Welcome to another visit report, this one a park hopping day with a morning at Animal Kingdom and an afternoon at Hollywood Studios. This post has some pretty good Lightning Lane content, so if you’re looking to see a good example of the system in action, read on!

Introduction + Pre-Planning

Emily’s parents are in town (visiting us in Florida) for three days of park visits, and while I wasn’t planning on writing much about these days, the first one turned out interesting.

Our planned three park days are:

(No Early Entry) Animal Kingdom then Hollywood Studios
(Early Entry) Epcot then Hollywood Studios
(Early Entry) Magic Kingdom

We’re using Genie+ and buying individual Lightning Lanes all three days, which takes the pressure off rope drop. We planned two afternoons at Hollywood Studios so we could try and get Genie+ reservations at that park in those afternoons. And while Epcot and Animal Kingdom can fill full days, we only had three total days, so some cuts needed to be made.

This first day we didn’t have Early Entry. Our big goal for the morning was a family ride on Kilimanjaro Safaris, one of the few rides for toddlers at Animal Kingdom.

Kilimanjaro Safaris is typically not a part of Early Entry, which makes it a good option for rope drop if you don’t have Early Entry. But with an 8AM opening and Zoe’s 7AM wakeup time, we didn’t want everything to be rushed. So we grabbed our first Lightning Lane for Kilimanjaro Safaris, 8AM to 9AM.

In hindsight (hindsight being the key word), this was a mistake and we should have made our first pick Slinky Dog Dash (Genie+ would have automatically given us a 2PM or later timeslot due to park hopping rules) at Hollywood Studios.

Slinky Dog Dash remains one of, if not the, most popular Lightning Lanes in Genie+, so our chances at getting it once 7AM passed were slim. But we figured most any wait for Kilimanjaro Safaris wasn’t going to be welcome, and we had another afternoon at Hollywood Studios where we could grab Slinky if we wanted.

An Individual Lightning Lane Hiccup

At 8AM, right after we parked, it was time for me to try purchasing an individual Lightning Lane for Flight of Passage (just for Emily’s parents). As a non-Disney resort guest, we can purchase at the time the park opens. Disney resort guests purchase at 7AM.

This is a pretty important section if you’re making any individual Lightning Lane purchases. In the past, once you got to the payment screen your selected Lightning Lane time was locked in and you had ten (I think) minutes to complete payment. Lots of people had problems getting payments to process, though, and I’m guessing as a a result Disney updated the payment system, with an unfortunate side effect.

Now, you won’t know your Lightning Lane time until your purchase is complete. The first time you see when you tap into the tip board? That will probably be gone by the time you get to the next screen, where you pick your preferred time. The preferred time you pick? That will probably be modified by the next screen, though the screen will at least show you the new time and say “Please note your time has changed.” But by the time your payments processes, you’ll be given a new (usually later) time. In my case, the Tip Board said 8:25AM, I selected 11:30AM, that was pushed to 1:20PM and then to 2:30PM.

With park hopping starting at 2PM this wasn’t necessarily a problem, but it wasn’t ideal either.

Morning at Animal Kingdom

We were at the park gates at 8:05AM and walked right onto Kilimanjaro Safaris (via Lightning Lane) at 8:21AM. The posted wait was only 15 minutes and looked like it was more or less a walk on, so we could have skipped this Lightning Lane. You just never know with crowds these days, though, and it could have easily been 30+ minutes, in which case I’d be writing about how our pick paid off.

The safari was great, as morning safaris often are, and included looks at the baby zebra (which is pretty big now) and baby rhino. The lion was even awake.

Right after we tapped into the safari queue, I made my next Lightning Lane selection, a 3:15PM return time for Tower of Terror. Tower was a high priority for our family, and the ride has been running at half-capacity recently, making it one of the tougher rides to get on at Hollywood Studios.

Every so often people ask me how to split their time if they have two days at a park. There are a lot of ways, but my method is always the same—try and do everything, or at least everything important, on the first day. Grab the leftovers the second day.

As always, exceptions occur. For example, if a park has multiple shows you want to see, probably split them across the two days even if they’re lower priority than rides. Shows have limited showtimes and you don’t want to run into a situation where you’ve got two left but can only get to one.

