Coast to Coast 2014 - part two About This Page:

[Silvercat]

DAY FIFTEEN – Saturday 08 November

Plan : Leave the villa, move to Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort

Actual : After another good night's sleep, we were up at 8.00 a.m. to pack up and leave our lovely villa today. We didn't pack properly, just threw everything into the cases, as we wouldn't be flying and would be unpacking again later today. We loaded up our Owner's Locker box again, had quick showers and some toast, and were loading up the car by 10.30 a.m. As we left, someone from the management company was sitting outside in a van, waiting to come in and clean up ready for the next guest! We had stripped the beds and left the towels in a heap, as instructed, and also left the garbage bagged up in the garage. Other than that, the place was clean and tidy, as there had only been the two of us there all week and we are quite respectful of other people's property.

We drove one junction down the I4, and followed the directions to Saratoga Springs, although this was our second stay at this resort so we mostly knew the way, anyway! There was quite a queue for check-in, but it moved quickly, and we were really excited to get our lovely box containing our Magic Bands, in colours we had picked and with our names inside! I also asked if they had a package for me, as I was expecting one, and they did. (This was a box containing 4 packs of ground coffee, Disney Resorts & Parks Blend, from Joffrey's Coffee. The company, who supply Disney Resorts and parks with coffee, and whose coffee we love, do sell to individuals; however, they don't ship outside the USA, so several emails and a very friendly telephone call later, and we had had some shipped to the resort for our collection on arrival! We got 2 packs for ourselves, and 2 packs for my parents as a Christmas gift!)

Our room was not ready, but we didn't expect it to be as it was still early. We dropped off our cases at Bell Services, and then walked round to Artist's Palette for lunch. DH got a turkey club wrap, chips, M&M cookie, and apple juice. I had a lobster & bacon sandwich, chips, chocolate milk, and a Mickey Premium Ice-Cream Bar, which I said I would collect after I had eaten my sandwich. Lunch was really tasty, and yay for the free Dining Plan! I went back up and showed my receipt to the Cast Member on the till so I could get my ice cream. I was sitting and really enjoying this ice cream, when DH suddenly said to me, "how old are you?" I have no idea why, but I said, "5!" He agreed I was indeed 5 years old, as I had ice cream and chocolate all over my face at that point!

We got our refillable mugs, with a new design on them, and different coloured lids – I got red, he got blue, and we then filled them with coffee, before leaving to drive to Celebration. DH had never been there before, and I had only visited it briefly many years ago, (driving through and not stopping), so we really wanted to have a good look round there.

We easily found somewhere to park in a side street, and walked around the stores a little, before strolling round the lake. It was so pretty there! The weather was very hot and sunny, there were turtles (a lot of them!) sunning themselves in the lake, and we were so happy and content. We walked all the way round the big lake, then over a little bridge and found another, smaller lake, where we sat for a little while and discussed our future plans of buying property in the USA, with a view to moving there eventually. It was so lovely to be there. We walked back towards the car, and then found a little square with benches and trees in it – DH went over the road to the car and collected our mugs of coffee, and we sat in the square and enjoyed cold coffee.

At around 3.30 p.m., we got back in the car and drove back to Saratoga Springs; luckily, our room was now ready. We had requested a room in the Paddock area, which is where we stayed before, as we really loved the convenience of being able to walk to Downtown, but our room this time was in the Grandstand area, which was on the total opposite side of the resort. It didn't really matter, we were just happy to be there.

We found our room, dragged all of our luggage in, and made some coffee which we sat on our balcony to drink. We did some unpacking, and relaxed for a while. Around 7.00 p.m. we headed out again, and drove to Fort Wilderness Campground for our first dining reservation this year at Trail's End at 8.00 p.m. We were seated on time, after a short wait, and thoroughly enjoyed our fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, and mac & cheese. I also had a BBQ pork rib that was sweet and smoky, and DH added potato salad, slice of pizza, coleslaw, green salad, tomato, and dressings. We followed that with red velvet cake and banana pudding, (me), and apple cobbler and pumpkin cheesecake, (DH). We also got Sprite and pomegranate lemonade, (which I am still not overly keen on, and always forget this!). We were well and truly stuffed after all this!

After dinner, we went for a slow stroll round, and it was cooler and sprinkling with a little rain by now. Fortunately, I had brought my pink Disneyland jacket with me. We had a look round the small store near Trail's End, and two Cast Members separately asked me if my jacket was a genuine Disneyland one, as I suppose they expected to see Walt Disney World on the back of it! We told them we were just there two weeks ago, and they seemed quite impressed.

We didn't buy anything, and then walked down to the beach. It was still sprinkling with rain, so we dragged a couple of chairs under the canopy of a nearby building so we could watch the events. Several other folk saw this and did the same. (Normally, we sit on the beach to watch stuff!) The Electrical Parade came past after a while, and then a few minutes later, the fireworks began to explode over the Magic Kingdom. The playback on the soundtrack nearby was a bit quiet though, and people were talking a lot, so it was a bit hard to hear the music and narration. It was still a lovely show though, and we loved it.

When this was over, we walked back to the bus stop, caught a bus back to the Outpost Depot, collected the car, and drove back to Saratoga Spring, where we watched a little TV before bed.

DAY SIXTEEN – Sunday 09 November

Plan : Epcot, Food & Wine Festival

Actual : Stupid alarm clock! I have never been able to work the alarm clocks at Disney resorts, I have no idea how to set the time correctly or how to set an alarm. I thought I had set the alarm for 7.30 a.m., and it went off at 5.00 a.m.! I turned it off and went back to sleep, vowing to get the little travel alarm that we had brought with us out of the case and set up later today.

We managed to wake up at around 7.30 a.m., and got ourselves ready for the day. As we drove to Epcot, managing to keep the Swolphin game well and truly alive, I saw a quite big deer at the edge of the undergrowth on the grass verge! I christening him Bambi, and we sincerely hoped the gators wouldn't get him ….. (We had visions of driving past here again tomorrow, and seeing just bits of bloody stump lying in the grass …..)

We arrived at our favourite Disney theme park, and parked up quite easily. We held hands and entered Epcot! (I tried not to cry this time, unlike last year!) Bag check was quick, and the lines at the gates were reasonable, although we did our usual thing of heading as far left or right as possible, as most folk just head for the middle gates.

We walked round to the Land pavilion, and Soarin' was already showing as a 60 min standby wait, so we ignored that and rode Living with the Land, one of our favourite attractions, with a mere 5 min wait. The plants in the greenhouses change every year that we visit, so it is always nice to see what is new in there. There was still a 9 pound lemon tree, though – I would love to get my hands on one of those babies!

Breakfast at Sunshine Seasons was next. DH got a slice of pumpkin cheesecake, and I had a strawberry shortcake, got with snack credits. I paid for coffee out of pocket. We reckoned that pumpkin and strawberries = fruit & veg for breakfast!

After breakfast, we re-rode Living with the Land, though it was up to a 15 min wait now, so afterwards we headed back across the park to Test Track and went through the single rider queue, with a 10 min wait. We noticed that we got to design a basic car this time, when before the single rider just gets allocated a car, with no design input – odd.

It was now time for our first FP+, on Spaceship Earth. The queue there was up to 15 mins standby, but we whisked up the side of that and were on in a matter of minutes. Lovely! We really are pulling some very strange faces in our ride photo ….

It was by now approaching 11.00 a.m., so we walked across the bridge into World Showcase for the Food & Wine Festival. We had previously decided that if the items were more than $4 each, we would use snack credits; otherwise, we would pay out of pocket, apart from coffee or glasses of wine, which we always paid out of pocket for anyway.

