Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[koquinn]

Totally agree on Via Napoli. The only thing keeping us from an ADR there is Food & Wine festival.

Um... Does that mean I SHOULDN'T have had about 6-7 different things around the lake for lunch and then a giant dinner at Napoli?!

 

[pepperandchips]

Had an issue with my room folio which I emailed about (charged for parking when I shouldn’t have been). I love how I tried to follow Disney’s own protocol to avoid a trip to the front desk for this - I used the chat feature in MDE to limited success - and the person in billing tells me to go to the front desk

 

[Lumpy1106]

Totally agree on Via Napoli. The only thing keeping us from an ADR there is Food & Wine festival.

We did Via Napoli on our trip. Food was good but pricey. Service was nothing t o write home about. All in all I think we would have rather just eaten from the F&W booths. 2-3 selections each from there would have been cheaper and would not have demanded a tip, nor a dedicated reservation time.

 

[MomOTwins]

OK - I've been stalking this thread and have a list of (hopefully) quick questions that I wished some recent visitors could respond to. Over the weekend, my wife and I went and booked a trip only 4 days from now (we've never been so spontaneous before like this - we usually book everything the minute that we can (FPs, ADRs, etc.)). It'll be just the two of us, leaving our 4 kids at home (2 are so young that they wouldn't be able to keep masks on). We've just gone stir crazy and need to get out, and we had 2 free nights (from a previous nightmare trip).

4 nights at the Riviera
Friday Epcot with Dinner at Rose and Crown
Saturday DHS with Dinner at Mama Melrose
Sunday Epcot with Food and Wine all day
Monday MK with Dinner at The Plaza (although we are holding out hope for an ADR at Homecomin')
Tuesday AK

Questions:
1. What are people doing after the parks close? With the parks closing early, I imagine we will want to swim (but pools close at 9) or eat (most dining closes early as well). It seems as though ars care closing at 9 or 10 in most cases. With parks opening later in the morning, it doesn't seem right to just go to the room and watch TV/sleep. What are people doing from 9pm to 11pm/midnight? 2 adults here that want to live their best lives!

2. How crowded are the pools at the end of the evening? Part of me says it'd be crowded because of the heat and there's nothing else to do, but the other part of me says that most visitors are not staying at resorts which are supposedly operating at reduced capacity anyways.

3. Can you sit/eat at the "relaxation stations"? For instance, I heard Akershus is a relaxation station. Can you order from the Bakery (that only has outdoor seating) and go eat in the A/C inside of Akershus?

4. I think I saw that Orlando schools start in-school learning on Friday 8/21. Is it possible this might lead to an even bigger dropoff in park attendance from the recent trip reports from the last week?

5. Beaches and Cream still doing walk-up to-go orders for ice cream/shakes?

6. We've never eaten at Mama Melrose. Should we go with that for dinner or try Topolino's or even Brown Derby - both of which we've never eaten at either?

We just finished 9 days at Riviera so I think I can answer most of these.
1. The Beau Soleil pool is open until 11pm, so that was our go to entertainment after 9pm, though you have to be okay with crowds (see below).
2. Crowded. Best time to swim to avoid crowds at the pools is mornings (definitely a good option on Epcot day since it opens later). Starting at 2pm the main pool is packed until it closes at 9pm but Beau Soleil isn't bad. Then when the main pool closes at 9pm everyone moves over to Beau Soleil.
3. You can eat at relaxation stations, though whenever we went all the tables were full at first and we had to do standing room only and wait for a table to open up. Norway bakery is closed but French one is open.
4. Maybe? Most of the people we talked to were not local though so not sure how big of a difference that will be.
5. Yep.
6. We did all three of those. Brown Derby was the best, followed by Topolino’s and then Mama Melrose a distant last place.

 

[LizzyDragon]

I went to HS yesterday for the first time since reopening and had a blast! It was fun hanging out with friends and riding everything to our heart's content. I never waited more than 40 minutes for anything, and often the waits were significantly shorter then that. Everyone in my group got ROTR bgs; I finally got to be the rebel spy; and got to take my first ride on MMRR. Woot!

