If park reservations go…

In hindsight, this is one of my favorite Disney memories. I loved that morning.

I don’t want that system to come back at all. But that was a fun Disney day for us. The sky looked like this at dawn which is when we woke up to head to HS.
Sigh. Memories.

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Yep, our first ride we woke up at 4am to get in the line!

One nice thing about no APR and trying at 7am with everyone is if you don’t get a BG you can just go to a different park!

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And all the shouts and sighs of every single person in HS at 7am.

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Yup. I love me a collective feeling or energy like a crowd cheering at a sporting event or singing along at a concert and the hush over people in the park as the clock ticked towards 7am and the cheering as people secured BGs just made me really happy. Admittedly I’d have likely felt differently had we not obtained BGs ourselves.

I also think it feels special because it was only like that for a few months and those few months were right before the world and The World changed forever.

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Could they keep APR’s but remove the current limits on it? Meaning, you still select dates and parks, but they don’t sell out until it is truly 100% capacity?

They did? I don’t recall that at all. I mean, the time they were available was a little longer, sure, but It was still a cut-throat free for all at 7AM. The only difference was the screams of defeat(and subsequent arguing/blaming of each other in the party for not being fast enough) were heard in the hotel rooms, not the park grounds.


it was the 100% interruption of activity in the park at 10AM for me. Wild to witness.

And I don’t see why it wouldn’t go back to this (but probably go back to the 7AM lottery). Though I would prefer if you had to be in the park for it (cause of the aforementioned crowd energy) It sucks from an experience perspective, having part of your day reduced to a lottery, but it worked well enough. Better than standing in a line for 7 hours with the hope the ride doesn’t go down, anyway.

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I guess I’m thinking in terms o throngs of people lining up earlier and earlier every day so as to be in park before the VQ dropped.

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ah ok. Yeah the reservations did cut down that part until they moved it to the 7AM time.

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But they moved it to 7am before park reservations existed. It worked fine and I’m sure that’s how it will work again when/if they do away with APR’s

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I had forgotten about that.

Why do I only have visions of throngs of people rushing the gates?

:rofl:

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Holy Cow that picture should be on a Disney Museum wall somewhere…it’s swoon gorgeous and that’s my least desired resort to visit and it makes me want to go!

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Sigh. The good 'ole days LOL, J/K I remember doing this two mornings in a row. We did it on our rest day to try it out before my parents joined us the next day because I was absolutely terrified of this system and getting a BG and didn’t want to disappoint the 'rents. It was brand new Jan '20 (marathon week). We did get a BG thanks to the instructions here on this site both days and I got a better one the 2nd day with my 'rents because of my practice.

oh did they? i don’t remember that. I thought the reservations came first

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Probably because it was a clusterfuck and there were several discussions around here about why no one ever knew what time HS was going to let people in. :wink:

It was awesome! So many days of getting a BG, riding ROTR and then hopping (at 9 or 10am) to another park! Ahhh the good ole days :rofl:

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It really is swoon gorgeous. @WakandaForever is a gifted photographer–I’ve been admiring her countdown photos for awhile! I’m personally invested in her January countdown so that I can see the pictures she takes :rofl:

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This was the case at the beginning and stayed the case at DLR. Your memeory is accurate!

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Where can I find these?!

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Oh phew. I’m in my late 40s so… :rofl:

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Aw thank you. I tried to take the advice of @Randall1028 from a TR he did a couple years ago about taking time to line up my camera and to play around with camera settings before the trip but I’ve yet to master it. His trip photos during my pandemic isolation while waiting for kids to become vaccine eligible were life giving during some pretty somber days. Inspired me to take more photos on my own trips.

We’ve got strolling through WS and AK at the “golden hour” penciled into our theoretical plans for next month to try and capture some good photos. I will make sure to share plenty. My DS wants to try a live TR this time and maybe a scavenger hunt type of game so we’ll see.

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