Summer Update 2025 - Lots of Changes!!!

In this week's Episode, Jared shares all of the changes that have taken place at the Orlando Parks as well as in his personal life.  But fear not, lots of new episodes coming soon!!!  

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On this week's Episode of A Dryer Dose of Disney, Jared shares with us his summer 2025 updates as well as an exciting lineup of future episodes! Welcome to this week's episode of a Dryer Dose of Disney. I'm your host, Jared Dryer, and today we have our summer 2025 update for you. And it has been a long time since we recorded an episode, and that is because so many things have changed in our lives. It has just been completely busy and chaotic the last few months. Our last episode, which was our spring update after we went to the art festival at Epcot we came back home to Denver. We were getting all settled back in and real quickly they're going into March. I got a job offer in new Orleans, Louisiana. And starting in March, I started flying out there and started working the new job and then into April and May, we were house hunting and moving, and we now live in Louisiana. So we're up in Mandeville, up on the North shore of Lake Pontchartrain just outside of New Orleans. And we absolutely love it down here. It is nice and warm. I'm never gonna have to shovel another driveway again. So things are very exciting, but we've had a lot of things going on, so things have just been completely chaotic for us and I haven't been able to record. But hey, we've got five new episodes coming for you, starting with one today because we've been to Epic Universe and we've had so many things. But before we dive into that, let's go through some of our housekeeping items. We just wanna say wherever you're listening to us, or if you're watching us on YouTube. Find the pause button or go find, subscribe, and go ahead and click that subscribe button. So as we're releasing episodes, especially over these next few weeks you can get those delivered into your inbox each and every single week and get the latest tips and tricks, as well as the review of Epic Universe. So lots of really cool things going on. Since we were just down there in Orlando, we stayed at our condo at the dryer dose of Disney Family Condo. And we have had so many people renting it, so many podcast listeners checking it out and staying there and we get really great feedback on this place. It's a three bedroom condo so that's gonna be in the links to below if you want to go out there and check it out and stay where we stay. It's a lot cheaper than staying on site and we're just a few miles away from all the parks, so it's a really cool place to go and it's a lot of fun. And then as always, if we have any tips or tricks that are saving you time or money we ask for your support over at Patreon. That is also done in the links below, and we appreciate all of our supporters there. Now we used to have an Etsy shop, but because of the fees on Etsy and we weren't selling a ton of stuff, I went ahead and closed that out. So if you listen to prior episodes and heard about our shops where you can buy the, I can do this all day tip of the day gear. We are no longer gonna be selling that, but if you wanna get ahold of some, you can always reach out to me and I can see about getting you some of that. But we have so many cool things to share with you guys today. So many updates from the parks, so many things that are happening down there in Orlando. And we've got a great, I can do this all day tip of the day, as I said, we have moved down to Louisiana. I'm working at a credit union down here outside of New Orleans and just absolutely loving it. It's been a lot of fun. Don't get me wrong, it's always hard to move your entire family from Colorado down to Louisiana over a thousand miles away. And we definitely miss our friends and family. But we're definitely loving it down here. We have a pool in our backyard. We've never had a pool before. So that's a lot of fun. We're getting used to the humidity, but. You guys know we were down in Orlando so often, it wasn't that big of a deal for us to begin with because we were used to it from being down there. So we absolutely enjoy it down here. Like I said earlier, no more shoveling snow. Lots of cool wildlife. We have frogs in our backyard. Absolutely everywhere. And if you know me and if you've seen our other episodes, I love fish and reptiles and all the different pets you can own. So it's cool to have your backyard full of frogs and have those things croaking all night. That's a lot of fun. We're off a river over here in the lake of course, and so we've got alligators in the river. We've got all kinds of fun stuff, but we still go out and go boating and water skiing on it. It's all been just a ton of fun, but a whirlwind because obviously we completely. Uprooted our lives and moved it all the way across the nation. So lots of fun there. But we just got back from a seven day trip to Orlando. We actually had this planned for the beginning of June, but because of the move and the fact we moved the last week of May, we put it off till the end of July, which again is why this has been delayed and why we haven't gotten you this episode. But we just did seven days at the park, including two at Epic