ThemeParkCommando

Beautiful ship. At one point I was reminded of the opening of the first Star Wars movie, as it was backing out and it just kept going and going.. I never thought it was going to end, lol. I can't believe the engineering behind these monster ships. I keep thinking they look so very top heavy. The ballast used must be quite impressive.

From the way it looks, I'd bet you could park a food truck there. The deck looks like it would make a decent spot for a line.

As long as your phone can access the internet. It might not be able to read a QR code, but you can find the menu's on the WDW website for each restaurant. My Father in Law still uses a flip phone, too. He does have internet access with it. It's slow, but it works.

OH, I forgot one part. The reason for the title of this TR. According to our Pokemon Go game, we walked 58 miles during the 6 days we were at WDW. You can see by the pictures, I'm not an 'in shape' person, except for the concept that round is a shape. I have a condition called "palmoplantar keratoderma' which causes thick callouses on my feet ( up to a half inch thick in some places, and that's with all the buffing I do to keep them down). Due to this I have a lot of foot pain, and a new issue called 'polymyalgia rheumatica', which causes pain in hips and shoulders, I j

Final thoughts: I probably should have put this at the beginning of the report, because it has the most useful information about traveling to WDW right now. Well, call this the reward for traveling there with me, as I reminisced. Mousekeeping is limited. Something I must have missed in all my reading, but mousekeeping is still not doing sheets or bedding changes. Neither will they make the bed on their days in the room. Mousekeeping comes every other day for light cleanup and to replace towels and sundries. If you want to come back to a freshly made up room, you will need to make your be

For the first time in forever, we left a park at midday. We went back to the hotel, took a quick shower and took a nap for an hour. We then got up, got dressed and went back to HS. We had one final thing to accomplish back at Galaxy’s Edge. It was about 1:30 when we walked back into the park, and it was about 85 degrees. We got a cold beverage an d started the long walk to the back. This was our one crazy decision, as we wanted a photo pass photo with our new ‘couples’ shirt, in front of the Millenium Falcon. Worth it! We left HS after that, a long walk back out to the

My husband said the same thing.. lol. I was trying for 'suprised' , but my hand is just in the wrong place.

Saturday – Last day at the parks. So, for this day, we knew we weren’t going to be done with HS, but we were pretty sure we didn’t need an entire day there. We also had reservations for LeCellier at 8:45PM at EPCOT. Also, we hadn’t yet ridden the skyliner. Now, we are not a family that enjoys the Disney busses. We prefer the freedom of the rental car. We also prefer to tour one park per day, rope drop to close. So, we had a big, different plan for today. Our plan was to get an LL for Slinky Dog, then head over to Tower of Terror and Rockin’ Rollercoaster. Watch the firs

Then it was time for our reservations at Oga’s. We got in pretty quickly, only about 5 minutes after our scheduled time. We had a spot at the bar, and a very lively bartender. I was happy because DJ Rex was playing music, but not nearly at the ear splitting levels most bar’s seem to like these days. Oga’s only offers 2 snack plates, so we ordered both. The Batuu bits, which are chips and dip, and the Happabore Sampler, which is a charcuterie plate. They were both pretty good, with the odd shaped chips and strangely cut meats to try and make it seem more outer worldly. I still had to drive, and

We stopped by the Indiana Jones stadium to pull the rope on the mine shaft / well / whatever that is. It was fun, and we startled a few passerby. I’m glad that little easter egg is still there. We got in line for our Mickey and Minnie Railway journey, and I was very happy to have purchased the ILL. The line was at 70 minutes. We only had to wait about 10 minutes overall. The ride was a fun little jaunt, but it is not going to become a favorite of ours. We don’t like the new animation of the Disney characters. Goofy is just too scruffy for our liking, we much prefer the older animation. Also, i

Thanks for all the wonderful comments. Nice to see folks reading along. I keep an eye on the view counts too, since I am bad about commenting on TR's, I can tell folks are reading along from those counts. We were now in the window for our ILL on Ride of the Resistance, so we walked back over using the path lower down, below Ronto Roasters and the shops. There is an area there where you can play with your newly built droids with other folks who also have one. They talk to each other! It was cute to watch them for a bit. That area is near a used landspeeder shop, where Chewbacca was

Nightmare before Christmas is my granddaughters favorite Christmas movie too. I always bring her something on that theme for Christmas.

