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This morning we woke up early, checked out of our hotel, and drove over to Hollywood Studios to get there in time for the park opening. We found they were already letting people through the gates, stopping the crowds just short of Hollywood Boulevard. Without any fanfare or opening ceremony, suddenly the park was open and the crowd was streaming in two directions: to the right towards the Aerosmith Rockin’ Roller Coaster and the Tower of Terror; and straight ahead to Toy Story Mania. A line of Disney cast members kept the surging crowd to a slow walking speed. I overheard a cast member saying they had to start doing this to prevent people from flat out running and getting trampled!

Still, we were near the front of the surge and got right into the standby line for Toy Story Mania. In fact, it was the shortest wait we’ve probably ever had for that ride (the third track probably helps with that, although we didn’t get to see it). Even being some of the first people on the ride didn’t help us get anywhere near the high score for the day, though. After Toy Story we went back to the front of the park to hit the single-rider line for the Aerosmith roller coaster (my daughter and I rode it twice in relatively quick succession, laughing at the change to Steven Tyler’s hand gesture).

The whole backlot area is now closed due to the Star Wars/Toy Story Lands expansion … looking forward to that. After riding Star Tours, we spent some time meeting characters around the park (like Kylo Ren and Chewbacca at the Star Wars Launch Bay, Sorcerer Mickey and Minnie Mouse at Red Carpet Dreams, and Olaf). We came out of the Olaf area to find it pouring down rain! We decided we were done with the park, donned our ponchos, and headed back to the car.

I hadn’t received the text message for our online hotel check-in yet, but we drove over to the Polynesian Village Resort in the rain anyway, hoping to be able to get into our room. The guard at the gate radioed ahead and we were met by Dave as we were unloading our luggage in front of the main building. Dave gave us each leis and helped us check our baggage, which I thought was amazingly helpful. After self-parking the car and going back to the main building to meet my family, I found Dave still there chatting with them. It turned out that we had been upgraded to a concierge level room and he escorted us personally to the Hawaii building for check-in! Since I had already done the online check-in and our MagicBands were already linked to our room keys, this was really just a formality, but we did get to see the concierge lounge (free food and drinks) and Dave told us about watching the Magic Kingdom fireworks from there (complete with piped in music from the park). It was still raining so we grabbed a late lunch at the Kona Cafe and spent a little time learning our way around the resort.

The rain finally tapered off and a quick check of the weather showed that we should be rain-free the rest of the day, so we left our ponchos drying in the room and boarded the resort monorail for the Magic Kingdom. It’s a Small World, the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad were all closed for refurbishment (I found it strange that two big name attractions would be closed at the same time). Small World is supposedly going to get screens at the end of the ride that will say goodbye to you by name, using the RF technology in the MagicBand (we noticed this has already been added to the exit line of Space Mountain in the form of personalized postcards as you walk by). The Big Thunder refurb seems a bit more major as most of the mountain is covered in scaffolding (although I loved the mountain goat infestation sign). We had our FastPasses planned out so we got to ride the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Space Mountain, and Splash Mountain without any problem.

We had planned Splash Mountain last so we could head back to the hotel if we were soaked (but we didn’t get that wet after all). We took the monorail back to the Polynesian and had some time to freshen up for dinner, the Spirit of Aloha dinner show. We had another pleasant surprise as we were shown to our table in the front row, with a great view of the stage. As we ate (mmmm … pineapple, barbecue, and sangria) we enjoyed the traditional Polynesian music, songs, and dancers, which concluded with the fire knife dance. The show was longer than we expected, so the Magic Kingdom fireworks were actually done before we left Luau Cove and we didn’t get to watch them from the concierge lounge. Still, it’s been a great vacation weekend so far! Tomorrow we go to Animal Kingdom at night for the first time.