Well… yesterday was a washout! Literally! I guess you have to expect it in sub-tropical Florida. And this is what we had all day.

So rather than stomp soggily round the parks, we stayed away and did some admin things. I had a hair appointment and got my hair cut and styled. We did a bit of food shopping and some telephone calling.

Today was a much better day – dry anyway. A bit cooler – 70F – but dry. We had a fabulous day at Hollywood Studios, arriving at about 0830. We are using touringplans.com to make plans for the day in combination with the Disney experience app. I do believe that both of these apps help to plan a day that minimises wait times while maximising what you experience during the day.

We enjoyed several attractions today that were new to us. Remember we’ve visited this park for decades – since opening. In that time, it has massively changed. It’s expanded and there are a lot more attractions. The whole Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge area is a first for us. A wonderful Star Wars theming area and a great asset to the park. We’ve really enjoyed our day here, took a relaxed view, had breaks, decided to leave some of the highest demand attractions to late in the afternoon when line times were massively reduced. Well worth doing.

So…. new attractions we tried – Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Train- inside the replica Chinese Theatre that used to house The Great Movie Ride, a great love of our’s. Well…. actually we really enjoyed it. Is it a loss to not have the GMR? Yes, hugely in our opinion in a park themed on Hollywood movies. But…. it’s a good new ride and well worth riding again. We also tried all sorts of other rides – Muppets 3D, Frozen the Show, Beauty and the Beast live show, Star tours Continued, Star Wars Millenium Falcon….. Most of these have been there for decades and are amazing especially the live shows. This time we especially enjoyed the Frozen show especially the huge snow shower at the end. It was a great show.

The big new area for us is the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge area as I mentioned. It’s a big new area within the park and the theming is spot on and very immersive. A great addition to HS. We waited till late in the afternoon to ride the 2 attractions here and that paid off. The big one – Star Wars Rise of the Resistance – is outstanding. A merge of 2 rides, areas of huge amounts of animatronics, large cast of live actors…. it’s a very innovative and stunning attraction and one that we will certainly try and ride again. We went at 5pm and the line through the themed approach area was 40 minutes – a fraction of what it can be. It’s well worth that wait though. Just amazing technology mixed with human performances. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Anyway, really enjoyed our day today. We’ve now visited all 4 Disney theme parks and the rest of the time we’ll do half days combined with the water park or our own resort and some days going back for evening shows which we haven’t seen this time.