It’s 6:30am and I’m up! Why??
I’m prepping to try to get our boarding group for the Rise of the Resistance ride! It’s a really cool ride, especially if you have Star Wars fans in your group, but it’s a must do even if you don’t. I think it uses every new ride technology out there. It’s pretty amazing!
But, the only way to ride it right now is to get a virtual boarding group at 7am or 1pm ET (12pm PT at Disneyland) each day, and they go fast, so you have to prep for it so you know what to do beforehand. This is a thing! You really have to prep for it! Study the strategies ahead of time. It’s crazy, but you have to be lightning fast or you won’t get to ride. Luckily, you can do it from your room now at 7am instead of going to the park first, as long as you have a park reservation to Hollywood Studios that day. There are several strategies out there on the internet, but this is what I did.
Do this on the fastest phone in your group. I’ve read things about having multiple people in your party try at the same time, but I’ve also heard that it can cause issues doing that. Just figure out who has the fastest phone connection and do this from that phone. Use a speed tester to figure out if you get a faster speed using WiFi vs your data plan and use the faster one, figure out the location around your room or outside, if necessary, with the best connection and speed too, check if your phone time is the same as NIST time, or pull up at site too (on another phone so you can see that n your screen, but that’s the official time Disney goes by), shut down all other apps besides the MDE one and log in. Make sure that everyone who wants to ride is linked to your MDE app and has a HS park reservation for today. Go to the main screen and click the Join button for the Rise virtual queue.
Leave it on that screen n wait. Or practice refreshing that screen once or twice to see how long it takes, hopefully just a few seconds. It’ll say something like there’s no boarding groups right now yet, but this is where another Join button will appear when it’s time. Just hang here for now.
When the NIST time reaches 6:59am ET, start refreshing continuously n quickly, no lag waiting between refreshes, until you see the next Join button. Then, very quickly click the buttons on the next three screens. Don’t even stop to read what it says there. They basically list your group members and ask if you want to join and all the explanation text. Don’t read. Just trust and click everytime you see a button. I know, it’s pretty nerve-wracking. A millisecond makes a difference though. If you stop to read, you probably won’t get it. The groups fill up within the first minute.
Once you get to the end of the series of join screens, it should show you your boarding group number (yay!) or a sad message saying that the groups have been filled (bummer). If that’s the case, you can try again at 1pm, but you have to scan into the park first, even if you leave before 1pm.
You can go to the main screen and go into the Virtual Queue’s Status screen to double check. Sometimes, I fly through the screen so fast that I can’t even see if I got a group or not. LoL! Screenshot that screen for proof that you got a group incase anything wacky happens later.
If you get any errors during this process, also screenshot the error message, then go to Guest Services at the park and they’ll hopefully take care of you.
This status screen is where you’ll check throughout the day to see what group they’re up to. It’ll show you an estimate in minutes of how long it’ll be before your group is called also. Don’t get in a long line for another ride if it looks like your group will be called soon! They may not pardon you for that. But if you have a table service dining reservation during the time your group is called, you can finish or go to your meal before going to the ride. Just show them proof that you had that reservation during your callback time and they’ll usually let you ride even if it’s past your hour window. Make sure you screenshot your reservation listing showing your reservation time.
The app will send a notification popup when It’s time for you to ride, or you can keep checking the status screen incase you don’t get notifications. You have one hour to get to the ride entrance after you’re called. Don’t be late…except for the above mentioned dining situation. However, I recommend going back as soon as you can after you’re called, because you never know when the ride can go down. It’s better not to take any chances and ride as soon as possible.
This morning, I got boarding group 10! That’s an amazingly early group, the earliest we ever got! Yay!! Time to get everyone up to go soon then! The park opens at 9am.
Note: if you want to ride Rise, you have to pick Hollywood Studios for your park reservation that day. You can’t try for boarding groups if you’re just hopping there in the afternoon, and there are no standby lines. The park reservations for this park run out the fastest, so grab all your Hollywood Studios days first when making your reservations.
So, today, our park reservation is at Hollywood Studios. We can take the Skyliner there as well.
We checked the ride wait times in the MDE app as soon as we got near the park entrance to plan our first ride. We got there a little before park opening, but it looked like they had already let folks in for a while before that. The Millennium Falcon ride was already projected at 45 minutes, but the new Mickey n Minnie’s Runaway Railway was still only at 15 minutes, so we hopped on that line. We haven’t done this one yet since it opened right before the Covid closure, so we wanted to check it out. It was very well done, lots of vivid projections and fun ride motions. You should definitely do it!
Since our Rise boarding group was so early, by the time we were done with the railway, we got the notification that our group was called!
We headed into the Star Wars land, Galaxy’s Edge. If you’ve never been, you definitely need to explore this area too. There are many nooks n crannies, stores, fun stuff (go to the Play section of the MDE app), photo spots (especially in front of the Millennium Falcon), and food options. Everyone has to try the blue milk at least once! But for us, it’s time to ride first!
The ride was so cool! This was actually just the second time we’ve ridden it, but I think it’s even better. There are things to see all around you and I think I missed some the first time around.
