gometros
<font color=teal>WDWWDS Chief Weapons Inspector an
- Joined
- May 4, 2001
Weekdays are definitely the better choice. DS on weekends is a nightmare and if you drive parking is worse.
Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping
Weekdays are definitely the better choice. DS on weekends is a nightmare and if you drive parking is worse.
mickeymom629
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2002
We (DH, DS26 and I) arrived by car from MD yesterday morning. Our villa wasn't ready at OKW so we went to DS about 10:30 - I had updated our check-in time for 10:30 from noon. Found parking easily on the lowest level. Lots of people already there and a long line for Gideons bakery that we noticed. We went to Guest Services to exchange old tickets for new ones to put on our MDE when we get home so as not to cause an issue with the tickets we wanted to prioritize for this week. It looked like only a few people in there but there were already about 5 before us. Got icy drinks at Candy Cauldron and then pretzels at Wetzel's. We wandered around a lot in between. It was cloudy and humid but no rain. Most people wore masks properly. One guy took off his mask to sneeze on the ground as we were having our icy drinks. We left about noon, when it was getting too warm and crowded and sat at the OKW quiet pool while hoping to get our room assignment. Watched one of those white cranes slowly creep on the plants and snatch up a small lizard (not sure about the correct name of either animal). Got our room assignment about 1:30! It never rained where we were all day (just a few brief sprinkles), though it looked like it would. Today we are just relaxing. Tomorrow is supposed to be AK day. I noticed that AK is now open for tickets...maybe because of weather predictions? TP also showed HS availability for today but I don't see it on the Disney site.
Hoping that the weather for tomorrow gets better than the forecast for our AK day
Hoping that the weather for tomorrow gets better than the forecast for our AK day
Dis703
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2010
I have just returned from a 6 day visit 4/12-4/17 and just wanted to share a bit of my impressions. First, I was there in December for 4 days for the first time during COVID and I was really impressed both with how they were handling precautions as well as how good the guests were about distancing and using face masks properly. So it was after that experience that I decided I was comfortable bringing my kids for a visit.
However, since December it seems like guests are way more lax about wearing masks properly and I only once in 6 days heard a CM ask someone to cover their nose. People were getting away with walking and eating and standing in line with masks completely off. And the efforts to distance seemed to have gone out the window much of the time as well. It definitely felt more crowded than early December too. If this had been my experience in December I probably would not have taken my kids this time around. But we made the most of it and were as cautious as we could manage.
Certain areas like Pandora there were too many people to even attempt to distance, but CMs were trying to keep people moving.
They were still using dividers and spacing people out on rides that didn't have them so that was good to see. I didn't hear nearly as many announcements reminding people about masks this time as I did in December. Not sure if it would have helped or not.
We still had a lot of fun and lines weren't too bad.
However, since December it seems like guests are way more lax about wearing masks properly and I only once in 6 days heard a CM ask someone to cover their nose. People were getting away with walking and eating and standing in line with masks completely off. And the efforts to distance seemed to have gone out the window much of the time as well. It definitely felt more crowded than early December too. If this had been my experience in December I probably would not have taken my kids this time around. But we made the most of it and were as cautious as we could manage.
Certain areas like Pandora there were too many people to even attempt to distance, but CMs were trying to keep people moving.
They were still using dividers and spacing people out on rides that didn't have them so that was good to see. I didn't hear nearly as many announcements reminding people about masks this time as I did in December. Not sure if it would have helped or not.
We still had a lot of fun and lines weren't too bad.
Raisincain
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- May 4, 2011
I think the "level" of adherence to Covid protocols at WDW has "peaked" and will continue to slowly deteriorate with time.
It is inevitable.
We are going down Saturday for our third Covid WDW trip and are now vaccinated.
We will still follow every Protocol to the letter,but even with that being our attitude,we,rightly or wrongly, will not feel the same level of "concern" as on the other 2 trips.
For example,if another Guest gets within 4 feet of us in a queue instead of 6 feet,the "freak out" factor just won't be there for us like it was on the other 2 trips.
It would be awesome if everybody would still act at WDW as they did in the early days of Covid World,but it is not realistic IMO-human nature is in play.
LSUmiss
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2014
Yep this has been my prediction from the beginning that before wdw does away with the mask policy, we will see it be more & more lax & enforced less & less.
