All the Disney food, fun and detours! A belated Sep-Oct 2017 report - Completed 12/29

[harddrive]

Day 4 - Part 3

Now that we were well and truly full from dinner, we made our way to the monorail station and headed back to the Magic Kingdom. While we were enjoying our dinner the clouds outside seemed to be getting darker and darker and we were hoping that the rain would hold off for the evening, which it did for the most part!

On the way into the park we got our wristbands and Trick or Treat bags, and stopped for a quick photopass pic.

We spent some time enjoying the atmosphere, wandering around people watching and checking out all of the different costumes that people were wearing. We also jumped on a couple of rides with short waits, Pirates of the Caribbean and Jungle Cruise. We had a great skipper on our ride, they really do make or break this attraction for me!

Last year it totally slipped our minds to get some merchandise from the party, so it was a mission of mine to get one of the Halloween pins this year. We made our way over to Big Top souvenirs and picked one up.

We had met Jack and Sally last year, so this time around our special character to meet was Lotso. We lined up early over in Tomorrowland and waited for him to come out. It was definitely worth the wait. He was so cute and his interactions with all of the kids, especially those who were in Toy Story costumes, was adorable. Even with the adults he was great. Steve had a great interaction with him about when he got stuck on the truck bumper grate in the movie!

After a few photos we bid Lotso farewell and went to grab a crown for my costume, because you can’t be Flynn if you haven’t stolen a crown! Instead of the typical crown, I decided my Flynn would go for something a bit more sparkly, so I bought a pair of silver sequin Mickey ears! If you look closely in a couple of the photopass pictures later on you can see them poking out of my satchel.

We grabbed some water and a couple of cake pops and then found a spot to watch the first Hocus Pocus show. It was already quite busy, but we found a nice spot over to the side to watch.

This show is still probably my favourite show. The music and variety of characters are what make it! It was great to see a couple of the small rewrites they have done to allow the Sanderson Sisters to shine more with their comedy.

Being on the side of the hub we were able to make a quick escape into Fantasyland after the show had finished and we went straight to meet a couple of princesses. I wanted to get a photo with Rapunzel, so we chose to meet Rapunzel and Tiana. When we got into line we got handed a red card! What are the chances of us getting one of these nowadays!

We had great interactions with both of the princesses. Rapunzel and I spent a lot of time chatting about her Eugene and all of the antics he gets up to, and Tiana and Steve had a great chat about his blue hair. She really wanted to change her hair colour too!

After our princess encounters, I thought I remembered vaguely that during the halloween party Genie and Aladdin sometimes do a meet and greet together. So off we went in search of them, but unfortunately they were not meeting together. There was still some time to kill before the first parade, so we did a couple of trick or treat trails before making our way to the edge of Frontierland and grabbed a spot opposite Pecos Bill Tavern to watch the parade. We sat here last year and had a great view of the parade and this year was no different.

Just like the Hocus Pocus stage show, I think that the Boo to You parade is my favourite parade in Disney World. Once again I love the music and the characters. I didn’t really get any photos of the parade as I was enjoying watching it too much, but we did get a photopass photo with the logo board.

Once the parade had passed we grabbed a couple of dole whips from Aloha Isle to cool down as the costumes were making us a bit warm!

We didn’t really take a lot of photos during the evening apart from getting quite a few photopass shots, so sorry it's a little light on with other photos. The fireworks were coming up soon, so we staked out a spot to watch them. They were awesome as usual!

We were a little over the crowds by this point, so we decided to call it a night and leave the park early. We did stop by Mickey the Magician on the way out of the park though, as we really enjoyed seeing him last time, and I wanted to get a picture with him in his Halloween costume. He seemed to like our costumes and he even did a magic trick for us which was very funny! I’m glad that we got to see him again seeing as he doesn’t talk anymore.

On the way back to the car we remembered the tip we got a few days ago about the direct bus to the TTC, and look at this, we had our own private bus trip. Kings of the bus! Like really, it seemed as though we were the only ones taking advantage of this.

