Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[DisneyFive]

You can check by trying to make another Genie+ selection. A page will show up that says you cannot book another one until *insert time here*.

Thank you!!!!! In the fine print after our names, I see it now. Geez Disney you could make it a little more obvious though.

 

[jods]

What time are the magic drops for Genie +? I wasn't paying attention because I wasn't planning on getting it but changed my mind after reading @DisneyFive trip reports lol. So I've been watching epcot today and Remy, frozen and TT have been gone for hours. Refreshed at 2:47 and boom, Remy and frozen available! Still no TT and frozen was gone in a couple of minutes but wow, I couldn't believe they came back. Do I know 2:47, is it 12:47 and 4:47? Thanks.

 

[DisneyFive]

What time are the magic drops for Genie +? I wasn't paying attention because I wasn't planning on getting it but changed my mind after reading @DisneyFive trip reports lol. So I've been watching epcot today and Remy, frozen and TT have been gone for hours. Refreshed at 2:47 and boom, Remy and frozen available! Still no TT and frozen was gone in a couple of minutes but wow, I couldn't believe they came back. Do I know 2:47, is it 12:47 and 4:47? Thanks.

At Epcot all I know is about the 2:47 pm and 4:47 PM drops

at Magic Kingdom I have seen one at 10:47am

 

[g-dad66]

What time are the magic drops for Genie +? I wasn't paying attention because I wasn't planning on getting it but changed my mind after reading @DisneyFive trip reports lol. So I've been watching epcot today and Remy, frozen and TT have been gone for hours. Refreshed at 2:47 and boom, Remy and frozen available! Still no TT and frozen was gone in a couple of minutes but wow, I couldn't believe they came back. Do I know 2:47, is it 12:47 and 4:47? Thanks.

The LL data at thrill-data.com gives me the best picture of when later aviailability is most likely to pop up.

 

[jods]

The LL data at thrill-data.com gives me the best picture of when later aviailability is most likely to pop up.

Thanks. I've tried looking at thrill data and my old eyes can't make sense of the graphs and charts maybe I'll try the laptop to see if it's any clearer.

 

[g-dad66]

Try this: go to Epcot, then pick Frozen Ever After. Then scroll down to the Genie+ Lightning Lane Availability Map.

Do you see the vertical gold broken line (at 2:50 pm), and the vertical orange line (at 4:50 pm), and the vertical red line (at 6:50 pm)? Those are good indications of when later availability is most likely to show up.

 

[Erica Ladd]

Try 3 minutes from now at MK and HS

 

[jods]

Try this: go to Epcot, then pick Frozen Ever After. Then scroll down to the Genie+ Lightning Lane Availability Map.

Do you see the vertical gold broken line (at 2:50 pm), and the vertical orange line (at 4:50 pm), and the vertical red line (at 6:50 pm)? Those are good indications of when later availability is most likely to show up.

Thank you. I think I got it. Is this the map? So those 3 lines that I circled are most likely when there were more drops?

 

[g-dad66]

Thank you. I think I got it. Is this the map? So those 3 lines that I circled are most likely when there were more drops?

Exactly. Everything gray is when there is no availability.

 

[jods]

Hey y’all. Hollywood studios today! Park hours are 8:30 AM until 9 PM

Forecast is 92° and sunny

This is the sixth day of our trip and our second and final Hollywood Studios day. We are testing a late morning/early afternoon stacking strategy. (because we wanted to sleep in, which we did)

Priorities are ToT, RnRC, MMRR, MFSR and ROTR standby at park close. If we get lucky maybe we will grab a slinky, but not planning on it We also want to see the Indiana Jones show. We plan to eat QS for lunch and sushi at Kimonos for dinner in the Swan resort.

At 7 AM I booked us a 11am-12pm Tower of terror. (it took a few times of clicking into ToT ,and out, from the tip boards page but finally it got to that time frame. I could’ve grabbed any time slot from 9 AM to noon easily but I had to wait a little bit for the 11 AM to noon, maybe 30 seconds)

At 10:30 AM I grabbed a 12:15-1:15 G+ For RNRC. Just before 10:30 RNRC was hanging steady around an 11:50 AM return time but as soon as 10:30 hit it started jumping later very quickly because a lot of people were able to book at that time. So I snagged it quickly.

We will do ToT later in the 11-12 time slot, (around noon) then walk over to RNRC and do that keeping in mind you are able to tap in up to 5 minutes early, so 12:10 at the earliest.

We plan to arrive to the parks around 11:30 AM.

