A Whole New World of COVID-19: An Annual Passholder Adventure (Updated 10/1 x2: Disney Springs & Epcot)

[lindseyanne]

July 24: A Taste of The Taste of Epcot
Part Three

Boyfriend was in the mood for something sweeter, so while I got my macaroni and cheese fix, he stopped at the Desserts & Champagne booth for one of the liquid nitrogen chocolate cake pops ($4) and the Frozen S'mores drink ($4.50):



As you can see in the pic above, the cake pop he chose had crushed M&Ms on it. The cake itself was just standard, nothing excited chocolate cake, but the chocolate covering it was delicious. It also started melting immediately, so be sure to get a boat to carry it in (they didn't give one out to everyone, Boyfriend had to ask for it). The Frozen S'mores was AWESOME and well worth the $4.50. It had the taste and texture of frozen hot cocoa.

Required "I-just-took-a-bite" picture:



My last stop for food was France, where I got the tarte aux oignons caramelises ($5.50) and the tarte Tropezienne ($3.00):



Here's a closer look at the tarte aux oignons, which is fun to say:



The best way to describe the taste of this tart is that it tasted like Thanksgiving. The taste was like a very onion and rosemary heavy Thanksgiving stuffing. There's a decent amount of goat cheese on top, but the onion and rosemary overpowered that. The taste was very good, but the texture was a bit off. Because these festival tarts are transported from a central kitchen and kept warm at the food stalls, the center never fails to get soggy. It doesn't really justify the $5.50 cost.

The tarte Tropezienne, though!



Laaaaaaawd this was good! The brioche seemed a bit stale, but the pastry cream was light and tasted a little tropical--I have no idea what was in it and the menu description didn't say. There was plenty of raspberry coulis to dip each bite in. For $3, this was a great choice for dessert.

We walked through the oddly deserted World Showcase and I ran into the Germany pavilion to get some caramel popcorn to go from the Karamell-Küche. It's 30% off for APs right now, so you best believe I was going to take advantage of that!



The World Showcase without international CMs is.....weird. I don't like it. They add so much to the atmosphere. Obviously I'm glad that Epcot is back open and that other CMs are able to get hours by working in the World Showcase, but it is most definitely a different experience. On top of that, the lack of entertainment is really obvious in the World Showcase. I don't know if "lifeless" sounds too dramatic, but it's a dramatically different dynamic than Epcot pre-pandemic.

Click here to continue with the rest of the evening at Epcot. ​

 

[PlutosRHM55]

I feel the same way about Epcot right now as you do, which is funny considering it was once my least favorite park back when there was little to no construction going on. Not sure what really changed for me, but I love it and unlike you who prefers Listen-uh erm-LIVING with the Land, Spaceship Earth is my go-to. I'm super hype for the update and curious what it entails. I'm also interested in WHO they will get to replace the iconic Miss Dame Judi Dench as the narrator. I have ideas, but they are mostly jokes. It's just prior to Judi it was always these older white me and then Judi broke the mold so who even knows now?

Gosh, as much as I thought I was prepared for HHN getting cancelled (I was kinda hoping for it tbh since the concept of a "watered down" event did not sit well with me) it still hurt, especially considering I had just sent in my audition submission. I'm glad we're waiting a year for the safety of everyone, but also so we can ensure HHN30 is the anniversary year we wanted. Also, I IMPLORE you to give the event another shot. This past year I got a lot of friends who thought they wouldn't be able to do anything but drink did every house. I even got one girl who did her first three houses with her head buried in someone's back to go through the rest of the houses looking at everything. It's a lot more fun than scary when it comes down to it. If you really love Halloween, you'd definitely grow to love HHN as much as the rest of us (I love MNSSHP too, but... it has nothing on HHN)

Gosh, I'm always too too aware of how much extra space there is in World Showcase for expansion. Yet I never knew the World Showplace covered up space that could be used for two countries. Wow. Maybe if they got in an agreement with a country that was too good to pass up, they'd finally get rid of it, but who knows?

It makes me sad to think that World Showcase is all domestic CMs. I have many big dreams to travel to a lot of these countries so I just loved being around those who actually lived that dream. Mitsukoshi with white boys at the registers seems very wrong to me

The Frozen 'Smores looks and sounds so good. I definitely need to make sure that is on my radar whenever I return to Epcot for a festival.

Looking forward to reading about the rest of your evening!

 

[lvcourtneyy]

This next part of Living with the Land always reminds me of the terrifying there's-no-earthly-way-of-knowing-which-direction-we-are-going boat ride scene from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:

Yas same I sing it every time lol

Okay, back to Living with the Land. Something I've really liked over the past year or so on this ride is that they've added little decorated nooks that change with the season. Let me tell you, this dining set-up is a complete missed opportunity on WDW's part, because I doubt I am alone is saying that I would pay good money to dine here:

 

[lindseyanne]

I feel the same way about Epcot right now as you do, which is funny considering it was once my least favorite park back when there was little to no construction going on. Not sure what really changed for me, but I love it and unlike you who prefers Listen-uh erm-LIVING with the Land, Spaceship Earth is my go-to. I'm super hype for the update and curious what it entails. I'm also interested in WHO they will get to replace the iconic Miss Dame Judi Dench as the narrator. I have ideas, but they are mostly jokes. It's just prior to Judi it was always these older white me and then Judi broke the mold so who even knows now?

Gosh, as much as I thought I was prepared for HHN getting cancelled (I was kinda hoping for it tbh since the concept of a "watered down" event did not sit well with me) it still hurt, especially considering I had just sent in my audition submission. I'm glad we're waiting a year for the safety of everyone, but also so we can ensure HHN30 is the anniversary year we wanted. Also, I IMPLORE you to give the event another shot. This past year I got a lot of friends who thought they wouldn't be able to do anything but drink did every house. I even got one girl who did her first three houses with her head buried in someone's back to go through the rest of the houses looking at everything. It's a lot more fun than scary when it comes down to it. If you really love Halloween, you'd definitely grow to love HHN as much as the rest of us (I love MNSSHP too, but... it has nothing on HHN)

Gosh, I'm always too too aware of how much extra space there is in World Showcase for expansion. Yet I never knew the World Showplace covered up space that could be used for two countries. Wow. Maybe if they got in an agreement with a country that was too good to pass up, they'd finally get rid of it, but who knows?

