This trip report is part of our larger vacation which started at Universal (you can see those day reports here: 11 Apr, 12 Apr, and 13 Apr). To see day two, go to Day Two. Our party of five consisted of our family (in Disney lexicon: DH age ~40, DW age ~40, DS age 13, DD age 7) as well as our son’s good friend age 12. These trip reports are mostly for me to document our days at Disney, but if there’s any benefit for anyone else, then bonus. These timestamps are all photo/text based (timestamps) or best memory/guess (~).
The goal for Wednesday was of course to get a BG at 0700 and proceed to have the smoothest morning possible by knocking out 75% of HS and then riding most of what we wanted to at Epcot when we hopped right before 1400. That of course never materialized. We did have a good day overall, it just had a very inauspicious start. Disney had a rough morning when it kicked out bogus error messages for everyone trying to get BGs. We had three folks trying at 0700. After practicing on and off for a couple months (and feeling confident in our odds at getting BGs) we had none. I spoke with many folks who had the same message that morning. Some of them did manage to eventually get BGs, however we did not. The managing CM at ROTR told me it was a server capacity/loading issue. I gently (and I do mean gently) told him I spent thousands of dollars and drove a thousand miles to take my family on vacation during a pandemic. While I realized it was not his fault, I told him it was a terrible look for Disney and certainly made me question if it would be worth it to come again if I couldn’t ride the top ride at Disney because they couldn’t get their act together.
Despite not getting BGs, I didn’t let any of the kids see my disappointment. We were still going to RD some headliners and save ourselves a lot of time waiting. Plus we all love HS, so it was still gonna be great! We left our hotel in Disney Springs and got to the Swan parking lot ~0733 (parking in the corner nearest the main road and the walkway) for an official 0900 opening. The walk from here is ~10 min and when we got to the first holding area at the arriving empty skyliner compartments, there were ~60 folks in front of us in three lines. They were holding us here till the temperature check tents were ready to go (which I believe they’ve stopped taking temps at this point). At ~0750 the security guard started us walking forward to the tents, where they held us till ~0811. Then it was through the metal detectors and tapping in with no wait.
- 0817 - Boys RD SDD; ladies RD MMRR with the intent of meeting up directly after in TSL and walking back to MFSR. Wait times for both rides were negligible.
- 0825 - TSMM - with us getting on the second SDD slinky train and the girls held up for a moment on the slower opening Runaway Railcar, I let the boys head onto TSMM (walk on) while I waited for the ladies.
- 0832 - DD, DH, DW queue for TSMM. ~4 min wait
- 0834 - Boys hop back in queue for their second TSMM.
- ~0852 - MFSR queue. So, we had RD’ed two headliner attractions (albeit one per group) and ridden TSMM a couple of times and were in line for another headliner which ended up being a ~25 minute wait (all before official park open).
- ~0930 - Star Tours queue
- ~0952 - Muppets queue; show finished at 1023
- 1030 - Relaxation station; schedule a MO lunch window at Backlot Express (~1215)
- 1055 - In line for MMRR (this would be the ladies’ second time). This was also our longest wait for any ride (~50 min at MMRR) all week (on par with waiting for one of our VQs for Hagrid’s). It was a little rough waiting in the extended queue in the hot sun. Also when we got inside, the ride broke down for ~5 minutes.
- 1210 - Relaxation station at Indiana Jones Stunt Show stage
- ~1220 - Lunch at Backlot Express
- 1250 - Back to Relaxation station to nab a BG, which we did successfully (BG 86)
- 1307 - In line for 1330 Frozen Show (DH, DW, DD). At that time, we were put first in a standby line. Only two people behind us got into the show, so we were fortunate. We let the boys do rides they wanted. They ended up doing TSMM a few times. We figured we’d hang out at Hollywood Studios because our group would get called in the next two hours. We were wrong. There were all kinds of delays with ROTR that day.
- 1410 - Coffee and cold treats in the alley before TSL.
- 1430 - Meet up in shade of TSMM exit queue with the boys. Get them cold treats.
- 1505 - DD and parents visit Alien Swirling Saucers and have what seemed like an interminable 20 minute wait to ride.
- 1540 - Cancel 1830 ADR at Via Napoli via Guest Services near Muppets (they waived the fees as well) as we were unsure when we’d board ROTR. ROTR was experiencing a ton of down time and they kept pushing the expected time for our group to board back and back into the evening. So, we finally decided not to stick around waiting for ROTR to get its act together.
- 1549 - Chip and Dale character cavalcade on way to Skyliner.
- 1601 - On the Skyliner to Epcot
- 1623 - Enter Epcot via International Gateway
- ~1635 - DH, DW and DD queue to ride FEA, while boys head off to ride Mission Space Orange. The queue for FEA extended into China. We waited ~40 min.
- 1707 - Boys done Mission Space
- ~1715 - We finish FEA.
- ~1735 - BGs had finally started getting called again, so we hop back on Skyliner; glad I cancelled our ADR earlier in the day.
- ~1810 - ROTR queue
- 1907 - Stormtrooper room.
- ~1930 - Star Tours (~5 min wait) to close out the evening. We could’ve ridden something else, but we were tired.
- Walk back to Swan with a late dinner at the hotel from Panera (maybe?).
Thoughts: It was a long day, but I was glad in the end we did get a BG, even though it changed our planned schedule pretty dramatically by getting it at the 1300 drop. This way, the pressure was off for us to absolutely need to get a BG for our last day - Fri 16 Apr (We were fortunate to grab BG #2 that morning). I really enjoyed MMRR as did my daughter. Hollywood Studios had solidified itself as my favorite park, and everyone in our group indicated it was theirs as well on the long trip home. My daughter was a champ on the day as we did a lot of walking. I’m not sure how many miles it ended up being, but for a 7 year old in pretty warm weather, she did awesome and with nary a complaint.