11:30am and we are here! Heading to ToT


11:42 AM now. Tapped into TOT. Posted 100 minutes! Waited 7 minutes
View attachment 687433

12:14 PM and just tapped into RNRC. Posted 100 minutes. Waited 7 minutes to preshow.
View attachment 687455
Started looking for more G+ after tapping into RnRC. Refreshed for a few minutes and found a MFSR that jumped a couple of hours earlier to 3:35-4:35 so I grabbed it. Will look for MMRR in two hours.

12:40 PM now and heading to the 1:15p.m. show of Indiana Jones. Grabbed a couple of Mickey pretzels on the way since lunch won’t be until after the show.
View attachment 687476

Lunch at Backlot Express after the show

2:24pm and booked a 5:45-6:45 MMRR. After that we will walk to the front of the park and take a friendship boat over to Kimono’s at the Swan for sushi (no reservations required)

2:41 PM now and doing Star Tours standby. Posted 25 minutes. On in 15 minutes
View attachment 687512

3:07 PM and getting in line for Muppets 3-D

3:45pm And just tapped into MFSR. Posted 75 minutes. On in 5 minutes
View attachment 687576

Jumped into the 4:30 Frozen Sing along to get some air conditioning.
View attachment 687578

While at Frozen started refreshing a little and what popped up? A 5:15pm Slinky Dog Dash! Booom! We will now do that before MMRR. I don’t know if you want to plan on refreshing later in the day to get SDD but we’re two for two.

5:05 PM now and off to get some caffeine . Much, much caffeine

6:05 PM and just tapped into Slinky dog. Posted 110 minutes. On in 7 minutes. Gotta love G+, even though I loathe paying for it versus the old free FP+ system.
View attachment 687591

At 6:10 booked a 8:05-9:00pm Toy story mania. That works out well because it puts us near Galaxy‘s edge when we will do ROTR standby before park close. So now we have everything we wanted, plus some.

6:24 and tapped into MMRR. Posted 40 minutes. In preshow in 8 minutes
View attachment 687594

6:50 PM and heading to dinner. Kimono’s at the Swan. YUMMMMMM
View attachment 687609

8:20 PM and back in the parks and just tapped into Toy story mania. Posted 50 minutes. On in 8 minutes.

A word of caution. They will shut down the standby line for Rise of the resistance before 9 PM. I would plan to be there at least in full 25 minutes before park closing. We got there at 8:48, a full 12 minutes before per closing and they had just shut down the standby line. The ride was still operating. It was not down. If we would have known we would have easily shown up earlier. Needless to say there were a lot of frustrated guests, including us, but we will make lemonade out of lemons. We hoofed it over to Tower of terror to end the night. Doing standby at 8:55pm which is a walk on despite a 50 minute posted wait.
View attachment 687654

-Dan

Sorry you didn't get on rise. Looked liked you had a great day otherwise.

 

[DisneyFive]

Sorry you didn't get on rise. Looked liked you had a great day otherwise.

Thanks, yeah live and learn. Glad we were able to do it earlier in the trip.

It was another awesome day. Tower of Terror isn’t a bad trade off for our family. It’s a nostalgic super family favorite. Somehow we always seem to be rushing to hop in line to finish our night with ToT. Happened last year too

Epcot today. Our boarding group for Guardians just got called but we’re still at the Poly getting ready. . We’ll get there around 10:30 I’m guessing and tap in.

Dan

 

[DisneyFive]

Ready for another great Epcot day today! Our second and final Epcot date of the trip

Forecast is 90° and sunny, with a chance of rain as usual

Park hours are 8:30 AM to 9 PM with EEH for an additional two hours for deluxe resort guests. We plan to make use of that primarily for the special EEH Guardians boarding groups, and hopefully to do Remy again.

At 7 AM I got boarding group 26 which, has already been called.(it’s 9:18am right now) We are still getting ready at the Poly (things move a little slower by your seventh park day ) and I expect to get to Epcot around 10:30am and we will tap in then.

By the time I got done getting our boarding group, I got us an 11:45am to 12:45PM Remy which works out well with our 12:25 ADR at Beaches and cream nearby at the Beach club. We’ll probably tap in around 11:40 and will finish Remy and walk out the international gateway to the Beach club

At 10:30 AM I tried to be a little strategic with our G+ selection. Test track was sitting out at 8:30 PM and Frozen jumped to around 5 PM which is good for us. So I snagged a 5:15 - 6:15 PM Frozen and later will use the 4:47 PM drop to snag a Test track for about an hour later. At least that’s the plan. At 12:30 PM I plan to start using a number of G+ selections, with close return times, like Spaceship earth, and just keep rolling for a bit until we head back to the resort for an afternoon break.

