300 PhotoPass pictures later, here we are.... A May/June 2017 TR! Updated 8/15!

Eeyore is my favorite, too...I may have told him I loved him at a Halloween party :rolleyes1

I agree with the lighting at CRT, all my pictures looked washed out. It was worse at my most recent visit. We were further from the windows, but the pictures were worse. I guess it was the direction we had to take the pictures because they placed the girls at the table where the would be closest to the princesses.

Hope to make it to Crystal Palace some day!

Hope your feet feel better!!
 
Great report so far!

I have to agree abotu CRT - it doen't live up to the hype it has - we also had the same experiences with the princeses there as you did

looking fowrad to the rest ofyour report
 


I'm sorry that your experience at CRT wasn't that great. I've heard such mixed reviews of if that I've never booked it.
 
Congrats to you and your sister on your graduations! A year early for college?! Super congrats to you on that!

I just got back from a trip to POR (arrived the day you left) and found the beds to be strangely soft and lumpy. Slept well anyway because we were so tired.

Aside from a lackluster dinner sounds like you had a great start!
 


I agree with you on the uncomfortable beds at POR and underwhelming experience at CRT.

Congrats on your graduation!
 
Eeyore is my favorite too (hence my profile picture :D)
He came back around and gave us magic wands too, which I thought was cute.... Until I looked around and saw that they give them to all the children....? And the few other tables that didn't have kids with them didn't get magic wands. So I'm not sure if he thought we were a lot younger or what.
I don't know what makes them decide on those. Our party was 6 adults: my parents who were 59, me, my husband, my brother and my sister-in-law all in our 30s, no kids, and we got the wands too. I thought that was odd. And we didn't have any buttons or anything!
 
Eeyore is my favorite too (hence my profile picture :D)

I don't know what makes them decide on those. Our party was 6 adults: my parents who were 59, me, my husband, my brother and my sister-in-law all in our 30s, no kids, and we got the wands too. I thought that was odd. And we didn't have any buttons or anything!

This is low-key giving me hope because I want to book CRT a little more now just for these wands :laughing:
 
Congrats to you and your sister on your graduations! A year early for college?! Super congrats to you on that!

I just got back from a trip to POR (arrived the day you left) and found the beds to be strangely soft and lumpy. Slept well anyway because we were so tired.

Aside from a lackluster dinner sounds like you had a great start!

Thank you! I was super lucky, I had a good amount of credits from AP classes and such in high school and my major was a pretty small one.

How funny that you got there the day we left, and that we seemed to have different (thought still odd) experiences with the beds. I wonder how the beds are at the other resorts, or if Disney just has weird beds in general.

I agree with you on the uncomfortable beds at POR and underwhelming experience at CRT.

Congrats on your graduation!

Thanks for the congrats :) I was so taken aback by the beds, even the mattress on my futon is more comfortable than they were. I mean it's not like we come to Disney to sleep, but still. And yeah I wish I had listened to the mediocre reviews of CRT, I was so deadset on booking it for the experience of eating in the castle but honestly.... It wasn't really worth it. Maybe if I had kids who absolutely LOVED the princesses, but not for adults.
 
Part 4- A Thunderstorm, Space Mountain, and Happily Ever After

When I last left off, we had just left Cinderella's Royal Table and overheard a CM assuring a woman that the fireworks wouldn't be cancelled, just delayed if it rained with lightening. We had no intention of standing around waiting for fireworks, and judging by the crowds we were probably way late in getting a great viewing spot anyway. I had booked us a FP for Space Mountain while we were sitting at dinner, so we headed over there instead:

1hihQIJ.jpg


..... And we weren't the only ones! This was the FP line after waiting for a few minutes, it stretched back farther when we first got in. It moved quickly though, so we didn't mind. Soon enough we were rocketing through space.

amTWDGW.jpg


We decided that we should make serious, deep in thought faces. I've gotta say, one of the best parts of memory maker was getting to take silly ride pictures and actually getting to keep them without having to buy them individually. Those prices really add up! Sure, we could've just taken a picture of the screen with our phones like a lot of people do but that's not the same.