Mask compliance was very high (nearly 100% everywhere except for the parking lot). Plenty of hand sanitizer available in many places, and rides were periodically closed for 5-10 minutes throughout the day for cleaning. I also tried out mobile ordering for the first time since reopening- the biggest change is that pretty much every food location now requires a mobile order. Even walk-up places like Ronto Roasters now require it. The other change is that you now must pick a window of time that you plan to pick up the food. But ordering was quick, and the food was ready nearly immediately.

 

[MomOTwins]

Well, we are leaving today. As I posted a couple of times during our trip, I can’t help but feel a disappointed, and I don’t expect we will be returning for some time.

The pros: We stayed at Riviera for the first time and it is wonderful. The pools and kids splash areas were lovely (though did get crowded in afternoon/evening), the food was excellent, rooms were beautiful and well designed (love the two showers) and the grounds were gorgeous. The skyliner when it was working was fantastic (more on that later). Also, we really had no trouble with masks (four year old included) and don’t get all the fuss. We used Disney cloth masks and they were very comfortable and easy to breathe in.

The cons: It was crowded. Waits were frequently in the 30-60 min range which is not bad compared to normal standby times, but as someone who knew how to fastpass refresh and so never waited more than 10mins to ride anything, it was rough—especially outdoor queues in the heat. The cleaning procedures were annoying because the wait time did not factor it in—so as an example I entered a 15 minute queue with my son and then the my started cleaning, and it was a 40 minute wait in the heat even though the posted wait time never changed.
The skyliner was down a LOT because of thunderstorms and alternate bis service was very inadequate with long waits.
I don’t know if people reporting near perfect mask compliance were lucky or unobservant. There was never a single point in time where I could look around and not see someone within 20 feet of me with their mask under the chin/on the ear/below the nose or just not on at all. I saw CMs try to correct this often but people just ignored them or complied for and then removed the mask 10 seconds later.

 

[720L]

I forgot to mention, the paper/surgical masks were much better than all the cloth ones I bought.

 

[yulilin3]

Just back from MK, that first hour is golden, rope dropped and the park looked emptier than last week when I went Tuesday. Walked on to PP, Dumbo (rode 2 times no need to get out cause I was the only one on it) Goofy's, Teacups, 7DMT had a 20 min wait, Country Bears at 10:30 and hopped over to Tom Sawyer Island.Saw all character cavalcades plus the Main Street band as well

 

[GBRforWDW]

Just back from MK, that first hour is golden, rope dropped and the park looked emptier than last week when I went Tuesday. Walked on to PP, Dumbo (rode 2 times no need to get out cause I was the only one on it) Goofy's, Teacups, 7DMT had a 20 min wait, Country Bears at 10:30 and hopped over to Tom Sawyer Island.Saw all character cavalcades plus the Main Street band as well

Dumb question, Did you see the Cavalcades from Tom Sawyer Island? Or where would be a good spot for viewing?

 

[MomOTwins]

Sorry, adding a couple more thoughts that I forgot to include in my above post.

We liked what they did with the characters. The cavalcades were adorable. But their timing was unpredictable and we did wish there was more character dining—we loved the Topolino’s breakfast and would love if they added more meals like it.

Dining in general was a downgrade from prior trips. We knew going into it that a lot of our favorite restaurants were closed and that menus were limited, but weren’t prepared for how disappointing that would be in practice—a lot of the new places we tried because our favorites were closed just weren’t good. We also really missed having the dining plan when we saw the hotel charge folio—we’ve always saved a lot of money on the dining plan because my kids love snacks and DH and I like to get alcohol, steaks/seafood and desserts when we are on vacation, so we went wayyy over budget, but c’est la vie.

I do wonder if crowd-wise we were just really unlucky going the week silver APs were allowed back. In my mind, I thought that since passholder passes were sold out in prior weeks when there were low crowds it couldn’t make a difference. But anecdotally, a lot of APs I talked to booked onsite stays to extend their passes beyond 3 days, so that explains the crowd uptick since the resort bucket was never full previously. I can’t imagine how bad crowds and waits would be if all three park pass buckets were full!

 

[Lumpy1106]

Dumb question, Did you see the Cavalcades from Tom Sawyer Island? Or where would be a good spot for viewing?

