Update from the last few days:
Saturday we were back at the Poly and took DH with us this time. He is allergic to pineapple so he had the lime Dole Whip, which I actually hated. It’s more tart than I expected and had more of an artificial candy taste. Same story at the gate, they let us in just to get dole whip.
Tiny castle!
Monday we went to Beach Club. Showed the guard our MO and he asked if we were getting it and leaving right away. I told him we were planning to walk around a bit and eat here and he said ok. We were picking up a mickey bar and I told DS4 we were doing our walk first and that whiners don’t get ice cream. 
We walked the loop of the lake and then ate our ice cream bar. It was a really beautiful and quiet morning.
Today we MO from Riviera and then took the skyliner to Pop. Wandered around Pop and AoA a bit. Kinda curious to see if our experience at the AoA gate would have been repeated, but wanted to ride each segment of the skyliner more. Going over CBR is very pretty, but the Epcot line is my favorite I think. It’s longer and more relaxing.
Heads up to anyone who doesn’t already know, the skyliner line at CBR can get a little insane. They don’t have space to separate the lines, so everybody is funneled into the same line and if you’re changing lines there, you’re sent down the exit ramp to the back of the line. The line at 9 for HS opening was very long. The line at 10:20 was not quite as bad and moved very quickly (but people were going to both HS and EP at that point, so in theory it could have been moving twice as fast) and we waited 15 minutes to board.
There wasn’t a line at all for EP at Riviera, and we had seen a few gondolas at CBR go past empty (maybe one out of 8). My guess is that those are for people ready to board at RR since most people would not be getting off there (although we were).