Sunday was our first full day so we were ready to try our hand at the early morning Rise of the Resistance boarding at Hollywood Studios. We left our hotel at 6:15 a.m. in order to walk to the park, get through bag check and gates and stand ready to launch the app at 7:00 as per Disney instructions. There was a little rain on our walk and throughout the day. We were in the park at least 10 minutes ahead of time and worked our way up to a less crowded area near the Hollywood Brown Derby outdoor seating area. We thought that would position us nicely to head to Toy Story Land at 7:00 once the ropes dropped and we had our boarding group assignment.
Turned out our spot for the morning wasn't a great pick. Although I was able to have some space to launch the app and join a boarding group, we were in a bottleneck spot to get back onto Sunset Blvd and head to Toy Story land since the cut through we anticipated using was closed. We still made it over to Slinky in decent time and only had to wait around 30 minutes. Then we rode Toy Story Midway Mania and took some more photos. Our plan was to finish a few things there, have brunch and then return for Rise of the Resistance.
Since we didn't know what time our boarding pass would be, it was going to be a bit of a crapshoot for balancing the brunch, which is a minimum 2 hour commitment with travel back to our hotel , eating, and travel back to the park. After we got boarding group 49, we guesstimated that we'd be called back around 11 a.m., which meant we would have 11-1 as our window to ride. Our brunch was scheduled for 10:45 a..m, which would cut it too close. So I used the My Disney Experience app while we were in line for a ride to move our reservation back to 10:20. Then we also showed up a few minutes early to make sure we were actually seated by 10:20. Our boarding group was called just as our table was called at 10:15 a.m., so we were on the clock! I set a timer for 11:20 to make sure we left brunch on time.
This is actually one of our favorite brunches for the food and sort of for the characters (although William has mostly outgrown that....). Our waiter was incredibly friendly and brought William this hot chocolate that was fully loaded with whipped cream! He was always quick to bring the check when we told him about our ride timer. We saw our two favorites of that bunch: Donald and Minnie. We were full and ready to ride before Daisy or Goofy made it around to us, so we left without seeing them. The buffet had Minnie waffles in addition to Mickey waffles, and William and I both happened to have them. Minnie seemed very concerned when she watched William eat an ear off of her namesake!
I got a photo with her, as well, before digging into my decked out Minnie waffles!
Donald was happy to meet a family that knew he was #1.
We had second walk to Hollywood Studios for the day to settle our buffet binge. (We had taken the Skyliner from the park back to the hotel, but we didn't want to risk any delays on our return.) It also contributed to our nearly 30k steps that day! The Play Disney app had a game where you collected codes throughout the queue to unlock something....I'm not sure what but William really enjoyed it. All told the ride wait and experience took us around an hour. It was all most impressive!
There was a pre-show room before heading outside to load into a transport ship for what we would later learn is only part one of the ride!
After our transport ship was caught by an Imperial Destroyer, we were offloaded onto their ship to meet our doom at the hands of Kylo Ren. Oh....and this entire fleet of Stormtroopers!
But we managed to escape with the help of Finn and Poe and returned safely to Batuu! Amazing ride!
Back out exploring the land there were some more interactive elements for the app which William enjoyed. There were also some photo ops that we all enjoyed.
The Stormtroopers told William to get out of the garden area. He briefly did. Then stepped back in. So they told him again! ;-)
We had our Fastpasses reserved for Magic Kingdom for the day since we did everything early morning walk on at Hollywood Studios. So we ventured over there late afternoon to take in the pretty decor and ride a few rides. We also stopped at the glass blowing store so I could buy myself a Christmas gift of a glass tree with classic Disney ornament balls - an item long on my Disney wish list. William and I enjoyed watching the glassblower work while we waited for them to package my tree.
The ducks (that aren't Donald) also always catch our attention and make us laugh! These near Tomorrowland's entrance seem happy that the construction is done and they have their moat back.
After our Space Mountain ride (still in pre-Christmas original mode), we checked out the ride vehicles for the Tron ride that's coming in another year. Looks cool! Then we rode Buzz Lightyear and John hit some sort of secret target right off the bat for bazillions of points. I could never keep up after that!
We were leaving just as another parade (because when we arrived we also caught the end of a parade....) was coming through, but since it was rainy, this was just a parade to tell us there was not going to be a parade! I found that extra funny for some reason.
We had a late dinner at our hotel and caught the end of the Epcot Forever show from the pool area on our way back to the room. We couldn't stay up too late since we were going to do the early morning Hollywood Studios routine again tomorrow!
Those red days were long, sedentary days at my desk! It's embarrassing to show them but an interesting comparison of a work day versus a Disney day. I always knew Disney was good for my health!
