Disney Orlando January 1-8 recommendations

My bad, and thank you for the correction.

And never take Beefy King for granted says the guy wearing a pink Beefy King t shirt.... :-)

I thought it was the best RB sandwich I’d had in a long time. It reminded me of Arby’s back in the day of roasting actual, real roasts. And the Beefy King story is interesting. They were poised and ready to take over the world but failed. All other locations except the original are closed.
And it almost seems like they’re running it as a hobby or something. Their hours are short, and they’re not daily either. The time of year I went to Orlando they were a hard catch and info on line was wrong. When I finally caught them open the dining room was closed and I had to eat that yummy goodness in the car.

Do they still have an Arthur Treachers fish and Chips down there? Used to love AT's; a better version of Long John Silver's.

slithernoggin said:

And Fastpasses can, I believe, still be obtained the old fashioned way by walking up to the attractions Fastpass kiosks.

Maybe you are thinking of Disneyland. They recently rolled out FastPass Max. For the convenience of booking your Fastpass reservations on-line you can pay $10 per person per day. Or you can still get the legacy paper Fastpass included with your admission.

But you can also go up to the kiosk with your ticket or magic band and get a fast pass at WDW, correct?

Edit: yes, you can:

Use the First 3, Then Get More
Once you redeem your initial set of FastPass+ selections (or the last arrival window has passed), you can make another FastPass+ selection for the same day at an in-park kiosk or using your mobile device, up to park closing. After you redeem the additional FastPass+ pick, you can return to a kiosk to make more selections (one at a time).

For us the idea of getting additional fast passes has always proved more theoretical than real. By the time we could get them, there are none left (at least none that we have wanted). Presumably that depends on the time of year/crowds.

It depends on the park, but the hard to get FP's don't get easier that day. At Epcot, you're only allowed one from the pool of Test Track, Soarin' and Frozen, and after you do your three, the only one that comes up (sometimes) is Soarin'. At MK, you'll never get 7DMT day-of. At DHS, waits for everything get pretty short at the end of the day anyway. At AK, forget the Avatar stuff and Kilimanjaro Safari.

I guess we had better luck last July. We were able to book 5-6 fast passes a day using the app. We found that refreshing the app a few times tended to show more availability. Granted this didn't work for Test Track, Soarin', and other marquee attractions. However, we were able to shave off wait times on rides like Spaceship Earth, Pirates, and Buzz Lightyear among others.

There are absolutely other options, yes (though at Epcot, they're for no-wait attractions anyway). I'm just saying that there are limitations. The strategy starts with booking the most popular, hard to get rides as your three, and do your best to get them as early as possible.

And, obviously, make your reservations for early in the day as well.
Or....
If you’re on property it never hurts to check with your resort concierge to see what might be arranged. On our last visit we had someone in our party who wasn’t always available for morning FP, which put the rest of us at a loss to schedule more later in the day via the app. In other words, the system wouldn’t let us add on until our first three were done.
So the first morning I was at the concierge anyway and put on my best puppy dog face and asked if he had any power over FP. His response? “What do you want, and don’t say Frozen, I’ll tell you right now it’s the one I can’t do.” (It was the hottest e-ticket at the time) So, seriously, he gave us anything else we wanted including a FP or two at different parks on the same day if we needed it. The guy and I became best friends that week and the puppy face or a pitiful story wasn’t required. Turns out, their job is to make your stay magical and they’re happy to oblige.
Now, I will say that we were at Grand. I can’t guarantee that Pop Century guests get the same magical treatment, but I’d hope so. It’s certainly worth a try.

Or just be the victim of a little bad weather.

We did the Star Wars tour at Studios last Friday. The park handed out ponchos when we signed in. It started raining shortly after the tour started, and I don't think it ended until after the dessert party started. Rained out the March of the First Order, the Jedi Training Academy, and A Galaxy Far, Far Away viewing. Eh, kinda sucked, but at least those were all public things that we had watched before.

Just before the dessert party extra cast members showed up to help people reschedule the Jedi Training for little ones. When we said we didn't have any kids in the Jedi Training age range, they handed us 4 paper re-entry passes good for the next day at Studios(same as used for parent swap, except good on any attraction), and a paper certificate good for any one ride during the rest of our trip. Guest services at Magic Kingdom happily exchanged the 4 passes for MK specific ones the next morning.

We then had the unbelievable luck of having 2 of our scheduled fast pass attractions go down briefly during our FP time windows, so those fast passes were turned into good on any attraction fast passes good for the rest of the day. Walking around with 6 use-when-and-where-you-want fast passes is liberating.

Our luck continued Monday when a cast member at Flight of Passage let us use the certificate there. He told us that they weren't supposed to accept the certificate, but the Pandora exceptions weren't being noted on the pass so he let us slide on in.

We also sometimes have luck reserving stuff as a single rather than a group and staggering the times. For example, if I know am going to Epcot on a given night and want to ride Soarin', there may not be anything for Soarin' for a group of two. But I may be able to find a reservation for one from, say, 6:30-7:30 and another reservation for one from 7:10-8:10, which still has a long enough overlap to make it work. That strategy has worked many times for us.

Tbone's chop said:

Do they still have an Arthur Treachers fish and Chips down there? Used to love AT's; a better version of Long John Silver's.

Not that I am aware of. I loved the stuff as a kid (and Long John's as well) but don't think I could take more than a bite of it today.

AT's was less greasy than LJS's. Now LJS is just soaked in grease; I can't stomach it anymore.

Isn't fried food by its very nature soaked in grease?

Shades said:
Isn't fried food by its very nature soaked in grease?

There's a difference between cooked in grease and just absolutely soaking in the stuff. Case in point, McDonald's burger vs White Castle. (Not cooked in grease, both flat tops, but analogous in terms of grease) McDonald's is greasy, but White Castle is just motor oil.