Thursday May 15th 2025

I am finding traffic in this area of central Florida to have improved significantly. Some of it is timing. The winter residents are clearly back in their home regions. You just need to driver through a park like the one my base camp resides in. I would guess that less than a quarter of the sites and homes are occupied.

Probably the biggest traffic change in this immediate area is the result of two new lanes on Interstate 4. As I mentioned in one my resent blog posts, the two new lanes were completed in an expedited fashion. Since they opened in the last week of April the stopped traffic on the interstate has been isolated to short periods during rush hour. Drivers are not avoiding the highway anymore. Before the new lanes arrived traffic was using other routes that were not designed for heavy volume. The backups on the local streets, including on Disney property, are a lot less now.

It took me about thirty minutes to get to Disney’s Hollywood Studios earlier this week. I has been taking close to an hour during the winter. My visit to Hollywood Studios was to get in one last showing of the Muppet Vision 3d movie. The whole Muppet Court Yard area of the park is being replaced by a series of Monsters Inc attractions starting June 7th. It will be under construction for the next year plus.

Hollywood Studios is my least favorite park of the four at Walt Disney World. It is not great as a place to get in my walking exercise. It is relatively compact and doesn’t have a lot of good long walking routes without doubling back. The rides also have very long waits. In addition to the Muppet show, I rode Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad on this visit. That is a fun ride, but I miss the Great Movie Ride that it replaced.