Hey everyone! Long time lurker, first time poster here! I’ve been obsessing over this forum leading up to our trip and it’s helped me a ton, so I wanted to post our experience for anyone contemplating on making a trip! My name is Erica and my husband and I made our first trip together to WDW in 2016 and have been itching to go back. My husband turns 30 this week so we figured what better way to celebrate! After reading about how quiet the park was after reopening, we wanted to take advantage. I will admit, in the weeks leading up to our trip I was getting pretty nervous reading about how much larger the crowds had gotten and how much the wait times were increasing, and it almost made us second guess our trip. But we figured we would make the best of it because Disney is Disney! We also planned to go Sun-Tues to hopefully avoid some crowds during the week. Here’s a play by play of each day we had!
We arrived Saturday, Sept 19 around 530 and checked into Pop. Easy check in, went straight to our room with no problem. The recent room renovation is nice! Simple and clean, lots of nice storage. After we checked in, here’s where our night unfortunately took a turn for the worst. We quickly dropped off our stuff and freshened up to meet my sister (who lives outside of Orlando) at Raglan road in Disney springs. We left with what I thought was enough time (30 mins early) but boy, was I wrong. We pulled up towards Disney springs to the worst traffic I’ve ever seen (and this says a lot growing on on Long Island, NY) It was 630 and our resy was at 645. We were at a stand still grid lock with nowhere to go. As the time passed we saw each sign change to “green parking closed” “orange parking closed” and then finally, “Disney springs at capacity.” We obviously just forgot about our resy at this point and met up somewhere else after another 30+ minutes to just get the heck out of there. Super stressful and I’m still not really sure why it was as crazy as it was. And super bummed we didn’t make it to raglan road! In hindsight, I wish we had just ubered there instead of drove ourselves, but it is what it is. Needless to say, I wouldn’t recommend going to Disney springs on a sat night based on my experience because it was absolutely crazy!
Today (Sun, Sept 20) was Hollywood studios day so we were ready early with one goal in mind! (To get a boarding group of course!) The park “opened” at 10 so we wanted to be right at the gate around 9 (or at least as early as we could). The problem though, was that the skyliner from pop didn’t technically leave till 9, but we figured we would see what we could do. We walked towards the sky liner at 8 and there was already a line (although we were near the front!) We waited until about 830 when it started to get a little windy and the skyliner seemed to be stopping and going, so we decided to just get an Uber. I knew if we got to HS too early we wouldn’t be allowed in, so we decided to Uber to boardwalk and walk over. Everything worked out perfectly and we were right at the gate at 9 on the dot. I will say, ironically, the people who were behind us on line at the skyliner somehow ended up behind us again at the gate, so I guess the skyliner left earlier than posted with no problems! They let us in around 9:10 and we went straight to mickey and minnie’s runaway railway. On and off the ride by 930. (Which I was thrilled about because I knew the wait times were posting about 90 mins everyday the week leading up to our trip!) We thought about hopping in another line but we didn’t want to risk being somewhere with bad service to get in the virtual cue. We sat down outside of sci fi and waited it out. 959 came around and my husband started refreshing the virtual cue in the app (he force pulled down), quickly hit join group when the button popped up, selected all at the top and then hit next... and we got in boarding group 2!!! We were so so elated and headed right over! It was phenomenal and I’m so glad we got in!
The rest of the day was spent riding rides and enjoying all the blue milk at milk stand in galaxy’s edge (it’s soo good!) Here's the posted wait times from today and how long we actually waited- mid way mania- posted 40 mins, 15 min wait, aliens- posted 20 mins, 10 min wait, star tours- posted 30 mins, 20 min wait, smugglers run- posted 75 mins, 25-30 min wait (we also rode this again about 15 mins before park close and it was a walk on), slinky dog- posted 50 mins, 25 min wait (we rode this 2 more times back to back walk on about 30 mins before park close), Muppets- posted 15 mins, 20 min wait, tower of terror- posted 45 mins, 25 min wait, Aerosmith- posted 50 mins, 25 min wait. And.... I think that covers them all!! After our long day of rides we got dinner at sci fi (we just love a good theme restaurant!) and called it a day. All in all we had a great day. I missed the shows, but I liked not feeling like I had to plan when I’d be squeezing in each show and fast pass. Highly recommend the Ronto wrap in galaxy’s edge and blue milk at milk stand! So so good! Overall, the park was “crowded” but never unmanageable and I imagine much emptier than peak summer and holiday months. After 2ish the park cleared out a good bit. The wait times weren’t bad and everyone mostly kept their distance. I’d say maybe at one ride the people behind us were getting a little too close, but other than that, no issues! Hand sanitizer everywhere (although I’d say close to 50% were empty, which was fine as we had our own) and good mask wearing across the board. Here’s to Epcot tomorrow!