We had decided to go round anti-clockwise, for a change, as we normally start with Mexico. The first booth we visited was Scotland, where DH had salmon and a potato pancake, and I got a scallop and cheesy spinach with bacon. I hate salmon, but DH said this was delicious; I loved my dish though, I had never had scallop before and really liked it, but the outstanding hit for me was the cheesy spinach with bacon – it was yummy! There were no tables available, so we balanced our food plates on top of a trash-can. Not ideal, but it was all there was.

Canada was next, for Cheddar Cheese Soup, (DH), and Mushroom Filet (me). I am not a fan of this soup, and realised that so far, DH has got to sample both my dishes, and I haven't had any of his yet! I think this was a ploy, so he got to eat all of his and some of mine!

We passed the United Kingdom, as we can get fish & chips any time we like, and walked over the bridge to France, where DH picked up a Pasta Gratin, and I got the Short Beef Rib with mashed potatoes. Both of these were very good indeed, and our favourites so far.

We were a bit full by now, and our next FP+ time was approaching, so we took a slow walk back the way we had just come, and went to Test Track with our FP+s. Now, when you FastPass Test Track, you used to get to design the basic car, but we were given the whole shebang this time, complete design freedom – this has clearly changed since last year. This is what we worked it out to be :-

2013 2014
Single Rider – no design, allocated car from stock Single Rider – design basic car
Fast Pass – design basic car Fast Pass – full design
Standby – full design Standby – full design.

We think this is because now the FastPass line integrates with the standby line, resulting in much longer waits for both standby and FastPass queues, and they have done away with the 'no design at all' option. Anyway, we noticed that the FastPass queues were much, much longer for all the FP+ rides now than they used to be – this is particularly noticeable on rides such as this one and Soarin', where the FP+ line can extend right out to beside Sunshine Seasons!

We opted to design a car with minimal power but maximum efficiency, and made it pink and cute. We do love doing this, and usually alternate between designs so we get a different experience each time. Fun! And still DH's favourite ride of all time, anywhere. (Although Radiator Springs Racers was now a close second to this!)

Next was Mission Space (Green) with FP+, which is always great fun, as once again I convince myself we really are flying to Mars, and am severely disappointed when we emerge back on Earth again.

We walked to the Festival Centre after this, and picked up a Food & Wine Festival t-shirt for DH, but couldn't find a pin. We got our free samples from Ghirardelli's, (mini caramel again), and looked at all the lovely chocolate sculptures. We also bought a couple of bottles of wine, like last year – a bottle of Key Limen for me, and Mango for him, and had them sent to the front of the park for collection later tonight. (I always panic that we are going to forget to pick them up before we leave!) As people who don't really drink much, we absolutely LOVE this wine, and the bottle of Key Limen I had last year lasted me for ages at home, as I kept it in the fridge, sealed with a gorgeous bat stanchion (from the Haunted Mansion) wine bottle stopper; DH only had sachets last year, so was upgraded to a whole bottle this year!

We walked back round to the Joffrey's Coffee stand near Test Track, got 2 cups of coffee, and sat on a nearby bench to rest and enjoy our drinks.

It was now nearly time to meet up with our online friends. About 10 or 11 years ago, I used to avidly read lots of different people's online trip reports – although, actually, I still do this! But I began reading ones by a woman, (Robin), that I really enjoyed. Her style of writing was funny, interesting, informative, and so detailed that I always felt that I was on the trip with her. She was very good at picking out the tiny details of Disney that I loved, and we seemed to have very similar personalities – she loved the exact same things at Disney World that I did. Robin lived in Texas, and as my brother lives there too, I felt we had some kind of tentative connection! Anyway, we began corresponding by email, and continued this for many years. We also used to send each other messages on one of the Disney fan websites, which is where we had originally met. Around the same time, I was also reading trip reports written by a guy, (Larry), and also enjoyed his funny and irreverent sense of humour, and his way of looking at Disney parks, which was quite different to anyone else's.

The upshot was that those two got together, got married at Disney World, and moved around the world a bit. I kept in touch with both of them, and then lo and behold, Facebook was born! Cue more messaging, 'friending', and generally getting to know each other a bit better. I also became aware of Robin's lovely and very funny sister, Paula, thanks to Facebook.

Robin and Larry were due to go to Walt Disney World in September 2014, but then Robin had a bit of a medical hiccup and ended up having to postpone their trip a little. When they rebooked the trip, both Robin and I realised that we would be in the World at the same time as each other! We had to meet up, after all these years of online friendships, it would be silly not to.

We added each other to our My Disney Experience accounts as 'friends', which meant we could view each other's plans, and realised that for the first 4 days of our overlapping trip, we had planned to visit the same parks as each other! Unfortunately, by this point, I still hadn't managed to get to get any credit for my USA phone, but we did exchange various messages on Facebook, and finally, a few days before they arrived in Florida, we arranged a meeting time and place.

So this was now the time, 4.00 p.m. on Sunday 09 November, and the place was near the British Revolution performance stage in the UK pavilion in Epcot. We walked round to the designated meeting place, and I began to panic I wouldn't recognise Robin – I only knew her from photos, what if I didn't recognise her at all? I needed have worried, however. As we rounded the corner and approached some benches, a very glamorous blonde began waving frantically at me – it was Robin! She was on the phone, but waving like a mad woman! As we got to her, she ended her phone call and we gave each other the biggest hug – it was brilliant to finally meet up with her. She explained that Larry had just gone for a quick ride on Test Track, and would be back soon, so we sat down on a bench with her and it was like we had known each other forever – I couldn't believe how well we got on.

Larry came back, and we greeted him with enthusiasm, although he seemed a bit reserved at first. Robin told us that he had said that morning that if they decided they didn't like us, they never had to see us again, which was why he didn't mind meeting up that day! He was horrified that she told us that, but we just laughed at him. Robin's sister Paula turned up, along with her very tired hubby Wes, who was almost asleep on his feet. They had all only arrived at 2.00 a.m. that morning, thanks to a very delayed flight, and had still got up early to come to Epcot.

We sat and chatted for over 2 hours, the British Revolution played for a bit but we mostly ignored them, being too busy talking and getting to know each other to pay them much attention! I think the guys listened to them a bit, and poor Wes curled up in a ball on the floor, and fell asleep! We poked him occasionally to make sure he was still alive, but then left him to it, despite the fact that his head was in a small puddle. He seemed comfy enough.

Larry and DH got talking about photography, a subject they are both very interested in, while Robin and I, with a little help from Paula, just talked and talked. Larry suggested taking a ride on Spaceship Earth together to inject a little more Britishness in the form of Dame Judy Dench into the proceedings, but no-one took him seriously and we just laughed at him. Eventually, we parted company to go off and do different things, but before we did, we made tentative arrangements to meet up again tomorrow at the Magic Kingdom. We were a bit vague about the plans, as we both had FP+ to work around, and we also had the dining plan in there somewhere, (they were only on the Basic Dining Plan, so didn't have table-service reservations to deal with!), and I also still couldn't be contacted by phone, so we arranged to meet around 3.15-3.30 p.m. behind the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train ride.

We hugged goodbye, and headed off round World Showcase via France. At the Hops & Barley Food & Wine Festival stand, DH got an Artisan Cheese Plate, which he loved. I waited till we got to Italy, where we both got a serving of cheese ravioli. This was really good, and a generous portion – it may have been my favourite item so far!

