Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[kgcricket]

While we weren’t there super recently, we were there at the end of May, my youngest sister was on the search for the iconic Mickey head balloons for my nephews birthday pictures and was told that no one had them in any park or location due to shipping delays. I guess they essentially ran out. I don’t know what their current state is

Thank you so much for this info. What a bummer.

 

[itf]

For all that it’s been a very easy day. We’ve had two rides malfunction (haunted mansion and buzz) and two lightning lanes converted (space and 7 dwarves) which is pretty poor.

 

[DisneyFive]

Right. Day 1 of 14, 2 adults one child, G+ everyday. Offsite. Snagged 8:35-9:35 space mountain and heading to the parks now. Will book 7DMT in the Lyft over and try and update as we go. Hoping an early first selection keeps me ahead of the crowd all day.

7DMT for 11:30 and could have got earlier. Looking ok!

Space is down for now so walked on space ranger

Buzz broke down on us and our space mountain is now an anytime. Got an immediate g+ for pirates so headed there

Big thunder g+ secured for lunchtime so now standby for jungle cruise (posted 30 barely 10)

7DMT down so that’s recovery too

Barnstormer and teacups ticked off

Walked on mermaid

People outside trying to drum up walk ins for be our guest

Big thunder done just waiting for LL for Splash, then will eat, do space and seven dwarves and haunted mansion and it’s back to the resort. Not a bad job for a “short” party day.

Having genie just decimated MK on a slow day, my most frequent problem has been return times too soon. If it wasn’t for Seven Dwarves and space being down we’d be nearly done!

As a side note Apple Watch as magic band has been seamless and I’ll likely leave my band at home for the rest of the trip

Sounds like an awesome day!

I’m curious, when Space went down during your G+, did the Anytime G+ include Space Mountain as an option? Normally it does not include Space, PP, JC or 7DMT but I am wondering if it does include Space if that is the ride you were on when it went down.

Thanks. -Dan

 

[itf]

Sounds like an awesome day!

I’m curious, when Space went down during your G+, did the Anytime G+ include Space Mountain as an option? Normally it does not include Space, PP, JC or 7DMT but I am wondering if it does include Space if that is the ride you were on when it went down.

Thanks. -Dan

It must have done we never thought about it and it went green when we tapped in

 

[melking23]

Sounds like an awesome day!

I’m curious, when Space went down during your G+, did the Anytime G+ include Space Mountain as an option? Normally it does not include Space, PP, JC or 7DMT but I am wondering if it does include Space if that is the ride you were on when it went down.

Thanks. -Dan

It likely included Space and any rides lesser in “value”.

 

[DisneyByMarriage]

I’m headed to OKW tomorrow but planning on heading straight to Typhoon lagoon. Do I still need to be there early and if the park opens at 10 can we get into lot around 9? We’d rather not go to the hotel first because we know the room won’t be ready.

 

[Good&Plenty]

Popped over at 2 pm from Universal yesterday to start our five day WDW trip. We're staying at a Hilton that allows early entry.

Did the following six rides from 2:30pm to 6:45pm and then left. I booked the last two while I was in the park.

7:00am - Booked SDD for 5:30pm (refreshed for a minute to get that time).
8:30am - Booked Rise for 6:30pm
10:30am - Booked Tower of Terror for 2:30pm
12:30pm - Booked Mickey Runaway for 3:30pm
2:30pm - Booked Millennium Falcon for 6:00pm
4:30pm - Booked Toy Story Mania for 5:30pm

Set alarms on my phone to remind me when to book. The rides lined up so that we were able to minimize criss crossing the park. Watched Indiana Jones at 4:30pm to pass time. While waiting for the show to start, put in a mobile order at Woody's. It was a fantastic day.

 

[lorileahb]

Popped over at 2 pm from Universal yesterday to start our five day WDW trip. We're staying at a Hilton that allows early entry.

Did the following six rides from 2:30pm to 6:45pm and then left. I booked the last two while I was in the park.

