One day only…

[luvsvacation]

My daughter (20) is in love with Guardians of the Galaxy. We live in the Midwest and have joked that we need to drive down (15 hours) just to ride the new ride at Epcot. So I think we are actually going to do this! Plan would be to drive one day, spend a day at Epcot, spend a day at Universal (Harry Potter) and then a day driving home. Just kind of a silly crazy long weekend, we love road trips anyway! Last year we went to Disneyland and used the virtual queue for ROTR and had very good luck getting to ride it 3 times in 4 days so I feel fairly confident we could ride. I also understand we could pay for 1 lightening line (which we’ve never used and know nothing about). Could we conceivably ride it twice in one day? Also we would want to make the most out of the rest of our day…would we need magic bands to book fast passes for other rides in Epcot? I know nothing about those. We would not be staying on site and would just have one day tickets/reservations for Epcot. We were planning to do this in the spring but I have an unexpected few days off work in mid December and her college finals will be over so we are thinking of moving it up. It is too crazy busy around Dec 16-18??

 

[Orsino]

Yes. In theory, you will be able to ride twice. Once by VQ and once by paid ILL. We clicked refresh at exactly 7:00AM and got VQ every time we tried. I suggest you have another device set to time.gov or something that shows time to the second. But even if you don't get it at 7AM, the 1PM queue is much less competitive.
I don't know how fast the ILL sell out though. If you aren't staying on property you can't buy ILL until the park opens. check Thrill Data for info on LL sell out time.

You don't *need* magic bands. Disney will issue you a plastic card if you don't have a Magic Band.

 

[tobikaye]

Basically Genie+ (G+) is the new name for FP and is no longer free. You would need to purchase this to book ride reservations. (FYI: this is separate from the LL purchased for Guardians.) Note that G+ is not a set price now so the price fluctuates on pricing.

As for going December 16-18, so far, it looks like you could get a park reservations to any of the parks those days and Epcot is less likely to sell out over MK or DHS. Christmas is just a busy time at WDW in general. It looks like Neil Patrick Harris is the host for the Candlelight Processional those days and he tends to draw a crowd so evenings could become packed near the America Gardens Theatre with people hanging around or waiting to get into the show.