ridemax blog

Disney’s Hollywood Studios – Kids’ Shows, Star Wars Merchandise, Backlot Express Galactic Chicken Salad

I decided it was time to check out a few of the “kids’ shows” at Disney’s Hollywood Studios last Thursday, since it’s been a while since I’d seen some of them and wanted to see if any of the related “tips” in RideMax needed a refresh.

Something folks sometimes overlook with RideMax is how handy it can be for visiting the various shows at Hollywood Studios. If you’re trying to visit five or six shows, it can be a real pain to figure out your schedule by hand, even if you know the show schedule in advance. On the other hand, RideMax can crank out a schedule in seconds — literally — for visiting the shows of your choice, given the date of your visit and your planned arrival and finishing time.

I needed to leave the park right after lunch, so I didn’t have a lot of time for this visit. With RideMax I was able to schedule three of the shows, plus visits to Toy Story Mania and Tower of Terror, along with some time afterward for lunch at Backlot Express.

Here is the specific schedule I used:

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Animal Kingdom – Rivers of Light Construction Close-ups, Lunch at Harambe, Zootopia Exhibit

As promised in my last post, Liesle and I stopped in for an afternoon visit to Animal Kingdom last Friday, January 29th. We followed the RideMax plan outlined there, so feel free to refer to that post if you want more background.

After all of the rain we’ve seen the last couple of days, these beautiful clear skies were a welcome relief.

Our goal with this visit was sort of a personal one, and our RideMax plan reflected that. I seems that our lives have been increasingly busy lately, so we decided it was time for an afternoon/evening date in the park. As a result of this more laid-back goal, we just did the few attractions we were interested in, and which would comfortably fit into our afternoon. We skipped Dinoland completely, for example — neither of us felt like losing our lunch on Primeval Whirl.

Before I give the details of our day, I wanted to post an update on the Rivers of Light construction progress.

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Join Us at Disney’s Animal Kingdom on Friday!

Disneys Animal Kingdom Tiger

Liesle and I decided to stop into Disney’s Animal Kingdom this coming Friday for an afternoon visit, and as usual, we’ll be following a RideMax plan and doing some live tweets and Periscope broadcasts from the park. We love meeting RideMax customers in person, so if you have a free afternoon and are in the Orlando area, feel free to join us. Otherwise, you can follow along on the feeds I’ve linked above.

Our goal for Friday’s visit isn’t to do another round of RideMax Roulette, but to simply visit a few of our favorite attractions, as well as to check out the new Zootopia exhibit scheduled to open on Friday.

The attractions I plugged into RideMax are the following:

Expedition Everest
Festival of the Lion King
Kilimanjaro Safaris
Maharajah Jungle Trek
Rafiki’s Planet Watch (which houses the Zootopia exhibit)
Lunch at Pizzafari

As you can see, a handful of attractions like this isn’t exactly a “stress test” of RideMax. But it does illustrate that the software is handy for mapping out a casual visit like this, just as it is for planning a much fuller day.

The activities that have “fixed” starting times in the plan are the lunch break and the Lion King show, and it’s nice having RideMax figure out how to visit these, mixed in with the other attractions, in such a way as to minimize walking and waiting, rather than having to map it all out ourselves. I’d also hate to risk missing out on Festival of the Lion King if the day got away from us and we happened to forget the show’s starting time.

Since this is an afternoon visit and we won’t be able to take advantage of low rope-drop crowds, it seemed pretty obvious that we’d want to use FastPass+ for Expedition Everest and for Kilimanjaro Safaris, so I also plugged those choices into RideMax.

At any rate, here is the plan RideMax came up with, and which we’ll be using Friday:

Friday Animal Kingdom RideMax Plan

You might notice all the “free time” at the top of the plan and wonder what’s up with that? I originally told RideMax we’d be willing to start at 11:00am and go until 4:30pm, but the software was basically able to fit everything in after lunch, so it turns out we don’t need to arrive that early. I actually expect us to arrive for lunch at about 12:15 and go from there.

