Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[DisneyFive]

Thanks so much for sharing your experience. Based off of that photo you posted earlier, may be time for an updated profile pic-your kids have grown!

You can say that again! My wife was mentioning today how it’s so much easier touring the parks now versus when the kids were little. However I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. I just love that old photo from our first trip in 2010. Honestly it may be my favorite family photo ever. Would be hard to replace it for nostalgia’s sake.

Dan

 

[Southwest Minnie]

Friday is our first Epcot day too! (Tomorrow is HS). It’s very hot but very doable with the right plan. I’ll take the heat over storms or cold weather any day. Taking the afternoon off really helps if you can manage it. It gets you out of the worst of the heat, let’s you recoup, and it’s also the typical time for showers. We ordered a couple of neck fans too so you’re not alone . I got notified by Amazon that that they delivered to our resort today so we’ll go pick them up in a bit. I’ll have to do a mini review LOL.

I'm hoping I get the buy-in from the two 16yr olds to take an afternoon break - they are energizer bunnies and I will sweat off 10 pounds keeping up with them lol!

 

[disneyfan150]

@DisneyFive Amazing report! Thank you so much. Our trip is in just over a week and I waited until now to figure out G+ since everything keeps changing. You give me hope!

 

[cakebaker]

Just back from our first "real" trip to WDW since the shutdown. The highlight of the trip was getting to see FOTLK return and at the first showing. The crowd was full of vloggers and castmembers and was just an amazing experience. We cried right along with a bunch of other people. It was fun to see the videos from vloggers where we could actually see ourselves in the crowd. We had DAS this trip and along with Genie +, it all worked amazingly well. I was skeptical of Genie +, but after the first day, we were hooked. We accomplished much more in less time than we ever have before and never once needed to use standby for those of us who could do it if we needed to. We had no trouble getting in the VQ, managed it on all 3 days we tried. Crowd levels, at least in the parks themselves were very manageable with the exception of Sunday afternoon at Epcot, but that's to be expected with the start of the F&W festival. We thought the food still suffers from being blah, bland and repetitive- stuck with QS exclusively. I think buying as many bells and whistles as we could - staying DVC to get extra evening hours, Genie +, the fireworks dessert buffet and the Typhoon Lagoon after hours- all made it much easier to get things done and not deal with long lines and crowds. Overall, I was very pleased- clean parks, clean bathrooms, pleasant CM's. Now if they'll just bring back Fantasmic! We have a trip on the books for a post cruise visit in September so hoping it's back by then.

 

[NavyDad]

Magic Kingdom today! I will edit this post throughout the day. With such a long day yesterday we decided to sleep in a bit.

Magic Kingdom hours today are 9 AM until 11 PM and we also get the benefit of the EEH until 1 AM. We will be making use of that so I will report back on how that goes with the late extra two hours

We plan to be at the monorail stop around 9 AM. ish….

At 7 AM I booked our first G+ for Space Mountain from 9 AM to 10 AM. Then, fortunately I was able to fall back asleep

I normally don’t post pictures of us but here we are to put faces with the posts. If you happen to be here and see us, say hi!
View attachment 686460

So we got to Space Mountain at 9:45 and were on a ride in five minutes. Posted wait was 50 min. After the second tap I booked us a haunted mansion for 10:05.

Tapped into HM at 10:05, waited 6 minutes. posted wait 50 min, then snagged an 11am G+ for Pirates. (Splash and BTMRR times are currently conflicting with our lunch ADR so I’ll probably stack those when we take our afternoon break.
View attachment 686428
10:30 now and off HM . Heading to its a small world standby. Posted 20 min. Edit: calling an audible. IASW just jumped to 40 minute standby so we are heading to Arial.posted 5 min. On in 7 min.
View attachment 686437
11:10 AM In line for Pirates G+. Posted 65 min. On in 9 minutes.

Note, at 10:47 AM it looks like there was a pretty significant drop of G+ for BTMR and Splash for starting at 11 AM and it lasted for about five minutes for the 11 to 11:30 timeframe. If I hadn’t already booked Pirates for that timeframe I would have snagged one.
View attachment 686449
At 11:15 booked a G+ for Splash at 4:30-5:30 pm since we are heading to lunch and then back to the resort to rest. At 1:15 PM I will stack another ride as well as at 3:15PM.

