I’m sitting down to make some plans for a trip with park time both before & after a cruise in early September so opening up a thread to start a brain-dump of the questions I have as a I go along.
Rough plans are:
Thur
Fly in pick up rental van (late arrival at midnight)
Get to sleep ASAP at offsite hotel (Holiday Inn Resort Lake Buena Vista)
Fri
Islands of Adventure 9am-6pm Option to stay later or until close if we’re not wiped out
Priorities: Hagrid’s, Suessland and of course Butterbeer
Sat
Epcot all the live long day (9am-9pm)
Arriving for rope drop and staying until close, maybe EP Forever?
Priorities: Cosmic Rewind and all the wandering in World Showcase
Sun
Magic Kingdom undetermined start time staying until at least HEA & possibly later
Priorities: HEA, Carousel of Progress, Peoplemover
Mon-Fri Cruisin’ 4 Night Bahamian out of Miami on the Disney Magic
Fri
1/2 day Hollywood Studios
1PM-ish start in the park after driving back from port of Miami in the AM until late Fantasmic!
Priorities: Fantasmic! including DS12’s dragon heist to collect DHS’s Dragon for DLR’s Fantasmic! since Murphy burned to a crisp & there are no plans to replace him [insert snark animal here]
Sat
Half day of
Flight is at 7pm so don’t need to head to airport until 4pm
Morning/early afternoon plan all undetermined but hoping for laid back & have some ideas that need help/fleshing out
Thanks in advance for any help. Starting with Epcot q’s since that’s where I’m at in planning mode:
For Epcot, what’s your best strategy to accomplish Frozen Ever After, Remy’s, Test Track & Cosmic Rewind? And am I on the right track thinking Frozen first (arriving from front entrance since we’re driving)
Is Epcot Forever worth staying to see? Ideas for last-minute spots closest to main entrance appreciated. We love nighttime entertainment & in our visits to DLR every night we include one or two out of fireworks/World of Color/Fantasmic! But we love Epcot & have always left wanting more time so trying to balance out getting into line right before close to do one last thing before leaving out the door to maximize time.
We know about the Remy Challenge & plan to do it. Is there any not to be missed Food & Wine fun or booths? We’ve done Flower & Garden both times we’ve been to Epcot & have loved the topiaries & butterfly landing so anything like that is just our jam & don’t want to miss the Food & Wine things that might be like that.
There is typically a Halloween party in MK on Sunday nights with the park closing to regular guests at 6:00pm with no HEA fireworks. I would check your date for MK and maybe switch your Epcot/MK days.
Good callout! Because HEA is our #1 must do for MK this trip, I did plan our MK day around dates for Halloween parties and knew there was one both Friday’s for the dates we’re around, but didn’t have a Sunday party in my notes so I got scared for a second that I’d missed it!!
But I just double checked & the Sunday we’re there (probably bc it’s Labor Day weekend) there’s no Sunday party. But I would’ve been so so so glad you pointed that out if I had missed it, so definitely a good callout.
Are you planning on VQ or ILL for Guardians? Are you getting G+?
Check out the Eat to the Beat schedule to see if there is a band you would like to see. Look at the menus on the food booths to see if there is anything your family really wants to try.
Full disclosure: I loved the version with the jet skis and kites pre covid and haven’t seen the current version. We skipped in favor of HEA and Fantasmic. I do love Beacons of Magic and that’s an easy one to fit in.
Might be a game-time decision based on whether you’ve already ridden Remy and FEA or want to re-ride them.
Highly recommend the VQ plus an ILL for GotG. It’s that good and the ILL is your insurance policy.
Definitely planning on VQ. Will possibly do ILL, but bc this is a 2nd WDW+Cruise trip in a year, we’re also ok with not spending all the extras.
Likely not. We got it in March for our HS & EP days and so we were able to get a lot accomplished, so this is truly a bonus trip & especially in Epcot a stop and smell all the Food & Wine/World Showcase roses.
