Completed our fabulous trip, see the full recap below!
Background: We are a couple in their 30s without kids who prioritize dining experiences and rides. We do LL Multipass but not ILL and we aren’t worried about doing a ton of walking/crisscrossing the parks or park hopping. We tend to come about every 3-4 years from Washington. On this trip we walked 67 miles over the 4 full parks days of our trips (not including the last half day)!
Day 1:
Arrived at Dolphin around 6:00 PM, dropped our bags and headed to Disney Springs. It was our first time visiting and we enjoyed it, though didn’t find it something we would spend more than a few hours at. We ended up dining at the Edison and really liked our food. The atmosphere there is great, especially for adults. The cocktails are fantastic and the atmosphere/live music is very fun. The theming is very immersive.
After dinner we wandered the shops and ended up grabbing Gideon’s with only a 15 minute wait. For sure worth the wait if you like large sugary desserts!
Day 2:
Started in AK with EE rope drop. We were through the gates and to FOP by 7:40. Rode FOP and were off just before regular park open. We headed over to Everest and did this a few times with a low wait. . We got Joffery’s coffee and a scone and then bounced back to Kilimanjaro for our LL and then wandered back to Everest for another ride and over to Dinosaur before heading back to Pandora for Navi River Journey LL and lunch at Satuli (a favorite of ours). We had a small pixie dust moment when we got a free drink that the CMs made by accident. We ended up deciding to wait for FOP in the stand-by queue as it was only a 45 minute wait. We then headed to do the nature trails, it’s Tough to Be a Bug and generally enjoy the atmosphere before making the jump over to Epcot.
At Epcot we managed to line up LLs for Land, Soarin’ and Spaceship Earth before and after our dinner reservation at Coral Reef with the CLP Dining Package. We also walked onto Nemo, wandered through the Seas and did the Moana trail twice. Coral Reef is my husband’s favorite, given the view and we always wait a bit extra for a tank-side table. We find this to be a bit underrated the atmosphere is great (especially with kids) and we’ve found the food consistent on our 3 visits. We had an awesome 20 year CM as our waiter and really liked the package options. We took our tickets and headed over to line up for the CLP performance at 8:15. This was a first for us and a bucket list item for me. Our narrator was Josh Gad, and he was great. The music and performers were lovely and Josh did a nice job balancing the story with a few jokes. We were quite chilly and tired after this so we headed back for bed. ‘
Day 3:
Started in MK to take advantage of the lower crowds due to
MVMCP that evening. The crowds were fantastic. We EE rope dropped Tron and were off of that before park opening. Our first LL of the day, Space Mountain, was down so we went and did Buzz and Jingle Cruise while lines were low and After this we did Pirates before heading Gaston’s Tavern for the Crème Brule croissant and the flatbread. We did Ariel and Small World We then then hit our LL at Big Thunder and our VQ for Tiana’s. After this we did our LL at Haunted Mansion and then had lunch at Columbia Harbor house. We then did a leisurely walk around Tom Sawyer before it closes. By this point Space Mountain was back up and we had racked up 3 flexible LLs for rebooking it a few times PLUS another Space Mountain specific LL. We did it three times in a row.
We took a nap and then headed to Jiko. Jiko was fantastic, excellent food, service and ambience. We really enjoyed the more adventurous menu and would recommend it. We walked around AKL and then caught a bus to HS since we were able to grab some LL.
At HS we did Rockin’, Runaway Railroad and Tower of Terror on new LLs. We also hopped back to Galaxy’s Edge since it is great at night and did Smuggler’s Run on LL and took some photos. I got interrogated by the Troopers for the first. I was even able to snag a last minute LL for Toy Story Mania, a mini miracle this late in the evening. We ended up closing out HS and then walked back to Dolphin.
Day 4:
Started in Epcot. We snagged boarding group 24 for Guardian’s VQ but were a little slower this morning so we ended up just hitting the French Bakery to start, and it was already quite busy at 9:05. After this we did single rider on Remy (longer to walk through the queue then to get on ride). We did our Spaceship Earth and Soarin’ reservations and walked around the world a bit. We also did Mission Space Green. Guardians was having issues (a theme of the trip) so we went ended up taking a nap and then heading over the HS for a late lunch at Sci Fi (least favorite meal of the trip). At HS we did Galaxy’s Edge again, single rider on Rise and Mania again on LL. We then took the Skyliner back to Epcot.