Catvondita
A Quirky Strange Girl in a Disney World
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2015
When people say MCO is chaotic is it the security lines that people aren't distancing? Or are there large groups of people crowding by their gates? Are they at least wearing the masks properly ?
ENJDisneyFan
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2016
When people say MCO is chaotic is it the security lines that people aren't distancing? YES
Or are there large groups of people crowding by their gates? YES
Are they at least wearing the masks properly ? Sometimes
MinnieInVA
Actually MinnieInCA now, but whatever...
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2012
We just got back on Saturday from a 7 night trip (4/10-4/17)
4/10 (arrival day): flight landed around 4:30 pm, and we had a rental car reserved thru Enterprise. The line for the desk was long-ish, but we waited like 30 seconds for a kiosk to open up, did the check-in that way, and we were off to the garage within 5 minutes. We arrived at Beach Club Villas around 5:30 and hadn't gotten a room notification yet, so we stopped by the front desk. The app hadn't gotten around to notifying us that our room was ready, so we got our room number and settled in. I'd gotten groceries from Garden Grocer, so that was dinner, and then we walked over to Epcot Guest Relations to activate our annual passes (I had purchased them months prior to the pandemic in anticipation of an inevitable price increase, which worked out well for this trip!). We zipped over to Les Halles to get macarons and some pastries for the next morning's breakfast, then back to the resort for the night.
4/11 (MK): We got to the bus stop around 6:40 am for an 8 am open. The line at BC wasn't long, no trouble getting on the first bus at around 6:43. We were at the tap stiles by 7 am, and the gates opened about 2 minutes later. We zipped over to SDMT, which opened a couple minutes after we got in line. We had a productive morning catching a lot of outdoor rides since we knew some bad weather was coming. Sure enough, at noon the skies opened up and proceeded to storm for the next 5 hours. It was crazy. I'd planned to try to stick it out, but my DD (11) was over it about 30 minutes into the storm, so we opted to leave...along with about 90% of the rest of the guests. It took 90 minutes to get on a bus back to BCV, and it was miserable. We hung out in the room til the storm passed around 5, then we headed into Epcot for dinner and a couple of attractions.
4/12 (EP): We got to the IG a little after 10, the line wasn't awful. I think the gates opened about 10:15, and we were off to Frozen (walk on). We did most of the rides throughout the day, trying to balance what was close with what had the most reasonable wait times. We had a dinner reservation at Teppan Edo at 4 (yummy!) and after a couple more hours of wandering/riding rides, we had dessert at Les Glaces. World Showcase was a little busy, but not what I considered ridiculous.
4/13 (Blizzard Beach/Disney Springs): We arrived at Blizzard Beach at about 10:40, got towels from the Beach Haus, and then waited at the bridge until 11 for rope drop. We grabbed loungers in the shade near Polar Pub and headed off to the chairlift for Teamboat Springs. That was a walk-on at that point, and we had a 10 minute wait about an hour later when we went again. We did most of the slides and had lunch over the course of about 3 hours. Of note, someone grabbed one of our loungers while we were out doing slides, which I thought was a no-no in these times....but apparently that doesn't matter to some people. We survived. We left around 2:45 because we wanted to go to Disney Springs before it got too late. We did get there around 4, and it was dead...relatively speaking. For reference, Gideon's had a 25 minute line. Not a virtual queue, the actual line. It was awesome. We did the Coke store international tasting tray, had dinner at Polite Pig, got cookies at Gideon's, did the Photopass Studio (with masks, since it was indoors), and shopped. I think we left around 7:30-8 pm, and it still didn't look crazy crowded. Maybe Tuesdays are the day to go?
4/14 (HS): We experienced the 7 am glitch where for about 2 minutes the app told everyone that they didn't have a park pass. I gave up after 15 seconds because I assumed it was an issue on my end, but screenshotted my issue so I could see the Guest Experience Team when we got there. We walked to HS and got there around 8:10. The gates opened around 5 minutes later. We headed for ToT, which unfortunately was down when we first arrived. So I decided to go see the GET folks and see if they could help us out with the RoTR boarding group problem I had (which I learned later wasn't just me, but I didn't know that at the time). I wound up spending the rest of the pre-opening time in line for the GET. They couldn't help with RoTR, but they did give me a fastpass to an attraction of my choice, and we chose SDD. We bounced around the park, choosing rides based on proximity and wait times, and had lunch at Docking Bay 7 at around 12:45. While eating, we tried for a RoTR boarding group. I did a speed check and the Ping time for park wi-fi was way better than Verizon's, so I used wi-fi to get boarding group 87! Unfortunately, RoTR was having issues that day, so our group didn't end up being called until nearly 5:45pm. After lunch, we left the park via the Skyliner for a couple hours, then returned via Skyliner as our RoTR group was getting close.
