Here's my trip report from last week. We had three park days (Thursday 3/5 through Saturday 3/7). Our original plan had been to do DHS on Thursday, MK on Friday, and a mix of Epcot and AK on Saturday. We had some great RD luck on Friday and breezed through our MK must-dos and were able to do our Epcot visit on Friday afternoon, leaving us with another morning at DHS.
On Thursday, we walked from the Swan to DHS, leaving there about 6:45 and arriving about 7:00. We used the bag check to the far right and breezed through security. However, we ran into a snafu with our tickets when we entered and had to go to guest services. They resolved the problem and we were in the park by 7:20. Interesting side note - the CM at guest services suggested that anyone in our party who had a phone should try to use
MDE to obtain a BG.
Since we had a FP for MFSR for later in the day, our strategy was to RD ToT and RnR. When we walked toward those ride, both already had pre-loaded lines. We waited in the line for ToT until opening. Opened MDE at 7:57 and waited. I was on an iPhone 6 with Verizon (four bars) and DW was on an iPhone 7 with ATT (four bars). Spent the downtime in line teaching a couple of folks on the strategies I've learned here for getting a BG. At 8:00:01 I tapped on the AT-AT picture and the red "Join Boarding Group" button was active. Tapped that, hit select all for our group, tapped again and was rewarded with BG 3!!! One of the people next to us couldn't get an active "Join Boarding Group" button, so I told him to close the app and relaunch. After that he was immediately able to get backup BG 81 (thankfully the ride performed well Thursday, so I'm pretty sure he was able to get on).
While we were waiting in line for ToT, CMs came through to let everyone know that the ride was down. At about 8:07 we received our notification for RotR with a one-hour return. We abandoned ToT and headed straight over to GE. RotR appeared to work great and we had an amazing experience on the ride! So thankful for everything I've learned on this thread.
Saturday morning for our bonus visit to DHS, we left the Swan at 6:30, arrived at 6:45, through security easily and no issues tapping into the park. We did notice that all three of our park days all four parks employed finger scans for entry. Without a FP for MFSR on Saturday, we decided we would try to RD it if the crowd outside GE wasn't too crazy. Getting to the park about 15 minutes earlier seems to have done the trick, as we were about 8 people back from the line of CMs holding the rope on Grant Avenue near Muppet Vision 3D.
Followed the same MDE strategy above and was able to get BG 4. Also helped a couple of families near us, and one got BG 13 and the other BG 44. With BG secured, we joined the RD crowd and headed into GE. The whole walk to MFSR was great with all the CMs lining the street and greeting us travelers. Had a great time of MFSR, then headed straight over to RotR for our second time. Still beyond amazing!
One thing that almost tripped me up is that the loudspeaker announcement that BGs were open started playing at about 7:59:30. It was so tempting to start tapping into the app once the announcement started, but I resisted and waited until 8:00:01.
Thanks again for all the advice on here that I've soaked up over the last few weeks in preparation for our trip.
