Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[scrappinginontario]

The launch system needed a lot of work. I’d rather they close to keep attractions safe.

 

[Mango7100]

The launch system needed a lot of work. I’d rather they close to keep attractions safe.

Huh? No one is saying that it shouldn’t be refurbished if it’s for safety issues. If that was the case, then why didn’t they close it sooner instead of announcing it months before they actually closed? People are saying they shouldn’t have closed it on one of the top 5 weeks for crowds—they could have waited 1-2 additional weeks.

 

[gottalovepluto]

Huh? No one is saying that it shouldn’t be refurbished if it’s for safety issues. If that was the case, then why didn’t they close it sooner instead of announcing it months before they actually closed? People are saying they shouldn’t have closed it on one of the top 5 weeks for crowds—they could have waited 1-2 additional weeks.

Some of us are thinking Disney World determined they could get X number more days out of the system safely and X happened to hit this week. We’re theorizing they got every day out of it that they could safely get.

 

[NJlauren]

Just finished up my trip, well almost we fly home tomorrow, but at the airport hotel and relaxing.

The combo of presidents week and Mardi Gras, was a lot! The parks were really crowded and it was hot, records for this time of year. Now sure if I liked the freezing on 2020 or this week better.

I did posts about genie on the two sold out days earlier but happy to answer any specific questions.

I thought most staff was on point this week, and funny my fav was the parking person taking payment, as a CM walked across he goes don’t hit Mary we are already short staffed. Thought that was funny. Had a great interactions with CMs at AK and most meals.

I did have a few PhotoPass people I didn’t love this week but I saw a ton just standing around! If you have PhotoPass stop and ask them to take your picture!! I worry if so many don’t get a lot of photos they will reduce the number of them in the parks. One did tell us the new costumes are so hot and they don’t breathe at all.

Genie + in Mk is great, the rest of the parks I totally see why people feel it’s a waste. I wasn’t going to get it at all in AK ended up getting it and for us it was ok, but not really worth it.

Again any questions happy to answer

 

[SwanVT2]

Just finished up my trip, well almost we fly home tomorrow, but at the airport hotel and relaxing.

The combo of presidents week and Mardi Gras, was a lot! The parks were really crowded and it was hot, records for this time of year. Now sure if I liked the freezing on 2020 or this week better.

I did posts about genie on the two sold out days earlier but happy to answer any specific questions.

I thought most staff was on point this week, and funny my fav was the parking person taking payment, as a CM walked across he goes don’t hit Mary we are already short staffed. Thought that was funny. Had a great interactions with CMs at AK and most meals.

I did have a few PhotoPass people I didn’t love this week but I saw a ton just standing around! If you have PhotoPass stop and ask them to take your picture!! I worry if so many don’t get a lot of photos they will reduce the number of them in the parks. One did tell us the new costumes are so hot and they don’t breathe at all.

Genie + in Mk is great, the rest of the parks I totally see why people feel it’s a waste. I wasn’t going to get it at all in AK ended up getting it and for us it was ok, but not really worth it.

Again any questions happy to answer

We were thinking of getting Genie + on our AK and Epcot days. Why did you think they were a waste? Thank you. We are bringing family who have not done Disney before and I want to prevent lots of long lines for the newbies.

 

[Disneyhanna]

We are doing studios and have walked onto ToT twice at 8:25 and 8:50 with a 8:30 park opening. No one here. Half empty elevators. Slinky down. Not sure if it’s a combo of the half marathon, both elevator shafts, or what. I’ll take it’

 

[NJlauren]

We were thinking of getting Genie + on our AK and Epcot days. Why did you think they were a waste? Thank you. We are bringing family who have not done Disney before and I want to prevent lots of long lines for the newbies.

I said other people feel it’s a waste and I get that. I almost always get it at all parks. Especially if you do all the rides and know how to work the system. But on our AK day it was $22 a person and we got 3 rides that’s a bit expensive. Put HS day it was $29 a person! If you only get in 3 rides is that worth it? I guess that’s personal opinion

 

[blistex]

We were thinking of getting Genie + on our AK and Epcot days. Why did you think they were a waste? Thank you. We are bringing family who have not done Disney before and I want to prevent lots of long lines for the newbies.

There are so few rides available at AK for LL, particularly with KRR down, you really only need Genie+ for Navi and KS and even those have a standby time of less than an hour at many times of day. We are extremely line-averse so we bought it anyway but you could probably have a pretty fulfilling day by spending that money on an FOP $ILL and riding everything else standby whenever wait times look best.

