TheDaysGoBy
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2016
I spent weeks lurking in here for my trip 9/17 - 9/20 and wanted to give my take on what I experienced because I found this thread so helpful in all my planning/managing my expectations.
I met my friend at MCO on 9/16. Her flight came in about 9:45pm and we stayed offsite that night. We stayed at the Wyndham Garden Lake Buena Vista (Disney Springs area). Because we only checked in at 11pm or so, there was no exploring of the hotel or anything. But it was a clean/comfortable room where we were able to get some sleep.
9/17 - We hit a grocery store (buying water and some snacks for the room) before arriving at Coronado Springs. We'd done online check-in prior to arriving, but we'd got in line for check-in anyway since we'd already planned to spend at least a little time to see if our room would be ready shortly after our arrival. We also wanted to check on the process for the rental car (side note: it's all tied to your band, they don't need anything else like license plate or anything like that). A cast member said she could check on the status of the room for us and reported back that it wasn't ready yet and that it could be a few hours (since it was only after 10 and check out wasn't until 11 and then the room would need to be cleaned). But she offered to see if there were any rooms ready, and we agreed. She came back saying there was a room on the 4th or 6th floor of GDT. Apparently we were supposed to get the 14th floor, but she said she could give us one of those rooms if we didn't want to wait. Ultimately, we're the kind of people that like to be settled in the room if we can before we head to the parks so we agreed to a room on the 6th floor. It wasn't our first time staying at Coronado but it was the first time for GDT. It was beautiful for sure and the view was fine. Sure we weren't as high up, but we still had a water view. Plus we don't spend much time in the room anyway.
Once we were settled, we were off to Epcot. We tried to scan our bands at the gate and had issues. They ended up sending us to Guest Services, so we had to wait in line for that for about a half hour. Not the start we wanted to our park day, but the cast member who assisted us was helpful and it seemed a super easy fix. After that, we got through no problems and went about our day.
A lot of comments I'd seen in this thread were that wait times were reasonable but the walkways often felt crowded, and I'd say that probably held true for the majority of the trip but especially Epcot. We did Soarin twice (our favorite). The first time the wait had been listed as 30 minutes and was more like 10, the second time was 15 minutes and it was truer to the actual wait. We did pretty much everything we wanted to at Epcot except for TT (not for lack of trying though). It kept going down because of weather. Once we actually made it into the line and just finished building our car when they made the announcement. We waited in line for about a half hour before bailing at about 3pm since we had a 3:40 at Via Napoli and didn't want to have to rush over to WS.
We stuck around for Epcot Forever which was nice. We watched it at the front of the WS near Future World and it wasn't terribly crowded.
9/18 - AK. We decided not to rope drop, so we got there about 9:30/10. We jumped on the Safari and then did FOP. It had been listed as a 50 minute wait and that was pretty much what it'd been. As off as the wait times at times, FOP always felt spot on. We caught the Festival of the Lion King show as well as the bird show. Both were enjoyable. Obviously Lion King suffered a bit of cuts due to COVID, but it was still enjoyable. The bird show - those guys were hilarious. So fun. We ate at Yak and Yeti (the QS place) for lunch and just lucked into Restaurantosaurus for dinner. We literally walked in like 5 minutes before they closed - not that we'd known that at the time. We did FOP again to end our night and the ride actually went down while we were on it. The ride started and we'd got 30 seconds into it before the screen froze and then the whole thing just shut down. They left us in the restraints and we ended up just sitting there for about 15 minutes before they managed to get it working again.
We hit Disney Springs after for a couple hours, and it was busy but didn't feel unmanageable. Not like the Emporium did on Monday (more on that later). As such, I got a good bit of shopping done which took the pressure off buying at the last minute which was so nice.
