• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Disney World Tips and Tricks

Heading to Universal for a couple of days next week. 3 kids and primarily for Harry Potter. Staying at a hotel in the park. Any tips?

Get to the park early, like park opening early - do the Potter rides first, it gets super busy, you can come back to do the shopping stuff later.
 
If you're staying in one of the hotels at the park you should have the skip the line feature, which is necessary. If you don't have it, get it. It expires around noon on the day you check out though.
 
-Definitely buy the Universal Express if you're not staying on site.
-Do Hagrid's ride first and then the rest of the Harry Potter stuff as early as possible.
-The wand-buying shop is worth it with kids, but do it early because the lines get long and they move slowly.
-Do the ET ride and The Mummy. Don't bother with Transformers or Jimmy Fallon.
-Don't do the Dudley Do Right log ride unless you're prepared to be completely soaked. Like stepping out of a swimming pool soaked.
 
7am inside Hollywood studio and already two other families with wake gear and Go Deacs.
 
I find a lot of my simple, random “Go Deacs!” interactions have been replaced with, “Can you believe that moron Manning is still our coach!?!” baffled exchanges.
 
I think about half of the alums I run into have no clue about sports at all.

Helps explain why manning is around
 
Seems like ATS is talking about a random interaction with someone wearing Wake gear. That person may be more likely to follow sports.

A Wake alum in a workplace or academic context is less likely to know about sports.
 
I think about half of the alums I run into have no clue about sports at all.

Helps explain why manning is around

If you were a high school student that cared about basketball, would you apply to Wake?
We've self-selected a certain student body.
 
I should have been more clear perhaps. I was also talking about the random, both in wake gear, and start chatting.

Work people never wear wake gear anyway.

But very cool. Saw the one family many times during the day
 
Made a spur of the moment trip to Hollywood Studios this morning to ride Rise of the Resistance. It was spur of the moment in that my saw a friend on Facebook post that she got to the Studios at 6:30 am, got a boarding pass in the 60s for Rise when the park opened at 7:00 am, and finished riding it by noon. So she figured when could get up really early this morning and do a quick trip over there. It did not work out that way, but more on that later.

Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge to open May 31 at Disneyland and August 29 at Hollywood Studios. It's ahead of schedule, but the twist is it's opening in phases. The Millenium Falcon ride is opening in the first phase then Rise of the Resistance opens later this year.

https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/b...esort-august-29-at-disneys-hollywood-studios/

They really should have just waited to open the whole thing together.

i heard that same podcast. they're designing Rise of the Resistance for a 5-hour wait. there is no ride on earth that is worth wasting 5 hours of my life standing in line.

Rise is the most amazing ride experience I've had and it isn't even close. It was worth getting up at 4:30 this morning. It was worth dealing with my kids melting down and fighting most of the day. It was worth sitting and waiting 75 minutes after it broke down right when our boarding group was finally called. My oldest was crying that he wanted to go home while we were waiting and at the end he screamed, "It was totally worth it!" and started talking about how he wants to ride with all this friends next time.

I won't spoil it but it's an 18-20 minute immersive experience that surpasses anything else I've seen before. It's the height of various technologies that have made their way into theme parks over the last decade except for roller coasters. I saw at least 4 families today doing VIP tours. I've maybe seen that many in 10+ years of going to the parks. That's got to be because you get Rise passes with it.

We made a spur of the moment trip to Hollywood Studios on Saturday to check out Galaxy's Edge.
.
.
.
Smuggler's Run was a disappointment, at least the ride itself. The experience of walking through the Millennium Falcon was very cool. The whole mission set up with Hondo (a Star Wars Rebels character) and Chewy was cool. You're given boarding passes and 2 people each are assigned pilot, gunner, and engineer. This is basically the whole thing. If you're pilot, apparently it's an amazing ride. One pilot controls left and right. The other controls up and down and hyperspace. In our experience, a little girl and her dad were the pilots. We crashed a lot. If you're a gunner or engineer, it's basically Star Tours with button pushing. The gunner can't aim, just fire. The engineer just pushes whatever buttons light up. You do get a score at the end but everyone gets the same score. If your pilot is a 4 year old, you're just not going to get a good score.

I got the impression they had high aspirations for the ride but just couldn't do everything they wanted to do and still be a high capacity ride. The general impression I get from friends who rode it and the Disney Facebook group I'm in are basically the same. If you can be the pilot, be the pilot. Otherwise, it's not worth the wait. FOP is a far superior experience. SR is the #2 ride, equivalent to Na'vi River Journey or Alien Swirling Sauces and Rise of the Resistance is the top tier attraction.

Got to be the right side pilot in charge of going up and down and going into hyperspace. It was fine. Got to be the gunner later and it was pretty boring except that my 7 year old did a great job as the left side pilot. I think the imagineers just got stuck on the obvious idea and just couldn't figure out how to make it happen without a bunch of compromises, but they stuck with it. It's just enough to not be Star Tours, but the cool thing about Star Tours is that they've updated it for each film in the Skywalker sequel trilogy. Star Tours for TROS was very good.

I had much more fun on Rockin' Rollercoaster, Slinky Dog, and Midway Mania.

The food in the counter service was good yet again. Had a grilled chicken thigh salad with green curry ranch dressing. It was unique enough to seem "alien" and very good.

I should have been more clear perhaps. I was also talking about the random, both in wake gear, and start chatting.

Work people never wear wake gear anyway.

But very cool. Saw the one family many times during the day

Unrelated to Disney, I wore a Wake tobaggan to a work trip and a guy who works at Wake introduced himself. We did end up talking about basketball.
 
Last edited:
I was disappointed with ROTR. (I'm the only one in my family). I wanted more of a roller coaster experience. It really does bring you into the story, but I thought with all that then the ride would be star tours meets space mountain but the pit of you stomach feel was only one or two small drops. More Goofy's Coaster than space mountain. FWIW My wife and oldest were in HS yesterday too before heading to the pro bowl. They love the ride.
 
Yeah you’re going to be disappointed if you didn’t want an immersive dark ride experience.

Still hoping they do the long rumored Monsters Inc roller coaster at some point.
 
surprised I'm beating Ph to this one: Disney announced they're retheming Splash Mountain to the Princess and the Frog.

Seems long overdue. "Mommy, I wanna watch the Splash Mountain movie! The rabbit is funny."
 
Going to be funny to see the haters on this one. It’s still going to be a basic flume ride.

Disney fans hate change until it’s happens then they love it.
 
Going to be funny to see the haters on this one. It’s still going to be a basic flume ride.

Disney fans hate change until it’s happens then they love it.

I'm surprised it took so long for this to happen.
 
 
If they do an animatronic Tiana there similar to the Navi shaman at the end of Navi River Rapids, that would be pretty incredible. It would be more difficult because it's outside though.

Hopefully Disney uses the additional down time due to COVID-19 to speed up construction efforts.
 
Man I hate to see it happen cause Splash Mountain was great but I understand it and it’s surprising it lasted as long as it did
 
Back
Top