We did a quick trip last week with DW and DD13, 4/5-4/8. This was our only COVID era trip, and our first visit since SWGE opened. Being a Star Wars obsessive, that was the primary focus. Here's a brief report:
Monday 4/5
Flew into MCO. Flight was great, and DME worked perfectly as intended. Note - the Magic of
Disney store in MCO was closed. This surprised us, since the Universal one across the concourse was open. Signs posted at DME entrance that wait would be 60 minutes. We were heading to YC, and wait worked out to ~15 minutes. YC was the last stop, after CBR, RIV, and BC.
Used direct to room at YC, and found out that our room assignment had 1 King for the three of us. Visited desk to discuss. Hotel was fully booked so they didn't have a room with 2 Queens. We had a dinner reservation at the Edison at DS, so they took my phone number and called around. We left our bags with Bell Services (who confirmed they had our grocery delivery, too). En route to dinner, they called and offered to transfer to GF. I refused, since I really wanted an Epcot area resort. They called back a few minutes later with a transfer to BWV, which I accepted.
DS was fairly crowded, but manageable. Saw some noses walking around, and maintaining a 6 foot bubble was pretty impossible, but it wasn't as packed as I'd feared. Dinner at the Edison was terrific, (Candied Bacon - Yes, please!) and we hit up the Star Wars Galactic Outpost shop to begin our obsessive Star Wars souvenir hunting. Picked up a Jedi Holocron and white and yellow kybers.
Headed back to YC, picked up our bags, and walked across the bridge to BWV. Had a couple of missteps trying to find our room, but eventually found it. Room was fine (1Queen, sleeper sofa, and murphy bed), but not quite as nice as I might've hoped. Bathroom made it's first of several attempts on my life when I showered. (The bottom of the tub wasn't at all flat, and the low point was about a foot away from the drain. I fell while showering, and then hit my head on the soap holder later, when picking up a bar of soap.) This wasn't quite the glamorous DVC I keep seeing advertised. Bed was very comfortable, though.
Tuesday 4/6 - DHS
Up at 6:30 in order to grab food and try for RotR boarding pass. Made coffee in the coffee pot. Slightly problematic since we'd ordered K-Cups for the Keurigs at YC. (Doh!) Joffrey's was kind of weak, but it was caffeeine. In better news, DW managed to snag us a BG (82). Finished breakfast and decided to hoof it to DHS.
Walk over to DHS was pleasant, but when we arrived security lines were VERY long and we ended up the very last in line on the left side. They opened up the right side right after us, so we had a fairly long wait to get in. OTOH, security screening and temp checks were amazingly fast. So, hardly worth a complaint. Just noted that we thought the boat would be a better plan for the next day. Mobile ordered lunch from Docking Bay 7 while we waited.
Hit MMRR on the way in, with no real wait. We all enjoyed the ride.
Headed directly from there to MFRR. ~20 minute wait, and the queue made that a completely enjoyable wait.
Went back and did Star Tours and Muppet Vision with pretty manageable waits. Then moved over to TSMM. By then it was lunch time and grabbed that.
We sat in one of the cargo containers within Docking Bay 7, and bought the obligatory sporks. This was a really well themed and delicious meal. DD and I both got the Batuuan Roast, DW had the Endorian Tip Yip. Both were very good, and the portions were a bit bigger than I'd expected. Batuu-bon was an amazing desert.
RotR was after lunch. The ride was really impressive and fun.
Somewhere in here we hit up a few different PP sites to collect magic shots. We got the Porgs, the zooms, the X-Wings, and the TIEs. We also hit the Disney/Chase spot and got those. There were a couple of others I would have liked to snag, but I didn't have any luck finding them, and I probably should have asked.
Took the Skyliner to Epcot after lunch for a break at the hotel. This was WAY better than I'd expected it to be. DD went for a swim in the pool. She thought it was too crowded, but I thought it was pretty manageable. We also snagged a refillable mug from Boardwalk Bakery at this point, which we used extensively for refills for the remainder of the trip. Their set up was great, because they didn't need us to carry the mug. They just told us to take a photo of it and keep it on our phone, then we could get refills as needed. This seemed like a tremendous improvement over the normal way of doing things.
Changed into bounding attire and headed back to DHS in the late afternoon. We did a little shopping in SWGE, and then hit 7:15 reservation for Oga's and 8:25 reservation at Savi's. Both were extremely well themed. The numbing experience from DW's Fuzzy Taun-Taun completely lives up to the reputation. DD's Carbon Freeze was really wild with the dry ice effects. My Jet Juice was enjoyable, and worth trying to replicate. I think Oga's would have been better in a non-pandemic time, when it could be legitimately crowded. It was very cool to not feel rushed and to be able to see everything, but it was kind of like being in a bar on a week day afternoon, instead of in a hopping weekend party.
