Day 5 – Blizzard Beach & EPCOT

Today, we have something totally different planned! We are going to the Blizzard Beach water park!

But, hold that thought…

First, we need to try for a Rise of the Resistance boarding group again! Crossing fingers!

I got group 49! Not as good as group 10 the other day, but still an awesome, low number. If you missed my explanation of the boarding groups and strategies, check out my Day 2 recap.

So, our park reservations were originally scheduled for EPCOT today for all 4 of us. You don’t need to make reservations for the water parks, so I got them for the park that we’d most likely go to afterwards. However, last week, Disney increased park capacity and reservations became available for Hollywood Studios again! It was previously all full already. It’s usually the first to go, so make sure to reserve your Hollywood Studios days as soon as you buy tickets!

When reservations became available, I quickly started to switch ours over to HS, so that we had a backup day in case we didn’t get boarding passes the other day or we wanted to ride anything there again. However, I was only able to do my husband’s and son’s before they were all gone again. I told you they go fast! Lucky for us, they’re the two huge Star Wars fans anyway, so it worked out. My daughter n I didn’t mind not going again.

Note: In order to change your Park Reservations, you have to click into your current ones in your MDE app and delete that first, and then go add the new one. It’s pretty risky. You want to do this fast before it runs out again after you drop your original ones and then not be able to get those back either. And of course, check that there is indeed availability in the new park first before you drop your current ones.

Note 2: Disney adds to the reservation supply every so often so if the park that you want is not available when you go to make your reservations, at least pick another park that has availability for now. That way you at least have somewhere to go. Then, check the availability calendar often and if they restock, you can always cancel the original one and try to grab a new one for the park that you want.

So, today will start out as a split day. They will go to Hollywood Studios first until whatever time after their boarding group is done, while we go to Blizzard Beach first. They’ll meet us there when they’re done.

So, this is something you can do if members of your party want to do different things or even different parks. You don’t always have to all do the same things. Just make sure that your reservations are for the right people at the right places.

Hollywood Studios opens at 9am today, so they took the Skyliner there a little after 8am to try to rope drop it. They were able to ride the Millennium Falcon this time, and even got the pilot role! That is super fun! Always try to get the pilot role, the right pilot if you’re a super fan. You’ll see what I mean! Somehow, they forgot to take a picture of the Falcon though! Gasp! Trust me, it exists! Then, they did Rock n Roller Coaster too, another favorite, before lines for everything got long. It definitely pays to rope drop If you want to ride the big rides without long lines.

Time for a snack back over in Star Wars’ Docking Bay 7, the counter service restaurant. They got the chicken and pot roast dishes, which were decent.

After a ride on Star Tours, their boarding group was called, around noon! Not too bad! It was another awesome ride! You can see all my pics from the ride in our day 2 recap. They caught the character cavalcade also on the way out.

Once they did everything they wanted here, they took a Lyft over to meet us at Blizzard Beach.

Meanwhile, we had taken the bus to Blizzard Beach a little before 11am, which was when it opened, and staked our claim on an awesome shaded cabana!

Note: the Disney buses from the resorts take you to Animal Kingdom Park first, and from there you have to wait at the Blizzard Beach bus stop for the Blizzard Beach bus. Blizzard Beach is only about 5 minutes from there though. Depending on your timing, since buses come every 20 minutes or so, you may end up taking a good chunk of time to get to Blizzard Beach by the time you wait for the Animal Kingdom bus at your resort and then wait for the Blizzard Beach bus at Animal Kingdom. If you’re eager to get there quicker, this may be a good instance where it’s worth it to take a Lyft instead. We’ll probably do that next time.

This time though, we made it there with about 15 minutes to spare before the official opening time, so they actually held the crowd at one of the inner paths to the main park areas and we had to wait for the official opening. Kind of funny that we finally made an actual rope drop, but at a park that you don’t really need to rope drop. Although, it is better to get there earlier if you want to stake a claim at a nice shady lounge chair. There are plenty spread all over the park, but some are at better spots than others. We got lucky and found a nice empty cabana!

Our favorite thing at the water parks is the lazy river so we went to do a lap there first. This river was really long! It took about a half hour or more to float back around to our stop. It was fun though! We even ran into Goofy along the river!

We also did the Teamboat Springs raft ride, for which we had to take the gondola up to the starting point at the top of the mountain first. The ride itself is crazy fun! You go so fast, with many twists n turns.

