We are back from an AMAZING trip to Disney. We arrived in Orlando on 3/7, check in to our Good Neighbor hotel and headed to Disney Springs...bad idea. It was beyond packed. Wait for World of Disney was estimated at 2 hours. No thanks. We grabbed some food at Earl of Sandwich and left.
3/8 we got our "room isn't ready" text at about 9am so went and parked our car at Grand Floridian and headed to Epcot. Rode a bunch of rides (wait times were reasonable) and ate way too much food at the Flower and Garden booths. Got the text that our room was ready around 3 or so. They put us in Big Pine Key. Was hoping for Boca Chino but decided to roll with it. SO glad we did because we had a gorgeous corner room with 2 balconies. One faced the Poly and the other faced the wedding pavilion and MK. We could see space mountain and the castle. We got to enjoy the Electric Water Pageant every evening.
3/9 Magic Kingdom day. Again we found the wait time reasonable except for our darn nutella waffles at Sleepy Hollow...lol. We rode almost everything we wanted before dinner. Had dinner at Liberty Tree Tavern. Due to social distancing we actually ate our meal at Diamond Horseshoe. We had never been in there before so that was a nice treat.
3/10 Animal Kingdom day. This is never a full day park for us so after you factor in no shows or character meet and greets, we were done after just a few hours. Skipped Pandora except lunch at Satuli Canteen. Wait times for those rides were crazy. Rode EE twice in 45 minutes though. Safari was about 25 minute wait but the queue was REALLY spaced out. Like all the way back to FOLK. We did get to walk through the theater where we noticed that social distancing measures are in place for the seating. Hope they announce an opening date soon. We decided to try our luck at Disney Springs again. Much better than on Sunday, no wait at all at any of the stores we wanted to go in to. Had an amazing meal at Chicken Guy. Headed back to GF and enjoyed the pool (and the pool bar....lol).
3/11 Hollywood Studios. All of us got up at 6:45 to try our hand at getting a ROTR boarding pass. DH managed to get it, group 7. Youngest daughter and I got dressed and headed over to HS around 8. Rode Slinky dog, Millennium Falcon and Toy Story mania before DH and our other daughter joined us. Then we rode ROTR. Hands down it was just amazing. Waited 40 minutes for MMRR, well worth the wait. Did a bunch more rides before dinner at 50's Prime Time (YUM).
3/12 Check out day (boo). We loaded our luggage in our car and headed to EPCOT. Rode a bunch of stuff and again stuffed our faces with F&G food. It started getting really busy around 3:30 so we decided it was time to go. DH checked the app an wait times at MK were crazy low. So we hopped over and rode a few things. Did some last minute shopping in the Emporium and Confectionary. Hopped on the Monorail and went to the Contemporary so DD could get something from the gift shop there. Back on the monorail to go to GF to spend more money at their shops HAHA! Then it was time to say goodbye to Disney. Spent the evening at a Good Neighbor hotel.
Few notes for those with upcoming trips:
- Mobile Ordering really takes the spontaneity out of QS meals. We didn't think this would be a big deal but if you are travelling with picky eaters it is harder to order something from here and then pop over to there and get something else for someone in your group. The pick up times NEVER seemed to align. So we found ourselves watching someone eat and then going to the next place where they watched everyone else eat. Maybe we could have planned this better but the whole point of QS is to get it on the fly and not plan it out. It wasn't the end of the world to us, just a bit of an inconvenience.
- Every single CM we interacted with was pleasant and helpful. We got tons of great pictures from the Photopass photographers. Almost all of them did magic shots.
- Masks really were not an issue for us until the last day. It was mid 80' and the humidity seemed to be up a bit. Add in the lack of shade in Epcot and growing crowds....it was just not for us.
We went in to this trip knowing it would be different from every other Disney trip we ever had. Honestly, we had a fantastic time and made wonderful memories. We really only missed the shows. We saw plenty of characters in the cavalcades and around the parks. Fireworks and parades were never a big deal to us. Funny thing, this was the very first trip that not a single drop of rain fell while we were there. It was nice but we kinda missed dodging the puddle and running from place to place.
Hoping you all have PHENOMOMAL trips and make tons of great memories!