Universe. So lots of cool things to share with you. As you can see, my background's similar. We have the same kind of office set up here but the desk is a little bit further away, so you get to see a little bit more of my world. And one of my favorite things is up there on that top shelf, the Jaws shelf that I've put together. I actually, we probably had that in a couple early episodes. But I absolutely love that because I'm a big fan of the movie Jaws and just lots of cool things in this new house. So it's maybe some other episode. We'll give you a tour and share all of that with you, but lots of changes and lots of things going on. Now, I will say when we were down in Orlando, it was the hottest. We had seen it ever in Orlando. We had the heat index up upwards of about 112 hundred and 13 degrees, and we were absolutely melting. At one point we were walking through Magic Kingdom with some friends and going from one end of the park to the other, and we were headed over to Adventureland to get some Dole whips. And boy did we need 'em by the time we got there. We were a sweaty mess. We felt like Olaf in summer. But we didn't have the flurry above us, so we were melting really quick. And like I said, the hottest we've ever seen it out there. So the heat definitely will take it out of you. So we recommend if you ever go down during the summer hydrate, hydrate, drink tons of water. As I like to tell my family. Hydrate or hydrate something my sister told me a long time ago. And lots of fun though. Lots of good times. We had some friends with us. That were on some previous episodes with us as well, and they had a lot of really good feedback this time around as well. So we'll be sharing some of their tips and tricks with you in the coming episodes, but some of the changes. So first, biggest change is universal. Universal had some amazing foods. They are really upping their game when it comes to food and food service. And so Disney better be on the lookout. As they opened up Epic universe, which the food there was off the charts. If you wanna hear a lot more about that, go to that episode. That's gonna be coming here in the next couple weeks because we are gonna be talking about all the food that we ate there, and there is a lot. In fact, the list is so long that could take up most of the episode in and of itself. But I will promise to get through that very quickly. And share all the great foods that we had out there. But they did really well with the mobile ordering and the mobile dining. In fact, they're doing it better than Disney, in my opinion. So be on the lookout, like I said, Disney. So in some quick comparison, so when you go to Disney and you do a mobile order you're gonna put your mobile order in from wherever you're at. You're gonna check in when you get there. And then they're gonna tell you, come to station number 5, 6, 7, whatever, and you're gonna go up there and there's gonna be a short little line of maybe two people and you're gonna get your food. If you listen to some of our other episodes, one of my biggest pet peeves about doing that is people will cut those lines. So you may have completed a mobile order, you may be up there waiting, and you're gonna have a lot of people cutting up to the front asking for cups of water, asking for condiments, asking for directions or other food items. And that just really ruins that experience and you don't feel like they're catering to you that much. It's something I didn't absolutely love about their mobile ordering. Now over at Universal, they have definitely solved that and they've taken on the Chick-fil-A model. So if you're familiar with Chick-fil-A, you can do a mobile order, you can be sitting at a table and you can scan the QR code on the table and they will bring it to you, which was a great feature at Universal. So you could go, relax, kick your feet up for a second, and wait for your food to be delivered to your table so you weren't having to go get in line with other people. So that was really cool. So much better over there. No more virtual queue at Disney. We talked about this in our spring episode that this was coming, but there is no more virtual queue, which means guardians of the Galaxy. Cosmic Rewind, Tiana's Bayou Tron. Light Cycles. Are all just standard queue now, so you're gonna go wait in line with everyone else unless you wanna pay for the lightning lane, pass, the individual lightning lane, that's gonna cost you about $20 a person to ride those. The virtual queue going away is something I'm not too thrilled about. And in fact, we talked about it on that episode. I really feel that virtual queue gives most visitors the opportunity to guarantee a ride for the one of the premier Marques rides that day without having to go wait in line. Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes when your virtual queue number comes up. You may have to go wait still for 30 or 40 minutes to go ride but you're not gonna be standing in a two hour line typically. So I really did the virtual queue. It made the day a little bit easier to plan but at the same time they've decided to get away from it. And that has changed the structure of the lines in the parks because instead of people waiting for their virtual queue you have a lot of people rope dropping these bigger rides or going and spending a lot of time waiting there, which does free up some of the other rides in the park. So it did make a little bit of a difference. Now, I will say with future ride changes and enhancements, I do expect that they will bring back the virtual queue. But for right now, there are no virtual queues. You also have, we talked about this in the spring, the new premier Lightning lane. This is the one that's super expensive, but you get one guaranteed lightning lane per ride per day in all the Disney parks, and you're not bound by any time you can go visit whenever that is up and running, that is selling out like crazy. So kudos to Disney. You're making a lot of money doing that. But at the end of the day, it to me, still not worth it. We've talked a lot about this in other episodes where we talk about our days at the Disney parks and the fact that we're able to get through all the rides that we need to without utilizing the lightning lane. And of course we wanna encourage you to listen to some of those episodes and check that out because we will give you tips and tricks on how to do it. So you don't need to pay for it. But if you wanted to, you're more than welcome to. And that's a way to skip all the lines there. Now we also started to see in the spring, and I will reinforce it now in the summer they are giving out fewer lightning lanes, which are keeping the general queues moving a little bit quicker, which is very nice. In my opinion, the general queues should at least keep a steady movement, steady flow to them. You should never have to stop and stand for a while. And in most cases, the seven days we were out there, we never did stop and stand unless a ride went down. There were a handful of times that they had some technical difficulties or a ride went down, and then of course we would have to wait just a little bit until that came back up. Or maybe we would leave and go somewhere else. But for the most part, anytime that the rides were operating, we were able to walk through the lines and keep moving in the standard queue, and it felt a lot better than it had in the past. So I really like that they're doing fewer lightning lanes. My guess is because Premier Lightning Lane is selling out and they're making. 10 times the amount, they're probably giving out half the lightning lanes that they had before because they can make 10 times the amount on one hand, do half on the other hand. And it's a win-win for everyone as long as Disney selling out and they're making money doing it. A lot of changes in the park dynamics there where we saw the standard queues moving a lot quicker. We also were able to test out both single riders. This trip on both Ratatouille and Rise of the Resistance at Hollywood Studios, the Star Wars ride there. Now I'm, I don't wanna spoil the Star Wars ride for you, but if you've ridden it, you know that there's multiple parts to that ride and you do skip the first part by doing the single rider. So that's all that I'll tell you about that. I'm not gonna tell you what you're skipping or what the differences are but just know that when you do single rider, you are giving up part of that ride. But for someone like us in our family that has ridden it probably in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 times plus. We don't mind giving up that first part of the ride because the better part of the ride is the latter part anyways, and single rider saved us a ton of time. In fact, on rise of resistance, we were probably only waiting about 15 or 20 minutes in single rider on Ratatouille. We hardly waited at all, less than five minutes and we were on the ride. In addition to that they reopened test track. Over at Epcot, which has a single rider line, which we've encouraged people to use. And that was also fairly quick now because it has just opened, the single rider line was a little bit backed up. It probably took us closer to 20, maybe 30 minutes to get through there. But the queue time was almost 120, so I felt pretty good about that. We still got to ride it and they had lots of really cool upgrades on test track. So if you get a chance to get back down there to Orlando and go to Epcot, I definitely wanna encourage you. Test track is awesome. Now, the ride mechanics themselves are the same. So the way the car drives and going through the speed loop and all that's identical, including the air brakes. If you've ridden it enough, you know that some of the rides have some of the quirks out there, test track being one of 'em, where the air brakes are really jerky towards the end of that speeding loop that they do out there. And a lot of people talk about that now, that is still present. You're still gonna feel that. But outside of that, the ride is upgraded quite a bit and they did a lot of really cool screens in there. So lots of fun, and I do wanna encourage you to definitely go check that out next time you're out there. We did standard queue, like I said, on Guardians of the Galaxy Tron, Tiana's Bayou.'cause there is no virtual queue. Those lines were pretty long. But we really coordinated it pretty well throughout the day. And we're gonna talk about that on another episode. You're definitely gonna want to tune into. We had a lot of changes obviously that we talked about in the last time, but I