11:50 and on the monorail to Steakhouse’71 in the Contemporary. Fantastic day so far.

View attachment 686469
View attachment 686470


Everything was excellent! We’ll be back!

1pm now and heading back to the Polynesian to rest up for this evening.

1:15pm and just booked a G+ for BTMRR at 4:55-5:55 so that will overlap perfectly with our 4:30-5:30 Splash especially since they are next door neighbors.

3:14 now and trying for Peter Pan but it’s hanging around 8:50. Hoping for something earlier. I’ll refresh and see what happens and maybe wait to see if earlier times drop at 3:47.
3:42 now and boom! nailed a 4:45-5:45 Peter Pan! Now we have three overlapping stacked G+‘s. A blessing and a curse. I think we can squeeze them all in though.

So I think we’ll try to get to Splash at around 4:45, then BTMRR at about 5:10 then walk to PP before the window closes at 5:45. At least that’s the plan for now lol

4:50 PM now and just tapped into splash mountain. Posted 95 minute wait. Waited 7 minutes! Our BTMRR G+ just turned into an any time experience which actually helps us out. We will hit PP G+ after Splash.
View attachment 686526
5:21 and tapped into Peter Pan. Posted 75 minutes. On in 7 minutes. After tapping into PP at 5:25 booked G+ for IASW for 5:45 since it is right across the walkway and we know you can get in up to 5 minutes early.

5:40 PM now and tapped into a IASW. Posted 25 minutes. On in 7 minutes
View attachment 686533
At 5:45 PM I booked a G+ for Jungle cruise! It had been sold out for quite some time but with refreshing it popped up for 7:30.

6:25 and mobile ordered Columbia Harbour House.

7 PM and all outdoor attractions are temporarily closed due to the weather in the area. (Had some light rain but it’s gone). We are heading to people mover to fill in time hoping that Jungle Cruise opens up within the 7:30 to 8:30 time slot that we got. We also have an anytime G+ from BTMRR that closed during our timeslot

7:07 and in line standby for People Mover. Posted 20. On in 12 minutes. With so many things temporarily closed, everything that is open is pretty busy right now. While on People mover all the outdoor attractions opened back up.

7:44 PM now. In line for BTMRR. Posted 55 minutes. On in 16 minutes.

7:50pm (2 hour rule) and booked a 8:45pm G+ for Buzz

8:15 and in line for our Jungle Cruise G+. Posted 65 minutes. On in 8 minutes.
View attachment 686547
8:45 PM. By popular request couldn’t pass up some Dole whips! Yummmmmm

9:00 and in line for Buzz G+. Posted 35 minutes. On in 10 minutes

9:17pm and booked a 9:20pm G+ for Dumbo. Why? Because we can. Lol. We are victims of our own success. There are not many G+ attractions left to choose from

9:23 in line for Dumbo G+. The 9:20 fireworks show is going. Posted 15 minutes. On in 10 minutes
View attachment 686567
9:40 and doing Barnstormer standby. Posted 15 minutes. On in 5 minutes

10 o’clock now and slowing down our pace; shopping then staking out a spot for the 11 PM Enchantment fireworks.

Immediately after the fireworks, around 11:20pm, we headed over to BTMRR and the line already stretched all the way across the bridge with deluxe resort guests. By our experience last year that was at least a 30 minute wait. So instead we walked over to Pirates and the line stretched all the way back to the tiki room. Hmm…. I think the fact that the fireworks went twice today, with a second showing at 11 PM, made for a huge push of people at the headliners for EEH right after the second firework show.

We don’t feel like taking the time for these people to flush through those lines to the point where we could have very short waits. It feels like it would be midnight or 12:30 AM before ridies will be short again . We accomplished so much today that believe it or not we are heading back to the resort and not going to make use of EEH.

We will get more rest for Hollywood Studios tomorrow. I think we’ll need to sleep in a tad. I’ll wake for a bit at 7am to book out first G+ for sometime in the 9-10:15 range if possible.

