Starting the Year Off Right-- A 2020 Trip Report

abarriger

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jun 5, 2014
Welcome, dear reader(s)! Let's get something on the table before I begin-- my name is Amy, and I'm a chronic trip report abandoner. I think this will be my third attempt at a report so far, and they have all stalled terribly. But this time will be different, I promise!

So, first, of all, welcome to what I'm sure is going to be the most exciting, most stimulating, most complete trip report written by me yet. So I guess I will start with introductions.

Here's who will be joining you on this trip:


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That's me (Amy), your fearless leader of this trip report.

I love just about everything about Disney, but a few of my most favorite parts of a Disney trip are: Frozen (in any and all forms), The Little Mermaid Ride, princesses, baked goods, and resort pool slides. I dislike scary rides and downtime. By day, I'm a preschool teacher at a private early childhood center. I'm the real Disney-fanatic in our household, and I spend pretty much all year planning out our next trips... or dreaming of the next one.

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That's my loving wife, Marjorie. Don't let the mouse ears fool you... these Disney trips were never about her. But she is (usually) a pretty good sport. Some of her favorites include Tangled, Flight of Passage, Tiffins, and Animal Kingdom. She dislikes early morning rope drop and a fast spinning teacup. For the last 6 years of our life, Marjorie has been a full time graduate student... but this year brought a big change, and she took a "big girl job" as a real professor at a wonderful college in Indiana.

We've been lucky enough to have had a good number of Disney trips over the years. Here's our first trip ever, in 2014. Honestly, we have only been able to do this because of Marjorie's parents, who purchased a house 2 hours from Disney. So, our trips are short (because we squeeze them in on the end of a visit to her family) but we have been fortunate enough to return several times.

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This was our first time, in 2014. The trip was one day long, with a night spent crashing at Pop before driving back the next morning. We got bitten pretty badly by that wonderful day at MK, and have returned (almost) every year since: here are some highlights.

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The one exception was 2017, which we took off for a different magic kind of occasion.

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Anyhow, all of those trips were very special to us. Even if Disney isn't Marjorie's favorite place in the universe, we have shared some wonderful moments together there. And it had become a kind of tradition in our house, that the very end of each summer was marked with a trip to Florida. But things are a little different now. Marjorie and I both started new jobs, and I am now working at a school without the whole summer off.

So this year marks a new kind of a Disney trip. We know it will be crowded, we know it will (probably) be too cold to swim in the swimming pool, we know it will be Christmas all over the place... but we will be ringing in the first day of 2020 at our happy place. Welcome along!


 

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The All Important Trip Logistics

When: January 1-4, 2020

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We have spent the last week in Sarasota, Florida, basking in the natural beauty here with Marjorie's parents. If I can't be at Disney, this is the next best place. We are remaining here until New Year's day, at which point we are leaving at the crack of dawn for Disney... but not before watching the pineapple drop at midnight!
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We are taking a one way rental car to MCO, and will take the Magical Express from there to...
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This beautiful place, Saratoga Springs Resort. This is our first time renting points, and our first ever deluxe stay. We are pretty darn pumped.

I'm hoping to hit up this
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And this
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and this walkway.
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The weather report is looking decent, and I've been in the pool most days this week, so I'm hoping the warm trend will continue.

Day 1 will be spent in Epcot!

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This is kind of a bonus day for us. You see...

🥁🥁(drum roll)
I will be spending the day with an imagineer! In fact,it's an imagineer who is kind of Disney famous. Her picture has been popping up all over my Disney news feed lately. If you have seen the image of the new Ratatouille ride coming to Epcot, you have seen my friend. A few years ago I threw a baby shower for a dear friend, and in so doing got to know my friend's cousin, who is the only person I've ever met in real life whose love for Disney and knowledge about Disney exceeds mine. She offered to show us around next time we hit Disney (she works at Epcot) and we've tried to connect before, but this is the first time it's actually worked out and I'm so excited.
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We're having dinner at a new spot for us, Biergarten, and I'm excited to just hear all about her Disney knowledge and see Epcot through her eyes. Since we weren't originally planning to visit Epcot at all, I'm viewing the whole day as a bonus, so I'm not stressing anything too much: I do know she has fastpasses for us for Frozen Ever After, and I'm hoping to meet the newest queen of Arendale, but I'm planning to just go with the flow.

