Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

TISHLOVESDISNEY said:

EE is really DS8's priority.
Thank you for your response. Gives me a bit more hope.

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Oh you’ll get on it no problem! It was great- I was terrified but surprised at how much I loved it. I was just as terrified every time after but still loved it. We laughed so hard every time, it was a highlight of the trip for us- just to laugh so much after the stress of this year.

We did FOP a second time at the end of the night, got in line right before the park closed. I’m glad we did because you really get to enjoy Pandora at night while in the queue. Highly recommend that route if you don’t get on in the morning. Seeing Pandora at night was on my to-do list anyways.

Are there a lot of water bottle refill stations? When exactly are you allowed to drink from a water bottle and lower your mask?

disneylover102 said:

Are there a lot of water bottle refill stations? When exactly are you allowed to drink from a water bottle and lower your mask?

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I am unsure of the number of water bottle refill stations in each park (I think 1-2 at most).

I believe that officially, you are not supposed to eat and drink in line. However, it appears that isn’t enforced in the outdoor extended portions of ques and *only* enforced once you reach the “no eating/drinking beyond this point” sign (which is typically near the rides entrance).

We do not eat and drink in any portion of any line but from my experiences that’s what it appears to look like.

DisneyNDecember said:

Don’t they still have lockers in the parks?
You could put your purchases in a locker and get them out before you leave the park , so you don’t have to carry all your bags during the day.

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I don't know if the lockers are open these days - not something I've noticed anyone post about.

Assuming they are open, they are always near the park entrance. It might not be convenient to walk all the way back to the park entrance to put something in the lockers, then walk back further into the park to resume your touring.

disneylover102 said:

Are there a lot of water bottle refill stations? When exactly are you allowed to drink from a water bottle and lower your mask?

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You may eat or drink (outside of line portion poster answered above) when you move to the side, become stationary then take a quick sip and immediately replace your mask between sips.

wdwrule said:

Same thing happened to me last week. I thought I was so prepared with phone, battery pack and umbrella held out at arm’s length. So surprised too to find out it was sunglasses case which they said was covered in metal.

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I never could figure out what to do.

I would start pulling things out of my pockets to hold out at "arm's length" and the Guards would tell me not to hold anything out, just to come on through and of course the things in my pockets would set the machine off and off I would go to the table for extra screening!lol

Best Aunt said:

I don't know if the lockers are open these days - not something I've noticed anyone post about.

Assuming they are open, they are always near the park entrance. It might not be convenient to walk all the way back to the park entrance to put something in the lockers, then walk back further into the park to resume your touring.

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Lockers are operational at all parks

WEDWDW said:

I never could figure out what to do.

I would start pulling things out of my pockets to hold out at "arm's length" and the Guards would tell me not to hold anything out, just to come on through and of course the things in my pockets would set the machine off and off I would go to the table for extra screening!lol

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Things that trigger the metal detector are metal water bottles, metal eye glasses cases, umbrellas, battery packs and gimbals

ejdmomma said:

I just wanted to share our experience with the queues and maintaining our distance. We were at the parks last week over Thanksgiving and experienced "at capacity" parks. For the most part, we didn't have any issues maintaining appropriate spacing except for in the lines. We are a party of 5 - two adults, two teens that are adult sized and our 10 year old. The 5 of us did not fit on one line...obviously. If we had two on the line and rest behind those two, we were almost to the line marker behind us. After a couple of rides with the party behind us on the line immediate behind, we started to spread out and take up two lines. This worked well for us for the rest of the trip. I don't know if anyone has any better suggestions, just wanted to share!

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We were there during the same time and noticed lots of families taking this method, which is smart! There just isn't enough room between the markings for more than like 3 people (who stand right on top of each other) and still allowing for distance from the party behind. We always gave people their space, but I do know there are just some people who don't pay attention (and a few who don't care) who will cram up right on top of you so taking extra space is always smart. DH and I noticed several families where one parent would hold back and stand a good bit further away from the rest of their family to keep other parties from crowding them. I always felt bad for that one person, but I suppose it could work for some. My DH has already said he'll probably take that method when we go back with our kids over Christmas week (I personally like the spread out method better).

We’re here at the Boardwalk right now. Official opening time for the park is 9 am. It’s 8:35 am and busing for Magic Kingdom buses haven’t started running yet. We’re pretty frustrated. We wanted to be IN the park by 8:15 am. So just letting you guys know that the buses have started to come MUCH later. Even for official opening time at 9 am, that’s ridiculous

yulilin3 said:

Things that trigger the metal detector are metal water bottles, metal eye glasses cases, umbrellas, battery packs and gimbals

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Also, the purse I took to dinner at CG had a large-ish metal decal/name plate on the front and it set it off one our way back to MK after dinner. Security looked at it and showed me on the screen where it just highlighted the metal tag on front, they let me go without searching my bag because they said that happens often. It did not set it off when going through MK security going to dinner, but I think I'll refrain from taking a purse with something like that on it in the future.

Julie Amber said:

We’re here at the Boardwalk right now. Official opening time for the park is 9 am. It’s 8:35 am and busing for Magic Kingdom buses haven’t started running yet. We’re pretty frustrated. We wanted to be IN the park by 8:15 am. So just letting you guys know that the buses have started to come MUCH later. Even for official opening time at 9 am, that’s ridiculous

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Same report from someone at AoA, maybe their trying to move the true opening back to 9am? Still usually buses start at the latest 45 minutes before park opening

Sarahslay said:

Also, the purse I took to dinner at CG had a large-ish metal decal/name plate on the front and it set it off one our way back to MK after dinner. Security looked at it and showed me on the screen where it just highlighted the metal tag on front, they let me go without searching my bag because they said that happens often. It did not set it off when going through MK security going to dinner, but I think I'll refrain from taking a purse with something like that on it in the future.

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Yeah, metal

yulilin3 said:

Same report from someone at AoA, maybe their trying to move the true opening back to 9am? Still usually buses start at the latest 45 minutes before park opening

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This happened to us on our MK day the week before thanksgiving. The bus didn’t show up to CBR until about 8:45AM for a 9AM opening.

Update, the first bus of the day finally came at 8:45 am for an official park opening at 9 am. For a deluxe resort, that seems pretty Non- Deluxe. We were not pleased to say the least. If we didn’t have a group of 15 people, we would have called an Uber. But just know that the transportation people told us that they are no longer running an hour before the park opens.

yulilin3 said:

Yeah, metal

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Yeah, I just didn't think that A: it was real metal lol, and B: was enough to set off the detector because they always just say to take out the big battery packs and umbrellas. Just something to remember when people are headed to the parks.

Julie Amber and other folks who are there this week, thank you for all updates today and this week on how early the buses are running and how early people are being let into the parks! If they are dialing back to actual posted openings, that works for me...but sudden changes in times are incredibly frustrating.

yulilin3 said:

Things that trigger the metal detector are metal water bottles, metal eye glasses cases, umbrellas, battery packs and gimbals

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Also Ipad minis

I am annual passholder and back from EPCOT World Showcase yesterday. I have not been to Disney since Feb. but am not overly anxious about Covid and am usually out and about. We always loved Disney around the holidays. However, this time we really felt Disney has lost its magic. The holiday decorations were surprisingly sparse and underwhelming. The constant announcements about Covid were annoying and interfered with getting in the holiday mood. It felt soulless not being able to see joy in people's faces. We really missed the usual entertainment in all the countries and international cast members. We only saw one calvalcade of 4 characters that lasted 30 seconds. Voices of Liberty performed holiday songs at designated times in the American theatre and were very talented as usual, but they had a sparse audience. There was no holiday excitement in the air. There was an excellent variety of food in the kiosks and the biggest line was for L'Chaim. The showcase building had a nice tabletop gingerbread display of Washington DC buildings ---very cute but not a huge wow . Did not see any holiday decorations outside Yacht and Beach Club. The Yacht Club did have a big tree and garland in the lobby but it was eerily quiet there and had none of the usual staff greeting people. World Showcase was not very busy during the day. Walked right on the skyliner one way but had to wait in line about 15 minutes for the return loop. You cannot see one holiday decoration on the entire loop. Disney has handled Covid protocols very well but almost to the point like you feel like you are in a hospital ward. If you are a first timer to Disney I would suggest waiting because it is a shell of its former self. We decided will we not return or renew our passes until things get back to more normal.

Thanks to all that have been sharing their experiences in this thread. It helped immensely with our planning and we had a great trip. I thought I would share an overview of our trip and what worked and what didn't.

We were there from November 24th-December. There were many, many moments leading up to the trip where we thought we would cancel but we ultimately went and had a great time. Originally we were staying at the Beach Club. This of course didn't open and we got our first taste of pixie dust before we left. They moved us to the Grand Floridian and we got a theme park view for only $200 more (total). Totally spoiled us and I will have a hard time accepting anything else ever, lol. We ended up spending the most time at Magic Kingdom so we were happy to have such easy access!

Overall thoughts of each park:
Epcot: Meh. We LOVE Epcot but it was so hard to get around right now and mask compliance here was pretty iffy. We did enjoy the holiday touches on Living with the Land but otherwise we didn't spend much time here. We ended up switching our second Epcot day to MK instead because we just weren't feeling it. DD doesn't like Frozen and there is only so many times you can ride Soarin. We had dinner at Garden Grill and it was awkward. It was hard to interact with the characters from so far away and the food was underwhelming.

HS: This was the park that required the most planning and it definitely payed off. We rented a car and I highly recommend this if you can. On both of our HS days we had breakfast at an Epcot resort (Boardwalk and Yacht Club) and then would walk over the HS around 8:30. Both days we were lined up at 8:45 and on our first day we were one of the first families in the park at 9:15. We were able to ride Mickey and Minnie and Slinky all before park opening. We quickly did the rest of Toy Story Land after that and wandered over to Star Wars Land after. We didn't get a Rise boarding pass this day so we did Millennium Falcon instead. Posted wait time was 40 minutes but it was more like 20. By this was time it was 11 and getting very busy so we called it quits and went to swim at the resort. Came back for dinner and then rode Mickey two more times with a 10 minute wait as well as Millennium Falcon. I didn't expect much from this ride based on reviews but we all enjoyed it and thought it was fun! On the second HS day (Saturday) our plans didn't work as well. We still got in line by 8:45 but this time they lined us all up in one tent area and then opened the second one much later (but before unofficial opening) for the Skyliner/buses so there wasn't much advantage to getting their super early. We still walked right on to Mickey but but had a much longer wait for Slinky. We did snag a Rise boarding group this day though so we hung out awhile and rode TSM a few times. Then we headed to Hollywood and Vine for lunch was delicious and the characters were fun! DD is 10 but still loves characters so I was glad she had this opportunity. After that we rode Rise and headed back to the hotel by 1. Super, duper crowded and this was the day I felt most uncomfortable with the crowds.

AK: We spent one morning here. It was crowded, hot, and not very fun. We did the Safari with a 40 minute posted wait but it wasn't really that long. Pandora was busy so we skipped it. We did mobile order at Flame Tree and then sat by the water to watch the Characters. That was fun! After that we just went to the hotel to swim. Dinner that night was California Grill and it was the best meal all trip. Highly recommend the potstickers. SO good.

MK: We ended up spending 4 full days here. This is the park that taught me that FP really is not necessary. Other than the big rides nothing was every more than a 20-30 minute wait. Our last Thanksgiving trip rides like Peter Pan and Barnstormer all had an hour or two wait. This time it was never more than 30 minutes and we did so many rides. We would get there around 8:30 and walk on to a big ride and then spend the rest of the morning doing really just whatever we wanted until lunch. We would come back after dinner and continue riding rides until getting in line for a big ride right at closing. This worked well and we were probably getting 10-15 rides in a day with minimal waits. Our last Thanksgiving trip we were lucky to get 5-6. IMO not having FP really is a good thing and I welcome a revamp of it later on. It was so nice riding Peter Pan and Haunted Mansion more than once a trip this time with very little wait. This was the park where we had to ask people the most to keep space but they did every time. Our only issue was on Barnstormer where a CM had her mask off and was coughing while directing people where to go. It was very cringe worthy. Still it was a 2 second interaction.

Resorts: I was surprised to not get a full room cleaning the whole time we were there. It didn't bother us and I get it but I was just surprised. They did come by every day to clean out trash and provide fresh towels though. The pools were great! Never very crowded and easy to find space. We stayed at the GF but spent a ton of time at The Contemporary as well. We would do The Wave for breakfast a lot and then walk over to the MK. I just want to give this resort a quick shout out for being so incredibly friendly. Even though we weren't staying there the CM's at the front desk always said hi and service at both The Wave and California Grill was incredible. Even a guy that was cleaning stopped us one day and we had a nice chat. He thanked us for wearing masks while taking pictures and said it is getting harder and harder to enforce so he really appreciated us following the rules. I would definitely consider staying here next time just because the overall atmosphere was so dang friendly. GF was great, too, but we really just hung out at the pool or our balcony so we didn't have as much CM interaction.

Restaurants: Service was great most everywhere. The Wave, California Grill, Hollywood and Vine, and Narcoose's were all stand outs. Whispering Canyon for breakfast as well. Trattoria and Garden Grill were the worst. I really felt the lack of dining options since we were there so long. This was especially true at breakfast. Mobile ordering worked fantastically. The tip of ordering when you get to the park worked every single time.

Overall: I am glad we went. It was SO nice to get away and turn things off for a bit. There was still a lot of Disney magic. I don't think I will go back until things are a bit more normal but I don't regret going. It is getting a bit crowded but not as bad as I feared. I wish they hadn't increased capacity. You do feel it, especially in the afternoons. Still everyone was pretty polite and followed the rules. Some issues here and there but nothing truly terrible. I'm happy to answer any questions.