Hello everyone! First of all, let me say once again, “Thank you!” Clark and I really had a wonderful, amazing trip, and having a community of people to share it with really made it so special! With that said, let’s get to the good stuff! I’m writing this post because I know there are people like me (crazy) who love planning Disney and are interested in all the nitty-gritty details of how our day went down. So for those folks, here it is!
As Clark and I were working on this post, it became a huge monster. For that reason, I’m splitting the whole thing into two parts. Without further ado, here is part 1.
Our planning began about a month before our trip (Clark was actually planning this as a surprise earlier than that, but I accidentally ruined the surprise when the credit card company reached out to me to verify “suspicious” purchases). We originally had an earlier flight (about 12:30), and we made an itinerary for every park order option we could think of to make the Walt Disney World part work. We finally had an option that we thought we could do, but I was still nervous about making the airport on time, so we ended up pushing our flight back about three hours. With the new flight time, the itinerary was pretty easy! Between the Early Morning Magic at Hollywood Studios and the late hours at Disneyland Resort, we felt confident we would have enough time to accomplish our goals.
Our next big hurdle was luggage. We were only spending one night in Orlando, but we had four days in California. We were not staying onsite, so we didn’t want to leave our luggage at the hotel. Although we were pretty confident in the timing of our plan, we didn’t want to worry about making a stop at the hotel on our way to airport. Disney does not allow anything that rolls or is too big, and honestly we didn’t want to lug our luggage with us the whole time either. We thought about renting a locker, but the lockers available are too small to fit anything close to our needs. Our next thought was to rent a car for the night and stash our luggage in the rental, but we wanted to avoid the hassle if we could. We could not come up with a better option, so I posed the question to an online Disney forum.
Someone there suggested mailing our luggage to our hotel in California, and only bringing what we needed for the one night in Orlando. Brilliant! And so, a few days before we were to leave, we boxed up our duffel bag and I took it to the post office. It was a pretty large and heavy box, so maybe splitting it into two large flat rate boxes might have been cheaper, but it was too late for that. I think the cost for shipping our box was $56, which is not too bad considering we were avoiding any fees for checking bags. With our luggage set, we anxiously awaited the big day.
On Tuesday (#epicparkhop eve), Clark and I packed up the kids and their essential supplies to go stay with family while we were gone (this was their fall break week which made for a fun little vacation for them too). We travelled to the Nashville airport, and caught an afternoon flight for Orlando putting us there in time for a date prior to the big day.
Once we landed, Clark and I took our first ever Uber ride from MCO to our hotel (I know we are far behind here…) We stayed at the Wyndham Garden Lake Buena Vista which is a partner hotel for WDW, and it was in walking distance to Disney Springs. It is not a fancy place, but the location is hard to beat. Given we had Wyndham hotel points to use, this made for a great option.
At 6:30 PM, we walked to Disney Springs from our hotel and grabbed dinner at the Earl of Sandwich. We weren’t on the dining plan of course, but after eating here, I’d say it’s a good use of a quick service credit if you happen to be in Disney Springs.
The main event for our date night however was “The Void.” Without going into too much detail, the Void is a fully immersive virtual reality experience (sight, sound, touch, temperature, etc.). The currently available experience there is Star Wars themed, and it takes you through a really fun adventure set during the “Rogue One” era of events. I won’t spoil any of the surprises, but I would strongly encourage anyone visiting Disney to give this one a go. Bottom line, we LOVED it!
So we finish our date, and walk back to the hotel in time to be asleep before 9:30 PM. We understandably were a little too anxious and excited, so it was probably past midnight when we actually got to sleep.
We set multiple alarms to wake us up between 5:15AM and 5:30AM, and at 6:08AM, we were out the door and calling an Uber. It literally took 1.5 minutes for our ride to show up, and Clark and I are still amazed at how easy ride share services have become.
We arrive at the entrance of Hollywood Studios, and walk to bag check. We were literally the first guests to arrive at Hollywood Studios that day, not a soul in front of us. Since bag check actually wasn’t open yet, we took some pictures outside of the Fantasia fountain. It was 6:25AM.
They soon opened bag check, and we were at the tapstyles at 6:35AM. Our Toy Story Land “Early Morning Magic” tickets were for 7:00AM, but they let you in a little early to enjoy your breakfast that comes with the ticket (at ABC Commissary). By 6:57AM, we sat down to breakfast, which was actually pretty good.
There were multiple entrees to choose from, and there was also an all-you-can-eat continental style buffet available for your enjoyment. We both had a breakfast fried chicken (with syrup) and some croissant donuts (I suppose we needed the sugar to get us through #epic park hop!).
We were one of the first to exit breakfast, and we went to join the crowd waiting outside the Chinese Theatre to walk over to Toy Story Land. This was at 7:11AM, and at 7:20AM, the cast members walked us into Toy Story Land where we were 2nd in line to get onto Slinky Dog Dash. By 7:25AM, we were walking out of our first SDD ride, and boy did we love it! I would say the thrill was a couple notches above Seven Dwarfs Minetrain, and the overall theming and integration within the land made it more memorable (despite 7DMT’s fantastic animatronics).
We heard that Alien Saucer Spin would be walk-on the entire morning, but we were too excited to wait. Despite being a “kiddy ride” there is something so enjoyable about it. Even though it is the exact same ride as Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree in Disneyland, we preferred Alien Saucer Spin so much more. We hopped on over to Toy Story Mania from here, and we were on the ride by 7:45AM. Even though we had ridden it countless times before, we really wanted to see the new queue, and Clark and I had been reading up on how to up our score in the game (hint: there are some really cool features you can unlock with a little teamwork!). We never get to ride together since we have to split up with the kids, so it was fun to test our research!