It makes me sad to think that World Showcase is all domestic CMs. I have many big dreams to travel to a lot of these countries so I just loved being around those who actually lived that dream. Mitsukoshi with white boys at the registers seems very wrong to me

The Frozen 'Smores looks and sounds so good. I definitely need to make sure that is on my radar whenever I return to Epcot for a festival.

Looking forward to reading about the rest of your evening!

I sooooooo want to know who will replace Judi as the SSE narrator. It will probably never happen but it's my dream for Tilda Swinton to narrate it, because she has that same kind of rich British voice.

I was actually leaning towards possibly-maybe-perhaps trying HHN this year once it was announced that MNSSHP was cancelled, because I knew I needed my in-person Halloween event fix. I was going to work myself up to being brave enough! I feel like Universal just needs to give everyone what they want and, if everything is able to open up more by the spring (please, *fingers crossed*, if things haven't improved by then I don't know what we're all going to do), do a hybrid Mardi Gras/HHN.

Domestic CMs in World Showcase is incredibly weird to witness. I was truly relieved that they don't have everyone in the separate costumes of the countries because that would make it even more awkward.

Yas same I sing it every time lol

GOOD, it's not just me!

 

[lindseyanne]

Hiya peeps! There's not much left of this kind of anticlimactic Epcot evening. I have a park pass tomorrow for Animal Kingdom, and I'm so excited. I usually avoid DAK during the summer because it's unbearably hot there during the daytime, but I don't even care now, I can't wait to see some otters and tigers and hopefully loop Flight of Passage as many times as possible.

July 24: A Taste of The Taste of Epcot
Part Four

After buying my bags of caramel popcorn to take home, we worked our way to China, which was even quieter than the other pavilions.



The only thing open right now in the China pavilion is the movie (which I love btw, but ugh, the narration is so problematic and it's time for it to be gently updated); the store, the quick service, and Nine Dragons are all closed. So I took the opportunity to take plenty of people-free photos while I still had enough daylight!



The red lanterns in this pavilion always remind me of a movie I was absolutely obsessed with in high school, Raise the Red Lantern, starring Gong Li. On a slightly related but not really note, during quarantine I have gotten sucked into an extremely long Chinese series called The Legend of Zhen Huan, about the wives and concubines who inhabit a Chinese emperor's court. There's lots of scheming and intrigue and amazing sets and costumes. A very truncated version is on Netflix, which I do not recommend watching, although I would never dream of suggesting that you can easily find the entire subtitled series via Google if you have eighty hours to sink into this saga like me.





Without people milling around, you can really appreciate all of the detail that went into this pavilion. It's gorgeous!

I have no actual evidence to back this up, but it seemed like this pavilion in particular was a little....overgrown? Boyfriend and I joked that nature is reclaiming it.



I took this picture in particular because the lamp post behind this giant mass of greenery reminded me of Rapunzel's tower in the Magic Kingdom:



The crescent moon was starting to peek out, which made for a very pretty twilight as we said goodbye to China. As Li Bai says in Reflections of China, "A wave of the hand, and I am gone..."



Scroll down to continue!
​

 

[lindseyanne]

July 24: A Taste of The Taste of Epcot
Part Five

The line for Frozen Ever After was snaking all the way to China, due to social distancing (I think the ride must have gone down at some point for it to have gotten so long), so Boyfriend and I skipped that in favor of a far better ride....



As you can see, we shared a boat with one other party. They were loading boats with one party in the front row and another party in the back.


Here's the only fireworks we'll be seeing in a Disney park for the foreseeable future.

The day before our Epcot afternoon, a certain bird had had a little too much fun, and fell over head-first on the stage of this ride. Alas, José Carioca was not to be seen today. The CMs, though, had placed a floral tribute where he once stood.

As you look at these next two pictures, I suggest that you let this song play in the background.


I thought we'd get to see forever, but forever's gone away...


...it's so hard to say goodbye to yesterdayyyyyyyyyyy.

After our very grand Gran Fiesta Tour, Boyfriend and I found ourselves in a very weird situation: we were at Epcot at 7:30ish, with nothing left to do and no fireworks to set up and wait for. Our usual Epcot routine before coronavirus would be to grab some quick service (usually Lotus Blossom Cafe for him, Les Halles or Katsura Grill for me), some Starbz, and find a place for Boyfriend to set up his tripod for Illuminations Epcot Forever. Alas, those days are gone.

Since we had nothing else to do, we headed out. It's very strange for me to leave Epcot while it's still open--we usually close out the park and are among the last people to leave way after park close!



We did stop for a bit outside Spaceship Earth for an impromptu moon photo shoot:





See, I told y'all this was anticlimactic! I still had one more Epcot-y part of the night, though...



LISTEN. I don't get to eat Disney food in the comfort of bed very often, because I live here (so I don't have a close by hotel bed to take my snacks back to) and more importantly because when I buy food I eat it immediately because I love food. Once I saw on Twitter that this popcorn was 30% off for APs, I immediately planned in my head a wonderful night of showering, crawling into bed, and eating this while watching Seinfeld. And that's exactly how I finished this evening. IT WAS GLORIOUS.

Click here to continue with a day on the surface of the sun at Animal Kingdom!​

 

[TwoLittlePrincesses]

Really enjoying your trip report and seeing all the changes that they’ve made since the closure. Thanks for sharing!

 

[lindseyanne]

Heyyyyyyy everybody. Well, I've been putting off doing an update for my DAK day long enough. Some things about this first visit back to DAK were just not good. Up until five months ago I would have been all about moaning about things, but ugh, so much in the world is just so awful right now that I really don't like spending any of my free time focusing on things that sucked. But I have my first park pass for Hollywood Studios coming up on Friday, and I don't want to fall behind in this neverending TR, so without further ado.....