4/15 (AK): We drove over since the bus times for BC were causing me angst, and were there not long after rope drop. We headed straight for FoP, and that was practically a walk on. Went to Navi after that, which was also practically a walk-on. We bounced around the park the rest of the day, trying (and failing) to find shade. Expedition Everest continued to have fairly short (20 minute) most of the day, even though the line looked insanely long. This was the one day I regretted not having fast pass. Normally, I would FP for FoP, so we could do Kilimanjaro Safaris first before the heat of the day makes the animals sleepy. We ended up not doing KS until 2:30 or so, and that was the least interesting safari ride I've ever experienced at AK. We still did everything we planned that day, but the lack of shade really hit us hard that day. We had dinner at Beaches and Cream that evening, which was still yummy...especially the Fudge Mudslide sundae!
4/16 (MK): day 2 at MK, we got there around 7 am on the bus, and the tap stiles didn't open til around 7:15. We again zipped over to SDMT, which didn't start running until around 7:40, so a much slower start than on Sunday. We did rides until around 11, then left for a few hours of break time. We came back around 3:30 and stayed til closing. We had dinner at Skipper Canteen. The food was tasty, but our server was apparently in training, so her jokes weren't quite as well delivered or plentiful as I'd been looking forward to. However, her trainer stopped by near the end of our meal to see how the trainee was doing, and he more than delivered on the jokes and puns.
4/17 (EP): Departure day (boooooo.....), but our flight didn't leave until 6:30 pm, so we spent a few hours at Epcot. We got to IG at 9:45, and the tap stiles opened shortly after 10. We hadn't done Soarin' yet, so we beelined over to that. The CMs in the Land pavilion were noting that "Soarin' is not planned to open until 11", but they were letting everyone in to line up anyway. As I suspected, the ride did actually start running around 10:30, so we got in on one of the first showings of the day. We caught a few more favorites, had our traditional Mickey ice cream bar/sandwich, caught Canada Far and Wide, Beauty and the Beast singalong, grabbed macarons for the road from Les Halles, then over to Via Napoli for a 2 pm lunch. After that, it was time to head back to BCV to grab our bags from bell services, load up the rental, and head back to the airport.
This trip was different, but I expected that, and different isn't always bad. If you are either vehemently pro-mask or vehemently anti-mask, this is not the time for you to be at Disney. You'll either be annoyed all day at the anti-maskers disregarding the rules (which weren't by any means widespread) or you'll be annoyed with the "sheeple" abiding by "stupid mask rules and social distancing." I did enjoy not being told to fill in all available space, even though about 25% of the lines I was in had line creepers behind me. Masks weren't as bad as I thought they would be in the 80s outside. Shopping was far more limited than I'd hoped. Disney didn't take nearly as much of my money as I'd thought they might. We made do with the limited food offerings...we certainly didn't starve. I generally didn't miss fastpass, the standby lines moved very well, and I was generally able to avoid the longest rides by either rope-dropping or keeping a watchful eye on wait times/monitoring the Touring Plans app. It was also nice to see some of the standby line features that I've missed out on in the past because I always fastpass the rides. I would go again, if given the opportunity, even despite the current restrictions.
4/10 (arrival day): flight landed around 4:30 pm, and we had a rental car reserved thru Enterprise. The line for the desk was long-ish, but we waited like 30 seconds for a kiosk to open up, did the check-in that way, and we were off to the garage within 5 minutes. We arrived at Beach Club Villas around 5:30 and hadn't gotten a room notification yet, so we stopped by the front desk. The app hadn't gotten around to notifying us that our room was ready, so we got our room number and settled in. I'd gotten groceries from Garden Grocer, so that was dinner, and then we walked over to Epcot Guest Relations to activate our annual passes (I had purchased them months prior to the pandemic in anticipation of an inevitable price increase, which worked out well for this trip!). We zipped over to Les Halles to get macarons and some pastries for the next morning's breakfast, then back to the resort for the night.