It will also be a short day, as we are driving in early that morning, dropping a one way rental at the airport, and taking Magical Express in. We might catch Epcot forever, but then we are passing out.


Day 2

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Day 2 is going to be all about Hollywood Studios. Honestly, we didn't really mean to pick this park. In 2018 we loved Toy Story Land, but neither of us had ever seen Star Wars, so we sadly said, "We won't come back until 5 years from now when everyone else has done Star Wars." But, we hit MK on our last trip (in May this year) and I honestly had trouble imagining doing my favorite park with these level 10 crowds... so we decided to try HS, planning to skip the Star Wars stuff and just focus on Toy Story Land.

Except... then came Disney Plus. And in the past week and a half I went from having seen zero Star Wars movies to having seen 4 of them (and I'm working my way through some more...) and we read the reviews for Rise... so we're giving it try, with some caution about how insane the whole thing will be. Park open is at 7:00, and we'll definitely be there on the early side, trying to get into the virtual queue for Rise before hitting up all of our favorites. Which mostly means Toy Story Land
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and Frozen.
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We have a Fantasmic Dinner package at night, at Hollywood and Vine, and we've never caught that show before so I'm looking forward to that.

Day 3

Our last day takes place at M's favorite park.
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I want to rope drop FoP, Marjorie wants to ropedrop Triceratop Spin. (Have I mentioned she hates ropedrop?) We have a fastpass for FoP late in the day, plus a safari and Dinosaur. Also, dinner is at both of our favorite restaurant anywhere in the world (not just Disney world.) We're going back to Tiffins.
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This is all we left behind on our last visit.

Departure Day




😭😥:sad:

We have a mid-afternoon flight out on Saturday, so we plan to start with breakfast at the Wave (or possibly Homecomin... we're still deciding) before peacing out.
 
Following along. Looking forward to reading about your adventures
 


Following! And I do believe I've followed along on your (not complete) TR's before lol. So Happy Early New Year to you both! Look forward to reading more :)
 
Following! And I do believe I've followed along on your (not complete) TR's before lol. So Happy Early New Year to you both! Look forward to reading more :)
I’m so sorry for abandoning you! I will try harder this time!! Welcome aboard!
Following along. Looking forward to reading about your adventures
thank you! I’m looking forward to having them (I leave Wednesday morning!)
 


Hi there I'm here and following! Your plans look fantastic, I hope your trip is going even better than planned.

I'm a chronic trip report abandoner.
At least you're very self aware 😂

but not before watching the pineapple drop at midnight!
I absolutely love that they drop a pineapple. All other NYE dropping objects are officially inferior.

I will be spending the day with an imagineer!
Whoa cool!!
 
Well, I'm back! And after four picture perfect days at Disney, one one horrendous day of travel (and I mean day, as in 24 hours) I'm reading to start combating my serious case of PDD with some trip report writing.

Day 1, Part 1: Joyriding a Whole Lot of Disney Transit
Marjorie and I jumped out of bed Wednesday morning (the first day of a new year) with a few sad feelings about leaving behind a wonderful family trip to Sarasota... but a lot of generalized giddiness about heading to WDW. I donned my mouse ears, we hugged our good byes, and we were off. We were on the road by 7:00 am. We stopped at Wawa for breakfast (we both have a deep and inexplicable love for this place, which doesn't exist in our neighborhood.) Before long we were seeing an unusual power line...
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And then something even more excitingly familiar.
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I hope they never ever ever change that sign. I don't have a ton of memories from my childhood visit to WDW, but I remember this sign.
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Now, we were dropping off a rental car. I had originally planned to return the one way, one day rental at MCO and take Magical Express. But a few days before we left, I remembered that there is a car rental in the Swan/ Dolphin. (It's an Alamo, by the way, if anyone is interested.) And using this rental agency knocked 50$ off our price, and bought us some time-- since we would be on property when we left the car, instead of coming from the airport. It worked out great: except this rental agency must be pretty small, because there was absolutely no signage. I ran out of the car and asked an employee where to bring the car: he didn't know, he went in... ultimately a woman came out and took the car from us, offering a paper handwritten receipt. It felt sketchy as heck, but it seemed to work.
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We visited the lobby for a quick look around. Can anyone explain to me why it's called the dolphin, but the logo is a fish? These are the things I wonder about. Anyway, there wasn't a ton to see in the hotel, and we had some heavy luggage, so we called a Lyft and zoomed off to our actual destination.
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Hello, Saratoga Springs!
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This cute little gingerbread scene was in the lobby for the first day or two of our trip, but was gone by the end.

