We pick things up at Disney’s Hollywood Studios on the morning of Wednesday, February 19th, 2020, at 8:06am. In Part One, we arrived before 6:15am in order to move through Slinky Dog Dash this quickly, and ideally join a guaranteed low-number boarding group for Rise of the Resistance. I went one for two, which would be good if I were batting cleanup in the All-Star game, but potentially less good if I only had one shot at experiencing Disney’s newest ride, and my entire family was relying on me to get them there. Fortunately, things will end up coming together pretty well as we move about our morning, despite a considerable amount of chaos happening around me. Let’s see what we can expect from the Studios on a legitimately busy day.

While being at Hollywood Studios at 6:15am would not ordinarily be near the top of my list of where I’d like to find myself, being at the end of this line for Slinky Dog Dash would be much further down that list. The line extends all the way out of the Land and back into Animation Courtyard, where you’ll find Star Wars Launch Bay and the Disney Junior show. Slinky’s posted wait is currently 120 minutes, but it will very quickly hit 165 minutes, which is nearly three hours. To the right, we have a small glimpse of the extended outdoor queue for Toy Story Mania already filling. In 15 minutes, the posted wait will be an hour, and the actual wait could very well be worse. Rise of the Resistance, and the necessity of arriving before Park opening to have any shot of being able to ride, continues to drive morning crowds higher than they’ve ever been before. Given the long length of the line for Slinky Dog, some number of people make the obvious choice to bypass it, instead heading to Toy Story Mania. This phenomenon will make it difficult or impossible to ride all three Toy Story Land attractions in standby with short waits first thing in the morning. The actual wait for Toy Story Mania at 8:05am is about a half hour, which isn’t all that bad considering what we’ll see once we get to Sunset Boulevard.

Continue reading “Disney’s Hollywood Studios Morning Touring with Smugglers Run FastPass+”

We head out to Disney’s Hollywood Studios on the morning of Wednesday, February 19th, 2020, which is/was the first day that Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run offered FastPass+. In an effort to get this post out in a timely manner for once, and considering I have plans to return to Hollywood Studios for a longer visit tomorrow, these pictures are unedited. Usually, I go through every picture I take and edit/crop/etc. it in Lightroom. I took 475 pictures at the Studios over the course of about five hours. If it takes 30 seconds to edit each picture, on average, then you’re looking at about four hours of work before the writing process even begins. We’ll return to our usual low quality images with the next series of updates, but very low quality will have to do for this round. You should be able to more or less make out what’s happening.

In the image above, I’m arriving at 6:07am with the 8am stated opening, and there is no wait for bag check. Last month, I penned a post titled, “A Super Early Arrival at Disney’s Hollywood Studios May No Longer Be Your Best Bet, Plus Updated Hours and Star Wars Rise of the Resistance Strategy.” The main point was that arriving at 6am, only to wait two hours for the Park to open, didn’t necessarily make a whole lot of sense. That was back when Smugglers Run didn’t offer FastPass+, and actual afternoon waits were typically around 45 minutes. Now, Smugglers Run offers FastPass+ and afternoon waits are closer to 90 minutes. The FastPass+ Tiers were also much different prior to February 19th, with all rides other than Star Tours comprising Tier 1. Now, most rides are in Tier 2. It was also before Disney changed the rope drop procedure. Everyone used to be held on Hollywood Boulevard and slowly marched at the same time back to Galaxy’s Edge and Toy Story Land. Now, we’ll be able to get a lot closer to the attraction of our choice after entering the Park. We’ll reassess our plan of attack as we move about our morning, but the early arrival may be back in our good graces, as much as we might prefer to sleep in “on vacation.”

All segments of the Disney Skyliner system currently come online at 7:30am, which may not be early enough to get you inside the Park before 8am during a holiday week like this one, especially if you’re coming from Pop Century/Art of Animation, where the trip is longer and you’ll need to take the time to transfer at Caribbean Beach Resort. If you have a vehicle, then you’ll likely want to drive yourself to Hollywood Studios to have more control over your arrival time. Without a vehicle, I’d strongly recommend considering Uber/Lyft if you’re planning on arriving this early. The cost of that ride should run about $10 from anywhere else on property. The drop-off area is to the right of where I’m standing, almost even with the Skyliner entrance/exit. Bag check is less than a minute away, so it couldn’t be much more convenient. The regular Disney bus stops are somewhere off in the distance. If you’re relying in Disney bus transportation, then you should be able to get over here by 6:30am, but it may be a bit stressful as you either wait at the bus stop with nobody else around, or watch on the app as the bus arrival time gets later and later. You’ll also be behind everyone else who arrived earlier via other modes of transportation.

