Good morning! Ready for another exciting day?

Are there any other Star Wars fans on this trip? If you’re a fan, you’re in luck! We’re about to go to Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios today!

Disney’s newest transportation system is the Skyliner gondolas. It connects Hollywood Studios and Epcot with several nearby resorts. Lucky for us, Pop Century is one of them. The Skyliner station is right in the middle of the lake between the Pop Century and Art of Animation resorts. So, this morning, instead of going to the front of the main building to catch the shuttle buses there, we will be going to the back of Pop Century to take the Skyliner instead. It’s a really cool ride! Let’s go!

That was neat, wasn’t it? It took just under 10 minutes, so it’s much faster than taking the shuttle buses and was so smooth. It’s not scary either, even for those of you who are afraid of heights. You feel very secure and safe inside those gondolas.

Let’s make our way into Hollywood Studios and go down Hollywood Boulevard. We’ve transported back to old-time Hollywood!

Since we want to ride the newest ride in Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, Rise of the Resistance, we have to do something unique to this ride first. As of now, there is a virtual queue system for this ride. You have to do this if you want to ride, you can’t even just wait in a long line. You have to go into your MDE app as soon as the park opens, and click the Join Boarding Group button to get your boarding group number. Be ready to do it the second the park opens because it will fill up within minutes!

They will go through the boarding groups during the day and notify you when it is time for your group to ride. It’s like a FastPass with an unknown return time. You can check the app to see how fast they’re incrementing through the group numbers throughout the day and estimate when it’ll get to yours. Still, you never know when they may have a delay in the ride or something. You can only hope that they get to your group number before park closing.

Everyone in your group who wants to ride has to be scanned into the park first, so get there about a half an hour to an hour before park opening. They will usually start letting folks in by then. There are many tips n tricks out there for this process, and the rules for how this works have changed over time, so read up on the latest procedure before you get here.

For today, let’s say we got a good boarding group, number 50. This is approximately in the middle of the pack of how far they usually get in the group numbers, so barring any massive delays, we should be able to ride around early afternoon. They typically make it to a little over 100 groups on an average day. Crossing fingers!

Now, this frees us up to go do other rides first. For today, we got our passes for Rock ‘n Roller Coaster, Toy Story Midway Mania, and Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway. So, the strategy here is to quickly go do two other popular rides that we couldn’t get passes for right after park opening. Otherwise, the standby lines for them will get even longer throughout the day.

Slinky Dog Dash in Toy Story Land is still one of the popular rides with crazy long lines all day, so let’s go do that one first. It’s a fun, medium intensity coaster that Andy built in his backyard using parts from his toys. Look all around you in Toy Story Land and in the queue for the rides. The theming is incredible! Let’s go!

Wasn’t that fun? There are many other neat things in this land to check out too, but we’ll come back to it later when it’s time to do our Toy Story FastPass.

For now, we have to bee-line it over to Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge to try to ride the Millennium Falcon ride too before that line gets even longer. Luckily, that ride has a single rider queue, which can be a bit shorter than the regular line. That’s why we can take our chances on doing that one after Slinky Dog. There’s a back entrance to the Star Wars land right at the end of Toy Story Land, so let’s go that way. It puts us in closer to the Millennium Falcon this way too.

Look how incredible! They did a fantastic job creating this land. The theming is incredible here too. Look all around you, there are so many details. You can explore here for hours! For now, we have to go fly the Millennium Falcon! Can you believe it?!?

That was awesome, right? What role did you get? You can ride this several times to try to get all of the roles.

Now, it’s time for our first FastPass. We need to go back to Toy Story Land. I know this is a lot of back n forth, but there’s a method to my madness. This park needs a bit of this strategy if you want to do all of these big rides due to the tier system for FastPasses. You can only pick one major ride to FastPass, so you need to rope-drop the other two first thing in the morning.

So, let’s go back to do Toy Story Midway Mania now. This is another fun one where you’re going through classic carnival games, shooting at targets to score the most points. Let’s see who can get the highest score!

While we’re in this land now, let’s explore the rest of the area. Alien Swirling Saucers is another fun ride in this land, and Andy’s Lunchbox is a good counter service place to grab a snack or meal. There are several delicious options to choose from.

Cool huh? Did you recognize toys from your childhood?

Next, let’s go back out to the main Hollywood Boulevard area to do our Runaway Railway ride in the Chinese Theater. You become a part of the Mickey animations. This just opened recently, so we haven’t done it yet either! We’re excited to see it!

That was cute! Did you like it?

Now, we have to go down Sunset Boulevard for our Rock ‘n Roller Coaster ride. We’re speeding to an Aerosmith concert in a “super-stretch limo”. This is another one of those crazy, high-speed coasters, so be warned. Our kids love it, though. Can you tell by now that they like thrill rides? Haha!

Phew! Is your brain scrambled?

Well, now that we’ve done our three initial FastPasses, we can get another one. Let’s see if we can get one for the Tower of Terror next door. That’s an iconic ride in this park. I’m sure you saw the building on the way over here and maybe heard the screams coming from it. Haha!

Let’s do this one now and then go have lunch. You definitely don’t want to do this after eating.

OK, if your brain wasn’t scrambled enough before, I’m sure it is now. It’s time for a breather.

We got lunch reservations at one of our favorite restaurants in this park, the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant. The ambiance is really neat in there. You’re at a drive-in theater where you eat in the cars and watch campy, old sci-fi clips. You just have to see it. There’s a decent selection of classic burgers and milkshake type foods here, but you’re mostly coming for the atmosphere. It’s pretty cool!