China was next, where we got duck in a steamed bun with hoisin sauce. I loved the duck and sauce, but REALLY hated the bun - it was too soft and soggy for me. DH liked all of it, so had my bun too! We moved onto Florida Local, where I bought us a glass each of the Key Limen wine that I adore, and DH also got a serving of peppered potato hash, which he really liked. I had a taste and thought it was okay, but very peppery.

We were more or less done now, but made the mistake of being a bit over-ambitious and stopping at the Fife & Drum stand to get ice-cream sundaes with Ghirardelli sauce. These were listed as a special on the Food & Wine Festival menu, but were not available as snack credits, so I just paid for them. With hindsight, we should have either shared one of these as they were HUGE, or just skipped them altogether, as we were quite full anyway. They were absolutely gorgeous, but they left DH feeling really over-full and eventually quite nauseous. We slowly continued our way round World Showcase, stopping in Morocco for me to take a restroom break and DH to sit and groan on a low wall for a few minutes.

I gave him an anti-nausea tablet as I usually have these on me, and he began to feel better quite quickly, so we continued our walk round until we reached Spaceship Earth. We decided to collect the bottles of wine from package pickup, and take them back to the car as it wasn't that far away, and we could also drop off DH's rucksack and camera bag to give him a rest from carrying all that. There were already a couple of people in the package pickup area, but it didn't take us long to get our bottles of wine, and we duly took everything back to the car.

Back into Epcot we then went, and as Spaceship Earth was a straight walk-on, we did. The face-pulling for the camera is beginning to get a little extreme!

As the night drew on, the weather had changed a little, with some cloud moving in and a few spots of rain, but nothing too dramatic, and we weren't cold, so we began an anti-clockwise stroll around the lagoon to find a space to view Illuminations, which wasn't on until 10.00 p.m. The park wasn't as full as we were expecting for a weekend night, especially this close to the end of the Food & Wine Festival, and we managed to find ourselves a nice bit of fence to lean on just before Germany, to watch the show. I don't think I will ever be able to watch this wonderful show without welling up! The lasers seemed particularly bright to us, more so than previously, and in fact new equipment was being used at that point, but we didn't know this at the time. There also seemed to be a lot of pink fireworks being used, something we had noticed last night as we watched Wishes from the beach at Fort Wilderness campground. Last year there had been an abundance of orange fireworks, and now this year, it was a lovely pale pink that we saw a lot of!

After the show had finished, we decided against our usual tradition of walking in the opposite direction to the crowds and having one last walk around the lagoon, because although DH was feeling lots better, we were very tired by now, so we exited with the hordes and headed back to Saratoga Springs for a little TV and then bed!

DAY SEVENTEEN – Monday 10 November

Plan : Magic Kingdom

Actual : We were up bright and early this morning, and after showers and coffee, drove to the Ticket & Transportation Centre, where we parked the car and caught Monorail Peach to the Magic Kingdom.

We began our day with the traditional family breakfast when at the Magic Kingdom, and went into Goofy's Candy Company for rice krispie treats. Ooh, they have new ones – with peanut butter chips! Yum! We got these with snack credits, and sat on a bench around the corner, by the Caricature Artist, to eat them. Some kind of dance parade went past us while we were there, these things seem to haunt us every year – one year it was High School Musical that we saw a thousand times, another year it was Minnie's something or other involving dancing parcels. Anyway, it wasn't unpleasant, and I think we saw Mickey Mouse at the end of it.

So Pirates of the Caribbean was first on our list, and we whisked in there with our FP+, and not much wait at all really. We were pleasantly surprised to see that mist on the water had been added to the scene with Blackbeard and the big boats, just like in Disneyland! It really adds to the atmosphere, we thought it was great. I nearly got shot in that scene though, I felt something whizz past my ear and then there was a splash next to me!

As we came out, we browsed the gift shop and I bought a small skull on a key-ring, to hang jauntily from my handbag. I told the CM that I should have stolen it really, this being a pirate shop and all, and he just stared at me, sighed theatrically, and produced a bright red, toy pistol from under the counter, which he pointed at me!! I promptly handed over my $6, and we laughingly exited. I love it when CM's join in with a joke or play along with you!

We walked round to the Haunted Mansion, joined the 15 min standby queue, and thoroughly enjoyed our Doom Buggy journey. After this, we excitedly went into the new store there, Memento Mori – we had been really looking forward to seeing what they had in here, after we had seen a few Haunted Mansion items for sale in World of Disney last year. There were too many good things in here we wanted to get! We were inspired enough by the various items to seriously reconsider the forthcoming redecoration of our front room at home, and decided that it would be really lovely to decorate the room in shades of purple and black, then get some cushions, candlesticks, throws, etc to dress the room up with.

Still discussing this prospect, we left, knowing we would be back later in the week to actually buy stuff, and headed round to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad as we were in our FP+ window now. The ride was great fun, as always, and we loved the fact that this was the third incarnation of this ride that we had experienced this year!

We were very hot by now, and the park was quite crowded, so I suggested we visit an area that we have never been to before – Tom Sawyer Island. There was no queue for the next raft, so we started one! We had a fantastic time on the Island – we explored the mine, the fort, the trails around the island, and we wound up sitting in rocking chairs on a covered porch, waving at folk on the Liberty Belle riverboat, and just relaxing for a little while. There was a short rain shower while we sat there!

Eventually, we decided we ought to get some lunch, so we caught a raft back to the mainland, and went to the Columbia Harbour House. There was quite a long queue, but it was going down quite quickly. DH had a lobster roll, fries and coffee, and I had an Anchors Aweigh sandwich (tuna), fries and chocolate milk. We both got peach cobbler for dessert. It was all really good, this is one of our favourite counter service restaurants at Disney World.

After lunch, it was time for our next FP+ - the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train! This was to be our first ride, and we were really excited about this. We strolled across to Fantasyland, and entered the FP+ queue, which moved really quickly and deposited us at the front of the standby queue area. WOW! We LOVED this ride! It was faster and more thrilling than I was expecting, (some of the drops made me squeal a bit!), and we loved the way it slows right down to take you through the diamond mine, as I thought we would be through there too quickly to see anything. We had great fun while going up one incline, pointing each other out to the hungry vultures at the top of the hill! The little cottage at the end with Snow White dancing with the Dwarf's is also really cute. The track is incredibly smooth, and the gentle swaying of the carriages adds to the smoothness. The whole thing was fantastic!

The only minor downside is the seating – the seats themselves, although a little snug, aren't too bad really. But the bar that goes over your upper thighs is very narrow, and it dug into DH's legs quite badly. He wasn't very happy about it, and we both thought it was odd that as folk are generally getting bigger, Disney would spend a lot of money developing and building a ride that would not easily accommodate anyone who was more Pooh-sized, or tall (DH is 6'2"). Anyway, it wasn't enough to stop him from wanting to experience the ride again, or from loving the theming and speed of the ride.

We walked round to the back of the ride to see if we could spot Robin, as we were supposed to be meeting them there today, but the times were a bit hazy in my head. I couldn't remember what time their FP+ was for the Mine Train, (I had written all ours down in a little notepad, as I wasn't using my UK phone in the parks), and my USA phone still had no credit, so I couldn't call or text her. We walked back and forth for about 20 mins, but in the end we had to leave and we missed them. (I found out the next day that Robin was arriving as we left, and we just missed each other!).

We headed round to Fantasyland Train Station, and just like in Disneyland, battled our way through the strollers to get to the queue. A train arrived shortly afterwards, and we watched a family trying to get the CM to let them use the handicapped space on the train so they didn't have to wake their little Princess up, get her out of the stroller, fold up the stroller as instructed previously, and sit in the bench seats like the rest of us. Quite rightly, the CM refused them this request. We boarded, and rode the train all the way round the park.

