I always preferred this way because it is much much quicker and you get an ac room to watch tv in.
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Just more proof in how dumb AI is!! 
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I stressed out so much planning for this that I wanted to document for future readers what I had planned vs. what I accomplished! I said this on another thread, that I do think Touring Plans has figured out the Crowd Levels. I believe the “4” was accurate for Epic on the day we were there. But the predicted wait times were still pretty far off. I timed every wait we did so hopefully as time goes by they will get better.
Here was my plan:
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We left the hotel room around 7:15. I had heard that the buses start at 7:30. Turned out they started at 7:45 for Cabana Bay.
We saw a rainbow and a friend of mine said that it was the gays giving me luck 
I don’t quite have exact times after this, but it was at least about a 15 minute drive to the park. We got in the security line literally as it opened! They let people through security and up to the ticket booths and then held us. We were the last family through security, maybe 10 groups back from the ticket booths. We were held here with enough time to rearrange the bag a little bit and apply sunscreen but less than 10 minutes I would think.
The ticket booths opened around 8:30. It was a little bit slow because they were taking pictures. This picture is from 8:35. It was not complete madness, so we felt comfortable stopping for a couple quick pics.
We were then held in Celestial Park but not quite at the portals for another about 15 minutes. DH had time to go put our big bag in a locker and this is when the skies opened up and downpoured on us! Luckily we had umbrellas so we were fine. My back got drenched but it had been very hot and sunny up until this point so I was ok with that.
I’m not sure if it was the rain or just the timing, but they seemed to let the line forward to get under cover for a few minutes and then let us go towards the portals at probably 8:45/50ish. We went to Nintendo! They checked for hotel cards (not very thoroughly) before we got on the escalator. (Non EE guests could queue off to the right.) It was a very cool, surreal experience! We loved the powerup sound!
We went straight to Bowser’s Challenge and this time stamp is 8:59am. (Mine Cart Madness is not open for EE but you would have to go down the stairs for that. People were heading down there to line up early but I do not think it even opened at 10am.)
This was an incredible line! It was air conditioned and we were walking as slowly as we could to see everything.
My kids loved reading all the different book titles. And there were ghosts flitting around too!
We were in the pre-show at 9:20. A lot of this was just the time it took to walk the queue, but there were also a decent amount of folks in the EP line at this time. I don’t know why you wouldn’t save your EP for a second ride?
Again, there was such cool theming in this queue. But I was shocked at how many stairs.
This is from 9:28 and we are just about to ride!
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This was a family favorite ride! It was fun for all ages and Mario Kart is such a universally fun game. I got the high score in our car! This was the first time I could somewhat tell that the staff were still learning. They had to let a couple of cars go empty because they couldn’t load people fast enough.
We were on and hustled off to Berk. I had prepped the kids up and down that we would come back to Nintendo and they could play games and see everything later. If they had been younger I think it would have been really hard to drag them away. But they were very good sports to hustle over to Berk. We had the portal in sight at 9:47am.
You can see the two lines on either side of the portal. The left line was shorter (maybe?) so we went in that one but ultimately had to go to the right so we had to weave a little. We were a little behind the schedule in my mind but there weren’t THAT many people in front of us.
This part of rope drop I had literally scoured the internet for videos and pictures of and couldn’t really find. (But there’s 9,357 reports of the first day of the same old F&W festival!) I don’t like how they allow non-EE guests to line up ahead of EE guests. If there was still time left in EE we should have been allowed either into Berk or the front of the line. But it’s good if you don’t have EE you can be first in line for Toothless!
They did a little chant at about 9:50 and off we went! We were able to get in front of some groups and many went to Hiccup’s Winged Gliders, but we were on a Toothless mission!
We got to the line at 9:54. Toothless and Hiccup were doing their thing but the other Vikings warned us that the line would not start until 10am. I would say we were behind maybe 10-15 groups.
They started meeting very promptly at 10am and then at 10:15 there was a commotion and out came Stormfly! (Astrid’s dragon)
She did a little pre-meet and greet with the line and her Viking was fantastic. I think they did this to soften the blow that Astrid was swapping out with Hiccup. We had warned our boys up and down that Hiccup isn’t guaranteed, just Toothless. They were a little bummed but were fine.