After disembarking we noticed a huge backup in the gift shop- nobody was going outside. We weaved our way over to the door and noticed that it was raining like crazy! Thunder, lightening, the whole 9 yards. You know that little trick you can do where you count the seconds between lightening and thunder to see how far away the storm is? I could barely count to 3! Being from Phoenix, we're not really used to rain, much less huge thunderstorms. So we put on our trusty disposable ponchos and went outside to investigate. It was REALLY coming down! People were making mad dashes from shelter to shelter and the announcement was being made over the speakers that the fireworks were postponed.

This video isn't all that great in quality, because it's from Snapchat, but it kinda gives you an idea- although it doesn't capture just how LOUD the thunder was and how the entire sky seemed to light up with lightening.



We walked around in the rain for a while and had a great time! I think it's because rainstorms are so rare for us but we were absolutely loving it. And people were leaving in DROVES. We figured since the park was clearing out it would be easier to get good FPs for the rest of the night- and we were right! I hopped on the app and got us another Space Mountain FP for a window that started right away. So we made our way back over there and rode again:

5dDqPko.jpg


I tried to look at the camera.... And didn't realize that the camera was on the other side because we were on a different track :rotfl:

When we got to the gift shop we looked outside for a second to confirm that, yup, it was still raining cats and dogs. So we killed some time taking some pics in the photobooth:

05ckwdl.jpg


... Before our next Space Mountain FP started and we got back on the ride! The standby wait was still pretty high at this point, and it felt good to just walk on :)

CCMsw92.jpg


We tried to look confused.... And I still managed to forget which side the camera was on. :rolleyes:

By this point it was almost 10:30 and we were willing to call it a night. Sure, it was a little bit earlier than 11 so I couldn't exactly say we fulfilled my plan of staying from rope drop to close, but we were both tired and needed to rest before rope drop at Hollywood Studios the next day. So we started working our way back to the hub, which was basically empty at this point. The rain had let up almost completely, and I guess a dedicated few had remained to save their good viewing spots. Then we heard an announcement saying that the fireworks would be starting soon! We figured that since we were already there, we might as well stay and watch. We managed to get a good spot without any trouble since there were so few people there. We really lucked out! I positioned my phone out of the way of my face so I could still watch the show, and just kept hitting the screen so it would take pictures- i ended up with some good shots though (and about 100 that were identical).

RQEk6CY.jpg


HcHKYwa.jpg



RfZG9kw.jpg


And then there's this one.... Which wasn't quite timed correctly, because it looks like we're staring into an apocalyptic ball of fire :rotfl:

eLgmK3P.jpg



All in all we really enjoyed the show! You might've already got this sense but we're really not huge fans of fireworks usually. And I'm actually still a little afraid of them, which is a remnant of my childhood days when I would burst into tears whenever I saw fireworks- they're SO loud!! I'm always afraid that they'll explode wrong or something and I'll get blown up (which is totally irrational I know) So needless to say I'm not a huge fan of the 4th of July, and we usually skip the fireworks at Disneyland. We love World of Color though, and we're definitely not averse to waiting for a nighttime show, but we prefer it not to be of the fireworks variety. But this show was really well done, I loved the music and may or may not have started crying when the "You'll be in my heart" song from Tarzan started playing! That's one of my favorite Disney movie soundtracks. Overall I'm really glad we had the good timing of arriving just as the fireworks were starting, because I doubt we would've seen them otherwise- although we did catch bits and pieces on the other nights of our trip because as it turns out you can pretty much see them anywhere in the park.

We followed the masses to main street, and then heard the announcement about the castle projection show, which I didn't even know existed! If I had, we would've stayed where we were.

q5YEiV6.jpg


This is where we watched it from. It was cute! And it's not at all bad to watch from this far back, we could still see everything.