9/19 - HS. We got up at 6:55 and basically just kept refreshing in the app to try for a boarding group for RotR. Between the two of us, I got through and we got BG74. It estimated we'd get called about 1pm and we didn't get called until 2pm because the ride did go down a couple times in the morning. But we got to the park just before 9:30 and MFSR was 30 minutes and MMRR was already 45 minutes so we went to Galaxy's Edge and did MFSR first. We ended up as pilots, which was so fun. My friend though felt kinda nauseous afterwards and we had to sit for a few minutes to let her stomach settle. I had no problems though, and it was seriously so fun. After that we did MMRR which was still 45 minutes, and ugh being outside in that heat for that queue was not great. It felt super hot and humid. I loved the ride though. So cute and so fun. We did a combined mobile order meal for lunch where I got chicken tenders from Backlot and she got food from ABC Commissary (and I met her over there and we ate outside the restaurant as the Commissary gives you legit bowels/plates that the staff collects). Then we did Sci-Fi for dinner. All the wait times were super low after we were done (about 7pm) but we were way too full to even think about getting on a ride so we just did Muppets and then just hung out back there for a bit until we did some last minute shopping in GE before catching the Animation show.
9/20 - MK. After basically doing rope drop to close the day prior, we weren't ready for another all day in the park. So we only ended up getting into MK around 11/11:30. Seven Dwarfs stayed around 60 minutes pretty much all day and in the end, we ended up not riding it but we were okay with that because we'd been before. We hit Splash, Small World, BTMR, Pirates, HM, Buzz, COP all before our 5:40 res at Be Our Guest. This was our first time doing dinner since they'd made the change to prix fixe. We enjoyed the meal. Our waitress was a bit slow at first about greeting us and then getting us our waters/bread but things seemed to move better after that. We didn't get out of there until about 90 minutes later or so. The Beast walks around and waves/bows at people/tables. The food was very good, and we were both so full. My birthday was the 12th so I wore a birthday button each day of our trip, and when they brought the desserts out, they also gave me a plate of the grey stuff that was shaped like Mickey ears as well as a card of the castle with the Beasts' signature on the back. So that was pretty cool.
After we left the restaurant and walked out into the hub, we were surprised at the number of people that were already assembled for HEA. It was only going on 7:30 and the show was at 8:15. We did find a spot in the grass in front of Casey's (thanks to this board for the tip!). Though, like someone else had mentioned, there had a spot roped off that was reserved and then they were filming something. No idea what, but we sat there and kinda watched them while we waited which was kinda fun. HEA was great and while the particular spot we were in wasn't like packed in with people, it was truly at that moment I realized what a huge crowd we were in for fireworks. It didn't give me anxiety per se (my friend and I never really masked outside the whole trip) but it was surreal given 18 months of purposely avoiding people. It just felt weird being around that many people again, but it didn't damper my enjoyment of it.
Afterwards, we sat for about a half hour or so before we decided to hit the Emporium on our way out. And in there is where I felt real anxiety about the crowds, lol. It was wall to wall people. You couldn't turn around without running into someone. And I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the day they'd dropped the 50th merch so I think it being the first day of that added to the craziness. It was absolutely insanity in there and I was relieved to be outside when we were done lol.
All in all, it was a great trip! I've gone in September before and this definitely felt hotter than normal. It felt more like the August trip we'd done back in 2018. This was my first trip taking my own refillable water bottle into the parks and I have to say, I didn't hate it at all (and I have a huge bottle). It was a 32oz bottle from Simple Modern, and I'd ended up finding a cute paracord strap that let me sling it over my shoulder. It wasn't as much of a pain carrying it around as I thought it might be, and the staff at each TS restaurant was quick to offer to fill it before we headed back out into the park which was so nice. I drink a lot of water and I know I saved a fortune that way rather than buying bottled water all day long.
Crowds weren't quite as light as they'd been weeks ago, but like I said, we'd hit everything we wanted. My feet had some seriously terrible blisters this time around, which made the 20,000 or so steps we did each day hard but it was still such a blast! I loved being able to see some of the shows before they're retired, but at the same token, I'm kind of bummed I'll be missing the new shows that will be debuting once the 50th starts. Though, it's just a reason for me to go back I guess.