Signing off…. Thanks for joining us on our amazing day today.

-Dan

This sounds very much like out MK day in the Spring. We got so much done using Genie+, and the crowds got so big the first hour of EEH we just decided to go back to the hotel instead of staying for the extra couple of hours.

 

[DisneyFive]

We’re alive! Today is Hollywood studios. We’ll see how today goes with a bit of a later start. Weather today is hot and sunny, high of 94F, which we’re perfectly happy with.

Hours are 8:30 AM until 9 PM. We needed to get some sleep so at 7am I booked our first G+ for TOT from 9:40 - 10:40 AM, hoping that we can tap in and book our next G+ before the crush of people at 10:30 AM. For these last two parks we have found out it is VERY beneficial to get that first G+ before the +2 hour time frame after the park opens, this allows you to get ahead of a lot of folks. That is tough at HS for people that want to do slinky dog though, which we don’t plan to do. Start refreshing right at 7am and grab that morning time slot when it gets to your desired time.

9:30 now and at the Poly bus stop. Priorities today are ToT, RNRC, MMRR, TSMM, MFSR, and then ROTR at park close. Slinky doesn’t do much for us so that helps us a little with G+ selection strategy.

We also would like to do Beauty and the Beast and Indiana Jones, maybe Frozen. The showtimes might be kind of tough because we like to do afternoon breaks and rides in the morning. We have a lunch ADR at Hollywood Brown Derby for Cobb salads so all these things kind of conflict with the morning through afternoon showtimes. We’ll see.

10:04 and tapped into ToT. On immediately. Posted 50 minutes.

After tapping into ToT snagged a G+ for RNRC 12:05-1:15. This is perfect right before our 12:25 HBD lunch.

10:27 now and we’re doing the 11am Beauty and the Beast show.


12pm and tapped into RNRC. Posted 55 minutes. Waited 15 minutes after tapping in to get into the actual ride vehicle. Was probably 4 minutes until the preshow with Aerosmith.

While in line for RNRC at 12:04 refreshed a bit and luckily snagged a 7:25-8:25pm G+ for Slinky Dog Dash! Wasn’t on our must do but not going to turn that gift down.

Will try for a MMRR at 2:04pm

12:25 and at Hollywood Brown Derby. Cobb salads and shrimp Mac’n Cheese didn’t disappoint



1:26 PM and done with lunch and still feel like doing another attraction before we head back to the resort to relax. We are in line for Star Tours standby. Posted 30 minutes. On in 13 minutes


2PM now and noticed that Toy story Mania “dropped” to a 35 minute standby. On in 41 minutes. Probably should’ve used a G+for this later. Oh well. Still fun!

2:07pm (2hr window) and booked a 7 PM G+ for MMRR. Now we have MMRR and SDD G+ stacked back to back for later

2:45pm and heading back to the resort now

At 4:07 spent 22 minutes refreshing and snagged a 6:15-7:15pm Millennium Falcon even though they kept showing sold out for the first 21 minutes of trying ! Awesome, a little persistence pays off!!

5:45pm now after resort rest time and heading back to HS. Plan is to eat dinner at ABC commissary then do our stacked G+’s, MFSR, MMRR and SDD, quite the lineup

6:51 PM now. At MFSR and using our G+. Posted 65 minutes. In preshow 4 minutes.
We survived despite our pilots (our daughters) trying to kill us all


7:27pm and just tapped into slinky dog. Weather in the area so hopefully we can get on before they shut down. Posted 80 minutes. On in 7 minutes. We made it!


7:43pm and tapped into MMRR. Posted 35 minutes. At the movie screen in 6 minutes


8:10 now and Just grabbed a G+ for Star tours with an immediate return, because, why not? It’s one of the few attractions left to G+.

8:33 and in standby line for ROTR, posted 95 minutes. On in 41 minutes!


Well, I feel like we maximized our day. Even with sleeping in a bit and getting to the park a bit later, and taking an afternoon break at the resort, we still were able to do all the headliners with very short waits even considering our ROTR with 41 minute standby. Another amazing day.!!

