So some of you may have followed along the rollercoaster (or trainwreck) that was my trip planning back in december. You can read all about it here: This is very embarrasing... no park reservations... -> we are going, I think!
To sum it up, last fall our whole trip to the US (due to travel restrictions from Europe, among other things) seemed so unlikely that I was fully expecting to cancel the WDW trip along with everything else. As the restrictions eased up, it became a bit more likely that we would travel, but we were still very uncertain about WDW. Ultimately, we chose to go as the covid situation in Florida hadn’t blown up (this time around) yet and we were healthy, vaccinated and willing to take the calculated risk of getting sick (we were spending the following 2+ weeks in FL pretty much on our own any way). Would I make a different choice now? Maybe, because even though we avoided covid, it did bring a lot of stress which I will talk more about later.
So these unusually late decisions, along with being stressed out of my mind at work and various other things, meant that 3 weeks before the trip, I realized we had no park reservations. Almost all parks were fully booked, but as you can read in the other thread, eventually availability started showing up and I managed to secure park reservations to everywhere else but HS, where we would hop to. At this point I was in a complete haze having gone back and forth between travelling and not travelling several times. So we are going now?! We squeezed a day at UOR into one empty day too - my family has never been there and I haven’t been in 20 years, so this was exciting.
Our whole idea was that this time, with no more FP and it being a busy time, we will take it easy and try to fit in our favorite rides and leave plenty out. Well that sort of worked out and sort of didn’t…
This was the plan:
Dec 18th: arrival
19th: MK and park hop to HS
20th: Universal
21st: Epcot with option to hop to HS
22nd: AK
Oh and travelling? Me, my wife, daughter (10) and son (7)
Arrival at Polynesian
We arrived late on dec 18th and checked into the Polynesian. It was our first time here, I’ve been wanting to go since I was a kid and now, after the refurbishment, seemed like a perfect time. We instantly fell in love with it, largely influenced by our room: we had a 1br suite in the Tonga building which meant a very close proximity to the Ceremonial House and an amazing view of the marina, lagoon and MK. For various reasons (including my daughter’s neurodevelopmental quirks and my insomnia) we have concluded that we need at least a seperated bedroom in our room to avoid losing our minds. In WDW terms this means either a suite or two rooms, which limits availability and usually means $$$$. This suite ended up being the best option for us, I was surprisingly able to book it quite late. It was awesome as was Poly altogether.
Would you look at it? Just look at it!
So our first day just included checking in and everyone else was asleep by 8PM. As usual, I went to tour the hotel as is my habit at night, and I ended up watching the fireworks from the beach. This was my first time seeing Enchantment, I avoided looking at any videos of it and I think it was worth it!
First park day:
We were jetlagged and up before 5am. The plan was to be at MK at rope drop - it was a 7am opening. Naturally, both of the kids had their individual meltdowns (wrong backpack, I can’t wear these shorts, my shoes are uncomfortable, I don’t want to eat this, I’m not going anywhere if I can’t bring this or that…) By the time we got out we were of course runnig late. We hopped on the monorail, making it to the gate at around 7:05. I believe people were already in queues at this point, I was trying to hustle with Genie to book ILL’s for HS and get some G+ selections for MK - this was impossible and ridicilous to do while simultaneously trying to make a 7am opening, but I managed to get them.
We headed straight to 7DMT, which was posting I think a 60-70 minute wait but actual wait was less than 30 minutes.
Two years ago my son was afraid of roller coasters and now he loves them!
We rode Speedway, Dumbo, Barnstormer, Peoplemover and Buzz. Crowds had been pretty low until 10am and we had gotten plenty done.
We headed to lunch as soon as Cosmic Ray’s opened - it’s become a tradition for us because it’s one of the first places to serve lunch at 10:30 - due to the 5hr time difference we are usually starving by then. First meal at a park usually means going a bit overboard:
After lunch, we rode Buzz again (everyone’s favorite), went by some shops (my daughter’s priority). The plan was to go to Haunted Mansion but my son decided he doesn’t want to go and daughter felt indifferent, so we skipped, instead heading to BTMRR.
We strolled around the castle with no rush. My son wanted to find every penny press in the park. Something fun I had never paid attention to / noticed before was this window display, I think it was at Sir Mickey’s:
Upon heading out, we saw a cavalcade and spent plenty of time at the Emporium. As we had already gotten our top priorities done, we headed back to Poly for a short pause. A rather eventful day and it was only 1PM!
We ate a very early “dinner” at Poly and grabbed an Uber to HS around 3pm. We had spent quite a bit of time in HS and particularly SWGE two years ago (building light sabers, droids, riding the Falcon etc) but one thing I missed out on back then was RotR as it broke down just before my boarding group, on our last day. This time we would go on day 1 and I had secured ILL’s for all of us.
We started with MMRR which was our other ILL for the day. My son had watched videos of it and was particularly excited for it. It was a fun ride, visually beautiful, but like in many rides, had a bit too much of everything crammed into a couple of minutes. I would’ve preferred it to be a bit less hectic.
I couldn’t help but wonder how much they thought about instagram and youtube when they designed this ride - it’s extremely photogenic.