After that was done we headed for the bus back to Port Orleans. The wait wasn't too bad and we were one of the first ones on. Our first day at Disney was complete! We both passed out as soon as we hit our beds. I slept like a log that night, which is how I know I was exhausted because usually I wake up 2-3 times in the middle of the night. Next up: Hollywood Studios, Be Our Guest, and an Evening Magic Hour right back here at the Magic Kingdom.
 
Last edited:
Part 5- Hollywood Studios: Barely a Half Day Park!


We woke up bright and early to get to rope drop at Hollywood Studios. We managed to get to the bus stop right as the bus for Hollywood Studios was leaving and the cast member was doing a last call for passengers. The bus wasn't full at all, I think most people were headed to the Magic Kingdom that morning.

Looking back this is probably the park I took the least amount of outdoor pictures in. Which is fitting since we spent so little time there, but for trip report purposes it's not ideal! So apologies in advance for the text to picture ratio being a little off!

Our FPs for the day were Rock n Roller Coaster, Star Tours, and the Little Mermaid show. The plan was to rope drop Toy Story and avoid the Tower of Terror at all costs- we both have a deep, deep hatred for freefall rides. I did the Disneyland version once and promised myself I would never do it again. I'll get on just about any roller coaster in the world without hesitation- my best friend lives right by Six Flags over Texas and I love every single coaster there. Again, absolutely no fear. I love drops, I love loops, I love speed, but there's something about a drop when it feels like the ground is just coming out from under you that I HAAAATE. So, anyway, the Tower of Terror was definitely NOT on the menu for the day :p

We had no problem getting to the park and bag check was quick. We proceeded with the masses to the hub (what's it even called at Hollywood Studios?) and then my inability to understand maps got the best of us. When the ropes dropped we headed with the crowds and thought we were waking toward Toy Story, but ended up at Rock n Roller Coaster! I'm not sure how it happened, because I had looked at the map on the app and thought we were going the right way. So we had to backtrack a little bit and try to figure out where Toy Story really was- I must say that Hollywood Studios isn't laid out very well. Can you already tell that I wasn't a big fan of this park? I'll try not to be toooo biased but yeesh.... It's not the best. We could've easily have left this park by noon if it wasn't for our Sci Fi ADR.

Thankfully my bad navigation skills didn't hurt us too bad, and we probably only waited 15 minutes if even that for Toy Story, which I thought was great. We rarely do this ride in California Adventure because the wait is always crazy, there's no FastPass (or at least there wasn't in 2014, I think there is now) and we'd much rather ride California Screamin' which is right next door. But with Hollywood Studios having so few rides, I decided we should check it out. The queue is definitely better than the California version, and the ride was a lot of fun!

dmpRxVq.jpg


Here's our scores- I was player 2 :cheer2: I'm not the greatest at games like these because I have terrible aim. I blame my astigmatism, but I'm sure it's actually because I'm not very good :p

We got off the ride and for a second planned on doing the Woody and Buzz meet and greet- until we saw the wait time was 50 minutes. Yeeah.... Had to skip that one, no offense Woody and Buzz! I'm not even that big of a Toy Story fan (Monsters Inc is the best Pixar movie imo....) so we moved on.

On the way back over to Rock n Roller Coaster we stopped in to One Man's Dream to check that out and to meet Starlord and Baby Groot. There was basically no wait!

roOoKjk.jpg


Here I think I was saying "Awwww he's so cute" or something to that effect about Baby Groot.

al6ts3a.jpg


And here's our group picture! This meet and greet was fun, Starlord wanted to know where to get the best icecream on earth, I said he should go to Coldstone.... Before stopping myself and wondering if they even had Coldstones in Florida.