There is not even a remote chance that we could have been this successful without Genie+ the last two days. It has saved us a massive amount of time . Especially at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios it is well well worth it. After the standby-only debacle of last summer, I’m starting to feel like we have our Disney parks back to some extent.

-Dan

 

[cheshiregoofy22]

We’re alive! Today is Hollywood studios. We’ll see how today goes with a bit of a later start.

Hours are 8:30 AM until 9 PM. We needed to get some sleep so I booked our first G+ for TOT at 9:40 AM to 10:40 AM, hoping that we can tap in and book our next G+ before the crush of people at 10:30 AM.

9:30 and at the Poly bus stop. Priorities today are ToT, RNRC, MMRR, TSMM, MFSR, and then ROTR at park close. Slinky doesn’t do much for us so that helps us a little with G+ selection strategy. We also would like to do Beauty and the Beast and Indiana Jones, maybe Frozen.

Looking forward to your day!!

 

[TropicalDIS]

Appreciate your detailed reports @DisneyFive
Have a great rest of the trip!

 

[Neverbeast]

These are amazing to see how it’s unfolding as you make choices during the day. So helpful and we all appreciate the time you’re giving us to document! Sounds like a great trip!

 

[cjlong88]

@DisneyFive what a great day! Glad to see you are highlighting the benefits of refreshing. We found it to be just as successful as it used to be during the FP+ days. And TBH, a 20 minute refresh FAR outweighs a 2-hour line, at least to us. More persistence = more last minute drops and cancellations.

Hope you and your family are enjoying the trip! Looks like a blast.

 

[DisneyFive]

Epcot today! Hours are 8:30am -9pm. Forecast is a measly 95 degrees, and probably something like 105% humidity because you know, it’s Florida..

Priorities are Guardians, Remy, TT, Soarin, Frozen and SE and the countries, and Harmonious, and…

Keeping with our trend we are getting some sleep and not getting to the park for rope drop. I decided to try for a Guardians boarding group and a Remy G+ on my own this morning to let the family get some good sleep instead of them logging on to another device to help. Planned to get GoTG boarding group first and then as early of a G+ for Remy as possible.

Here’s how it went. A few minutes before 7am I confirmed our party for the virtual queue. However when I went back into the virtual queue right before 7am it wasn’t confirming our party until literally the very last second so at 7am or maybe a couple of seconds later I finally saw the refresh button and hit that, then Join? I ain’t gonna lie, a bit of panic and chaos ensued. Anyway, scored boarding group 108. Heart was pumping. Immediately switched to tip board which wasn’t showing any G+ return times right at 7 am again! Ahhhh! So I manually clicked into Remy and it showed a return time of 10:25-11:25 am so I snatched it up!

I particularly wanted Remy before 10:30am to beat the other guests who can book then. We plan to tap into Remy 5 minutes early at 10:20am and scour our next G+.

We have two ADR’s today, Nine Dragons at 12:15pm and Via Napoli at 6:15pm. We also plan for an afternoon break at the resort. Might take some sort of kung fu mastery today to get our G+ times to work but we’re up to the challenge!!!

We plan to get to Epcot via monorail just in time to tap into our 10:25 Remy G+

Sorry for the long winded introduction, I guess I was feeling… wordy.

9:45am now and just stepped on the Epcot monorail from the TTC (we walked over from our Poly room)

Hello beautiful.


10:20 AM and tapped into Remy. Posted 70 minutes. On in 4 minutes. Our first time. Loved it! It’s a family favorite movie (we all love to cook) so the ride made it all the better.


Right after tapping into Remy, I booked a 6:55 PM Test Track which will work well with our 6:15 dinner at Via Napoli

At 12:20 will try for Frozen.

10:45 and heading to the Seas with Nemo and Living with the land both standby with shortish waits. Then we’ll see where Spaceship Earth waits are

11:05 and in standby line for Living with the land. Posted 15 minutes. On in 7 minutes, probably the longest we’ve ever waited for LWTL , but it’s HOT out today and this is perfect to cool off.



