Oga’s Cantina should be the easiest recommendation at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It is a functioning cantina inside Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, with a droid DJ, exotic drinks, and the kind of theming that made people cry when the land opened. For a certain kind of Star Wars fan, walking into that room is the whole reason to visit the park. ...

Disney’s Hollywood Studios has never been an easy park for young kids, and that is not a new complaint. The headliners are thrill rides. Rise of the Resistance, Slinky Dog Dash, Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Smugglers Run. Most of them carry height requirements, and the ones that do not still skew older in tone. So when Disney ...

Almost every time I write about the Disability Access Service at Disney, the story is a bad one. Guests are denied after years of qualifying. Families rearranging entire trips around an interview outcome they cannot predict. People are being told, in one way or another, that what they need is no longer available to them. I have covered that repeatedly, ...

There is a version of “it’s a small world” that converts skeptics, and it only exists for about eight weeks a year. If your entire experience of this attraction is the standard one, the reputation makes sense. The song, the doll faces, the fourteen minutes. Plenty of guests walk out of it politely. Then they ride it in December and ...

Solo park days are their own specific skill, and single rider lines are the single best tool you have. If you have never done Disney alone, that probably sounds dramatic. But when you are by yourself, the calculation changes completely. You are not coordinating with anyone. You do not need to sit together. You will happily take whatever seat is ...

Yesterday, we wrote about what Lilypad’s arrival would mean for Toy Story Land. Today, she is physically standing there. The larger-than-life tablet has been installed outside Alien Swirling Saucers at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, sitting atop a large orange toy block. She is not active yet, displaying only her “The Pond” interface with no other graphics running. Disney has said Lilypad ...

My family lives three hours from Walt Disney World, and for most of my life, that meant we got to be strategic about it. We knew the calendar. The second week of December was ours, after the early-month crowds and before everyone showed up for the holidays. Or we would wait until after Presidents’ Day, when the schools went back, ...

Rainforest Cafe is not a Disney restaurant, and it never has been. But try telling that to anyone who grew up going to Disney parks. The chain has been part of the Disney experience for decades through sheer proximity and persistence. There is one at Disney Springs, still doing steady business. There is one outside of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, where ...

Disneyland has been photographed more than almost any place on earth, and that creates a specific kind of opportunity. Every day since 1955, thousands of people have pointed cameras at the same castle, the same storefronts, the same stretches of Main Street, U.S.A. Millions of those photos sit in shoeboxes, slide carousels, and undeveloped film canisters in garages across America. ...

The Germany Pavilion at EPCOT has a joke built into its premise that most guests never think about. It is always Oktoberfest there. Not during October. Always. The Biergarten has been running an Oktoberfest buffet with live polka every single day of the year for decades, which means a family visiting in March gets the same accordion, the same communal ...