Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[GBRforWDW]

Wow, just wow. Clearly an IT issue with Disney and they are definitely putting their spin on it. Enhancement? Now that’s funny

I really appreciate the heads up because now I know it will be the same way for the rest of our trip, three more full days.

-Dan

Yeah, I'm not sure if it's an IT issue as much as something they are intentionally doing, probably due to complaints about the tip board showing 1 time, the next screen a different time and the final screen a third, especially for the popular rides in the morning. Would be better to just do a VQ, but that's what we have for now .

Enjoy the rest of your trip!

 

[DisneyFive]

probably due to complaints about the tip board showing 1 time, the next screen a different time and the final screen a third, especially for the popular rides in the morning.

Enjoy the rest of your trip!

I agree. However I consider that an IT or coding issue. They should be able to lock in the time once you click it on the main screen. They were able to do it with FP+. My guess is that they are working on fixing it behind the scenes. Here’s hoping because this new feature stinks

 

[g-dad66]

I agree. However I consider that an IT or coding issue. They should be able to lock in the time once you click it on the main screen. They were able to do it with FP+. My guess is that they are working on fixing it behind the scenes. Here’s hoping because this new feature stinks

When you book the LL time between 7:00 and 7:30, does it still change times on you when you confirm, or does the time now stay the same? (I'm guessing that it can still change, because a locked-in time would be a real enhancement. )

Thanks for the daily reports. Much appreciated.

 

[DisneyFive]

When you book the LL time between 7:00 and 7:30, does it still change times on you when you confirm, or does the time now stay the same? (I'm guessing that it can still change, because a locked-in time would be a real enhancement. )

Thanks for the daily reports. Much appreciated.

Well, it definitely does not change now but that’s because by the time you see the time window you are already at the second screen. So instead of showing for example 9 AM on the main screen and by the time you click into it, it says 9:05 AM, you don’t see anything on the first screen anymore and you have to click into the attraction to see the available time. Hope that makes sense.

What it takes away is the ability to see multiple attractions that you are trying for at a glance. I always used the main screen as an estimate anyway and my times are typically not off by more than 5 to 10 minutes when I clicked into the second screen. When refreshing, and all of a sudden an earlier time popped up, I always knew it was a risk that by the time I clicked into it it would be gone.

To me, the big issue is with $ILL attractions that you actually pay for, and then the time slot changes on you. They should have just made those rides not show the time at 7am left all the others

I suppose a lot of guests would be very frustrated by that so I understand why Disney made the change but they really need to fix it completely so that the time in the second screen always matches the first screen, which they can certainly do.

Just my opinion of course

Dan

 

[jods]

Hey everyone, another Magic Kingdom day!

Looks like we had a last-minute change of plans. Our oldest is feeling a little under the weather and needed more sleep so the rest of us four are heading into the parks and will do rides standby while we stack rides for later this afternoon and evening once she is able to join us. I had booked a 10:45-11:45 am Space but canceled and will rebook for later. The plan was to tap into that and look for a another selection, beating the crowd that can book again at 11 AM .

This will be a test of the stacking strategy for those that want to stay at the resort in the morning and start your visit later in the day.

Again this morning, at 7am the dang G+ system was not showing wait times and you had to manually click into each ride to see when you could return. This is very annoying because you cannot make a judgment call if you’re trying to choose between multiple rides. Also, once you choose a selection you cannot see times for others even if you wanted to. The last few days it has taken about 30 minutes, or 7:30am for the times to show back up in the app and start working properly

It’s 10:20am now and none of the G+ Selections are late afternoon or evening yet except JC, but JC doesn’t do much for us. I know I know. . Lots of G+ selections (the mountains) are currently early afternoon.

We have a 12:45 PM ADR at Jungle Skipper Canteen and looking forward to that also

10:37 AM and at Pirates. Posted 20 minutes now, and building I’m sure. On in 11 minutes
View attachment 687164
Again today at 10:47 AM there was a drop for a lot of the headliners for return times only about 25 minutes from now. Unfortunately I cannot make use of it today , but maybe our last day, Tuesday the 26th, we can make use of that drop.

11:01 and heading to BTMRR standby. Posted 40 minutes. Waited 50 minutes
View attachment 687167
Still can’t stack anything yet because times are not far out enough. It looks like it will be Splash that we get first though, that is already out to 3:15pm

11:41am and booked our first G+ for Splash 4:30-5:30pm which we’ll use after our afternoon break. Will stack another when I can book again at 1:41. Will target G+ for Space or BTMRR next.

