I intended to write this a while ago, but better late than never! My family ventured to Disney World for a week in November and we had a wonderful time, despite all of the changes due to Covid. I’m not going to write a full trip report. Instead, I am going to cover our day at Hollywood Studios (mostly spent in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge) and our resort, The Cabins at Fort Wilderness (you can read my review here). Both of those experiences were brand new to us. We also spent one day each at Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom, but those days were pretty basic park days with no new experiences and I hardly took any pictures, so I’m going to leave those out. I will cover all of the Covid precautions as well. I feel like we went on our trip at the perfect time. We were there the week before Thanksgiving, which was before the Covid numbers started going back up, the holiday crowds had not yet arrived, and the weather was perfect.
We had not been to Hollywood Studios in a long time. I think our last visit was in 2015, before Toy Story Land or Galaxy’s Edge were there. So, we had a lot of catching up to do! Our day started at 6:45 am when I woke up to get ready to get into the virtual queue for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, this is the headline attraction in Galaxy’s Edge and you must sign up for a place in line on the My Disney Experience app. The first group of the day opens at 7:00 am, and you do not have to be in the park (obviously) to get into the queue. Previously, the virtual queue opened up at 11:00 am and you had to physically be inside of the park to get a spot. But, they have changed it to 7:00 am and you can be anywhere. There is another group that opens at 1:00 pm (recently changed from 2:00 pm), and you do still have to be inside the park to sign up for this one. This is only for people who were unable to get a spot the first time – each person is only allowed one spot per day.
At 6:59 am, my husband and I were ready with 4 different phones (2 each) in order to tap that button as soon as the clock changed to 7:00. One of my phones was successful, and we ended up in group 41.
When your boarding group is called, you will get a notification on your phone and you will have 1 hour to report to the ride. You can also check the app at any time and see which boarding groups are currently being called so that you will have a general idea of when your time is approaching.
Relieved that we got a spot (lots of people don’t), we hung out in our cabin because the park didn’t open until 10:00 am that day.
Somewhere around 9:45, we got into our car to drive to Hollywood Studios. I LOVE that you can park your car right next to your cabin – this allowed us to completely avoid buses for the entire trip. We parked and once we got close to the entrance, we realized that we forgot to look and see which section of the parking lot we were in – oops! This will become a relevant detail at the end of the day. The entrance was much less crowded than pre-Covid.
We had our bags checked and temperatures taken, and proceeded into the park. There were still decent crowds, despite the reduced park capacity. I don’t know for sure, but I have read that they are limiting capacity to either 25% or 30%. It definitely didn’t feel empty though.
We have never been to this park during the holidays, so it was neat to see all of the decorations.
We headed straight to Toy Story Land and got in line for Toy Story Mania.
For those of you that might not know, the Fast Pass system is not currently being used. The park capacity is low enough that most rides still have reasonable wait times without it. Some of the more popular rides did have consistently long wait times – more on that later.
You’ll notice in the photo above that the posted wait time is 45 minutes. In our experience, these estimates were consistently inflated. For this ride, I think we waited about 25 minutes. Also, the lines look long because the people are so spaced out but they move very quickly. We rode many rides where the line was moving the entire time and we hardly, if ever, stood still. One thing I need to mention is that it is often hard to find the end of a line because the people are so spaced out that the end is not anywhere near the ride itself. There is a CM at the end of each line holding a tall sign that indicates which ride the line is for. If we struggled to find the end of a line, we found that people in the line were always willing to point you in the right direction if you just asked. For Toy Story Mania, the end of the line was actually outside of Toy Story Land. On the ground are markers reminding people to leave plenty of space between parties:
While I’m talking about Covid precautions, I’ll go ahead and talk about face masks. They are required for everyone ages 2 and up and the guests during our visit were very compliant. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone without a mask, unless they were actively eating or drinking while stationary and socially distanced, which is in accordance with the rules. I was impressed by the level of compliance.
After Toy Story Mania, it would have made sense to ride Slinky Dog Dash right next door but the wait time was listed at 70 minutes (spoiler alert: it never went down) so we went ahead to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge since it was nearby.
Instead of getting in a line right away, we walked around and looked at all of the theming. It was incredible!
After soaking it all in, we got in line for Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run. This next group of pictures were all taken while we were in line. You can see just how much ground the lines cover with the social distancing.
Once you enter the interior part of the queue, the theming gets really neat – you even get to see the top of the Millennium Falcon:
When it was our turn, we entered the Millennium Falcon:
The photo above doesn’t show the entire space, but it holds 6 people. Our party of 5 got one to ourselves, and I think at the time, they were only putting a single group/party in at a time regardless of number of people. I have read online that since then, they have installed plexiglass between seats and are now boarding multiple parties together.
Before the ride, a CM instructs each group to choose 2 pilots, 2 engineers, and 2 gunners. Each role has a designated seat and different tasks. I won’t give too much away, but you are on a specific mission, and how well each rider performs determines the success of the mission.
After the ride, we were hungry for lunch. But first, we conveniently took a water break, socially distanced, in front of the Millennium Falcon and quickly took a picture without masks.
There are 2 quick service restaurants inside Galaxy’s Edge – Ronto Roasters and Docking Bay 7. Ronto Roasters only sells the Ronto Wrap (Roasted Pork, Grilled Pork Sausage, Peppercorn Sauce, and Tangy Slaw wrapped in Pita Bread) and chips, so we went to Docking Bay 7 for more variety. However, my husband wanted the wrap so he got one and brought it with us. We found out later that the wrap is actually on the Docking Bay 7 menu for dinner, but not lunch.
Because of Covid, they are HIGHLY recommending that you place mobile food orders and honestly it is so easy and convenient that I think this trend will stay for good. You use the My Disney Experience App to place your order, select an arrival time, and pay.
Once you get the notification that it is your turn, you go to the restaurant entrance where a CM (pictured below) will verify that it is your turn and send you inside to a specific numbered line.
Once you get to your assigned line, another CM is already preparing your order, and it is ready in a minute or two. There are also CMs helping guests find places to sit since many of the tables are blocked off, and we were asked if we would like to sit outside on the patio. We did, so we were led to a booth outside. I didn’t take any photos of the patio, but it was really nice. I borrowed this one from allears.net:
The food was really good! It is not your typical theme park food, and we thought the quality was great. I got the Roasted Endorian Chicken Salad (Marinated Chicken, Mixed Greens, Roasted Vegetables, Quinoa, Pumpkin Seeds, Green Curry Ranch):
The chicken was flavorful and juicy, and it was so nice to have the option of vegetables at a theme park. This was my husband’s Ronto Wrap from next door:
The girls each got the Endorian Fried Chicken Tip Yip (Crispy Chicken with choice of Vegetable Mashed Potatoes with Herb Gravy or Macaroni and Cheese and Roasted Vegetables) and really enjoyed it:
The broccoli was especially good. For dessert they each got the Batuu-bon (Chocolate Cake, White-Chocolate Mousse, Coffee Custard):
I just noticed that the description says there is coffee custard in it, but the girls didn’t mention it so the coffee flavor must be pretty mild.
I’m going to end part 1 here, but stay tuned for part 2, which has all of the highlights of the day: Rise of the Resistance, the Droid Depot, and Savi’s Lightsaber Workshop!
We loved Galaxies Edge and Toy Story Land. We were there the 1st week of March last year, right before all of the restrictions. I’m so glad we went when we did. We never go on vacation in March, but for some reason I wanted to go in the Spring. It looks like you had a great trip! Looking forward to reading about the rest of it.
I really enjoyed reading this! I will be back to read part 2!