We encountered a Pluto meet and greet on the walk over to the Launch Bay and decided to stop for a picture:

ydZQhtw.jpg



We then headed to the Launch Bay. We're not big Star Wars fans but we knew enough to have fun. For some reason I always enjoy Star Wars stuff at Disney, but pretty much never any other time. The meet and greet lines weren't long but we had a deadline of making it to our Rock n Roller Coaster FP so we ruled out meeting BB-8 and decided on Chewbacca and Kylo Ren.

The line for Kylo Ren was the longest, but they had storm troopers come around and bug people about being part of the resistance, which was fun. I wasn't sure what to expect from this meet and greet because he's such a not friendly character but it was fun! He's definitely intimidating, and even though I knew he wasn't real I still got nervous!

PGlOMb8.jpg


Here I am asking him why he killed his dad. He wasn't pleased, and the cast member was like "oh.... that's not wise".

But he still agreed to pose for another pic with us, doing his weird hand thing- can he do force things? I don't really remember the movie..... My lack of Star Wars knowledge is showing, I know :p

HEzVkBc.jpg


After that we headed over to Chewbacca, who was much more cuddly:

zKBSu6h.jpg


w0XVscn.jpg


We told him goodbye and then headed over to Rock n Roller Coaster, right at the end of our FP window. On our first day we got to most of our FPs right as they started, and as silly as it may sound it didn't click with me for a while that we had the whole hour and didn't need to rush there right away.

On the way, even though we were starting to be short on time, we stopped to watch the star wars parade thing:

ymco74B.jpg


Later on we saw a little bit of the one with Vader, and we happened to be walking behind it when the flame throwers went "BOOM!". I didn't know it was coming so it scared the crap out of me! :rotfl:

Anyway, I was super excited for Rock n Roller Coaster because I loooove roller coasters, especially the kind that launch you really fast. California Screamin' is one of my favorite rides at Disneyland and Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast is my favorite at Six Flags over Texas for that reason. My sister is less of a fan, and doesn't really like loops- but because she left the planning to me she didn't get a say in what rides we did :p

We didn't have a long wait with the FP and we got loaded onto one of the last trains, which i was excited about because coasters always feel so much faster in the back! We decided to do the "rock on" hand symbol in the picture:

aMTEBZn.jpg


That launch was amazing!! II seriously can't even express how much I love the feeling of being launched really fast by a roller coaster. I loved this ride so much. The loops were great, I just wish it had a big drop.


We headed over to Star Tours next, which was fun. There was a little boy in our row who was very scared and crying, and the cast member was really great in trying to reassure him that the ride wasn't that scary. She even chose him to be the rebel spy, but I don't think he noticed because he was crying and hiding his face. Luckily the ride was loud enough we couldn't hear him screaming (that sounds mean, I know).

When we left Star Tours I contemplated riding The Great Movie Ride, but the wait was like 50 minutes and based on the videos I've watched on youtube that ride isn't really worth much of a wait. It'll be interesting to see if it does get removed/redone.

Our 3rd FP was originally schedule to be for the Little Mermaid show but when I checked the app it wouldn't load- and when it did it said something like "location undefined" and if I clicked on it the app would crash. Not sure what happened there. I managed to modify it and changed it to a Muppetvision FP that started sooner. We love the muppets, and the show was ok, but I definitely wish HS had more rides so we could've booked something else as a FP. We're not really "sit and watch a show" people at Disney. I just like rides, rides and more rides! And character pictures too :)

Speaking of, we met Chip and Dale! They're always fun, although I can never remember which is which! So when I went up to them I just avoided saying their names.

LdKADiw.jpg


This was right near the Mickey and Minnie meet and greet, and since we had time to kill before our lunch ADR at Sci Fi we decided to get in line. The posted wait was 20 minutes, but it was really more like 40. :sad2:

aOOPouQ.jpg


We met both of them two more times on this trip- looking back, I wish we had done the meet and greet at the Animal Kingdom so we could've met them in every park. Oh, hindsight :rolleyes:

CxaktUF.jpg


I love that the photographer got pics of Mickey hugging us- I don't know if we didn't hug Minnie or if that photographer just didn't get those pics.