My strategy for our two afternoons at Hollywood Studios, though, was to try and do all our big items on day one. This meant I’d be spending a lot of time on my phone trying to secure Lightning Lanes today.

So, having made my Tower booking for 3:15PM at 8:15AM, when can I make my next Lightning Lane booking in Genie+? Since the booking is more than two hours away, the two hour rule applies (i.e. I wait a “max” of two hours, I don’t have to wait until I ride Tower). But since Hollywood Studios isn’t open yet, the two hour clock doesn’t start until Hollywood Studios opens. So my next pick is at 11AM, two hours after Hollywood Studios opens at 9AM.

Okay, I’m going to summarize the rest of the “touring” aspect of the morning before discussing how my morning as unofficial planner for the family went.

After the safari we spent a leisurely morning at Animal Kingdom. We stopped for Starbucks (Creature Comforts) before heading to TriceraTop Spin and the Boneyard, both good activities for Zoe. DINOSAUR nearby often has low waits in the morning, and when it does we like to hop on that (without Zoe), too. It was a walk on, and Emily’s parents got to ride.

The family hung out in the Boneyard until at bit before 11AM, at which point we went over to watch the 11AM showing of the Tam Tam Drummers. We followed that up with lunch at Flame Tree Barbecue, which has the best outdoor seating maybe in all of Disney World. There is a ton of seating, much of it right next to Animal Kingdom’s Discovery River. We even had an obstructed view of KiteTails at the start of the meal.

Lightning Lane Screen time

Now, for my morning of…refreshing screens on the Disney app. While the family did all that, I worked on building our afternoon. Finishing the safari around 8:45, my next important time was 9AM. That’s when Hollywood Studios opened and I, not a guest of a Disney resort, would be able to try and purchase a Rise of the Resistance Lightning Lane. These were already sold out, but there’s always a chance one pops up if you keep refreshing the tip board. (Sidenote: this is all made much easier if you can run Genie setup to get the ride you’re looking at on the top of your tip board).

Between 9AM and 10:30 I saw times pop up maybe five times. Three of those instances the time was unavailable as soon as I tapped on it in the tip board. The fourth I was able to get all the way to the purchase screen before I got a booking error. The fifth, at 10:35AM, I was able to complete the booking, securing us a 5:20PM ride on Rise of the Resistance.

My other project for this time was a visit to the Guest Experience stand to see if I could get Emily’s parents’ Flight of Passage time modified to something earlier. I couldn’t remember where the nearest Guest Experience stand (the distinct blue umbrellas) was, but I knew there was one in Asia that was likely to have no line, so I headed there.

I usually don’t go to Guest Experiences for things like this, and I wouldn’t have if this happened to me any other day. But it was a family day I wanted to go well, and this particular error (the time changing three times, including without warning at the time of purchase) seemed significant enough to mention to them. Yes, they already know this is a problem, but the more people that politely bring it up, the more likely it is to get resolved one day. Finally, I knew readers would want to know if this could get fixed.

Guest Experiences indeed confirmed this is a change from the old system that held the time, and now times are allocated based on whose payment processes first. They were able to change my time subject to availability.

I don’t know exactly what this availability is, but I pretty strongly believe it’s different from what a guest would see in the app at this exact moment. Whether it’s a totally different bucket of times or Guest Experiences can simply see all times without them popping in and out on the app, I don’t know. In any case, they were able to modify the time to 12:25PM, which worked much better for us.

Some people on Instagram chimed in with various experiences around this. Sometimes Guest Experiences was only able to offer them a refund, no modification. This doesn’t surprise me, since my change was subject to availability.

Finally, with these two individual Lightning Lane purchases taken care of, I had one more morning task. At 11AM, it would be 2 hours after Hollywood Studios opened (my last Genie+ booking was the afternoon Tower of Terror) and time to make a new Genie+ booking.

I made a slight mistake here. A lot of people are going to be booking at 11AM, so you really need to be trying to book right at 11AM. Instead, I had a timer that went off somewhere around 30 seconds after 11AM, and the times were already pretty late. That’s usually fine, except Zoe should be in bed around 7:30PM, so we’re a bit limited in our options.

Genie+ availability comes and goes, though, and after two minutes of refreshing I was able to grab a 6PM ride on Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway. I’d be able to make my next booking in two hours, at 1:02PM.

