Day 3: Hollywood Studios and EPCOT

The heat yesterday was brutal!  I lowered my expectations for the rest of our time at Disney.  There were only two things I wanted to check out at Hollywood Studios; Toy Story Land and the much hyped Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride.  If you ever think you are going to just show up and spend the day at any Disney park you will be sadly disappointed.  Due to COVID not only must you buy tickets in advance you must also make a park reservation for each day.  When I started thinking about this trip back in April, many days in June were already booked with no reservations available.  I swear I have planned more for a Disney trip than multiple week trips to Europe!  True story I tell you!  Toy Story Land was just show up and wait in line but this Star Wars: ROR ride was no joke and required some planning and skill and luck too.  If you had a reservation for the day you could get on the app at 7am sharp and try to join the line . . . yes, I did and was ready to go well before 7am.  I hit join the line at 7:00am on the dot and within that second it was full . . . like FULL . . . no slots to ride the ride.  Thankfully, I was still in the bed in the cool, comfortable resort room.  So I went back to sleep knowing there was no sense of urgency to get to Hollywood Studios this morning.  We eventually made our way to the park and enjoyed a few rides like the no line Star Tours which was fun.  I lost my prescription sunglasses on the ride and realized it about 1 minute later so ran back . . . thankfully the person sitting on our row saw them and picked them up . . . we met on my frantic run back and he held them up.  I was so happy because man those things are expensive!  And then explored Toy Story Land.  I just love the Toy Story movies.

 

We were hungry so decided to put our name of the virtual wait list for one of the sit down restaurants, The Hollywood Brown Derby.  As we waited it was close to our final chance to get a boarding group in the virtual line for the Star Wars: ROR ride.  I swear at one second past 1pm there was a collective sigh and cheering . . . you knew who got a boarding group . . .

Now let me just say if we didn't get a boarding group it wasn't the end of the world . . . we would have moved along to something else and never knew what we were missing BUT we now had 280 minutes to waste.  First up was eating lunch inside with air conditioning!  Colin had a nice beef filet while I had a delicious Cobb Salad.  At this point, we had rode all the rides we wanted so we came up with the plan to walk to Disney's Fantasia Gardens Miniature Golf Course.  It wasn't that far so off we went . . . we both get a little competitive and I have never been one to let my kid win . . . so it was game on!  And on hole 4, Mother Nature decided to strike with lightning which shut down the course.  We tried to walk to the nearest resort to catch the boat back to Hollywood Studios but that shut down too.  So it was off we went on our own two feet . . . about half way back the bottom fell out of the clouds and the wind was whipping but we pushed on in the rain laughing and trying to not get blown away.  We found shelter and let the storm pass before entering back into the park.  Outdoor rides were shut down but Star Tours was indoors with no wait.  I am not a Star War fan but the theming was super cool.

We found a few more indoor shows and just sort of hung out and FINALLY almost 5 hours later, it was our boarding groups turn.

I am not going to lie the hype was huge and I was going to be super disappointed if we had waited all day and this ride was not good.  It is all anyone talks about on travel and Disney sites . . . I was expecting it to be overhyped but well it was super cool!  The ride is in stages and from the minute we walked past Magic Band check it was 44 minutes long . . . there was some standing in line waiting of course but for the most part you move from room to room and then board the ride.  I am glad we did it but it wasn't like we need to do it again this trip!

Our tickets included the Park Hopper option which meant we could hop over to any of the other parks so Colin wanted to go to EPCOT.  The buses were a disaster, the Skyliner closed due to weather so we decided to walk . . . oh man we got soaked . . . our shoes and socks were awful but we had a goal and off we went!  All we could do is just laugh about and continue walking.  We rode every ride we wanted to ride because the wait times were like 10 minutes each or less.  The park was getting ready to close as we headed to the bus stop back to the resort.  There were literally hundreds of people in line and the attendant said it would be a least an hour wait just to get on a bus.  Umm no thanks so off we went to the ride share line and were back at our resort in no time!  Best $10 I spent so far.  Colin was starving and we managed to arrive back to the POP Food Court with two minutes to order food!    

 Miles Walked:  11.7