At Epcot I personally don't think it's a waste at all, unless you don't like the rides at Epcot or are a very aggressive rope-dropper. Frozen, Remy, and TT all have long standby lines most of the day so it would be almost impossible to get on all three during low-ride times, and lines for Soarin', Mission Space, and even Spaceship Earth some days can get up there as well. For me that's enough rides to make it worthwhile especially since if you stream LLs you can almost always grab a ride nearby to tap into immediately and re-set your timer to book another LL.

 

[SwanVT2]

I said other people feel it’s a waste and I get that. I almost always get it at all parks. Especially if you do all the rides and know how to work the system. But on our AK day it was $22 a person and we got 3 rides that’s a bit expensive. Put HS day it was $29 a person! If you only get in 3 rides is that worth it? I guess that’s personal opinion

But can you get LL without Genie +?

 

[blistex]

We are doing studios and have walked onto ToT twice at 8:25 and 8:50 with a 8:30 park opening. No one here. Half empty elevators. Slinky down. Not sure if it’s a combo of the half marathon, both elevator shafts, or what. I’ll take it’

That's amazing. Husband said as we were leaving Thursday it really looked like we picked the wrong part of Pres Day week to come. Thursday was visibly tamer than Tues/Wed at 10:30 at Epcot (as viewed from the Skyliner), our friends who went Friday said it was normal crowded not wildly overcrowded. I've always tried to get us out of there before the races start but maybe I've been thinking about it wrong.

 

[blistex]

But can you get LL without Genie +?

No, you have to have Genie+ to get LL. You can get the paid ILLs in each park without it (currently 7DMT, FOP, Guardians, and ROTR) and for those rides you can't get LLs for them even with Genie +, which I find kind of annoying.

 

[NJlauren]

But can you get LL without Genie +?

No you can not get LL with out Genie + you can get ILL for the current 4 rides that offer it with out genie + but all other rides LL need genie +

 

[Disneyhanna]

That's amazing. Husband said as we were leaving Thursday it really looked like we picked the wrong part of Pres Day week to come. Thursday was visibly tamer than Tues/Wed at 10:30 at Epcot (as viewed from the Skyliner), our friends who went Friday said it was normal crowded not wildly overcrowded. I've always tried to get us out of there before the races start but maybe I've been thinking about it wrong.

It was definitely way less crowded Thursday and Friday. Presidents weekend is always crazy but the race weekends themselves I’ve found to be fine especially in mornings and evenings since runners mostly stick to the parks in the later morning through afternoon (speaking from experience)! Plus at least during marathon weekend I don’t buy genie on most running days if I’m only doing a partial day and I imagine many others are the same so the LLs maybe are a little less competitive.

At 9:11 ToT is still listed 13. RotR is listed 45. It’s wild!

Edit: 12:33pm and ToT is back to 13 standby, it went up to around 40 but back down. Wow!

 

[Needsanap]

Also here now. Have been this week several times so knew to expect crowds. I definitely think it's more crowded than I've seen before but definitely doable. Genie+ has saved our wait times (though depleted our bank account; I was happy to see it down to $22 today).
We rope dropped Epcot on Sunday. This was the 3rd trip since Guardians opened and the first time I couldn't get on the 7 am VQ. I did end up buying the ILL. In past visits we have been able to do a few rides during the early entry but this trip only Test Track and by 8:55 we were at Frozen with a 50 minute wait. I love the modify option on Genie; was only able to grab an evening Remy LL so modified that to Soarin when we were done with Frozen. Headed to breakfast at Cape May and then back to do Guardians. By that time it was 1 and teen daughter was able to get that drop for VQ. We headed back to the resort for pool. In the meantime I grabbed LL at HS for the evening- Slinky, RNR, Test Track and Toy Story. It took a little work for Slinky but I consider it a success. Headed back to Epcot around 6 to ride Guardians but the line was wrapped around the front and almost to the entrance where they are taking pictures. Since we already rode it and were coming back, we skipped it and headed to HS and got our rides in. A very successful first day!

Monday we headed back to HS around 9. Lines were long to get in, we were only going to do a couple of things and head back for pool (great weather here!). 2 of us did Rise (ILL) while 2 of us saw Frozen. We had LL for Toy Story and I grabbed another for Star Tours. Pool and rest before heading back to Epcot. Was able to get in the 6 pm VQ for the 9-11 extended hours. We were called by the time the fireworks were done (and we were were close by standing) so went immediately. Took about 30 minutes with wait and ride, walked down to Remy and it was a walk on (about 10:15). Could have snagged one more ride but we were done so headed to the bus. Another successful day.