11:33 at the Seas with Nemo standby. Posted 20 minutes. On in 25 minutes. By far the longest we’ve ever waited for this ride but it is good filler before lunch and it gets us out of the heat right now


12: 40 now and “refreshing my butt off” to try and get a Frozen G+. They are out currently. Wish me some pixie dust.

As a tip, I remember “magical” drops that happen at 2:47 PM and at 4:47 PM for the headliners. I remember checking this at home, and today, and it is legit.

Wow you guys are good. Pixie dust received! . Only refreshed 10 minutes and bam, a Frozen for 1:50-2:50pm. We’ll tap in at 1:45 and head back to the resort after.

Looks like our GOTG boarding group might get called around the same time we do Frozen, so we could do those back to back and then head back to relax and resort. Working out smoothly!

1:34 PM weather update: it’s hot

1:45 and doing a quick Gran Fiesta Tour before our Frozen G+. Posted 15. On in 4 minutes.

1:55pm and our boarding group, 108, was called.

2:08pm and in line for Frozen with G+. Posted 70 minutes. On in 8 minutes


2:33 PM and headed over to Guardians but it is temporarily closed. We are heading back to the resort and will do guardians later.

5 PM and heading back for Guardians and then dinner. We will definitely be able to confirm whether or not they let you in after your group has been called. We will be about 4-5 hours after we we’re called, but we did try during our window and it was down .

Still at 5pm, been trying for a G+ for Soarin starting at 7:30pm or so but the G+ return times are still too early and conflict with our dinner or other rides. Will keep looking. The “nature of the beast” with G+.

Tapped into Guardians at 5:45 PM. It blinked blue meaning we weren’t supposed to go in but the cast member waved us in and said we were good to go. The ride broke down while we were in line so it took us one hour to get on.

7:15 now and off the ride. Our impressions of Guardians of the Galaxy? It feels like Rockin roller coaster and Space Mountain had a love child. It was awesome.

So by now we are way way past our 6:15 reservation for Via Napoli due to the shut down on Guardians. Since we are so late already, we are going to do our Test track G+ while we are right here and then work our way back to Via Napoli and see if they will let us in or at least not charge us the no-show fee.

7:25 PM and tapped into G+ for TT. Got through the design and into a ride vehicle in 15 minutes. Posted 65.


7:45PM and booked a G+ from 7:50 PM to 8:50 PM for Soarin

Update: Via Napoli is letting us in even though we are very late. Thank you!

Made a brisk walk all the way from Italy to Soarin. Tapped in at 8:58 PM to close out our day.


After Soarin we meandered our way to the Monorail but by the time we got there the throngs of people from Harmonious were already there and it was backed up all the way down the full length of all the ramps. So I called an audible and got us a Uber that was there in two minutes. $13 (+$5 tip). We’ll worth it to us. Very comfortable ride and good conversation with our driver

Now we are finally making use of the Polynesian quiet pool and having some much-needed adult beverages.

Another awesome day with amazing new experiences.

-Dan

 

[disneyfan150]

@DisneyFive
I am studying your posts more than I studied for finals in college!Thank you for all the fantastic continuing information!! Our trip is in one week and your reports are so very helpful!

 

[cheshiregoofy22]

@DisneyFive
I am studying your posts more than I studied for finals in college!Thank you for all the fantastic continuing information!! Our trip is in one week and your reports are so very helpful!

Me too!

 

[WedWayPilot]

Just back from a great trip July 8th-17th. We stayed at the yacht club (standard double) the first night and Copper Creek (1 bedroom DVC) the next 8 nights. I’m going to break it into 3 posts because there is a lot of data. It was a great experience with very few exceptions. The cast members were great and lightning lane worked very well for us. We used lightning lane for 7 days and bought an ILL on 7 days. We spent 9 total days in the parks and never waited more than 20 minutes for any attraction. If I saw a time posted for >30 minutes we just skipped over it for another time. We rode almost every ride including many duplicates and Guardians 5 times. We only skipped triceratops spin, Tomorrowland speedway, dumbo and Aladdin’s carpets. I anticipated criss crossing the parks more than with fast pass, but our walking distance was the same in the fastpass days and I seldom thought that lightning lane was making me walk more than a typical trip. We walked 75 miles over the 9 days which is a typical Disney trip for us. We also did Moonlight Magic on July 14th which was a nice bonus.