Our room wasn't ready (it was 10:00, no shock there) so we left our luggage with bell services and took a bus to Epcot. Epcot was our park for the day-- but not yet! As soon as we got to Epcot, we hightailed it to another bus.
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It was our own private bus, in fact, complete with signage for my fave Disney franchise.
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Where were we headed? Well, we had gone in with a pretty open mind, and the Riviera bus was sitting there, so that made the choice! Marjorie in particular loves resort exploring, so we wanted to check out the newest Disney hotel. The outside was beautiful, and so enormous that we really couldn't capture it in photos.
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We did nab a picture of the only nod to Hanukkah we ended up seeing at Disney (which was pretty fair since the holiday was over by a week at this point.) We glanced at the bakery, explored the shop (all of the resort specific stuff they have here is pretty great) and headed out to walk the grounds.
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Those murals though... We didn't spend that much time at Riviera, but the mosaics were definitely the most memorable part of the resort.
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We had time for a bit of a photo shoot.
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Seriously I can't get over
1. How beautiful they are and
2. How well they connect to the skyliner.

Well done, Disney.

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Stay tuned for the rest of a glorious day!
 

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Joining in! I'm also a chronic trip report abandoner, determined to do better now :rotfl:

My sister and I also had a photo shoot with those mosaics at Riviera on our trip in December. They really are gorgeous!
 
There's no feeling quite like those few giddy hours at WDW. Looks like the trip was off to a great start!

YES! Nothing compares to that first-day-feeling. I wish I could bottle it for a gloomy Sunday afternoon like this one!
Those murals looks beautiful!
They are stunning. And they tie in so beautifully to the skyliner
Joining in! I'm also a chronic trip report abandoner, determined to do better now :rotfl:

My sister and I also had a photo shoot with those mosaics at Riviera on our trip in December. They really are gorgeous!
I feel you on the trip abandoning. I am really trying to change my wicked ways!! If only because I love reliving the trip. I think it is the best thing I can do for my current raging case of Post-Disney Depression.
.


Day 1, Part 2: Can You Please Go to a Park Already?

So, as you may have guessed from my last post, M. and I proceeded to spend the next hour or so doing one of our favorite things: joyriding Disney transit. Specifically, joy-riding the newest form of transit.
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Now, I think people can get a bit carried away with "Walt would have wanted this.." or "This is never what Walt wanted..." but like, can I just say I feel like the skyliner system is something that Walt would have just loved? It is so incredibly beautiful, so peaceful, so modern and futuristic and totally fun. Granted, I know there are people who don't love heights-- in fact, a woman on our car had to leave earlier than intended for that reason-- but it was a magnificent way to spend the morning. We rode from Caribbean to Pop/AoA, then back to Caribbean where we hopped off for a quick snack.
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I don't know if it is because people don't love heights, or because the skyliner is so new, or what, but we were there on a week where absolutely everything was insanely crowded, and the skyliner just wasn't. At each stop we were able to have a car all to ourselves, and there was very little line to wait in. So that definitely enhanced the experience for us.
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We have stayed at both Pop and AoA, and have a particular fondness for AoA's food court, but we figured we would check out the offerings for a snack at Caribbean Beach, given that we had eaten nothing so far that day but diet coke.

