Many years ago, when my family would visit Disney World every other summer, Hollywood Studios was the park we would often only spend a half day – or skip all together. Fast forward to 2021 and Hollywood Studios is perhaps the most popular park in all of Walt Disney World. If you look at the Disney reservations calendar, Hollywood Studios is booked out until the end of July!

Since my last visit in 2014, a lot has changed. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened to much fanfare in August 2019. Galaxy’s Edge features 2 rides and a number of Star Wars-themed restaurants and shops. Toy Story Land opened in 2018, with the super popular Slinky Dog Dash in addition to an extended Toy Story Mania. Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway opened on March 4, 2020 – right before the parks closed due to the pandemic.

While planning our trip to Disney, I knew Hollywood Studios was going to be a big deal for us. We’re both Star Wars fans and I was really looking forward to riding Rise of the Resistance.

Our day started off waking up at 6:50am so we could try to get a boarding group for Rise of the Resistance. We successfully got boarding group 50 at 7:00am and started getting ready for the day so we could Rope Drop at 8:00am. at roughly 8:20am they let us all into the park and we made our way to Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith – walking on both rides.

We then made our way over to Toy Story Land and walked on Toy Story Mania! and Alien Swirling Saucers. I absolutely love the TSMM ride – and it brings out our competitive streaks!

Next up was Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, where we got on Millennium Falcon – Smugglers Run, a ride that takes you into the Millennium Falcon and stars you on a 6-person smuggling trip. The line itself is pretty cool, as they’ve decorated the queue with Star Wars items.

We took a food break for Ronto Wraps at Ronto’s Roasters, followed by Blue and Green Milk at the Milk Stand. Usually theme park food is pretty mediocre, but we really loved the Ronto Morning Wrap, with eggs, grilled pork sausage, shredded cheddar, and peppercorn sauce.

We took photos and did some shopping until our boarding group was called for Rise of the Resistance. This ride was absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend trying to get a boarding group if you’re visiting Hollywood Studios.

At this point, Tower of Terror had dropped to a 20 minute wait, so we headed back towards Sunset Boulevard to ride it. On the way to ToT, we walked by the 45 minute wait for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and knew we made the right choice to rope drop it!

By this point in the day, we were getting tired after 2 previous theme park days, so we decided to head back to Galaxy’s Edge for an early dinner. Lupper was at Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo, Galaxy’s Edge’s quick-service restaurant. We mobile ordered ahead of time and arrived just as our food was ready. I had the Batuuan Beef Pot Roast with mac & cheese and veggies subbed in. X had the Smoked Kaadu Pork Ribs and we split a Moof Juice – fruit punch, orange juice, and pineapple juice. The food was really good and the perfect way to end our day at one of the coolest areas of the park.

We ended up doing the majority of the rides at the park – the only ones we didn’t do was Slinky Dog and Star Tours. As I’m writing this post, a week after we returned, I’m still in awe that managed to get a boarding group for Rise of the Resistance on our first try. Hollywood Studios ended up being one of our favorite parks during our trip – and my most successfully planned day.