Today is day two of our Lightning Lane (LL) experiment at Disney World. We bought Lightning Lane to park hop EPCOT and Hollywood Studio. If you have not read about the first day of our Lightning Lane experiment where we park hopped between Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom, please read that HERE.
So, to give you some background information, there are 3 types of Lightning Lane passes.
⚡Lightning Lane Multi Pass - What we purchased
⚡Lightning Lane Single Pass - For one ride only ( usually a top tier/ very popular ride)
⚡Lightning Lane Premier Pass- For all lightning Lane rides with no wait time.
Unless you know your exact date and you are with in several days of that date, Disney doesn't come right out and tell you how much each of these passes are. I believe it goes by the crowd level during that time. 
I purchased the LL tickets 7 days in advance. We knew we wanted to start the day off at EPCOT, so that is the park I bought LL for. It worked out for us because LL for EPCOT is cheaper than LL for Hollywood Studios. Lightning Lane for EPCOT was about $20 per person. It actually was probably around $18 or $19 but there is tax on the ticket so my total was $40 and some change for the two of us.
There were really only two "must do" rides for us this visit: Soarin Around America ( because of the new show for America's 250th birthday) and Remy's Ratatouille Adventure ( because we don't always ride this on each visit because the line is always so long, but I wanted to make sure we rode it this time since we purchased Lightning Lane).
This is what we ended up choosing
This looked like a good line up of attractions and I got the two major ones we wanted to do that day. However, after further consideration, I realized that I wouldn't be able to make another lightning lane selection until after 9:55 am. The goal here was to pick some early attractions at EPCOT so then I could start unlocking more lighting lanes to use later in the day at Hollywood Studios. I knew I could forfeit "Living with the Land" because it was not a must do and the line for that isn't ever that long anyway. I went back in the app now with a different strategy. I just needed to find something with an early Lighting Lane time. NOTE: Once you've made your first three lighting lane selections, you can go back in and modify them at any time. However, you can only choose attractions that are in your first park ( for us this was EPCOT), and not all rides will be available because those LL may be used up by other guests. It's really a hit or miss.
I modified our Living with the Land lightning lane to Disney and Pixar Short Film Festival, not because I really wanted to see it, but because it was available at 9:00 am and I knew I could scan in there at 9:00 am and then start choosing lightning lanes for Hollywood Studios.
Okay, so here is how our morning at EPCOT went. Early entry was at 8:30 am, but the park did not open to non resort guests until 9:00 am. Since we were in the park a little after 8:30 am, we did not wait around for our 9:00 am lightning lane, we went directly to Soarin Across America to see if we could ride that without using our lightning lane pass.
We only had to wait a few minutes to get on Soarin, which was amazing! ( From the time stamp on my camera roll, we got on Soarin at 9:15 am)
Since I did not use a LL for Soarin, I can modify that pass to choose something else. However, I want to use that pass for something at Hollywood Studios, and in order to do that I have to check into my 9:00 am LL at Pixar Short Film Festival first. So that is exactly what I did. Once I scanned in at the Film Festival, that unlocked 2 more lightning lanes at ANY park, not just EPCOT. It is only just after 9:20 am and already so many of the LL for Hollywood Studios have been taken or are currently unavailable. A lot of what was left is for later in the evening, which was really what we wanted anyway since we wouldn't be park hopping over there till right before dinner.
I was able to secure a LL for Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railroad for 6:45 pm and throughout the afternoon, I kept checking back for Toy Story Mania. I originally had a LL for 7:30 pm which was perfect timing, but after I selected it, it disappeared. I guess someone else clicked on it quicker. In any case I ultimately secured a 9:00 pm LL for Toy Story Mania. I wasn't really happy with this and kept checking frequently to see if anything earlier would open up.
Okay, back to EPCOT. After scanning in at the Pixar Short Film Festival ( which is near the Imagination building), I walked back over to the Land pavilion to meet my sister. We got in the very short line for the Living with the Land boat ride.
This one is always a favorite. I notice new little details each time.
After the boat ride, we stopped at Sunshine Seasons for their newest Mickey Macaron, which was the Strawberry Lemonade. It was tasty, but I prefer the pistachio peanut butter one I previously got here.
By this time, we headed over to Remy's Ratatouille Adventure for our 9:55 am LL. ( it was actually a little after 10:00 am at this time, but we do have that hour return window)
I recently found out there there is a single rider for this attraction. Since we had LL for this, we did not use the single rider lane, but I bet we will use it next time. We did have a single rider riding with us, and although it is a nice concept to help fill the cars, I have to say that seats on these mouse cars are a bit small to be seating three people that are not related to each other.
After Remy, we took a right through world showcase. We took some pictures of the America pavilion, because afterall, this is the year of 250. We checked what time the shows would be ( Voices of Liberty) so we would note when to return.
We decided to have an early lunch in Mexico but first we went inside the pyramid to do the boat ride ( which did not have a line), and then ordered our lunch from La Cantina shortly after 11:00 am
After this, we sort of bounced around EPCOT.
We had another LL freed up that we could use, so we used it on The Seas, with Nemo and Friends. I think the stand by line here was either 15 or 20 minutes, so although it didn't save us a whole lot of time, it was good to use. It was 12:22pm when we got out of the Nemo ride and we knew we wanted to hang out in this area until the Disney Visa card member meet and greet opened at 1:00pm.
We walked back over to the Land pavilion and watched the "Awesome Planet" show. we really enjoy this. The narrator is the guy who plays Phil Dumphy ( the dad in Modern Family). It's a cute show about how awesome our earth is!
Sine we were already in the area, we decided to finally see the Pixar short film festival.
There were three short cartoons shown. They were cute, and two of them had stories that sort of tugged at your heart. I don't remember ever seeing these before, although Lacey said she did see these before when she came for one of the festivals.
We walked around some more and I was thinking of getting an iced beverage from Starbucks and then that thought deterred us to Club Cool.
We always like visiting Club Cool for a little refreshing taste!
At 2:00 pm, it was time for us to start our game/scavenger hunt we wanted to do. I will share more on this later but basically Lacey and I each had a set amount of money and we had to secretly shop in world showcase. We allowed an hour for this game, but it only took us a little over 30 minutes.
Since we were back in World Showcase, we did end up stopping back to listen to Voice of Liberty in the American Pavilion.
We ended up seeing Mickey.
In Germany, we browsed through Karamell-Kuche to see their snacks, and just as we do every time, we left empty handed because everything either looked "too rich" or "too heavy". We decided to walk to the China pavilion to watch the show there since it's been a long while since we've taken the time to do that.
The show exits into The House of Goof Fortune, which is the main gift shop in China. This is one of our favorite places to shop! Of course we had to pick up a few treats here.
By this time, I realized I had stopped checking the LL app to see if I could pick up some more attractions for Hollywood Studios. I guess I kind of just gave up on it. I did see that there was a LL lane available for Space Ship Earth, so we snagged that one up and headed to the front of the park.
The stand by line here was about 20-25 minutes, so this was a good use of our time. We were off the ride by 4:35pm. We took some photos in front of Spaceship Earth and then decided it was time to take the skyliner over to Hollywood Studios.
Unless you really want to ride the skyliner for the experience of it, I would suggest not taking it to Hollywood Studios because it is not the quickest way. We don't always do EPCOT and Hollywood Studios on the same day, but when we do, we usually just walk over there or take the Friendship boat. I wish we would have done that this time. I totally forgot that the Skyliner does not go directly from EPCOT to Hollywood Studios. You have to get out and transfer to another Skyliner station half way through your ride.
We got to Hollywood Studios about 5:30 pm. It looked like it was about to pour down rain, but really it was only just misting.
We put our name on the walk up list for dinner at 50's Prime Time Cafe. It has been probably two decades since we've eaten there. But funny enough, not much had changed. We were seated about 15 minutes later. Complete review of our experience will be coming soon.
We left Prime Time Cafe around 7:00 pm and went over to our LL at Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway.
Now, we did have a LL for Toy Story Mania for 9:00 pm, but that is at the same time as the first Fantasmic show ( and we wanted to watch the first show tonight, not the 10:30 pm show).
NOTE: There is not always two Fantasmic shows. Be sure to check the show times during your visit. Also, if there is two shows, those shows are exactly the same. They are not two different shows.
Anyway, back to Toy Story Mania. The ride was still showing a 40 minute wait, but we decided to wait anyway. We figured that by the time we got through the line, it would be time for us to start heading over to Fantasmic anyway. So we hopped in the stand by line and instead of taking 40 minutes, it only took as 17 minutes! That sure was a nice surprise.
Since we had some extra time, we rode Alien Swirling Saucers, which had only a 5 minute wait. This was a new to us ride!
Afterwards, we made our way over to the Fantasmic show. This was the last thing we did at Hollywood Studios before leaving the park.
So, was purchasing Lightning Lane worth it for this day of park hoping?
We got to use the LL for 3 rides at EPCOT and only one of those rides ( Remy's) was something we really wanted to do. We got to ride our other must do ( Soarin) with out a LL and with very little wait.
In Hollywood Studios, we only got to use it for 1 ride ( Runaway Railway), which was a must do for us. The other must do ( Toy Story Mania) we did not use it for.
In my opinion, we certainly did not need the LL for EPCOT. I thought having the LL would make it better for us to secure some rides with low wait times at Hollywood Studios, but it really didn't. I feel like it might be more of a challenge to use LL while Park hoping. If you are going to use your three "good" lightning lanes at the first park, I doubt you will end up getting 3 lightning lanes you want at the second park. And when I say "good" lightning lanes, I mean that as opposed to "throw away" ones, like I did with the Pixar film festival one that I made just so I could scan in to make a LL for the next park.
I know there are a lot of strategies out there on how to best use these lighting lanes. I thought I had a good plan on how to use them and was just hoping to at least secure 3 rides per park hopping day. We were able to do that. I believe anything more would be setting expectations too high! However, I really don't think LL was needed for the days we visited.
Till next time~ M and L
Please check out our Day 1 of park hopping with Lightning Lane.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Fairytales and Fitness is a personal blog authored and edited by us, Meranda and Lacey. The thoughts expressed here represent only our own and are not meant to be taken as professional advice. Please note that our thoughts and opinions change from time to time. We consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind in an ever changing society. Any thoughts and opinions expressed within our out-of-date posts may not be the same, nor even similar, to those we may express today. Some links may contain affiliate links. Some links are just to pages we'd like to share.