This choice was not my best Disney planning move. First of all, I know this is not anything new or exciting, but that resort is HUGE. So we spent a really long time walking to El Centro.
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The Christmas decorations were so beautiful, and so well themed, so that was nice.
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Less nice was the fact that the food court CLOSES from 11:00-11:30 for the shift from lunch to dinner, so we were out of luck. I spend a whole year planning our Disney trips... but this is admittedly not the first time we have been really hungry and really frustrated on one of them, so I guess I should own up to my weaknesses as a Disney planner. Undeterred, we were off the the bus stop.
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Our bus came in about 10 minutes, and dropped us off at about 11:50, perfect timing. We were meeting our friend Meg. About a year ago I met Meg when I was throwing a baby shower for a dear friend-- and Meg works at Disney. As a freaking imagineer! We obviously had a lot to chat about that day, and she offered to show us around on our next trip. We've missed her every time since then, but this was the the trip where we were destined to finally get together.

Now, maybe I've mentioned this, but we almost always go to Disney in August. The weather is pretty close to unbearable, but we always have a good time. And since we always go at that time we are used to a pretty stable level of crowds: it's not empty in August or anything, but going New Years week, we had a lot to learn about crowd level 10. And the first thing we learned is that security checks take forever in Crowd Level 10. Of course I'm glad that Disney is keeping us safe, but we honestly just didn't have a concept of how long going through our bags would take. We waited in a giant line for over ten minutes to have our one bag examined.
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But before long we were looking at this view, so we weren't mad about it. We met up with Meg just before the entry point, and she used her magic passes to get us in. Can't say Thank You!! enough times or enthusiastically enough to her. She had even booked us all fast passes, which I was super happily surprised by.

We started with Spaceship Earth, one of M's favorite rides. No photos, but it was lovely as always. We had a lot of questions for Meg about Epcot-- because, lets face it, that park is clearly in a transitional state right now. Walls are absolutely everywhere. She took us to the Epcot experience to clear some things up.


Now, it goes without saying that Meg knows Epcot pretty well (seeing as she works there) so she had us hang out in there holding area for a bit so she could hear when the movie/projection thing was about to start fresh. She didn't want us to walk in in the middle.

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Which was fine with us, because there was a lot of cool stuff to look at. I lovelovelove these attraction posters they had for virtually everything offered in Epcot.
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Of course we had Meg pose with her rat! She didn't tell us a ton about this ride (which is her project currently) but what she did mention sounded all very cool. She said his nose is a little squishy, and she loves to boop it!
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This was my favorite poster, of course. Sadly, they are not available to purchase. :sad: Yet. The cast member there told us they get those requests a lot.
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This room also had super cute photo props for upcoming attractions to Epcot-- this one was for Mary Poppins. I told them to "hold on tight!" but they clearly missed the memo of looking like we were flying away. Whatever.
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On the topic of missing photo memos, this is clearly supposed to look like I am standing on the Epcot ball... but M. clearly got the angle off.

At this point, Meg decided the movie was at the right spot so we finally entered the room!

Now, if you have time to kill in Epcot, this Epcot Experience is pretty interesting. But... at the end of the day, its a big show devoted to cool things that you aren't going to be seeing any time soon. It was a perfect place to go on a "bonus day," when we had our whole trip ahead of us still... but if I was on a more typical park day, I honestly think it might have bummed me out a bit. We only make it to Disney once a year, if we're lucky, so the show did give me a bit of FOMO. Everything coming to Epcot looks so cool!! but at the end of the day, I don't know when/if I'll get to experience it. So that's my two cents. I'm excited for what this park will look like in a few years, but this show kind of highlighted a lot of stuff that is missing at the moment. HOWEVER on a super crowded day it was virtually empty. So maybe it is worth a visit!
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Anyway, I didn't take many pictures, but this is the one I did take. It's a big white model of Epcot, and then they project on it and around it all about the new upcoming attractions, and the new show, and so on. It is a cool piece of technology. Meg told us that they have a similar white model somewhere accessible to cast members that has all of Disney Springs on it, so Disney can show people what their stores would look like there. It's really neat to watch.

On our way out, Marjorie and I still hadn't eaten anything since breakfast diet cokes, so we grabbed a Mickey pretzel to share and made our way off to our next stop. Stay tuned!




 
We loved the skyline on our trip. But the new news about less bus service at those resorts is a little dis-heartening.

Sounds like a good morning, even if it was lacking some food. It happens to all of us.
 
We rode from Caribbean to Pop/AoA, then back to Caribbean where we hopped off for a quick snack.
Oh cool, I never even thought about enjoying the Skyliner as a long ride like that but it sounds like such a cool way to see the resort from above!

Anyway, I didn't take many pictures, but this is the one I did take. It's a big white model of Epcot, and then they project on it and around it all about the new upcoming attractions, and the new show, and so on. It is a cool piece of technology. Meg told us that they have a similar white model somewhere accessible to cast members that has all of Disney Springs on it, so Disney can show people what their stores would look like there. It's really neat to watch.
Alright I had no interest in looking into that area of Epcot but your pictures look awesome! The concept art, the photo ops, the 3D model... So cool.
 
Day 1, Part 2

When last we left you, Marjorie and I were subsiding on nothing but a (shared) Mickey pretzel. On an ordinary day, that would lead to extreme grumpiness and weakness... but on a Disney Day, we were powering through giddily. I guess this was partly because we were eagerly anticipating a really really large dinner.

Now, I was trying really hard to manage my expectations for this Epcot day-- I was okay if we didn't do much, or missed things I would typically prioritize. We were going with a friend, and I wanted to be flexible. But there was something I really, really, really, wanted to do. And we had some time before our next Fastpass, and the lines weren't bad...

So we made our way towards Arrendale.

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And this happened.
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It's funny, because we were remarking over how adorably starstruck the toddler in front of us was, but I was pretty equally giddy and shy when it was our turn. Frozen has been a really special story for me for a long time-- Elsa's journey really speaks to me. (so much in fact, that this was my Halloween costume this year)
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(adorable Yorkie obviously not a part of the costume.)

Anyway, I loved Frozen 2 with a reckless abandon, and was pretty pumped to see the new costumes.
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I asked to see Anna's ring, and bid her a "mazel tov." she responded that "That must be a part of your family's holiday tradition! Olaf's holiday tradition is having a snowball fight indoors," or something like that... but again, I was starstruck. I didn't love the look of these costumes in people's photos, but I thought they were stunning in person.

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Royalty met, we moved on for another Frozen related adventure (again, props to Meg for booking these fast passes.)
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This ride is pretty magic to me. Which I think my face expresses here.
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Megan did describe the Frozen Fever animatronics at the end of that ride as "5'o clock shadow Anna and Elsa," which seemed pretty apt.
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From there, we wandered the showcase a bit, with a quick stop to visit the Three Cabelleros. Megan wanted to show us her ride, but admittedly it doesn't look like much yet.

We stopped in China for a peach bubble tea for Marjorie.
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She's a big bubble tea fan but usually only gets taro or almond milk teas... but this was decent, not too peachy.

At some point, we admitted to Megan that we had never before experienced the American Adventure, so we headed there next.
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We caught the end of a Voices of Liberty performance while there. I've always wanted to listen to them before but we always miss it, so this was nice.

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There were about 15 minutes between the end of Voices of Liberty's set and the beginning of the show, so we enjoyed the display of Native American culture they have in there before going in for the American Adventure.

Can we say... I'm glad we experienced the American Adventure, but it will definitely be a one and done for us. (In fact, M. may have slept through part of it.) It felt like a really bizarre and disjointed way to explore American history. I will say the hokey song that they play at the end ("America... spread your golden wings...") was quite an ear worm. I was kind of amazed by the sheer length of that song in the film... and then it kept playing in the lobby as we left. Throughout the rest of that trip, Marjorie and I serenaded each other with it quite frequently.

After that we had time for more wandering-- through the shops in Japan (always a favorite for us)

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and then over towards a quick jaunt into the Big Blue World.

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We spent time with the manatees at the end-- Meg's roommate from her college program had worked with the manatees, so she knew a lot about them, and they were pleasant to watch: so pleasant in fact that we were almost late to dinner!

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Sadly, this is the only (crappy) photo I took of dinner. Since Meg was showing us around, we told her to pick anywhere she wanted for dinner, our treat. This would never have been our choice, but it exceeded all expectations. Overall thoughts:

1. I though the ambiance would be hokey, but it was ADORBS. You totally feel like you're in a little German town somewhere, and the show is not overpowering at all.