Afterwards, we decided to mobile order a breakfast Ronto wrap for a morning snack. It was really good! We actually liked it more than the regular Ronto wrap! The regular one is decent, but we think it needs some sort of sauce for more moisture. The breakfast wrap is better since it has that layer of egg and some cheese mixture. That gives it that flavor and moisture and makes it better, we think. Give it a try yourself and see which one you prefer!
After our little refreshment break, we walked around the land a bit more and then went out the back entrance to walk through Toy Story Land. That land is incredibly themed too and has two rides that are super fun.
By then, it was time to make our way over to the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater restaurant for an early lunch reservation. This is one of our favorites, and is themed like an old-fashioned drive-in theater. You sit in cars and watch kitchy, old movie trailers as you eat. It’s pretty neat. Reservations for this place go fast, so if you’re interested, make sure this is one of the first ones you book.
We knew we also had another late lunch reservation coming up at the Brown Derby restaurant in 2 hours, so we didn’t order that much here. We just shared an order of onion rings and an Oreo milkshake, which were delish! But, we just mostly like to soak in the atmosphere at this place, so we try to book it every trip. You’re mostly going here for the theming. The food is decent diner style food, but it’s not going to win any gourmet food awards.
Like I said, we plan to eat all the foods on this trip though. LoL. We booked some old favorites, but we also made a point to grab some places that are new to us. Research! But really, it’s also part of our strategy to deal with the heat and crowds that we were anticipating for this time of year. We figured that we would book a few sit-down restaurants throughout the day as a way of getting some refreshment, resting our feet, and most importantly, getting into some air conditioning. We were just planning to sample a few small things at each place to check it out.
Afterwards, we rode Star Tours and saw the Muppets show before doing some window shopping. We also caught a character cavalcade! They’re doing these now instead of the full parades, where certain characters will just drive by at random times.
By then, it was time for our Hollywood Brown Derby reservation for second lunch. Ha! This place is new to us. It’s modeled after the legendary Brown Derby restaurant in California, and has that old style Hollywood feel to it. We ordered the Cobb salad that it is famous for, along with a shrimp cocktail, creme brulee, and it’s iconic grapefruit cake. Everything was very delicious here. I would recommend this place if you’re looking for a little more quiet, upscale sit-down dining at this park. But, it’s also not stuffy and you can go in your normal park clothes, as long as they’re pretty decent. You don’t have to dress up.
After taking some obligatory group pictures on the way out, we decided to head over to the Boardwalk area resorts to explore them a bit before heading into Epcot for a few hours. There are several ways to get over there from Hollywood Studios. My daughter and husband decided to take the walking path, while my son and I were going to take the Skyliner. Unfortunately, the Skyliner happened to be down at that time, so we went over to take the ferry boat instead.
I think if you were going to go straight to the Epcot entrance, they would have beat us there with the walking. It’s about a 25-minute walk. It took about 15 minutes just waiting for the ferry to come, then it stops at another resort first before dropping us off at the lighthouse stop between the Yacht Club and Beach Club resorts, so we would have had to walk back over towards Epcot from there. However, for us, we were going to explore the resorts, so it was close enough to them.
Luckily for us, we had just gotten into the Beach Club when it started today’s afternoon rain bout. So, we just hung around in there a bit, checking out the stores and the cool pool n lazy river. If you’re the type to do resort pool days a lot, staying at the Beach Club or Yacht Club would be awesome since they share such a cool pool area. We also checked out the Yacht Club and the Boardwalk resorts.
After we are done exploring, and the rain stopped, we made our way into Epcot again to do another loop exploring the countries. Towards the end, we had another one of those torrential hurricane force storms. Luckily again, we happen to be near a store and just ducked in there to wait it out for about half an hour till it let up.
It was still lightly raining, but the crazy downpour with heavy winds and lighning stopped, so we just put on our ponchos and started walking over to the Dolphin resort for our dinner reservation at Shula’s Steakhouse that night. This was another new to us place and our special dinner for my husband’s bday.
Shula’s is owned by the legendary football coach, Don Shula, so the entire restaurant is decorated with many football themed photos. It’s also a little more upscale but not stuffy either, and they weren’t too strict about dressing up, though most people were slightly dressier than usual.
Since we had been nibbling all day, we just shared two large “cowboy” steaks between the four of us. They were grilled perfectly! Very flavorful and tender! We also got a side of a baked potato and a French onion soup, and then got the chocolate souffle and chocolate lava cake for dessert. I think next time, one dessert would do. Everything was incredibly delicious! I would definitely recommend this place for a special occasion, and especially if you have a football fan.
Afterwards, we walked around the resort a bit but we were too stuffed to do anything else, and most of the parks were closed or about to close by then anyway, so we just ordered a Lyft ride to take us back to Pop and called it a night. We had a great, jammed-packed day!
Check out this awesome fountain and lighting structure in the Dolphin resort lobby!
Intro | Flying To Disney | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Flying Home
Adventures By Anne 