We got off back at the same station, and looked around the Storybook Circus area, which we both love the theming of. This bit of the park was extremely crowded though, so we bypassed Dumbo and went into the big, circus-tent store. I was thinking I would have loved to get something with one of the Storybook Circus posters on it, the one I love has The Great Goofini juggling with tigers, (look at the tigers' faces – Goofy is so going to get shredded!), and my second favourite is the one with Lambert the Sheepish Lion, but I couldn't find anything with either of these on it. DH had decided that his great pin collection this year would be a Mickey ears-shaped flag of each nation represented at Epcot's World Showcase, so every store we went into became a flag hunt, and in this one he managed to find 8 of the 11 he would need! He was happy, and went off to pay for these, while I made a list of what he was buying and what we then still needed to get.

We next walked to Tomorrowland, and the TTA, another of our favourites. There was quite a queue for this, surprisingly! We enjoyed our trip, and when we got off, we walked round the edge and straight back on again, as the queue had gone down a lot.

Carousel of Progress was next, with no wait as they were loading up straight away. Unfortunately, not only was the sound awfully low in here, (DH, who is a theatre technician, was muttering something about digitising the sound to improve the quality), but there was a screaming baby in there too! The poor mother stood up to try and take him out, but then got yelled at to sit down by a CM, so she just had to sit at the back and try to pacify him. I felt really sorry for the mother.

We do love this attraction, but agree that it needs a little updating now.

Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin was showing as a 15 min standby, so we did that, although it was a constantly moving queue and only took about 5 mins. DH won by a HUGE margin, again – I used to be really good at this ride, I have no idea what is going on now!

We walked slowly round Tomorrowland a bit to take some photos, then stood on the bridge and listened to the Frozen stage show – the view was blocked by lots of other people, and some big trees! We really only wanted to see the Castle Lighting Ceremony anyway, which was now being done by Elsa, and was so lovely – all sparkly and frosty, just gorgeous!

The Magic Kingdom was closing early for a Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party tonight, and Main Street was now really packed with folk leaving the park or arriving for the Party, so we struggled down Main Street and into the Emporium. We checked for the 3 pins that DH now needed, but no joy. We did, however, pick up some Little Mermaid charms for him – the zip fastener handles had broken off his rucksack some time ago, and it was really difficult to do up and undo without them, so I had the bright idea of clipping some tiny charms on there for him!

We left the park after this, catching the ferry boat back to the T&TC and our car. We drove back to Saratoga Springs, picked up my phone from our room, and then went to the Turf Club for our dinner reservation. We were seated quickly, which was good as we were starving by then! Our seats were outside, in a lovely area with a really nice view across to Downtown, and by a patio heater. (We noticed a lot of these particularly shaped patio heaters all over the place at Disney World this year, we reckon they got a job lot from somewhere!)

DH ordered a crispy chicken breast, served with 3-cheese macaroni & cheese, and green beans, followed by a chocolate espresso torte, and Sprite. I had the prime rib, followed by seasonal fruit crisp (apple & cranberry), and a vanilla milkshake. It was all really, really good. I don't normally have prime rib, I would usually go for the grilled New York strip, but I found that sometimes a spicy rub is added to that, plus I had really enjoyed the short beef rib that I had a small portion of yesterday in France, so I thought I would try the prime rib, and it was gorgeous! Definitely the right choice for me. DH really enjoyed his too, although I thought his dessert was really rich, and I was glad I hadn't had that, (I nearly did!). I didn't finish all my dessert, it was really delicious but I was just too full, which was a shame.

We 'paid' with the dining plan, left a tip, and went back to the car. We drove to the Super Wal-Mart that we really like, down the 192, to get a little shopping. The main priority was to get some credit for the blessed phone, but they didn't have anything at all for it! We did get some pumpkin spice Ghirardelli squares for DH, he loves these and was worried he wouldn't be able to get them in the Ghirardelli store in Downtown Disney, as it was past Halloween now. (He was right to be worried, they didn't have them on our trip there in a few days!) We also got some sugar-free drinks flavour powders, as we were running low (we had had some in our Owner's Locker box, left over from last year), and I picked up a couple of small tubs of pumpkin spice too. Last year, I had bought a tiny sachet of this spice mix from Disney's kitchen store at Downtown, and used it at home when I made a fruit loaf. It was really delicious, but very expensive to buy that way, so I had wondered if I could get it from a supermarket in the spices section. It turned out that I could indeed get a much larger amount of exactly the same mix of spices, for less money, so I bought two from here, (the last 2 on the shelf!).

We then drove to Super Target, where I was able to get $25 worth of phone credit – yay! (Although I had only been looking for about $15 worth, but I was desperate at this point!) We also got another couple of tubs of pumpkin spice.

Back to Saratoga Springs we went, I put the phone on charge and happily entered the pin code to add the credit. A message appeared on the phone to say the SIM card had expired. Aargh!

I gave up for the night, we watched a little TV, and went to bed.

DAY EIGHTEEN – Tuesday 11 November

Plan : Animal Kingdom

Actual : After another good night's sleep, we got up and did our usual shower/coffee routine. (See, I say this, but what actually happened was that I tended to get up first, quietly put the coffee machine on to brew, and then have a shower, get dried and applied various moisturising lotions etc., did my hair, poured the coffee, and then DH would finally stir, crawl out of bed, and be showered and ready within about 10 minutes. Why can men do this when we can't? Not fair). Anyway, we needed to do some online stuff this morning, send emails etc, so we quickly got this done and then drove to Animal Kingdom.

We had an early lunch booked at Tusker House, which we were looking forward to, as we hadn't eaten here before. As it was Veteran's Day, the park was absolutely packed, and it was very hot indeed, so we just meandered slowly round for a bit, not really doing anything, until it was time for our dining reservation.

We checked in for our 11.15 a.m. reservation, and were seated quickly, in a side room off the main dining hall. We hadn't realised this was a character meal! We were visited by Daisy Duck, which was lovely as you don't normally get to meet her, followed by Goofy, then Mickey himself. Donald Duck came towards our room, and I was just about to draw DH's attention to this as he was sat with his back to the doorway, when Donald made shushing movements at me. He then snuck up behind DH, and stood there quietly with two fingers up behind DH's head like bunny ears! I grabbed his camera and took a quick shot before DH had any idea what was going on, and then Donald and I had a good laugh about this! It was really funny, and great fun to interact with a character in this way.

The food was really nice, we had roasted ham, green beans, basmati rice with lemon, corndog nuggets, and a biscuit. DH got quiche, salad, garlic mashed potatoes, and some other stuff that I couldn't identify. What was nice was that because it was a buffet, we could try bite-sized portions of food that we wouldn't normally have chosen a full-size portion of, not being sure whether we would like it or not. He had Sprite, and I got a glass of chocolate milk, which amused our server somewhat – I don't think he was used to adults ordering chocolate milk, but I do only drink this when I am at a Disney park, honestly! The desserts were lovely – cherry & apple cobbler, tiny lemon tarts, brownies, pecan slices, chocolate volcano cake, coconut macaroons, all were really good. We were so glad we tried this restaurant!

After lunch, we walked the Pangani trail, although most of it was closed off for refurbishment. We spent ages watching the gorilla family, and they were fed while we were there too, which was interesting to watch. I got chatting to a CM there who knew a lot about this family, and she taught me so much about gorillas. There were two tiny babies in there, one was 3 months old and one was 4 months old, and you could tell which was which by the way their mothers held them – the younger one is held horizontally, in the palm of her hand, whilst the one that is a month older is able to cling to her mother, so she was held vertically. There was also a 4 year old female in there who was playing up hugely – she had been the baby of the group until her new brother arrived, and she didn't like it, throwing tantrums, stealing all the food, and generally behaving very badly!