4/11 (MK): We got to the bus stop around 6:40 am for an 8 am open. The line at BC wasn't long, no trouble getting on the first bus at around 6:43. We were at the tap stiles by 7 am, and the gates opened about 2 minutes later. We zipped over to SDMT, which opened a couple minutes after we got in line. We had a productive morning catching a lot of outdoor rides since we knew some bad weather was coming. Sure enough, at noon the skies opened up and proceeded to storm for the next 5 hours. It was crazy. I'd planned to try to stick it out, but my DD (11) was over it about 30 minutes into the storm, so we opted to leave...along with about 90% of the rest of the guests. It took 90 minutes to get on a bus back to BCV, and it was miserable. We hung out in the room til the storm passed around 5, then we headed into Epcot for dinner and a couple of attractions.
4/12 (EP): We got to the IG a little after 10, the line wasn't awful. I think the gates opened about 10:15, and we were off to Frozen (walk on). We did most of the rides throughout the day, trying to balance what was close with what had the most reasonable wait times. We had a dinner reservation at Teppan Edo at 4 (yummy!) and after a couple more hours of wandering/riding rides, we had dessert at Les Glaces. World Showcase was a little busy, but not what I considered ridiculous.
4/13 (Blizzard Beach/Disney Springs): We arrived at Blizzard Beach at about 10:40, got towels from the Beach Haus, and then waited at the bridge until 11 for rope drop. We grabbed loungers in the shade near Polar Pub and headed off to the chairlift for Teamboat Springs. That was a walk-on at that point, and we had a 10 minute wait about an hour later when we went again. We did most of the slides and had lunch over the course of about 3 hours. Of note, someone grabbed one of our loungers while we were out doing slides, which I thought was a no-no in these times....but apparently that doesn't matter to some people. We survived. We left around 2:45 because we wanted to go to Disney Springs before it got too late. We did get there around 4, and it was dead...relatively speaking. For reference, Gideon's had a 25 minute line. Not a virtual queue, the actual line. It was awesome. We did the Coke store international tasting tray, had dinner at Polite Pig, got cookies at Gideon's, did the Photopass Studio (with masks, since it was indoors), and shopped. I think we left around 7:30-8 pm, and it still didn't look crazy crowded. Maybe Tuesdays are the day to go?
4/14 (HS): We experienced the 7 am glitch where for about 2 minutes the app told everyone that they didn't have a park pass. I gave up after 15 seconds because I assumed it was an issue on my end, but screenshotted my issue so I could see the Guest Experience Team when we got there. We walked to HS and got there around 8:10. The gates opened around 5 minutes later. We headed for ToT, which unfortunately was down when we first arrived. So I decided to go see the GET folks and see if they could help us out with the RoTR boarding group problem I had (which I learned later wasn't just me, but I didn't know that at the time). I wound up spending the rest of the pre-opening time in line for the GET. They couldn't help with RoTR, but they did give me a fastpass to an attraction of my choice, and we chose SDD. We bounced around the park, choosing rides based on proximity and wait times, and had lunch at Docking Bay 7 at around 12:45. While eating, we tried for a RoTR boarding group. I did a speed check and the Ping time for park wi-fi was way better than Verizon's, so I used wi-fi to get boarding group 87! Unfortunately, RoTR was having issues that day, so our group didn't end up being called until nearly 5:45pm. After lunch, we left the park via the Skyliner for a couple hours, then returned via Skyliner as our RoTR group was getting close.
4/15 (AK): We drove over since the bus times for BC were causing me angst, and were there not long after rope drop. We headed straight for FoP, and that was practically a walk on. Went to Navi after that, which was also practically a walk-on. We bounced around the park the rest of the day, trying (and failing) to find shade. Expedition Everest continued to have fairly short (20 minute) most of the day, even though the line looked insanely long. This was the one day I regretted not having fast pass. Normally, I would FP for FoP, so we could do Kilimanjaro Safaris first before the heat of the day makes the animals sleepy. We ended up not doing KS until 2:30 or so, and that was the least interesting safari ride I've ever experienced at AK. We still did everything we planned that day, but the lack of shade really hit us hard that day. We had dinner at Beaches and Cream that evening, which was still yummy...especially the Fudge Mudslide sundae!
4/16 (MK): day 2 at MK, we got there around 7 am on the bus, and the tap stiles didn't open til around 7:15. We again zipped over to SDMT, which didn't start running until around 7:40, so a much slower start than on Sunday. We did rides until around 11, then left for a few hours of break time. We came back around 3:30 and stayed til closing. We had dinner at Skipper Canteen. The food was tasty, but our server was apparently in training, so her jokes weren't quite as well delivered or plentiful as I'd been looking forward to. However, her trainer stopped by near the end of our meal to see how the trainee was doing, and he more than delivered on the jokes and puns.
