Roller Coasters, Rides and Theme Parks!

[Asura]

Disney hotel guests can book 2 hours before park opening, non-guests 1 hr, so you book a high-demand ride at whatever slot you can get, because a lot of them are gone, then you can book the next ride an hour after, so you're swapping between pre-booked and filler rides all day.

The Fastpass system is great, but also weird.

@Blobcat and I often talk about how we got Genie+ one day in EPCOT, and when we were passing Spaceship Earth, there was a 45m queue. The ride has quite a lot of throughput so that's a huge crowd of people. As we were passing by, I stopped to check my phone, and was able to book a Fastpass with a 5-minute wait (FYI; "5-minute" is a walk-on with no queue, as they're never zero, that's the lowest it goes) and we both remember walking right past the massive queue, up the FP line gangway, and straight onto the ride while it seemed like several hundred people were staring at us.

EDIT: Another tip which is probably going to be useful for anyone going. If you book a Fastpass, it affects your ability to book another until that one is used (when we went, you actually could only have one at a time, but that has varied in the past). Anyway, the point here is that you "use" your Fastpass when you scan at the front gate of the ride. Often, even when you use a Fastpass, you'll still have the queue for 10-15 minutes (as opposed to 1hr+ in a regular queue), and you should use that time in the queue to get out your phone and book your next Fastpass.

If you do this, you can NiGHTS Into Dreams chain-combo your way through a huge number of rides. This is how we did most things in Magic Kingdom in one day; we practically never queued for anything but just kept doing rides back to back, all-killer-no-filler*.

*admittedly we did The Little Mermaid which is very much filler, not killer.

[Blobcat]

Very much this with fast passes. Had this happen a handful of times in the holiday when we got an immediate pass just passing a ride.

[QualityChimp]

Yeah, all of this is true. Great swanning past people, but do you want to use that hour's Fastpass on Spaceship Earth?

I actually found it helpful having those fixed rides to attend and semi-freestyling it between them, checking the app for queue times.

Molly All Ears Net has some great "The best day at..." videos.

I'm enjoying thinking about the holiday again, though.

[Neon Ignition]

Forgot to throw in.... never needed a Fastpass either

[Asura]

Yeah, all of this is true. Great swanning past people, but do you want to use that hour's Fastpass on Spaceship Earth?

Back when we were there, it didn't work like that. Once you used your FP, you could make another immediately.

You only had to wait if you made a FP and wanted to book another one. Or something like that. It's been a while. But the point was that we had days were we rode like ~20 things, mostly Fastpasses.

[Blobcat]

Our first MK day was meant to be just Adventureland and Frontier land but we did

Resort Ropedrop - photos down main street, Walt statue and Castle before opening.

Resort Ropedrop allows you to cross over the bridge to Tomorrow land and into fantasy land earlier than opening. They 'dropped the rope' to Adventureland and liberty square as soon as it opened.
So we couldn't ride the rides their early but we were on the bridge to Liberty square at the Rope at the moment it dropped.

In the end we rode
-Thunder Mountain (walk on)
-Splash Mountain (walk on)
-Jungle cruise - Lightning lane/ FP booking for around 10:20am
-Pirates of the Caribbean - may have rode this before JC but was just over 20 mins wait

We got excellent view of the parade at midday we accidentally got caught up in at Hall of presidents where we could have easily watched the show or queued at Haunted mansion whilst it was on but we had plans for them another day and the parade was at the top of my bucket list. Went back to the hotel after this

-Country Bears - LL/ walk on
- Its a small world - LL
-Philharmonic - LL but didn't need it

Watched the fireworks and booked LL for Space Mountain whilst we waited and rode it from 9pm
Had time to ride something else but waiting for the fireworks had killed our feet by then

We may have ridden Pirates again that day but we tried loads of snacks and explored a lot. If we wanted to we could have easily gone on the tree house / Aladdins carpet ride or Tiki but didn't feel like it at the time (Went into Tiki room on our last MK day)

So that was 8 rides/ shows plus the parade with an excellent view and we could have ridden 1-3 more rides even with the rest at the hotel if we really pushed things but our feet were mashed by abusing them too much the early days before.

EDIT - looking back we had first LL for Jungle cruise later as we had lunch before and we DID go on Haunted Mansion (LL) that day, so 9 rides

[Soundwave]

On the plane now will be in Florida soon



Let you know how we get on as we go...see you on the flip

Neil

[Neon Ignition]

Enjoy!


Not envious at all....

->Open Spoiler<-

[Blobcat]

Have an amazing time!

[Soundwave]

Enjoy!


Not envious at all....

->Open Spoiler<-

Have an amazing time!

Thanks both

Day 1 done...Magic Kingdom
Hit the majority of the rides - Haunted Mansion, Thunder Mountain, buzz Lightyear, Pirates of the Carribbean & Snow White
All but Snow White were around 20 minutes under the advertised wait times so we were chuffed with that
Next trip is to do the fireworks & parades & stuff

Had a good day but Dad's feet & legs aren't built for too much

Off for dinner now

Neil

[Asura]

Had a good day but Dad's feet & legs aren't built for too much

If you have a pool in your hotel, it's a good idea to go down and have a dip after you get back each day, even if it's just for 20 minutes. Your feet will thank you!

[QualityChimp]

I'm just sat here waiting for [MENTION=7037]Soundwave[/MENTION] to give us his list of top ten rides in Orlando.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/uncharted-dark-ride-roller-coaster-spain-portaventura-world-1235272165-1235272165/amp/

Spain will be receiving a new dark ride next year based on the film version of Uncharted

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-11/universal-plans-kid-friendly-texas-resort-las-vegas-horror-attraction?srnd=premium&leadSource=uverify%20wall

Universal have announced plans to build a new small theme park in Dallas which will be smaller than its Orlando park and focused purely on children and the associated IP. Universal plans to build multiple mini-theme parks in different locations

https://twitter.com/HorrorNightsORL/status/1613254607500898304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1613254607500898304%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=

Additionally, they've announced that they will be opening a year round permanent, dedicated Halloween Horror Nights attraction in Las Vegas

[QualityChimp]

That's really cool.

Obviously, I'd like more thrill rides, but it's good they're expanding and trying new things.