JETS70 is at the Fort......well not exactly but I am at Disney

[JETS70]

This week Teresa and I were originally booked for 5 nights at the Fort followed by 4 nights at Madeira Beach KOA. As many of you have been affected by the recent snow / ice storms to hit the southern, southeastern and northeastern parts of our country, Teresa and I made the difficult decision to change our booking from the Fort to Pop Century. Although the roads ended up being fine for the drive down, I still needed to get home safe. @WeLovePluto Those dancing and singing cats on Jellico Mt. have been striking up the band. I wasn't interested in joining them for any song or dance.
Since I do not frequent the others boards, and I am going to the Fort Saturday to visit with friends, I am going to post my trip report on the Camping Forum.
We drove down on Sunday and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Clermont. This was right down the road from Lake Louisa which was where we were going to overnight with the camper before coming to the Fort. We were able to move that reservation to our Halloween trip in October. We checked into Pop Century on Monday. We stayed here a few years back and since then they have done some refurbishments. I was really surprised and pleased with the room.

We then rode all the branches of Skyliner. We tried riding the Skyliner last October when we stopped by Disney for a day trip and after the first leg, it was shut down for wind and lightning. We had better luck this time.


We then had pizza at our favorite Orlando pizza joint, Giordano's.


Next post..... Magic Kingdom

Steve

 

[JETS70]

Today was a Magic Kingdom day. Our original plans were for 2 park days, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. Since we came down early to avoid the storm, we added a day and decided to go to the Magic Kingdom.



Teresa and I wore our masks and social distanced as much as possible. I will say that I was pleasantly surprised to see the vast majority of visitors following the safety guidelines




This was terrible. Maybe the last gateway was showing its age but come on......Disney needs to fire the person who designed this.


A couple of our favorite MK rides


A few pictures from the Liberty Belle riverboat.


Yep......I did it and I didn't get caught.


one more post for Magic Kingdom day...........
Steve

 

[JETS70]

Just a few more pictures from our day at the Magic Kingdom.

We had dinner at the Liberty Tree Tavern. It was really good. Served family style with pot roast, turkey and dressing and pork loin along with mashed potatoes, green beans, mac and cheese and a salad.


I figured that we needed to ride Splash Mountain for sure as the rumor has it that it is up for a complete redo.


On our way out for the night. The castle looked nice but............


Main Street is just not the same without the train station lit up. Kinda leaves a dark hole right in the middle.


I know its not like watching and listening to the water pageant parade from the beach at Fort Wilderness but I still like it.


We go to Hollywood Studios tomorrow. Up early to try and get a spot in the virtual queue for Rise of the Resistance.

Steve

PS.... I forgot to add this one pic. It is on the ferry to the Magic Kingdom this morning. Just curious as to if you think this was on purpose or someone was just having a really good day........

 

[garneska]

Nice pics @JETS70. i did not brave the parks. I hope you get ROTR. I laugh i came home on saturday because i thought mallory had a vet appointment on Sunday Feb 14. Turns out it was moved to Sun Feb 21. I could have stayed another week. I might have to in order to avoid this cold weather.

Enjoy your time there.

 

[JETS70]

Well, today started out as a bummer. Woke up early and prepared all the electronics to secure a boarding pass for Rise of the Resistance. As soon as the timer hit 7:00 am I hit the "join" button. It wasn't in the cards. I got the spinning circle of death. Oh well, I tried convincing myself that it was ok and we would try again in October. Deep down I was thinking........well lets just say I was disappointed. So we got our things ready for the day and headed off to the Skyliner and Hollywood Studios......sans ROTR.

Our first ride of the day other than the Skyliner was Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. Teresa and I both loved this ride. The colors and the actual movement / flow of the ride was fun.



Next up was Rockin Roller Coaster...........sans Aerosmith



Aerosmith has left the building.

After RRC, teh obvious next move was over to Tower of Terror. Posted at 70 minutes. If trends held true, time would actually be around 50 minutes. Before we exited TOT 240 minutes would be deducted from our time at Hollywood Studios. A breakdown that resulted in only 1 side running occurred about an hour in. We had invested to much time to jump line to another attractions so we stayed put.



On to the next post........

Steve

 

[JETS70]

After our extended stay at Tower of Terror, we decided to eat lunch. It was running up on 1:00 pm. Before eating lunch, Teresa made the suggestion that we try joining the 1:00 pm Rise of the Resistance virtual queue. Well, she is the bomb. Sure enough with some of her researching and a tip from our friend at the Fort, we scored a boarding pass for ROTR.



Here are a few pictures from ROTR. The immersion of this attractions ranks it up pretty close with Flight of Passage at Animal Kingdom.



On to the next post........;

Steve

 

[JETS70]

After ROTR, we went to Smuggler's Run. With the social distancing. Teresa and I were a 2 man crew. Should have tried to recruit. After our mission, the deductions for damage to the ship almost put us into the negative for our earnings.



We enjoyed Smuggler's Run but it is a one time a visit ride for me. Between the "3D effects" and trying to take some pictures, my stomach just cant handle it. When we exited the building, the line was not even out of the building. Probably a 30 minute wait.

One more post.....
Steve

 

[JETS70]

This last post is some general pictures of Star Wars Land and my IMHO take on my first visit.

Needless to say, being a child of the original Star Wars trilogy, I was excited to visit Star Wars Land. From the time you walk into the main entrance, it is a visual overload. With the challenges that we face on a daily basis with the pandemic, I understand why we have the protocols in place to keep everyone safe. With that being said, having to wait in line to do anything and everything in Star Wars Land, really took away from the excitement of visiting for the first time. We literally waited and hour to enter the shopping area that had a total of 4 stores that you had to wait to get into them. Would I go back again........absolutely.