I will admit the biggest complaint this week is pretty much all the park reservations are booked so there wasn't much room for changing any of your reserved days; which I wanted to do!

Late start to AK today and MK tonight.

How did your Ak/mk day go?

 

[aokeefe]

How did your Ak/mk day go?

AK was absolutely packed. I never saw the line for the Safari or Lion King extend as far as it did. We arrived around 9:30. We had LL for Safari and ILL for Flight of Passage. I grabbed a LL for Everest and walked around Gorilla Falls and then headed back to the pool. We had planned to go back to AK on Thursday to do the shows. I stacked rides for MK for that evening. Ate at Kona Cafe and arrived at MK by 8 pm. We had Peter Pan, Space, Thunder Mountain and Pirates booked as LL. Did Small World and Mickey's Philharmagic before heading home around 10. Kids stayed on for extended hours. A very successful night at MK.
Park availability did change a bit as the week went on so I was able to change AK to Hollywood Studios to give us more pool time.

 

[Needsanap]

AK was absolutely packed. I never saw the line for the Safari or Lion King extend as far as it did. We arrived around 9:30. We had LL for Safari and ILL for Flight of Passage. I grabbed a LL for Everest and walked around Gorilla Falls and then headed back to the pool. We had planned to go back to AK on Thursday to do the shows. I stacked rides for MK for that evening. Ate at Kona Cafe and arrived at MK by 8 pm. We had Peter Pan, Space, Thunder Mountain and Pirates booked as LL. Did Small World and Mickey's Philharmagic before heading home around 10. Kids stayed on for extended hours. A very successful night at MK.
Park availability did change a bit as the week went on so I was able to change AK to Hollywood Studios to give us more pool time.

Thanks

 

[Disneyhanna]

Following up on my post, quick recap of what we accomplished yesterday 2/26 with Genie+ between HS and MK (Princess half marathon day):

8:25 - walked onto ToT at end of early entry
8:50 - walked onto ToT even after 8:30 park opening
Before 11:30 we did LLs for Runaway Railway, Smugglers Run, Toy Story Mania, ToT, and also did Muppets standby. LLs returned very early times and if not immediate it took minimal refreshing for an immediate time

Lunch break and dole whip at Poly while waiting to park hop, stacked 2 LLs for MK in this time

In MK we got LLs for Pooh, Peter Pan, Big Thunder, Pirates, Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain (became anytime and used for Big Thunder since SM remained down), all before 5pm. We picked up a 5pm Slinky for that evening but didn’t end up using it since we decided to ride train before heading back to Studios.

We could have done a lot more but chose not to, HS was so empty that morning! MK was more crowded but lines were pretty short and LLs were plentiful, I think HS was a great choice that morning given the race (and most runners heading to Epcot or MK I imagine).

Today 2/27 we did AK which again was very quiet. We arrived maybe 20 minutes after park open and did Safari, Everest, and Dinosaur with under 15 minute waits for all in standby. Lines seemed pretty short all morning, Safari got a bit longer but I think was back down again by afternoon after we left. Very low crowds in general at AK.

 

[Claire&TheBoys]

Just back from a quick trip - just 2 parks to celebrate my sister's birthday.

We did MK on Monday, 2/27. The park hours were 8:00-10:00. We stayed at POFQ, so we were able to get in at 7:30. We arrived about 7:30 and went straight to SDMT. The posted wait was 65 minutes, but I didn't think it actually looked that long and I was right. We were on in 35 minutes. We used G+ and through the course of the day we used it for Space Mtn, Thunder Mtn, Jungle Cruise, Pooh, Mickey meet-n-greet, and Small World (we had ridden everything else standby that we wanted to). We waited standby for Buzz (10 min), PeopleMover (0), Under the Sea (20), Pirates (35), Country Bear Jamboree (5), Haunted Mansion (45), Enchanted Tales with Belle (35), Philharmagic (0), Carousel of Progress (0). We pretty much covered everything we wanted to do, plus had a couple of breaks in the shade with snacks, plus meals at Pecos Bill's, and Pinocchio's. We came out of Country Bear Jamboree about 5 minutes to 12:00 and stood right there to watch the parade, which neither of us had ever seen. We waited about 30 minutes in the Hub for Enchantment and had a good view. Afterwards, we sat behind the Christmas shop in Liberty Square awhile, then went through the shops along Main Street on our way to the bus.

