Trip report update. Asked for help with challenge of 1.5 days park hopping with newbie on Memorial Day weekend

[Kalamazoo2]

Okay, so we are taking a newbie to WDW this Friday (arrival at the parks around 2pm) and Saturday all day, and it's going to be pretty hot.

We want to show our friend the best of the parks which includes the whimsy

Have 2-day PH tickets.
We are 3 adults.
We will get Genie+ and ILL. so I can start stacking LLs on our travel day for later in the day
Thinking of starting our visit at MK.

Obviously we can't do everything. I am looking to move along at a good, quick pace but also have some down time for food and drink and a little shopping. We will have our departure day on Sunday with no park ticket - leaving around 3pm.

GotG is a must.
Ideally we will go to each park.
I think we will also do RotR and FOP. - not looking to do Tron unless our friend insists.

Being a veteran WDW park-goer, I certainly can make a plan and pivot when the plan goes awry, but have a bunch or possible scenarios swirling in my head and am looking for some input.

 

[LynnTH]

That's going to be a lot to get done in a short time. This is what I would do:

Day 1 - Start off at AK. Do FOP and other rides and shows then Hop over to HS. I say this because AK closes earlier so go there first and HS is open until 10 with a late showing of Fantasmic at 10:30. One of the best night time shows.

Day 2 - I would start out at Epcot for half day and then go to MK. I would do it this way so you can see the MK Fireworks/Happily Every After.

Definitely use Genie + and pay for any other ILL you can. (Especially GOTG - such an awesome ride).

I just like ending a the 2 parks that have the better night time shows. Just a thought.

 

[Kalamazoo2]

Thanks for the input, LynnTH. We did end up going to AK first - good suggestion. We rode EE, KS, Na'vi River and finished off with FoP. In between we had what ended up being our big meal of the day at the Nomad Lounge. Overall this worked well and we got to see and do almost everything we planned. Only missed out on Festival of the Lion King.

Our next park was MK (wanted our friend to see the castle on their first day). We rode HM, BTMRR, PoC and decided our Disney newbie had to ride the quintessential Disney ride - Dumbo. Somewhere in there we visited the egg roll cart (flavours were cheeseburger and pepperoni pizza - both good in different ways). Also at some point had Mickey ice cream sandwiches. Got a reasonably good last minute view of the fireworks half way down Main Street.

The second day was going to be the real challenge with hopping between two heavy-hitter parks. We started at HS with the plan of finishing at Epcot - taking in the F&G Festival and snacking at the booths around the park for dinner. This plan quickly got derailed when the Genie + app glitched at 7am resulting in my SD LL time being at the awkward time of 5:30. Rather than make an executive decision to reverse the order of the parks (thus eliminating the Epcot dinner plans), I modified SD for the end of the night (HS was closing at 10, Epcot at 9). I bought ILL for RotR at 1 and GotG at 5:30.

At HS we rode TSM, RotR and MMRR, looked around the Walt Disney Presents museum, met with Edna Mode (hilarious) and Sully (sentimental favourite) in Pixar Place, did some shopping and mobile ordered at Woody's Lunchbox for a snack/lunch. At some point I grabbed a LL for ToT and just kept pushing the time back towards the end of the night. So now we had ToT and SD to go back for at the end of the night. All the LLs for the big rides at Epcot were gone by then.

Epcot got the short end of the stick this trip. We lost some time when we unexpectedly saw the need to return to the hotel for a bit. After this, we returned to park at HS, then took the Skyliner to EPCOT. Epcot had become quite busy in the mid afternoon. I did some refreshing periodically to see if good LLs would show up but no dice - I was not willing to put a lot of focus on the refresh effort, too busy having fun. Got a LL for Soarin' and had our ILL for GotG.

The sky had opened up while we were in GotG and it was raining off and on with a bit of lightening at exactly the time when we planned to tour the WS and festival booths. We were lucky enough to snag a table at La Hacienda de San Angel and had a nice dinner there.