The number posted behind the attraction is what we actually waited for each. Here is what we were able to do each day.

July 9th
10:30 Guardians ILL 15 min
1:15 Guardians VQ 15 min
2:30 Yacht Club Swimminng
7:00 Spaceship Earth Walk on

July 10th
8:30 Astro Orbiter walk on
8:45 Peoplemover walk on
9:00 BTMRR 15
9:30 Splash LL 5
10:00 Riverboat walk on
10:45 Haunted Mansion LL 2 minutes
11:15 Small World LL 5 minutes
12:00 Parade viewed in front of diamond horseshoe
12:15 Diamond Horseshoe Lunch
6:00 Dinner BOG
7:30 Jungle cruise LL 10 minutes
7:45 Pirates LL 5
8:15 Mine train ILL 10 $42
8:30 Space Mountain LL 5
Buzz Didn’t use because of thunderstorm

July 11th
9:00 Safari 20
9:45 Everest 15
10:15 Navi LL 5 (Posted 60 Minutes)
10:45 Fop ILL 10 (Posted 165 Minutes)
11:00 Lunch Satuli Canteen
11:30 Nemo Show
Everest LL Didnt Use
1:30 Animation Experience 10
2:30 Animation Experience 10
3:30 Kali River Rapids LL 20
5:00 Dinner Storybook Dining

I’ll put the next few days in separate posts.

 

[WedWayPilot]

As you can start to see my family’s pattern is typically start early (rope drop or soon after), take a break at the resort after lunch, and return to the parks for dinner and rides. I would typically book the first LL as early as possible (ideally before the 120 minutes from park open hits), get a second LL for the morning, then begin to stack for the afternoon. This worked incredibly well for us. I ended up having many LL I never used and we often left the parks with LL still available to book. Here are our next 3 days:

July 12th
8:20 TOT 13 (walk on)
9:00 Olaf walk on
9:20 Frozen walk on
10:20 Slinky LL 5
11:00 Rise ILL 2
Vacation Fun 0
Runaway Railway LL 10
Lunch Docking Bay 7
Resort Swim/Nap
6:00 Dinner OHana
7:45 Peter pan LL 2
8:00 Buzz LL 5
8:15 Barnstormer LL 5
8:30 Teacups LL 0
8:45 Monsters Inc LL 5
9:00 Mickey and Minnie LL 5
Pirates LL Didn’t Use

July 13th
9:40 FEA LL 5
10:30 Guardians VQ 20
11:30 Mission Space LL 5
12:00 Lunch Creperie
5:30 Nemo LL 5
6:00 Dinner Garden Grill
Crush LL Didnt Use
Remi LL Didn’t Use
7:30 Living with the Land LL 5
7:45 Guardians ILL 2
Spaceship Earth LL Didn’t Use

July 14 (Did not use LL a this day. Just picked short waits and went to Moonlight Magic).
9:30 Carousel (0)
10:00 Ariel (20)
10:30 Philharmagic (5)
10:55 Citrus Swirl
11:00 Enchanted Tiki Room (0)
6:15 Muppetvision 3D (5)
6:30 Star Tours (5)
7:30 Alien saucers (0)
Start Moonlight Magic
Millennium Falcon (15)
Toy Story Midway Mania (10)
Rock N Rollercoaster (10)
Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway (5)

Final post will follow this.

 

[scrappinginontario]

Epcot today! Hours are 8:30am -9pm. Forecast is a measly 95 degrees, and probably something like 105% humidity because you know, it’s Florida..

Priorities are Guardians, Remy, TT, Soarin, Frozen and SE and the countries, and Harmonious, and…

Keeping with our trend we are getting some sleep and not getting to the park for rope drop. I decided to try for a Guardians boarding group and a Remy G+ on my own this morning to let the family get some good sleep instead of them logging on to another device to help. Planned to get GoTG boarding group first and then as early of a G+ for Remy as possible.