We made it back to the room and had a fantastic sleep after our long day.

 

[suse66]

I just binge read your report so far and am thoroughly enjoying it! Looking forward to hearing more.

 

[harddrive]

Day 5 - Part 1

Today was our unplanned Universal Studios day! As mentioned earlier, we had planned for this to be our second day at Epcot, but after managing to get through everything we wanted to see there in one day, why not go to a totally different park instead!

Even though we had a late evening the night before, we were still up really early as we knew we had a lot of ground to cover at Universal. Last year during our fist trip to Orlando we had planned on spending 2 days at Universal, but due to Hurricane Matthew we only had a single day, which we also had to cut short due to me coming down with food poisoning

We stopped in at the resort food court and grabbed a few snacks to eat in the car for breakfast. It’s a shame that hindsight is always 20-20 as I would have used more snack credits and got more food for breakfast, but throughout the whole trip I was always telling myself ‘don’t use too many snack credits today or else you won’t have any for the end of the trip’ and as it turns out we still had a couple of credits left at the very end of the trip!

Steve had the cupcake and bagel, while I had the croissant and muffin.

We made it to Universal around 7:30 and after walking past Toothsomes (we would be back there later that arvo) we were finally through the gate just before 8am.

I had decided to get us the Express Pass for the day, which essentially gets you one fast pass for nearly every ride in the park. With this we were sure to ride everything we wanted to. Turns out the crowds were very low this day and we could have done without the pass, but it did save us about 10 minutes in each line, which I guess isn't too bad.

Our first ride of the day was Rip Ride Rock It Rollercoaster. This is always a great way to get the blood pumping for the day ahead!

We made our way down the main boulevard next and went on Race Through New York with Jimmy Fallon and then The Mummy.

Race Through New York was great and Jimmy’s humour is so funny. The Mummy is still probably our favourite ride in Universal, don’t know what it is about it, but we both just really enjoy it!

After this we made our way to The Simpsons. By the time it had finished both Steve and I were done with all screen rides for today! I don’t know why, but we always feel sick after going on a couple of screen rides too close together. Ah well.

Our next adventure was an Extraterrestrial one, but before we got there we happened to pass by these awesome vehicles! Now I know that these probably aren't the actual filming props, but it's still nice to see them and get up close to them...or at least as close as you can get with chains and shrubbery in the way!

As I mentioned, our next voyage was heading home with ET. We didn’t go on this the last time we were here which was a bit sad but it was great riding it this time. Yeah, the ride gets weird towards the end where you travel to ET’s home planet, but I did enjoy the ride vehicles and makes a nice change from always being in a ground based ride vehicle.

Going from one set of aliens to another, we jumped on Men in Black. Both Steve and I can get a bit competitive on these sorts of rides, and this time Steve was the winner!

By this point we had pretty much covered everything we wanted to at this park so we made our way into Diagon Alley to have a bit of a browse.

I don’t know how long Steve was waiting here trying to take a photo of the dragon breathing fire, but as always the moment he goes to walk away the Dragon did it.

We jumped in line to ride Escape from Gringotts, but ended up getting stuck in one of the rooms during the preshow for about 20 minutes while they added more ride vehicles to the track. Not the most thrilling of experiences, but luckily we were in one of the rooms that didn’t have a video looping the whole time!

Once we had escaped we decided to jump on The Hogwarts Express and make our way across to Islands of Adventure. The Hogwarts Express was a fun experience, knowing that you are actually moving while the ride is going on was cool, and the train and carriages themselves looked the part!

 

[harddrive]

Day 5 - Part 2

By this point we were getting a bit hungry so decided to start our lap of Islands of Adventure to find somewhere to eat. We pretty much walked straight past Mythos Restaurant in The Lost Continent as we didn’t want to waste any time with a table service meal, and both Steve and I weren't too keen on the menu from the quick service there. The next stop on the lap was Seuss Landing and so we decided to grab some lunch at Circus Magurcsus. Unfortunately the meal wasn’t the best, it wasn’t horrible, just not great. Disney does seem to have better quick service places than Universal.