We arrived Saturday, Sept 19 around 530 and checked into Pop. Easy check in, went straight to our room with no problem. The recent room renovation is nice! Simple and clean, lots of nice storage. After we checked in, here’s where our night unfortunately took a turn for the worst. We quickly dropped off our stuff and freshened up to meet my sister (who lives outside of Orlando) at Raglan road in Disney springs. We left with what I thought was enough time (30 mins early) but boy, was I wrong. We pulled up towards Disney springs to the worst traffic I’ve ever seen (and this says a lot growing on on Long Island, NY) It was 630 and our resy was at 645. We were at a stand still grid lock with nowhere to go. As the time passed we saw each sign change to “green parking closed” “orange parking closed” and then finally, “Disney springs at capacity.” We obviously just forgot about our resy at this point and met up somewhere else after another 30+ minutes to just get the heck out of there. Super stressful and I’m still not really sure why it was as crazy as it was. And super bummed we didn’t make it to raglan road! In hindsight, I wish we had just ubered there instead of drove ourselves, but it is what it is. Needless to say, I wouldn’t recommend going to Disney springs on a sat night based on my experience because it was absolutely crazy!
Today (Sun, Sept 20) was Hollywood studios day so we were ready early with one goal in mind! (To get a boarding group of course!) The park “opened” at 10 so we wanted to be right at the gate around 9 (or at least as early as we could). The problem though, was that the skyliner from pop didn’t technically leave till 9, but we figured we would see what we could do. We walked towards the sky liner at 8 and there was already a line (although we were near the front!) We waited until about 830 when it started to get a little windy and the skyliner seemed to be stopping and going, so we decided to just get an Uber. I knew if we got to HS too early we wouldn’t be allowed in, so we decided to Uber to boardwalk and walk over. Everything worked out perfectly and we were right at the gate at 9 on the dot. I will say, ironically, the people who were behind us on line at the skyliner somehow ended up behind us again at the gate, so I guess the skyliner left earlier than posted with no problems! They let us in around 9:10 and we went straight to mickey and minnie’s runaway railway. On and off the ride by 930. (Which I was thrilled about because I knew the wait times were posting about 90 mins everyday the week leading up to our trip!) We thought about hopping in another line but we didn’t want to risk being somewhere with bad service to get in the virtual cue. We sat down outside of sci fi and waited it out. 959 came around and my husband started refreshing the virtual cue in the app (he force pulled down), quickly hit join group when the button popped up, selected all at the top and then hit next... and we got in boarding group 2!!! We were so so elated and headed right over! It was phenomenal and I’m so glad we got in!
The rest of the day was spent riding rides and enjoying all the blue milk at milk stand in galaxy’s edge (it’s soo good!) Here's the posted wait times from today and how long we actually waited- mid way mania- posted 40 mins, 15 min wait, aliens- posted 20 mins, 10 min wait, star tours- posted 30 mins, 20 min wait, smugglers run- posted 75 mins, 25-30 min wait (we also rode this again about 15 mins before park close and it was a walk on), slinky dog- posted 50 mins, 25 min wait (we rode this 2 more times back to back walk on about 30 mins before park close), Muppets- posted 15 mins, 20 min wait, tower of terror- posted 45 mins, 25 min wait, Aerosmith- posted 50 mins, 25 min wait. And.... I think that covers them all!! After our long day of rides we got dinner at sci fi (we just love a good theme restaurant!) and called it a day. All in all we had a great day. I missed the shows, but I liked not feeling like I had to plan when I’d be squeezing in each show and fast pass. Highly recommend the Ronto wrap in galaxy’s edge and blue milk at milk stand! So so good! Overall, the park was “crowded” but never unmanageable and I imagine much emptier than peak summer and holiday months. After 2ish the park cleared out a good bit. The wait times weren’t bad and everyone mostly kept their distance. I’d say maybe at one ride the people behind us were getting a little too close, but other than that, no issues! Hand sanitizer everywhere (although I’d say close to 50% were empty, which was fine as we had our own) and good mask wearing across the board. Here’s to Epcot tomorrow!
Last edited:
