Friday February 2nd 2024

Happy Ground Hog Day

Weather wise, today was a repeat of the pattern for everyday this week. The cold morning and cold nights bracket a nice afternoon. Today’s high was similar to Wednesday in the low seventies without a lot of wind.

My energy after four straight days of theme park visits was down today. I got up early to take advantage of the early entry for resort guests at the Magic Kingdom. It is only a half an hour from 8:30 to 9:00, but in theory it gives you a head start. This morning it didn’t help. Most of the popular rides that everyone heads for were not working at park opening. The result was longer lines at the rides that were open. Everything I wanted to ride had well over an hour wait.

After the official park opening at 9AM, I got lucky. I managed to get on the Haunted Mansion ride with a minimum wait. By the time I got off the ride, all of the other open rides I thought about riding were over an hour wait. The worst part is the crowds were growing by the minute. A steady stream of people were entering the park. I decided to push upstream against the flow and head back to my RV home. I was home by 11:30. It was a very unproductive trip across Bay Lake to the theme park.

I had a similar experience in the evening. My plan was to go to Hollywood Studios and watch Fantasmic, the nighttime show. Spending the evening at Hollywood Studios seemed to be a popular idea. There were a lot of people arriving when I did. The only problem is all of the daytime show attractions stop performances around 5PM. That means everybody gets in line for the few remaining rides. Most of the rides had more than an hour wait.

The week of theme park hopping was catching up with me as I wandered around Hollywood Studios. Trying to kill the three hours until the nighttime show, I was running out of energy fast. I sat on a bench for a few minutes and almost fell asleep. Trying to kill time is one of the downsides of solo visits. With no one to keep you going or even to talk to, you get board fast. What all this leads to is a trip back to my RV home. I gave up on waiting for the nighttime show.