4/17 (EP): Departure day (boooooo.....), but our flight didn't leave until 6:30 pm, so we spent a few hours at Epcot. We got to IG at 9:45, and the tap stiles opened shortly after 10. We hadn't done Soarin' yet, so we beelined over to that. The CMs in the Land pavilion were noting that "Soarin' is not planned to open until 11", but they were letting everyone in to line up anyway. As I suspected, the ride did actually start running around 10:30, so we got in on one of the first showings of the day. We caught a few more favorites, had our traditional Mickey ice cream bar/sandwich, caught Canada Far and Wide, Beauty and the Beast singalong, grabbed macarons for the road from Les Halles, then over to Via Napoli for a 2 pm lunch. After that, it was time to head back to BCV to grab our bags from bell services, load up the rental, and head back to the airport.
This trip was different, but I expected that, and different isn't always bad. If you are either vehemently pro-mask or vehemently anti-mask, this is not the time for you to be at Disney. You'll either be annoyed all day at the anti-maskers disregarding the rules (which weren't by any means widespread) or you'll be annoyed with the "sheeple" abiding by "stupid mask rules and social distancing." I did enjoy not being told to fill in all available space, even though about 25% of the lines I was in had line creepers behind me. Masks weren't as bad as I thought they would be in the 80s outside. Shopping was far more limited than I'd hoped. Disney didn't take nearly as much of my money as I'd thought they might. We made do with the limited food offerings...we certainly didn't starve. I generally didn't miss fastpass, the standby lines moved very well, and I was generally able to avoid the longest rides by either rope-dropping or keeping a watchful eye on wait times/monitoring the Touring Plans app. It was also nice to see some of the standby line features that I've missed out on in the past because I always fastpass the rides. I would go again, if given the opportunity, even despite the current restrictions.
OhioStateBuckeye
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2007
Friday April 16 DHS 9-8 and Epcot 11-11
Thought I would do another play by play of our parks day on last Friday, in case people are interested about timing and what you can get done. I'll have some general impressions at the end.
7:00 am: Tried for Rise boarding groups. My boyfriend got group 2. Which was fine, this was our second attempt at riding and on our first attempt I got group 1. So I'm still winning (but really, whose keeping score?).
7:05: breakfast ADR at Ale & Compass. We'd had breakfast there one other time, I think I liked it better the first time but it was still good.
7:38: started walking to DHS.
7:58: arrived at the DHS temperature check. Hovered a bit because they only had the left side open and last time we'd gone they'd had the right and left both open. Our hovering paid off and they opened the right side right around 8 am so we were able to be the third group back in a line instead of being about 40ish groups back on the left hand side. Left hand side was closest to parking lot, right hand was close to Skyliner.
8:05: started to do temperatures. We were quickly through that and then through the tap styles.
8:20: we had to wait for one train ahead of us to load then we were on Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway
8:29: backtracked to ToT and in line. The wait time said 13 minutes.
8:41: on our elevator.
When we came out of ToT the line now stretched all the way down the Fantasmic path. We had just beat the crowds.
8:51: in line for Rockin' Rollercoaster
Had about a 10 minute wait.
We headed over to Rise, we had until 9:30 to ride.
9:18: in line for Rise
9:38: off Rise
9:54: mobile ordered a drink at Ronto Roaster's and had a short sit down break.
10:21: in line for Star Tours
10:43: on ST, got the Force Awakens and Last Skywalker scenes.
At this time we had to go to guest services to clear something up with our tickets. It ended up taking until 11:30 to finish, so the very nice CM offered us a FP for anything but Rise and we chose Smuggler's Run.
11:45: walked through One Man's Dream. It had been updated with some new dioramas since the last time I had went. Even had a couple new costumes: Jack Sparrow, Descendants and Mulan.
12:20: mobile order at Rizzo's. I know most people hate this pizza but I really don't think it's that bad. Plus we discovered a room upstairs that made me think of local restaurants 'special room' that people reserved for birthday or wedding receptions.
12:54: Smuggler's Run. Had about a 5 minute wait in the FP line. The only bad thing about Smuggler's is we always seem to get engineer when it's just the two of us. We are both highly competitive and play a lot of video games. So engineer is pretty boring and our pilots crashed...a lot. If we had 9 lives like a cat we spent 'em all on that flight.