H3gMZap.jpg


ecJlCgn.jpg


By the time we left it was about 10 minutes before our ADR, so we walked over to Sci Fi and checked in.

I had heard mixed things about Sci Fi but I thought the theming seemed really cool, so I booked it. And i was right about that! It looks so cool in person and really feels like a drive in theatre. I also loved the cute little cars you get to eat in.
XGXSChY.jpg


I didn't take any food pictures, but we both had burgers. They were really good! Definitely better than I expected. The fries were great too. We stayed just long enough for the film clips to repeat before we got the check. Overall it was a good experience and I'd definitely book it again.

While we were eating I got us another FP for Rock n Roller Coaster, so we headed there after we left. We decided to pretend to be asleep in the picture, which is hard to do when you're being launched so fast!

HVmaMgz.jpg


While we were in the gift shop after I decided to see if I could get us one more FP, then the plan was to buy the express transportation pass and head back to the Magic Kingdom and stay there for the rest of the day and into the evening magic hour. It was only about 2:15 at this point, and originally I had us staying in HS until our 6:50 reservation at Be Our Guest.... But my sister looked at the map and said "We already did everything here" and I agreed. Since we're not really show people HS just doesn't have a lot to offer us. Once Toy Story Land and Star Wars Land are open I'm sure it'll be a different story, but for now it's barely a half day park. If we had stayed and watched the various shows it would've been a different story, but again, that's not really our touring style.

With my skills at refreshing the app I snagged us 2:30 FPs for Rock n Roller Coaster, so we left the gift shop and got right back on.

We didn't do anything special in this pic.... It's a lot harder to think of things to do when you can't really use your arms too much because of the shoulder bar.

CYGZTll.jpg


While we were in the preshow I used my app refreshing skills again and got us 3:10 Space Mountain FPs. Once we got off the ride we walked over to the express transportation booth, which is right by RNRC, and purchased the 7 day pass. Even though we were only there for 5 days, it was cheaper to get the 7 day pass at 29 dollars a person. I gotta say I absolutely loved the express transportation! The buses were basically always empty and it saved us a TON of time.

The bus to the Magic Kingdom leaves 50 minutes after the hour, and we took this ride photo at 2:40 according to the photopass website. Right at 2:50 we were on the bus, and by 3:28 we were on Space Mountain!

k3KbPyC.jpg


I'm telling you guys, express transportation is 100% worth it!

I'll start off my next update with our afternoon/evening in the Magic Kingdom and our dinner at Be Our Guest (spoiler alert: we loved it!!)
 
We have a bunch of similar ADRs/plans. Reading this is like getting tips for our upcoming trip, so thanks! Adding meeting Mickey/Minnie in every park to our list :) I want to see a few of the shows at DHS, so it's good to know we can make it into a (mostly) full day between those and rides.

Also kind of cracking up at how many times you FP'd Space Mountain and RnR in a row! lots of planning guides say those rides are difficult to find extra FP for or on day of. but you're in the gift shops immediately after and booking FP again and again :rotfl:
 
We have a bunch of similar ADRs/plans. Reading this is like getting tips for our upcoming trip, so thanks! Adding meeting Mickey/Minnie in every park to our list :) I want to see a few of the shows at DHS, so it's good to know we can make it into a (mostly) full day between those and rides.

Also kind of cracking up at how many times you FP'd Space Mountain and RnR in a row! lots of planning guides say those rides are difficult to find extra FP for or on day of. but you're in the gift shops immediately after and booking FP again and again :rotfl:

We really lucked out with our same day fastpasses! I didn't expect to be able to get any at all. But I think it helped that we were only a party of 2. And that I was willing to rapidly refresh the app, lol. Glad to know I'm helping you plan your trip! :)
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!










Top