I met my friend at MCO on 9/16. Her flight came in about 9:45pm and we stayed offsite that night. We stayed at the Wyndham Garden Lake Buena Vista (Disney Springs area). Because we only checked in at 11pm or so, there was no exploring of the hotel or anything. But it was a clean/comfortable room where we were able to get some sleep.
9/17 - We hit a grocery store (buying water and some snacks for the room) before arriving at Coronado Springs. We'd done online check-in prior to arriving, but we'd got in line for check-in anyway since we'd already planned to spend at least a little time to see if our room would be ready shortly after our arrival. We also wanted to check on the process for the rental car (side note: it's all tied to your band, they don't need anything else like license plate or anything like that). A cast member said she could check on the status of the room for us and reported back that it wasn't ready yet and that it could be a few hours (since it was only after 10 and check out wasn't until 11 and then the room would need to be cleaned). But she offered to see if there were any rooms ready, and we agreed. She came back saying there was a room on the 4th or 6th floor of GDT. Apparently we were supposed to get the 14th floor, but she said she could give us one of those rooms if we didn't want to wait. Ultimately, we're the kind of people that like to be settled in the room if we can before we head to the parks so we agreed to a room on the 6th floor. It wasn't our first time staying at Coronado but it was the first time for GDT. It was beautiful for sure and the view was fine. Sure we weren't as high up, but we still had a water view. Plus we don't spend much time in the room anyway.
Once we were settled, we were off to Epcot. We tried to scan our bands at the gate and had issues. They ended up sending us to Guest Services, so we had to wait in line for that for about a half hour. Not the start we wanted to our park day, but the cast member who assisted us was helpful and it seemed a super easy fix. After that, we got through no problems and went about our day.
A lot of comments I'd seen in this thread were that wait times were reasonable but the walkways often felt crowded, and I'd say that probably held true for the majority of the trip but especially Epcot. We did Soarin twice (our favorite). The first time the wait had been listed as 30 minutes and was more like 10, the second time was 15 minutes and it was truer to the actual wait. We did pretty much everything we wanted to at Epcot except for TT (not for lack of trying though). It kept going down because of weather. Once we actually made it into the line and just finished building our car when they made the announcement. We waited in line for about a half hour before bailing at about 3pm since we had a 3:40 at Via Napoli and didn't want to have to rush over to WS.
We stuck around for Epcot Forever which was nice. We watched it at the front of the WS near Future World and it wasn't terribly crowded.
9/18 - AK. We decided not to rope drop, so we got there about 9:30/10. We jumped on the Safari and then did FOP. It had been listed as a 50 minute wait and that was pretty much what it'd been. As off as the wait times at times, FOP always felt spot on. We caught the Festival of the Lion King show as well as the bird show. Both were enjoyable. Obviously Lion King suffered a bit of cuts due to COVID, but it was still enjoyable. The bird show - those guys were hilarious. So fun. We ate at Yak and Yeti (the QS place) for lunch and just lucked into Restaurantosaurus for dinner. We literally walked in like 5 minutes before they closed - not that we'd known that at the time. We did FOP again to end our night and the ride actually went down while we were on it. The ride started and we'd got 30 seconds into it before the screen froze and then the whole thing just shut down. They left us in the restraints and we ended up just sitting there for about 15 minutes before they managed to get it working again.
We hit Disney Springs after for a couple hours, and it was busy but didn't feel unmanageable. Not like the Emporium did on Monday (more on that later). As such, I got a good bit of shopping done which took the pressure off buying at the last minute which was so nice.