After lunch we strolled around Seuss Landing for a bit, but didn’t go on any of the rides there.

Heading through Port of Entry was cool, the theming in this area was well done and was nice to just look at all of the details they had put into the shop fronts.

We looked in a couple of the shops but didn't buy anything. We were really just killing some time to allow our lunch to settle a bit before heading on The Incredible Hulk Coaster.

Walking through Marvel Super Hero Island reminded me very much of the theme parks we have back here in Australia. It’s all very big, bold, oversized and in your face. I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but Disney doesn’t feel like this when you are walking around their parks, it feels a lot more thought out and developed, but maybe that's just my Disney bias.

So it was finally time to ride the Hulk,and wow is that an intense coaster. I don’t think I was quite prepared for how fast it was and how much it threw your body around. We both enjoyed it, but it certainly isn’t a ride that we could go on over and over again.

After getting off Hulk we grabbed our stuff that was secured in a locker and continued looking around Super Hero Island. Nothing else there really interested us so we decided to continue on.

Toon Lagoon was next and we pretty much strolled right through it. We stopped for a bit on the bridge that crosses over Ripsaw Falls and watched a few groups of people come down the big drop and get soaked! Both of us would have enjoyed going on the ride but didn’t have a change of clothes with us and looking at the people getting off the ride, everyone go soaked!! I did chuck a few coins in the water cannon machines and added to the wetness of a few people.

We were both looking forward to riding Skull Island: Reign of Kong. The queue was well done and luckily neither of us got attacked by people in the wall… do they still have people in the wall jumping out and scaring people? I don’t know.

The ride was quite good, the movie scenes integrated among real set elements were well done. Even though I’m not a huge fan of 3D rides, this one did a decent job of it, and it certainly helped having the screens all around the vehicles so you could look around at the scenes. The Kong animatronic was cool but a little lifeless to me.

Once we got off the ride we headed straight into Jurassic Park. My first experience at a Universal park was Universal Studios Singapore many years ago during a work trip and I really remember loving both The Mummy Ride and Jurassic Park River Adventure ride, so getting to ride these rides again are always a pleasure.

Here's a few pics from my day at Universal Studios Singapore back in 2012!

Now back to Universal Orlando in 2017!

We jumped on Jurassic Park River Adventure and got soaked! You see some people come off this ride with only a couple of splashes of water on them, well that wasn’t us this time, it really was as if someone had just tipped a bucket of water onto us! Nevertheless it was still a great ride, and I’m glad we went on it seeing as they are re-branding it to Lost World.

We decided to just chill in Jurassic Park for a bit in the sun to dry off before heading to Hogsmeade and the castle to ride the Forbidden Journey. Out of the 2 big Potter rides, this one is definitely my favourite! Not only do I find the queue a lot more interesting and immersive, but for me this ride really beats Gringotts with more physical set elements and less time spent in front of screens.

For those that have read our last trip report, you would know that Steve is a big Harry Potter fan, so we spent quite a bit of time looking in all of the shops in Hogsmeade ending our shopping trip in Honeydukes where both Steve and I bought way too many sweets!

At this point we had done everything we wanted to in both parks apart from seeing a couple of the shows back over at Universal Studios but we knew once we jumped on the Hogwarts Express earlier in the day that we wouldn't get back to see the shows.

It was time to head out of the park, but as we were making our way back through The Lost Continent I was enjoying looking at the great setting of the ruined temple, though neither of us knew what it was there for.

We asked one of the nearby cast members what the attraction was, thinking it was another 3D screen ride, but he said it was a walking tour so we decided to jump on it. I’m glad we took the chance as it was actually a fun and camp attraction. For those that haven't been on it, it is a walk through attraction with show elements throughout. You have an actor as a guide taking you on an archeological expedition where a bunch of stunts and special effects take place. The ending is a bit (VERY) cheesy and some of the effects are a bit dated, but we both enjoyed it.