Here’s how it went. A few minutes before 7am I confirmed our party for the virtual queue. However when I went back into the virtual queue right before 7am it wasn’t confirming our party until literally the very last second so at 7am or maybe a couple of seconds later I finally saw the refresh button and hit that, then Join? I ain’t gonna lie, a bit of panic and chaos ensued. Anyway, scored boarding group 108. Heart was pumping. Immediately switched to tip board which wasn’t showing any G+ return times right at 7 am again! Ahhhh! So I manually clicked into Remy and it showed a return time of 10:25-11:25 am so I snatched it up!

I particularly wanted Remy before 10:30am to beat the other guests who can book then. We plan to tap into Remy 5 minutes early at 10:20am and scour our next G+.

We have two ADR’s today, Nine Dragons at 12:15pm and Via Napoli at 6:15pm. We also plan for an afternoon break at the resort. Might take some sort of kung fu mastery today to get our G+ times to work but we’re up to the challenge!!!

We plan to get to Epcot via monorail just in time to tap into our 10:25 Remy G+

Sorry for the long winded introduction, I guess I was feeling… wordy.

9:45am now and just stepped on the Epcot monorail from the TTC (we walked over from our Poly room)

Here we go!…

Might be too late now but another option to save some steps on your Epcot day is to take a bus to DHS then Skyliner to Epcot. We found our last trip we used the Skyliner often to get to places we used to bus and walk to.

 

[DisneyFive]

As you can start to see my family’s pattern is typically start early (rope drop or soon after), take a break at the resort after lunch, and return to the parks for dinner and rides. I would typically book the first LL as early as possible (ideally before the 120 minutes from park open hits), get a second LL for the morning, then begin to stack for the afternoon. This worked incredibly well for us. I ended up having many LL I never used and we often left the parks with LL still available to book. Here are our next 3 days:

July 12th
8:20 TOT 13 (walk on)
9:00 Olaf walk on
9:20 Frozen walk on
10:20 Slinky LL 5
11:00 Rise ILL 2
Vacation Fun 0
Runaway Railway LL 10
Lunch Docking Bay 7
Resort Swim/Nap
6:00 Dinner OHana
7:45 Peter pan LL 2
8:00 Buzz LL 5
8:15 Barnstormer LL 5
8:30 Teacups LL 0
8:45 Monsters Inc LL 5
9:00 Mickey and Minnie LL 5
Pirates LL Didn’t Use

July 13th
9:40 FEA LL 5
10:30 Guardians VQ 20
11:30 Mission Space LL 5
12:00 Lunch Creperie
5:30 Nemo LL 5
6:00 Dinner Garden Grill
Crush LL Didnt Use
Remi LL Didn’t Use
7:30 Living with the Land LL 5
7:45 Guardians ILL 2
Spaceship Earth LL Didn’t Use

July 14 (Did not use LL a this day. Just picked short waits and went to Moonlight Magic).
9:30 Carousel (0)
10:00 Ariel (20)
10:30 Philharmagic (5)
10:55 Citrus Swirl
11:00 Enchanted Tiki Room (0)
6:15 Muppetvision 3D (5)
6:30 Star Tours (5)
7:30 Alien saucers (0)
Start Moonlight Magic
Millennium Falcon (15)
Toy Story Midway Mania (10)
Rock N Rollercoaster (10)
Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway (5)

Final post will follow this.

Impressive stuff!! Looks like overall we have similar styles other than we have not rope dropped and we do not purchase $ILL, at least not yet. -Dan

 

[Karalee402]

Epcot today! Hours are 8:30am -9pm. Forecast is a measly 95 degrees, and probably something like 105% humidity because you know, it’s Florida..

Priorities are Guardians, Remy, TT, Soarin, Frozen and SE and the countries, and Harmonious, and…

Keeping with our trend we are getting some sleep and not getting to the park for rope drop. I decided to try for a Guardians boarding group and a Remy G+ on my own this morning to let the family get some good sleep instead of them logging on to another device to help. Planned to get GoTG boarding group first and then as early of a G+ for Remy as possible.