9/19 - HS. We got up at 6:55 and basically just kept refreshing in the app to try for a boarding group for RotR. Between the two of us, I got through and we got BG74. It estimated we'd get called about 1pm and we didn't get called until 2pm because the ride did go down a couple times in the morning. But we got to the park just before 9:30 and MFSR was 30 minutes and MMRR was already 45 minutes so we went to Galaxy's Edge and did MFSR first. We ended up as pilots, which was so fun. My friend though felt kinda nauseous afterwards and we had to sit for a few minutes to let her stomach settle. I had no problems though, and it was seriously so fun. After that we did MMRR which was still 45 minutes, and ugh being outside in that heat for that queue was not great. It felt super hot and humid. I loved the ride though. So cute and so fun. We did a combined mobile order meal for lunch where I got chicken tenders from Backlot and she got food from ABC Commissary (and I met her over there and we ate outside the restaurant as the Commissary gives you legit bowels/plates that the staff collects). Then we did Sci-Fi for dinner. All the wait times were super low after we were done (about 7pm) but we were way too full to even think about getting on a ride so we just did Muppets and then just hung out back there for a bit until we did some last minute shopping in GE before catching the Animation show.
9/20 - MK. After basically doing rope drop to close the day prior, we weren't ready for another all day in the park. So we only ended up getting into MK around 11/11:30. Seven Dwarfs stayed around 60 minutes pretty much all day and in the end, we ended up not riding it but we were okay with that because we'd been before. We hit Splash, Small World, BTMR, Pirates, HM, Buzz, COP all before our 5:40 res at Be Our Guest. This was our first time doing dinner since they'd made the change to prix fixe. We enjoyed the meal. Our waitress was a bit slow at first about greeting us and then getting us our waters/bread but things seemed to move better after that. We didn't get out of there until about 90 minutes later or so. The Beast walks around and waves/bows at people/tables. The food was very good, and we were both so full. My birthday was the 12th so I wore a birthday button each day of our trip, and when they brought the desserts out, they also gave me a plate of the grey stuff that was shaped like Mickey ears as well as a card of the castle with the Beasts' signature on the back. So that was pretty cool.
After we left the restaurant and walked out into the hub, we were surprised at the number of people that were already assembled for HEA. It was only going on 7:30 and the show was at 8:15. We did find a spot in the grass in front of Casey's (thanks to this board for the tip!). Though, like someone else had mentioned, there had a spot roped off that was reserved and then they were filming something. No idea what, but we sat there and kinda watched them while we waited which was kinda fun. HEA was great and while the particular spot we were in wasn't like packed in with people, it was truly at that moment I realized what a huge crowd we were in for fireworks. It didn't give me anxiety per se (my friend and I never really masked outside the whole trip) but it was surreal given 18 months of purposely avoiding people. It just felt weird being around that many people again, but it didn't damper my enjoyment of it.
Afterwards, we sat for about a half hour or so before we decided to hit the Emporium on our way out. And in there is where I felt real anxiety about the crowds, lol. It was wall to wall people. You couldn't turn around without running into someone. And I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the day they'd dropped the 50th merch so I think it being the first day of that added to the craziness. It was absolutely insanity in there and I was relieved to be outside when we were done lol.
All in all, it was a great trip! I've gone in September before and this definitely felt hotter than normal. It felt more like the August trip we'd done back in 2018. This was my first trip taking my own refillable water bottle into the parks and I have to say, I didn't hate it at all (and I have a huge bottle). It was a 32oz bottle from Simple Modern, and I'd ended up finding a cute paracord strap that let me sling it over my shoulder. It wasn't as much of a pain carrying it around as I thought it might be, and the staff at each TS restaurant was quick to offer to fill it before we headed back out into the park which was so nice. I drink a lot of water and I know I saved a fortune that way rather than buying bottled water all day long.
Crowds weren't quite as light as they'd been weeks ago, but like I said, we'd hit everything we wanted. My feet had some seriously terrible blisters this time around, which made the 20,000 or so steps we did each day hard but it was still such a blast! I loved being able to see some of the shows before they're retired, but at the same token, I'm kind of bummed I'll be missing the new shows that will be debuting once the 50th starts. Though, it's just a reason for me to go back I guess.