As we were leaving there, we were just commenting to each other how cramped the park felt, because there were a huge number of construction walls everywhere, meaning that walkways were very narrowed and there were fewer animal enclosures on view, when we bumped into Larry! We hugged him hello, and he directed us to Robin, who was seated near the entrance to the trail. (He did seem much more open and friendly today, I think he was just a bit reserved when we first met him as he is shy and didn't know us very well.) Anyway, he was in a very good mood as he had just found out he had been offered a job he had been interviewed for a few days ago, which was great news.

We spotted Robin, who was sitting on a bench but turned away from us and talking to Wes. I crept up beside her and sat next to her, very close. She instinctively moved up a little, thinking that I needed more room, so I shuffled against her again. She turned round to see who this weird person was who was snuggled up next to her, and burst out laughing as I laid my head on her shoulder! We chatted for a little while, I apologised that we had missed them yesterday, and we discussed the Swolphin game, which had been something she used to play with her family and we had adopted a few years ago. (In case you don't know, it goes like this : the first person each day to spot either the Swan or Dolphin resort hotels shouts out, "SWOLPHIN!" and thereby becomes the winner. There is no prize, and a celebratory arm-punch is optional, depending on whether either of you is driving and you have a death-wish or not). Simple, yet satisfying!

Anyway, we arranged to meet up the next day at the Hollywood Studios for dinner at the Backlot Express, before watching Fantasmic, possibly together, and parted company for today. I was so happy to have met up with them again though!

Our FP+ window for the Safari was open, so we headed over there. The FastPass queue was huge, it looked longer than the standby line, which was showing as 30 mins! There were extra CMs at the head of the queue with portable scanners, to try and get everyone's FastPasses scanned quickly. We got chatting to a lovely couple from Canada as we queued, they were around our age and really friendly.

The safari was fun, although we couldn't see any lions at all, but lots of other animals were around. We were sat in the front row, which is always more interesting as you get chance to interact with the driver a bit more.

Next up was our Festival of the Lion King show FP+ timeslot, and our first time in the new Lion King Theatre. We loved the theming of this new theatre, it is much more immersive that the old one, which always seemed to have a temporary look about it. It is amazing that this is a brand new theatre, it has only been open for a couple of months, and yet it is built to look old and tumbledown! The show was absolutely wonderful, as usual, and never fails to make me feel all emotional. We were fierce lions!

We were in need of a coffee break now, as it was still very hot and humid, so we decided to skip our FP+ for the Nemo show, which would have meant a quick and sweaty walk across to the other side of the park. We picked up a couple of cups of coffee and a cup of iced water from Kusafari, and sat on the small wall behind there to rest and enjoy our break.

We emerged into a still very hot and crowded Africa, and made our way over to Asia to walk the Maharaja Jungle Trek. The replacement Komodo Dragon was happily sunning himself on a rock, (their previous Dragon had died about 6 months ago, sadly), and most of the bats were missing in action so we only saw 2 of them. Even the tigers had mostly disappeared, there was one hiding in some undergrowth, you could only see her nose and tail! We still enjoyed our walk though, we both really love this trail, it has some of my favourite animals in it and we just adore the theming of the flags, tumbledown buildings, etc.

By the time we left the trail, it was approaching 4.00 p.m., and we knew that the place we wanted to get dinner from would be closing soon, as it closes an hour before the park does. We therefore quickly made our way to the Yak & Yeti Local Café, and were amongst the last couple of people to be served. We picked up two servings of honey chicken with jasmine rice, and then chocolate mousse and Sprite, (DH), and banana pudding and lemonade, (me). We 'paid' with two counter-service credits, sat round the corner at the tables, and despite several bratty children trying to chase them off, were inundated with hopeful ducks, rabbits and squirrels, trying to share our feast! Despite knowing we shouldn't do this, we did end up hand-feeding a duck and a squirrel with some bits of vegetables and sweet biscuits from our meal, as it was cute to see them taking the food out of our fingers. Our dinner was delicious, we really enjoyed it, as we do love the food from here.

By the time we had finished eating, it was nearly time for the park to close, so we took a slow stroll out, stopping in a couple of shops along the way. DH managed to pick up the last 3 World Showcase flag pins that he needed, which was nice.

We left the Animal Kingdom, and drove to the Super Wal-Mart on the 192. Or at least, we tried to! We managed to get quite lost, and ended up near the villa we were staying in last week, so we went to the Publix near there to try and get a SIM card for the phone, but had no luck. The staff in there were actually quite rude – they had a display card for the SIMs, but when I asked about buying one, they said they were out of stock. I queried why the display card was still out if they didn't have any, and they said, quite rudely, that the card was out because they sold things!

We gave up, and drove back to Super Target.

So Super Target had loads of SIM cards for the AT&T Go phone, but none of them would scan through the cash register. A lovely young man called Alex actually RAN the length of the store to get more from out of the stockroom, but they wouldn't scan either. He got his manager involved, who took us to the Customer Services counter, and about 3 assistants all tried to scan their complete stock of cards to see if one of them would register, but had no luck. DH had given up by then and was sitting on a bench off to one side – he said it sounded like an episode of Casualty, (the TV show about an Accident & Emergency department), with all the beeping he could hear! The manager rang AT&T to see what was going on, and was told that they possibly had been given a complete batch of duff SIM cards. The manager was extremely apologetic, and gave us a $3 store voucher for our inconvenience - we felt guilty that they had spent so much time trying to sell something with a value of just $10. (We ended up not using the store voucher, and left it for Mousekeeping in the end).

We then tried the Publix on the corner before our turning, but had no luck there either, so just gave up for the night and drove back to Saratoga Springs. We parked at reception, and DH went to pick up some coffee in our refillable mugs, while I went to the Concierge desk to check if our Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party tickets had been linked to our Magic Bands, as I had attempted to do this earlier on today via the My Disney Experience app on my iPad. It had worked, and our tickets were indeed on our Bands – yay! Go me!

We were supposed to be going swimming this evening, as we expected to be back from the Animal Kingdom by early evening, but our side trips and getting lost meant we weren't back until after 9.30 p.m., by which time we were too tired to hit the pool, so we ended up just watching some TV, before turning in for a good night's sleep.

DAY NINETEEN – Wednesday 12 November

Plan : Hollywood Studios

Actual : After the usual coffee/shower thing, I had some emails to send, and we also wanted to set up a time for a Skype call to my family for tomorrow, so we did all this before setting off for the Studios.

The park was really busy, and we had a little trouble finding somewhere to park, although bag check was relatively quick and the turnstiles were easy to negotiate. (We had got into the habit of pretending to be communists, and walking all the way over to the LEFT hand side! This not only made us laugh each day, but also tended to get us past all the big queues in the centre of each entrance!)

Our first port of call was the Great Movie Ride, which had a 30 min standby posted, but this looked like a much longer queue to us as it snaked round the front quite a bit, so we walked round to Star Tours instead. This was showing as 20 mins, so we joined the fast-moving queue. We saw Larry, Robin and Paula in the queue just ahead of us, and in actual fact, Larry took a photo of the queue area without realising until afterwards that we were in his picture! They spotted us at about the same time as we saw them, so they came back in the queue to join us, which we thought was a lovely thing to do! Wes was still at the hotel sleeping, as he wasn't feeling too well, but was joining them later.