1:30: headed out for the Skyliner so we could hop to Epcot. Skyliner ended up taking almost half an hour exactly to get there, but it was a nice break and the breeze was great.
We went back to Yacht to drop off our umbrellas since there had not been any rain. On the way back to Epcot we saw Donald and Goofy coming out. It was just really nice to see some characters! We didn't end up seeing any character cavalcades that day. I wonder if the parks were just way too crowded?
2:30: entered Epcot
We saw Pooh out with his butterfly net.
3:28: walked onto Nemo
No pictures to take time stamps from but we next waited about 10 minutes for Spaceship Earth.
We also went on Living with the Land.
4:33: spent a few minutes in the preview center to cool off. The park walkways were stupendously crowded at this time and the masks were making us really hot.
We walked around World Showcase trying to find some food booths to sample. We noticed the line for Frozen was all the way over to the bridge to the African Outpost. We ended up wasting our time and did not stop at any booths. The lines were somewhat long and the sun was really hot and we were starting to get tired and cranky.
5: we ended up in the festival center by Canada. We went to the Cider house booth, Brian got a dark chocolate raspberry tart, said it was fine. I got the house made potato and cheddar biscuit with salmon tartare which I thought was pretty good. Thankfully we found a table with chairs and had a nice break and listened to the piano player.
5:37: back on the Skyliner to DHS. I wanted to take advantage of (hopefully) shorter lines at the end of the park hours. We really had wanted to hop to Epcot to eat at food booths, which really didn't work out. Our short stint at Epcot was the only really bad part of the day. Too crowded, too hot.
6: back to DHS
6:10: another go on Star Tours. Wait was only about 10 minutes this time. We got the Pod Race and Naboo scenes. Was nice to see the throwback scenes.
6:41: picked up a mobile order that we'd made around 2 for Woody's Lunchbox. I tried the pop tart which was just ok, and Brian had the totchos, which were much better. Seating in this area sucks. We could only find a standing table and I was not very pleased. Luckily the table next to us got up to leave and offered us their table after a few minutes.
7: in line for TSMM, was a walk on
We thought about Smuggler's again but the chance to be engineers just didn't make it worthwhile.
7:25: in line for Mickey and Minnie's again. 10 minute wait. When we were done we had 12 minutes left til park close.
7:51: in line for another go on ToT.
8:36: were off the ride and headed slowly for the exit.
Made a pretty big mistake here. We wanted to head back to Epcot since it stayed open til 11. The Skyliner line was long (but moving fast). We were afraid it would be backed up at the transfer to the Epcot line, so we instead waited for the ferry. We had to wait for 2 and didn't make it back into Epcot until close to 9:45. Bad move. Waiting for the ferry tired us out. Should have just taken the Skyliner.
10: we wanted to ride Living with the Land in the dark.
10:20: headed towards Mexico and took some pictures along the way.
10:30 no wait to get into Mexico and also no wait for the 3 Caballeros.
10:45: about a 10 minute wait for Frozen.
Does anyone want to see what it looks like to ride Frozen in the back row through the plexiglass?
The park had just closed as we were finishing with Frozen so we slowly walked to the International Gateway.
Misc Thoughts:
-mask adherence was pretty good all around. Saw a few bad eggs but you'll always have that.
-we ended up walking 38,000 steps which is 15.77 miles. My feet still hurt a bit.
-if you have park hoppers and can take a midday break, I still think those are best.
-arriving at DHS early is the key to everything. We were able to ride Runaway Railway, ToT and RR with very little wait. We've done the same thing on another day trip and also knocked out Railway, Slinky, Alien Saucers and TSMM with little to no wait.
-ToT gets a very long line super quick and it stays that way all day. If you want to ride I'd suggest first thing in the morning or right before the park closes
-mobile ordering ahead of time at places like Woody's Lunchbox is key. You can put an order in anytime after park open and you can pick whatever time slot you want/is available.
-Epcot was horrendously crowded around 3-4. Especially the World Showcase. I think a lot of other park goers hopped over with the intent to eat at the food booths.
-I do all my timing by time stamps on my pictures. Most of those times are accurate, though I did stop taking so many pictures later in the day. So times might be a bit jumbled there.
Anyone have any questions?
