Tuesday 10/24/17
We didn’t have the first flight out in the morning and it felt kind of good to get up at a normal time. My sister drove us and we had a good flight down, landing just 10 minutes late at just after 1:00 pm. There was some rain around Detroit so we were hoping we wouldn’t be delayed. We got the text that our room was ready shortly after landing. I love online check-in! It seems to go so smoothly and we get a room right away instead of having to wait! We were in Lady section of Pop, third floor, away from the pool. Pretty nice spot. We dropped our bags off and went to Studios to activate out AP’s. The cast member was great and was so happy for us that we were on a daddy/daughter trip! By now it was 4:00 and we were hungry! Not having eaten since breakfast! We missed PizzeRizzo being open which we wanted to try, but no matter, we would rectify that in December. We had an incredible 7 layer rice bowl from Fairfax Faire on Sunset Blvd! It was huge! Very tasty and it went down so good! While we were eating we checked wait times. Tower was listed at over 2 hours! We knew something was up and right about then we got the email that it was down and our FP was now a wildcard. We quickly decided to use it later at TSMM, two tier one’s in an afternoon/evening? Yes please! Rock-n-Roller Coaster was just a 20 minute wait and we knew crowds would be heading there with Tower down. We quickly finished and jumped in line. Our first ride of the trip! We were right about the crowds, standby had inflated while we were in there. We used our wildcard for TSMM and Lauren beat me. That was ok, it was her birthday trip! She got best in vehicle too! After exiting we met Cruz with only a 4 person wait! I will always jump in for a meet and greet with only 4 people in front of me! We worked our way over towards Star Tours where our next FP was. We saw Olaf’s queue with hardly anybody in it and Lauren hadn’t met him before so we jumped in. Good thing we did! After we were done the queue was almost full! We could actually feel the crowds following us and nipping at our heels with Tower being down! We saw Star Tours with only a 10 minute standby. Ok. Knowing how the crowd was flowing we jumped in. Rode it and when we got off it had gone up to 30 minutes! Perfect time to use our FP! So we got two rides in with minimal wait, but get this, we got two totally different episodes too! Not one scene the same!
We got some nice pictures and shopped a bit, taking it easy and just enjoying being there and the atmosphere, feeling the stresses of the real world slip away. They had a lot of the decorations up but not lit yet, we couldn’t wait to see it at Christmastime!
We walked into the amphitheater for Fantasmic with our last FP. We got great seats in Maleficent, just left of center. We only had to wait about 30 minutes, and half of that I was getting some popcorn for a snack for us. Great show, as always! We left after that and were back home by 8:30. We put on our suits and went swimming for a bit and enjoyed being at the resort a bit before bed. It was a great first half day of daddy/daughter and Lauren’s birthday trip!
Steps: 17,034 (not bad for just a late afternoon/evening in the parks)
Miles: 7.68