Here’s how it went. A few minutes before 7am I confirmed our party for the virtual queue. However when I went back into the virtual queue right before 7am it wasn’t confirming our party until literally the very last second so at 7am or maybe a couple of seconds later I finally saw the refresh button and hit that, then Join? I ain’t gonna lie, a bit of panic and chaos ensued. Anyway, scored boarding group 108. Heart was pumping. Immediately switched to tip board which wasn’t showing any G+ return times right at 7 am again! Ahhhh! So I manually clicked into Remy and it showed a return time of 10:25-11:25 am so I snatched it up!

I particularly wanted Remy before 10:30am to beat the other guests who can book then. We plan to tap into Remy 5 minutes early at 10:20am and scour our next G+.

We have two ADR’s today, Nine Dragons at 12:15pm and Via Napoli at 6:15pm. We also plan for an afternoon break at the resort. Might take some sort of kung fu mastery today to get our G+ times to work but we’re up to the challenge!!!

We plan to get to Epcot via monorail just in time to tap into our 10:25 Remy G+

Sorry for the long winded introduction, I guess I was feeling… wordy.

9:45am now and just stepped on the Epcot monorail from the TTC (we walked over from our Poly room)

Here we go!…

I'm literally reading your posts aloud to my family - next best thing to being there! It's such fun following along with your adventures. Have the very best day today!

 

[WedWayPilot]

The final 3 days were more relaxed with increased break time and more swimming and shopping. By this time we had ridden almost everything so I was picky with the LL I chose.

Overall I find the LL system works as well or better than fast pass for skipping the lines. Many of the LL we waited in were much shorter than fast pass ever was. LL does require more flexibility in the ORDER you do the rides in. I can see how this would be problematic in a short trip or during an exceedingly busy time. If you are staying for a week, I think you can ride everything you want, most likely multiple times and likely waiting less than 20 minutes. I also do not feel like I was on my phone an increased amount during the old FP days.

July 15
3:00 It’s tough to be a bug 0 Minutes
4:00 Navi River LL (5)
4:30 Everest LL (5)
5:00 Yak and Yeti
7:00 Dinosaur LL (5)
7:40 Flight of passage ILL (10)

July 16
9:30 Figment (0)
10:00 Remi LL (5)
10:30 Beauty and the Beast LL (3)
Three Cabelleros (1)
12:00 Space 220 lunch
1:30 Guardians of the Galaxy VQ (20)
6:00 Via Napoli Dinner
7:00 Soarin LL (5)
7:30 Test Track LL (15)
8:00 Frozen LL (5)
8:50 Spaceship Earth LL (0)

July 17
9:00 Breakfast CRT
10:00 Carousel 0
10:15 Peter Pan LL 2
10:50 Mine Train ILL 10
11:00 Haunted Mansion LL 5
11:30 Carousel of progress 5
11:50 Buzz LL 5
12:00 Teacups LL 2

Finally I wanted to say I MUCH prefer lightning lane and ILL to Universals Express pass (Visited Universal twice in the past year). I see a lot of people singing the praises of Universal and Express pass, and I just don’t see how it is better in any way. If you are not staying at one of the 3 premium resorts it is more expensive for 2 days of Express Pass than I paid for LL and ILL for my entire trip. And if you are staying at a premium resort there is no way to purchase express for the top tier rides. At Disney you at least have the option of getting on the best rides with a short wait if you are willing to pay. The Harry Potter, Mummy and Jurassic Park areas at Universal are wonderful, and on par with Disney. Outside of those areas the parks a have a more regional amusement park feel and there is very little to do if you have children under 8. In my opinion Universal is a nice 1-2 day supplement to Disney, but in no way is a replacement.

I also don’t mind the park pass system at all. I made my initial park pass reservations when I booked my dining, modified them as needed and had no problem on any day with a reservation. I don’t understand the discontent with this. Disney knowing how to appropriately staff and supply a park and keep a cap on attendance seems like a overall benefit to the guests.

 

[DisneyFive]

Might be too late now but another option to save some steps on your Epcot day is to take a bus to DHS then Skyliner to Epcot. We found our last trip we used the Skyliner often to get to places we used to bus and walk to.

Great suggestion! Thank you! I think we will probably do that on our way back this afternoon or our next Epcot day which is three days from now.