Skyliner Crawl + Dinner at Kona Cafe = ?

[LJisthewalrus]

Hopefully this is the correct forum for this! I am meeting my mom down at Disney and arriving around 10:00AM on Thursday. I've been researching non-park ideas and came across two that I liked and am now trying to figure out if I can do both! We are staying off-site with our own vehicle.

The first idea is watch the fireworks from Poly beach, and I was able to get a reservation for 8:25 at Kona Cafe on Thursday. This is cutting it pretty close to the 9:20 fireworks time, but hopefully we can arrive a little early and just order a quick-ish meal/appetizers only. I won't be doing MK this trip, so I thought at least seeing the fireworks would be a nice start to the weekend.

The second idea is a Skyliner Crawl, which my mom seemed super excited about seeing the resorts since we almost never stay on-site. No park reservations, so we'll just be doing resorts.

Is this possible? Will we have to drive between DHS and Poly? Can we park at Poly (or near there) and then Monorail to Epcot? How long should we budget for all of this (realizing that the amount of time will also be influenced by how long we want to spend at each resort)?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions! I've learned a lot searching the forums, but didn't find this particular transportation question

 

[Skippyboo]

Skyliner is outside of the International gateway at Epcot. So you can’t take the monorail to Epcot and get to Skyliner without going through Epcot. Where are you planning to park? Your ADR will only get you a couple of hours of parking at Poly around your adr time. You won’t be able to park at Poly all day.

 

[LJisthewalrus]

We do not have a definite parking plan, which is why I've come here to get advice!

Thanks for the info about Epcot and parking at Poly. With no ADR at any of the Skyliner resorts, I'm guessing parking at one of those is out of the question. And it sounds like you can't park in Epcot parking lot and get to Skyliner either, so it sounds like our only option is to park at DHS, then drive to Poly before our 8:25 ADR?

 

[Skippyboo]

You can pay to park at DHS. Get the Skyliner there. It’s goes to Caribbean beach. CBR is hub for Skyliner. From there you can explore CBR, take Skyliner to Pop/AoA, Take Skyliner to Epcot with a stop at Riviera (the doors open). The Epcot line ends at International Gateway. You can get Friendship boat back to DHS then you can drive over to Poly for your ADR.

You can also walk from Epcot to DHS if you want to look around the hotels around Crescent lake and Boardwalk area. Also once you pay for parking at once park, just show your receipt at another in case you want to park at TTC and explore resorts around MK before going to Poly

 

[LJisthewalrus]

You can pay to park at DHS. Get the Skyliner there. It’s goes to Caribbean beach. CBR is hub for Skyliner. From there you can explore CBR, take Skyliner to Pop/AoA, Take Skyliner to Epcot with a stop at Riviera (the doors open). The Epcot line ends at International Gateway. You can get Friendship boat back to DHS then you can drive over to Poly for your ADR.

You can also walk from Epcot to DHS if you want to look around the hotels around Crescent lake and Boardwalk area. Also once you pay for parking at once park, just show your receipt at another in case you want to park at TTC and explore resorts around MK before going to Poly

This is a great plan - I didn't even think about the Friendship boat! Thank you so much!

 

[scrappinginontario]

Another option is to park at Disney Springs and take a bus to one of the Skyliner resorts to start your crawl there.

 

[LJisthewalrus]

For those who may stumble on this thread in the future...

We ended up paying to park at DHS, then attempted to board the Skyliner there only to find out it was closed due to lightning in the area (June in Florida, no surprise there!). So we took the Friendship boat to the Boardwalk area, then hit Hurricane Hanna's and the Margarita stand over at the Boardwalk. I was disappointed to miss out on AbracadaBar, BUT we ducked in to use the restrooms there and I was able to snap a few pictures! After waiting around a while, the Skyliner finally was up and running again, so we hit Bar Riva at the Riviera, then The Drop Off at AoA, skipped Pop Century, but I hit the Banana Cabana at CBR before riding back to DHS to get to our car. Because we skipped Pop Century and didn't linger long at CBR, we had time to go back to the room and squeeze in a short nap before heading out to Poly for our dinner reservation. (Which we were able to have dinner and make it out RIGHT as the fireworks were starting.) We parked at DHS at 12:30, and were back to get our car around 6:30, for anyone who is trying to figure out how long this will take. Again, YMMV, but we did spend a decent amount of time relaxing in the AoA lobby to cool off and doing some shopping at the gift store.

I DEFINITELY underestimated the amount of walking. From the Skyliner stop to Banana Cabana was quite a haul in particular. I put in 16,132 steps on Thursday (Airport + Skyliner Crawl), 16,582 steps on Friday (Epcot), and 14,897 steps on Saturday (DHS). Just for comparison. One difference is there's not as much standing as a park day - the Skyliner lines were relatively short, so the walking was interspersed with sitting at the different bars.

All in all, a really enjoyable day

 

[Moliphino]

For those who may stumble on this thread in the future...

We ended up paying to park at DHS, then attempted to board the Skyliner there only to find out it was closed due to lightning in the area (June in Florida, no surprise there!). So we took the Friendship boat to the Boardwalk area, then hit Hurricane Hanna's and the Margarita stand over at the Boardwalk. I was disappointed to miss out on AbracadaBar, BUT we ducked in to use the restrooms there and I was able to snap a few pictures! After waiting around a while, the Skyliner finally was up and running again, so we hit Bar Riva at the Riviera, then The Drop Off at AoA, skipped Pop Century, but I hit the Banana Cabana at CBR before riding back to DHS to get to our car. Because we skipped Pop Century and didn't linger long at CBR, we had time to go back to the room and squeeze in a short nap before heading out to Poly for our dinner reservation. (Which we were able to have dinner and make it out RIGHT as the fireworks were starting.) We parked at DHS at 12:30, and were back to get our car around 6:30, for anyone who is trying to figure out how long this will take. Again, YMMV, but we did spend a decent amount of time relaxing in the AoA lobby to cool off and doing some shopping at the gift store.

I DEFINITELY underestimated the amount of walking. From the Skyliner stop to Banana Cabana was quite a haul in particular. I put in 16,132 steps on Thursday (Airport + Skyliner Crawl), 16,582 steps on Friday (Epcot), and 14,897 steps on Saturday (DHS). Just for comparison. One difference is there's not as much standing as a park day - the Skyliner lines were relatively short, so the walking was interspersed with sitting at the different bars.

All in all, a really enjoyable day

I'm surprised the boats were still running with lightning in the area! We've been booted off them due to storms before.

 

[LJisthewalrus]

I'm surprised the boats were still running with lightning in the area! We've been booted off them due to storms before.

Apparently the range is different for the Skyliner versus the boats? I'm not sure if it's because the Skyliner is up in the air or because it covers more area than the lake. They did warn us on the boat that if the lightning got too close, they would take us to the nearest stop and everyone would have to get off, but luckily it held off enough for us to get to Yacht and Beach.