Booking G+ for an attraction close to park open and rolling from here is definitely the way to go at MK if you can. It is much more efficient, but those weren’t the cards that we were dealt today. We will make the most of it

12:13pm and watching the parade go by near Splash Mountain, then heading to lunch.
View attachment 687202

1:25 PM now and heading back to the resort. Will keep stacking G+
Here we go!…

Loving all your trip reports! Quick question though so I understand correctly. I know you are stacking for when your whole family is there tonight. However, if you had to wait a few hours to stack, why didn't you book the early return times while you were waiting to be able to book the later ones? I wasn't planning on getting genie + for my August trip but now I think I want it lol. I just want to make sure I understand properly. Thanks and hope you're enjoying your day!

 

[DisneyFive]

Loving all your trip reports! Quick question though so I understand correctly. I know you are stacking for when your whole family is there tonight. However, if you had to wait a few hours to stack, why didn't you book the early return times while you were waiting to be able to book the later ones? I wasn't planning on getting genie + for my August trip but now I think I want it lol. I just want to make sure I understand properly. Thanks and hope you're enjoying your day!

Thank you

It’s a good question. The reason is, I wanted to be able to have us all together for the G+ attractions with the short waits, and you can only book G+ once per attraction per day. If I had used genie plus in the morning for the four of us I would not be able to book the same rides for later in the day when we are all together

I would highly, highly recommend G+ at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood studios especially. It’s a game changer at those parks. It’s saved us massive amounts of time standing in lines

-Dan

 

[jods]

Thank you

It’s a good question. The reason is, I wanted to be able to have us all together for the G+ attractions with the short waits, and you can only book G+ once per attraction per day. If I had used genie plus in the morning for the four of us I would not be able to book the same rides for later in the day when we are all together

I would highly, highly recommend G+ at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood studios especially. It’s a game changer at those parks. It’s saved us massive amounts of time standing in lines

-Dan

AHHH, forgot that you could only ride once. Makes complete sense. Thanks. Can't wait to read the rest of your day. Have the best time!

 

[Erica Ladd]

Congrats on the anytime DisneyFive!

 

[g-dad66]

Well, it definitely does not change now but that’s because by the time you see the time window you are already at the second screen. So instead of showing for example 9 AM on the main screen and by the time you click into it, it says 9:05 AM, you don’t see anything on the first screen anymore and you have to click into the attraction to see the available time. Hope that makes sense.

I understand that you're not seeing any time slot until you get to the second screen, but then when you click on the time on the second screen, doesn't it then still go to a third screen to confirm your time?

You're saying that the time doesn't change between the second screen and the third screen? That wouild be good news.

In the past, not only did the time often change from the first screen to the second screen, but it would also often change from the second screen to the third screen.

 

[DisneyFive]

I understand that you're not seeing any time slot until you get to the second screen, but then when you click on the time on the second screen, doesn't it then still go to a third screen to confirm your time?

You're saying that the time doesn't change between the second screen and the third screen? That wouild be good news.

In the past, not only did the time often change from the first screen to the second screen, but it would also often change from the second screen to the third screen.

These are good questions. Let me check again tomorrow morning how it actually works because it was a bit of a blur in the morning when you’re in a rush to grab a good G+

The way I am remembering it now, when you click on the ride from the main Tip Board screen it took you to the next screen which showed the time window and then you could just confirm it in that second window. The third window was just a confirmation of your time. In my experience the only time the time ever changes is between the first and second window not the second and third.

I will try to check again tomorrow morning and report back

 

[BK2014]

Thank you! It is an iPhone 13 (not pro). I always have my flash off, and I do not use “live photo” ever.

1. My typical process for editing photos is to click on the photo, hit edit, then I typically Crop as needed
2. hit the little magic wand which is Apples way to “intelligently” enhance the picture.
3. Then increase exposure if it needs it,
4. and sometimes I reduce the Blackpoint (make the blacks blacker).

All this ends up making a more dynamic photo with better contrast Sometimes I will enhance the highlights as well. It all depends on the picture.

Also, I find myself wiping the lenses on the back of the phone with my shirt quite often. Finger smudges and other smears on the lenses will make your picture turn out hazy.

…it’s always best to hold your camera is still as possible while taking the picture

Low light photos are always the hardest, but using the flash almost always makes it look worse than without a flash in my experience.

Hope this helps!

Dan

Thank you for the tips!

 

[DisneyFive]

Hey y’all. Hollywood studios today! Park hours are 8:30 AM until 9 PM

Forecast is 92° and sunny

This is the sixth day of our trip and our second and final Hollywood Studios day. We are testing a late morning/early afternoon stacking strategy. (because we wanted to sleep in, which we did)

Priorities are ToT, RnRC, MMRR, MFSR and ROTR standby at park close. If we get lucky maybe we will grab a slinky, but not planning on it We also want to see the Indiana Jones show. We plan to eat QS for lunch and sushi at Kimonos for dinner in the Swan resort.

