What a Day!

It was an early morning for everyone today as alarms were were set for 5:30 and we were all out the door by 6 a.m.  Cam and Doug had an 8:15 a.m. flight and the rest of us had hopes of securing boarding passes for Rise of the Resistance.  Thankfully, both groups were successful, although the adventure for Brett, Cal, Meg and I was definitely more stressful.  I have been to Disney World dozens of times and never experienced a morning like we had.  We were at Hollywood Studios at 6:18 and through the turnstiles at 6:33.  We were shoulder to shoulder in a large crowd inside the park waiting for its opening.  At 7 a.m. we got onto the My Disney Experience app as instructed to secure our boarding passes.  The app would not load, no matter what we tried.  Meg found a Disney employee to help us and right as we walked over to him a boarding pass opened and we found ourselves in boarding group 101.  We felt extremely fortunate to have secured a pass as there were only 114 groups for the day and all passes were distributed by 7:04 a.m.

As soon as we finished at the front of the park we walked in a large line to Star Wars land in the hope of riding the Millennium Falcon.  The amount of people doing the same thing was overwhelming, but the sights of the new land completely made us forget how crowded it was.  I actually felt as though I was walking on Tatooine.  There were land speeders, secret hideouts in the rocks, and storm troopers.  We had to have "credentials" to be in the land and paid for everything with "credits." The coke bottles were shaped like droids and we even got a glimpse of Chewbacca.  Our journey was awesome as we walked right by the Millennium Falcon to get into our jet fighter.  We each had a role on the ride as Brett and I were gunman and Cal and Meg were pilots.  In the end we flew well enough to bring back one container of fuel.  We checked out the rest of the land once we finished and then headed to Toy Story Mania.

        

The rest of our morning was spent back at the Boardwalk eating breakfast and resting before Doug and Cam arrived.  Their plane had arrived early and they were thankful to get two of the last few seats on the Magical Express.  Once we filled them in on our morning, we all walked to EPCOT for lunch.  Doug's first drink was a grey goose slushy in France.  The boys and I enjoyed them as well.  We ate brats in Germany and then headed to Norway to ride Frozen.  We had time to ride Test Track, Mission Space, Living with the Land and Soarin' as well.  Doug, Brett and Cal opted out of the Donald Duck ride to get jalapeño, blood orange and avocado margaritas.

          

While we were at EPCOT we received a message that we had two hours to board Rise of the Resistance.  This gave us enough time to eat at the Boardwalk club lounge.  Dinner was delicious once again this evening with steak salad and shrimp Alfredo.  Since we could only get four boarding passes this morning, I decided to let Cameron take my spot.  He asked me several times if I was ok with that, and I definitely was.  It had been crazy this morning trying to get them and there was no way that I wanted to do that again tomorrow to get more passes.  I was just thrilled that they would all get a chance to experience it.  Cameron did have to go as "Hadi" as I had been called multiple times this trip.  It was still a long wait, but the Heinisch children absolutely loved it.  It was based on The Force Awakens and was a ride like none that they had ever experienced before.  I was so happy they liked it and relieved that they all got to try it.  It was a fun walk back to the Boardwalk listening to their stories.