Savi's was a pretty emotional experience for me. I really enjoyed it, as did DD. We both fence lightsaber, so we knew we weren't going to be getting really high end sabers out of this, but we knew we were paying for the premium experience. They absolutely delivered on that front. That's a memory that I will treasure.
We snuck around and snapped a couple of quick photos in our bounding outfits, and headed out of the mostly empty park.
We walked back to BWV, mostly because we wanted to walk through late evening with our illuminated sabers. Then, changed back into more normal attire and grabbed a late snack at Epcot F&G booths. (Dole Whip with rum was probably the dining experience of the trip.)
Wednesday 4/7 - DHS
Another 6:30 start for breakfast and RotR. DW again snagged us one, this time a little early (52). We headed down to the dock at 7:45 to catch a boat, but the dock wasn't yet open. We saw the boats appear just before 8, with two heading to S&D, one to YC, and one to BW. At this point, I realized we'd made a poor decision. It would've been smarter to walk to YC or S&D and catch that boat first. Boats travel Epcot -> BW -> YC -> S&D ->DHS. So, we had to stop at YC and S&D before going to DHS. This meant that we missed RD by ~10 minutes.
Screening was much faster coming from the boats, but it was already open when we arrived. So, by the time we got to SDD, there was a 60+ minute wait. Decided we'd take a pass on it, and just went to RRC and TT. This was DD's first experience with both of them, and I was relieved that she really enjoyed them.
Headed from there to Droid Depot, where DW and DD built droids. We'd picked up small dog slings for these, which they used to carry them around the rest of the day. It was really cool to see and hear the droids interacting with each other, the environment, and other people's droids as we walked around.
Lunch was Ronto Roasters. We all went with the standard Ronto Wrap and really enjoyed them. We've got plans to try an at home recipe for these this week, and I'm hoping it works out well.
After lunch, we did RotR when our BG was called. Oddly, this skipped the first part of the ride, and just went directly to the second part. This seemed pretty weird, since it messed up the story element and also required us to walk through some backstage portions. Now the ride was still amazing, but I really enjoyed the first part, so I was sad to not get to experience it. Also a couple of other families near us were obviously on their first ride through, so I felt bad knowing that they'd missed important story elements. I don't know how often this happens, but I really hope it's not common.
I think we hit another couple rides at this point, and then headed back to the hotel for a break.
I took our (far too much) loot down to the hotel gift shop and made arrangements to ship everything home. This was only $40 for two lightsabers, two droids, and far too many other items as well. That seemed like a really great value. The clerk indicated that it was probably going to be three boxes, and that I should allow 1-2 weeks for delivery. I haven't seen anything yet, but today's only 1 week, so I'm not sweating it either. The only challenge with this stage was figuring out how to ship the Sporks from Docking Bay 7. Since they're metal, I was concerned about trying to get them past TSA. Since they're sold by a restaurant, these didn't come up in their system. The clerk was kind enough to figure out a way to add them, but it felt like they were making an exception. For something like this, I felt like there should've been a better system in place. This probably took 30-40 minutes, given the complexity of hte process and the amount of stuf we were shipping. So, I was really glad that I'd decided to do this on Wednesday instead of waiting until the next morning.
We grabbed a pizza from BW Pizza with a salad from the bakery as an early dinner, and it was a pretty decent pie and a very cheap dinner by Disney standards. After that, we headed back over to Epcot for a little more shopping and to hit up the F&G booths a bit more. World Showcase was busy, but not packed. Mask compliance seemed pretty good, though there was a lot of walking and eating. Lines were all 70+ minutes for any of the attractions we would have wanted to hit, so we decided it wasn't really worth it. We split up a bit to snag different snacks, and met back up to consume them. Karamell-Kuche was amazing as always. The shakshuka from the booth in Morrocco was definitely my F&G highlight of the day.
We stayed until around sunset, and decided at that point that our legs and feet had done enough walking for the day. Stopped at BC and grabbed a snack from the marketplace to enjoy back in our room at BWV, before settling in for the evening.
Thursday 4/8 - MCO to Home
Grabbed coffee (last use of sourvenir mug) and a pastry from Boardwalk bakery, and then DME picked us up at ~8:15. The trip back to MCO was painless and our flight departed on time. The airport was more crowded than we'd expected, and there wasn't as much social distancing possible here. Mask compliance otherwise seemed pretty good, though.
All in all, a very successful and enjoyable trip.