10:47 AM and at Epcot! Heading to Guardians.

10:58am and tapped into Guardians. I do recommend asking to wait for the very front vehicle, row 1. They will accommodate you.

Dang that’s an awesome ride!!!

11:59 and tapping into Remy. Posted 65. On in 7 minutes


12:13 PM now and heading to lunch at Beaches and Cream

Yup, we’re pigs.

At 12:30pm I could book another G+. Was looking for Soarin but it was out to 2:30pm and I didn’t want to wait that long because I want to go back and relax. So I was refreshing for a little while, maybe 10 minutes and all of a sudden a Test track for 1:10 PM popped up!(it was showing sold out prior) That will be perfect on our way back from lunch. We will do that and then head back to the room.

2:17 now and worked our way back to Test track. Tapped in 7 minutes into the late grace period. Posted 75 minutes. On in 10. We got lucky and made it through the ride just before rain shut it down temporarily

3 PM now and heading back to the resort to relax

5:35 PM and heading back to Epcot after some nice little naps.

Can’t wait until this is done.


6:14 PM and just tapped into Frozen. Posted 75. On in 8 minutes.


All of the G+ return times are still too soon. We want to do a little browsing the worlds and then Soarin and then Spaceship Earth but G+ timeframes for those two are almost immediately.

8:26 PM now. Spent a good amount of time browsing the world showcase, having a few drinks, and ended up having dinner at the patisserie in France. Really hard to beat the value of this place. The sandwich below the simple but tasty and only $8.95
The deserts are really good too


I booked an 8:20 PM to 9:00 Soarin G+ but I’m not sure if we will use it. We are having fun browsing the World Showcase. We can do Soarin during EEH if we want.

Of course, we had to do the perennial favorite, Club Cool before the park officially closes. Not sure if it is open for EEH so we made a beeline over there. In case you were wondering, the Beverly is still nasty


9:20pm headed to Remys before Harmonious ended and scanned in. In line for 29 minutes.


Browsed around various shops a little.

Tapped into Guardians at 10:25 PM


Finished off the night by hustling (ok, kind of running but don't tell anybody) over to Spaceship Earth and tapping in at 10:59 PM. Whew!


So long Epcot. Until next time…

-Dan

 

[DaviVascaino]

anyone here saw any stainless steel mugs recently?

 

[DisneyFive]

anyone here saw any stainless steel mugs recently?

Have a picture to share? I can look at Epcot

 

[WedWayPilot]

anyone here saw any stainless steel mugs recently?

There is a SS Epcot mug in creations shop with some multi color stripes. I believe there was also a SS mug in the Pandora gift shop. I only saw the plastic mugs at Wilderness lodge and Yacht Club.

 

[DaviVascaino]

Have a picture to share? I can look at Epcot

There is a SS Epcot mug in creations shop with some multi color stripes. I believe there was also a SS mug in the Pandora gift shop. I only saw the plastic mugs at Wilderness lodge and Yacht Club.

sorry, I updated my previous post. I mean the refillable resort stainless steel mugs

 

[NavyDad]

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.
View attachment 686653
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.
View attachment 686660

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.
View attachment 686672
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
View attachment 686684


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
View attachment 686687

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!
View attachment 686709
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
View attachment 686836

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!
View attachment 686791

7:43pm and tapped into MMRR. Posted 35 minutes. At the movie screen in 6 minutes
View attachment 686795

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!
View attachment 686822

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

Dan,

Thanks for doing this great live reports. We are planning a trip for next summer and all of this has been very helpful.

Your experience has matched ours from April quite closely which is reassuring. We really felt we got the most value out of Genie+ at MK and DHS.

 

[saraheliz]

Hey y’all. Hollywood studios today! Park hours are 8:30 AM until 9 PM

Forecast is 92° and sunny

This is the sixth day of our trip and our second and final Hollywood Studios day. We are testing a late morning/early afternoon stacking strategy. (because we wanted to sleep in, which we did)

Priorities are ToT, RnRC, MMRR, MFSR and ROTR standby at park close. If we get lucky maybe we will grab a slinky, but not planning on it We also want to see the Indiana Jones show. We plan to eat QS for lunch and sushi at Kimonos for dinner in the Swan resort.

At 7 AM I booked us a 11am-12pm Tower of terror. (it took a few times of clicking into ToT ,and out, from the tip boards page but finally it got to that time frame. I could’ve grabbed any time slot from 9 AM to noon easily but I had to wait a little bit for the 11 AM to noon, maybe 30 seconds)

At 10:30 AM I grabbed a 12:15-1:15 G+ For RNRC. Just before 10:30 RNRC was hanging steady around an 11:50 AM return time but as soon as 10:30 hit it started jumping later very quickly because a lot of people were able to book at that time. So I snagged it quickly.