Dinner tonight was at another favorite just outside the Disney Springs area, Miller's Ale House. French onion soup and a salad to share. I had the Zinger Mountain Melt and Teresa had the Mahi Fish Tacos for dinner.


Animal Kingdom tomorrow.

Steve

 

[garneska]

Making me excited to try DHS again and get a boarding pass For ROTR. we have still not been on it yet.

 

[Sjm9911]

The funny part is my pictures are almost the exact same as yours from star wars land. Lol. Same spots and angles. Its definitely cool. And rotr wasn't open yet....... glad you liked that . Summglers run was just so so as you said.

 

[JETS70]

We are at Animal Kingdom today.just a quick post to show a picture and a comment about the lines. IMO Disney has done a great job with the lines and social distancing. I can only imagine the hours of planning to design the paths to keep the 6 feet without completley ensnaring all traffic in the park. Here at the AK they are incorporating the closed show venues. We are currently in line for the Kilimanjaro Safari at a posted 40 minutes. The path started back before you cross the bridge into Africa and winds down to the back entrance / exit of Pandora and through the old Festival of the Lion King. Even though these are long walks, the line very rarely stops. Even the small children dont have time to stop and complain. Here is a picture inside the Festival of the Lion King arena.

More tonight.
Steve
PS....Teresa just corrected me our time at TOT. It wasn't 240 minutes but 2 hours....120 minutes. In other words still a long time.

 

[Sjm9911]

120 240 whatever it takes.

 

[Sjm9911]

 

[bama_ed]

We are at Animal Kingdom today.just a quick post to show a picture and a comment about the lines. IMO Disney has done a great job with the lines and social distancing. I can only imagine the hours of planning to design the paths to keep the 6 feet without completley ensnaring all traffic in the park. Here at the AK they are incorporating the closed show venues. We are currently in line for the Kilimanjaro Safari at a posted 40 minutes. The path started back before you cross the bridge into Africa and winds down to the back entrance / exit of Pandora and through the old Festival of the Lion King. Even though these are long walks, the line very rarely stops. Even the small children dont have time to stop and complain. Here is a picture inside the Festival of the Lion King arena

It's similar, Jets70, in the Magic Kingdom for Pirates. When we had the DISMeet back in October, tiggerdad was in MK that week a few days before me and gave me a heads-up. The line snakes out of PoC and down to Jungle Cruise and then back up to the entrance to Frontierland in the direction of Splash with folks spaced out in the line (tape on the ground IIRC). He said it moved constantly and it did in a shuffling fashion.

We didn't have indoor facilities, obviously, but we were not put off by the length of the line since we knew it was not the usual WDW queue. It wasn't bad at all.

Have a good day there!

Bama Ed

 

[Teamubr]

Disney really has done an amazing job with the spacing in lines. The one that scared me the most was in HS for SDD. The line was all the way out the path towards the old Toy Story Mania entrance, around the corner in front of Walt's Theater and out to the courtyard in front of the new MMRR (old Great Movie Ride).

It was a 35 minute wait, despite walking 1/2 mile.

j

 

[JETS70]

Today was Animal Kingdom. The weather was perfect and the crowds were manageable.

Our first attraction was Dinosaur. I am not sure what demon possessed Teresa to suggest this as our first ride of the day. The low wait time might have influenced the suggestion but then again the low wait time should have been an indicator that this may not be a good first thing in the morning ride.















More pictures coming.

Steve

 

[JETS70]

We made our way over to Expedition Everest. I was a little surprised as to the short wait.











A quick shared lunch at Yak and Yeti.


Next up was Pandora.

Steve

 

[JETS70]

Pandora has what is probably my favorite attraction at WDW. Flight of Passage is just hard to beat. Rise of the Resistance at HS is high on the list also. Because RotR has you involved in so many ways such as having to load the transport, get out of the transport when you are boarded and then walking out into the bay of the star destroyer with the life size stormtroopers only to be put in the escape pods and shuffled all around the star destroyer and chased by Kylo Ren......wait a minute, this post is about Avatar FoP.















A frozen Night Blossom is hard to beat


One more post, Kilimanjaro Safaris.

Steve

 

[JETS70]

Kilimanjaro Safaris was probably one of the better safaris we have taken in recent visits. As I said in an earlier post, the weather was perfect today and that may have encouraged the animals to be out. Most were sleeping but at least out where they could be seen.














Even the king of the jungle was out enjoying the weather.


This is when all the kids on the safari truck started singing Hakuna Matata


This is the first time I have seen this addition to KS. It is a goat exhibit. Nigerian goats I think

We had dinner at Rainforest Café. I have to plead a @garneska on this one as I forgot the food pictures. Sorry @bama_ed

Tomorrow is Disney Springs for some shopping and a birthday dinner at the Boathouse for Teresa. She turns

Steve

 

[bama_ed]

We had dinner at Rainforest Café. I have to plead a @garneska on this one as I forgot the food pictures. Sorry @bama_ed

Not gonna beat you up on missing those pics, Steve.

I survived Rain Forest cafe once. Kids, rain, kids, thunder, kids, jungle, ...... that's all I remember (and those were just MY kids). The food was not memorable or interesting and very noisy inside.

Did Teresa get a birthday button (What are you Celebrating) for today?

Bama Ed