Our pandemic trip to Disney’s Hollywood Studios ended up being the most bizarre, fortuitous, and short trip to theme park that I have ever experienced.
Originally, we hadn’t even planned on visiting Disney during our Florida house-hunting trip, but we quickly found a house that we liked ( which fell through during the inspection) and we shifted gears towards not only visiting the parks, but buying annual passes. Several years ago we purchased WDW annual passes by simply upgrading our day tickets. This time, Dan bought us day passes to Disney’s Hollywood Studios park, so we could visit and decide on dishing out the mega-bucks for year passes.
Since it is pandemic times, we had to not only purchase tickets in advance, but we had to make park reservations the day before. This was the same process as our trip to SeaWorld Orlando a month earlier. The parks have shorter hours and there is no park hopping
We arrived just before park opening and joined the crush of other visitors.
Generally, I felt safe visiting theme parks during the pandemic, but there were two main areas where safety measures seemed insufficient. The first was at park entry. Since the parks are open limited hours with no hopping, everyone arrives at park opening, and there is no way to maintain social distance at the entry gates. I’m not sure how to remedy this, as everyone wants to arrive at the same time to get a full-day out the parks. Somehow, they need to figure out how to control the bottleneck at the entry, especially at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, where the entry is narrow.
The other issue is not specifically a theme park issue, but one of the awareness of others. Most of the other guests were good about distancing, but sometimes in the queues excitement takes over, and people feel the impulse to bunch-up. Disney has plenty of signs reminding guests to stay apart, but it didn’t always happen. This was also really bad at the airports, especially when queuing for boarding the planes and going through security.
This was our first visit since 2016 and our first experience at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. The star attraction is “Rise of the Resistance” and the only way to ride it is to get in the virtual queue. In September, the virtual queue had two releases of slots; first thing in the morning and again in the afternoon. Park guests can enter one virtual queue a day in efforts to give access to as many guests as possible. We tried for the morning queue and missed out. All of the morning slots were gone within minutes.
Luckily, the other e-ticket attraction, “Smuggler’s Run”, where guests have the opportunity to fly the Millennium Falcon, had a normal stand-by queue. We rushed over to Galaxy’s Edge to get in line.
Honestly, it was a blur as we tried to find the end of the queue for “Smuggler’s Run”. We snapped a bunch of pictures and tried to absorb the overwhelming land which is Galaxy’s Edge. It’s full of rich details and is enormous. We did not see it all.
Luckily, there were plenty of cast members to direct us to the proper queues. Due to covid, there are more queues than normal, as every store and restaurant also has queues to enter. I have to admit that this somehow took away from the experience, but I also appreciate the safety measures that allow us to enjoy the parks during the pandemic.
The end of the queue ( approximately an hour wait at about fifteen minutes past park opening) was near a stage with Storm Troopers. Due to covid, all of the characters must keep a distance. This didn’t mean that they didn’t interact. I even had a Stormtrooper yell at me to keep moving when I didn’t notice a gap in the queue in front of me!
Much like all of the extra queues, the general lack of characters or atmosphere was also a departure from the Disney magic. We only saw the Storm Troopers, where it felt like there should be many more characters inhabiting the land. I think this must be due to Covid restrictions. However, it was a bit of a let-down for our first trip to Galaxy’s Edge. The land was stunning, but the vibe was terrible. I never quite felt immersed in the experience and never felt like I was transported outside of Orlando.
Here are some pictures of the queue. Like most modern attractions, the queue was constantly offering new perspectives and details to enjoy. I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, but my husband was very excited over everything, especially the Millennium Falcon.
And finally we made it on the Millennium Falcon!
Due to Covid, we had the entire ride vehicle to ourselves. This was cool, because we had a private ride, and not so cool, because the story of the ride has interactive elements with different tasks for all six passengers. The ride will of course run without all six people, but it breaks with the storytelling to have less, making it also feel less immersive. “Smuggler’s Run” is a state-of-the-art motion simulator ride. I’m not sure that I would say it was completely unique, as it takes from ideas of other simulator rides, but it was very well executed. I was a bit overwhelmed by my interactive tasks, when all I wanted to do was really look around at everything. I think the next time I ride it will actually be a better experience.
When we got off the “Smuggler’s Run”, we were thirsty and dazzled by the collectible Galaxy Edge themed coke bottles. At the price point, I think this is something you only splurge on once, but it’s a clever bit of theming. I read that they were showing up as weapons in airport screenings, so we didn’t bother to keep it as a souvenir.
At this point, our trip took a turn when my stepson called and we decided to head back to our rental house, so that my husband could play on the x-box with him. My step-kids live in Sweden, so these weekend calls and bonding time take priority.
Before leaving the park, we made the decision to upgrade to Annual Passes and went to guest relations. By the time we walked to guest relations, it had started pouring with rain. The kind of rain that soaks you to your underwear. Due to covid, the guest relations cast members were standing outside under enormous umbrellas to help guests.
The friendly GR employee informed us that they had temporarily suspended new annual pass sales. We were so disappointed, especially as just the day before, the website listed them for sale. It was raining so heavily that we could hardly see, so we decided to leave and come back later to make use of our day pass.
We went home and I decided to call the WDW help line to ask about the annual passes. I was hoping that guest relations was misinformed and that there might be some way to purchase the annual passes. After a nearly two hour wait, a very kind cast member informed me that there was no way possible to purchase an annual pass, however, since they could see that we only went on one attraction prior to leaving, they offered to refund our tickets. I was a bit disappointed to both not have annual passes and to miss out on the remainder of the day in the park, but we accepted the refund, effectively having a Disney experience for the price of parking.
I appreciate Disney’s offer, especially since I had not even asked for a refund. We are hoping to visit in 2021 with the kids. We want to truly experience Galaxy’s Edge as a family and we will probably even splurge on the themed Coke bottles again!
