Arriving at Hollywood Studios PRE-DAWN!

We arrived at Hollywood Studios before 6 AM get a boarding pass to the new Star Wars ride.  If you are not inside the park before 7am, there is no way that you will get a boarding pass to the newest Star Wars ride.  Usually all of the passes are allocated in a couple of minutes.

I was ready at 6:58am with the app open.  Refreshing the page again and again, we got on group 34 less than 1 minute after 7am.  This placed us in a group that could ride by 9am.  A few minutes later all the passes were assigned.  We do crazy things at WDW.  Two hour waits for a ride are not unusual if it is new.  Generally we will not wait more than an hour but even that seems nuts but is considered a short wait for the more popular rides.

While waiting for our boarding time, we rode Star Tours.  The ride had been updated to include scenes from the newest movie.  It's an old ride but one of our favorites.

We walked through Star Wars land to see all the theming while we wait for our boarding pass to activate.

Rise of the Resistance was (choose your own emphasis) A-MAZ-ING!  The realism and size of the structures was so immersive.  We walked into a room that was huge with line upon line of Stormtroopers.  A gigantic screen that gave the impression that you were looking out at space. There was a full size Tie Fighter.  Amazing!

The ride continued to surround us with areas that were lifesize presentations of everything I would expect if suddenly dropped into a Star Wars movie.  Huge AT-AT's, Laser Cannons, Robots, the newest Animatronics, ...  Ok last time Amazing!

We recovered from the sensory overload of the Rise of the Resistance ride by walking around Star Wars. Shawna noticed that the Stand By time for Smugglers Run, the "other" Star Wars ride had a reasonably short line.  By reasonably short I mean 60 minutes, earlier in the day it was 2 hours or more wait time.

It was a fun ride even the wait line was interesting.

The last ride of the day was in Toy Store Land.  We have always enjoyed Toy Story Mania.  It's a fun and interactive ride.  As we were walking out, this was along the way.

We thought about what rides that were new and decided to ride the Skyliner to Epcot for Ice Cream.  Not just any Ice Cream but a French Vanilla Ice Cream Martini made with 
2 Scoops of Vanilla with a couple of shots of Grand Marnier, Shawna's favorite.

The ride on the Skyliner was fun and a bit windy.

13.3k steps - 6.6 miles