I’ve always wanted to try solo traveling to a theme park. I feel like people considering solo adventures have that one thing they’re afraid of. “I could never go to a movie by myself,” “I wouldn’t eat out alone,” “I can’t solo travel to Iceland.” Trying something like that is intimidating!

For me that thing has been theme parks. Standing in line with the grumpy dads, necking teenagers, and the toddler exploring your shin with his plastic sword without anyone whose opinion you care about to prevent you from explaining your personal bubble to those around you in undiplomatic terms? I dunno about that.

So naturally I had to try it. I figured I’d start at Epcot since it has plenty of things to do that don’t require waiting in line. It’s not exactly a thrills-centric park with rides that draw huge crowds or Rise of the Resistance-length lines. I thought I’d wander around the World Showcase, look at stuff, and have a relaxing, Disney magic-filled day.
But then Disney sent me an email about how, at 7 am on the day of my visit, I can join the virtual queue for the new Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind ride. That sounds like a challenge. Are you skilled enough to get into the virtual queue? With a reasonable boarding time? Will you remember at 7 am? Can you refresh the app fast enough? There’s no stand-by line, so the virtual queue is the only way to ride.

So naturally I had to try it. At 6:59 am I was refreshing the app, and (without reading) kept hitting continue until I saw a “Congratulations!” screen. I got into group 2 with a 9:20 am boarding time. (The park opens at 9 am.) Nice. (My boarding time actually came up at 8:40 am, when I was still on the freeway, but they give you an hour to use it, so I’d made it by the time it expired at 9:40 am. And there wasn’t any waiting in line, we sort of walked on to the ride.)

The new Guardians of the Galaxy ride is like Space Mountain meets the teacups. It’s a rollercoaster that starts with a launch then runs around a star-filled room like Space Mountain, but each set of two benches spins. So you, the person next to you, and the two people behind you will be spinning together while the other four people on your train will be spinning together. Apparently the spinning wreaks havoc on the stomachs of people with motion sickness. The rumor is that the ride breaks down a lot, and that it’s usually so they can clean up vomit. And yes, while we were waiting to board there was a long delay, then as we were getting off the ride, there were two men standing guard over a collection of rags covering some spill on the exit platform.

I don’t have the most stellar motion sickness reputation (I can’t play first-person video games for very long), but I knew that I’d be fine if I looked at a fixed object (like the track, which I was able to see fortunately). So I didn’t get sick. In fact it was way fun. So smooth! It does feel like you’re twirling through space (or at least something without a floor). Plus, because the benches rotate, they do a BACKWARDS launch at the beginning, which was delightful. (The train is always going the same direction, they just rotate the seats right before.)
After that, the concept of a relaxing, no-lines day went out the window. I made of list of must-rides and came up with a plan to hit everything by 2 pm (which is when I’d be allowed to switch parks). I used Lightning Lane (fast pass) for Soarin’ Around the World and The Land (first photo in this post). Then it was time to eat!

Epcot was having its Holiday Kitchen event, where countries have a special small-bites menu, and several items were vegan. (There was peanut stew, tamales, spring rolls, potato latkes, and a black and white cookie.) I opted for L’Chaim between France and Morocco because they were the ones that had two vegan items.
Plus I’d seen a photo of the potato latkes, and they were as good as they looked. I mean, fried potatoes, so there’s that, but then the dill sauce was perfect, really flavorful. The cookie was very sweet! But fun to eat anyway.
I had some time to kill until my Lightning Lane time for Frozen Ever After came up, so I wandered around the world. (And I got the spring rolls from Shanghai’s Holiday Kitchen booth. They were vegan without the sauce.)
The United Kingdom.
Morocco.
France. This is the front of the new Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure ride. It was the only one I ended up waiting in the standby line for, but I hit it during lunchtime so it was shorter and mostly free of toddlers with swords. I read a book in line! It worked well, no one bothered me, and the time went fast. Plus I got a six-person rat cart to myself!

It’s a trackless dark ride, like Rise of the Resistance where you can see the shiny black floor with rubber cart lines criss-crossing it. But, unlike Rise of the Resistance, the action happens on screens. So your rat cart pulls into a dock and you watch a scene, then it moves to another location for another scene. It was a good ride! It’s from the point of view of a rat on the floor, and you’re trying to dodge obstacles in the restaurant.
The one I couldn’t figure out how to ride was Test Track. The Lightning Lane time was too late, and the line was LOOONG. But I wandered over there anyway, hoping for a miracle. And a miracle occurred! They had a single rider line! (Disney parks really need to bring back more single rider lines.)
I even got to ride the monorail for the first time! Overall, solo travel to a theme park was awesome. Between virtual queues, Lightning Lane, and single rider lines, I got a TON of things done, I only ended up waiting in one line for the six things I rode, I got to skip the part where your group starts squabbling because they’re headache-y (I’m looking at me here), and it turns out standing in lines (reading a book) and riding rides by yourself isn’t scary like I thought it’d be.
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