want to bring some confirmation to some of those. So you have obviously at Hollywood Studios the Muppets Courtyard where Pizza Rizzo and Mama Melrose and the Muppets four D was. That is all closed down and in demolition now. So they're working on that to make Monstropolis or the monsters part of the park. They do have a new suspension rollercoaster confirmed. Going in there. So we're very excited about that. And in fact, the warehouse that's gonna be going on behind the scenes over there, I've heard is gonna be very large and huge, similar to Guardians, the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind. If you go to Epcot, you can see there's a huge building off to the side that houses that ride. They're gonna be doing something similar at Hollywood Studios. So we're very excited about that. They do still have the rock and rollercoaster open though that is going to be closed and refurbished and moved over to Dr. Teeth and the electric Mayhem from Muppets. And we're excited about that. I'm a big Muppets fan, and don't get me wrong, I love Aerosmith, but eventually that license had a run out and it did. And now this is a way to keep the Muppets in the park and still have some fun with it at the same time. So that's gonna be coming. Over at Animal Kingdom they're starting to do work on Dino Land over there. They're gonna be making that into a Central America place. Confirmed. Obviously they have Indiana Jones, the ride that's gonna be doing the same ride mechanics as the one in Anaheim as well as the dinosaur ride. So they're keeping the same mechanics in place. But they did say that they're gonna completely re-theme it, and it's not gonna be like the Temple of the Forbidden Eye out in Anaheim. So if you've ridden that, this one's gonna be a totally different experience. At least that's what we're hearing. And I'm very excited about that. I'm a big Indiana Jones fan and absolutely love those series of movies. So that's gonna be awesome. And then they're gonna be doing things with the Encanto house the Casa Madrigal, and they're gonna be doing some cool stuff there. I don't know yet what that is. But more information to come as we find out a little bit more. And then of course, over at Magic Kingdom they have already closed down the Rivers of America, the Tom Sawyer Island area that has begun draining, and they're gonna be working on that. They're gonna be filling it in and making a cars land out there with some rides. And from what I'm hearing now, of course this side is not confirmed yet, but what I'm hearing is they are not gonna do a radiator springs racers. They are gonna be doing a different cars land ride over there. More to come as we get some more information on that in the future episodes. But that's gonna be very exciting to get the cars land. Now I do hope that they bring back the Cozy Cone Motel. That's some of the best food over at California Adventure. And that would be a great addition to the park over here. We're definitely looking forward to that. So lots of changes now. Changes that have already taken place. We have already talked about the lightning lane, the Premier Lightning lane, but let's talk about things inside the park. So we have new shows over at Hollywood Studios. They updated the Little Mermaid Live show that has the puppets and the live action in there. And we went and saw that. And I will say that one is absolutely amazing, a great improvement. It's a, I don't wanna say it's a long show. It's not super long. It's about 20 some minutes long, I'd say. It's on par, with the Beauty and the Beast show that they have over there. Or the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular. That's also an awesome show. But this one they use really good effects with black lights, with puppetry and just with some of the special effects. So they've definitely improved that show. So I will tell you, if you're a big fan of The Little Mermaid, you've got something great to look forward to. But one of the highlights is the new villains show, and I was very excited. For the new villain show, just because I think that's been a miss in the parks, that they haven't had a tribute to some of these villains. Now, of course, they're usually in parades or you can find them walking around the parks, but even the characters at the parks, the villains have some of the best interactions. If you ever watch these things on YouTube or other social media sites. Meaning that when you're interacting, for example, with the stepsisters from Cinderella they're picking on people they, make jokes about people. When you interact with other villains, they like to engage a little bit more than your traditional heroes do. So I think the villains have been missed at the parks and they did a fantastic job with the new show. It's a musical. You get a chance to vote for who's the most misunderstood villain. And they did a really good job theming it using good special effects. And I'll even say the highlight were the actors that they hired to. Play these roles now, of course, I'm sure throughout the week and throughout the different times of the day, you may get some different actors that get in there just because somebody can't do that seven days a week, 24 7. But I will say that the actors that they had were really good. They did a great