I didn’t bring my phone on this ride, so I don’t have pics of it. I won’t have as many pics as usual today. We had waterproof pouches for some uses, but I didn’t think we could take them on most of the rides. You’ll just have to take my word for it. I’m sure there are some videos on YouTube if you want to see what it’s like there though.

By the time we got off the raft ride, they were just about here. So, we got some food while we waited for them. It’s the typical burgers n sandwiches type fare here, spread throughout several counters n kiosks around the park. We got a flatbread pizza, a burger, and a chicken sandwich, which were decent enough. I could’ve sworn I took a picture of them, but somehow I can’t find it now. However, the real target is the mini donuts! They are incredibly delicious here and at the other water park, Typhoon Lagoon, which is still closed currently! I wish they would sell them at the other parks too. So warm n fluffy! We polished off a dozen real quick! Should’ve just gotten two! Maybe next time, we should just get two dozen of these and forget the other foods. LoL!

We snacked and caught up on what we all did so far, and decided on what to do next. This park has several water slides of varying degrees of intensity, a wave pool, and a bunch of kiddie activities. It’s not huge but has a decent amount of rides to fill a day. We decided to do the raft ride again, all together first, then go do some other slides, and then the wave pool.

Of course, we had to cap the day off with a lap or two around the lazy river again. There may or may not have been some ice cream n Mickey bars sometime in the day too. We pretty much stayed til closing at 6pm. It was such a fun yet chill time!

We realized that today was also the first day of our trip where it didn’t have the dreaded afternoon thunderstorm. We got so lucky because they will have to shut down the rides if there is lightning in the area, so that will cut into your park time for the day. This is definitely an instance where you may want to look at the weather more closely as you get closer to your trip, and potentially move your water park day to the least possible rainy day. I know that’s actually hard to gauge with Florida weather in the summer, but since you don’t have to make reservations ahead of time for the water parks, and you can even buy tickets as you walk up to the park, it may be best to play your water park day by ear.

Once we were done here, we went back to Pop to freshen up and drop off our stuff super quick, and then took the Skyliner from there over to the Epcot station. From there, we just walked next door to the Beach Club resort for our dinner reservation at Cape May Cafe.

This used to be a buffet that was primarily seafood, though like all buffets, they had other selections too for everyone. Since reopening post-Covid, they are doing the family style platters like other buffet restaurants.

There’s a seafood one with clams, mussels, shrimp, fish, corn, and potatoes, all in a buttery broth. It was actually pretty tasty and cooked well. We got a refill of this one. The other platter had beef slices with a chimichurri sauce, roasted lemon chicken, roasted vegetables, and mashed potatoes. They were pretty decent, but pretty much the same as the other meat platters in other restaurants, so the unique thing here was definitely the seafood platter. There’s also a lobster mac and cheese that was ok, not much lobster though. You can also ask for other vegetarian and kids options as well.

At the end, they bring you a platter of various desserts. They were also pretty standard desserts, nothing too exciting to write home about. All in all, it was decent and I’m glad we tried it out, but we definitely liked the old buffet options better. We’ll probably come again when they bring back the full buffet. We really liked it here back then.

After we were done, we decided to go next door into Epcot for the last hour or so left. We like to close out Epcot. LoL!

It’s nice to walk around the countries with very low crowds, and then work our way to the rides in front. We were able to do Soarin’ and a few others again with practically no wait. Unfortunately, Test Track still had about an hour wait, and we didn’t feel like waiting for that long. It’s had a long wait every day so far, so I think we’ll probably not ride this this time, but that’s okay since we’ve done it in the past many times.

That’s one of the problems without FastPasses now. If you don’t feel like waiting very long, you probably will have to give up on some of the bigger rides that always have huge waits, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

Once the park closed, we made our way to the back entrance to take the Skyliner home. I tried to take some cool reflection pictures of the country buildings around the lagoon on our way out. This leisurely walk through Epcot was a nice end cap to a pretty fun day. The water park was a nice break from the usual pace of the parks. We highly recommend it if you can fit it into your schedule.

I love staying late at EPCOT, especially once the crowds thin out. Looking out at the reflections, I can’t help reflecting on our past trips here, and how lucky we were to have those experiences together. Some of my favorite memories still are of us watching Illuminations here together to end our nights. That’s still my favorite nighttime show, but partly because it always reminds me of our first trip together here when the kids were 9 and 6, so many years ago…