7:00am - Booked SDD for 5:30pm (refreshed for a minute to get that time).
8:30am - Booked Rise for 6:30pm
10:30am - Booked Tower of Terror for 2:30pm
12:30pm - Booked Mickey Runaway for 3:30pm
2:30pm - Booked Millennium Falcon for 6:00pm
4:30pm - Booked Toy Story Mania for 5:30pm

Set alarms on my phone to remind me when to book. The rides lined up so that we were able to minimize criss crossing the park. Watched Indiana Jones at 4:30pm to pass time. While waiting for the show to start, put in a mobile order at Woody's. It was a fantastic day.

Thanks! Glad you all had a great day!!

HS is one park I'm not going to visit again until I bring all my kids. I'm saving this plan - looks like you did all the planning that would hit everything I would want to get them to, except we could go a little earlier and add in Muppet Vision and Indiana Jones in, and maybe a meal at Sci Fi.

 

[itf]

Park day 2, AK, grabbed safari for 8:10-9:10 and will get an avatar LL at park open in a sec!

Avatar 12:35 so that works!

Trying to minimise the genie walking today so have Navi river journey for 11:30 to tie into our flight of passage ILL.

Headed to Everest (10 mins) and split the party so wife and daughter can watch kite tails while I ride.

Did a couple of Dino rides and we’re sat on a g+ that we’re not using because times are too close. Might book a show.

About to bail from the heat but we’ve done the two avatar rides, tough to be a bug, about to meet Micky and Minnie then we’ve got an immediate genie for Kali.

So again very successful with G+ . We will come back and do the shows another day.

Only downer is the length of time on the character meet lightning lane. Doesn’t feel much better than standby.

 

[heathsf]

I was at MK yesterday and we had great success with G+, thanks to the previous posters who have shared their experiences, so I wanted to pay it forward.

We arrived at 2:15. I started stacking at 7:15 because before then all of the return times were still too early to be useful for us (even Jungle Cruise!).

At 7:15 am I booked Meet Mickey & Minnie for 2:25-3:25
At 11 am I booked Splash Mountain for 2:30-3:30
At 1pm I booked BTMRR for 3:15-4:15.

We arrived at MK at 2:15, met the mice, and watched FOF in Frontierland so we could book it to Splash after.
The posted wait for Mickey and Minnie was 35 min and we waited less than 10.

The posted wait for Splash was 65 min and we waited 8.

The posted wait for BTMRR was 30 min and we waited 8.

For the rest of the day we booked LL one at a time with returns less than 2 hours away, and most of them were available immediately.

POTC was posted as 15 min and we walked right on the ride with zero wait at all.

Next we used LL for Magic Carpets but I didn’t write down the posted time or actual waiting time (sorry!) If my memory serves, we waited about 2 min.

IASW was posted as 15 min and the LL took about 5 (sorry, didn’t write this one down either)

Did a couple of refreshes while waiting for a mobile order for dinner and got WTP for about an hour earlier than what it had been. I think this was the only LL we booked while in the park that didn’t have an immediate return time and we actually had to wait 40 min, but we were eating dinner anyway. It was posted as 25 min and we were on in 5.

Afterwards, we booked Barnstormer for an immediate return time and waited about 5 min for it. It was posted as 25 min.

At this point we reserved Dumbo for an immediate return but decided to cancel and ride people mover instead because we were running out of time before fireworks.

We were purposeful in choosing LL geographically so we didn’t have to criss cross the park at all. That was one of my favorite things about using Genie+
So in 9 hours we rode 9 rides (8 of them with Genie+), two character meets (1 of them with Genie+), watched a parade, and watched fireworks. If we had stayed at MK after fireworks we could have used it on more rides, plenty of things still had G+ available. Overall it felt like a low crowds day but there’s no way we could have done nearly as much without G+. It really took the stress out of a late-arrival day.

Sorry this ended up being quite long. I’ll just wrap it up by saying the magic is definitely still here

 

[Earningmywings]

Anyone that stayed at the YC/BC in the last couple of weeks, can you tell me how the morning busses were to MK and AK? We are planning on getting to the busses 45 min prior to the early morning extra 1/2 hour. Did you have to wait for multiple busses?

 

[itf]

Day 3 is HS which is the one I’m worried about as an offsite guest. Got a 9;30 slinky but it’s whether we get rise…

Well we got a 5:40 ride so just on line for MMRR posted 35 at non resort guest open and that was pretty much spot on. Little one loved it and it’s the first time we’ve seen that ride tech so excited for rise.