So we finally made it out of the park, passing the great lighthouse monument, and it was finally time for Toothsomes Chocolate Emporium.

We didn’t quite realise how large the sundaes were here until they were delivered to our table, we had ordered one each...when in reality we could have easily shared one! Steve went for a Peanut Butter inspired ‘May Contain Nuts’ one and I couldn’t turn down the ‘Chocolate Brownie Bark’.

I think the photo speaks for itself! There was so much brownie and chocolate! Definitely worth the $9.50 I paid for mine.

Both Steve and I unfortunately didn’t make it all the way through our sundaes, but we thoroughly enjoyed them. Now feeling very full we made our way back to the car and the resort to have a bit of a rest.

One of the great things about travelling outside of the Disney bubble during the trip is having the opportunity to drive under this sign on your way back in!

Once back we just rested for a bit and watched some TV. The great thing about this being a shorter trip than last time is that we didn't have to worry about doing any clothes washing, which ate into our rest time a bit during the last trip.

It was finally time for one of the ADR’s that we were most looking forward to, the Hoop Dee Doo Revue! We had been on our last trip and couldn’t wait to go again. Last time we caught the Ferry across from the TTC to Fort Wilderness, but this year we decided to drive and then have a bit of a walk around the resort before dinner time. It was quite dark by this point so no photos of the resort, but it is quite pretty and actually somewhere I would consider staying in a future trip, although only in a cabin.

After looking around for a bit and taking a couple of photos they were finally ringing that dinner bell and we were ushered inside.

We had a table on the lower level off to the side, our view last year was a bit better as we were up on the balcony and so had no heads in the way, but we could still see everything.

Before the show started we got our drinks as well as the salad and the CORNBREAD!! I love Disney cornbread, I would have been happy with just a main course of cornbread and then dessert. They even brought us out a second loaf as our waiter could see how quickly we devoured the first one.

The show was underway before we knew it and the audience that night were loving it. We had a completely different cast to the year before and most of them were great. Six Bit and Dolly were hilarious, Dolly was definitely the stand out of the night for me. The only real letdown was the guy playing Jim. He just didn’t seem old enough to pull off the role and didn't have the stage presence or right characterisation for a person who supposedly pulled this group of travelling entertainers together. He certainly wasn’t bad, but just didn't live up to the actor we had the year before. We were at the 8:30pm seating so it was their third show of the night, so he may have just been having an off show. I can imagine how draining it would be performing three 1.5 hour shows back to back!

Before we knew it they were bringing out the dessert, strawberry shortcake! Even after our Toothsomes desserts earlier today, we still had no trouble finishing this one off.

It was finally time for us to say goodbye to the gang and make our way back to the car.

For anyone that hasn’t done Hoop Dee Doo before, it's certainly a dinner show we would recommend. The food is tasty and the entertainment is never dull. I know that it will certainly be a must do for any of our trips to Disney World.

Back at the resort we watched a bit more TV before settling in to sleep for the night. We had another early breakfast reservation for tomorrow with a few characters you don’t often get the chance to meet!

 

[harddrive]

Day 6 - Part 1

Today we woke knowing that we had 3 table service meals to look forward to! Despite being on the Deluxe Dining Plan none of our other days had 3 table service meals yet by the end of our trip we would have used all of our credits had we not missed our first dining booking due to the delayed flight, and not decided to have an unplanned day at Universal, which meant we cancelled a Garden Grill breakfast reservation.