Ooh very fun callout! Just checked our day and it’s Baha Boys. I didn’t recognize the name, so looked them up & they sing a very notorious song that I definitely know. I turned to DH & asked him, " Hey would you ever want to hear [insert name of song] played live by the band who released it?" DH: “You mean Baha Boys?” So he totally knew but we’re a maybe on it. The younger kids might get a kick out of it though. And in case you, like me didn’t know what song it was. It’s about and determining the identity of the personage(s) that let them out.
Thanks, off to read up on what this is since this is the first I’ve heard of it.
This is very likely the plan. If we have it in us to stand upright for another minute & have done all we want to do, we’ll probably see it. But I highly doubt our ability to be able to say we’ve done all we want to do in Epcot. Based on our past 2 trips where every one of our 3 Epcot days on it has been like “Awww man, we have to go home already?”
Oh we know we love it based on the one time we got on using VQ in Epcot earlier this year! Well, at least the 4 of us that are tall enough & can tolerate thrill rides. My DS6 is a big NO on most coasters and DD3 isn’t tall enough so we might not do both VQ/ILL. (Because it was like a 2-3 hour ordeal to do Test Track, Rider Switch Test Track, GotG VQ, GotG Rider Switch last trip and that cut into a huge amount of Epcot time, so we’ll see).
Since Genie was introduced, I haven’t done Epcot without G+ so I can’t advise on a no G+ Epcot visit based on experience, but my thought is that without having Early Entry, the Remy line will already be crazy by regular RD so you should start with FEA and then pick Remy or TT based on how long the lines are at the time. If plan to stay late, maybe do one of them during or after Epcot Forever.
G+ means no wait for FEA and Remy though…that gives you extra rose smelling time. Plus the Duck Tales adventure! We ran out of time but I know DS6 will love it.
Very good point. Now I have to go consult the family CFO (DH who is an accountant) about a budget request for G+. Once we’re there he’s a LOT more likely to say “You know, we’re here, we might as well do the things, what’s another $25/person for the 2 days we’ll make lots of use of it?” but I also know right now he is in a “We need to keep costs as low as possible on this trip” mode whenever he looks at the budget.
According to thrill data there is a bit of a lull late morning/around lunch for Remys that might be worth keeping an eye out for! In case you decide to not go for g+
G+ is per park pricing now too, in case you didn’t know, so if you were to get it for only Epcot it would be slightly cheaper. Today is at $19 instead of MK’s $27. Not a lot, but just saying, every dollar matters
Awesome, this is going in the back pocket for LL strategy. And I think the general idea is to have DS12/DH go for a VQ for Cosmic Rewind at the same time? Is that still the thought- so it’s earlier before crowds build?? And the newest phone should be the one trying to deal with MDE and LL’s? But VQ’s could still be done in BG1 and so don’t necessarily matter the age/speed of connection?
Very good to know!! And that could align just after a mid-morning Les Halles “brunch”. Which sounds perfectly perfect for the kind of Epcot day we’re hoping to have.
This absolutely matters! And that high MK price is probably one of the reasons we will almost never purchase G+ in MK. I just can’t seem to reconcile in my brain paying to skip lines at WDW for the same attractions I know how to get to in DLR with minimal waits & frequently do.
We were able to use BG1 for VQ’s for Roger’s the Musical in DLR so I’m hopeful it will stay that way for at least another 2 weeks.
Before BG1 we personally found that the newest phone/device out of all that we would try was the successful one so we would often let that one hog whatever connectivity resources we could. In the early days with Rise BGs, we were only successful about 50% of the time, until we learned all the tips & tricks here. So trying to remember back to those days now that BG1 can’t help us for any time sensitive LL’s.
pick up rental van (late arrival at midnight)
9am-6pm Option to stay later or until close if we’re not wiped out
all the live long day (9am-9pm)
undetermined start time staying until at least HEA & possibly later
4 Night Bahamian out of Miami on the Disney Magic
