Last fall I went on a blowout 9 night, 50th birthday trip to WDW, and I had SO MUCH FUN! My brother happily stayed home to keep an eye on Mom, because heat and crowds and all that are just not his thing. But he’s a massive Star Wars fan, and I could tell he was a little jealous seeing my pictures and hearing me talk about flying the Millennium Falcon. I’ve been longing to go back, and thinking about how much fun it would be to do Galaxy’s Edge with him. So I floated the idea of a fly in, hit the park, fly home trip with him, and he said yes!
I think we’ve settled on a date in May. (Not the 4th, as much fun as that would be. Too crowded.) I’ve found a flight that arrives at MCO at 7:15 am. I’m thinking an Uber directly to HS should get us there by 9 am, correct? The latest flight home I can find is 7:50 pm. What time should we leave HS to go back to MCO? I was thinking 4:30 or 5 pm? I don’t want to lose valuable park time, but I don’t want to risk missing the flight, either.
We discussed Lightning Lane options, and I think this might be the one instance where Premier Pass makes sense for us. I know pricing hasn’t been released that far out yet, but does anyone have a guestimate for the first week of May? Pricing for the rest of February is as low as it goes, but then it shoots up in March for all the spring breakers. Is it likely to come down much? TP thinks HS will be a 6 tomorrow and on the day we’re considering. Has anyone noticed a correlation between the TP crowd calendar predictions and PP pricing? Once you get past the idea of spending several hundred dollars each to skip the line, I’m not sure if it really matters if it’s $309 or $369, but I’m trying to get a realistic idea of the total cost of the trip.
Also, is there any way to create a touring plan with the Premier Pass in mind? I’ve been playing around, assigning each ride a LL return time, but I suspect it’s not as efficient as it could be.
This sounds amazing! I think you’ll definitely be able to arrive at the park before 9 if your plane is on time. And I would be “in the uber” at 5:15 for the ride back. I like to get to the airport about 90 minutes early, if I’m not checking a bag.
I agree that LLPP would be a great idea on a day like this so you can spend your time soaking up the park and enjoying each ride.
True. And with losing at least 4 hours of park time at the end of the day, we need every advantage we can get. I don’t think I could stomach the cost if we had more time and flexibility, but I’m afraid with LLMP we’ll run into rides that are sold out or not available until after we need to leave the park. My brother has been clear that this will be a one and done for him, so I want to make sure he gets to see and do everything he can.
I was checking pricing in MDE yesterday and noticed when HS sold out. My plan is to buy as soon as my 3 day window opens and keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t sell out before then. It’s not Thanksgiving/Christmas/spring break or a three day weekend, so I’m hopeful they will still be available.
I typically work backwards. For SW I figure boarding 30 mins prior. I want to make that one time because no assigned seating. But that is still a good rule of thumb for any airline I suppose. It’s hard to gauge traffic and security but 45 mins for travel, 30 mins for security, 15 mins for what ifs and that’s 2 hours before flight time. You have no luggage to contend with so that should be tight but manageable with a little time built in for snafus. If you REALLY want to be cautious add 30 mins for a total of leaving 2.5 hours before flight time. I would be good with 2 personally. That’s what we normally do with carry on luggage. So 5 seems good. Start exiting the park at 4:40 - 4:45 and call your Lyft.
Not with optimization but you could add everything and put minimize walking. You may still have to shuffle things around. If you set your pace to as quick as possible you can then add in LLs individually, evaluating every few steps to get food stops and shows in line.
I usually head out of the park 3 hours before my flight. I also have CLEAR and precheck, so that speeds up security, and I generally spend an hour waiting in the club so I could probably easily shave off 30 min. And you won’t need to do anything with your baggage.
I did for MK (it doesn’t make sense for me for Hollywood as I won’t ride ToT or RnRR, so I was able to do all my things between 10-1 with LLMP and MFSR single rider). It was really expensive (I paid $350) but at MK in 10 hours, I ate three meals / snacks and experienced 24 attractions, so I am a fan. Again, expensive, but I was sooooooooo relaxed, just doing everything in a section and moving on and not worrying about having to be in a certain place at a certain time.
I did HS with LLPP. I didn’t create a TP for that day. The order we rode was MMRR, all three TSL rides, both SW:GE rides, ToT, RnRc and then watched the early showing of Fantasmic. The only ride we skipped was Star Tours and we skipped all the shows except Fantasmic.
We were there on a high end of moderate crowd level day in November (maybe a 6 or 7 in the crowd calendar) (not the busy Thanksgiving week). As I recall, the price was $329/person.