A little bit of a detour here, but I know there is usually a lot of discussion as to whether any dining plan is worth it on your trip, and it really does come down to what is going to work best for you and your family. For us, we enjoy Disney food nearly as much as we enjoy the parks themselves, so we know that we are always going to be spending a lot of time and money eating whilst we are at Disney. Luckily on both our first trip in 2016 and this trip we have scored a free dining package which has meant we’ve definitely saved money on food. As I am sitting here now typing this part of the report we are only 10 days away from our next trip (yes we are coming back to Disney already, but more on that at the end of this trip report) and during our planning for the trip we did the maths, which involved looking at all of the dining reservations made and what we think we might eat at each of them. We worked out that at that stage even though we had 30 table service ARD’s booked over 14 days (with quite a few being 2 credit meals), we will still come out ahead paying out of pocket as opposed to being on a dining plan once you take into account any saving we could get with annual passes (which I now have) or Tables In Wonderland, which we were going to buy as well for the savings. A couple of weeks ago Steve and I sat down and re-looked at our budget for the trip and we had forgot to add in the sales tax into our original food estimation, so once we added that in, plus added on the cost of snacks we knew we were going to end up buying in the parks anyways, it turned out that we were only going to be making a saving of less than $200 by paying out of pocket as opposed to being on a Deluxe Dining Plan. So now knowing that info we decided to take the plunge and book the DxDDP for our upcoming trip.

Now I know you are probably saying why did we spend the extra money when we could have saved it, and the reason is that when we did our original food budgeting, we were being quite conservative in terms of what entrees we would eat and even more so with desserts and appetizers at meals, and for us the little extra money spent now means that we do not have to worry if we wanted to eat a bit more at some of the meals by ordering a dessert or a more expensive entree etc. It has also meant we have added in a couple more ADR’s because we had spare credits to use which means More Disney Food!!


Anyways, back to this trip! Once we were up and ready this morning, we made our way over to a resort we hadn’t visited before, The Boardwalk Inn. Even though we didn’t spend a lot of time walking around and checking things out, the main lobby and little bits we got to see were quite beautiful, and how can you not like this view!

Breakfast this morning was the Bon Voyage Adventure Breakfast at Trattoria Al Forno. This wasn’t one of our original reservations but one we picked up probably a month or so before our trip. The great thing about this breakfast is that it's a new character breakfast they have introduced where you get to meet Rapunzel and Ariel as well as both of their princes, Prince Eric and Flynn Rider.

The inside of this restaurant is just as pretty as the rest of the Boardwalk.

Breakfast started with a lovely plate of pastries, which even appeared to be themed a bit to Rapunzel.

Before we knew it Flynn had made his way to our table and wanted to compare smolders, so how could I say no to that!

For our mains Steve went with the Poached Eggs and I went with the Tower of Pancakes. Both these dishes were really nice, although with mine you can’t really go wrong with pancakes and bacon!

During our meal it seemed as though the staff were playing a bit of a game among themselves of pass the spoon. Essentially there was a tiny spoon that one staff member started off with at the beginning of the shift and you had to try and get rid of it at all costs, which involved getting your customers involved. Our waitress had ended up with the spoon while we were eating and so she came over and asked if we would help her get rid of it, so of course we said yes! After a bit we flagged down another waitress and when she came and asked us if we needed anything we smiled and said we had something for her and then proceeded to hand her the spoon. Needless to say she joked about how could we give that to her, but took it in stride and no doubt got one of her own tables to pass it onto someone else.

Around all of this spoon fun we also got to meet the other 3 guests at breakfast...or should I say hosts, as technically we were their guests this morning…

Anyways after a few portraits and chats about dinglehoppers and frying pans we finished up our meal and made our way out to admire the lovely view on the Boardwalk again.

Today was our only day in Hollywood Studios for this trip and after making our way over there from a great breakfast we were ready to go! We didn’t have a huge amount of things we desperately wanted to get done today, so we were able to take it a bit slower.

We arrived just after rope drop so we made our way straight onto Rock n Roller Coaster and it’s such a great way to start your day in the park. The thrill of speeding around in the dark is great!

We did have a fastpass for Star Tours next but decided to cancel it and spend a bit of time doing some window shopping and just strolling around the park.

 

[harddrive]

Day 6 - Part 2

We spent quite a bit of time in Star Wars Launch Bay just having a look around. I really enjoyed looking at all of the models and costumes they have on display from the movie series. They put so much detail into these things that you don’t really get to see on screen because the ships are always flying past so fast, so it was nice to admire their hard work.