July 31: Animal Kingdom
Part One

Before I get into anything about this visit to DAK, I should give the disclaimer that I never, ever, EVER go to Animal Kingdom during the day in the summer. Ever! My pre-COVID DAK routine for the summer was as follows: arrive around 5-6 pm, have dinner, use fastpasses to do the safari around twilight, use fastpasses for Navi River Journey or Flight of Passage, and wander around in the dark enjoying the Tree of Life Awakenings. Because this has been my summer DAK routine for so long, my body and mind forgot just how unbearably hot this park is during the daytime. However, DAK now closes at 6 pm, so visiting during the daytime is now unavoidable. The borderline heat stroke probably effected how I felt about things in this park, so keep that in mind as you read on.

Boyfriend and I rolled up to DAK around 1 pm, and the entrance was wide open:



I don't take pictures of security stuff as a rule, but the new scanners at DAK are great--you walk through with all of your bags. I have no evidence of this because I want to ask and risk looking like a potential criminal, but I think that if something trips up the scanner, it identifies exactly where it is for the security CM. When I walked through with my camera bag and purse, the scanner buzzed, and the security CM looked at his ipad and said he only needed to check my camera bag. This made security even faster and more convenient (and saved the CM from having to dig through my entire purse), and I really hope those scanners are rolled out at every park!

Although a proper show of Flights of Wonder is not happening for obvious reasons, the birds were still out in front of the Tree of Life:



Birds kind of freak me out but I love to watch the Flights of Wonder birds, especially when they swoop off and scare the heck out of people, which is what happened ten seconds after I took this picture, when a man stepped in front of them to take a selfie. Later on in the day, Boyfriend and I were on the bridge to Asia and they all came swooping down very dramatically.

I also think it's nice that the Imagineers put this guy right in the front of the Tree of Life. If any animal's expression adequately captures the mood of 2020, it's this fellow:


I AM VERY SMALL AND I AM SO TIRED, I AM DOING MY BEST.

We hadn't had lunch yet, so we headed over to Dinoland to hit up Restaurantosaurus. (Please do not judge me, I am a Satuli Canteen girl through and through, but Boyfriend doesn't like it and he won this round.) I have to say, the Restaurantosaurus mobile order system is the best that I've experienced in the parks so far. A CM was stationed at the entrance to the courtyard to check that everyone walking into the courtyard had placed a mobile order; if they hadn't, she showed them how to. The courtyard had giant fans set up to cool everyone down, and a CM was walking around with a tray of ice water. When your order was ready, a CM would come outside to announce it, then direct you to a station inside where your food was waiting, with everything else behind plexiglass:



This whole system kept the area wide open and kept everyone socially distanced. I was very impressed! Sadly, for obvious reasons, the topping bar is not operational. However, two CMs were stationed at the drink machines to fill and refill beverages.

Prepare yourselves for this wonderful food picture. It basically belongs in Bon Appetit magazine:



Sated, we made our way over to Dinosaur, aka my unironic fave in DAK.



Aaaaaaaand right as we approached the entrance, the "this ride is going down for awhile to clean" announcement came on. I looked at my watch and it was 2 pm. Remember this, because this is a key detail for some later complaints I have!

We decided not to wait out the cleaning--it was too hot to wait outside (Boyfriend checked and the real feel was at 110F), and we didn't want to wait inside for a prolonged amount of time with other people. So we decided to come back to Dinosaur later, and moved on towards Asia. Boyfriend and I both do not do Everest anymore (we both get headaches from the backwards portion!), but we love photographing the area, and we wanted to take advantage of rare daytime shots without people in them.



When we got there, we noticed that they were running empty trains. A lady told me that she had gotten a text from her family in line, saying they were cleaning the cars and to expect a little delay. Again, keep in mind that this was now a little after 2 pm.

Some Everest area b-roll for eventual editing and use on the 'gram:





We moved on to head to the Maharajah Jungle Trek, although we were feeling so overheated by this point that we knew the tigers would almost certainly not be out.

On our way, we passed the line for Everest, which was still not moving because of the cleaning. The socially distanced line was stretching out of the queue and on to the pavement in front of the Rivers of Light (RIP!) theatre. We also passed the queue for Kali River Rapids, which was ALSO stretched out of its entrance and not moving...because of cleaning.

So here is my first complaint about DAK. It was a little past 2 pm, and the three rides we passed--Dinosaur, Everest, and Kali River Rapids--were all down for cleaning at the same time. I have no proof, but I suspect that all of the rides went down at 2 pm for the every-other-hour cleaning. Now, I am totally in favor of shutting rides down to clean every two hours. In fact, I'd be in favor of shutting them down EVERY hour. BUT. It seems asinine to me to shut every ride down for cleaning AT THE SAME TIME, because it means queues get backed up, which ultimately means that people stop distancing themselves properly. Besides being a poor guest experience (there's really no need for every ride to go down at the same time to clean; I'm no attractions manager, but I could make an Excel spreadsheet in fifteen minutes staggering cleaning times, especially for a park with as few rides as DAK), it encourages people to linger in one place, and when they do that, they stop distancing. Hopefully this was just a quirk of the day I happened to be at DAK, because it really irritated me, and judging by the faces of other guests and the convos I overheard, I was not alone.

Scroll down to continue! ​

 

[lindseyanne]

July 31: Animal Kingdom
Part Two

The upside of everyone lingering in ride lines waiting for cleaning to finish was that no one was in the Maharajah Jungle Trek except us and the CMs! Boyfriend and I resigned ourselves to the fact that the tigers wouldn't be out in this heat. Our cats do not deign to come out from under the bed between the hours of noon to 4 pm, and they live inside in the air conditioning, so we knew that much like our contrary little babies, the tigers would be hiding somewhere cool.

However! These bébés were out, and I died over them.



I mean...look at that lil face. I want to pick this macaque up and squeeze it all day long.



One of the macaques then did what I think we all feel like doing in this year of 2020. Who among us has not wanted to just shove themselves between two rocks and ignore everyone and everything?!?