Then it was time to head back to HS via Skyliner. The rain had stopped. On the plus side, HS is so pretty at night. By the time we got there we had an hour of park time and 3 LLs (ToT, SD and I added TSM which we had ridden earlier through standby). This was the perfect way to end the night.

Reflection: Of course we didn't see even close to what we would have liked to have seen but we were happy with the pace of our trip and, realistically, we accomplished a lot in a day and a half. It was very hot but not the worst I've experienced at WDW. We rolled with the glitches and it made for a good time. At the end of our trip our now Disney-whetted friend told us to call anytime and they would be up for another go. Maybe it will be sooner rather than later since Tiana will be opening soon.

 

[LynnTH]

Thanks for the input, LynnTH. We did end up going to AK first - good suggestion. We rode EE, KS, Na'vi River and finished off with FoP. In between we had what ended up being our big meal of the day at the Nomad Lounge. Overall this worked well and we got to see and do almost everything we planned. Only missed out on Festival of the Lion King.

Our next park was MK (wanted our friend to see the castle on their first day). We rode HM, BTMRR, PoC and decided our Disney newbie had to ride the quintessential Disney ride - Dumbo. Somewhere in there we visited the egg roll cart (flavours were cheeseburger and pepperoni pizza - both good in different ways). Also at some point had Mickey ice cream sandwiches. Got a reasonably good last minute view of the fireworks half way down Main Street.

The second day was going to be the real challenge with hopping between two heavy-hitter parks. We started at HS with the plan of finishing at Epcot - taking in the F&G Festival and snacking at the booths around the park for dinner. This plan quickly got derailed when the Genie + app glitched at 7am resulting in my SD LL time being at the awkward time of 5:30. Rather than make an executive decision to reverse the order of the parks (thus eliminating the Epcot dinner plans), I modified SD for the end of the night (HS was closing at 10, Epcot at 9). I bought ILL for RotR at 1 and GotG at 5:30.

At HS we rode TSM, RotR and MMRR, looked around the Walt Disney Presents museum, met with Edna Mode (hilarious) and Sully (sentimental favourite) in Pixar Place, did some shopping and mobile ordered at Woody's Lunchbox for a snack/lunch. At some point I grabbed a LL for ToT and just kept pushing the time back towards the end of the night. So now we had ToT and SD to go back for at the end of the night. All the LLs for the big rides at Epcot were gone by then.

Epcot got the short end of the stick this trip. We lost some time when we unexpectedly saw the need to return to the hotel for a bit. After this, we returned to park at HS, then took the Skyliner to EPCOT. Epcot had become quite busy in the mid afternoon. I did some refreshing periodically to see if good LLs would show up but no dice - I was not willing to put a lot of focus on the refresh effort, too busy having fun. Got a LL for Soarin' and had our ILL for GotG.

The sky had opened up while we were in GotG and it was raining off and on with a bit of lightening at exactly the time when we planned to tour the WS and festival booths. We were lucky enough to snag a table at La Hacienda de San Angel and had a nice dinner there.

Then it was time to head back to HS via Skyliner. The rain had stopped. On the plus side, HS is so pretty at night. By the time we got there we had an hour of park time and 3 LLs (ToT, SD and I added TSM which we had ridden earlier through standby). This was the perfect way to end the night.

Reflection: Of course we didn't see even close to what we would have liked to have seen but we were happy with the pace of our trip and, realistically, we accomplished a lot in a day and a half. It was very hot but not the worst I've experienced at WDW. We rolled with the glitches and it made for a good time. At the end of our trip our now Disney-whetted friend told us to call anytime and they would be up for another go. Maybe it will be sooner rather than later since Tiana will be opening soon.

Glad to hear you had a great time. Nothing every goes as plans - have to make changes on the go constantly. But sounds like you got a lot done in the short time you had.