While we were walking around some Stormtroopers were patrolling the area and decided to accost Steve and ask to see his ID, which I found rather amusing!

We had already met Chewie and Kylo on the last trip, but the line was short to meet BB8 so we jumped in. It was a cute meet and greet, although a little awkward as all he does is sit there and move and beep randomly at you, so it really is a jump in and get a photo and then leave thing.

On the way out we checked out the shop and all of the replica costumes you can purchase! If I had the money and space I’d love to own a Darth Vader and Stormtrooper costume. There were also a couple of Star Wars themed prints on sale in various forms, kind of regret not buying one of them as the cantina print was cute.

We made our way over to Walt Disney Presents to check out the Toy Story Land and Star Wars Land models they have on display there. Just like the models in the Star Wars exhibit, I loved looking at the models of the 2 new lands coming as well as some of the original and replica models of the Disney parks. Getting to see a glimpse into the original ideas of the imagineers is such a joy and then comparing them to what eventuated in the parks is fun.

The models for Toy Story Land and Star Wars Land look really good. By now Toy Story land has already opened and I have been trying to avoid as many photos and videos of it as I can so I get to experience as much of it for the first time when we are there in a couple of weeks, hopefully the crowds have died down a bit!

We did jump in line to meet Star Lord and Baby Groot, which was a great encounter. Star lord really led the conversation and was great at interacting with both us and Baby Groot. We had a great chat and laugh about getting Baby Groot to grow a beard. Baby Groot didn’t miss a beat during the whole conversation and it was great seeing some new animatronics at play in the park and especially in such a close up environment.

After skipping our Star Tours FP it was time for our next one which was for Toy Story Mania. The theming in here really is top notch and it bodes well for Toy Story Land.

I won this round by quite a bit, which Steve wasn’t too impressed with.

Our last fastpass was for Tower of Terror, which is always a great ride. The cast member who said goodbye to us once we boarded the lift was just the right level of creepy!

Got to love rides where people feel compelled to put their hands up right when the ride photo gets taken...oh well Steve!

We had a bit of time to kill before our lunch reservation so we made our way over to the new Grand Avenue addition of the park to have a look around and browse some of the shops. I love The Muppets shop and its sense of humor!

 

[harddrive]

Day 6 - Part 3

Our lunch today was at the Hollywood Brown Derby as part of the Fantasmic dining package. The decor inside the restaurant is very stylish and it was fun trying to guess who each of the portraits were of, I certainly couldn’t pick many of them!

I’ll have to admit that the food here was probably a bit too fancy for my liking, but Steve really enjoyed it. I started with the Cobb Salad and Steve had the Blue Club Crab Crispy Wonton, and for our mains I had the Wagyu Beef Burger which was a nice safe meal for me, but Steve went all out with the Filet of Beef. Both mains were actually very tasty.

The dessert serving was a little strange however, on the online menu it stated that dessert was a mini dessert trio where you got to choose 3 mini desserts from a list, however our waiter didn’t give us any choice in them, he only asked if we would like dessert or not when cleaning our plates. When they arrived there was only 2 items on each dish.

I was a little perplexed but didn’t let it bother me as Steve was enjoying the ones we were given. Has anyone else experienced this here?

Once we were done we made our way out of the park and back to the resort to rest for a bit and to start packing, as today was our last full day in the parks as we were heading home tomorrow.

After our rest we headed back to Hollywood Studios for our dinner reservation at the Sci-Fi Dine In Theatre. I really enjoy this restaurant! We had to wait a little bit before being seated as it was rather busy, but it wasn't too long before we were being shown to the back seat of one of the cars.

The only little gripe I have with this restaurant is that I wish they would change up the movies every so often, as both times we have gone the loop has been exactly the same. But hey, if that's the only gripe I have then they are doing well!

We both grabbed a milkshake as our drink as they are delicious here!

