May 29-30th. 24 hour trip. Raining and empty

[Chad Fletcher]

Made a mistake on the title the March 29-30, 2016


First this is my first report on the board. I have been reading the last year or so and learning more stuff than I thought I knew already. Tons of great info on here. I consider my self a disney pro and of course a Disney nerd as my wife calls me. Over the last 30 years I have spent over 500 days on site. Look forward to going back every time I head south. But as many times as I have gone, this is the first year I have AP's for my two kids, wife and myself. Call me stupid, but my family owns a large company and over the years I have had certain vendors and customer treat me to tickets. So I might buy 5-7 days of tickets a year. I tend to ramble on so these might get a little long

Who am I:
I live in Thomasville, GA just across the Florida line. And on the GPS it is exactly 4 hours door to door. The family owns a time share at the Vistana resort right outside Disney property on I4. So we have nice place to stay 14 days of the year. Growing up I was lucky to have parents who also loved the Disney experience and always loved to take my and friends a few times during the summer. I spent a many of day with parents dropping me off at the Contemporary and telling me what time to be back so they could pick me up. And now I am lucky enough to have to DD 11 and 13 who are following in my foot steps of loving Disney as much as I do.

1st trip May 29th

My DD (11) and myself decided a spur of the moment trip to Disney would be a good idea during her Spring break (sadly DD's go to different schools, so different breaks). We decided about noon on May 29th, that lets head to to Orlando for that evening and the 30th and drive back late on the 30th. I worked the Fastpass selection to luckily get what I wanted for the night of the 29th (space, thunder and splash). We head out at 1PM on the 29th in the pouring rain. And drive down with rain on the windshield the whole way. DD is upset thinking that we can't do anything cause its raining. Then I tell her, "babe rain scares everyone off!". We pull into the T&T center at roughly 5pm, so we have about 6:30 hours in the park. As we are driving in traffic is almost bumper to bumper with people getting out of the parks. We pull up, not a parking cast member in sight and proceed to park 1st row, in the lot to the right of the tunnel. We walk to the ticket booth to activate our FP's, and there is a line 15-20 deep at each row for the shuttles, this looks good to me. Short 3 minute walk and we are on the monorail headed to MK.

We proceed to ride the mono over to MK with maybe roughly 40 people total. Once there straight in no wait at bag check. And here we are, basically in a MK ghost town. Yes it raining, but we have our jackets and are ready to go. Our first pass isn't for a hour so we planned on hitting "laugh floor", my DD's favorite. When I see Space wait is 5 minutes so we head there instead. So now the Fastpasses basically mean nothing. We spent the rest of the night walking around in a basically empty park, yes it was raining, yes I was soaked to core, but we were enjoying the park like I have never done before. We used out fast passes just to get another ride in , even though we really didn't need them. There are some pictures below, taken at around 1:00 AM on main street as we were leaving the park. This something I have never seen before. We stayed till little after 1 to catch the Kiss. And then was basically ushered to the mono by a few cast members according to Security we were 2 of the last 10 in the park. Shops were closed, and only 4 of 5 CM's to be seen anywhere.

Rides ridden on night of April 5th in 6 hours. Ride and number of times

Space (3)
Mine train (3)
Splash (3)
Thunder (3)
Pirates (1)
Jungle (2), was hoping to get someone off script but no luck
Laugh Floor (2)
People Mover (1)
Speedway (1)
Small World (1)
Peter (1)
Aladdin (1)

Hurry its raining "lets get out of here"

You don't see this everyday. Roughly 1:00 AM

 

[sunshinemelody]

Those photos are spectacular!

 

[Chad Fletcher]

Day #2, March 30th

This day was very fast paced. Anyone ever tried to do (3) parks in (1) day. Well me either but my DD decided she wanted to try. My plan was hit HS about 10, due to FP selections being later in the day HS and just trying to see what we could do before hand. Going to bed at 2AM that morning the sleep was needed. Well did I forget to tell you my daughter is just as crazy about Disney as me. Well at 6:45AM was woke up by to her with her grand plan to rope drop Epcot so we can ride Test Track. Well I manage to work up the energy and say lets do it. Shower, down to the truck and sitting TT center at 8AM. Proceed over to Epcot by 8:10AM and sitting at TT at around 9AM. No wait so hit it , then jump right back on to 10 minute wait. Then proceed to hit Mission Space (green) her fav ride at Epcot, then Spaceship earth. All the rides we like so we leave around 1030 and decide to hit MK till around 3 so we can go do our FP's at HS. Heading over to MK I look at the Touring plans app and see wait time are pretty low at HS, so make the decision to see what I can get at MK and cancel the HS ones. Managed to get FP's for space, pirates and laugh floor. Get over there a hour before Space FP and go back to Splash as luck would have it somehow manage to ride splash and thunder in under a hour. Proceed to Space for that FP. Then said lets take a chance and see if I can swap a FP and get Mine train, wow what luck one popped up. So we proceed to hit up a little quick lunch and then hit Mine at around 2PM. We make the call of we are done here and lets go hit HS.

So we go get the car and drive over to HS. Get there around 4. See on TP app that tower is only a 20 minute wait. So we proceed there. Get off head to FP kiosk right beside and was lucky to grab a FP for R&R in 15 minutes. Once off of it, we are both whipped and say lets hit the road. Its roughly 5PM when we hit HWY 429 headed north. Do the math and that roughly 24 hours total on Disney property. And we have done everything we care about and a few more rides. Sitting at home by 10PM. And we have managed to do what it takes most people a week to do. I admit there was a lot of luck involved, from rain to jut plain out FP luck. But we turned a quick trip into a total whirlwind of fun. Yes we didn't hit AK but we were so tired we were ready to get home.

This day was a mad rush so not a whole lot of pictures

Epcot on the way out

R&R