As we approached the load area, we picked up our 3D glasses. Then we were moved down to another loading area, further down, and I saw Robin put her glasses back and pick up another pair. I asked her why she had done that, and Larry said it was because the glasses only work with the simulator you are loaded into. Before my brain could properly catch up with what he had said, (and he had kept a completely straight face as well), I had agreed with this and changed my glasses too. About 15 seconds later, I realised I had been had ……. They didn't stop laughing for quite a while about this - some may call it 'gullible', I call it 'trusting'! Robin had apparently just seen a Cast Member bring a freshly cleaned load of glasses, and had changed hers for a clean pair.

We got the pod race (again!), and the battle in the skies (again), but because we were having such a laugh with the guys, we didn't mind too much, and it was still a fun ride. We exited through the ubiquitous gift shop, and stood outside for a little while, just chatting and enjoying each other's company. Wes arrived, having texted to say he was on his way, and we thought he still looked a bit poorly, but he was being a brave little soldier! They eventually left us for their Tower of Terror FP+ ride, and we headed for the Muppets 3D show.

We walked straight into the pre-show, which was just starting, and noticed a new segment in the film – there was slightly less faffing about at one point, and Constantine frog from the film, "Muppets Most Wanted", appeared and made a small speech about taking over the show. It was an interesting segment, but ultimately proved totally pointless, as we never saw him again and he hadn't been inserted into the show at all.

As we walked out of there, it was time for our lunch reservation at Mama Melrose's Ristorante, which was directly opposite us! We checked in, and were seated very quickly. It was really crowded, and we saw several folk enquiring about walk-ups, but were told it was fully booked.

I have issues with onions and garlic, not really an allergy but more of an intolerance, so I asked them what they would recommend off the menu, bearing this in mind. Our server kindly said she would get the chef to come and have a word with me, then she took our drinks order of Sprite and lemonade.

The chef came out to see me, and we chatted about my intolerances. I said I fancied spaghetti, with some kind of a creamy sauce and chicken, so he offered to make me a sauce specifically for me, without onions or garlic. I thought this was so good of him, he is already catering for a fully booked restaurant with lots of other people, but he was offering to make one dish just for me – how kind. We therefore ordered the rest of our meal, and he mentioned that there is onion and garlic powder in the batter they use on their calamari, which was my appetiser choice. However, I told him I was only going to eat a small amount of this, (I can never manage to eat a full 3-course meal), and that I had had it before and had been fine with it. We thanked him for his help, too.

While we were waiting for our lunch, we discussed the fact that we had just been told there is onion and garlic powder in the batter mix. I began to wonder if this is what has been causing me intermittent problems at home – if we dine out on fish & chips, most times I am fine with it, but just occasionally, (in a couple of specific restaurants), I have had a very bad reaction to the battered fish. I had been wondering if I had a problem with fish, but now I was beginning to think it may be the batter that is the issue. I had suffered a nasty reaction to a meal I had eaten last year at the ABC Commissary here, when I had enjoyed a seafood platter with battered shrimps and fish – maybe it was the batter that was the problem?

Anyway, my calamari was excellent, and I had to stop myself from scoffing the lot! DH had a fresh mozzarella and vine-ripened tomato starter, and said it was very good. He then had Chicken Campanelle to follow, which he said was delicious. However, my main course was just incredible – tiny bite-sized pieces of very tender chicken, in a cheesy, creamy sauce, over spaghetti. It was gorgeous! Full of flavour, very cheesy, I ate the whole thing! Definitely the best meal I had had so far at Disney. Our dessert was a sharing plate of a delightful trio of desserts – a mango panacotte, (which I ate as DH isn't keen on the texture), an Amoretti cheesecake, (DH had this – I hate Amoretti!), and a chocolate & cherry mousse/cake thing, which we shared. As we were leaving, we saw our chef talking to another family, and as he turned to go back to the kitchen, we thanked him again, shaking his hand and being very enthusiastic about the taste of the meal he made for me! He said it was just cream, parmesan cheese, and chicken, and I was astounded – I thought I hated parmesan cheese, and had I known that in advance, I probably wouldn't have even tried the sauce! Amazing.

We waddled out of there after lunch, and round to the Great Movie Ride. This was showing as a 15 min standby, but was almost a straight walk-on. As we were weaving our way round the barriers, half watching the film trailers and half watching where we were going, DH said to me to just accept whatever version we were offered, and not to make specific requests, as we had been asking for the Western version for the last couple of years. Ironically, we then got the Western version! This was still a fun ride, we love this, although we do think the film at the very end could do with changing, as we have seen the same movie clips for many years now.

It was now time for our Toy Story Midway Mania FP+, so we headed there, and were on the ride shortly afterwards. I barely won this, and as we were exiting, I was rubbing my right arm vigorously. A passing Cast Member said I had "Toy Story Arm", apparently a known affliction after riding this ride!

We wandered through One Man's Dream, watching the lovely video at the end, (for which DH managed to stay awake this year!), then the Little Mermaid show with a 10 min wait. (I tried not to spit at Ariel at the end of the show. It's probably not her fault that most men find her very attractive).

It was now time for our Star Tours FP+, and although the standby was showing as 20 mins, this was a very fast walk-on. We got the Wookie World and a Death Star battle, so it was great to finally see some different scenes.

We walked round the back of the now-closed Backlot Tour, to have a look at Wandering Oaken's Outpost and the snow playground. We thought this was wow! There was real snow, Christmas trees, gorgeous blue lights everywhere, we loved it! I walked gingerly onto the snow in my Croc flip-flops so DH could take my photo in the snow. The store was lovely, Frozen stuff abounded and it was full of hopeful little girls! I hugged a Sven and DH kindly offered to buy him for me, but I declined – I have a lot of stuffed animals, and don't really need another one.

As we exited, we saw a bunch of CMs just hanging around outside, in what used to be the unloading area for the Backlot Tour. We asked them where the theatre was for the Frozen Singalong show, as we had FP+ for that next week. They pointed it out to us, and then one CM began to show us his collection of old park maps, which was fascinating! He had one from the early 1990s, and the park looked so different then, but I remembered a lot of it – things like the area to meet the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Dick Tracy area. There was also the working film studio, which had a massive walk-through area where you would watch a short film starring Bette Midler, see loads of film props, and we had once watched Sidney Poitier doing some filming for a television show. The CM was so interesting to talk to!

Time for our Indiana Jones show FP+ now, we hadn't seen the show for a couple of years and wanted to catch it just in case the rumours are correct and it goes soon. It was fun, we had forgotten how much we enjoyed it, but it was MUCH longer than we remembered, and we were nearly 20 mins late meeting Robin & Larry (and Wes and Paula) afterwards, at the Backlot Express food court. We caught up with them and apologised profusely, they were fine and it was so good to see them again. They had decided to eat, and then see the 8.00 p.m. Fantasmic show, (which had been added in as an extra show for tonight). We chatted for about 20 mins, but then had to leave as we had FP+ for Fantasmic as part of our dining package at Mama Melrose earlier. We dashed across to the theatre, and just made it in time, being seated in the Scar section – we got there in 4 mins flat!

The show was wonderful, as usual. We really love the big dragon, he is so towering and intimidating! We did notice that the Little Mermaid boat didn't come out with the others when the 'romance' segment is on, but she did make an appearance on the big showboat at the end.