job singing and dancing and doing their part, and it made the show a lot of fun. And in fact, the best part of the show is, if you remember, this used to be where Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy was. If you've ever been in there, it was just benches that you would sit on. They now actually have theater style seating, so they've got the chairs, the backs, and it's much, much more comfortable in there. And it's a larger room. It's a larger auditorium, it feels than what it was before. And I know with the cars show that they had in there they couldn't use the whole building because they had the cars coming through and rotating through on the big turntable up there in the front. With this, it feels like they took obviously all that out. That opened up the space a lot more. They built in more seating and then obviously they've got a stage up in the front. The space feels a lot better. It was nice and air conditioned and darker in there, so it was very cool. It was a good escape from the sun. Lots of people in there, but like you said, it was a lot of fun to watch that show. So what I'll say is all that being said Hollywood Studios has definitely taken on this more show entertainment type park than some of the others. Meaning you've got Beauty in the Beast Live, you've got the Little Mermaid Live, you've got Frozen Sing-Along. You've got this short video with Minnie and Mickey the, cartoon video In there you've got Walt Disney presents where they talk about Walt and his life, which if you haven't seen that's like a 10 or 15 minute one. That one's fantastic. You've got the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular. So lots of really cool things going on at Hollywood Studios as far as an entertainment perspective. And then of course, you can't forget about Fantasmic, which is one of the best nighttime shows up there. I would say it's second to happily ever after. A really cool thing to see if you get a chance to over at Hollywood Studio. Lots of changes going on in the parks now. I will say the one thing that they did very poorly and earlier in the episode we talked about the food and that Universal's doing so much better with food now and the mobile ordering and we'll talk about that on the Epic Universe episode. But one thing Disney did that really was actually a downgrade and it's important to talk about it on this episode. Is their rope drop for Hollywood Studios, they completely changed. So if you've been there in the last few years, you probably know, obviously those on resort get early entry and they're gonna be able to go in 30 minutes before anyone else and they have full access to the park and they can go ride and do what they want. Traditionally. Then the non-resort guests, which we are included in because we stay offsite at our condo we would line up out front, out outside of the ticket area. And then they do rope drop out there, meaning that when the nine o'clock hour hits or the eight o'clock hour, depending on, time of year and when you get to go in. When that hits and you go in you're actually going through the turnstiles for rope drops. So what that means is it a few different things. Number one is it's metered, meaning that those that are there earlier, those that get to the front of these rope drop lines, which there are some secrets to that, which we talk about in the Hollywood Studios episodes. So go check that out. But those that get to the front. Are able to get through the turnstiles before all the people behind them and go to the rides, and you don't have all these people in the park yet. So that was a huge advantage At Hollywood Studios what they're doing now, what they changed is they're letting everybody into the park. But to get back into Toy Storyland or into Star Wars land you have to be resort guests and that's where they're checking you. Okay, so it makes sense. I totally understand that you eliminate the chaos out front, which is nice because trust me when I say it was chaotic trying to get in that way. The downside though, are two big things now. Number one, you've got everyone in the park, so by the time rope drop happens, they've already scattered, they're already throughout the park, and you have to be a lot more strategic about rope drop, meaning you need to get there 30 minutes earlier at Hollywood Studio. So that's a big change. Part of that also includes whatever ride you're gonna rope drop now has a standard queue line building up. That's not early entry. So for example, my daughter and I went and rode a rock and rollercoaster when we walked over there, there are ropes over to the side for non-resort guests that we had to get into a queue for and stand there and wait for almost 30 minutes. And by the time the park opened that thing was full. There was a ton of people in there. And granted, we worked towards the front, which was nice, and we got on very quickly. But had we not been there that early, we wouldn't have. And it now eliminates the advantage of a rope drop right now. You have to get there 30 minutes even earlier to get that rope drop. The second thing this actually really irked me and got me very frustrated is we absolutely love if you've listened to our Hollywood studio episodes in the best foods. We absolutely love the Ronto roasters, the wraps over