Second Annual February After Hours GetAway- Batuu Style (Update 1/28/2020)

[eliseisawkward]

This is my first attempt at anything trip report related, so please be kind. I have a lot to learn, but I’m excited to be here.

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So who am I? My name is Elise, I’m a 31 year old research scientist. After spending the first 27 years of my life as a student (and on a student budget), it’s very nice to finally be able to more easily afford vacations and trips. And what better vacation is there than WDW? I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been to Disney, but looking forward to having that change… soon. Trip number 5 is planned for February 10-13, 2020! So here we go with the short version, over time I’ll try to elaborate!

Who:
Myself, Elise.
My Husband, Derek.
My Sister, Steph.
My Brother-in-Law, Alex.

When:
February 10-13, 2020

Where:
POP!

What:
Monday- After Hours at Magic Kingdom
Tuesday- A bar-crawl, but where?
Wednesday- Intergalactic travel to Batuu
Thursday- Leave

Why:
Is this even a question? Ok, ok. The 4 of us went last February after receiving a “free” trip after sitting through a time-share presentation. The brevity of the trip pushed us to plan, and the “free” nature allowed us to splurge on an After Hours event at Animal Kingdom. We thought we might not be back for a while, but well… Star Wars Land and family planning and budgeting means I convinced the husband to go back sooner rather than later. Plus he’s the biggest Star Wars nerd I know (and that’s saying something as I myself am working on becoming a card carrying member of the 501st Legion). This is our last trip before we start seriously saving to buy a house, so trying to maximize the enjoyment.

Follow along:

• More on WHO we are
• When we go and where to stay
• Picking park days and FP+
• A Bar Crawl Update
• Heading to Batuu

Trip Report Here

 

[eliseisawkward]

Like I said, I’m a scientist by day and member of an elite Imperial squad by night (Commander Iden Versio, Inferno Squad, at your service). I love everything Disney Villains. And I guess the Empire is now included in that basket of characters! I’ve also loved Star Wars since I was a kid, so the merger is a good one.

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I’ve been to Disney 4 times. 2x as a child and 2x as an adult in the past 2 years. Can’t wait for trip number 5! My favorite park is Animal Kingdom, home to my two favorite rides: Expedition Everest and Flight of Passage. My husband is not quite ready to commit to annual trips (he has mentioned thinking it’s ridiculous we have gone/will have gone every year for 3 years in a row), but there’s a good chance he will come around…

Speaking of my husband… Meet Derek:

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He’s not in love with all things Disney, but he is obsessed with all things Star Wars. This is what has allowed me to plan this trip to Batuu, otherwise we would probably not visit again until we have kids to share the magic with. He works at a start-up doing computer and programming things. I vaguely understand it. He's been to Disney 3 or 4 times now? Including the 2 trips I've been on as an adult.

I have no idea what his favorite park is, probably AK. His goal during visits is usually to ride all the mountains at MK. He is heartbroken that Splash is being refurbed during our upcoming visit.

On to my partner in planning: My sister Steph. She has like 4 jobs, so I’m not even sure how to introduce her. But I suppose real estate is her main gig. (Also pictured, her husband Alex... more on him later)

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She’s also a planner, in fact she did the majority of planning for the biggest Disney trip I’ve ever been on: Family Holiday for 12. My dad and step-mom treated all 5 kids, plus partners of 3 kids and 2 grandkids to a 7 night stay at the Contemporary, complete with 5-day tickets and 1 park-to-park Universal day. It was madness and the only reason it worked was because of my sister. Oh, and it was the first time she had been since she was a kid. Props to her. This will be her 4th Disney trip as far as I can remember.

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She also loves Disney (obviously) and she is most excited to see Toy Story Land (also Star Wars… but mostly Toy Story).

And last, but certainly not least: Alex. He's in 2 pictures above, but I'll add another for good measure.

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Alex is a web designer, who loves Disney vacations as long as he also gets other non-Disney vacations too. He also recently passed his citizenship test/interview and will officially be an American for our next trip! His favorite ride is Seven Dwarves Mine Train, so fingers crossed we get to that once or twice this time around. This is his 3rd trip I think.

So that's the gang. It's the same gang from last February... so I guess this is our SECOND ANNUAL February trip. (Stay tuned in future years to see if I convince my husband to keep up this trend)

 

[eliseisawkward]

So now that you know who is going, let's talk about the when and the where.

The 4 of us had actually just visited February 2019 and fallen in love with the time of year. Lower crowds, cool weather... But oh no we have a Costa Rica trip planned for February 2020! However, it didn't take long for me to convince my husband that March was a better month for Costa Rica, plus we could visit his grandmother (near Ft Lauderdale) in February before or after Disney. Win-win-win.

After much badgering to get my husband to CALL HIS GRANDMA and figure out when would work for her, he never did. I had been poking around on the Disney site to look at available rooms and discounts, and when Gift of Magic popped up I knew that was probably our best bet. We knew that Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge was our main "goal" and I wanted to try to stay at a Skyliner resort. POP Century was reasonable and available Feb 10-13. Booked it and then told my husband that he needed to see if we should visit his grandma before or after.