At 7 AM I booked us a 11am-12pm Tower of terror. (it took a few times of clicking into ToT ,and out, from the tip boards page but finally it got to that time frame. I could’ve grabbed any time slot from 9 AM to noon easily but I had to wait a little bit for the 11 AM to noon, maybe 30 seconds)

At 10:30 AM I grabbed a 12:15-1:15 G+ For RNRC. Just before 10:30 RNRC was hanging steady around an 11:50 AM return time but as soon as 10:30 hit it started jumping later very quickly because a lot of people were able to book at that time. So I snagged it quickly.

We will do ToT later in the 11-12 time slot, (around noon) then walk over to RNRC and do that keeping in mind you are able to tap in up to 5 minutes early, so 12:10 at the earliest.

We plan to arrive to the parks around 11:30 AM.

11:30am and we are here! Heading to ToT


11:42 AM now. Tapped into TOT. Posted 100 minutes! Waited 7 minutes


12:14 PM and just tapped into RNRC. Posted 100 minutes. Waited 7 minutes to preshow.

Started looking for more G+ after tapping into RnRC. Refreshed for a few minutes and found a MFSR that jumped a couple of hours earlier to 3:35-4:35 so I grabbed it. Will look for MMRR in two hours.

12:40 PM now and heading to the 1:15p.m. show of Indiana Jones. Grabbed a couple of Mickey pretzels on the way since lunch won’t be until after the show.


Lunch at Backlot Express after the show

2:24pm and booked a 5:45-6:45 MMRR. After that we will walk to the front of the park and take a friendship boat over to Kimono’s at the Swan for sushi (no reservations required)

2:41 PM now and doing Star Tours standby. Posted 25 minutes. On in 15 minutes


3:07 PM and getting in line for Muppets 3-D

3:45pm And just tapped into MFSR. Posted 75 minutes. On in 5 minutes


Jumped into the 4:30 Frozen Sing along to get some air conditioning. This is the first day that we have not taken an afternoon break because we got started at such a later time today. (Which we are OK with because we are well rested now). It is hot right now, really hot. Experiencing this heat makes me glad we’ve been taking afternoon breaks but it is nice to do a show like frozen and get some nice A/C which helps a LOT.


While at Frozen started refreshing a little and what popped up? A 5:15pm Slinky Dog Dash! Booom! We will now do that before MMRR. I don’t know if you want to plan on refreshing later in the day to get SDD but we’re two for two.

5:05 PM now and off to get some caffeine . Much, much caffeine

6:05 PM and just tapped into Slinky dog. Posted 110 minutes. On in 7 minutes. Gotta love G+, even though I loathe paying for it versus the old free FP+ system.


At 6:10 booked a 8:05-9:00pm Toy story mania. That works out well because it puts us near Galaxy‘s edge when we will do ROTR standby before park close. So now we have everything we wanted, plus some.

6:24 and tapped into MMRR. Posted 40 minutes. In preshow in 8 minutes


6:50 PM and heading to dinner. Kimono’s at the Swan. YUMMMMMM


8:20 PM and back in the parks and just tapped into Toy story mania. Posted 50 minutes. On in 8 minutes.

A word of caution. They will shut down the standby line for Rise of the resistance before 9 PM. I would plan to be there at least in full 25 minutes before park closing. We got there at 8:48, a full 12 minutes before per closing and they had just shut down the standby line. The ride was still operating. It was not down. If we would have known we would have easily shown up earlier. Needless to say there were a lot of frustrated guests, including us, but we will make lemonade out of lemons. We hoofed it over to Tower of terror to end the night. Doing standby at 8:55pm which is a walk on despite a 50 minute posted wait.


So long Hollywood Studios. Until next time…

-Dan

 

[Erica Ladd]

Looking forward to hear how your day goes today because nobody in our party wants to rope drop either lol

 

[DisneyFive]

Looking forward to hear how your day goes today because nobody in our party wants to rope drop either lol

Thanks!! We have not rope dropped once and we have gotten absolutely everything done that we have wanted to, plus some. It is definitely doable. I’m not advocating one way or the other just saying that it has worked out for us and saved our energy some.

 

[DisneyFive]

I understand that you're not seeing any time slot until you get to the second screen, but then when you click on the time on the second screen, doesn't it then still go to a third screen to confirm your time?

You're saying that the time doesn't change between the second screen and the third screen? That wouild be good news.

In the past, not only did the time often change from the first screen to the second screen, but it would also often change from the second screen to the third screen.

OK, so reporting back on this. Here’s what you see at 7 AM. No time slots. You have to click into that box that says “ make first selection starting at 7 am “. As you can see, I took that screenshot at 6:56 AM so when it actually hits at 7 AM I think that box might say something different but still there is no time in it.


