But thanks to the time change (this was Daylight Savings AND we lost an hour going from CST to EST the prior day), 4:30am felt like 2:30am to my body.

Goodness, that’s early. :faint: After your early wake up the prior morning I hope you weren’t too tired later in the day!

However, as I’ll share later, it turned out to be a good thing we had the LL in our back pocket.

I’m so glad it worked out to have the Frozen LL! I’m glad you picked it instead of LWTL.

I was nervous about riding the Skyliner because of the height and how it swayed, but as you might have guessed from the title of my trip report, we ended up loving the Skyliner!

I’m so excited to ride the Skyliner! We won’t need it to get to the parks but it will be great for our Topolino’s brunch (and hopefully to explore AoA one afternoon?).

I noticed a few people had to drop out of the line to park their strollers, and I was thankful to be past that stage!

I’m really not looking forward to maneuvering a stroller! Where is the stroller parking by Remy? Is it possible for one parent to stay with the kids and the other to quickly park the stroller and rejoin the line?

Remy’s ended up being down 25% of this day and averaged a 122-minute wait time throughout the day, so I was glad we rope dropped this ride.

I’m so glad Remy was working first thing in the morning so it was an easy first ride. I’m also glad the bands worked for your dad!
 
How did I not realize you had a trip report!? I blame real-life stress. but i'm so glad i found it! I love your reporting style. Also love all the posts on Disney100! We were able to see it in Philadelphia but i think you had some parts that weren't at the exhibition in Philadelphia (like the Fairy Godmother photo op, etc). Loved all the photos and such - so good.

Glad you were able to make it to Orlando without toooooo much of a delay, and that you were able to make it to Gideon's! I mean I'm not a fan of Gideon's or anything....*shifty eyes* LOL

Also awesome rope drop planning - way to go!

Excited to follow along!
 
We were only in there for three minutes before I got THE text: “Your moment is here!” It was 7:46pm and already our turn to get in line at Gideon’s!

Success! I really love Gideon's. It took me several trips to try it.


The vibe in the shop is half of the fun.


Yes it is! There is so much to look at while you wait.

It was a successful trip for us!

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Very successful. I really like the bags too. I bring them home and reuse them.

However, as we came up on the store, we saw there was a long line wrapped all the way around the building outside. It’s hard to see in this dark picture, but this is what we walked up on:

This has happened to us several times. You have to be patient to get into the Lego Store.

Like all of Disney, I think Disney Springs is really pretty at night.

Very much so!
 
But thanks to the time change (this was Daylight Savings AND we lost an hour going from CST to EST the prior day), 4:30am felt like 2:30am to my body.

Wow you got the double whammy. It's hard enough adjusting to the time change from CST to EST and then you added the Daylight Savings. We ended up going to Austin to visit our Son and DIL. We didn't head home until Monday so that kind of helped make the DST difference better.

I was nervous about riding the Skyliner because of the height and how it swayed, but as you might have guessed from the title of my trip report, we ended up loving the Skyliner! It was so quick and convenient. I took a blurry early morning photo on our way to Epcot.

DH was very reluctant to ride the skyliner his first time but he as he said " It's a game changer" when it come to saving time.

We entered the queue at 8:23am and only waited 12 minutes; we were on the ride at 8:35am, just 5 minutes after early entry began! I considered that a rope drop success.

Very much so!

I was a little nervous because my dad gets motion sick easily and didn’t ride this on our last trip. But I sent him a POV video to watch in advance and he thought he could do this one with his wrist bands to help with motion sickness. I was worried when the rat started to turn in circles at times, but thankfully, he was fine. DD9 also does not like 3D rides, so she kept her glasses off the whole time. She said she could still watch the movie parts and loved the ride though!

I had no problem the first time I rode this but the next time it made me a little sick. I gave it another try in December but our Rat wasn't functioning right and we did the whole ride backwards. I never saw the screen.
 


Goodness, that’s early. :faint: After your early wake up the prior morning I hope you weren’t too tired later in the day!
So early! I was exhausted but running on adrenaline with day 1 excitement 😅
I’m so glad it worked out to have the Frozen LL! I’m glad you picked it instead of LWTL.
I’m so glad you all convinced me to go for Frozen instead on my pre trip report! It really was the right call.
I’m so excited to ride the Skyliner! We won’t need it to get to the parks but it will be great for our Topolino’s brunch (and hopefully to explore AoA one afternoon?).
It’s so convenient! And you should definitely explore AoA if you have time, it’s a great way to walk off a yummy brunch.
I’m really not looking forward to maneuvering a stroller! Where is the stroller parking by Remy? Is it possible for one parent to stay with the kids and the other to quickly park the stroller and rejoin the line?
If I remember correctly it was off to the right as the crowd veered left toward the queue. I think you could, if the line is outside it would be easy to rejoin. If the line is inside (and we walked right in at rope drop), then the adult catching up will have to say “excuse me” a few times to pass others and catch up with their group. We had to park our stroller there on our last trip and didn’t lose too much time doing so, just a quick detour we were able to skip this time around.
How did I not realize you had a trip report!? I blame real-life stress. but i'm so glad i found it! I love your reporting style.
I’m so glad you found it! Completely understand on real life stress, I come to the boards to try to hide from that 🫣 Thank you for reading along!
We were able to see it in Philadelphia but i think you had some parts that weren't at the exhibition in Philadelphia (like the Fairy Godmother photo op, etc).
That is interesting! I’m so curious what the KC version will look like.
Glad you were able to make it to Orlando without toooooo much of a delay, and that you were able to make it to Gideon's! I mean I'm not a fan of Gideon's or anything....*shifty eyes* LOL
I know you understood the stress of hoping we would make it into Gideon’s 😂 I was already mapping out plan B to go there on our rest day if our travel day didn’t work out.
Very successful. I really like the bags too. I bring them home and reuse them.
Their bags are great! I think we brought ours home too.
This has happened to us several times. You have to be patient to get into the Lego Store.
I didn’t realize it was so competitive to get into the Lego store! I remember going on our September trips and not having to wait to go inside but that was pre-Covid.
Wow you got the double whammy. It's hard enough adjusting to the time change from CST to EST and then you added the Daylight Savings. We ended up going to Austin to visit our Son and DIL. We didn't head home until Monday so that kind of helped make the DST difference better.
It was a double whammy! I didn’t realize it was going to be DST until right before our trip when my dad pointed that out. Glad you were able to ease in!
DH was very reluctant to ride the skyliner his first time but he as he said " It's a game changer" when it come to saving time.
I was still nervous toward the end of our trip but sold on the benefits. We rode it a lot!
I had no problem the first time I rode this but the next time it made me a little sick. I gave it another try in December but our Rat wasn't functioning right and we did the whole ride backwards. I never saw the screen.
Oh no! That sounds like a very odd experience.
 

World Showcase & Kringla Bakeri​

Our rope drop plan was to rope drop Remy and then see if we could make it to FEA before early entry was over. I read a few blogs where people did this successfully but knew we would be cutting it close if we weren’t at the very front of the rope drop line, and it was also risky because of the Spring Break crowds. Disboarders convinced me in my pre-trip report to go for the FEA LL just in case, and that ended up being great advice (THANK YOU @SimplyGoofy, @Ann-CA and everyone else who chimed in!).

We were heading toward Norway by 8:43am. We walked quickly, but also stopped for a few pictures along the way. The topiaries and international gardens for Flower & Garden Festival were beautiful! It might have been quicker to have walked "underneath" the World Showcase, but we had a quiet walk right through it without many people on the path.

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We stopped for restrooms in Morocco. This might have been our downfall, but with a group our size, we needed a lot of bathroom breaks.

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We agreed the Japanese garden was our favorite, and noted we wanted to come back to it later. But it was really peaceful without many other people around this time of day! There was water flowing through the sticks, and they were lightly banging surfaces like the water pail to make very soothing noises.

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As you can see, we had much of the World Showcase to ourselves on this walk, which is a rare sight for us!

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I think the Snow White topiaries were in Germany.

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There were a couple of workers tidying up the dwarves, so I snapped a picture given the empty view, but decided to get the girls with the dwarves later on.

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It was 9:02 before we made it to Norway, so the walk and stops along the way took us 19 minutes. In hindsight, maybe we should have hustled more. When we arrived, the posted wait for FEA was already 50 minutes. I wasn’t sure if that was going to be accurate, but the line was outside and wrapped around pretty far, so I thought it would be at least 30 minutes if not longer. We decided to bail since we had the LL. This was a good call; TouringPlans posted an actual wait time of 50 minutes at 9:10am, so the posted time was fairly accurate.

We all needed coffee, so we stopped at Kringla Bakeri. The girls had already eaten pop tarts for breakfast, and we had brought our first coffees from the hotel room while we waited in the morning, so I ordered 1 lefse, 1 bottle of juice for the girls and 1 coffee for me and Pat to share ($12.32 total).

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I can’t remember if the other adults ordered any food, but I think we all got coffee (except for my mom, who doesn’t drink coffee). The lefse has always been my favorite treat in Norway and was just as good as I remembered. The girls were skeptical about it, but they both seemed to like it. We sat in the shade while I scanned the app to figure out our next step. It was too early to book another LL so I was looking for short lines, and landed on Spaceship Earth, which had a 5-minute wait posted. I suggested we take our coffees to go before the line got much longer.

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We walked quickly, but also stopped for a few pictures along the way. The topiaries and international gardens for Flower & Garden Festival were beautiful! It might have been quicker to have walked "underneath" the World Showcase, but we had a quiet walk right through it without many people on the path.

I'm so looking forward to seeing Epcot in her glory next week. You got lots of great photos of the girls. I love their skirts.

We agreed the Japanese garden was our favorite, and noted we wanted to come back to it later. But it was really peaceful without many other people around this time of day! There was water flowing through the sticks, and they were lightly banging surfaces like the water pail to make very soothing noises.

I want to make some time to enjoy this too.

We all needed coffee, so we stopped at Kringla Bakeri.

Lots of caffeine is need for those DW early mornings and late nights.
 


Gorgeous pictures!

I feel you on the repeated bathroom visits; our group also needed repeated bathroom stops, but, well! People gotta go when they gotta go. (Though I admit there were many times I wished we could've coordinated our stops better!)
 
I'm so looking forward to seeing Epcot in her glory next week. You got lots of great photos of the girls. I love their skirts.
I hope you enjoy! This is my favorite time of year for Epcot, just so much to look at with the gardens and the topiaries. Their dresses are from Etsy, I love the flag Mickeys too!
I am loving your trip report! I am excited to read more!
Thank you for following along!
Gorgeous pictures!
Thank you!
I feel you on the repeated bathroom visits; our group also needed repeated bathroom stops, but, well! People gotta go when they gotta go. (Though I admit there were many times I wished we could've coordinated our stops better!)
Exactly - if they gotta go, we gotta stop! On the plus side, we got to explore a lot of different bathrooms at Disney on this trip and I do love a good themed bathroom :)
 

Epcot Pictures​

We paused briefly on our way to Spaceship Earth to get some PhotoPass Pictures. I always intend to go to the front of the park for the classic Epcot pictures, but on our last two trips, we did not make it up there. So, I’m grateful they had this PP stop to still get some “classic” Epcot pictures with Spaceship Earth in the background. We had a system to quickly get our picture taken at each stop with all seven of us, then our family of four, and then just the girls. I would have liked more combinations but was mindful of the time we took when there were lines, and the rest of my family didn’t have the patience for anything more than this.

I liked how this photographer took pictures with the Epcot ball centered behind us and also featured the Mickey & friends topiaries in some of the pictures. I loved Minnie’s dress on this one!

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This is a short "chapter" so I can keep pictures organized together, up next is our ride on Spaceship Earth!
 

Spaceship Earth​

We got to Spaceship Earth at 9:27am.

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The posted time was still 5 minutes and it took us exactly 5 minutes to get onto the ride.

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We tried to switch up ride partners for each ride. The girls were really excited for the last part of SE where you make decisions about the world you want to live in.

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We stopped briefly a couple of times, which is the only way I could get pictures that weren’t too blurry.

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I spotted Mouse Trap when we were stuck at this scene and got excited! It seemed like an odd placement for it, though, and I couldn’t remember if it’s always been there. Is this a reference to THE mouse? I'm not sure I would have noticed this if we weren't stopped at this scene.

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Our pictures came out with a lot of holes, like a mouse chewed through cheese! Maybe this is why they needed to set the Mouse Trap??

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My mom and DD9’s pictures came out much better, at least with no holes.

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The girls hung out to play one of the games at the end of the ride while the grandparents found a restroom.

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Disboarders convinced me in my pre-trip report to go for the FEA LL just in case, and that ended up being great advice (THANK YOU @SimplyGoofy, @Ann-CA and everyone else who chimed in!).

You’re so welcome! I’m glad it worked out to grab FEA so you weren’t stuck without it (or with a long wait). Thank you for confirming my original plan is what I should stick with. :goodvibes

It was 9:02 before we made it to Norway, so the walk and stops along the way took us 19 minutes.

19 minutes with a bathroom break is actually pretty good! I’ll be curious if the (somewhat?) lighter May crowds give us any advantage on getting on both rides.

The lefse has always been my favorite treat in Norway and was just as good as I remembered.

As nearly half Scandinavian (Swedish and Finnish) I’m a HUGE fan of lefse. I’ve never tried it at Kringla Og as it’s a more common food for me, but I’m curious if they serve potato lefse or flour lefse. (It looks more like potato lefse, but it’s hard to tell from a picture!

So, I’m grateful they had this PP stop to still get some “classic” Epcot pictures with Spaceship Earth in the background.

Your pictures turned out very well! It’s nice that you have a system - that’s very considerate of you.

The posted time was still 5 minutes and it took us exactly 5 minutes to get onto the ride.

Nice! I feel like Spaceship Earth used to be quite busy first thing in the morning - the three major headliners must really draw the crowd away from the front of the park!
 
. I always intend to go to the front of the park for the classic Epcot pictures, but on our last two trips, we did not make it up there.

This happened to us when we stayed at Pop and AOA. The Skyliner really changes how you tour.


I liked how this photographer took pictures with the Epcot ball centered behind us and also featured the Mickey & friends topiaries in some of the pictures. I loved Minnie’s dress on this one!

These are really great!

We tried to switch up ride partners for each ride. The girls were really excited for the last part of SE where you make decisions about the world you want to live in.

We switch up too especially if we have an odd number. We take turns being the single rider. Kids really do like the buttons. DH rode with JP when he was 21/2. The first thing he did when he got on was start pushing buttons. There were treated with the German version of the ride.

I spotted Mouse Trap when we were stuck at this scene and got excited! It seemed like an odd placement for it, though, and I couldn’t remember if it’s always been there. Is this a reference to THE mouse? I'm not sure I would have noticed this if we weren't stopped at this scene.

I've never noticed this. I'll try to remember to look for it. Thanks for the heads up.
 
You’re so welcome! I’m glad it worked out to grab FEA so you weren’t stuck without it (or with a long wait). Thank you for confirming my original plan is what I should stick with. :goodvibes
You should!! It was a good plan.
19 minutes with a bathroom break is actually pretty good! I’ll be curious if the (somewhat?) lighter May crowds give us any advantage on getting on both rides.
It's not bad! I always forget how big Epcot really is. You should have much better luck with May crowds, I hope you make it onto both rides.
I’m curious if they serve potato lefse or flour lefse. (It looks more like potato lefse, but it’s hard to tell from a picture!
I had to look it up, it is potato lefse! I know everyone loves the school bread there but I'm a lefse fan.
Your pictures turned out very well!
Thank you!
Nice! I feel like Spaceship Earth used to be quite busy first thing in the morning - the three major headliners must really draw the crowd away from the front of the park!
I think you're right on other rides drawing away from it.
This happened to us when we stayed at Pop and AOA. The Skyliner really changes how you tour.
So true! There's no reason to go to the front of the park if you enter from the Skyliner. I always think we'll pop over when we ride Spaceship Earth but we're usually running from one ride to another and I forget.
We switch up too especially if we have an odd number. We take turns being the single rider. Kids really do like the buttons. DH rode with JP when he was 21/2. The first thing he did when he got on was start pushing buttons. There were treated with the German version of the ride.
That's too funny! Kids do love the buttons. We also take turns being the single rider and a lot rides let us do 3, 2 and 2.
 

Moana Journey of Water​

Our next stop was Moana’s Journey of Water, an exhibit that was new to us. We passed Daisy on the way. The girls waved a quick hello, and she motioned us to follow her, but we were heading in the opposite direction.

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We started our walk through Journey of Water at 10:04am. It was really crowded at that time. There was a nice introduction about the water cycle.

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The exhibit was gorgeous! So much greenery and the water made it feel peaceful, despite the crowds.

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One of our favorite parts was this water that played music as you ran your hand through it.

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The pictures don’t do this exhibit justice, so I took a lot of videos. In this section, you lifted your arms in the air like you were asking the water to jump up, and it did!

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At this station, you put your hand over the water, and the higher you raised your hand, the higher the water would raise.

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They had a few of each station available, but because of the crowds, we had to wait our turn at each one. Most families were good about spending a couple minutes and then moving on to let others in, so we didn’t have to wait too long.

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There was a curtain of water that would part and let you pass if you walked through slowly. DD9 ran through it before the water had time to pause, so she got wet! There was a "dry" side too if you didn't want to walk through the water curtain (I didn't).

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The girls had so much fun running around here.

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I have too many pictures, Journey of Water will be continued in the next post!
 
I've been reading along and just not finding the time to comment! I might have to take your advice with the genie+ for FEA. It's annoying to me that the wait for FEA is so long by the second ride of the day because it just makes so much sense to go there after Remy! I was also considering stopping at the bakery before the ride so we had some treats for our wait, but then the line will just get longer? Also interested to see when or if you get on Test Track!
 
I've been reading along and just not finding the time to comment!
Thanks for reading along!
I might have to take your advice with the genie+ for FEA. It's annoying to me that the wait for FEA is so long by the second ride of the day because it just makes so much sense to go there after Remy!
If you're going at a time that is at all busy, I'd probably get the Genie+ for FEA. Our plan would have been to swap it to something closer in time if we didn't need it, to start that 2 hour clock early, but we were thankful to not have to accept a 50-minute wait since we had it in our back pocket. It was disappointing that we couldn't fit both in during Early Entry, especially after being there so early for rope drop.
I was also considering stopping at the bakery before the ride so we had some treats for our wait, but then the line will just get longer?
I would keep an eye on the wait time and decide in the moment. The bakery was pretty quick though (just grabbing items from the display case) so I don't think you'd lose too much time for a stop there. There was hardly any line at the bakery that early, even with the crowds that day.
Also interested to see when or if you get on Test Track!
We did not make it to Test Track. We didn't think everyone in our group would ride it so it was a "maybe" ride for us, and unfortunately, Test Track is not one you can just easily jump on later in the day because of its popularity. Maybe if our group was smaller, we could have watched for a LL (I never saw one come up for us later in the day), or if were open to the single rider line, but we ended up just skipping it on this trip.
 

Moana, The Seas with Nemo & Friends, Turtle Talk with Crush​

The Moana walk through is a great addition to Epcot, we will be sure to stop by on future trips. The water features are probably geared toward kids, but I also enjoyed playing with them.

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We had to get our picture with Te Fiti. She is so beautiful, and they positioned her perfectly with Spaceship Earth.

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We also got this neat magic shot.

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We finished our Moana journey in 13 minutes, though it felt like we were there much longer. Up next was sailing the Seas with Nemo and friends. The posted wait time was 15 minutes, but we only waited 10 minutes.

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We got stopped in the surfing turtle room, which is my favorite part of the ride, so no complaints there. I also love how they overlay characters from Nemo on top of the real aquarium at the end of the ride.

We knew we wanted to go to Turtle Talk with Crush right after this ride. It’s one of our favorite shows. We walked into the queue at 10:38am and a show was just about to start, so we walked right into the theater with no wait. We had to nudge the girls to sit in the front while we went to find seats in the back.

It was a cute show, as always. When Crush asked if any of the kids like to swim, he called on DD7 to talk to her! It was so cute to hear her introduce herself!

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Crush asked, “When you swim, do you like swimming slow or fast?” She answered fast. He said, “Fast, dude, you got thrill issues. Just like me! I’ll tell you what, just for you, we’re going to see how fast I can push it,” and he did his Rip It swim! She was really excited she got to talk to him.

I was able to book our next LL at 11:00am, towards the end of Crush’s show. I grabbed an 11:05am – 12:05pm window for Living with the Land since it was next door and we could get over there quickly.
 

We did Journey of Water at a Cast Member preview last September. It was crowded so I didn't get a chance to really look. I missed this detail and you got a great photo of it.


The Moana walk through is a great addition to Epcot, we will be sure to stop by on future trips. The water features are probably geared toward kids, but I also enjoyed playing with them.

I had so much fun playing in here. I want to go back at night. I've seen some photos and it's just beautiful.

I think it's a great addition for kids. I can see where it will be hard to get some to leave. It's a good think i spotted lots of sit down areas.


Beautiful Family Photo!

It was a cute show, as always. When Crush asked if any of the kids like to swim, he called on DD7 to talk to her! It was so cute to hear her introduce herself!

I love when the kids get to interact with Crush.
 

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