We will do ToT later in the 11-12 time slot, (around noon) then walk over to RNRC and do that keeping in mind you are able to tap in up to 5 minutes early, so 12:10 at the earliest.

We plan to arrive to the parks around 11:30 AM.

11:30am and we are here! Heading to ToT


11:42 AM now. Tapped into TOT. Posted 100 minutes! Waited 7 minutes
View attachment 687433

12:14 PM and just tapped into RNRC. Posted 100 minutes. Waited 7 minutes to preshow.
View attachment 687455
Started looking for more G+ after tapping into RnRC. Refreshed for a few minutes and found a MFSR that jumped a couple of hours earlier to 3:35-4:35 so I grabbed it. Will look for MMRR in two hours.

12:40 PM now and heading to the 1:15p.m. show of Indiana Jones. Grabbed a couple of Mickey pretzels on the way since lunch won’t be until after the show.
View attachment 687476

Lunch at Backlot Express after the show

2:24pm and booked a 5:45-6:45 MMRR. After that we will walk to the front of the park and take a friendship boat over to Kimono’s at the Swan for sushi (no reservations required)

2:41 PM now and doing Star Tours standby. Posted 25 minutes. On in 15 minutes
View attachment 687512

3:07 PM and getting in line for Muppets 3-D

3:45pm And just tapped into MFSR. Posted 75 minutes. On in 5 minutes
View attachment 687576

Jumped into the 4:30 Frozen Sing along to get some air conditioning.
View attachment 687578

While at Frozen started refreshing a little and what popped up? A 5:15pm Slinky Dog Dash! Booom! We will now do that before MMRR. I don’t know if you want to plan on refreshing later in the day to get SDD but we’re two for two.

5:05 PM now and off to get some caffeine . Much, much caffeine

6:05 PM and just tapped into Slinky dog. Posted 110 minutes. On in 7 minutes. Gotta love G+, even though I loathe paying for it versus the old free FP+ system.
View attachment 687591

At 6:10 booked a 8:05-9:00pm Toy story mania. That works out well because it puts us near Galaxy‘s edge when we will do ROTR standby before park close. So now we have everything we wanted, plus some.

6:24 and tapped into MMRR. Posted 40 minutes. In preshow in 8 minutes
View attachment 687594

6:50 PM and heading to dinner. Kimono’s at the Swan. YUMMMMMM
View attachment 687609

8:20 PM and back in the parks and just tapped into Toy story mania. Posted 50 minutes. On in 8 minutes.

A word of caution. They will shut down the standby line for Rise of the resistance before 9 PM. I would plan to be there at least in full 25 minutes before park closing. We got there at 8:48, a full 12 minutes before per closing and they had just shut down the standby line. The ride was still operating. It was not down. If we would have known we would have easily shown up earlier. Needless to say there were a lot of frustrated guests, including us, but we will make lemonade out of lemons. We hoofed it over to Tower of terror to end the night. Doing standby at 8:55pm which is a walk on despite a 50 minute posted wait.
View attachment 687654

-Dan

These details are so helpful for our trip coming up in just over a week! We have one day we're not planning on heading over to HS until after our 11:50 Topolino's reservation so this is super helpful.

 

[KandyM]

A word of caution. They will shut down the standby line for Rise of the resistance before 9 PM. I would plan to be there at least in full 25 minutes before park closing. We got there at 8:48, a full 12 minutes before per closing and they had just shut down the standby line. The ride was still operating. It was not down. If we would have known we would have easily shown up earlier. Needless to say there were a lot of frustrated guests, including us, but we will make lemonade out of lemons. We hoofed it over to Tower of terror to end the night. Doing standby at 8:55pm which is a walk on despite a 50 minute posted wait.

Wow, so this feels like huge WDW news doesn't it? Not being allowed to get into a queue before park closes? Or am I wrong? Have folks seen this before?
-Apologies if I am using Quote wrong

 

[DisneyFive]

Wow, so this feels like huge WDW news doesn't it? Not being allowed to get into a queue before park closes? Or am I wrong? Have folks seen this before?
-Apologies if I am using Quote wrong

You are using the quote correctly. The ride was not down. It was operating just fine and they decided to close the standby line around 14 minutes before Park closing. The cast member said that they were at capacity which made no sense because there was a lot of open space in the queue past the rope that they had pulled across the entrance. He said that on your park tickets it says they can close the ride at any time.