Once you click into that box for a particular attraction you will see the screen below. You will see that I was looking for Tower of terror this morning. I was looking for a 11 AM to 12 PM timeslot so this one was too early. I would click the X at the top left of the screen which would back me out to the main tip board and I would click back in until I got my timeslot.

Once the timeslot got to 11 AM I hit the continue button in that second screen above.

Edit. I noticed that the second screen above already has the red text saying”Please note the time has changed”. That note carried through to the third screen, because that same red text was there too. I think the time did stay the same between the second and third screen. That is my guess and how it actually worked. That red text is carryover from the old way the tip board screen showed one time and by the time you get to the second screen it was different

Hope this helps…

Dan

 

[elgerber]

10 o’clock now and slowing down our pace; shopping then staking out a spot for the 11 PM Enchantment fireworks.
View attachment 686743
Immediately after the fireworks, around 11:20pm, we headed over to BTMRR and the line already stretched all the way across the bridge with deluxe resort guests. By our experience last year that was at least a 30 minute wait. So instead we walked over to Pirates and the line stretched all the way back to the tiki room. Hmm…. I think the fact that the fireworks went twice today, with a second showing at 11 PM, made for a huge push of people at the headliners for EEH right after the second firework show.

We don’t feel like taking the time for these people to flush through those lines to the point where we could have very short waits. It feels like it would be midnight or 12:30 AM before ridies will be short again . We accomplished so much today that believe it or not we are heading back to the resort and not going to make use of EEH.

We will get more rest for Hollywood Studios tomorrow. I think we’ll need to sleep in a tad. I’ll wake for a bit at 7am to book out first G+ for sometime in the 9-10:15 range if possible.

Signing off…. Thanks for joining us on our amazing day today.

-Dan

That rain made for very interesting stacking. We walked into MK that night with 4 any ride passes, and an ILL for SDMT.
About those lines at BTMRR and Pirates during extra hours, they freaked us out too, and we walked away form BTMRR but when we got to pirates, realized it just back up as they scan bands to make sure everyone is eligible. The line never once stopped moving and we pretty much walked straight into a boat. We went back to BTMRR after that, and same thing. Line did not stop until we reached the loading ramp.

 

[DisneyFive]

That rain made for very interesting stacking. We walked into MK that night with 4 any ride passes, and an ILL for SDMT.
About those lines at BTMRR and Pirates during extra hours, they freaked us out too, and we walked away form BTMRR but when we got to pirates, realized it just back up as they scan bands to make sure everyone is eligible. The line never once stopped moving and we pretty much walked straight into a boat. We went back to BTMRR after that, and same thing. Line did not stop until we reached the loading ramp.

Very interesting!! That information right there is valuable about EEH. Something we’ll remember if we do EEH at MK again in the future.

We have EEH tomorrow at EP tomorrow and will definitely make use of that for the 6 PM boarding group drop for EEH guests for Guardians!!!

By 11:30pm we were pretty dang tired from a long day at MK, and we had already done it all besides 7DMT so we decided to conserve ourselves and head out. We had HS the next day and wanted to get started at a reasonable time.

 

[g-dad66]

OK, so reporting back on this. Here’s what you see at 7 AM. No time slots. You have to click into that box that says “ make first selection starting at 7 am “. As you can see, I took that screenshot at 6:56 AM so when it actually hits at 7 AM I think that box might say something different but still there is no time in it.
View attachment 687363

Once you click into that box for a particular attraction you will see the screen below. You will see that I was looking for Tower of terror this morning. I was looking for a 11 AM to 12 PM timeslot so this one was too early. I would click the X at the top left of the screen which would back me out to the main tip board and I would click back in until I got my timeslot.
View attachment 687364
Once the timeslot got to 11 AM I hit the continue button in that second screen above.

Edit. I noticed that the second screen above already has the red text saying”Please note the time has changed”. That note carried through to the third screen, because that same red text was there too. I think the time did stay the same between the second and third screen. That is my guess and how it actually worked. That red text is carryover from the old way the tip board screen showed one time and by the time you get to the second screen it was different

Hope this helps…

Dan

Thanks for the great info!

It will be an improvement if the time doesn't change again after you click Continue on the "Review Details" page.

 

[DisneyFive]

OK, dumb question. Is there somewhere on the app that shows you when you can make your next G+ selection? I’ve normally just set my timer for two hours ahead but it would be good if I could confirm on the MDE app.

 

[Smugpugmug]

OK, dumb question. Is there somewhere on the app that shows you when you can make your next G+ selection? I’ve normally just set my timer for two hours ahead but it would be good if I could confirm on the MDE app.

You can check by trying to make another Genie+ selection. A page will show up that says you cannot book another one until *insert time here*.