I am going to Epic April 18 and 19. On December 9th I bought 3 express passes for $179.99 each. Today they are $240.
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I would buy them as early as possible. The only exception would be if they’re already the max that you see for any date, but even then they could raise prices across the board at some point.
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Oh wow! Ok. I need to find some refundable ones and buy now. Our dates are now April 17-April 22nd! We may also be in Epic on that Sunday, 19th.
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It’s a South park joke. It’s the name of the Chinese eatery in that cartoon. 
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We arrive very late on the 17th ( son and DIL are working that day) and staying 3 nights at Stella Nova before we transfer to one night at Portofino.
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If we were to stay onsite, I would pick the cheapest place that I could walk to the boat transport and avoid City Walk. Then buy multi day EP’s
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This is exactly what we did, except Hard Rock instead of Portofino.
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I checked and they went up $10 from when I was pricing them last week so I went bought them before they go up any more! My CC found a code for $30 off the total so that was nice. UT was the lowest for my dates but I was checking them all often.
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Sorry, I’m confused - Attraction Tickets says:
“Tickets can be cancelled for free up to your holiday departure date. No refunds are given after this time.”
What do you mean by “No refunds are given”?
We are looking at booking accomodation direct and then seperate park tickets + EP with Attraction Tickets.
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Originally I was going to do this. The options are Cabana, Bay (across the street and it’s questionable if you’re supposed to cross there), Adventura (very modern and not my vibe but nice) and Sapphire Falls. I tried to email Sapphire Falls but the fee email addresses I ubtained were no good. I wanted to know what rooms were in building 1, closest to the water taxi. Because many rooms at Bldg 3 were twice the price of Cabana Bay but could be a similar walk to the water taxi. Since I didn’t get a response, I took it as a sign and just going to deal with Hyatt off-site and Uber to CW and Epic.
Hmmm, I may have misread this then. I read after as at. But it looks like it days you can cancel them through departure date and still get a refund. But after the departure date no refund- even if unused. I’m definitely revisiting these then! Thank you for pointing it out.
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9 28 entered BotM EP line.
9 33 stopped just after vacuum room.
Immediately announced down
9 58 announced up. At 10 15 plan had been to bail
We were off by 10 09. Wait was 27 minutes
75 min standby wait
I will edit this as I go along. Hadn’t planned on doing BotM but we got here early.
I endorse the BotM EP during EA.
We are at the Paris Cafe for breakfast. Also will split the butter beer crepe
Parisian crepe was a hit. But we enjoyed sharing the butter beer crepe. Would not have enjoyed the whole thing
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The streetmosphere in Darkmoor is great!
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At mine cart. Just got off the Bowser Challenge. TP said to go to Berk and come back later but I really really want to avoid backtracking.
They announced they are pausing the ride to add a vehicle.
This is our 9th park day and we are not remotely bored. 14 day tickets with 5 day EP was brilliant
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Adding the car at Mine Cart really sped up the line. We didn’t get everything done that we had hoped for, but we did piddle a lot. I swear DD spent 20 minutes picking her drink at the French cafe.
Had a really great day.
We have 5 park days and two EP days left.
Tomorrow we will focus on the shows. We’ve only seen Bourne once on our last visit and the actors were wearing masks.
Something interesting on Toon Lagoon. DD is 15 and knows of Betty Boop and Dennis the Menace, but no one else.
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General musings.
Lanyards are still very necessary. With all the facial recognition stuff I thought it would be less necessary. Even for the express pass which almost all rides seem to have the facial recognition, you still need to show either the paper pass or the pass on your phone to get into the line.
Then there are the lockers. You need a barcode on a lot of them. The photopass cards use QR codes so that won’t work. People don’t have physical AP or ticket cards. So, at the lockers that don’t use facial rec. there always seems to be someone handing out locker cards. If you are able to keep that card for later rides, one less thing to do later.
Photopass yellow vs blue cards. We arrived with a photopass account and two yellow photopass cards. On the photopass website you are able to link the blue temporary cards into your account. So whenever I didn’t have the photopass card handy, I grabbed a blue one and then linked it later. For one of those I got a warning that the card was still locked when I added a ride photo to it. So we went to a photo store location and gave them the email and they unlocked it. Another reason for a lanyard.
ETA: We had no problem getting more Yellow photopass account cards. They asked what happened with the ones I had and I shrugged and said “Black Hole”. She smiled and prepped another one.
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Single rider. As three people, we often have a single rider with us. I have been asking how long their wait was. Mostly the answer has been “I don’t speak English” said in another language.
Yesterday evening we rode Hagrid’s EP and waited 15 minutes. The single rider had waited 16 minutes. She had never ridden it before. She said, “I read that the bike is best. Can I ride the bike?”. She was a little taken back when DH said a flat “No”, and I added “You don’t get a choice”. Her reaction was naive and not anything in negative. It just hadn’t occurred to her.
For Hagrid’s, DD and I always ride together. I am happiest in the sidecar. If DH and I rode together someone might try to bully her into the sidecar. Even the TM seem to assume she will be in the sidecar.
I thought the velicoaster loading was brilliant. One line will be for even groups and one line for odd. Makes ride car Tetris easier.
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Also, the ride operators outside of Epic seem to really really appreciate hearing, “I love this ride”. I guess it is rough to go from the fair-haired child to the red-headed stepchild. We often have the entry to the next ride as our meeting place.
Also I figured out why I was so peeved our first time parking at City Walk. Our buddy wasn’t there. On our trip, the first morning there, we were the first car in the parking lot and with the robes it took a long time to get out of the car. I know you guys are shocked at both those things. We parked on the third level. DH and the parking lot guy had a nice chat while DD and I were getting situated. After that the parking lot guy always had the very first spot saved for us and we would chat with him. I think part of that was that he was a Caddy fan. I of course didn’t expect a saved spot. But EA rope drop should park somewhere inside
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Boggles the mind that they don’t start out at max capacity.
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