A whole mood.

We walked through the rest of the trek and saw the bats (no pictures because the few bats hanging out were....um....really hanging out, if you catch me drift, and were making the pictures not safe for all ages). The CM at the tiger area was looking all around for the male tiger, who was apparently the only one out, but he was nowhere to be found. The deer were out (gazelles? imapala? what are these animals? I didn't write it down!), and they were following the bats lead and displaying their assets. Luckily, this time it was just butts:


Booty booty booty booty rockin' everywhere.

And this, my friends, is where the real feel of 110F hit us and hit us HARD. It was so unbearable that we made the decision to skip Kilimanjaro Safari, planning on returning later in the afternoon when the animals were more likely to be active. Boyfriend I both love the Pangani trail, with both the gorillas and the meerkats, but we were feeling the heat so intensely that we knew we needed to get inside quickly. Boyfriend is a little more tolerant of the heat than I am (I am pale and go from fine to HOLY COW I AM ABOUT TO PASS OUT very quickly), and even he was like, "I need to sit down in the air conditioner or I'm going to throw up."

We grabbed some ice waters from a stand in Asia and booked it as fast as we could to Pizzafari, which is currently not serving food and is the inside, air-conditioned mask-optional zone. They removed a lot of the tables to give everyone a good amount of space, and luckily it was pretty empty when we went in. CMs were stationed outside to count how many people entered and exited so that it wouldn't get too crowded.



As a rule, neither of us take our masks off inside unless we are physically in the act of eating and drinking, but we did feel okay about removing our masks for a few minutes in here to cool down, since it was so empty. There's no way around this: wearing a mask at DAK in the summer, where so much is outside and it's so hot, is downright uncomfortable. It's definitely something to keep in mine if you're on the fence about visiting from far away--I can be cranky and uncomfortable and just go home, but I would be a whole other level of cranky if I was spending thousands of dollars on a vacation and this was my only DAK day.

Once we felt slightly more human, we masked up and headed towards Pandora. This was what Boyfriend and I were most excited for when it came to DAK, because the low capacity means that Flight of Passage has an incredibly short wait time. We were jazzed about the idea of looping FOP. Pandora actually predates our relationship by a few months; we didn't know each other during AP previews for Pandora, and went during different preview dates. Boyfriend rode FOP five times during his preview AND, perhaps more importantly, met Joe Rohde! I, on the other hand, was dealing with some major anxiety and claustrophobia issues at the time (I still take Lexapro daily, but I am pleased to say that with a combo of medication, therapy, and practicing coping skills, my anxiety is so much better and has been under control for years now). I was too afraid to try FOP because of the sensation of being "trapped" and being in an enclosed space. Once we started dating, Boyfriend was like, "no, you have to try FOP" because he knew I would love it, and I worked up the courage to try it with a fastpass about a year after it opened. Obviously I loved it and now it's one of my favorite rides.

Warning: here's where the day began to get really disappointing in a few different ways. Complaints ahead! But first, the beautiful floating mountains of the Valley of Mo'ara:



Does everyone remember the first time they walked into Pandora? I do, and I have absolutely no interest in the movie (I fell asleep watching it. It's FernGully, except in space, and without the voice acting of Christian Slater!), but I remember walking into this area for the first time and my jaw just dropping. The only experience that surpassed it was turning the corner in Galaxy's Edge and seeing the Millenium Falcon for the first time, when of course I burst into tears, but that's a story for a different day.

I especially love all of the water features in Pandora. On this day, I specifically wanted to jump the fence and just stand under this waterfall to cool down.



Get ready for something I never thought I would see with my own eyes...



...a 10 minute wait for Flight of Passage! (Okay, it really didn't come out well in this picture, probably because my hands had The Shakes from being overheated, but trust me, it says 10 minutes.)

Since I've only ever ridden Flight of Passage with fastpasses, I finally got to see the fantastically themed standby queue. The line was moving to fast to stop and take pictures (we had parties in front of us and behind us, and the queue is so tight I didn't want to stand off to the side), but I enjoyed taking it all in. After about a constant five minute walk, we reached the last room before what used to be merge:



I didn't know it at the time, but this is actually an image that precedes disaster...dun dun DUNNNNNNN.

Scroll down to continue!​

 

[lindseyanne]

July 31: Animal Kingdom
Part Three

This is where a day that was feeling a little off went wrong.

At what would be the merge point, a FOP CM sent parties down those long lanes where you're held before being grouped into rooms (I hope everyone can visualize this, because explaining it is hard). Like a lot of indoor queues, these lanes all day plexiglass up on them, and six feet lines on the ground indicated where to stand to maintain social distance. As anyone who has ridden FOP knows, you can often wait in this area for a cycle of the ride, or longer.

I am not in the business of social distance shaming people, because I think that for 99% of people, it's genuinely not something they're doing on purpose--they just forget. But this happened:





As you can see by the pairs of feet in this picture, social distancing completely broke down here. Now, outside or in a constantly moving line, it's easy to distance yourself--but when the line stops like this, you really do rely on other people to follow the markings and to do the right thing, and that doesn't always happen for any number of reasons. I felt uncomfortable asking people "hey, do you mind backing up a little bit?", because sadly in this day and age, you never know who is normal and who is part of that .0005% of people who are going to get all up in your face about it.

And this is where I do place some blame on Disney. I am in no way blaming individual attractions CMs, because having been an attractions CM myself, I know that they've got their minds on tons of other things to keep everything running safely and efficiently (and that's without the extra coronavirus stuff!). BUT. CMs are constantly walking back and forth along these lanes. To keep everyone appropriately distanced, it really would be a good idea to have a CM stationed here whose sole purpose in that position is to keep everyone spaced out and remind people to back up.

One of the issues, I noticed, is that people consider the green "stand here" signs as "my entire party should stand behind this line, and as long as we don't stretch onto the other green line behind us, we're fine". In reality, it should be "my entire party should stand as close to this line as possible, and not spread out at all". Honestly, it's difficult for parties of more than two.