2. I thought we would hate communal seating-- it was actually super fun. In the real world, I would hate sitting with strangers: but at Disney, we obviously had something in common (a Disney trip!) so we chatted it up with the people next to us. They were trying to get on Rise, and I was obviously pretty up on that from planning our trip, so we shared notes and compared our trips so far.

3. The food was good. Not great, but solidly good. Meg said her favorite thing there was missing (potato dumplings?) but they had a substitute (potato pancakes, aka latkes) but we were just coming off Hanukkah and a whole lot of latkes, and theirs were a bit soggy, probably just because they were sitting out on a buffet. Still, we enjoyed the Mac and cheese, and the beer cheese soup with pretzel bread, and the schnitzel... we would totally consider returning.


Now, I had originally had hopes of staying for Epcot forever. It's a limited time offering, and we just happened to be there for it... but we were getting really tired, and Meg said it's "Okay... if you go in with the mindset that it's temporary," so with that ringing endorsement, plus the promise of a crazy early rope drop the next day, we headed back to Saratoga Springs.

Will we find it to our room? Will we make it on Rise? Find out in my next installment!
 
We loved the skyline on our trip. But the new news about less bus service at those resorts is a little dis-heartening.

Sounds like a good morning, even if it was lacking some food. It happens to all of us.
I agree with you-- except for stay at a non skyliner resort (Saratoga) the bus service was so abysmal (esp for rope drop) we had to uber anyway. I feel like bus service is :mad: kind of across board these days?
Oh cool, I never even thought about enjoying the Skyliner as a long ride like that but it sounds like such a cool way to see the resort from above!


Alright I had no interest in looking into that area of Epcot but your pictures look awesome! The concept art, the photo ops, the 3D model... So cool.

It's totally worth a "long" skyliner if you have any downtime at all. At least on our trip (and this was just as they were unveiling the shortened bus service) it took less than an hour to do the whole loop.
 
I agree with you-- except for stay at a non skyliner resort (Saratoga) the bus service was so abysmal (esp for rope drop) we had to uber anyway. I feel like bus service is :mad: kind of across board these days?
True! A couple ubers though is probably still less than some deluxe hotels!

I think I need to put the German restaurant on our list to try! You don't see it a lot in peoples trip reports!
 
This choice was not my best Disney planning move. First of all, I know this is not anything new or exciting, but that resort is HUGE. So we spent a really long time walking to El Centro.

That resort is huge lol. Not that it helps you now but if you're ever at CBR in the future, there's another QS Spyglass Grill on the other side of the resort that's much better than the food court.

She said his nose is a little squishy, and she loves to boop it!

I would do that too lol
 
Day 2, Part 1


When last I left you, M. and I were exhausted and stuffed and heading home from Epcot.
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I took exactly two photos of our room before crashing into bed. I have read that Saratoga Springs is due for a refurb, and I kind of agree with this. We have stayed at a handful of Disney resorts, but never a deluxe before. I think I prefer the rooms at Pop honestly.

The next morning was our Hollywood Studios day! I won't lie... it started out pretty rough. Given EasyWDW's recs, I knew that boarding groups would open exactly at 7:00-- so I knew we needed to be out early, but I figured getting there around 6 would be fine. We were up by 5:00, and quickly checked the bus times-- a bus was showing up in 20 minutes, so we opted to head to the bus stop. Now, this was where our morning took a turn for the worse. I could write paragraphs and pargraphs about it, but I'll sum it up like this.
1. No bus came for Hollywood studios, despite the posted time, for over an hour.
2. During that time, many buses passed, including three for Animal Kingdom.
3. We attempted to call Ubers and had terrible luck-- we couldn't match with a Lyft, and then the Uber was 28 minutes away, and so on. (we ended up being charged for calling and cancelling, because a bus came up as we called one the second time...)
4. And that bus that came by was full and didn't stop.

SO. It was a miserable morning. I would be lying if I didn't admit to having tears in my eyes, honestly. Marjorie, bless her, was full of solutions. She said we could bail on HS and go to MK instead; she said we could pay to add a Park Hopper and come back to HS tomorrow morning... she was amazing, and I was bereft. In the end, we made it onto a bus around 6:30 (well over an hour after we got to the bus stop.) We waited in another horrendous security line, and entered the waiting area at 6:59, no embellishment here, when the park opened at 7. We were standing on Hollywood Blvd, in an unimaginably oppressive mass of people, when the app supposedly opened for boarding groups... and my button was greyed out. :sad: We pushed our way through the crazy masses for a cast member,who told us the nearest guest services was all the way down at the end of the street: which was pretty discouraging, because it was wall to wall people and the time was ticking and people around us all had passes. Anyway. We pushed onward... and as we walked, it lit up. We were able to get a backup boarding group, number 140.