For my starter I got the Crispy Chicken Tenders and Steve went with the Spinach and Artichoke Dip. Both of these were really tasty.

For the mains Steve had the Buffalo Chicken Salad and I had the Classic American Burger... yes I know that's 2 burgers in the one day for me, but I actually enjoyed the Sci Fi burger better than the Brown Derby one.

As this was our third big meal of the day we didn’t feel overly hungry for dessert, so we both just went with the fruit salad.

The Sci-Fi Dine In never fails to disappoint, it really is just good tasty food!

After dinner we had a little bit of time to kill before heading over to Fantasmic so we went back to the Muppets shop where I picked up a nice Jack Skellington hoodie I had eyed off earlier in the day.

I am terrible when it comes to impulse purchases, so I have a rule that I try to follow when I’m at Disney in that if I see something I want, I won’t buy it on the spot instead I will deliberately wait a while (usually a day where I can) and if I still really want the item, I’ll get it. Obviously this doesn’t always work if we aren’t going to be going back to that park during the trip, but even so I will wait until the end of that day to make the purchase. The only exception to this rule is when I come across a Disney sketch that I like, I'll always purchase those on the spot as they aren’t mass produced so if i wait until the end of the day to get it, it might be gone. I’m starting to build a nice collection of the Disney sketches, already have 3 up on a wall at home and will definitely be buying more on our next trip.

We made our way over to Fantasmic and joined the crowds of people heading up the path. With dining package tickets we got to miss a lot of the crowds and ended up getting a great seat! We could have sat right down the front, as there were not many people in the dining package seating area when we arrived, but we didn’t want to get wet and also wanted more of an overall view of the show.

While we were sitting there with the crowd growing around us, a drunk guy got up the front and tried to rev the crowd up quite unsuccessfully!

Finally Fantasmic started and as always the show did not disappoint. It’s such a fun and entertaining show and a hard one to get decent photos of! Next trip I’ll have to take along my bigger camera to get some better shots!

Mickey defeated the dragon and performed his final disappearing trick and then it was time for us to make our way out of the park. They opened up one of the secondary exit routes and so we got to make our way through one of the slightly backstage routes, which was kinda cool.

We made our way out of the park and headed back to Disney Springs to grab the last couple of souvenirs we wanted, which included those Haunted Mansion statues I mentioned earlier in this report that I had to have!

Here they are on display in our lounge room.

They are sat right next to the two Haunted Mansion Tiki mugs that were released earlier this year. As soon as I saw photos of them on Instagram I knew I had to have them...I will admit I paid way too much for them, but so glad I did.

After we had bought everything we wanted to we headed back to the resort, grabed a quick snack, continued packing and then went to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a sad day, the final day of our trip.

 

[harddrive]

Day 7 - Part 1

We got up this morning feeling sad, as I’m sure everyone does on their last day , but that didn’t last too long when we remembered that we still had a few special friends to meet at breakfast this morning.

It was an early start for us as we had to finish the last of our packing and make sure that we got us and our bags checked in at the resort for our flights home (and have our bags taken straight to the airport for us). I didn’t realise that Disney offered this service until Steve mentioned it to me, but it was great, it meant we didn't have to be at the airport super early for our fight to check in which really meant more park time!

After we were all checked in we made our way to the TTC and boarded the monorail to get to the Magic Kingdom for our pre-park opening breakfast reservation at Crystal Palace.

There seemed to be a lot more people who had PPO reservations this year than there were last year, don’t know if there were just more reservations available this year or if when we did our PPO last year it was just a quiet day, but it did mean we couldn’t get a clean shot of the castle without crowds around, ah well.

After checking in for breakfast we were shown to a great seat in the greenhouse. It really is a lovely building and definitely well suited for Pooh and the gang.

The breakfast food on offer was your standard Disney Breakfast buffet offerings, but as we were in the first sitting of the day it was all very fresh and hot. I think both Steve and I had about 3 or 4 plates of food, varying from savory to sweet items.