Here, look at these dinosaurs to illustrate what I mean:


With these two small parties, both dinos can stand on the green line, and leave six feet between them and the party behind them.



But here, with a prehistoric party of six, everybody spreads out and are now NOT distanced at all from the party behind them.

This is all a very long way of saying that Boyfriend and I both were uncomfortable with this part of the queue, which ultimately made us decided right there that we weren't going to re-ride and loop FOP. The rest of the ride was as fun as always, and at least for those four and a half minutes, I was out of my funk.

We walked over to Navi River Journey, got in the socially distanced queue, and right on schedule, the "we're down for cleaning!" announcement came on (it was 4 pm, which contributed to my theory that all the rides were going down at the same time for cleaning, which is really not cool). I see no reason to wait longer than 5 minutes for this ride, so we ducked out of line and decided to kill the cleaning time with Night Blossoms.


I would honestly kill to have one of these right now.

We found a somewhat shady corner to stand and enjoy our drinks in, and as usual, something very embarrassing happened to me. For reasons I don't understand, whenever I get one of these drinks, something embarrassing occurs. On my last visit to DAK before the coronavirus closure, I was walking to meet Boyfriend with two Night Blossoms, tripped over literally nothing, and spilled both all over the ground in front of dozens of people. This time, I was struck with the inevitable Night Blossom Brain Freeze, and had my eyes closed and was stamping my feet going "ow ow ow ow ow", causing a security CM to walk up to me and ask if I was okay. WHY AM I LIKE THIS.

We walked back over to the Navi River Journey, figuring that cleaning should be wrapping up. This is where the other disappointing thing happened that really made me sour. The party that walked in ahead of us was made up of a mom, a dad, and some kids. Dad was holding a beer, with his mask down below his neck. The CM at the entrance told him nicely that he had to have his mask on. Dad responds, "I'm drinking this." The CM explained that it was fine to have his mask off while drinking, but only when he's in one place, not walking around. Dad ignores her.

Well, cleaning was not down, and the line was not moving. Boyfriend and I, right behind this party, realize that Dad is going to just stand in this line without his mask on. Since the queue was snaking back into the direct sun, Boyfriend and I both decided not to wait, since this ride really isn't worth baking in the heat. On our way back out of the queue, I told the CM at the entrance that Dad still wasn't wearing his mask, and was just standing there maskless. She rolled her eyes, said "of course", and.....didn't do anything. I know she didn't do anything, because while Boyfriend went to the bathroom, I stood and watched the entrance for like ten minutes.

Just like I said above, I want to make it clear that I do not, in any way, blame individual, front line CMs for this. At all! As a former CM, when I see something like this happen, I know that the CM is not doing anything because they know that escalating this to a lead or a MOD will do nothing, and will probably result in them getting an earful from management. My sole blame is on management, which appears to not have the backs of front line CMs in these situations...because if they did have their backs, I am certain that CMs like the ones I encountered would feel empowered to take action.

I am probably over-sensitive to these things, because of living in central Florida, where so many people brazenly ignore the mask mandate and businesses do nothing. For example, after leaving DAK on this very same day, I stopped at Publix to grab stuff for dinner at the deli and watched a man not only refuse to put his mask on (he was wearing it around his neck), but yell at the deli staff that the mask mandate was ridiculous. They shrugged and continued to take his order. So that's what we're dealing with here in Orlando!

All of this had left me and Boyfriend in a pretty bad mood, especially when combined with the heat, so we decided to ride Dinosaur to try and salvage the afternoon and then leave. As we cut through Discovery Island, we were blessed with the rare sight of one of the kangaroos!

This truly helped my mood. I love kangaroos so much and they're so rarely hanging out in front of the Tree of Life. This kangaroo was not cooperating with pictures, so here's a kangaroo butt:



It's impossible to really see it in this picture because it blends in with the rockwork, but right in front of the kangaroo was a giant bird. I have no idea what kind it was; it looked like a condor, but I don't even know is DAK has those. If you look at the kangaroo butt above, then look about a foot to the right, you'll see it's head and some of its body. Anyway, this bird cracked me up because it stood there and spread it's gigantic wings out, like it was shielding the kangaroo from prying eyes. Give her/him some privacy!

Our spirits slightly lifted, we walked over to Dinosaur, which was blessedly not being cleaned at the time.



SADLY, I must report that the world's greatest pre-show video featuring Dr. Seeker was not running. How will people understand the gravity of their mission? How will we know to go get that dino?

I am also sad to report that I never got the on-ride photo from this ride, which makes me make the same face as this guy from the Dinosaur dump store:




And that wraps up a kind of okay but not so great day at DAK. Like I said in part one, I have a park pass for DHS this Friday, which I am cautiously optimistic about. I am pretty sure that I will have an emotional breakdown if I don't get a boarding pass for Rise of the Resistance, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

Click here to continue: a DHS day!​

 

[PlutosRHM55]

I'm sorry you had a not-so-great day at DAK. I personally love DAK despite its heat during the day and always have, but I'm the person who thought an entire day spent at Disneyland in 110 plus degree weather was the best day ever so I'm obviously a minority opinion on the subject. But yeah, it sounds pretty rough and they definitely should stagger out those ride cleanings. The whole system with the ride vehicle cleaning seems unproductive as is, but to not stagger... it doesn't make sense.

Every time I hear stories about how guests just ignore CMs and the CMs can only say something in the hopes they listen, I get so bothered. It's the one thing about Disney's guest service system that will always irk me as a former CM. Get chewed out by guests or them just being casually rude to you with you as a CM not able to self-advocate and in a way not be able to prevent this behavior from happening again is the worst. The amount of times those types of guests will consistently get what they want or get away with whatever is infuriating. I'm sure they are still ironing out the flaws having to enforce social distancing and mask wearing, but not wearing a mask properly or outright refusing to should be grounds for ejections just as it is in most public places. Frontline CMs again have enough to deal with.

Sending you all the pixie dust that you get that Rise boarding pass. May the force be with you on Friday.

