Day 3 - Monday, January 27th
I know my "reports" are pretty dull since I'm mostly just listing off every ride we did. But that's pretty much all we do on our trips.
On day 3, we didn't wake up until 8:45am. We went down to get breakfast and this was the day I mentioned earlier that had no coffee available. People were getting pretty frustrated with this. But we just went and had crummy coffee in the room instead.
We were out waiting for the bus around 10:40.
Our son finally fits into the WDW shirt we bought him last year!
Got to Epcot at 11:15. It felt pretty crowded to us on this day. First we went to do Living with the Land. The wait ended up being 20-25 minutes which is really pushing our son's limit. Thankfully we got on before a major meltdown occurred. The line was so tight and snaked back and forth a lot. There was this one couple in line that gave us major "stink eye." The woman had an actual curled lip scowl at me when we passed by her (twice.) The 2nd time, she gave me the look, nudged her husband/boyfriend, whispered something to him...then he looked over and scowled too! I have no idea if it's because we were wearing masks or because they saw my husband's "protect trans kids" shirt. Either way....they didn't look too pleased with us....which I thought was funny.
After Living with the Land, we used a
DAS return for Spaceship Earth. When we had arrived at the park, I think it was a 30 or more minute wait, which is too long for our son so we were thankful for DAS. By the time we were done, he was ready for lunch. We planned to get burgers in the America pavilion and instead of making the long trek, we took the Friendship boat across, which was nice. We placed our mobile order and then struggled to find anywhere to sit. We had hoped to sit outside but there was nothing. So we went inside and thankfully saw a table opening up. This happened a lot on the trip. Quick service places never have enough tables and while I like mobile ordering, I think it's a big part of the problem. So many people, like us, just waiting for their order to be up. (Well, and then people lingering is also a problem but I get it....everyone's tired.)
We ordered an adult burger for our son. I got myself a kids burger because I like the smaller ones. It was pretty terrible though. Had one last year and I remember it being better but maybe I was just so hungry last year that it seemed better. Ha! Our son ate most of his....then.....he ate french fries! This was a big deal. Over all these years, we've always offered him fries and even put some on his plate. At home, on vacation, etc. He NEVER eats them. He's maybe taken a bite or two in all his 11 years on this earth.
He picked up a fry and smelled it. I pretended not to notice him and just watched out of the corner of my eye. Then...he took a bite. And finished it! And went back for more! He ended up eating a bunch of them. And this continued on the trip. He ate them several more times. He doesn't really eat many fried foods and he's in the roughly 1-percentile or maybe 2-percentile for his weight. So we were pretty excited. He also ate his entire burger (minus the garlic toast that it came on) and 4 slices of watermelon. So proud of this kid.
Once we were done, our DAS return for Ratatouille was up and thankfully, it didn't break down this time. Our son remembered the ride and after the first kitchen scene he said "broken" and I wasn't sure what he was talking about. Then I realized, he must have though the wet mop was during that scene. Then when we got to the ACTUAL mop part, he remembered and ducked his head. He ducked for the cork too. He's not a fan. But overall, he loved the ride and laughed a lot.
He didn't want to go on Frozen and it was already after 3. So he wanted to take a break. First we went into a bunch of art booths and I bought a lot of post cards. I'll need to figure out a good way to display them all. We headed towards the bus stop around 3:45.
Got back to the room at 4:30. Relaxed for a while. Then took the bus to Hollywood studios and arrived around 6:15. The sky looked really pretty.
The first thing we did was head to Star Tours, one of our son's favorites. The wait was only 5 minutes.
We had dinner next and just ate at Backlot Express. Our son said he wanted the chicken strips but he didn't like the breading. We helped him pick it off the best we could but he ended up eating very little chicken. Thankfully he had eaten a good lunch so it wasn't a huge deal.
The outdoor seating area was pretty empty when we grabbed our table. And there were a LOT of tables. Yet...when 2 families showed up....they took the tables right next to us. So weird. I wonder if they take the bathroom stall next to people instead of skipping one.
At 7:30 we were done and used our DAS for Mickey and Minnie's Railway. There was no pre-show which was a bummer. I absolutely love the cartoon, the song, and the hole opening up in the wall. The ride was still great though.
We picked up a DAS return for Toy Story Mania after this but we had a lot of time to kill so we decided to take the long way around and walk through Galaxy's Edge. As we got near Rise, we saw it was only a 20 minute wait. I believe it had been down and just reopened. Our son didn't want to ride but I told my husband to jump in line and go. He said he didn't want to ditch us but I told him I really didn't mind. Like our son, I'm not really a big fan of the drop part either so didn't really want to go anyway.
While we waited, we just sat down for a bit and did some people-watching. Saw a ton of people running to the Rise queue. Okay....so I pulled this picture from Google maps.
You see all these boxes....we were sitting on one of them. We picked one at the end of the row, nearest to Rise.
ALL of the other boxes were empty. But after several minutes, some random lady came over and sat on the same box as us! What the heck?! It was like at dinner time with everyone sitting by us....but this was even worse. I was beginning to wonder if my family is invisible or something.
Needless to say, as soon as she sat down....we got up.
We looked at some merchandise booths and then just walked and took pictures. I'm not really a Star Wars person, but I love anything that's lit up at night!
After my husband was done with Rise, it was almost exactly time for our Toy Story return. So we headed that direction. The LL queue took a little while but wasn't too bad. Towards the end, a couple groups of people decided to leave the line. They said "they are only running one side so it's taking forever." But we got on the ride probably 5 minutes or less after they left. Weird. My son actually managed to hit some of the targets on his own (after I helped him figure it out a bit.)
We decided to call it a night after this.
We saw some random fireworks as we were walking out of this area but I'm still not sure what show it was for or anything. Didn't even know they had fireworks here.
We were at the bus stop around 9:10. The bus stop at HS seems so far away from the entrance to me. It's probably not any worse than Epcot but it seems like it's farther.
We were back at the hotel around 9:40 and decided to get some hot chocolate and then relaxed for a bit before bed. All in all, a really nice day! Weather was tolerable. Not too hot during the day. A little chilly in the evening, but perfect sweatshirt weather for us!