Initially it was going to be just the 2 of us, but after I texted my sister, she invited herself (and her husband) along. So I had to alter the reservation to add them... successful alteration and additional deposit paid... Only thing is... I had promised husband this would be 2 nights and 1 park day, but I booked 3 nights figuring we could shorted by a night once we figured out the visit to his grandma. Sister and BIL said "oh keep the 3 nights and leave early or come late, but we want all 3 and we can figure out splitting cost based on when everyone stays." To which my husband says "Oh well if they're staying we might as well too..." And so with that settled, time to book flights.

Decided to go to Ft Lauderdale first, so grabbed a hotel there and then flights into Ft Lauderdale, and back out of Orlando. Easy peasy. My sister booked her flights on the same day, everything is going smoothly. Except we (husband and I) don't know how we will get from Ft Lauderdale to WDW. We've done the car rental thing, but husband didn't want to do that again. Ended up booking Greyhound tickets. This will be an adventure, I hope it goes as planned.

Summary:
Feb 7 Flight PHL->FLL
Feb 7-10 Stay near G-ma
Feb 10 8:20AM Greyhound to Orlando, arrive approx. 11:50AM
Feb 10-13 Stay at POP
Feb 13 1:40PM Flight MCO->PHL

 

[eliseisawkward]

FastPass day has come and gone, plans are starting to solidify. First up deciding what to do each day! Then, FastPass successes and failures.

February 2019 saw us going to Animal Kingdom After Hours, a first special ticketed event for all four of us! And we absolutely loved it. The low crowds, short (or no) lines and being about to do it all! So when After Hours dates were released for February and Magic Kingdom was on arrival day, it all seemed way too perfect. With Christmas around the corner I texted my dad asking if he needed gift ideas and wanted to gift us each an After Hours ticket... his answer was yes! So day 1 was set.

Monday, Day 1: Magic Kingdom After Hours (arrive for 7pm entry to park, event 9pm-12am)

Since my sister and BIL are arriving separately from my husband and I, we have different dining plans for day 1. All of us will eat a late lunch (Paddlefish for Sis and BIL, undecided still for me and husband) and then plan to eat a "filling" snack at MK before park close, and then popcorn and ice cream for the rest of the night!


Figuring out what day to do Batuu (the main goal of this trip, since we're giant Star Wars nerds) became a discussion... Husband wanted to do Tuesday, that way if we needed to last minute add a second day we could. I would prefer to relax Tuesday after being at MK until midnight and save Batuu for Wednesday when we can get up super early to make sure we are there before park open (at this point boarding group stuff was unknown, everything was up in the air). I made reservations for 7:00pm-ish at Oga's both days while we debated which day to go where (good thing too, by the time we decided they were completely booked up)! Finally I won out, Tuesday would be a sleep in and relax day, Wednesday would be Batuu. But now the pressure was on to make sure we got everything in on Wednesday.... Canceled the Tuesday Oga's reservation and bought tickets for Wednesday. Then set about making the droid and saber reservations!

Wednesday, Day 3: Batuu and More! (arrive before park open, currently 9am and close down park, currently 8pm)
10:50AM Droid Depot- 2 guests (all 4 of us will go, 1 droid per couple)
LUNCH at Docking Bay
5:50PM Savi's Lightsabers- 1 guest (just me and my husband, me building)
6:45PM Oga's Cantina- 4 guests (just drinks before we leave and have dinner outside park)
Dinner- Pizza party at POP in our room is the current leading plan, depending on mood we might end up somewhere else.

Now all that was left was to decide what to do with Tuesday... And thanks to this board and reading some trip reports my sister and I decided that we really needed to do a Monorail Bar Crawl. Goal is 3 locations (1 per resort area) plus dinner at The Wave. Got a 5:30PM dinner reservation figuring we could either start there, or dinner there in the middle, or end there depending on how we feel that day about when to start. I really liked the idea of building flexibility into the schedule.

Tuesday, Day 2: Monorail Bar Crawl (????? Whenever we feel like it!)
5:30PM Dinner at The Wave


FastPass day was early December, but I've been so busy that it came and went and I forgot to talk about it here and anyway here's the barebones summary of how that went:
-Logged in just before 7am
-Went to get Slinky Dog Dash for 4 on 60+2 RIGHT AT 7
-Saw a SDD FP+, clicked and.... it's gone. So, so sad.
-Added Toy Story Mania at 2:25-3:25 since I was already on that day/park.
-Quickly changed focus to Mine Train on 60, hoping for end of day FP, got 7:25-8!!!
-Added Space FP 6:20-7:20
-Went back to 60+2 and added Star Tours at 9:10-10:10
-Debated what to do with 3rd on HS day, decided to just go back to bed.
Summary: 4 FP+ on 2 days, keeping an eye out for SDD and waiting for park hour changes

 

[eliseisawkward]

The Bar Crawl Update!