there in Star Wars Landover at the Black Spire Outpost, and that's one of our favorite breakfasts out of all of the parks, Disney and Universal combined. So we always go to get that. And I also love the grapefruit alcoholic drink over there. A great way to start our days. We always get those after we've done a couple rides. Because like I said, my daughter and I went to do the rock and roller coaster. My wife doesn't ride that, so she went to go get breakfast for us. While we were waiting in line and they would not let her through to the Star Wars area to go buy that. Even though they were already open and serving food because she wasn't a resort guest. So I get that they didn't want her to get past that point, but take it a step further. You couldn't buy food at any stand unless you were a on resort guest. Meaning your standard guests who are now in the parks who are making their way through, are not able to buy or consume food in the park until nine o'clock. So I think that's a big miss. I think obviously people are hungry in the morning and I don't think anyone who's on resort is gonna have a problem if somebody's buying food first thing in the morning while they're running to their rides. People need food. People need water and to. Prohibit it and to actively tell them, you are not allowed to have food. Until nine was a big discouragement and not very pleasant at all. Now go back because I did want to think about that and reflect a little bit. When I got frustrated and thought, okay, if I was rope dropping outside of the park, so if I'm standing out in front of the ticket booths waiting to get queued in. I don't have access to food there and that's a hundred percent true, but I went in expecting that, if that makes sense. I knew I wasn't gonna get food until we got into the parks, but now that I'm in the park and I can get to these stands, especially over there on Sunset Avenue where you're getting over towards tower of Terror and Rock and Rollercoaster to say, I can't buy food 'cause I'm not a resort guest, even though they're open is. Beyond frustrating. It's just infuriating. That's something that I didn't enjoy. And in fact, I gave them a survey, did their survey, gave them that opinion and told them that they at least should open up the food so that people can eat or get drinks if they want to in the morning. Obviously they want to sell more and that would help 'em do it. Those were some of the big changes. We went of course over to Disney Springs and at Disney Springs. Not a lot of changes going on over there. Everything's pretty standard, pretty normal. So nothing to really report on that side of it. And not a lot of changes that many of the other parks, including we talked about all the rides coming and stuff, the standard rides, everything was operating just as normal. So with that, that brings me to our, I can do this all day tip of the day. And that is, we are gonna be dropping in a couple weeks here, an updated 2025 rope drop episode. And the best part is typically in the past we have done rope drop for all the parks individually. This time we're gonna be doing one episode that's covering all of the Orlando parks, excluding I'm gonna do one exclusion. And that is Epic Universe because it will have its own episode just like we did prior years for all the other parks. So E Epic's gonna get its own but we're gonna do one episode that's gonna talk through the four Disney parks in Orlando and Islands of Adventure Universal Studios, and give you an updated rope drop strategy. For those parks because it has changed. So I definitely wanna encourage you to tune in and subscribe so you can get that episode and get all the latest tips and tricks for how to do rope drop. Like we just talked about at Hollywood Studios, big change and we will talk a little bit more about that on that episode. But with that, like I said, we've got episodes coming the next four weeks after this one. Lots of exciting things. We're gonna be doing the rope drop, we're gonna talk about Epic Universe. My review. We are gonna be doing Epic universe rope drop strategy, as well as I am gonna do an episode on Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run. How to Get a High Score there. Obviously we have high score episodes on Toy Story Mania. The Buzz Lightyear rides at both parks, both in California and in Orlando. And we did Men in Black. So now we're gonna be adding the next competition one, and that's gonna be Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run. And the best part about that one is that's a team one. You're not competing against other people. You're gonna be working together as a group, and we're gonna tell you how to maximize your score there as well as some. Unpopular thoughts on that ride. So you're definitely gonna wanna tune in and hear the drama on that and what we've experienced on that ride. But that also has one of the best I can do this all day tips of the day that we've ever done. So you're definitely gonna wanna tune in to that one if you're. A big fan of Star Wars because we've got some cool stuff for you. So with that, we wish you a magical week as you're planning your next vacation. Again. Click subscribe and check out our other episodes, and we will be talking to you over the next few weeks. Thanks. Bye-bye.