At Epcot we had a later Space 220 reservation. It was fun and the drinks/dessert we had were good, but probably not a repeat for us. We then finally got called for Guardian’s only find out after waiting ages in the queue that it was down to 1 lane (hence the issues all day). We waited just over an hour to ride, though we loved it. It cut a bit into our EE hours so we walked back into the world to do the Cabellos ride and then hopped back to Space Ship Earth Soarin’ and then our second VQ for Guardian’s (much less of a wait and we let out after EE hour close).
Day 5:
Started in HS. Another slow due to the late night. We ended up rope dropping Tower just before the park opened to regular guests and then did Start Tours twice. We then did both Slinky Dog and Mania on LLs before having Woody’s Lunch Box for breakfast (the tater tot breakfast bowl was great) We then did Galaxy’s Edge again including Smuggler’s Run as Pilots on LL. We then did our Ooga’s Reservation, which we loved as usually. We did a bit of shopping before hitting the Muppets. We went back to Galaxy’s Edge to pick up on final item and hit is right as they reopened Rise after a multi-hour closure, we ended up walking on in 5 minutes which was incredibly lucky.
We then headed back to the hotel to drop off our items and change into our Christmas Outfits. We walked to the front of Epcot to try again for the VQ for Guardian’s we had secured but the wait was too bad, again due to operational issues, so we skipped it and just got on the monorail. We arrived at MK right before the party started, and took the ferry boat over to the park. Walked into the park at 4:10 to no wait, got our ornament and maps. We were starving at this point so we sat down for dinner at Skipper’s at about 5:00 on the wait list. It was awesome, my duck fried rice may have been the best thing I ate on the trip. We then realized we forgot our ponchos so we skipped Tiana’s. We tried for Big Thunder but it went down as soon as we got strapped into our cars. We then went and did Space Mountain twice (once with the everything LL we got on Big Thunder and once with our own LL from the day). We got the festive beignets which were tasty! By this point the party had started officially. We got some cookies from the two stops in Tomorrowland after doing Tron while the wait was dying down as folks lined up for the first parade. We waited about 40 minutes. We then did some Main Street shopping while glancing out at the parade. We hit the Adventureland cookier stop and then did Pirates and then Haunted Mansion plus the Liberty Square cookie stop. We wandered through Fantasyland and caught the fireworks from this area (which was different but very fun). We then wandered through the Storybook Circus area and hit the Fantasyland cookie stop (the CM there gave us 8 cookies unprompted). We then did Buzz and Speedway with low waits before doing Space Mountain twice with a 5 minute wait (and being allowed to cut the long walk by the CM). We then decided to try for Tron once more and ended up being able to do it 3 more times before the party finished. All in all a super successful party, especially given riding Tron 4 times including 2 times at the front of the lightcycle!
Day 6:
Another slower start though we managed to grab boarding group 1 for Guardian’s VQ since we didn’t get on the day before. We wandered in just after regular park open and hit up Norway for some school bread and coffee. A lot of rides were down in the park and we didn’t have LL today so we did Soarin’ and Figment with regular waits. We decided to grab lunch at Biergarten which was a good value and tasty. We wandered around the world a bit more just generally shopping and browsing. At 2:00 Guardian’s finally came back up after being down all morning and we hustled over there to reach it just after it reopened. We waited about 30 minutes, due to it going down again before riding. After this we did Spaceship earth and shopped. My husband wanted one final item from HS so he ran back there before we headed to pick up our bags at the Dolphin and to the airport.
Summary: All in all this was a great trip. We got to do everything we wanted and more. We were able to really make LL work for us given our willingness to walk and park hop. We also cracked the VQ code and got it each time we wanted it. We noticed a lot of ride issues throughout the trip which meant we had to be adaptable. Dining was great and the crowds were overall very good. We would totally stay at the Dolphin again. The rooms and beds were comfortable. The proximity to two parks with multiple transit options was incredible and being able to avoid backups on buses for at least some parks was worth the extra cost (in addition to EE and EE Hours). Overall, a fantastic trip to the World!