Thought I would do another play by play of our parks day on last Friday, in case people are interested about timing and what you can get done. I'll have some general impressions at the end.
7:00 am: Tried for Rise boarding groups. My boyfriend got group 2. Which was fine, this was our second attempt at riding and on our first attempt I got group 1. So I'm still winning (but really, whose keeping score?).
7:05: breakfast ADR at Ale & Compass. We'd had breakfast there one other time, I think I liked it better the first time but it was still good.
7:38: started walking to DHS.
7:58: arrived at the DHS temperature check. Hovered a bit because they only had the left side open and last time we'd gone they'd had the right and left both open. Our hovering paid off and they opened the right side right around 8 am so we were able to be the third group back in a line instead of being about 40ish groups back on the left hand side. Left hand side was closest to parking lot, right hand was close to Skyliner.
8:05: started to do temperatures. We were quickly through that and then through the tap styles.
8:20: we had to wait for one train ahead of us to load then we were on Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway
8:29: backtracked to ToT and in line. The wait time said 13 minutes.
8:41: on our elevator.
When we came out of ToT the line now stretched all the way down the Fantasmic path. We had just beat the crowds.
8:51: in line for Rockin' Rollercoaster
Had about a 10 minute wait.
We headed over to Rise, we had until 9:30 to ride.
9:18: in line for Rise
9:38: off Rise
9:54: mobile ordered a drink at Ronto Roaster's and had a short sit down break.
10:21: in line for Star Tours
10:43: on ST, got the Force Awakens and Last Skywalker scenes.
At this time we had to go to guest services to clear something up with our tickets. It ended up taking until 11:30 to finish, so the very nice CM offered us a FP for anything but Rise and we chose Smuggler's Run.
11:45: walked through One Man's Dream. It had been updated with some new dioramas since the last time I had went. Even had a couple new costumes: Jack Sparrow, Descendants and Mulan.
12:20: mobile order at Rizzo's. I know most people hate this pizza but I really don't think it's that bad. Plus we discovered a room upstairs that made me think of local restaurants 'special room' that people reserved for birthday or wedding receptions.
12:54: Smuggler's Run. Had about a 5 minute wait in the FP line. The only bad thing about Smuggler's is we always seem to get engineer when it's just the two of us. We are both highly competitive and play a lot of video games. So engineer is pretty boring and our pilots crashed...a lot. If we had 9 lives like a cat we spent 'em all on that flight.
1:30: headed out for the Skyliner so we could hop to Epcot. Skyliner ended up taking almost half an hour exactly to get there, but it was a nice break and the breeze was great.
We went back to Yacht to drop off our umbrellas since there had not been any rain. On the way back to Epcot we saw Donald and Goofy coming out. It was just really nice to see some characters! We didn't end up seeing any character cavalcades that day. I wonder if the parks were just way too crowded?
2:30: entered Epcot
We saw Pooh out with his butterfly net.
3:28: walked onto Nemo
No pictures to take time stamps from but we next waited about 10 minutes for Spaceship Earth.
We also went on Living with the Land.
4:33: spent a few minutes in the preview center to cool off. The park walkways were stupendously crowded at this time and the masks were making us really hot.
We walked around World Showcase trying to find some food booths to sample. We noticed the line for Frozen was all the way over to the bridge to the African Outpost. We ended up wasting our time and did not stop at any booths. The lines were somewhat long and the sun was really hot and we were starting to get tired and cranky.
5: we ended up in the festival center by Canada. We went to the Cider house booth, Brian got a dark chocolate raspberry tart, said it was fine. I got the house made potato and cheddar biscuit with salmon tartare which I thought was pretty good. Thankfully we found a table with chairs and had a nice break and listened to the piano player.
5:37: back on the Skyliner to DHS. I wanted to take advantage of (hopefully) shorter lines at the end of the park hours. We really had wanted to hop to Epcot to eat at food booths, which really didn't work out. Our short stint at Epcot was the only really bad part of the day. Too crowded, too hot.
6: back to DHS
6:10: another go on Star Tours. Wait was only about 10 minutes this time. We got the Pod Race and Naboo scenes. Was nice to see the throwback scenes.
6:41: picked up a mobile order that we'd made around 2 for Woody's Lunchbox. I tried the pop tart which was just ok, and Brian had the totchos, which were much better. Seating in this area sucks. We could only find a standing table and I was not very pleased. Luckily the table next to us got up to leave and offered us their table after a few minutes.