We were next in line and I saw the Viking give a little hand signal and I though we were not going to get to meet her but that meant we were the last ones! We met Stormfly at 10:24am.
This picture is my favorite!
Then we met the big cheese at 10:33!
It was such a great M&G and the 30 minute wait was totally worth it. Also, I do not think the handler took her finger off the camera button during either dragon encounter. Like that is 1/10th of my camera roll!
We told DS9 that we could do one pic with his mask on and one with it off! (They were pretty firm about 2 posed pictures per group.) I did NOT feel rushed even with the picture limit. We chatted with Astrid for what felt like a really long time. Which is also why the wait is usually 90 minutes all day, but again, super fun.
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We hustled over to Hiccup’s Winged Gliders and I have a pic of our locker at 10:51. That line was cranking at that point so we could not have waited more than 15 minutes. This was another point where the poor CMs seemed overwhelmed. They had 3 CMs trying to load two sides of the coaster. Again seats were going empty because they couldn’t get people staged in time. It doesn’t help that people are on stairs so aren’t exactly streaming down the platform like BTMR. (again more stairs)
This was an awesome ride! Honestly I think it was my favorite. I think all of the reviews I had read were accurate that it’s very similar to Slinky. (It might be a touch more intense and
goes backwards for 5 seconds.
) The storyline was super cute and my kids were surprised to see the figures along the ride. And it felt nice to hear Hiccup’s voice in our ears! I was SO proud that DS6 rode it. He looked a little scared in the beginning but there was a big smile on his face for most of it.
We were still aligned with my plan at this time and you could tell there wasn’t tons of foot traffic around so we smelled the roses a little bit. Thankfully didn’t have to smell the belch that emanated from this guy.
The very cool Toothless thing like this was broken.
We had to check out the Viking Training Camp! It was really neat.
We circled all the way around and were still able to pretty much walk onto Fyre Drill at 11:43am.
This was very fun and we definitely got soaked! I got a literal bucket of water dumped almost straight on me. It was hot enough and I had the light dress on that I was fine. I had listened to a podcast that mentioned that they had permanently put the ride on “winter mode” due to people getting “too wet.” It was very obvious that the water wasn’t on full blast which was frustrating because you could only actually reach about 50% of the targets. I hope they are able to go back and somehow recalibrate it. I’m not sure if this is a spoiler, but
the different targets that you hit do different things to get you wet.
It’s really neat!
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At this point I was still surprised at how quiet Berk was. We were getting hungry but I made us wander around a little bit so I could dry off and not freeze at lunch.
We mobile ordered at Mead Hall. This was just too easy. When you get there and find a table you scan the QR code and they bring it to the table. Even alcohol!
The food everywhere was very good and had a lot of variety and much more healthy than I was expecting.
DS9 and I went to the bathroom and on our way back our good man Gobber was in his workshop! He got DS to try and wake up Grump to no avail. Gobber also tactfully pointed out that I had a fungus on my arm. (I was wearing the Toad PowerUp band.)
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Berk is so pretty!!
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It was about 1:10ish that the latest round of weather was rolling in.
The rides started to go down so we hustled over to the Untrainable Dragon show. I was expecting it to be full due to the weather and the time of day but we honestly came in with maybe 5 minutes to showtime and there were plenty of seats.
It was AMAZING! It was really cute with the storyline and the live music. I’m unclear what people would consider a spoiler at this point so I won’t post pics but do not sleep on this show. It brought tears to my eyes.
(There was some disappointment that they were sold out of the baby dragon eggs. 
)
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Haven’t heard of this…off to Google…
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I have this picture from 2:15pm. I am not sure what we went to Nintendo for but we played some of the games.
Then we got the app alert (also a cool function) that Battle at the Ministry was down to a 25 minute wait! We had absolutely set our expectations that we would not experience this ride but then walked with purpose over to the France portal.
You can see that there is no actual line in here. Everyone is just walking through. We did stop in a later room but I know we did not even wait 20 minutes total. DS6 got a little spooked and I had no frame of reference to tell him if he would or would not like the ride, so we did rider swap with him.
The ride was very cool! I had no real motion sickness and it felt SO real. It’s really the Harry Potter version of Rise of the Resistance in terms of immersion. I wish I had gotten to ride again. DS9 got that honor and I picked up DS6 and we left. We took some pics on the way out. Not the most flattering angle from a 6 year old.