There are several good places for food in this park. The 50’s Prime Time Cafe is another favorite. Get the fried chicken if you go there! So good! The Hollywood Brown Derby is a little more upscale and modeled after the legendary Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. The counter service places in Toy Story Land and Galaxy’s Edge also have good choices.

While we were eating, we checked the MDE app. It looks like they’re almost up to our boarding group for Rise of the Resistance, so let’s go explore the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge area more while we wait for it.

Isn’t it cool?!? They did such a great job creating this new Star Wars land! There are so many interesting shops, food areas, and rides. Hidden details are everywhere, so pay attention. There are little activities that you can play along to in the Play Disney Parks app, as well, as you explore the land. You probably need several hours here to do everything!

If you’re a die-hard Star Wars fan, there’s also a special experience where you can build your own lightsaber! It costs about $200, but you get to customize a high quality, metal handle and blade, and get a special experience while doing so. I won’t spoil it here in case you want to do it, but it’s one of those goosebump inducing ones. I think if you’re a hard-core fan, it might be worth it for you. You should make a reservation ahead of time for it, because it’s usually full, so plan ahead.

Hey! We just got the app notification that it’s time for our boarding group to ride Rise of the Resistance! Let’s go!

Wasn’t that amazing? It’s probably the most complex of the Disney rides, and so immersive! There are so many components to it. I think we’ll definitely have to ride it again another day to soak it all in!

There’s one more Star Wars ride that we haven’t done yet, but it’s technically outside of Galaxy’s Edge. Let’s go do Star Tours next.

Did you make it back from your tour? Were you the rebel spy? Don’t forget, your experience can vary during each trip, though, so this is a good one to do again and again.

Well, at this point, we’ve done all of the favorites in this park. There are several other rides and shows here, including two good nighttime shows, but we’ve done them in the past. If you haven’t, then I definitely recommend that you check them out, though. You can spend all day in this park.

For us, we usually like to hop next door to Epcot for the rest of the day. It’s an excellent park to grab dinner at later. We can take the walking path, the Friendship boats, or the Skyliner gondolas. These two parks are pretty easy to hop between if you have park hopper tickets. Let’s head over!

We’ll take the Friendship boats this time since we haven’t taken them yet during this trip. It’s a nice leisurely cruise over to the Boardwalk area resorts first, then ending at Epcot. There are many good restaurants in the Boardwalk area resorts too. We’ve eaten at several already, but there are still many we want to try. The boat ride takes about 30 minutes, so it’s a good rest for our feet in the meantime.

Going to Epcot via any of these methods will put you at the back entrance of Epcot, the International Gateway. This is the side near the countries, which is perfect. We love exploring the countries here.

We love the Epcot festivals and try to catch as many as we can throughout the year. During the Spring months, Epcot holds the annual Flower & Garden Festival. They have so many incredible topiaries and floral displays around the park, all created from flowers and other organic materials. It’s amazing how realistic some of the character topiaries are! They’re all gorgeous!

The other significant part of the festivals is the different food kiosks. They showcase foods related to the nearby country that fit the theme of the festival. They’re usually foods that the regular restaurants don’t offer, so it’s a fun way to try different items from each country. We typically like to get one or two things from each kiosk to share so that we can sample more items around the world. This is what we’ll do for dinner tonight. Let’s start walking around and see what we want to try for this year.

Yum! So many delicious options!

We love exploring the World Showcase, which contains 11 country areas surrounding the lagoon in the middle. They are Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, America, Japan, Morocco, France, United Kingdom, and Canada. Each country area usually contains an educational display, kids’ activities, souvenir shops, snack stands, and restaurants. Some also have a ride or a film to watch. Until we make it to each country for real, this is the next best thing.

It’s neat just to roam around each country and see what you’ll find there. Each one is unique. We still find new things every time we come, especially new foods. Of course, things are continually changing as well, so what you see here may be different by your next trip. The loop around the countries is over a mile long, so it’ll take some time to explore it all. Let’s go take a look at each one.

Whoa! That took all night! Granted, we don’t do each country this in-depth on every trip. You’ll discover your favorites that you may return to more often than others. Did you make it around to every country with us? Hopefully, you liked each country too and ate enough during this ’round the world tour.

Well, it’s almost time for the nighttime fireworks show over the lagoon now, so let’s find a good spot to watch it. Make sure you don’t have tall trees in front of you to block the fireworks.

That was a good show to cap off the night. Sadly, this replaced the Illuminations fireworks show last year, though, which is still my favorite nighttime show ever. *Sniff*

You know what, since this is our fantasy trip, let’s say Illuminations is still showing. It tells such a beautiful story and just evokes sentimental memories of our past trips. Look closely at how the buildings of each country light up as the globe spins. I love that. Goosebumps! Listen to the lyrics of the song, Promise. The full version plays at the very end after the show. That’s what actually kills me every time. Let’s watch it now!

Hugs! Let’s go home.

We’ll come back another day to do the rides in the front half of Epcot, the Future World section. We have FastPasses for them in two days.

From here, the best way to get back to Pop Century is to go back out of the International Gateway entrance that we came in at before. Then, take the Skyliner out there over to Pop. It’ll be less crowded than the mass exodus out the front of the park to the shuttle buses. If you want to take a Lyft back, then, walk past the Skyliner station to the Beach Club resort next door and do your Lyft pick-up from the front lobby there. That’s the closest resort.

We had another great day, exploring Hollywood Studios and half of Epcot. Hopefully, you were amazed by Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, and you see now why Epcot is one of our favorite parks. You should make sure to add it to your itinerary for future trips too. There is so much to do here for kids of all ages.

Well, tomorrow is our Animal Kingdom day! Rest up for another fun one!

Goodnight!