Trip Report Completed- Photo Heavy!! Lines, Lines, Fast Pass, Lines, Lines, repeat- A Quick trip to the World

Hello again everyone!! Got another whirlwind trip report for you!

So on this trip, we were offered by my Mother and her Husband a trip down to Florida to visit them as our Christmas present for this year.
And what a present it was!!
They rent this beautiful house every winter to hang out and to get away from the cold winters up north.
So we got to fly down, spend a few days with them and at the parks, then back home to work, school, and worst of all, cold weather again.

Here we are in our first of many lines on this trip! In line to check bags at the airport. The cast on this trip is my Wife, 2 sons, daughter, and myself.

Yay for flying coach!! Look at all that leg room!!

The entrances to the airport monorail had these cool stickers on the glass advertising Black Spire Outpost!

Next up, Universal Studios!!

 

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It was New Year's Eve the day we were at the park, so to kill some time, we caught a spot for Universal's Holiday Parade.

Minions!!

We all thought the Minion craze was over, but these floats seemed to get the biggest reaction from people. Even more than Santa Claus!!

 

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More Parade pics

I've never been to NYC to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, so I have to admit that it was kind of cool to see balloons that had been used in the parade before. It was interesting to me to watch the handlers of the balloons to see what they had to do to keep the balloons safe. You don't get to see that part on TV.

Shrek!!

 

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More Parade

And just like the parade in NYC...

It ends with Santa!! I thought it was kind of risky to have Santa in the parade after Christmas. What if some kid didn't get his X-Box and decided to take it out on the bearded wonder? It could have been ugly.

Thoughts on the parade: It wasn't as good as Disney parades we've seen. My family just doesn't have the emotional attachment to these characters like we do with Mickey and Co. I have to say that the performers did put on a very enthusiastic show for everyone. And in the end, we all enjoyed the parade.

After the parade went by, we starting walking to the place where we were going to have dinner, when we noticed Santa stopped next to the tree in the park.

We had stopped by the tree earlier in the day, where the Wife took this ornament selfie with the kids.

We noticed that the tree was not lit up at night.

But Santa said some Christmasy words, and the tree lit up!!
We all thought it was a nice touch.

The park was beautiful in the dark.

And we had to go back into Diagon Alley to see it at night.

 

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To mainly see this

It was kind of cool to see this. It amazed me how many people would just stand around waiting for it to go off. If you were close enough, you could even feel the heat from the fire.

Okay, one more rant.
Since it was New Year's Eve, the park was advertising a special fireworks show in the lagoon. Being Disney veterans, we knew we needed to find a spot early. So we went to the park area next to the lagoon, and found us a nice area that had a brick wall in front of us, and a metal fence surrounding a planter to our right. We were thinking it was a good spot as two of our four sides were covered.

As we got closer to midnight, more and more people started to crowd into the area. People started climbing up on the rock wall to see. People started climbing the metal fence to get into the planter to see. The crowd behind us starting pushing forward as the show started.

The staff did not even try to keep an emergency path open. We saw no staff at all actually. We felt the whole thing was very unsafe, and not organized at all.

The show ended up being a couple of dance songs, some projection mapping on one set of buildings, a count down to midnight, then some fireworks.

Kind of a let down compared to what Disney does on the same night. We did get free party hats and noise makers!!

So all in all, we enjoyed both Universal Parks. We just didn't think there was enough to do to fill out our day. Now if we didn't have the Express Pass, we most likely would not have been able to do half of what we did, as we would have spent most of our time waiting in lines.

So we made our weary way back to my Mom's house, and sleep in!!!

Next up: Magic Kingdom!!

 

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Day Three: Magic Kingdom

Yay!!! We're Home!!!

We normally stay on site when we go to Disney, so it was kind of weird having to go in thru the parking lot entrances and ride the trams.

In my best Tim Tracker voice "Monorail!!!"