 

[Verstehen]

I am really enjoying your report. I'm also an Orlando local, though I haven't returned since the parks closed. You're giving me a good idea of what to expect. I'm still on the fence but at least I'm not in a hurry. Not sure where in the area you live (I'm in College Park), but when things get back to normal I'd love to have a park buddy if you're interested!

 

[lindseyanne]

Hiya peeps! Long time, no post, I know. I work in higher ed, so unsuprisingly the past few weeks have been very busy with the start of a completely online fall semester (which is always our busiest semester when it comes to enrollment, period), so the last thing I've wanted to do after working remotely all day is stay on the internet! Plus, I've been having a lot of coronavirus-related ennui. It's my boyfriend's birthday this weekend, and I can't help but get in my feelings, thinking about how months ago it was my birthday, already months into quarantine, and I thought "well, at least by the time his birthday comes around, things will probably have returned to normal"....and nothing has returned to normal at all. I was kind of in a funk, so I'm excited to return to the really fun day that we had at DHS a few weeks ago. This is going to be a long one--we ended up spending the entire day at DHS, almost open to close, which I have quite literally never done since I worked there, when it was still called Disney-MGM Studios, Walt Disney Presents was still One Man's Dream (my first job ever), and dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Oh, and spoiler alert: WE GOT RISE OF THE RESISTANCE BOARDING PASSES AND THE ENTIRE RIDE WORKED PERFECTLY AND IT BLEW MY MIND AND I'M STILL NOT OVER IT!!!

Without further ado....

August 14: Hollywood Studios
Part One

Boyfriend and I were up bright and early, since our ROTR boarding pass plan was to get into DHS well in advance of the park's 10 AM opening. We arrived outside the parking plaza at 9:05 am and were about 10 cars away from the entrance:



We started moving at 9:15 am sharp, and it took a little less than 10 minutes to get through the gates. Two parking attendants were stationed at each gate, which really helped move everyone through efficiently. In the 10 minutes we were parked outside the parking plaza, though, the line of cars got really long behind us, so I think that arriving by 9 am-9:10 am is really key to not having to wait too long.



We got a spot very close to the front of the park--this lot made me very nostalgic, because it's where I used to park as a CM for work. Boyfriend was feeling very George Costanza-esque due to how close this parking spot was, and was like "well, now we have to stay all day, you don't give up a parking spot this good."

Every AdventHealth temperature check was open, as well as every security line and entrance tap point, so we were in the gates just before 9:30 am. As you can see from the picture below, Hollywood Blvd was looking pretty crowded. I will say that everyone was being very mindful of social distancing and was not clumping up in crowds.



We decided to find a shady spot further afield to sit down and wait for the 10 am drop of ROTR boarding passes. Some people were already starting to line up for Runaway Railway, but you shan't catch me standing outside in direct sunlight:


Sigh. I really like Runaway Railway, but every time I see this building I remember that we lost the Great Movie Ride.

We found a nice table in the shade directly across from the ABC Commissary, then prepared our phones (wifi off) and our minds for the 10 am ROTR boarding pass drop.



Following the suggestions from friends and bloggers, Boyfriend and I both started refreshing our My Disney Experience apps at 9:58 am. 10:00 am came, and Boyfriend was greeted with the most wonderful sight a DHS guest can see:



WHAT A RELIEF. Seriously, at this point I was more relieved than excited about scoring a boarding pass--I was so afraid we wouldn't get one and would have to try our chances at the 2 pm drop, which isn't guaranteed if the ride is having technical trouble (and it had been having trouble the entire week). Don't worry, the excitement came in about 2 minutes later.

With our ROTR boarding pass secure and the park now opened, we rope-dropped the second most important attraction in DHS...



YES THAT'S RIGHT, MUPPET VISION 3D. Neither of us are Tower of Terror or Rock n' Rollercoaster people, and the lines for other top tier attractions like Runaway Railway and Slinky Dog Dash were already at around 45-50 minute waits in the sun.

A grand total of 5 other people had the same ideas as us:



The theatre is really set up well for social distancing; entire rows are blocked off, and sections are blocked off within the rows.

After relishing that glorious 3 hour finale, we headed to Star Tours, which had a 10 minute wait posted.


Still one of the best queues in all of WDW.



Even though the wait time was very low, the extended queue was being used to keep parties distanced. No problem there, because I love the Ewok village, and more importantly the girls in the party in front of us were playing "What'd I Miss?" from Hamilton out loud on their phone.

Scroll down to continue!
​

 

[lindseyanne]

August 14: Hollywood Studios
Part Two

We lucked out and got a very Original Trilogy trip on our starspeeder, with Darth Vader, a jaunt through Kashyyyk, and the Geonosis asteroid belt. On the way out through the dump shop, I caught a glimpse of Jedi Stitch:



The lines for marquee attractions are pretty high (45-50 minutes) in the mornings at DHS because you have to be in the park at 10 am to have two chances for a ROTR boarding pass, so instead of standing in line in the heat, we visited an old friend:



Like I said earlier, I used to work here loooooooooooong ago, when it was still called One Man's Dream--my first job at Disney and my first job ever. It was also truly one of the easiest jobs on property. HOWEVER. In those days, we had to wear the same horrendous vests that servers at Animator's Palette on the Disney Cruise Line wear, the ones that are black and white and then can be flipped inside out to be multi-colored. We would wear our black and white side of the vests at the beginning of the attraction, and flip them over to the colorful side at the point in the walk through that Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color was introduced. We also used to have CMs stationed throughout this attraction with our sole job in that rotation being to wander around and share interesting facts about Walt Disney. SIGH. Those days are done. Boyfriend and I were very excited because the actual One Man's Dream movie was being shown. I can still recite most of it, I watched it so many times as a CM. Still chokes me up!

The clouds were looking beautiful as we exited the theatre, so Boyfriend wanted to head to Toy Story Land to take some pictures.





Toy Story Mania was showing a 10 minute wait time, but in actuality we walked straight to the loading area. It still boggles my mind that we now live in a world where you can walk on to Toy Story Mania at 11 am.



