decorations, so it might be best to conserve them as much as possible.
Obliviously, you can buy Concession and Decorations Chests from the shop if you have enough Gems, but we heavily recommend against it. Instead, you should be spending your precious stones into buying Attraction Enchantment Chest.
It takes a lot of work to expand your theme park and welcome all characters in Disney Magic Kingdoms, so we urge you to be patient while playing this game. Make sure you remember our tips, cheats and strategies above if you want to succeed! In case you have come across additional tips or tricks, feel free to let us know in the comments below!