Short version of yesterday: It was hot, really, really hot, but we still had a great time. It was the last day we would be in the parks before our AP's expire and we made the most of it.
Long version: I'm from Arizona and I'm used to hot weather, but my way of dealing with it is to not leave the house unless absolutely necessary. To help stay cool and hydrated we stopped in many restaurants for free water cups. The CMs were great about that. The IT failure for about 4 hours in the afternoon was interesting, but we actually benefited from it due to fast passes that were available later in the day. To start the day we got there at rope drop. That was huge. We rode a lot of rides between 8-10:30. We started at DL then moved to DCA. At that point it was getting pretty uncomfortable. We rode one more ride and got some lunch. 2 kids tried to ride Incredicoaster while the rest of us got in line for Frozen about 11:30. The line at Incredicoaster was insane due to a Toy Story shut down. I imagine all the FP and stand-by riders from Toy Story shifted over to Incredicoaster. My boys left the FP line after about 15-20 minutes. They hadn't even scanned their tickets for their FP. We all got into the 12pm Frozen show with good seats... and sat there until 12:30 when they cancelled the show due to technical difficulties.
About that same time I noticed my app wasn't working. It kept asking me to sign into my account but wouldn't recognize my password. We went back to the hotel and turned down the AC and tried to rest. I tried a few things to get my app to work, then I realized it was a system wide problem. I would describe myself as a Super Max Pass user so I was a little nervous how it would play out for our last day. We won't be going back to
Disneyland for a few years and I wanted it to end well. About 4:40 I noticed I could sign into my account. Most of the FP were for immediate times so I got one for BTMRR just to test it out. Then I realized the ride was down so I decided to let that play out. Sure enough, 25 minutes later it converted to a ME pass. I did that a few times before we went back to the parks. I don't think it is a good policy to give out FP for rides that are down then convert them to ME passes, but as long as Disney is willing to hand out ME passes, I'm willing to collect them. It would have been a great time to be in the parks, but the heat was just too much at that time.
We went back to the parks about 6:30. In all, we rode 9 rides that evening (started in DCA then moved to DL), ate dinner at White Water Snacks (the AC in there was heavenly and it was fairly empty), stopped for pictures twice, ate dole whips, and closed the parks out at midnight on Pirates. The FP lines were extra long. In many instances, they were longer than the stand-by lines, but not terrible. I'm sure all the ride shut-downs during the day were part of that. I feel bad for anyone who didn't have MP yesterday. It was probably just hot and miserable. The longest FP line was BTMRR. It took us about 25 minutes. Normally I would not wait that long, but we wanted to do it one last time.
Overall, it was a great way to end our year of Disney. I'll miss it, but I'm ready for a break. This past year has been super fun but exhausting. I hope everyone who was at the parks yesterday managed well, including the CM's who were there working.