We were starting to get peckish, and according to the MDE app we had about 70 minutes before our ROTR boarding group would be called, so it sounded like a good time to eat lunch. I placed a mobile order for Backlot Express from Toy Story Land, and by the time we walked from Toy Story Land to Backlot Express, our food was ready:



I have been wanting to try the "Tatooine Two Suns Hummus" for a long time, and it sounded like the perfect meal for a hot day. You can't really see the regular hummus in this picture, but it's there, topped with a cucumber salad. The real MVP was the red pepper hummus with plant-based "meat" and fried chickpeas. I could have eaten a gallon of it. If you're really starving, this would probably not be enough food, but it was a great light lunch and didn't leave me feeling gross and overstuffed like quick service meals typically do.

Let's take a close-up of that beautiful red pepper hummus:



Maybe one of the regular hummus too, so it doesn't get offended:



As we were throwing our stuff away, the best alert ever came through the MDE app:



AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH IT WAS TIME. By now I was practically climbing the walls in excitement. We were FINALLY going to ride Rise of the Resistance!!!

Click here to continue *WITH RISE OF THE RESISTANCE SPOILERS*, you've been warned​

 

[lindseyanne]

Every time I hear stories about how guests just ignore CMs and the CMs can only say something in the hopes they listen, I get so bothered. It's the one thing about Disney's guest service system that will always irk me as a former CM. Get chewed out by guests or them just being casually rude to you with you as a CM not able to self-advocate and in a way not be able to prevent this behavior from happening again is the worst. The amount of times those types of guests will consistently get what they want or get away with whatever is infuriating. I'm sure they are still ironing out the flaws having to enforce social distancing and mask wearing, but not wearing a mask properly or outright refusing to should be grounds for ejections just as it is in most public places. Frontline CMs again have enough to deal with.

Sending you all the pixie dust that you get that Rise boarding pass. May the force be with you on Friday.

YES. I hate hate hate that the idea has really spread on the internet that you can and should complain about every small thing (including things that YOU, the guest, are doing wrong) because CMs will eventually relent because it isn't worth arguing. Especially nowadays. If you can't listen to a CM tell you to put a mask on, then begone.

Your pixie dust must have worked, btw, because we got boarding passes! IT WAS AMAZING I AM FOREVER CHANGED.

I am really enjoying your report. I'm also an Orlando local, though I haven't returned since the parks closed. You're giving me a good idea of what to expect. I'm still on the fence but at least I'm not in a hurry. Not sure where in the area you live (I'm in College Park), but when things get back to normal I'd love to have a park buddy if you're interested!

Thanks for following along, fellow Orlandoan! I'm over in Lake Nona. I am always up for hitting up the parks!

 

[Lilias]

Ohai fellow Higher Ed person! The last few weeks of August are always the absolute WORST and we have a new system this year that is a disaster! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

So far our students haven't partied/spread Covid amongst each other (we're doing online optional this year) and I am just completely shocked lol

I CAN'T WAIT TO HEAR ABOUT RISE. I haven't been blessed with it yet and it gives me stress that we might miss it during our December trip >_<

 

[PlutosRHM55]

Your pixie dust must have worked, btw, because we got boarding passes! IT WAS AMAZING I AM FOREVER CHANGED.

OMG I'M SO GLAD TO HEAR THAT!!

But you left us on a cliffhanger for that, dang.

WAIT THEY USED TO DO WHAT IN ONE MAN'S DREAM??? That is my happy place in DHS, which is the weirdest thing but I love Disney history and it's the one place where I can feel close to my real home, Disneyland. I would love to just talk with CMs for hours about Walt. That would be LIFE.

Also, it definitely must be such a former Studios CM thing to just LOVE MuppetVision because SAME. Literally we are the reason it is still there because poor thing is holding on by a thread. That facade alone says so much. Gosh, but I will fight and die for her. She needs to stay.

 

[lindseyanne]

Ohai fellow Higher Ed person! The last few weeks of August are always the absolute WORST and we have a new system this year that is a disaster! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

So far our students haven't partied/spread Covid amongst each other (we're doing online optional this year) and I am just completely shocked lol

I CAN'T WAIT TO HEAR ABOUT RISE. I haven't been blessed with it yet and it gives me stress that we might miss it during our December trip >_<

Ugggggggggggh, the dreaded double whammy of a new system + August registration and now a triple whammy of a pandemic. WHY DOES EVER HIGHER ED ADMINISTRATION DO THIS TO US. I for one am pleasantly shocked that your students have not been partying it up. I work for a community college so we have no housing to worry about and went completely online, but my alma mater (UCF) has already been in the news for Greek life parties and giant pool parties. Siiiiigh.

OMG I'M SO GLAD TO HEAR THAT!!

But you left us on a cliffhanger for that, dang.

WAIT THEY USED TO DO WHAT IN ONE MAN'S DREAM??? That is my happy place in DHS, which is the weirdest thing but I love Disney history and it's the one place where I can feel close to my real home, Disneyland. I would love to just talk with CMs for hours about Walt. That would be LIFE.

Also, it definitely must be such a former Studios CM thing to just LOVE MuppetVision because SAME. Literally we are the reason it is still there because poor thing is holding on by a thread. That facade alone says so much. Gosh, but I will fight and die for her. She needs to stay.

YES EVERYONE FORGETS THIS USED TO HAPPEN IN ONE MAN'S DREAM. They don't even wear the snazzy Animator's Palette outfits anymore which is deeply upsetting to me! Ugh. I miss being a Studios CM so much.

 

[lindseyanne]

Hola friendsicles! The multiple servers that run my entire college's web presence (aka the only way anyone, student or faculty of staff can access, oh, ANYTHING now that we are 100% remote) have crashed, so I now find myself with hours of free time to finish up this DHS day! I have a park pass for Magic Kingdom on Saturday to see the Halloween Lite decorations and hopefully catch as many of the Halloween cavalcades as I can.

