We were in the world from Sep 3-13, which still wasn’t long enough to do everything!
The first five days were at Riverside. We left after a half day at work and landed about 7p. On the plane i realized that I forgot a few important things like my swim suit and collection of DWAs. I thought I’d have to take a trip to a Target on the way to the resort, but we had friends who are coming down the next day and they went to our house and grabbed everything I forgot. We were a little slow leaving the airport, so I canceled some fast passes for splash and 7dmt, but kept one for msep with the hope we could still make it. While driving from the airport, it looked like bad storms were in the distance, so we just went to the hotel since we expected the parade to be canceled. We were right, and I got an email saying we could have a replacement fast pass for any ride. In an attempt to take advantage of NTKS’ s orbitz promotions, I had booked our first night separately and in a regular room. At the front desk I learned that we would get to be in the royal guest room that I had booked for the rest of our trip-bonus night upgrade! We briefly listened to Ye Haa Bob, grabbed dinner at the food court and settled in for the next day.
We went to DHS for our first day. We had FP+ for ToT and TSMM (I cancelled the third). We got the first space in the parking lot with the diamond AAA pass (I’ll hate to see this benefit go) and joined the crowds at the tapstiles, not all were open, and the ones that were had quite a few people at them, except for the very ends, but right as we were about to be first in that line, another savvy individual swooped in front of us, putting us second. We did the march to the hat, got right up to the rope, and watched the welcome show.
While I liked the 15-20 minute early openings at DHS, I do like opening shows to kick off the day at the parks. I wish other parks still had them.
We headed to tsmm, got buzz and woody’s autographs then went to RnR and ToT. We probably use rider swap passes to the point of exploitation, but I lost count of how many times we rode and re rode various rides. Back to tsmm to use our fpp, and then we rode again using the anytime fast pass we got the night before. The CMs recognized us coming back so soon. My wife and I worked hard to team up for the different games and we had our best scores ever, but still nowhere close to the 400k+ that I see. We proceeded to get fpp after fpp, but I lost count as to how many we got, but we rode tsmm a few more times RnR as well. We walked up to a fpp kiosk at 1124 and got an 11 25 arrival time. While I wish there were more kiosks, I’m glad that you don’t have to walk all the way to the attraction if you are on the other side of the park to get a pass.
It was raining of and on, so we missed the character palooza. We saw the frozen sing a long and thought it was fantastic. We had a fpp for that, but we got great seats without it. The girl in front of me kept turning around and smiling as I sung Hans’ part.
We had lunch at Brown Derby. We split the cobb salad. But it looked like the appetizer portion, we were charged for the full size, but ours was smaller than others I saw. I ordered the burger, which was delicious. I wasn’t impressed by the four small potato wedges that came with it, but the burger was huge and filled me up. My wife ordered the chicken Alfredo which was dreadful. Hardly any sauce. What was there just looked greasy. My wife requested more sauce, and even when it arrived, it didn’t help. Olive garden would have been better. We shared the dessert trio. Blueberry cobbler, chocolate sphere, and banana toffee cake. The server brought the caramel custard instead of chocolate. I don’t know if the server knew he was getting 18% because of TiW, but he was miserable. The only table nearby that didn’t leave before us was another table he was waiting. After he cleared our main course, he was gone for 10 min then came back and asked how we are doing. I Should’ve just asked for the check and gotten a carrot cake cookie. Instead I asked for a desert menu. But really? You leave us for 10 minutes with nothing and we have to ask for the dessert menu and you ask us how we are doing? Not well pal. We were looking forward to eating here again, but we won’t be back soon.