My Disney Hurricane Ian Trip and the Cannonball Run To Maryland

I know this is a pinball forum (there is some at the end) but many of us have kids/grandkids and this is my Disney Hurricane Experience. Just made it back from Disney after spending all day Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday in the parks. Drove 900 miles down Friday after school and Saturday afternoon with my wife, 5, 8, and 10 year olds and met my parents in the park. Left Tuesday night when they announced Wednesday/Thursday park closure.

The Fleeing Part: Tuesday evening I am sitting with my family at Epcot at the Biergarten restaurant eating overpriced German food while watching the show. Everyone’s phone goes of with the emergency alert sound you hear sometimes and the message is “Hurricane warning is now a Hurricane Watch”. Disney sends a mass text that they are closing the parks Wednesday/Thursday, and that you can stay if you want to, but “please stop by a Disney restaurant before returning to your room”. I.E. you can stay, but we won’t feed you. We had tickets/plans for Sunday-Friday, but we decided to “flee” at this point in time. Weather was still beautiful (and had been beautiful our entire trip) so we took the skyliner back to Disney’s Art of Animation, packed up our stuff, and headed out on the “Cannonball Run” back to Maryland with the family. Kids were (understandably) upset but what can you do? Hotels were mostly booked until we hit the Carolinas.

We made it to South Carolina the first night and were making great time yesterday until we hit DC. We had nothing better to do on the trip and after more than 9 hours on the phone with various levels of Disney customer service got a cash refund (coming in 7-10 business days on our card) for the Wednesday-Saturday hotel and park tickets ($2500). At the same time, we met my parents who flew in down there and are stuck. They went to leave in their rental car on Wednesday night but… the car wouldn’t start so they are still there! After all the dire warnings from Disney they were lounging by the pool (in the light rain) all day yesterday at the Disney hotel and other than their being a 2 hour wait to get food at the hotel have been just fine. Probably should have stayed… but on Wednesday when we left the storm was aimed directly at Orlando.

New Great Things at Disney:
-Best Ride- Rise of the Resistance: *Spoiler* This was the best ride I’ve ever been on. Not most thrilling, but best immersion and overall experience. Disney has shifted their new rides to have a more immersive “end of the line” section to make rides feel longer. Disney did this with Rise of the Resistance turning their 3 minute ride into a 20 minute experience. Phase 1- a 60 minute line before the “ride” started. Phase 2- Briefing from animatronic BB8 and holographic Ren. Phase 3- walk past the X wing into the escape transport… animatronic ackbar is piloting the ship, and as we are flying with great graphics in the windows, we are of course captured by the first order. Phase 4- Walk into bay outside of ship which has a legion of animatronic storm troopers in it, and looks like the inside of a star destroyer, Step 5: processed for interrogation and put into holding cells: Phase 6; Holding cell is broken into, resistance fighters board us onto escape cars piloted by droids. Step 6- Cars drive us through an area where there is a laser fire fight, we are rescued by Finn, Kylo Ren almost gets us, and we escape an At At blast. Step 7- Rescue and de boarding.

-Second Best Ride- Guardians of the Galaxy at Epcot. Imagine a high budget space mountain with a Guardians theme. More immersive line experience like in Rise of the Resistance.

-Third Best Ride- Star Tours… Duh!

-Thing kids liked best- 7 Dwarfs mine train (amazing animatronics) and meeting Darth Vader. Looking at my youngest son’s face after meeting Vader was the happiest I think I’ve ever seen him.

-New Meh ride- Smuggler’s run.

Themeing: Star Wars Land is freaking amazing. Epcot themed areas are great to look at, but not many rides.
Ride technology: Since I went 5 years ago, Disney has changed/added several rides to be piloted by self driving Electric Cars. Rise of the Resistance and Ratattoli are both like this. They can do some pretty neat things when they don’t have to worry about tracks.
New Sucky Things at Disney.