We did Star Tours for the first time with the kids, they liked it! HS was quite busy so we didn’t feel like queueing much - we spent quite a bit of time wandering around Batuu, doing some shopping and looking at all sorts of things and details we hadn’t noticed before. The theming continues to impress me.
By our ILL time for RotR at 6pm, the kids were so tired they were close to giving in. We made it onto the ride and it was everything we had hoped for! Impressive, immersive, visually and technically stunning and at times thrilling. I didn’t tell anyone there was a drop at the end and that was absolutely the best part!
After this, it was a bus ride back to Poly. This was the first time I felt really uncomfortable about crowds - the bus was packed and people didn’t wear their masks properly. There were two kids coughing a lot on. I was tired and getting a bit claustrophobic 
We made it back and I was surprised my kids were still awake at 9pm. They have never cared much for fireworks or night time shows. we’ve actually only watched HEA once in the park with them as they’ve been mostly in bed by 9. It doesn’t help my daughter is sensitive to loud noises. But this time, they were not only up but glued to the window (and at times on the balcony) for the entire show and it was as magical as it ever gets 
Day 2 - Universal
In the morning we decided that, even though we have just one day at UOR, we will not rush there because yesterday the kids had been up for 19 hours and on the move for most of the day. We shall again prioritize and paid an arm and a leg for Express passes. I’m once again justifying this by having cancelled an entire 3 week trip to the US in 2020, but my god UOR was expensive during peak season.
We got to the park around 10am. It was only our second day and unfortunately I was having issues with some nerve pain in my leg. I had forgotten how much walking there is at UOR just to get to the parks, let alone tour two of them. Somehow, by taking it very slow, I made it there, but I wasn’t sure if I was making it back, it was that bad and I had taken every painkiller I had and stretching at every point I could.
We made our way around the east side of Studios. It was evident that UOR was way, way more packed on this day than what MK had been the day before, and unfortunately it also seemed like all the people avoiding WDW mask mandates were here. Zero preventive measures anywhere and about half of people unmasked inside. Didn’t feel great. But we were there so we’d push on. I think it’s quite telling that I have 3 photos on my phone from that day and about 50 from the day before simply because it was that stressful.
We rode Minion Mayhem, ET and Simpsons. We were hungry and so were 10 thousand other people apparently, because every restaurant had a line stretching out the door. Donuts from Lard Lad? Maybe our only choice unless we want to wait an hour. I went to buy some water from Duff Brewery as there was no line and what do you know, they have corn dogs!!! So corn dogs it was. Of course, I sat in bird poop.
Our top pick for the day was riding one of the big rides in Wizarding World - it didn’t even exist the last time I was at UOR. If it wasn’t clear earlier, it was clear now that the park was PACKED. Diagon Alley was filled wall to wall, it was uncomfortable and sadly we couldn’t really take any of it in and enjoy the area. We decided to ride Escape from Gringots and this ended up being the most uncomfortable experience in terms of covid/crowds on this trip. Everything starting from the ridicilously crammed and compulsory lockers was incredibly crowded, much more so than anything at WDW. The queue was tightly packed and even the Express pass lane felt like it took forever. I think we queued for about 50 minutes but it felt like half a day in the tight corridors.
We finally made it onto the ride and it was pretty impressive, I have to say. The queue was impressive too but I couldn’t really focus on it. Gringots was more thrilling than RotR but obviously it relies more on screens. I really liked the combination of a roller coaster and simulator-style ride, but I often find 3D rides problematic and that was the case here too. A very cool experience after what was the worst queue experience.
After the ride, we wanted to get out of Diagon Alley asap. I’m really bummed we didn’t get to enjoy it and I’m curious whether it’s often like this? Compared to for example Batuu, it felt incredibly claustrophobic.
We headed to Hogwarts Express to get to IoA. Another rather long queue despite EP. The building/station, the train and all the theming and details were cool, the experience itself maybe a bit lackluster. Of course, they crammed other (unmasked…) people with us into the cabin.
When we got to IoA, it was pouring. I really wanted to ride Hagrid’s, but it was going to be a long queue and rain, so it wasn’t going to happen. The whole day at Universal had felt hectic and uncomfortable due to the crowd, so we decided on two rides (other than Hagrid…) that we really wanted to do. They were Spider Man (picked by my son) and Hulk (picked by my daughter) - both classics so I was happy with that. Surprisingly, I was able to still walk ok at this point, but it wasn’t enjoyable by any means. We quickly went by some shops, both kids had meltdowns because they had already spent their money and they were tired. It was still raining, everyone was fed up (at least we had rain jackets), we hadn’t had dinner and were starving. if we could make it to the car in one piece it’d be a success.
I’m not gonna lie, it was a pretty dreadful day - super crowded, tons of unmasked people, hard to get food, every store crowded… And the cold, wind and rain to top it all off. We absolutely should’ve done a no-park day, but I pushed it with trying to accomplish a bit too much in 4 days. And that’s not all folks - we had to stop by a pharmacy on the drive back and managed to pick some Walgreen’s that had a horribly long queue, which is the last thing we needed along with the kids fighting in the car.
But even after all of this, eventually, Disney saved the day. Eating dinner in the room and later watching Enchantment from the balcony made it feel like everything was ok again.
TBC…
Yes, that place is huge!