momtotwolittleones
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2007
- Messages
- 226
We were in the parks Monday and Tuesday, no EE or MM. Monday morning we started at DL. We arrived at about 7:30 for 8am opening. Lines were already decent size. Line 13 is definitely the magically short line to use. (A quick side note, since you will all feel my pain: I left my hubby and kids in line to go check out line 13 - there were like 10 people in front of it! The line we were in was probably at least 50 deep. I tried calling all three of my people - no one answered their phone! The gates opened, and I had to leave line 13 to get back to where they were still waiting, and that line took forever! We missed rope drop for the first time I can remember! I wanted to strangle them, but refrained.) We still went on PP first, because my kids love that, although due to their lameness above, we waited about 30 minutes. But whatever, we rolled with it.
Both days were pretty busy, but with good use of FP we did everything we wanted to, multiple times. Sometimes we decided to just wait in a long line because we had some time to kill before we could get another FP and just needed a break from walking. And Disney really is genius about keeping the lines moving.
Random notes:
Pay attention to the return time of an attraction when planning your FP. For instance, if you want to get FP for both Space Mountain and Star Tours, Space Mountain return time may be 4-5 hours from now, but Star Tours might be in an hour, meaning that if you get ST now you can get SM in an hour, but if you get SM first you have to wait two hours.
We were told by a Cast Member that they were now doing projections onto the water in front of Pirates (like Fantasmic) for the fireworks display, but we didn't check it out. We got a spot for the 8:45 parade around 7pm, mainly because we needed a break from walking. The front sidewalk areas seemed to be all taken, but we found a nice wide corner spot, kind of between the Corn Dog stand and where Crystal Arts is. The corners are good because they are much wider than the rest of the areas. Then, when it's time to move into the street for the fireworks, it's an easy "rush" to the middle in front of the roped off walkway area. We left right around 10:45pm and you could easily have found a sidewalk spot for the parade at that time.
The fireworks are FANTASTIC! Do not miss them! My kids were blown away.
Right after the fireworks everyone books it over to Space Mountain. It's crazy.
Riding Pirates is not the time to have a nonstop conversation with your companions at full volume about random crap totally unrelated to the ride. The woman behind me yapped THE ENTIRE TIME! So annoying.
Star Tours has some new videos, so we rode it about 3 times. Love that ride.
CMs were serious about FP starting times - they would make us wait if we were 10 minutes early. Would usually let you in about 5 minutes early. But it was pretty busy, and even the FP return lines were a little longer than I've seen before.
Started at DCA on Tue. Plan was to get there at 7:30 again, but my kids were exhausted and my older son was coming down with a cold, so we let them sleep a little bit and got the parks around 8:30 (another first for us). Easily got a GOTG FP with a return time of 12:20. Then rode Soaring with about a 20 minute wait, then rode RSR single rider with about 20 minute wait, rode Screaming, got a FP for TSMM which started about 45 minutes later, rode some random small rides, then did TSMM, then got RSR FP with a return time of about 6pm (we wanted it later so we waited). Could have gotten another GOTG FP, but the kids wanted RSR instead. Rode GOTG with our FP, then headed to DL. Don't think you can wait until park closing to ride GOTG - each night at closing time the line was about 2 hours. Several points during the day it was down as low as 45-75 minutes, so last thing at night is a bad idea, unless you want to hang out until midnight.
Never seen such a long line for Pirates - not sure what's up with that right now, but go in the morning.
Super fun trip!
Both days were pretty busy, but with good use of FP we did everything we wanted to, multiple times. Sometimes we decided to just wait in a long line because we had some time to kill before we could get another FP and just needed a break from walking. And Disney really is genius about keeping the lines moving.
Random notes:
Pay attention to the return time of an attraction when planning your FP. For instance, if you want to get FP for both Space Mountain and Star Tours, Space Mountain return time may be 4-5 hours from now, but Star Tours might be in an hour, meaning that if you get ST now you can get SM in an hour, but if you get SM first you have to wait two hours.
We were told by a Cast Member that they were now doing projections onto the water in front of Pirates (like Fantasmic) for the fireworks display, but we didn't check it out. We got a spot for the 8:45 parade around 7pm, mainly because we needed a break from walking. The front sidewalk areas seemed to be all taken, but we found a nice wide corner spot, kind of between the Corn Dog stand and where Crystal Arts is. The corners are good because they are much wider than the rest of the areas. Then, when it's time to move into the street for the fireworks, it's an easy "rush" to the middle in front of the roped off walkway area. We left right around 10:45pm and you could easily have found a sidewalk spot for the parade at that time.
The fireworks are FANTASTIC! Do not miss them! My kids were blown away.
Right after the fireworks everyone books it over to Space Mountain. It's crazy.
Riding Pirates is not the time to have a nonstop conversation with your companions at full volume about random crap totally unrelated to the ride. The woman behind me yapped THE ENTIRE TIME! So annoying.
Star Tours has some new videos, so we rode it about 3 times. Love that ride.
CMs were serious about FP starting times - they would make us wait if we were 10 minutes early. Would usually let you in about 5 minutes early. But it was pretty busy, and even the FP return lines were a little longer than I've seen before.
Started at DCA on Tue. Plan was to get there at 7:30 again, but my kids were exhausted and my older son was coming down with a cold, so we let them sleep a little bit and got the parks around 8:30 (another first for us). Easily got a GOTG FP with a return time of 12:20. Then rode Soaring with about a 20 minute wait, then rode RSR single rider with about 20 minute wait, rode Screaming, got a FP for TSMM which started about 45 minutes later, rode some random small rides, then did TSMM, then got RSR FP with a return time of about 6pm (we wanted it later so we waited). Could have gotten another GOTG FP, but the kids wanted RSR instead. Rode GOTG with our FP, then headed to DL. Don't think you can wait until park closing to ride GOTG - each night at closing time the line was about 2 hours. Several points during the day it was down as low as 45-75 minutes, so last thing at night is a bad idea, unless you want to hang out until midnight.
Never seen such a long line for Pirates - not sure what's up with that right now, but go in the morning.
Super fun trip!