The Cavalcades are a real casual thing - a vehicle of some sort with some characters - most people don't even stop what they are doing as they pass. Call me crazy, but I prefer that to the crowd that gathers and clogs the entire park during the parades.

 

[GBRforWDW]

The Cavalcades are a real casual thing - a vehicle of some sort with some characters - most people don't even stop what they are doing as they pass. Call me crazy, but I prefer that to the crowd that gathers and clogs the entire park during the parades.

yeah, i know the laid back nature of these, and definitely know what you mean about parades. we could not squeeze into a spot when trying to view one the only time we've been so far. Was just wondering how easily they could be viewed from TSI.

 

[yulilin3]

Dumb question, Did you see the Cavalcades from Tom Sawyer Island? Or where would be a good spot for viewing?

Anywhere along the parade route is fine cause there's not a lot of people so you hear the music, just walk up to the street. I was at Tom Sawyer and saw the goofy one, easy to see from the dock side

 

[disneytraveler]

I went to HS yesterday for the first time since reopening and had a blast! It was fun hanging out with friends and riding everything to our heart's content. I never waited more than 40 minutes for anything, and often the waits were significantly shorter then that. Everyone in my group got ROTR bgs; I finally got to be the rebel spy; and got to take my first ride on MMRR. Woot!

Mask compliance was very high (nearly 100% everywhere except for the parking lot). Plenty of hand sanitizer available in many places, and rides were periodically closed for 5-10 minutes throughout the day for cleaning. I also tried out mobile ordering for the first time since reopening- the biggest change is that pretty much every food location now requires a mobile order. Even walk-up places like Ronto Roasters now require it. The other change is that you now must pick a window of time that you plan to pick up the food. But ordering was quick, and the food was ready nearly immediately.

That is great to see

 

[Quilty]

I was having dinner at Tutto Gusto and this drunk group was taking swigs of brandy from a bottle they bought in the Germany pavilion. So, you definitely can buy bottles of alcohol and carry them out with you. Eventually the waiter at TG saw them and told them to put the bottle back in the box/bag. I think the wine shop is also open in Italy...

Yes. The wine shop in Italy is open.

 

[64ghs]

of course, it's like shipping anything, you have to pay shipping. The price varies by the total amount of the transaction, not sure how much

thanks

 

[rnorwo1]

We will be there in a week and a half, Sunday through Friday. I was trying to choose the least likely-to-be-crowded park for Sunday, which I assumed to be Epcot since Pandora is still fairly new. However, I’ve read a few threads that suggest Epcot may be busier than AK? Does anyone have a sense of which one may be the better park?

 

[koquinn]

We will be there in a week and a half, Sunday through Friday. I was trying to choose the least likely-to-be-crowded park for Sunday, which I assumed to be Epcot since Pandora is still fairly new. However, I’ve read a few threads that suggest Epcot may be busier than AK? Does anyone have a sense of which one may be the better park?

We did AK on a Sunday and did everything and then some - see my post a few pages back for details. Epcot would also be easy to make it through but opens much later. I would think about what time you want to be in the park, 8a vs 11a, and choose that way if the rides don't make the decision for you. It was annoying to wait till 11 to be in a park on our Epcot days, but we had the most fun there hands down this trip.

 

[Alice Sr.]

I am and always have been horrible at navigating. When I did my summer internship at Epcot back in 2000 I was constantly turning off on the wrong exit or missing my exit altogether. I once ended up on a toll road and ran out of change so got a warning ticket. I could see right where I needed to go but there was no exit to get there! This is why I never rent a car now when I go to WDW.

My DDs always complained the sign they saw the most was "You are now leaving Walt Disney World". Then one year I didn't rent a car so we relied on buses lol. They never complained about it again (at least out loud).

Someone on the Pop thread said they used the chat with us feature on MDE the other night after waiting in a huge bus line. Shortly after the contact, a bus was sent.

So maybe using the new chat with us feature on MDE can work?

Excellent, thank you!

 

[katyringo]

I’m used to planning and over analyzing every aspect of our trip.

we making dinning reservations this Friday and I’ve looked at some recently touring plans..

but is there anything else I’m missing?Can we really just show up to the parks and go?