Friday! – A full day at Hollywood Studios, emphasis on Galaxy’s Edge. This is the big planned for day. All the timing for every other park was due to the need to experience the Star Wars expansion to the limit. When it was time for me to make reservations, Friday was the only day I could get the lightsaber build reservation, and reservations for Oga’s Cantina, so this day was set in stone early. This day will be the biggest section of my trip report. HS opened at 9am officially, so 8:30 am was our target. We got up and ready at 6:30, and made our Genie+ Lightning Lane and Individual Ligh

Thursday – Disney Springs / Rest day You know…’rest’ is a relative term when you are at WDW. This was more of ‘no park’ day, but not completely restful. We did sleep in, got up around 10am and went swimming at the resort pool. I’ve always seen the pool slide at POFQ and wanted to play on it. My chance is finally here! I went down the slide a few times, enjoying the ride and swimming around happily. No one else was in the pool at the time. We spent a couple of hours poolside, then went to get dressed and head to Disney Springs. We took the riverboat up to DS, a nice 20 minu

The MK report took 3 posts. We really did have a nice day there, and did a lot! Time to check in for our Skipper Canteen supper! 4:10 pm was our reservation time, and we were called up at about 4:20. After all my research and perusing about this restaurant, somehow the ‘secret menu’ concept was completely missed. Apparently, there is one. Our server recommended the Pao de Quiejo secret appetizer, so we tried it. It’s a cheese bread bite, and they are served with a chimichurri and cream cheese sauce. So glad we got it, it was delicious. Apparently, the ‘secret menu’ changes almost daily. I g

hehehe....I've got some newspapers and a squirt gun around here somewhere.

Thanks for all the kind messages about my TR! We are heading to lunch in MK now. Outside of Princess Hall, I did a mobile order for Columbia Harbor House for lunch. That was interesting, because the poor CM keeping hold of the doors had to constantly tell people that it was Mobile Order only. That rule is frustrating to both CM’s and guests. Hope they can get rid of it soon. However, when I got inside to pick up the mobile order, there was plenty of seating for us, when just before we were fighting to find a spot to sit outside, thinking we had no choice. Hubby and I both were happy to sit

Wednesday: Magic Kingdom day! At least we got a good night sleep, lol. We crashed at about 9:30pm after returning from AK, slept until 6:55 when we got up to make our LL selection for the day. We planned to do MK as the ‘Memories of Walt’ tour (i.e. All the stuff kids find boring!). We’ve been on all the rides. SDMT did not impress us back in 2014. Space Mountain is now in the ‘It hurts too much to ride’ category. We made our 7am selection for Jungle Cruise, with a 2:30pm return time. Perfect! Resort open time was 8:30am. We drove into the TTC parking area right at 7:30 pm, and again wer

We went to Celebration of the Festival of the Lion King, and got on the Lion side of the crowd. My favorite side! I’ve never been a fan of the tumble monkeys, so didn’t miss them, but my husband did. I am not sure why, I am impressed by gymnastics, and I know how much work it takes for a person to be that nimble, but I've never enjoyed watching people flip around. After tapping in the LL lane there, I made another LL for Dinosaur! for around 3:45pm. We had a couple of hours to kill before EE, so we rode the train to Conservation Station. It’s still very quiet there. They have an

Urrrrgh.. the worst of my planning was putting the latest closing park first then having to get up for the earliest opening park the next day. Couldn't be helped, since my reservations to Hollywood Studios for the lightsaber and droid builds were only available on Friday, and my Skipper Canteen lunch was only available on Wednesday or later. AK opens at 8am, so Early entry is 7:30am for resort guests. Went to bed around 11:30pm, and groaned our way out of bed at 5:45am. The morning was beautifully foggy, dew dripping everywhere. We drove into the parking lot at 6:15 am, and were the 3

Oh dear, so sorry! LL is Lightning Lane, the replacement for FastPass +. You have to buy Genie+ at $15 a day per person to be able to use the LL feature. VQ is Virtual Queue, what they use for the popular ride as a fastpass feature that you don't have to pay for. ILL is Individual Lighting Lane, the Fastpass+ you have to actually pay for separately, and can be anywhere from $7 to $10 per person. BatB is Beauty and the Beast.

Using the LL for Soarin, we got on the ride with only a 5 minute wait, while standby was about 1 hour. I immediately booked a 3:25 Spaceship Earth LL. On Soarin, we got the top row, far right side, so we giggled a lot at our bent building perspective. It was still fun though. After, we walked onto LwtL using our LL. We then went to the Seas, and walked on the Nemo ride. Enjoyed the cool air and watched the aquatic wildlife for a bit, then went to SE. During this time, I noticed that our Rat VQ was starting to get pushed back again, and again. After SE, we walked onto MS: O

LOL..I'm with you, though. Make entry to the park free, and just sell ride tickets for each experience, the way it used to be. You would have to keep the reservation system though, because the parks would become unimaginably crowded otherwise.

Exactly. The reason he had 2 MDE presences is long, and I really disliked having to figure out the workaround on our first morning there. Also, SO many restaurants in EPCOT now just give you a QR code and expect you to pull up the menu on your phone. I really dislike that, too.

Before I left for my week at WDW, I purchase unlimited data from my phone provider. I did not want to have to depend on Disney WiFi for the 7am rush to book LL's. We had issues with being indoors blocking my wireless connections. Hopping onto the wifi then usually helped. I also was less than thrilled about having to use my phone for a menu AT the restaurants. Luckily, we had taken the time to look at the menu's earlier, so we knew what we wanted already. Even Morimoto's had the QR code for menus at the table. Our waiter was kind enough to bring paper menu's for us, though, withou