Loved seeing the parks decked out for Christmas.

 

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So we figured we would hit Seven Drawfs Mine Train first.
The problem is, so did everyone else in the park that morning.

There was a mad rush to get in line for the ride. With people pushing and shoving, trying to get to the ride as fast as they could.

We've been to Disney many times when it has been crowded, but we have never seen guests acting as bad as this. It's surprising to me that no one got hurt!

We finally made it to the entrance! Should it be Dwarfs or Drawves'

The theming of the queue was fantastic.

This was our first time riding this ride.
We all enjoyed it, especially the Mine section of the ride.
We just didn't think it was worth all of the anarchy to get in line for the ride.

Onto Storybook Circus next for our first Fast Pass

Dumbo!!!

 

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Goofy was down this morning. We never made it back over to this side of the park to ride it.

It's become a family tradition that Dumbo is always one of the first rides we ride.

Elephant Butt

My Wife's favorite ride is Peter Pan, so we started to make our way over there.

Couldn't get a Fast Pass. So we went into the stand by line. We knew they had updated the stand by line queue, so we didn't mind getting in line. 90 minutes later, we finally made it onto the ride. The new queue is cute, but not cute enough to wait in line for that long!

 

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Favorite restrooms!!

Next was Haunted Mansion. Even though the stand by sign said 50 minute wait, we got into the mansion in 15 minutes.

Found the Bride's ring!!

Had to check out the new widened pathway. It was very nice.
Had to stop and mourn for the trees that were planted for one day and then removed from this path.

By then, it was time for our next Fast Pass at Space Mountain. We were hoping to catch the Christmas version, but it was back to the normal version. Note: above is not Space Mountain, lol.

We had just enough time to get one of our favorite treats

Dole Whip!!! The new location crowd flow seemed to work much better than the old location. And the new waffle chip with Goofy on it was a nice touch.

We then made our way to the hub to scout out a spot for the afternoon parade.

 

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This was our first time seeing the Festival of Fantasy Parade.

Loved that the MSP lead off the parade!!

Smolder?

We had a family sitting next to use that had a little girl that had one of those annoying bubble blowers. She would blow bubbles at the different dancers, and when they saw the bubbles, they would come over and interact with the little girl!
Even characters on the floats would yell at her. So there is a pro tip for you. Get you a bubble blower to try to attract the cast members over to interact with your kids, then accidentally lose the blower in the nearest garbage can after the parade.

Almost looks like i tried to merge these pics!

 

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We are big Disney parade fans!!

Our Favorite part of the parade, the Maleficent Dragon Float

We kept waiting for the fire, but no luck.
Universal- 1, Disney- 0

While waiting for the parade, we started chatting with a cast member that was working crowd control. I think his name was Rudy, but I don't remember for sure. He was quite a character. He was talking with the crowd and telling all kinds of jokes to entertain everyone. I noticed his name badge was a special one and asked him about it. He said he had received the Legacy award from Disney. He then went on to tell us funny stories about how he met Bob Iger and Bob Chapek at the award ceremony. He was great!!

Overall, we enjoyed the parade. We didn't think it was the best one we had ever seen. But it was still fun!!

 

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We then went to ride our third Fast Pass at Big Thunder Mountain. We went ahead and did stand bye at Splash next since we were right there.

Splash stand bye sign said 90 minutes, but we only waited 60.
The ride stopped on us right next to the scene where Brer Fox is putting Brer Rabbit into the pot. We were hoping to get an evac!!! But no luck, the ride started up. The good news was everything seemed to be working except for the hopping Brer Rabbit.

Forgot to throw this in earlier, but the boys are excited about the new Tron coaster coming.

While waiting in line for Splash, I was able to score Fast Pass for Jingle Cruise!

We love campy looking decorations, so this fit the bill. Then add in campy Christmas Jingle Cruise jokes, it made it even better.

