The Grand Tour
I’ve always wanted to do a thing - go to all three (Animal Kingdom excluded) Disney parks in one trip. One after work trip. Leverage as many different Disney transport options as possible, and avoid backtracking. Just try and walk the whole thing.
Such an effort was unthinkable six months ago. But today I tried it; and with some issue mitigations, I can report success.
Just the logistics and pathfinding is fun - and one can expect there will be curveballs thrown during execution, which makes it that much more interesting.
Day started in a surprisingly empty Magic Kingdom parking lot at 2:14pm. Everything closes at 9… so time to go.
I took the resort monorail to the kingdom so I could check the resort monorail off the list - and as I arrived the train was pulling into Main Street station. I nearly ran to get on the train - a bonus Disney Transport option!
The train took me to Fantasyland, allowing me to skip Main Street entirely, therefore avoiding that backtracking.
I made a rule that if anything was a walk-thru or had a 5 minute posted wait, I was unable to skip it. I had to ride it. Believe it or not, Pirates had no wait. 
I also stopped briefly to enjoy a Wawa pretzel I had smuggled in.
And of course I had to let the water bottle catch up with it’s wall family.
But the walk must go on, so it was quickly out of the park, on to the express monorail (check that off the list), transfer to the Epcot monorail, and over to Epcot.
(ball)
For this Epcot visit, I was only going to see about half the part (the western half) as I was simply using it as transit to Hollywood Studios. That said, there was plenty happening. First stop was Journey of Water, which is a walk-thru, and so it was non-negotiable.
Then Nemo was a Five minute wait. 
My family saw manatees today. So did I. I think the manatees they saw were happier.
Then I captured the new phone background:
And the Figment ride had a long wait… but a good sun.
It’s the festival of the arts, so there was a painting for guests to paint… no wait. I did my part, choosing squares near the top.
From there I walked towards the International Gateway, through a few countries.
Route was something like this:
I went to Studios by boat - original plan was the skyliner buckets, but they are down for refurbishment all week. So I was really concerned about my plan now, because the boats are definitely slower than the buckets. But I was ahead of schedule, so it would work out.
The route in Hollywood Studios looked something like this:
Definitely backtracking here, but basically unavoidable with the construction going on. I stopped outside the Tower Hotel for an ice cream.
This was the first Mickey Mouse Ice cream bar I’ve had in probably a decade. It was better than expected. I also got some fun pictures and rode the 5-minute-wait Star Tours on the way out.
With that, it was a boat back to Epcot to do the rest of the park, and get on the monorail to get back to the ticket and transportation center where my car is waiting. The path through Epcot the second time looked like this:
It was nighttime now, and nighttime Epcot is amazing. Also it’s the Festival of the Arts, and while I’ve always found the festivals silly… now I get it. This has been insane.
I finally took a different picture of China… and the required picture of Mexico. But those are standard.
Being the Festival of the Arts, there’s special food. Here’s a Figment-inspired Rainbow Popcorn + Popcorn Chicken and waffle.
Then I sat down to write all this in an insanely nice space.
And from here I just need to take the monorail back to my car. All good, right?
Well…
Then the whole area around me started playing different music.
Rainbow Connection.
Okay. I’m done. Perfect day.
Time to go home.
(overall map)