7: in line for TSMM, was a walk on
We thought about Smuggler's again but the chance to be engineers just didn't make it worthwhile.
7:25: in line for Mickey and Minnie's again. 10 minute wait. When we were done we had 12 minutes left til park close.
7:51: in line for another go on ToT.
8:36: were off the ride and headed slowly for the exit.
Made a pretty big mistake here. We wanted to head back to Epcot since it stayed open til 11. The Skyliner line was long (but moving fast). We were afraid it would be backed up at the transfer to the Epcot line, so we instead waited for the ferry. We had to wait for 2 and didn't make it back into Epcot until close to 9:45. Bad move. Waiting for the ferry tired us out. Should have just taken the Skyliner.
10: we wanted to ride Living with the Land in the dark.
10:20: headed towards Mexico and took some pictures along the way.
10:30 no wait to get into Mexico and also no wait for the 3 Caballeros.
10:45: about a 10 minute wait for Frozen.
Does anyone want to see what it looks like to ride Frozen in the back row through the plexiglass?
The park had just closed as we were finishing with Frozen so we slowly walked to the International Gateway.
Misc Thoughts:
-mask adherence was pretty good all around. Saw a few bad eggs but you'll always have that.
-we ended up walking 38,000 steps which is 15.77 miles. My feet still hurt a bit.
-if you have park hoppers and can take a midday break, I still think those are best.
-arriving at DHS early is the key to everything. We were able to ride Runaway Railway, ToT and RR with very little wait. We've done the same thing on another day trip and also knocked out Railway, Slinky, Alien Saucers and TSMM with little to no wait.
-ToT gets a very long line super quick and it stays that way all day. If you want to ride I'd suggest first thing in the morning or right before the park closes
-mobile ordering ahead of time at places like Woody's Lunchbox is key. You can put an order in anytime after park open and you can pick whatever time slot you want/is available.
-Epcot was horrendously crowded around 3-4. Especially the World Showcase. I think a lot of other park goers hopped over with the intent to eat at the food booths.
-I do all my timing by time stamps on my pictures. Most of those times are accurate, though I did stop taking so many pictures later in the day. So times might be a bit jumbled there.
Anyone have any questions?
EEPETEZ
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2010
Honestly, the airport was the scariest part of our trip. It is crowded, people everywhere, little mask compliance. I was so happy we all have pre-check, the security lines seemed like a nightmare.
EEPETEZ
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2010
We did last week-waits were very minimal.
I think we were there about 2 hours before close and did Dinosaur, EE, FoP and Navi. We even played some of the dinosaur carnival games.
LeeLee'sMom
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2010
OMG never ever had that long of a line in all of the times we have been there too...wow
Elle23
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2016
So are the CMs just not being honest or not communicating with the operating crew or what?
The same thing happened to us today. As we were walking through at 10:18, they were telling everyone the ride would not start till around 11. I decided to leave my daughter in line and run to the restroom since it would be a longer wait than anticipated. It wasn’t a minute or 2 later she texted me that they were already loading the ride and I ended up missing it.
MinnieInVA
Actually MinnieInCA now, but whatever...
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2012
Yeah, I don't know what's up with that. I guess they're trying to balance expectations so they have some leeway, but that doesn't always work out well for the guests. Sorry you missed riding with your family!
eileen2664
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2005
This probably means nothing. But I’m in the World today, this morning it was rainy and dreary with forecast of rain on and off all day, out of curiosity I checked reservation availability.....for weeks it’s been showing only Epcot as available. This morning (before 10) it showed everything except DHS. Right now (3pm) its green, everything is available. And the weather is gorgeous now. Not pool weather (for me, my kids would likely swim) but perfect park weather.
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2010
My guess is guests who had an option to go today or not, chose to do something else. I'm guessing it happens regularly with locals who have options to move their dates more easily than those travelling to Disney. I know I would do that with our local theme park if it was calling for rain.
eileen2664
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2005
that’s exactly what I told dh this morning. I was posting as a thought for those who can’t get the park reservation they wanted. We’re not rope drop people and had we not already had a reservation for MK today I could have switched to that if I’d wanted to. I wouldn’t bank on it but might be worth a last minute check before heading out to yet another Epcot day because that’s all that was available when you made your reservation. Kwim?
Catvondita
A Quirky Strange Girl in a Disney World
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2015
Well that's a drag. Like I expected a few non compliant people but not a sea of them lol
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