-Genie+- You can pay an extra $15 per day per ticket to have Genie + and get into a virtual queue one time for each ride. This was free 5 years ago when we went, it now costs money. We rode every major ride in the park using this. Highly recommended, but stinks its an up charge now.
Virtual Queue- You had to use an App to request a ride on Guardians. It filled within 15 seconds of opening. We got in!
Lightning Lane +. This is where Disney jumps the shark. You can pay extra to skip the line completely on major rides. We could have ridden Rise of the Resistance or Guardians an extra time… for $20 per person per ride. The normal line is now labeled as the “Standby” line. We did not do this. If I knew we would have to cut our trip in half I might have done Rise of the Resistance one more time for a fee, but Disney is getting really greedy here.

Food: If you like Cracker Barrel get a family reservation at Liberty Tree Tavern in Magic Kingdom. Great place for Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of your Marathon day.

Random: Saw a rocket launch (by complete coincidence) on my first night there. Launched right over the hotel.

Pinball: Every hotel had pinball machines. Mine had Star Wars (no LCD), Avengers 2012 (no thor) and Tron. None had ever been cleaned and you couldn’t make
the ramps on them. But that’s not why we go to Disney now is it.

I hear people talking about getting pins their grandkids might play. I would 100% recommend spoiling family with a (well researched) trip to Disney if you have the means over a more kid friendly pinball machine for their visit.

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You could still wait in line like normal for everything except for their newly opened Guardians of the Galaxy rewind roller coaster. You can buy a "Genie" for $15 per day per ticket if I remember and it is worth it. Essentially, you can reserve one "walk to the front of the line" at a time, and it opens at 7. For example, you could wake up at 655, spam the app at 7 and get an early reservation for "Rise of the Resistance" at 1000, show up at 0830 for early entry and dash to "Slinky dog Dash" ride it, and by the time you are done with that you can walk up and do Rise of the Resistance, which had lines over 2 hours at some points in time. After you use your Genie Pass and ride the ride you can use it on any other ride in the park. We did all the rides we wanted to at Epcot, Magic Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios. The only things I wanted to do I didn't do were the Indiana Jones Stunt Show and Mickey and Minnies Train Ride (Don't judge) but we were planning on 2 days at each of the parks... not a hurricane.

The only thing you couldn't use Genie or just wait in line for was that Guardians ride, which anyone could get in line for at 7 a.m. virtually. However, all the days tickets for it were gone in about 15 seconds, so you really need to watch a youtube video and prepare.

They did sell "lightning lane" tickets for a few of the busier attractions. I could have paid $15 per person per ride to skip the line a second time for Rise or Guardians... This is where Disney is pushing it.

As to the Rocket Launch, there are several per month out of Cape Canaveral 70 miles away. We just happened to be outside at the hotel when it launched and looking in the right direction. Even from 70 miles you could see it, and see separation of the module as it ascended. Pretty neat. Couldn't hear it.

Agree on the immersion. As to the pins they were just in atrocious shape... but little kids still looked like they were having fun so... win?

So my parents who we met there are still there. They flew in, and their rental car wouldn't start to flee the disney parking lot and we were already in Georgia by that time. They said the hotel they were at was mobbed, it took several hours to get any food, and they were making an effort to keep kids entertained keeping the pools opened until 3ish Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were boring, but they could at least do walks around their resort (art of animation) and they had some extra characters around there (B rate characters like the seamstress from the incredibles... but still). They actually have tickets for Magic Kingdom today and are there since they can't catch a flight until Sunday. The standby line for Space Mountain is 15 minutes if that tells you anything. Least amount of people they've ever seen in the park. In retrospect we should have stayed but we didn't know the storm would miss Orlando at the time.

Man you went all out! I've sprung to stay at Disney, but we are "Art of Animation" family resorts. The new skylinner taking folks to the parks is great though.

I was impressed last time I went to Universal (pre Covid) with Harry Potter world.

Never did the Disney Cruise, but those look sweet.

The Galactic Star Cruiser sounds epic.