I have to agree that today’s EMM felt much busier than I expected. It was overall a very good event and I’m glad we did it, but we didn’t get to do the multiple rides that other people were doing. However, we left as the RD crowd was entering and, good grief, it was a lot of people. The EMM price was worth it just to avoid being part of that!
We arrived at 7:25am as we had some issues with the Lyft app and then ended up having to wait 12 minutes for a Minnie Van. It’s a long walk back into Toy Story Land, and I use a walking stick and am fairly slow, so we didn’t arrive as early as planned. We went straight back into TSL. Rode TSM and were the only ones in the queue, which was weird but fun. The lines for the characters were very short at that time, though they grew during the event.
Then we went to SDD, which had a 15 min posted wait time. We probably waited 10 mins, but even so, that’s more than I had expected. Great ride!
AS2 was a walk-on, and it was a fun ride but nothing I would go out of my way for.
Then my sister did TSM again, and it was a long queue. I didn’t ride anything a second time, as my husband was back in the hotel unwell, so I was fighting with the park WiFi to try to speak to him.
I left just as the RD line arrived, and it was horrendous trying to get out. Woody and Jessie only had 1 person in line to meet them at that point, but I didn’t really care about meeting them, so I just headed to the ABC Commissary. My sister left about 10 minutes later and arrived at ABC 20 mins after I did, because the crowds coming into TSL were so dense.
They did still have a table outside Andy’s Lunchbox with water, and also coffee I believe. So that wasn’t just for the media preview.
Food:
I arrived at ABC about 8:50am and it was quiet. I didn’t fancy the avocado toast, so I just asked for 2 kids’ scrambled eggs and sweet potato barrels. I was on my own at that point, but there no problem. I was specifically told “Don’t forget to come back for seconds and try something else on the menu”, so you can definitely order more than one entree. I actually enjoyed my scrambled eggs and tots very much! They had juice and water at the buffet, and you could also order fountain sodas at the hot food counter.
The pastries were a bit disappointing, but the fruit was fresh. I didn’t eat much from there, as I had over-ordered on the scrambled eggs - the kids’ portion was easily big enough for an adult.
Gluten-free:
My sister is GF. We grabbed a CM when she arrived, and a chef came over. He said that they could make any of the hot entrees GF. He then brought out a plate with 3 GF pastries - donut, a blueberry muffin and a chocolate cake, all of which were delicious apparently. I took a photo but the site won’t let me upload it.
One thing that impressed me: when the chef came to the table, my sister, niece and I were all there. He came back with the pastries and my sister was in line for hot food. He left them with my niece and I at the table, but then went to my sister in the queue and told her that he had left her food with us. I just thought that was a nice touch.
Overall:
It was Columbus Day, and while the park wasn’t packed, the crowd for TSL was dreadful. I was happy to pay to avoid that. If I was going at a less popular time of year then I don’t know that it would be worth it, as there were definitely more people there than I expected - I’m really bad at guessing but I would say closer to 400 than the 200 that has been mentioned. That really affected the SDD wait time.
The other bit of advice is to get there early. Today was my first day in HS, so I didn’t realise how long it would take us to walk from the Minnie Van drop off all the way into TSL. I was also a bit blasé about the arrival time because previous reports had talked about the 7am arrivals getting sent for breakfast. But even so, get there early!
We are doing EMM at MK tomorrow, so I will be interested to see how that compares.