So what I failed to mention last update was that I got a little crafty with my Christmas gift to my sister and BIL and made us all drinking passports (inspired by drinking around the world) for use during the monorail bar crawl. They have multiple pages and several different bar crawls for future trips as well! Here they are in progress:

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I don't have finished pictures and (un)fortunately already gifted them... along with "Monorail Drink Tickets" that I also made (they look like the monorail and I think they're pretty cute). I requested pictures of all these things from my sister and will hopefully have them soon to post!

They include a page for "First Drink of the Trip" and "Last Drink of the Trip" as well as "Drinking Around the World" at EPCOT, a Disney Springs Bar Crawl, and of course the Monorail Bar Crawl! Oh and one page for "Out of This World" which includes Batuu and Space 220. I'm pretty proud of them and really excited to start filling them up!

And also in Monorail Bar Crawl news, we have started working out our plan of attack! Because a lot of the lounges for the signature dining locations do not open until 5pm, we decided that of those locations we would only do California Grill. I ended up pushing back our dinner reservation at The Wave to 6:30, so that we can arrive for drinks at Cali Grill at 5, have a drink and chill for an hour or so, then head down for dinner at The Wave. If we feel like it and the weather is nice, we might head BACK up for fireworks after that. So the current plan (open for suggestions and alterations) is:

The Enchanted Rose at GF some time after it opens (around 1pm)
Trader Sam's at Poly some time around when it opens (3pm)
California Grill when it opens (around 5pm)
The Wave for dinner at 6:30pm (maybe more drinks?)
Fireworks at 8pm (if it's nice and we feel like it)


Are there any other place we should seriously consider? Any of these not great?? Our real goal is at least 1 lounge/drink at each resort, we would be willing to add a second at any of the resorts if it's a must do!

 

[DLo]

Following along. Looking forward to reading more

 

[eliseisawkward]

Following along. Looking forward to reading more

Happy to have you! We are getting close, 2-weeks from today we will be in WDW!!

 

[eliseisawkward]

Batuu!

Ok. So I promised my husband that we would be able to do everything in Galaxy's Edge in a single day (this is how I managed to get the bar crawl wedged in the middle). So now the pressure is on to get it all done. Touring plans have changed a few times already, and boarding groups have impacted that somewhat... so here the current plan:

Bus/Lyft to Hollywood Studios ~60 minutes before posted opening (currently 8AM). Enter park before opening, head towards Toy Story Land to try to rope drop Slinky Dog Dash (but don't need to be first in line, less than 60 minutes wait would be nice). This will obviously change if we can swap into a SDD FP+ before getting there. Currently have FP+ for TSMM 8:10-9:10, which should give us enough time to head there after SDD. While waiting to rope drop SDD, we will secure a boarding group for Rise of the Resistance.

After TSMM 8:10-9:10AM we have Star Tours 9:10-10:10AM. I figure we head around the "long way" to do that before finally making our way into Galaxy's Edge. I like the idea of taking our time entering SWGE. We have a Droid Depot reservation for 2 builders at 10:50AM. If we arrive there earlier than that we will see what it looks like and if they can take us early. We have a Muppet*Vision 3D FP+ 10:20-11:20AM that we will likely let expire. Depending on our boarding group luck, we make or may not have to figure that out at some point during these plans. Trying to be flexible there. Depending on wait time for Smuggler's Run, we may hop into that line, or just wander around in the shops, maybe play with the droids. Planning on lunch at Docking Bay 7, likely order ahead on the app.

We then have a break in "solid" plans here. I figure we can do rides outside SWGE at this time, maybe try to snag day of FP for ToT or explore more of TSL, including Alien Swirling Saucers. My sister has her eye on a souvenir sipper from TSL. We may end up trying to meet Vader, since we've never met him in the parks (I know several Vader's personally, but I think there's something special about the park characters). It would be ideal if our boarding group got called back around the early afternoon (or earlier), because I do have a Savi appointment for 1 builder at 5:50PM. After Savi's we have Oga's at 6:45PM, and maybe we will catch the Galactic Spectacular at 8PM on our way out. We can also hop into a line of a ride we haven't been able to get earlier in the day. We plan on eating back at POP.

WHEW. That seems like a lot to me, even though we have a huge amount of time "up in the air" I'm anxious about the things we do have scheduled fitting around a boarding group call back. Especially now that it seems you only get an hour. We will have to finagle that if we get called back after 5PM.

Summary:
RD SDD
8:10 TSMM FP+
9:10 ST FP+
10:50 Droid Depot
LUNCH/Explore/Etc.
5:50 Savi's lightsaber
6:45 Oga's
Last minute ride on something we missed?
Dinner at POP


Bonus share: I recently took pictures in costume to submit for approval and admission into the 501st so here's my "action shot"

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[eliseisawkward]

I managed to snag some pictures of the finished drinking passports I made! They have a faux leather cover and are sewn and glued together. I snagged most of the ears graphics from others... I’m considering remaking the graphics myself so that I can offer them for sale on Etsy. I embedded the pictures before printing for these, but I think if I sold them I would just have blank ones that you would glue your own picture into. I really enjoyed making them! Can’t wait to use them.

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[eliseisawkward]

We are back!! Link to trip report here. Not sure how long I'll take to update, but hoping I remember to do so regularly! I took lots of notes on the trip.