Pooh, Tigger and Eeyore all came around and visited quite quickly which was a nice change from some character buffets in which characters can take a while to make the rounds, but unfortunately Piglet seemed to miss us on both of her rounds so we had a quick chat to one of the handlers and they got her to quickly come over and say hi.

Once we had finished saying hi to Piglet we made our way out of the restaurant and managed to have a bit of a look around the main stage in front of the castle.

 

[harddrive]

Day 7 - Part 2

Our first fastpass of the day was for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. As always it is such a nice ride, and being so early in the morning we were on and off quickly.

Despite the number of people who entered the park with us for their PPO breakfasts, the rides were surprisingly quiet. After Seven Dwarves we made our way over to the Haunted Mansion as it was a walk on. We made a quick stop at the Tangled restrooms and because of how quiet it was, I didn’t feel like a creep taking a quick pic of the Wanted posters! These restrooms really are the most themed in all of the parks that we have visited.

As it was so empty in the queue for Haunted Mansion I finally got to snap a couple of good pictures of the theming they have done here.

Next we trekked across the park for our next fastpass, which was on Space Mountain. We were so relieved to see it wasn’t down again like our first day in the park!

We had a bit of time to kill before our last fastpass for the day so we went for a ride on the People Mover. I really enjoy travelling around on this just looking at all of the different views and observing people mulling around.

We spent a bit of time wandering around Main Street and looking in a bunch of the shops to get the last of the purchases we wanted for this trip. Steve did most of the shopping this time and picked up a nice phone cover, that he’s still using today, and also a couple of shirts.

It was time for our last fastpass which was our last ride for this trip. When making our fastpasses for this trip we had decided that on our last day the 3 passes would be for the 3 coasters in Magic Kingdom, so naturally our last one was Big Thunder Mountain. It was sad jumping on the ride knowing it was our last, but we knew that we would be back at some point in the future!

Our last meal for the trip was an early lunch and we managed to score a reservation for Be Our Guest. I know i’ve said it before, but the theming in this area is great. I love the forced perspective Castle on the hill even if the trees look a bit sad!

We decided to sit in the Rose Gallery as it was a bit quieter in there.

We both ordered the Croque Monsieur as it was the simplest thing on the menu to us, and after our large breakfast we didn’t want a huge meal.

The meal was ok, the grilled sandwiches themselves were a little soggy and neither of us finished our meals . I know that some people have said that the food at BOG is hit and miss, which seems to be true as we didn’t have any issues with the food the 2 times we dined there in our previous trip. Hopefully our next trip the food will be back up to standard.

So with our final meal finished and our final ride done, it was time for us to leave the park. However on our way our we saw the infamous crane hiding away. Luckily he didn't come out during our trip and ruin any photos!

Also as we were passing by the side of the castle we saw Daisy and Flynn waiting to go onstage, Daisy was her normal sassy self posing for photos and even waving to us a couple of times.

Goodbye train station, don’t worry we will be back soon!

We decided to take the monorail back to the TTC, which was a nice way to finish.

After filling the hire car with petrol we made our way to the airport for our long trip home. We had another flight cancellation, which meant that we now had to do an extra domestic flight. This was a detour through Houston before making it back to LA and then boarding the long flight back to Australia.

Friends of ours back home thought we were crazy for not only going back to Disney after only having been there the previous year, but also travelling all that way for such a short amount of time. Although this was only a short trip, it was still very enjoyable for us. The flight cancellations and delays both going there and coming home were annoying at the time but didn’t really affect the overall trip too much.

So with this trip now behind us we have almost finished packing for our next trip and leave on Jan 1st 2019! So here’s a few details on it. We will be doing both Disneyland and Disney World in a 3 week trip. We are spending 5 days at Disneyland and then a huge 14 days at Disney World. Both of us are really looking forward to all of the dining we will be able to do, visiting both restaurants we have enjoyed before and new ones we haven't had the chance to try yet... plus a few other special events too!

So thank you for following along and reading this trip report, and stay tuned for our next one in the new year!