Continue reading “Disney’s Hollywood Studios Opening with Smugglers Run FastPass+ Day One”

Epcot is probably a lot like your kitchen at home. You’ve wanted to remodel it for years, but you know it’s going to be expensive, disruptive, time-consuming, and ultimately, everything you currently have more or less works, even if it’s not the latest and greatest. Well, Disney has finally decided to take the plunge, and the renovation is going to be expensive, disruptive, and time-consuming. At the end of the day on February 15th, Electric Umbrella and the pin store behind Spaceship Earth closed, and Disney walled off the middle of the Park, requiring a variety of bypasses and temporary walkways to move about Future World. In this post, we’ll take a walk around the Park to get an idea about the sorts of things that we’re going to see over the next couple of years as Epcot’s transformation continues.

You can click any of these images for a larger version, which may provide more context and clarity than the standard 800 pixels across.

Continue reading “What Epcot’s Future World West Looks Like with the Middle of the Park Closed Plus Rope Drop Changes”

We pick things up on the morning of Tuesday, February 11th, 2020, at exactly 11:30am. In Part One, we returned to Early Morning Magic, the paid event at Magic Kingdom that currently comes with a Cinderella 70th anniversary twist. Part Two followed with a foray into Storybook Circus for The Barnstormer and Tron construction pictures, before ultimately returning to Tomorrowland for the PeopleMover and now the Carousel of Progress.

This is where we’ve been:

1. Meet Fairy Godmother: 7:51am – 7:54am
2. Say hello to Suzy and Perla: 7:55am – 7:57am
3. Try to marry Anastasia Tremaine again: 7:58am – 8am
4. Peter Pan’s Flight: 8:01am – 8:09am
5. Peter Pan’s Flight: 8:10am – 8:16am
6. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 8:18am – 8:29am
7. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 8:30am – 8:37am
8. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 8:38am – 8:48am
9. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: 8:51am – 8:57am
10. Space Mountain: 9:02am – 9:27am
11. Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin: 9:28am – 9:39am
12. Breakfast at Cosmic Ray’s: 9:40am – 10:10am
13. The Barnstormer: 10:15am – 10:43am
14. Visiting the Lilly Belle: 10:44am – 10:48am
15. The PeopleMover: 11:02am – 11:18am
16. Carousel of Progress: 11:20am – 11:45am

At this point in the day, it’s time to continue visiting the anytime attractions, while beginning to mix in our three pre-booked FastPass+ selections. Thanks to Early Morning Magic, I’ve already experienced the Fantasyland headliners, in addition to two Tomorrowland priorities in Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. That’s allowed me to book FastPass+ for a few priority attractions in other Lands:

Continue reading “Magic Kingdom Late Morning February 2020 Touring”

We pick things up from our review of Early Morning Magic, which included an exclusive hour in Fantasyland to tackle the priorities there. I also stopped by Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. This is where we’ve been:

1. Meet Fairy Godmother: 7:51am – 7:54am
2. Say hello to Suzy and Perla: 7:55am – 7:57am
3. Try to marry Anastasia Tremaine again: 7:58am – 8am
4. Peter Pan’s Flight: 8:01am – 8:09am
5. Peter Pan’s Flight: 8:10am – 8:16am
6. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 8:18am – 8:29am
7. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 8:30am – 8:37am
8. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 8:38am – 8:48am
9. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: 8:51am – 8:57am
10. Space Mountain: 9:02am – 9:27am
11. Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin: 9:28am – 9:39am
12. Breakfast at Cosmic Ray’s: 9:40am – 10:10am

If you’re not attending Early Morning Magic, then you can still follow along with this post for the most part, with the assumption that we started with Space Mountain at regular Park open and then moved on from there. The 30 minutes that I spent at Cosmic Ray’s could be substituted with Tomorrowland Speedway or Astro Orbiter, both of which would take around that much time at 9:40am.

In the picture above, the wait for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is already up to 130 minutes at 10:11am. I was able to ride three times during Early Morning Magic without waiting longer than five minutes, and could have ridden another time or two if I hadn’t been busy with the pictures, trying to marry Anastasia, and the other attractions. Riding three times now would take 390 minutes, which is not three hours and ninety minutes, but rather six-and-a-half hours. If you were to get in line at 10:11am, and then wait the 130 minutes, you’d be off the ride at approximately 12:21pm, which is just in time for lunch at Cosmic Ray’s.

Continue reading “Magic Kingdom Morning Touring on a Busy Day After Early Morning Magic”