Afterwards, we walked back to the Streets of America to see the Osborne Family Lights. This was VERY crowded, but the lights were amazing. We explored the side roads, watched the lights dancing, and hunted for the purple cat, but couldn't find it. As we walked back onto the main street, we bumped into Larry again, and he directed us to where Robin was sitting on a bench at the end of the street, while he went off to take some photos. We went over and sat with Robin for a while, and we all watched the lights dancing and the snow falling. We were amazed to learn that they had never seen this before, despite many visits to Walt Disney World over the years, but it turned out that they had never been to the Studios at this time of the year before! They loved the lights, especially Paula, who is like a big kid where Christmas is concerned, apparently! Robin told us about the time they were at Disneyland one Christmas time, when she and Paula were in floods of tears, claiming that "it is the most wonderful time of the year, in the happiest place on earth!".

The guys had decided to skip Fantasmic as it was so crowded, and see the lights instead. We were so glad they did, as it meant we were able to watch them together! Paula told us where the purple cat was located, (although the next time we visited the lights a few days later, we couldn't find him and think he had been moved – we never did see him this year, which is unusual for us!). We watched Larry singing into his camera tripod and dancing to Felice Navidad, a song we weren't familiar with before now, but which has come to haunt us ever since …… It is definitely an ear-worm, once it is lodged in your head, you can't get rid of it!

We wanted a photo taken with all of us, so Larry set up the timer on his camera, balanced it on the tripod, and tried to get into the shot, but it all kept going horribly wrong, so in the end a very nice passing man offered to take the picture for us. Larry handed him the camera, and we all posed. And held that pose for, ooh, about 15 seconds, while the poor man tried desperately to get the camera to work. Larry suddenly realised he still had the timer switched on, and in a classic comedy moment, the minute he reached for the camera with both hands, the thing went off and took a photo! We finally got our picture, and it is lovely, as we are all laughing our heads off at the timer fiasco!

Eventually, and still not yet hungry enough to grab any proper food, we decided to leave around 8.15 p.m. in order to try and beat the Fantasmic crowds out, so we said our goodbyes and left, although DH dithered about taking photos on the way out and we very nearly got caught up in the crowds. We drove back to Saratoga Springs, stopped at Artist's Palette on the way to pick up coffee and hot chocolate, plus a cookie and rice krispie treat that we thought we could have for breakfast in the morning. Sadly, we have the collective willpower of a dead gnat, and we ate them as soon as we got back to the room.

Back to our room, TV, bed.

DAY TWENTY – Thursday 13 November

Plan : Blizzard Beach, shopping day

Actual : DH had a very bad attack of acid reflux during the night, (he takes regular medication to combat this, but has been taking it last thing at night and we think this may be too late in the evening – from today we are going to try changing this so that he takes it an hour before eating dinner), so he was feeling tired and a bit delicate. We therefore decided to leave Blizzard Beach till one day next week, and to have a swim in our resort pool today.

We showered and dressed, then called my family via Skype, chatting to them for about 25 minutes in all. It was fun being able to gently wave my iPad around, showing them the resort room, and the view from our balcony! All was well, apart from my sister having pulled a muscle in her shoulder whilst walking the dog, (he is a big, strong Border Collie!), and the fact that it has been cold and rainy there for the last 2 weeks – we took no pleasure in showing them our tans and the gorgeous blue sky outside, honestly!

After we finished talking to them, we gathered up our laundry and a Purex washing sheet, and walked over to the nearby pool. We put the washing into a machine, then I realised we had forgotten to bring several items with us, so DH went into the water while I volunteered to go back to the room for sunscreen, Carmex, refillable mugs, and DH's swimming goggles. To be fair, we hadn't realised there was a place to get soda from in our mugs until we got to the pool! The food outlet there was closed when we first arrived, but there was a soda dispenser to the side of it. It was a very hot and sunny day, and I thought we had best put some sunscreen on our faces and DH's shoulders, although he was also wearing a sunscreen t-shirt.

I fetched the missing items, which was no big deal as our room was about a 3 minute walk from the pool, and then joined DH in the water. We swam, floated, chatted and generally relaxed for a good couple of hours, during which time I got the laundry out of the washing machine, put the underwear in the tumble drier, and draped the t-shirts, shorts, etc on spare sun loungers to dry in the sun. There were a couple of other folk at the pool, but not many, so we weren't taking up lounger space with our drying laundry that could be used by anyone else.

At midday, the tiny food outlet opened, and we decided to have lunch there, using counter-service credits. DH had a ham & cheese sandwich, while I ordered a tuna sandwich. Both were very fresh and really nice. I then had a cheesecake, which was light and delicious, and DH asked for a Mickey Premium bar, to be collected after he had eaten his sandwich. We got bottled water as they didn't do coffee.

I went back to collect his ice-cream bar, but when he saw it, he said he had meant a cookie ice-cream sandwich. I offered to change it, and took it back to the food outlet. The lovely CM was quite happy to change it, but said to keep the original bar too – I assume as it had been out of the freezer for a few minutes, they don't like to put it back again. I took DH's ice-cream sandwich back to him, and gave the Premium bar to a small boy sitting near us, with his mum's permission. They were British, very friendly, and seemed delighted with a free ice-cream for their (very polite!) little boy! (We watched them leave about 10 minutes later, his little face was COVERED in ice-cream and chocolate and he was happily finishing off his treat!).

After lunch, we swam for about another hour, and also went into the hot tub for 20 minutes or so. It was very hot in there! We finally dried off, collected the washing, and walked back to our room, having had a thoroughly good time.

Back in the room, I took a shower while DH fell asleep. When I was dried and dressed, I pottered on my iPad for a while before falling asleep on the sofa for an hour. Finally, we woke up and DH had his shower. I fed him his anti-acid reflux medication, too.

About 5.00 p.m., we drove to the boat dock, parked, and then waited about 10 minutes for a boat to Downtown Disney. We had a reservation at Splitsville, this would have been our night to dine at House of Blues, but this was when we saw the notice that said it was closed for a private party.

We loved the convenience of taking the boat across, it was so easy. Last time we had stayed at Saratoga Springs, our room had been at the opposite end to this time, and we had been able to walk to Downtown across a bridge. We had enjoyed this, but we were just a bit too far to walk there this time.

We were a bit horrified at the amount of construction walls at Downtown. We had never seen it like this before! All the walkways are narrowed down to just very constricted corridors, with extremely high hoardings everywhere, so you basically have no views of anywhere else. This made the whole thing very disorientating, as you couldn't see landmarks or anything to give you a sense of where you were at any given point. Disney had clearly tried to address the situation by placing pockets of entertainers dotted around the walkways, there was one man and his guitar, small bands, etc, to try and put some atmosphere back into the area. This was fine, but it also then made for pockets of crowded spaces, which were difficult to negotiate! There was absolutely nothing to look at anywhere, and everyone seemed to be ploughing on to get somewhere, so you couldn't just relax and meander along, enjoying the views across the lake, or take a break and sit down somewhere – there wasn't anywhere to sit! We found Downtown to be nowhere near as fun or exciting a place as we are used to it being. I'm sure it will be lovely when it becomes Disney Springs, but this really was a disappointing struggle this time around, and we felt sorry for anyone whose only visit to Downtown Disney was this year – at least we will be back next year, when this area should be a lot nicer to visit!

We had finally battled our way to Splitsville, and were seated quite close to our 6.05 p.m. reservation time. We both ordered bacon cheeseburgers, which came with some really delicious crinkle-cut, chunky fries. The burgers were very good, too. We then shared a warm brownie with ice-cream and cream, which was also delicious! We had Sprite to drink. The place was really lovely, although very noisy! After dinner, we watched some people bowling for a few minutes, and agreed that maybe we should have booked a lane to have a go ourselves. Maybe next time.