Did slinky and walked through galaxy’s edge to muppet vision then met Olaf. Will do star tours on the way to our ILL for smugglers.

Star tours and smugglers done but leaves us with a long gap for next LL. Eating and then we’ve split so I can do rock n rollercoaster and wife and daughter can do toy story mania.

Rise has been down but back up. Fingers crossed for our LL later.

Seen indie and going for a g+ re ride of star tours as my daughter loved it. Just need to fill time to our rise time.

We’re now doing frozen sing along and have a G+ for alien swirling saucers.

Genie was mostly effective for us in combination with standby. If we hadn’t done MMRR standby first thing I think we’d have found it hard to get that, and we didn’t do tower of terror which we will come back and mop up when we come for Oga’s on Saturday.

Aaand rise is down

Rise took an hour to come back and honestly the blue umbrella person I asked about refunds if we didn’t stay was about as unhelpful as anyone I’ve met at Disney, but that’s been the exception most cast members have been good.

Big shout out to Rey who bumped into my daughter, told her to keep her location secret and made her feel special!

 

[CarolynFH]

Anyone that stayed at the YC/BC in the last couple of weeks, can you tell me how the morning busses were to MK and AK? We are planning on getting to the busses 45 min prior to the early morning extra 1/2 hour. Did you have to wait for multiple busses?

I haven’t stayed recently, but the general recommendation (as reported in the ETPE thread ) is to be at the bus stop 90 minutes before ETPE opening, because the first bus usually runs approximately one hour before ETPE starts. Catching that first bus gives you the best chance of being near the front of the crowds entering for ETPE.

 

[saraheliz]

My crew- 2 adults, 3 teens. POR from 8/4-8/7 and YC from 8/7-8/16. 8 park days- 1 AK, 2 HS, 2 MK, 3 EP. We had G+ every day, used ILL every day, and rope dropped every day by arriving 30-60 minutes before each early entry time. We also had MK extended evenings 1 time and 2 times at EP.

This post is not pro nor anti G+ or ILL. This is just to report what happened to us.

The combination of strategic planning, luck, single rider line, G+, ILL, and Early Entry allowed us to ride literally everything we wanted to with extremely low waits. We waited 0-15 minutes per ride, the only exception being Guardian's virtual queue, we did 3 virtual queues, with waits of 60, 45, 40.

Before I begin, we got incredibly lucky this trip with the weather, it rained every day, but we were either eating a meal, napping, at a show, or doing something else indoors, we got wet from rain once and dealt with no closures for rain/lighting either, again, there were closures but none that impacted us whatsoever, pure luck!

The basic plan was very simple:

1. Wake at 6:45
2. Use G+ to book headliner ride
3. Use G+ to book a ILL (FOP, 7DMT, ROTR, Guardians)
4. Immediately go to the park
5. At early entry rope drop ride headliner of our choice
6. Do headliner rides in order of importance until
7. Early entry time expires, then go to higher capacity lower wait shows and rides until 5 minutes before first LL return time
8. At 5 minutes before the return time opens, tap into first LL, sometimes second tap point, then
9. Immediately book the next LL for a ride with a close return window, 0-30 minutes away.
10. Repeat steps 8-9, until return windows start to push out further, then I'd start stacking for late afternoon and evening.
11. Use our ILL during the return window we selected.

Using this method, we'd routinely hit 2, sometimes 3 rides in the 30 minutes of Early Entry and then use G+ to get LL for 2-7 rides throughout the day. We maxed out at 7 LL in MK. Sometimes, we'd skip hundred of people at something like Splash, other times, it was 40 people at Carpets, all told, using G+ saved us hours and hours. We'd use our ILL within the return window we selected.

Single rider allowed us to re-ride Everest, RNR, MFSR, Test Track multiple times. My kids rode Everest 6 times in a row, crazy.

Rope dropping allowed us to ride the headliners at least twice, once at rope drop in the standby line and once with ILL. We did Guardians 6 times-3 virtual queue, and 3 ILL. ROTR 4 times- 2 rope drop standby, 2 ILL. FOP twice-1 rope drop standby, 1 ILL. 7DMT 4 times-2 rope drop standby, 2 ILL.