By 8:00AM, we were walking out of Toy Story Mania and decided to get in line for Slinky Dog again by 8:08AM. We actually ended up riding it three more times (total of four times), and believe it or not we were walking out of Toy Story Land by 9:00AM (not before taking some photopass pictures in front of Woody).
(Side note: For obvious reasons, Clark and I wanted to leave Hollywood Studios early, by 9:00. However, if I were trying to make the most of my time at the Early Morning Magic event, I would eat a quick muffin or pastry from the continental choices before entering Toy Story Land. At 8:45, before regular park crowds are let into the park officially, I would hop over to Rock n Roller Coaster to try to beat the lines there. I would possibly even ride Tower of Terror as well, depending on the line. After riding every major attraction in the park, I would go to breakfast. The breakfast at ABC Commissary included in the event ticket is available until 10:00 am.)
So our original plan called for a brisk walk from Hollywood Studios to Epcot. We heard this might only take 15-20 minutes, and in many ways might be our quickest way to parkhop. While this would have worked just fine, Clark and I decided to conserve some energy and get out of the heat (Orlando saw record highs for October while we were there!). We were aware of Disney’s Minnie Van service, but had never tried ourselves. It’s basically an Uber/Lyft setup (you even use the Lyft app to order it), but a CM is driving and the air conditioning is going full blast! There’s also convenient charging stations for you as you hop between parks. After some CM’s suggested it to us, we thought what the heck, and the Minnie Van service became our park-to-park transportation for the rest of the day. Our original hopping transportation would have worked out just fine, but suffice it to say, we have NO REGRETS. The Minnie Van service at Disney World is just wonderful! One huge advantage of the Minnie Van is they drop you off and pick you up at the bus stop at Magic Kingdom – no dealing with the Transportation and Ticket Center!
So by 9:05AM, we are on a Minnie Van headed to Epcot, where we experienced the longest security line we would see that day. Despite this, we got through, entered the park, and we were in line for Spaceship Earth by 9:37AM, riding at 9:47AM. Originally, we were going to ride Test Track, but the ride was down when we arrived. Our original goal was to ride a unique ride in each park, and Spaceship Earth certainly fit the bill, so we changed our plans. After all, what could be more iconic in Epcot than riding the attraction stuffed inside that giant golf ball!
Given the heat (did I mention it was hot?), and our requirement to eat a meal or a snack in each park, we opted for an iconic Mickey Bar for the Epcot leg of our trip. We were eating said Mickey bar at 10:10AM, and by 10:17AM we had exited the park and were hopping on our second Minnie Van (our original plan was to take the monorail over, but did we mention how much we liked the Minnie Van?).
We arrived at Magic Kingdom at 10:28AM, and we entered the park 6 minutes later at 10:34AM (security was much better than Epcot). After a couple pictures in front of the castle, we headed straight for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train where we had a fastpass. We were done with the ride right at 10:57AM, and we decided to go for a LeFou’s Brew for our Magic Kingdom snack since it was nice and cold (did I mention it was hot that day?) around 11AM.
By this time, we knew we were ahead of schedule, and we could afford to take our time leaving Magic Kingdom. Clark’s favorite area in any Disney park is mainstreet in the Magic Kingdom. We didn’t lollygag around by any means, but we did take a few minutes to soak it in despite our aggressive schedule. This was also the time where the cast members from the Disney Parks Blog were asking us questions about our trip for their blog post the next day. This included a few pictures just for their post. While the object of this post is not to dive into the media attention that day (Clark wrote another post on that side), I would just like to reiterate how kind these cast members were to associate with for even a short time.
By 12:04PM, we had said goodbye to Magic Kingdom, and we were on Minnie Van #3 on to Animal Kingdom (in our original itinerary, we planned to be ahead of schedule and figured taking the bus to AK would have been OK. It still would have been, but the Minnie Van was just too dang convenient).
We arrived to the park around 12:20PM, and the original plan was to ride single rider for Expedition Everest (one of my faves!). However, when attempting to book our fastpasses several weeks earlier, there was a system glitch that inhibited our ability to find what we were looking for. When we tried to rectify this over the phone, we were instructed to visit guest services to see if they might be able to do anything. Indeed, we did visit guest services the previous night while in Disney Springs, and we were fortunate enough to be given a multi-use fastpass that we could use for… you guessed it… Flight of Passage!!!
Now I suppose the purest of challenge critics might cry foul that the excellent customer service provided by Disney resulted in our being able to ride multiple premier rides in multiple parks. Fortunately for us, the by-laws we created for #epicparkhop did not include stipulations that discounted the benefits enjoyed from such good fortune. In other words, we were THRILLED to ride our favorite ride in Disney World, though our original plan would have still been successful.
By 12:39PM, we were in the Fastpass Line for Flight of Passage, and by 1PM, we were off the ride. Our flight wasn’t until 4:30PM, so as far as our meal/snack was concerned, we had some time to sit down and enjoy it. For us the decision was easy, as Satu’li Canteen is our favorite quick service option on property. To save time here, we used mobile ordering to choose and pay for our meal (I did another blog post on mobile ordering here). As adventurous as we are most of the time, we always get the same thing here, Wood Grilled Chicken over Sweet Potato Hash with the creamy herb sauce (delicious!). We also sprung for the Blueberry Cream Cheese Mousse, and a Pibb (this is one of the only places on property where you can find Pibb, another definite plus for me!).
We were in no real rush honestly, and we were even able to take some nice photopass pictures in front of the floating mountains of Pandora.
We left the park around 1:45PM, and took Minnie Van #4 to head to the airport. At this point, we had completed all our goals at Disney World, and we couldn’t be happier with how the day was going. We rode some great rides, had some great food, and surprisingly still had a lot of energy left.
Stay tuned for part 2, still to come… (UPDATE: here it is!)
