I had one Disney World goal this time: ride Rise of the Resistance. At Disneyland you can show up when the park opens, buy the Lightning Lane pass, and head straight for the ride. But at Disney World, they open Lightning Lane reservations to resort guests two hours before the park opens. So by the time regular guests are admitted to the park, Lightning Lane passes will mostly likely be sold out.
So non-resort guests have to wait in the standby line. Which means that I wanted to be first through the gates when the park opened, which means getting there an hour before, which means getting up very early. But it worked!! After a heart-stopping delay where both men ahead of me couldn’t get their tickets to work at the admission gate, it was a speed-walk to Galaxy’s Edge and into the standby line. The posted wait time was 40 minutes! But it seemed faster, almost like walking on. And the ride is just as good as I remember. Mission accomplished!
After Rise of the Resistance, it was cake to get to Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run and Star Tours, which wrapped up my to-do list for the Hollywood Studios park. So I was free to wander aimlessly, which was good because that was about the time the credit card network went down. So my aimless wandering became semi-purposeful as I kept an eye out for an ATM. (Spoiler alert, it’s outside the park, to the right of the entrance gates).
Found a new ride! Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway! (But it had a long wait.)
Got cash! Headed for Ronto Roasters to order the breakfast thing I’d scoped out! They said, “You can’t order that because breakfast ended 11 minutes ago.” (Also, credit cards started working again, so you didn’t need to go get that cash. You probably could have made if for breakfast if you hadn’t.) So I ordered the plant-based lunch thing! It’s called the Zuchii Wrap (grilled zucchini, smoky chickpea-onion slaw, garlic-tahini sauce, and fresh cilantro in pita bread). It was really good except that it was really spicy.
Jeff ordered the Andoan Fruit with Muja Sauce and split it with me. It’s jicama, cucumber, pineapple, melon and dragon fruit with tamarind sauce and dusted with peppercorn ash. It was tasty, especially the pineapple.
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