Emily and I headed home for Zoe to take a nap, and Emily’s parents got in their very enjoyable ride on Flight of Passage. Heading into the afternoon, our full Lightning Lane lineup for the day looked like:

8AM Kilimanjaro Safaris (Done)
12:25PM Flight of Passage (Done)
3:15PM Tower of Terror
5:20PM Rise of the Resistance
6PM Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway

Afternoon at Hollywood Studios

1PM rolled around and it was time to make my next booking. Now I had a choice—try for Slinky Dog Dash, or just grab something like Toy Story Mania.

As of this post, Genie+ doesn’t have a “modify” option. This means if I grabbed Toy Story Mania, then tried to get Slinky Dog Dash, I’d have to cancel Toy Story Mania before I could book Slinky. In that time, Slinky would definitely disappear.

Keeping with my strategy of “try to do all the important things today”, I opted to try and grab a Slinky Dog Dash time. I spent the better part of 90 minutes on my screen, refreshing, before I finally snagged a 4:10PM return time at 2:32PM. This brought our Lightning Lane lineup for the day to:

8AM Kilimanjaro Safaris (Done)
12:25PM Flight of Passage (Done)
3:15PM Tower of Terror
4:10PM Slinky Dog Dash
5:20PM Rise of the Resistance
6PM Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway

This lineup is amazing, but it came at the cost of a lot of screen time on my part. Had I booked Slinky Dog Dash at 7AM I would have saved myself some trouble (again, hindsight being 20/20 with regard to the Kilimanjaro Safaris wait), but with slightly slower fingers I could have spent another hour trying to get Rise, too.

After Zoe’s nap, we headed to Hollywood Studios. Emily and her dad rode Tower of Terror (posted 125, 18 via Lightning Lane) at 3:28PM. The rest of us went to nearby Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy, a good option if someone in your group doesn’t meet the height requirement for Tower.

From there we went to Slinky Dog Dash, riding in two groups. Emily and her parents rode at 4:10PM, waiting 4 minutes in the Lightning Lane versus a posted wait of 100 minutes. Zoe absolutely loved watching the coaster go by from Toy Story Land. I rode after them with a similar wait.

I checked on Lightning Lane availability, thinking a Toy Story Mania time might fit in, but the only options were Star Tours or a late Toy Story Mania, so I didn’t make any more picks today.

After drinks at BaseLine Tap House, Emily and her parents rode Rise of the Resistance, waiting 20 via Lightning Lane (about the minimum wait you’ll have, given how the experience is designed) versus a posted wait of 140 minutes. While they got dinner at ABC Commissary, I rode with similar waits.

Finally, we all rode Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway together at 6:40PM, waiting 14 minutes in the Lightning Lane versus a posted wait of 70 minutes.

Conclusions

Here’s how the full day worked out, with “?” where I’m estimating some things:

8:21 Kilimanjaro Safaris (posted 15, 5 via Genie+ Lightning Lane)
Starbucks
9:15 DINOSAUR (posted 5, actual 5?)
9:35 TriceraTop Spin (posted 5, actual 5?)
9:45 - 10:45 The Boneyard
11AM Tam Tam Drummers
11:30 Lunch at Flame Tree Barbecue
12:35 Flight of Passage (posted 90, 15? via Individual Lightning Lane)
3:28 Tower of Terror (posted 125, 18 via Genie+ Lightning Lane)
4:10 Slinky Dog Dash (posted 100, 4 via Genie+ Lightning Lane)
Drinks at BaseLine Tap House
5:40 Rise of the Resistance (posted 140, 20 via Individual Lightning Lane)
Dinner at ABC Commissary
6:40 Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway (posted 70, 14 via Genie+ Lightning Lane)

Overall I’d rate this day excellent. Since we have planned (we might change plans) another afternoon at Hollywood Studios, I’m not concerned about the things we missed there, and we managed to hit four of the five most popular rides (Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run being the one we missed).

At Animal Kingdom we could have maybe done Genie+ on Na’vi River Journey since we effectively rope dropped Kilimanjaro Safaris. Other than that we were find missing Kali River Rapids and It’s Tough to be a Bug. Plus, Expedition Everest is under refurbishment.

I’m always frustrated that guests have to potentially spend a ton of screen time to get on the best rides, but it worked out well for us today.

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