My family which is a group of 9 (7 adults, 2 small kids) have 8:05am reservations at Crystal Palace in MK on a Monday morning in late June with a 9am park opening and CL 7, and an 8:05am reservation at Hollywood &Vine on a Tuesday morning also 9am park opening and a CL 6. No EMM or EMH scheduled for these parks on these days.
Can someone please walk me through the timing and steps for the PPO breakfasts at these parks? We are staying at Pop and AOA.
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What time do we need to be at busses? Is Pop or AOA busses better to use, or does it not matter?
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Where do we go once we arrive at the parks? Is there a special location for breakfast people? I understand MK let’s people in as early as 7:45am to walk around Main Street, is this correct? Will we just be let in with everyone else that is there that early? For HS, I hear they let people into the park now by around the same time, maybe 7:50am instead of at the gates and there is no longer a dedicated gate for breakfast people. Is this correct? Basically my concern is are we going to potentially be stuck behind a hoard of people at these parks unable to get to our 8am breakfast on time?
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How long is the walk from gates to Crystal Palace? Will there be time for a group photos in front of the castle at MK before breakfast. This is my number one thing I want to do. Are there photopass photographers availabile that early?
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How long is the walk from the gates to H&V? Will there be time to sign up for Jedi training for my nephew in HS before breakfast. Where do we go for this?
- How much time should we allot for the character breakfasts? I understand they are buffets… but the 2 kids in our group will likely want to meet all the characters. Possibly not tho, they could be scared as they are quite young. Can individuals from a dining party leave early? Say, if me and DH wanted to leave before rest of my family is done eating, can we do that?
I’ll try to help. Did an 8am at CRT last week.
Unfortunately I cannot speak to the bus schedule. You should check the schedule when you arrive at the hotel and confirm with concierge. At MK in the gate area, there is an area to the left where CM will check your breakfast reservations to ensure you can be let into the park early. For CRT they gave us a pamphlet to show as we walked through the park to get to the castle. Gates opened up around 7:45ish to let early breakfast into the park. I don’t know how fast you are but I would budget about 5 minutes to walk from the gate to CP - maybe 10 minutes since you have a larger party. CP is not that far from the end of Main Street. You should have time to take pictures in front of the castle. They even have CM photographers there to take pics if you have a photo pass. But if you walk all the way up to the castle for pics you will have to backtrack somewhat to get back to CP, adding a few more minutes. Upon arriving at CP, how quickly you are seated depends on how long it took you to walk there any how many people are in front of you waited to be seated. You could be seated immediately or need to wait a few more minutes. Budget at least an hour for breakfast. May take longer if breakfast is full and characters are slow to matriculate. There are a lot of characters at CP, so decide if you want to see them all. If you do, you may not get out in time to beat the rope drop crowd close to 9am. Our family was first to be seated at CRT at 8am and we finished roughly at 9 but were still a few minutes behind the rope drop crowd - resulting in a 30 minute wait for PP. So plan accordingly.
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Thank you, this is very helpful!
Ok I’ll walk you through but you have to pay for my meal. 
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Buses start around 6:30am, so I would be out there by then. The resort will probably tell you that buses don’t run until an hour before park opening. However this is incorrect and we have gotten a bus before that. Since you already got instructions for MK, I’ll do HS. There is also an ADR line for this park, on the left hand side at the turnstiles. They do tend to let people in at 7:45ish. When they let you in, you can head straight to the Jedi training sign ups, which is past H&V. There should be a CM to direct you, but if not, it is at the Indiana Jones store. Once you have signed up, you can head back to H&V to check in. Other than that, there is no rope drop advantage. If you can finish eating in time, you can make it out with the rope drop crowd to wait for internal rope drop. This is the only restaurant that does PPO at HS, so there is not a huge amount of people that will be heading in. It is much easier than MK.