We walked around and caught the end of the musical act that was REALLY good! We have not seen the Fantastic Beasts movies but there was some fluffy animal involved in this show that DS6 loved. I didn’t see it in a shop though!
DH texted that the ride had gone down just as they were about to ride and they were going to be 20 extra minutes so DS6 and I waited at the Cafe. I enjoyed a gillywater and we shared a butterbeer crepe.
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I know someone going in December and I am hoping that they have them by then!
Molly and Alan of Mammoth Club did like a 20 minute video of them adopting the dragon babies and DS9 had been saving exactly enough money. I did feel really bad, as did the shop CMs.
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The got off the ride and DH who has not read or seen anything Harry Potter was VERY impressed! That’s high marks. He has started eavesdropping on my reading Prisoner of Azkaban to DS9.
I had originally said PowerUp Band OR Wand but with the lack of the dragon eggs I caved on a wand…
He chose the Epic exclusive with the Phoenix feather core. He had just finished Chamber of Secrets and loves Fawkes.
They loved wandering around and doing the spells. I found it somewhat annoying that every window had a line so that you always got “spoiled” about what the window would do. But in all honesty the kids did not seem to mind that.
DS6 was an absolute saint about not getting a wand. His brother would not have had the same attitude.
The last picture is from 4:30pm. DS6 said he wanted a nap and we were hoping to close down the park till 10pm. So at this point we bailed for the bus. There was one waiting when we got there so we were back to the hotel for exactly 45 minutes. Both boys laid down and closed their eyes for a little bit. We changed and refreshed for the evening. It would have been nice to have been a Stella Nova but it was fine going back and forth to CB.
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Thanks for sharing all the details, I’m so glad you enjoyed EU!
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Thanks for following along! I’m hoping to help future visitors get a feel for what they can accomplish in a day! You were so helpful to me when I was planning.
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Back in the park at 6:30. DH got a cool Grunkle Dragon backpack and we had some fun with the PowerUp Bands.
We had really wanted to eat at Le Goblet Noir that had German food, but we did not want to go that far into the park and it also closed at 7pm. So we ate at Toad’s Cafe which was very cute.
Again with the mobile order to your table and it was very well themed and delicious. The above picture is from 7pm. We finished dinner and wandered around and we just wanted to walk back into the Donkey Kong land to see it since we had sort of blitzed through all of Nintendo earlier. Mine Cart had been down for many hours so it was quiet back there literally and in terms of people. Both lands are odd feeling with the high walls on the sides.
All of a sudden there was a whoosh of a Mine Cart cart flying through the air and all the heads in the land flew up! DH and I looked at each other and said now or never and we (along with others) ran for the line.
There were people in the line (who must have been there for a long time?) but we walked straight into the 2nd to last room. Besides Toothless we did not really feel like we impatiently waited for anything all day so this wasn’t too bad. The switchbacks were winding but there were some places to use the PowerUp bands and DS was engrossed in his wand.
I was worried that the Express Passes would overwhelm the line but it still moved pretty steadily. There were a decent amount of people with paper receipt style passes and I assume that was ride recovery from earlier in the day?
I wish there was a way to see my submitted waits from the Lines app but I’m confident that we waited under an hour. I think both boys agreed that this was their favorite ride! I can’t believe we got to ride it. They wanted to go again but the posted wait was 120 minutes at that point so we did not.
From here we did Yoshi…. don’t waste your time. The seat is uncomfortable, the game is rigged and it’s just boring. You can see more sights just walking around.
We decided to have another go on Mario Kart which is such fun. This is 8:50pm.
Soldier Mario.
I have no more pictures but then we went back to France to do some more spells and look at the windows lit up. At about 9:45 DH and DS9 went on Stardust Racers. Mine Cart was posting 15 minutes at this point so DS6 and I hustled over there but poor guy chickened out at the last minute. It was fine. He did so great and we slow walked back out to the bus via the shops. I asked if he waned to do the carousel but he was all done.
I wish we took more pictures at night. But it was an incredibly successful day.
We’ll be back again!
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Wait a second. Is that supposed to be a gigantic goldfish cracker?
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I think it’s supposed to be an actual fish! (Dragon food!)
ETA: It was dessert! And delicious!
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So, there are places in the line to use those things? If so, that is brilliant.
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