Anyone who’s willing to take a look, your feedback is greatly appreciated. Anyone who just wants to tell me I’m wrong and offer no suggestions for improvement, that’s welcome also
I’m planning for a family that does NOT want to do thrill rides (although I convinced them they should try a couple of the tamer coasters), but I put SDD on anyway, so they can look at it and decide if they want to try it. They’ll be going on 7DMT the night before, unless they chicken out. But I left out Sunset Blvd completely from the plan. Their #1 priority for the whole trip is Star Wars, so that is the focus of the TP.
When I went in 2016, I was brought to tears watching Path of the Jedi. And only me. No one else cared. Why? Because really it is little more than a film about nostalgia for those of us who grew up with it, and adverting for the new film(s).
As such, despite the Star Wars focus, I’m not sure it is really worth putting it in the plan unless you have folks like me who grew up with Luke as your hero. Then again, it doesn’t take terribly long.
Also, lunch seems to be quite late. Personally, I’d be starving by then considering an early start (assuming rope drop). Perhaps shuffle things so Indiana Jones is the 3:15 showing instead?
I agree about Path of the Jedi, but they’ll be walking by it and it won’t take away significant time or make them miss anything else, so why not, right?
I’m not sure I can push the lunch break any earlier without needing to skip either Indiana Jones or A Galaxy Far, Far Away (I know, skipping A Galaxy Far Far Away is not really a big deal, but I think it’s kind of cool if you’ve never seen it before).
If they do the 3:15 Indiana Jones, they have to do the 4:30PM A Galaxy. Maybe I should put in in the middle of the Launch Bay touring time?
The other option is to have them grab a Mickey bar (or whatever) while they wait for Indiana Jones to stave off hunger. But then, I usually eat lunch at 11:00 am, so maybe others are okay with a late lunch? They will have been standing in line a really long time by this point, though.
They’re normally on Central Time, so that will actually be 12:45PM to them. Not terribly late. It might need some more tweeks since the official planner who has the credit card didn’t book the HBD dinner when I told her too and now that ADR slot is gone. Hopefully she listens to me and books the lunch like I told her too. I’m pretty sure once she has it guaranteed with a credit card I’ll be able to modify it at will so if an ideal dinner time opens up I can snag it. Apparently not everybody is prepared to make plan changes on a moments notice 24/7. Weird.
Right? She gave me the login info but wouldn’t give me the CC number. It’s probably got no limit anyway, so it’s not like I could cause any trouble with it!
This makes no sense. She can add the credit card to her MDX and then you can book dining for her. No additional credit card info needed. These folks really should have engaged a TA.
Wow, that is a long day at HS. I know it is a CL10 and you’ve done a good job focusing on SW. Is there any advantage to moving ROTR to the end of the day or RDing ROTR and moving MF to end of the day? I’m sure you’ve played around with it plenty but yikes that 400 minutes of waiting is killing me.
Lots of Mickey bars and popcorn refills to fuel them through the day. The new Aliens holiday bucket is so cute, I’m itching to buy it.
I think this trip will live in infamy. Newbies going commando at Christmas on less than 60 days notice.
I really haven’t, thanks for the reminder! I was mostly focusing on not sending them back and forth across the park more than necessary. But with the entrance from TSL, that would make sense and not add much walking.
I think the last time I did it for myself it made me enter the cc every time. That’s why I thought it would be a problem. I just modified the HBD ADR to dinner time and I see where it has the cc saved. That’s good.
You say this is their focus. But where is the time to explore? Without getting into the whole “lack of ambience” issue around GE, there is a ton to look at, and I’ve never even been. The theming is out of this world, Auarbesh inscriptions everywhere, Classic Star Wars fighter starship models, shops to explore.
Seriously, for Star Wars fans I would be allowing a minimum of 90-120 minutes free time in GE. I realise this throws the rest of the plan out. , but the alternative is the rest of the plan goes to pot right from the get-go.
Unless you can persuade them that they can go back later rather than go to TSL, you might want to re-think this part of the plan.
I like the Launch Bay plan, 45 minutes plus time for meet and greets may just about be enough. Although again, they may want more if the movie thing is still showing.
But for starters, have a chat with them about Galaxy’s Edge. It may be you need to start the plan from around 1pm, and leave them to explore GE until then.
Also I’m pretty sure the opening hours will be extended, there may even be EEMH added. At the very least, DHS will likely open at 8 or 8:30.
I was kind of thinking this too. If the opening changes to 8am, likely let in by 7:45, they’ll have about 5 hours.
Another change I’m going to consider is leaving one of the rides for later in the evening. Then they’ll have time to explore in the morning and also get to come back and see it at night.
I’ve revised the TP, primarily to allow enough time for exploring SW:GE and also to move lunch up a little earlier. In order to accomplish this, I’ve split up RotR and MFSR. First question:
Do you think it is realistic to RD RotR and have a 60 minute wait? Just for fun, lets say, park opens at 9AM and you arrive at the park at 8AM. This plan calls for being done with RotR at 10:15AM. So really, assuming they let people start riding early, it may allow closer to 75 minutes of waiting and then 15 minutes for the ride.
There is some buffer built in, as I’ve allowed for 90 minutes of touring the land after riding. I’m just afraid that a)They won’t show up early enough and don’t have the experience to call an audible and realize they’ve hit the peak RD surge and try to hit MFSR with a shortish wait and b) The line for RotR might by 120min+ the rest of the day anyway. Predicted times are down around 40 minutes for MFSR later in the evening, but RotR is predicted for 80-100.
I switched the lunch to Docking Bay 7 (I know, what was I thinking planning for ABC Commissary when there’s a brand new Star Wars QS restaurant!)
The 80 minute wait for SDD will likely not ever happen, I just left that in there in case they decide to give it a go or decide to ride TS Mania again or whatever. I’ll do something else with it eventually, but for now it’s just a placeholder.
, but the alternative is the rest of the plan goes to pot right from the get-go.