When we reached the famous "Back Side of Water" my whole family cheered!!! The looks from the other guests on the boat were funny, as they were trying to figure out if they missed a joke some how.

By then it was close to park closing. So we sadly made our way out of the park.

Was Magic Kingdom crowded beyond belief? Yes it was. It was the most crowded (how's that wording English majors?) we had ever seen the parks.

We ended up getting in 10 rides this day.

We also got to try mobile ordering for the first time at Cosmic Ray's, and I considered it a success!!! We spent more time waiting to find a seat than we did waiting for our food!

Next up: Disney Studios

 

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Our next day we got up bright up bright and early to make it to the Studios for the 7 a.m. opening to try to get the coveted ROTR boarding pass!!

In line to get in the Park 6 a.m.
They started letting us into the park about 20 after and we were thru the gates by 6:35.

It seemed like most guests were going towards Batuu, so we headed for Toy Story Land. We made it to the rope, and then waited for 7 a.m. to strike.

At 7, the wife and I started furiously hitting refresh on the app. She was able to get us a boarding pass!!! We were group 86.

It was kind of fun hearing different parts of the crowd start cheering when they got their boarding pass. But there were other guests close to us that only got back up boarding passes.

Is it the best solution in the world? No. But it is better than standing in line for multiple hours. More on the ride later.

This was our first time visiting Toy Story Land. It seemed like everyone was heading for Slinky, so we decided to head for Midway Mania.

Was the land built on the cheap? Probably. But my family loves the Toy Story movies, so we enjoyed the decor.

By the time we got off Midway Mania, the lines for Slinky and the Alien ride were crazy. So we decided since we were right next to Batuu, to go ahead and venture in Black Spire Outpost.

Batuu selfie

More Star Wars Land ahead!

 

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So let me start by saying that I and my children are huge Star Wars fans. So our expectations were high going into the land.
What did we think? The answer is ahead.

I got a little tear in my eye when we turned the corner and saw this beauty.

The wait for the Falcon at this time was 170 minutes. The line ended right before the entrance back into Toy Story Land.
We went ahead and got in line. It worked out well, as we took turns leaving the line to go explore the Outpost.

Then that group would return, and the other group would go explore. So the first part of the line seemed to past quickly.

It gave us a chance to try to Blue Milk. (In Collectible container). We thought it was okay. We prefer LeFou's Brew or Butterbeer.

The theming of this land is incredible.
More to come!!

 

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More Batuu

 

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More

This was the line to get into the Cantina!!

 

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You might be able to tell that we liked this place

 

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You may be able to tell that most of these pictures were taken while waiting in the line

Getting closer!!

My son used the Disney Play app to make the Falcon spit out smoke! That was pretty cool.

 

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Even though the wait was 170 minutes, after a brief tour of some back stage areas, we finally made it to the Falcon.

For all you ramp enthusiasts

Finally made it into the building!

 

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Loved the humor in the queue with the crew members talking back and forth to each other.

Finally made it into the pre-show area. We are fans of the Clone Wars series, so it was awesome to see Honda Onaka in person!! Our total wait ended up being only about 100 minutes.

Dream come true. Never thought I would have the chance as a little boy back in the 70's.

Ride Review- Awesome. I know many on here say it isn't the best ride in the world, and it isn't. I think just the thrill of being in the Falcon was the highlight of the ride. Don't get me wrong, the ride is still fun, and we all enjoyed it. My Wife was stressing as she didn't want people "yelling" at her to press her buttons, lol. She ended being a gunner and did great!!

The only complaint I had was we didn't have enough time to see the Falcon. I sat down at the table first thing, and before we could take the picture, the cast members were calling our group! I would have like some more time to roam around.

Maybe the second cutest thing behind Baby Yoda.

 

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Kylo and the Boys. New Sit-Com coming to Disney +

Inside Dok Ondar's

Dok itself. I told him I had some ocean front property for sale on Tatoonie, but he didn't seem intersted.