10 Essential Tips and Tricks

Disney Illusion Island is a colorful and engaging but fairly formulaic platformer, but you can’t do everything right away. A purple gator character called Mazzy will conveniently appear throughout the game to give each character a gadget of some kind to help them on their journey.

Find a Character That Suits Your Playstye

Every character is functionally identical, but there are subtleties to the animations and sound effects that can passively impact your experience. Goofy may not actually have a larger hitbox, but his body is much larger than the others. His movement is floaty and he feels, well, goofy. Mickey and Minne feel more or less the same, so the difference is mostly cosmetic. Where Minnie gets a quality carabiner to swing across rainbows, Goofy gets a bunch of sausage links. Minnie gets a dainty paper plane to soar across the sky, but Donald gets a noisy firecracker. Some are more distracting than others, so try out different options.

Hidden Walls Always Have a Chip Missing

It shouldn’t be too long before you accidentally slip through what appears to be a wall only to find a secret room on the other side. These can appear virtually anywhere and vary greatly in size, often leading to a more challenging platforming section with collectible rewards like Tokun cards. But you can always spot them by recognizing a small, rounded chip somewhere in the wall.

Wait to Explore and Find All Collectibles

Don’t be tempted by unexplored areas of the map until rather late in the game. Sure, you can earn more Glimt, but more often than not, you’ll hit dead ends because you haven’t unlocked certain abilities yet. Perhaps most importantly (light spoilers here), you unlock a fast-travel option rather late in the game. If you’re a completionist looking to collect it all, mainline the story and then work on tracking everything down.

Collect All the Glimt

The main collectible and form of currency, Glimt comes in groups of three and looks like blue-white will-o’-the-wisps. They track the player character when they get close enough, so you don’t necessarily have to “touch” them. Their main use is in unlocking panels in the Glimts Rewards section of Collections. Each six-panel image that you reveal grants you an extra heart, permanently increasing your health stores. Still, don’t go too far out of your way to hunt them down, but never leave a stray Glimt ball behind in passing.

Save Health Packs

You might be tempted to jump on every health pack you see, if only for the little bounce boost it gives you. But so much of Disney Illusion Island involves backtracking, so you’re better off saving it for later when you’re actually low on health.

Swap Characters Early and Often

Particularly later in the game once you have more health, you don’t really want to be caught at only one heart heading into a complicated area. Head to your nearest mailbox to auto-save and then quit to the main menu. Log back into the game and select a character, and you’ll respawn at full health. Any time you pass by a mailbox and you’re not at full health, you might as well do this to top off your hearts.

Use Jet Streams and Glide to Rise Higher

The main use of the glide ability is to catch the wind on the upward jet streams found throughout the island of Monoth. They vary greatly in size, but in every case, the upward boost they give you lingers even after you exit the stream. Use this boost to reach higher places or sail over obstacles to reach far-away platforms.

Glide Can Slow Your Descent

You don’t want to fall blindly into any holes, because there are probably some spikes waiting for you at the bottom. You can activate glide whenever you’re airborne, and it’s a great way to slow your descent to get your bearings rather than plummet down.

You Can Jump Up Through Some Platforms

The overall design of Disney Illusion Island’s levels vary wildly, but if you see any thinner platforms that look somewhat normal, then you can probably jump up through them. Oftentimes, any air currents will have many of them.

Hold Y to Stay on a Swing Point

The grappling swing ability gives you some forward and/or upward momentum by swinging along the route of any upside-down rainbows you see. But an easy-to-miss complication is that you’ll reverse directions if you just keep holding onto the Y button used to initiate the swing. Some boss battles have you swing back and forth to break a central crystal, and quite often you’ll have to reverse your direction to progress. Rather than dancing in the air, just hold on tight to do it automatically.