I have a 8 am pre-rd reservation and a 12:15 pm reservation at Akershus. I am trying to decide which one to keep. My princess obsessed little girl will not want to miss any of the princessesso I don’t want to rush through the meal. The only reason to keep the 8 am one would be to get a jump on Frozen Ever After but I will be trying to get a fast pass for it too. It is towards the end of our trip so maybe we should sleep in and just go for lunch instead.
If you don’t want to rush, I would go with the 12:!5. I can’t do a sit down ADR in less than 90 min with my DH, so RD FEA idea would be blown.
1 Like
Personally, I lean toward keeping the lunch one as a nice, air conditioned break. My family loves Akershus, and the princess interactions are good. Plus, they do a little princess parade where the girls (and any boys who want to too, I guess) do a little “parade” through the restaurant. One of my favorite memories is of DD3 (at the time) proudly holding Aurora’s hand all through that parade. I also have a slight preference for the food at lunch over the food a breakfast (breakfast isn’t bad, it’s just a little more plain-Jane and doesn’t seem like as great a value to me, but by all means look at the menu and see what you think your family would prefer).
We did the 8am breakfast this last time in July, with an eye toward riding FEA. We were the first people seated got, got our check right away and paid, got our food and had plenty of time to eat. The princess didn’t start meeting until around 8:30, but we still had plenty of time to see them all, but they didn’t do the parade until later. I don’t think we were that rushed. We made it out to get in line (ahead of rope drop people) and were like 10th in line or something. But the ride had technical difficulties and didn’t open on time, so we waited about 20 minutes, then bailed to ride something else. And I’m glad we didn’t wait any longer than that, because it ended being closed for several hours.
So… There you go. My $.02.
3 Likes
@awspoede, this is super helpful re: the FEA/Akershus strategy. I am glad to hear it is realistic to eat and beat the RD crowd! We will be trying this with an 8:10 ADR next Friday and I will let you all know how it goes! DS and DD are both leery of too much princess stuff, anyway (although they do like breakfast :-)), so we will try to get the check, eat, and go line up for FEA. I agree that a relaxing lunch sounds better for OP!
1 Like
Thanks everyone. That’s helpful. I will be trying to get my FPP this weekend so will see when and if I can get the FEA one before I make a final decision.
In case anyone is wondering I tried to make my FPP for FEA right at 7 am EST at 60+6 days and they were already gone for the entire day. Crazy! At least I was able to get one on an earlier day on our trip. Is no the same day as our Akershus reservation, anywhere near the time I was hoping for and will result in a lot of extra walking but at least I got it.
Thanks for sharing with us. That makes me very nervous for my fast pass day! I will be in Epcot for days 3 & 6 of our 10 days.
I couldn’t get FPP, either, but was able to get there shortly after RD (8:50) from an 8:10 Akershus because my kids were happy to skip the Belle portrait, princess visits, princess parade, eat quickly, and we got the check right away. My opinion is we still could not realistically have been done at actual RD (8:40), but 8:50 was close enough we only waited a few minutes for FEA. The ride was great!
For those of you who couldn’t get FEA FPP, check again. I just happened to get a party of 6, for 10/19, last night. I heard someone else say that theirs opened up, too, over this weekend, for a different day. So, it’s possible that Disney just released some more fastpasses for FEA in October. (No idea why that would be… but check!!)
1 Like