Extended evening hours did little to nothing for us, by the time the extended evening hours came, we had already gone on everything we wanted, and waking at 6:45 made getting the most out of evening hours very difficult.

While I hate paying all that extra money for G+ and ILL, it really made touring the parks a breeze. We ended up with hours and hours of free time out of lines, we used this time for extra pool time, re-riding, and exploring the parks in-depth.

The one big-time thing that we did not plan for was the fact that no waiting means more walking, we were on the move more than ever. For example, we walked from 7DMT, to BTMRR, to Splash, to Pirates, to Space, to Dumbo in what felt like a blink of the eye. We topped over 125 miles walked for the entire trip. I had blisters on 6 toes and my knees ached, I loved it.

Any questions? I'm happy to help.

We were there 8/3-8/14 (two parents, two teens, 6 1/2 year old) and I very much agree with everything you posted, including lucking out with the weather and moving efficiently meaning so much walking!! I packed 20 ponchos (from the Dollar Tree) and wondered if that would be enough for 8 August park days with 5 people...we didn't open up a single one until our last night (8/13) when there were some awful storms that moved through around 8.

The only thing we did differently was we did a few later days....one each (starting around lunchtime or just after) at EP, HS, and MK. This allowed us to sleep in/recover from deluxe evening hours (which were nice but I agree not a super huge advantage), and just catch up on rest a little bit. I still woke up at 7 though to book our first G+. The only park that doesn't work great at is MK, especially if you've already ridden JC several times. I had to wait until almost 8 until one of the mountains (we wanted to start on one end of the park and work back through) had a return time past 1. So, I didn't get up going back to sleep. Oh well. But in general that worked well, especially at EP and HS. As much as I hate paying extra, G+ did work well if you've studied the ins and outs and I really didn't spend a ton of time on my phone. No more than I did with the old FP+.

The only frustrating thing for me is the rides going down + the inflexibility of having to book park days, etc. Dinosaur was the ride my 6 year old was most looking forward to (he's a dino fanatic) and it was shut down most of the afternoon/evening on our AK day. It opened back up briefly while we were back at the resort and we went rushing back, only to have it close as we were walking in. We should have started the park on that side instead of in Pandora but there had been so many mornings with EE and/or Dino down that it seemed risky. There were a lot of tears...he recovered and moved on and it was short lived but it's so hard to move plans around with dining reservations that are hard to get/so far out and park reservations...even adding a park hopper to our ticket (for 5 people for one ride) wouldn't have worked well because of the timing of our hard to get dining reservations. So, c'est la vie...kid wants to know when he can go back to ride Dinosaur, gonna be awhile, kiddo.

 

[DisneyByMarriage]

I haven’t stayed recently, but the general recommendation (as reported in the ETPE thread ) is to be at the bus stop 90 minutes before ETPE opening, because the first bus usually runs approximately one hour before ETPE starts. Catching that first bus gives you the best chance of being near the front of the crowds entering for ETPE.

I am here now at old key west and under the “resort hotel” there is a bus times tab that shows when the busses come. I can say we left on the second bus this AM around 6:50 from old key west and we arrived and were held at studios tapstiles (it was a sea of people). You should be fine 45 minutes before early entry.

 

[NJlauren]

On day 3, and laying low with an under the weather 4 year old, if anyone had any questions about current park conductions, did AK and typhoon lagoon for H2O glow and the rest of the fam is at HS today.

 

[scrappinginontario]

On day 3, and laying low with an under the weather 4 year old, if anyone had any questions about current park conductions, did AK and typhoon lagoon for H2O glow and the rest of the fam is at HS today.

Hope your little one is feeling better soon!

 

[NJlauren]

Hope your little one is feeling better soon!

Thank you! Made a turn for the better about an hour ago, so Crossed !

 

[scrappinginontario]

Has anyone noticed this sweater in the WDW stores?

HM themed.

 

[Earningmywings]

I haven’t stayed recently, but the general recommendation (as reported in the ETPE thread ) is to be at the bus stop 90 minutes before ETPE opening, because the first bus usually runs approximately one hour before ETPE starts. Catching that first bus gives you the best chance of being near the front of the crowds entering for ETPE.

I had read that I was just trying to get a feel how the bus line is specifically at YC/BC 45 min prior to EE hours since the crowds have slowed down some.