I’m Going To Disney World: Part 2 – The Plans
Trip is July 1st – 6th, arriving mid-day on the 1st and leaving early on the 6th. We’re staying at All-Star Sports and have 5-day park hoppers. (Side note: this is the first time we’ve gotten park hoppers since 2013. It’s gonna be a little weird)
Sunday, July 1st:
Getting to Disney: Beth and I will be arriving separately. She’s taking Amtrak from West Palm Beach to Kissimmee, then taking an Uber to the hotel. I’m flying from JFK to MCO, and while my flight gets in about half an hour before Beth’s train, I’m taking DME from the airport to the hotel (yay!), so unclear which one of us will get there first.
Park Time:
One we’re settled in, we’ll head to our chosen park for the afternoon/evening …
We’re starting off in the best possible way – Magic Kingdom! Park is open until 10PM, so we should have a decent amount of time to get stuff done.
First stop will be guest relations, to upgrade my ticket to an annual pass (eek!). We also have some extra fastpasses that I was gifted several years ago (it involved a complaint email, a nasty response, and then a phone call) that I keep forgetting about, so we’ll see if they’re still available and we can get ourselves some extra experiences.
FastPass+:
3:55 PM - 4:55 PM – Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (aka our favorite)
5:10 PM - 6:10 PM – The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (because nobody wants to deal with kids in line play with loud things)
6:40 PM - 7:40 PM – Peter Pan's Flight
Once we get through those three (and we will try to move some of the later ones up if we can), we’ll try to get some additional fastpasses. Those of you who knew me back when I used to actually go to the parks more than once every 2.5 years know that we’re all about the FP+. I don’t expect availability to be great (and I do expect to be waiting in lines for a long time), but … we’ll see what we can get.
Happily Ever After is at 9:15. We may or may not see it, depending on what we’ve gotten done so far, how we’re feeling, and what the attraction lines look like.
Monday, July 2nd:
Morning:
Regular operating hours for Hollywood Studios are 8AM - 10:30PM, with EMH from 1AM to 8AM
We haven’t decided yet if we’re going to get there for 7am EMH – we’ll play it by ear. This will be the day we wait in all the Toy Story Land lines. Hopefully we’ll have time for a few other things too.
Once we’re done with DHS for the day, we’ll hop over to our late afternoon/evening park …
Animal Kingdom is open until 10:30 PM.
This is where our fastpasses are:
4:25 PM - 5:25 PM - Na'vi River Journey (We really have no interest in Pandora, but we figured that since there were fastpasses available, we should give it a try. This (and maybe some walking around) is likely all we will do in Pandora.)
5:50 PM - 6:50 PM - Meet Favorite Disney Pals at Adventurers Outpost (because Mickey and Minnie)
7:40 PM - 8:40 PM - Kilimanjaro Safaris (This is probably the FP+ that I am most excited for. Sunset is at 8:28 PM. So I figured if we can get on the Safari around 8ish, we'll be riding just as it starts to get dark and it should be incredible. I was very happy that we were able to get this.)
Rivers of Light is at 9:15 and 10:15, and we’re hoping to catch the earlier one. We also really want to see the nighttime Tree of Life stuff. Not sure when we’ll head out of the park.
Tuesday July 3rd:
Park Hours: 8 AM – 12 AM, EMH: 12AM – 2AM
Yeah, I think you can probably all guess what hours we’re planning to be at the park.
(In case you couldn’t guess, the answer is all of them)
Since this will be an 18+ hour day, we’re planning to “schedule” meals and snacks so that we have breaks built in. We did this once before (I set calendar alerts), and we were pretty good about sticking to it and staying decently fed. There will also be lots of Starbucks. Because 18+ hour day.
Here are our FP+ selections:
8:50 AM - 9:50 AM - Splash Mountain
10:55 AM - 11:55 AM - Haunted Mansion (fun fact: I hate the stretching room. I'm sure it's cool and all that, but all I can think when I'm in there is "too many people, not enough space." It’s not fun.)
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM - Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Splash Mountain is a bit earlier than we wanted, but we couldn't get the time we wanted, so we figured we'd just start with it. We'll make it work.
We will keep trying to move things up as we use them, and once we've used our 3rd FP+, we'll get a fourth (and so on and so forth). Getting all the FP+ will be a little bittersweet, though … on past trips we had to go to kiosks to get FP+, and we had a favorite kiosk area (near Mickey’s Philharmagic), where we made friends with the CMs. No more kiosks, so no more FP+ CM friends. Sadface.
We plan to see the
4th of July fireworks at 9:15 … not sure when yet we’ll start camping out for a spot, but probably not super early since we don’t need the best spot ever, just a decent one. Other than that … we’ll mostly play it by ear and see what FP+ we can get.
And of course, we have to get on line for an attraction at around 1:58AM. We have a thought what it will be, but I’m not going to share it because it might change.
Wednesday, July 4th:
Since we’ll be up mad late the night before, we’re planning to sleep in a bit, then hit up Disney Springs. Breakfast pastries from Erin McKenna Bakery, coffee from Ghirardelli, and some shopping. Once we’re done at Disney Springs, we’ll head to our park for the day …
Epcot is open its usual hours ... 9AM to 9PM. I'm pretty sure the world will end before Epcot changes its hours.
Since we won't be there all day, we made a list of must-dos for Epcot (which I can’t post here because I’m writing this on my PC and the list is on the MacBook … I have too many computers), and we figured we could get through all of them in the afternoon. Hopefully we’ll be right about that. If not … I dunno.
Anyway … our FP+:
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM - Soarin' Around the World
3:50 PM - 4:50 PM - The Seas with Nemo & Friends
4:50 PM - 5:50 PM - Spaceship Earth
We decided to standby Frozen Ever After, and we'll either Single Rider Test Track or try to get it as a 4th FP+. Major non-attraction priority is meeting Mary Poppins. We also want to meet the characters in Revolutionary attire or whatever. And probably meet some princesses.
And of course, end the night with
Illuminations.
Thursday, July 5th:
7AM and we’re back at …
Park hours are 8AM to 10:30PM, with EMH from 7AM to 8AM.
This is our full day at Hollywood Studios. I will be wearing my yet-to-be-revealed Pixar Uniqlo shirt.
Originally we had a FP+ for TSMM early in the morning, but I had to give that up when I saw another FP+ that I wanted. I don't know what we'll do first, but we'll probably start in Toy Story Land before heading over to our first FP+.
FP+ plans for the day:
10:00 AM - 10:15 AM - For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration (I will probably livestream this for
@jennamfeo … just kidding)
12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith
5:55 PM - 6:55 PM - Alien Swirling Saucers
I’m going to keep checking for a Slinky Dog Dash FP+ (in which case we’ll have to standby Alien Swirling Saucers), but I know that most likely we’ll have to ride that standby. Toy Story Midway Mania will be either standby or a 4th FP+ if we can get one. We’re also planning to see
Fantasmic! at 9 PM.
Friday, July 6th:
Okay, bye bye.
Our flight leaves at 9 something, so we’ll get picked up by DME at 6 something.
I’m scheduled to run 5 miles when I get home that afternoon, so … we’ll see if that happens.