If you have some time Friday and want to join us in person, feel free to get those FastPass+ reservations lined up as outlined in the plan above. (We also secured FastPass+ reservations for the 2:00pm Lion King show, though I doubt we’ll really need them.) And of course, if you can’t come in person, feel free to follow along on Twitter and Periscope.

We hope to see you on Friday!

Favorites From the New Skipper Canteen Restaurant at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom

Skipper Canteen Restaurant

Just a quick update today… I finally got around to eating at the new Skipper Canteen Restaurant in the Magic Kingdom last week. I found the food and the service good.

I will, however, confess that the attempts at “skipper humor” by the staff sometimes left me feeling a bit awkward in the small-audience setting of guests sitting at a single table. (Somehow you can just cringe at the skipper’s jokes when you’re in the larger setting of the Jungle Cruise ride itself. But when your waiter is looking right at you expecting a reaction to his corny joke, you sort of feel obligated to laugh, even if you’re still just cringing inside.)

At any rate, I was able to share lunch with Josh at easyWDW, and I’m sure he’ll be posting much better pictures than my lame cell phone pictures below, along with a more full review.

However, in the spirit of the Jungle Cruise from which the restaurant’s theme is taken, I WANT TO POINT OUT A FEW OF MY FAVORITE DISHES:

Skipper Canteen Restaurant Appetizer

This one.

Skipper Canteen Restaurant Appetizer II

Here’s another.

Skipper Canteen Restaurant Dish

And this.

…

Now… PLEASE GET OFF MY BLOG.

Magic Kingdom Fifteen Attractions Before 2:00pm — Follow Along LIVE Tuesday on Periscope

I had enough fun earlier this week using Periscope briefly to live-stream a ride on Expedition Everest, that I thought I’d next try something a little more ambitious.

So, in that spirit, I’ve created a Magic Kingdom RideMax plan for Tuesday, January 19th, that should allow me to visit fifteen attractions by 2:00pm. More significantly, I plan to live stream the entire visit on Periscope. I’ll have my extra phone batteries (and leg muscles) ready to go bright and early Tuesday morning for park opening.

What is it that appeals to me about Periscope for this? Three things, really.

First, Periscope will allow me to show off this RideMax plan in a real-time setting. And since it’s a *live* video, you know that what you see is what you get.

Second, I expect to keep broadcasting even as I’m walking from one attraction to the next, and while I’m standing in line. And although if everything works out the lines should be fairly short, if anyone viewing the broadcast has questions you’d like to ask over Periscope during this lull between rides, I’ll try and answer what I can as I’m moving about the park.

Finally, I’d like to be able to share some of my favorite tips for visiting some of the attractions, and live video seems ideal for doing this.

If you want to join in but don’t want to spend all day watching for your favorite attraction, here is the plan I intend to follow, and yes, I already have those FP+ reservations lined up:

MagicKingdom15Rides

As you can see, the day begins with what might be the ultimate rope-drop challenge in all of Disney’s theme parks, visiting the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. I’ll try to show you how I navigate the crowds for this to (hopefully) end up near the front of the line. That 10-minute estimate may look optimistic, but it all depends on how you make your way into the park, and hopefully the live-feed video can allow me to show that.

Looking at this plan you may be wondering if I plan to take a lunch break, and the answer is yes, sort of. I guess I’m cheating a bit by virtue of the fact that, based on the current weather forecast, I expect Tuesday to very cold, and that 31-minute estimated wait for Splash Mountain will instead be closer to 5 minutes. This should give me time for a lunch break somewhere in that timeline, probably right after Pirates.

I also decided I wouldn’t attempt to broadcast a ride on Space Mountain, as there wouldn’t be too much to see in the dark, so it’s omitted from the plan. In addition, Buzz Lightyear is scheduled to be closed for refurbishment, so that doesn’t leave us with much to see in Tomorrowland. Then again, I do have to admit that simultaneously driving and filming the Tomorrowland Speedway should be… interesting.

At any rate, if you want to join in the fun, be sure to follow me on Periscope. I’m new to “scoping” and don’t have a huge following there; this should make it easier to answer your questions as we hit those 15 rides.

I expect that the Magic Kingdom will open at roughly 8:45am, and I’ll start the scope just prior to that time.

I hope to see you on Tuesday!