We did Epcot on Tuesday, 2/28. The park hours were 9:00-9:00. We got there shortly after 8:30 for the early resort hours and went straight to Test Track. They were still doing the morning test runs, and were not filling the queue, but we waited in line for them to open and we were on around 9:00. We got off by 9:15 and checked MDE and our GotG boarding group (22) was already open, so we went directly there. There was almost no wait. Looking at MDE, we saw that Soarin' only had a 10 minute wait, so we walked over there and it was accurate. We actually got off and queued up again - it was still only 10 minutes at 10:30. I've never seen it that short, EVER. We also rode Living with the Land with no wait, then went back to GotG for our ILL$. We were going to stop at Spaceship Earth but it was down. We rode Imagination after lunch at Sunshine Seasons and waited about 20 minutes for the Disney Visa character meet-n-greet. We had G+ LL for Remy and Frozen Ever After in the afternoon. Those rides did have pretty long standby lines - about an hour or so - but nothing else seemed to have a long queue. Even into the mid-afternoon, there were still GotG ILL$ available and I don't think the boarding groups filled up until at least 5:00 - we walked by one of the tip boards on our way to dinner on the Boardwalk and noticed it still said they were available. We did a lot of shopping and pin trading, heard the Voices of Liberty, and watched the new-ish Canada movie, which neither of us had seen (our husbands and kids are not fans of those things). We found a spot for Harmonious about 8:00 and enjoyed a rest while we waited for it to start.

We figured that Epcot was so uncrowded on Tuesday because the F&G Festival was starting on Wednesday and everyone wants to be there for the food booths. It was a nice change from my last trip, which was around New Year's when every park was packed out.

 

[Davey Jones II]

Just back from a quick trip - just 2 parks to celebrate my sister's birthday.

We did MK on Monday, 2/27. The park hours were 8:00-10:00. We stayed at POFQ, so we were able to get in at 7:30. We arrived about 7:30 and went straight to SDMT. The posted wait was 65 minutes, but I didn't think it actually looked that long and I was right. We were on in 35 minutes. We used G+ and through the course of the day we used it for Space Mtn, Thunder Mtn, Jungle Cruise, Pooh, Mickey meet-n-greet, and Small World (we had ridden everything else standby that we wanted to). We waited standby for Buzz (10 min), PeopleMover (0), Under the Sea (20), Pirates (35), Country Bear Jamboree (5), Haunted Mansion (45), Enchanted Tales with Belle (35), Philharmagic (0), Carousel of Progress (0). We pretty much covered everything we wanted to do, plus had a couple of breaks in the shade with snacks, plus meals at Pecos Bill's, and Pinocchio's. We came out of Country Bear Jamboree about 5 minutes to 12:00 and stood right there to watch the parade, which neither of us had ever seen. We waited about 30 minutes in the Hub for Enchantment and had a good view. Afterwards, we sat behind the Christmas shop in Liberty Square awhile, then went through the shops along Main Street on our way to the bus.

We did Epcot on Tuesday, 2/28. The park hours were 9:00-9:00. We got there shortly after 8:30 for the early resort hours and went straight to Test Track. They were still doing the morning test runs, and were not filling the queue, but we waited in line for them to open and we were on around 9:00. We got off by 9:15 and checked MDE and our GotG boarding group (22) was already open, so we went directly there. There was almost no wait. Looking at MDE, we saw that Soarin' only had a 10 minute wait, so we walked over there and it was accurate. We actually got off and queued up again - it was still only 10 minutes at 10:30. I've never seen it that short, EVER. We also rode Living with the Land with no wait, then went back to GotG for our ILL$. We were going to stop at Spaceship Earth but it was down. We rode Imagination after lunch at Sunshine Seasons and waited about 20 minutes for the Disney Visa character meet-n-greet. We had G+ LL for Remy and Frozen Ever After in the afternoon. Those rides did have pretty long standby lines - about an hour or so - but nothing else seemed to have a long queue. Even into the mid-afternoon, there were still GotG ILL$ available and I don't think the boarding groups filled up until at least 5:00 - we walked by one of the tip boards on our way to dinner on the Boardwalk and noticed it still said they were available. We did a lot of shopping and pin trading, heard the Voices of Liberty, and watched the new-ish Canada movie, which neither of us had seen (our husbands and kids are not fans of those things). We found a spot for Harmonious about 8:00 and enjoyed a rest while we waited for it to start.

We figured that Epcot was so uncrowded on Tuesday because the F&G Festival was starting on Wednesday and everyone wants to be there for the food booths. It was a nice change from my last trip, which was around New Year's when every park was packed out.

So Enchanted Tales with Belle is running again? When did it reopen?

 

[jillinastoria]

I believe it opened on 2/19–when we visited on 2/20, they said it was their second day back.