Also, I'm so glad WDW has decided to let everyone, including adults, wear costumes through Halloween! I had many MNSSHP costumes planned (Boyfriend and I had planned on buying the party pass if it was offered this year), and now I can actually wear them. I am the world's biggest proponent of adults wearing costumes, as seen in these blasts from my past:


Eagle-eyed viewers, go back to page 1 of this TR because Ariel may remind you of a certain Scottish lass, wink wink.


For the record, this was in 2015 and thus well before Redd existed, I am just THAT ahead of the curve. This is probably my favorite costume ever but lawd it's heavy.


As you can see, Boyfriend has been cropped out here, but we made the truly stupid decision to dress as Hoth Han and Leia for an early September party and felt like dying all night.

It's definitely still too hot to whip any of these out; I've also been planning a Haunted Mansion Tightrope Girl costume (I found the Dress Shop outfit at Cast Connection last winter for $25!) and a Winter Soldier Disneybound (ironically, I decided against doing this last year because I couldn't wear a mask as an adult...finally, my time has come!).

Anyway, enough of my fashion monologue. Travel back with me to weeks ago, at DHS. I had just finished eating hummus (I'm starving right now btw) and was about to experience Rise of the Resistance for the very first time...

August 14: Hollywood Studios
Part Three *CONTAINS RISE OF THE RESISTANCE SPOILERS*

If you have somehow avoided Rise of the Resistance spoilers (HOW. How did you do this for so long?) and want to continue avoiding them, don't read this update or the update that follows!

Go away now....



Last chance....



OKAY LET'S DO THIS. I was truly about to bounce out of my skin by this point. I had been waiting to go on ROTR for so long and was so excited. I actually managed to avoid watching ride-throughs and even looking at too many pictures of the ride itself; obviously, it's impossible to be on Instagram and avoid pics of the hangar filled with Stormtroopers, and I had a general idea of the flow of the ride, but I was going in relatively spoiler-free.



We were one of the first people from our boarding group to reach the entrance, so we walked right through into the outdoor queue. After we were done riding, another boarding group had been called and with social distancing the queue of people stretched all the way out here in the blazing sun, so definitely try to hang out nearby when it's getting close to your time!

Luckily, the queue didn't stop for us until we were close to the cavern and under cover, so we didn't have to wait in the direct sunlight. This queue is so serene!



We were moving somewhat steadily once we got into the indoor portion of the queue, but we paused enough to get to take in the amazing details. The queue had the standard 6 feet social distancing markers, and some were actually even longer because of the switchbacks used in the queue, so we were never close to other parties. The social distancing in this queue is actually the best I've experienced so far.




I was dying over the old helmets. My favorite scene in the sequel trilogy is when Rey puts the old Rebel Alliance helmet on while chilling outside her makeshift casa in The Force Awakens.



Imagineering did such a great job setting the scene in this queue--it really looks like everything has been cobbled together. My fellow Star Wars superfans will greatly appreciate how the idea of a "used universe" was implemented here.

We reached the point where you're loaded into the preshow, the "Rey Room". ROTR had been having major issues all week, so we were pleasantly suprised that a) this room was being used (apparently they cut it a lot?) and b) everything was working properly. I should note that this room was also loaded very lightly, so we had plenty of space between us and other parties, and everyone was placed on their own social distance marker.


My internal monologue: aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.


AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

I'm not a giant sequel trilogy fan (I don't hate the movies, but I do think they have some serious flaws), and I'm definitely not as emotionally attached to them as I am to the original trilogy and to some extent the prequels, but I do love Rey.

Scroll down to continue!​

 

[lindseyanne]

August 14: Hollywood Studios
Part Four *CONTAINS RISE OF THE RESISTANCE SPOILERS*

After being informed of our very important mission by Rey, we left the preshow room and headed to our transport...


Not our transport!

I absolutely LOVED how you go outside to board your transport; it turns the immersion up to a crazy level. The transport "vehicle" was also loaded very lightly, so we weren't crowded, and all of us were again placed on our own social distance markers.


Not to be dramatic but I would die for this Mon Calamari.



In news that will surprise no one who has ever been on a ride in a theme park, our mission was disrupted and we faced great peril! We were boarded by a very in-character First Order CM who escorted us out...

AND YET AGAIN I DIED. Even having seen this so many times in pictures, it really doesn't compare to how massive this hangar is and how intimidating it is to face lines of Stormtroopers. As you can see form this picture below, Boyfriend was frantically grabbing as many pictures as possible as we walked.



Sadly, on our way to our interrogation chamber, we didn't encounter "real" Stormtroopers like they apparently often place here. Still scary!



The picture below should give you a pretty decent idea of how few parties were being loaded at a time; it was two parties per chamber, which works out two one party per ride vehicle. Also, all of the CMs working this ride were great but the First Order officer in this picture was FANTASTIC. He kept staring at Boyfriend's The Empire Strikes Back shirt with pure disdain, and made sure that everyone in our chamber used the "sanitation droid" (the hand sanitizing station).




AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

At this point I put my phone away because I wanted to fully experience the actual ride portion of ROTR without any distractions. WOW WOW WOW WOW. I was completely blown away. It's truly the most immersive experience I've ever had--I was LITERALLY THERE. For someone like me who has loved Star Wars since I first began watching movies, this was pretty much a religious experience. Thank god each party is currently being loaded into their own ride vehicle because Boyfriend and I both started just screaming sounds of joy once we saw the lifesize AT-ATs and never stopped until the ride was over and we were at unload. We also really lucked out and had everything running in A Mode, with no broken effects or B Mode effects.

Also...I knew the small drop was coming, and I still freaked out and held onto Boyfriend for dear life.

After we unloaded, we both just kind of wandered around Batuu in silence, processing our lives.


The clouds really were stunning on this day.

After we left Batuu, I made sure to check that my absolute favorite, borderline not safe for the DIS, hidden detail in all of the Disney parks in existence was still there:



You can find it this on the working call box outside the "apartments" on Grand Avenue. I want so badly to know the story behind this. Who is the Imagineer who loves Seinfeld so much that s/he programmed this reference into the callbox? Whoever you are, I salute you.

Click here to continue
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