Now... this whole morning had been incredibly disheartening. Of course we had no idea whether or not we would ride. But we were at Disney, so we tried to make the best of it, or get too hung up about the buses or anything like that. Of course, getting there so late we had not a chance of riding a headliner ride, but we went over towards Toy Story Land for a beautiful game of Mania.


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I can't really say this enough... the crowds were intense. For the whole day the line for Slinky was never contained in the queue.
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But it doesn't take away the charm of this wonderful land. M and I really are quite taken by Toy Story Land-- its immersive and beautiful and so fun!
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We felt a lot better after riding something.
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I did beat Marjorie's score, although, looking at my accuracy it is clear my strategy was to shoot at everything as hard and as fast as I could.

From Mania, we had a bit more time before a FP for the first Frozen singalong for the day, so we went for a spin.
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I feel like this ride doesn't get a lot of love, but I really do enjoy it.


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The wait was posted 40, and we waited about 25 minutes, which seemed fair. As we walked off, I tired to Mobile Order for Woody's lunchbox-- and here's where we ran into a bit of trouble, because IT WAS CROWDED, did I mention the crowds? It was so crowded that the Mobile Order app wouldn't allow any more orders for Woody's-- and, as we walked by, we could see a mob of people. So we looked for somewhere we could order-- Docking Bay 7 won by a mile.
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On our way out, we passed this adorable guy. It was so crowded that Marjorie had to politely ask the swarm of people, "Could you please move so I can have a picture with Ham?" because you couldn't even get to him.

So, we made it into Batuu for our first visit.
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Our first impression: wow, just wow. But also-- wow, this is confusing. And also crowded, did I mention that? And nothing is labeled in English. And everywhere there are Cast Members holding signs that say "Keep right," which cracked me up a bit because it that really the best way to do that? But we forged onward, amazed at the scale of the place but also SUPER confused. We ended up in the WRONG restaurant on account of the lack of English signage.
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But everything was totally awe inspiring, even though we aren't enough of Star Wars fanatics to even know what everything is. By the time we made it to Docking Bay 7, breakfast time was over. But they happily handed over our breakfast, which was delicious.

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Usually at Disney, the portions are huge. M and I love to eat, and in the real world we don't usually share portions, but at Disney we usually do. This was the Bright Suns Breakfast Platter - Three-Cheese Egg Bite, Pork Sausage, Purple Potato Hash, Mini Mustafarian Lava Roll... and it didn't meet our Disney Portions Metric, because by the time we finished it we were ready for another:P Since breakfast was over, we had an order of the Fried Endorian Yip Tip with the mac and cheese. We inhaled it so quickly I missed the photo... but the mac and cheese was wonderful, and even the broccoli was tasty. We are fans of this restaurant.. .although it seems awfully similar to Satuli Canteen. Which we also love.

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After consuming lunch and breakfast in the span of 30 minutes, we were off to our first (and totally unnecessary) fastpass of the day. Now, I booked this fastpass because tiering made me pick something, but I honestly don't love having it because you have to line up SO EARLY and it's not like the seats are better or anything. We were stuck in that holding area for a solid 25 minutes. During which time I got an email from our resort asking how our stay was so far, with a survey link. I only got 500 words, but I was able to fit in some strong words about our bus experience that morning, and then moved on to enjoy the show.
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I totally adore this show. I am all about any opportunity for me to belt out my favorite music of all time, in public, with a hefty dose of Disney magic and some irreverant humor. I also really enjoyed the holiday ending-- I love the music from "Olaf's Frozen Adventure," though the story was a bit disappointing. Marjorie captured this photo of me being in my element when the snow falls down at the end.
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And, on that note, I'm off to bed!! Happy long weekend to those of you lucky enough to have one!​
 

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