We walked round to World of Disney, where we had intended to do some major shopping, but it was hot and crowded in there, and we were tired and lethargic, so we left without buying anything and went round to Basin as I wanted to get some soap for ourselves and for gifts. (We had a book of money-off vouchers, which included 10% off in Basin). We also went to Little Miss Matched to get some socks for my daughter, who HATES socks that don't match, so I always get her some from here as it is funny to see her face when she opens them at Christmas! Bad mother.

Ghirardelli's was next, for some assorted bars of chocolate and a bag of peppermint bark squares, although they had no pumpkin squares, (thank heavens we picked some up in Wal-Mart!), or milk chocolate drops, which we have had a problem getting for the last couple of years. I enquired at the cash register whether they had stopped making these, and was told that they were indeed still in production, and they may have some more stock arriving tomorrow. They said to call them and check. We still managed to spend nearly $100 in there though! I got 10% off everything with a voucher, and then the staff member pointed out that on my till receipt was another voucher for 10% discount, which didn't expire, which I popped in my handbag for future use.

We walked back towards the boat dock after this, stopping at the Candy Cauldron to pick up some Dr Pepper flavoured Jelly Belly Beans for my son for Christmas, (eurgh, I HATE Dr Pepper!), and got the next boat back to Saratoga Springs, laden down with goodies!

We loaded the car up with our shopping, drove to Artist's Point for coffee and hot chocolate in our refillable mugs, and then drove back to our room, where TV and bed called!

DAY TWENTY-ONE – Friday 14 November

Plan : Epcot

Actual : After a great night's sleep, with DH feeling lots better and not suffering from acid reflux at all last night, we got up early and got ready for our day at Epcot.

It was a day of cloud and light drizzle first thing, but we didn't let that stop us and got to Epcot at rope drop. The park was a lot quieter today, for the first time in our trip. We had been really surprised at the crowd levels up to now, we are used to much lower crowds at this time of the year.

We walked in and went straight onto Spaceship Earth, pulling ever-more inventive faces for the photo, and choosing "work" and "the city" as what was most important and where we wanted to live, which is the complete opposite of how we really feel! We love this ride, but do sometimes need to vary it up a bit.

We went to the Land pavilion for breakfast – coffee, pumpkin cheesecake for him, and a red velvet Whoopie Pie for me. Bearing in mind that the food would be snack credits, and the coffee paid for out of pocket, DH offered to get the food if I got the coffee – how I laughed! It made the CM serving us laugh too, when I explained why I was chortling in her queue! The food was excellent, I had never had a Whoopie Pie before but had wanted to try it, and I love red velvet cake.

Living with the Land was a straight walk-on, so we did that to give our breakfast time to settle a bit, then it was time for our first FP+ of the day, so we rode Soarin', noticing for the first time just how badly Patrick is edited to remove the words, "over California" when he says "Welcome to Soarin'". We hadn't noticed it very much before we saw the Anaheim version!

Living with the Land was now showing as a 15 min wait, but we love it, so we queued for that whilst trying to think up alternative names for it. Larry once called it "Living with the Lettuce", (and also, "It's a Small Lettuce), so we now tried to think of others – Cruising with the Cucumber was one of mine, DH came up with "Riding with the Radish", which I thought was quite funny.

We walked back round to Spaceship Earth for our second FP+ for today, and decided to choose Japanese as our language, to see what Dame Judy Dench sounded like dubbed into Japanese! Sadly, it wasn't her, it was some bloke, but it was still quite funny.

We then took a slow stroll round to France, taking our time and enjoying the sights, stopping very briefly at the Lumberjack Show that has replaced Off Kilter. Not that we were really into Off Kilter, but that was very popular and we don’t think the Lumberjack Show has much of a future, from what we saw of it. Anyway, 10 mins later we checked in for our lunchtime reservation at Le Chef du France.

It wasn't open when we first arrived, but after 5 mins or so we were taken through to be seated, along with several other folk. Our server was sweet, a very young and very French lad, who took the time to explain everything to us in English, as we hadn't dined here before.

We were blown away by the quality of the food in here, it was amazing. DH had chicken, potatoes, and broccoli, and remembering the gorgeous short braised rib I had sampled at the Food & Wine Festival earlier in the week, I ordered the same rib, with cheesy polenta, and carrots. I wasn't sure about the polenta, the taste was lovely but the texture was a bit weird, so I didn't finish all of that, but the meat was outstanding, and the carrots were perfect. The bread we were served was a short, warm baguette in a paper bag, and was delicious. For dessert, DH had a chocolate mousse and I had profiteroles, again this was so lovely. All the food here was such good quality and flavour, we were delighted by this new dining experience!

When we finally left the restaurant, we decided to try something else new to us, and caught the Friendship boat across the lagoon to the Port of Entry. This was a lovely thing to do, so relaxing, and gave us a new perspective on the World Showcase, seeing the lands from the lagoon.

We browsed both Port of Entry stores, but didn't see anything we needed to buy. As we exited, we saw that Duffy was in his little gazebo, wearing a Santa outfit, so we joined the short queue to meet him. He is one of the few characters that we bother queueing for, and it was so worth it, he was very cute and interactive!

The weather had improved a lot by now, the clouds had gone and the sun was out and hot. We walked round to the Imagination pavilion, and checked out Captain EO but a show had just started and the next one wasn't for another 18 mins, so we rode Journey into your Imagination with no wait. When we came out of there, they were calling for last seats for Captain EO (with 30 seconds to go!), so we clearly timed that nicely, going into the theatre to watch the film, which we really love.

We walked out singing away afterwards, and had a look round the Imagination store, where we picked up a really cute, purple tie-died Figment t-shirt for myself and a brain exercise book for DH, (as he needs all the help he can get ….).

Test Track was next, where we joined the single rider queue and were allowed to design the basic car for the first time in this queue, which was fun as we are quite competitive and enjoyed playing off our designs against each other. Even as single riders, it still took us 20 mins to actually get into a vehicle.

We just had time to visit Ellen's Energy Adventure, (still fun!), before our FP+ time opened for Mission Space (Green). Disappointed once again that we didn't actually exit onto Mars, we went back to Test Track for another spin round through the single rider queue, (20 mins again).

We then shopped our way through Mousegear, seeing several things I wanted to pick up once we had our free Disney Gift Card. (As part of our booking package, we had received a voucher for a $200 gift card, but we had to take the voucher and collect the card from World of Disney at Downtown, and I forgot to take the voucher with me when we were there last night! This is the third year in a row that we will have had a gift card with our booking, and we usually spend it on nice things for our home. I think the majority of it this year is going to be spent in Memento Mori!) We picked up a couple of t-shirts and some other bits and pieces, and then DH took all the shopping back to the car while I got us some coffee to share from the Electric Umbrella.

When he returned, we sat on a wall, drank our coffee, and watched the dancing fountain for a little while. It was nearly time for our dinner reservation at Akershus, so we made our way round to Norway and booked in. We had to queue outside for quite a while, so we passed the time by discussing the demise of Maelstrom and how we felt about Frozen being added. Whilst we really like the film, (me more than him, I have a sister!), neither of us is very happy about the addition of another animated film to one of the Countries represented in World Showcase. In our opinion, this is not what World Showcase was supposed to be about, and we think it will open the floodgates to sticking vaguely related films and merchandise into all of the pavilions. We'll see. I have no doubt it will be extremely well done, as Disney never do things by halves, but – we'll see.

Anyway, ranting over, we were taken inside about 10 mins after checking in, which was good as we were STARVING by this point. We had our photo taken with Belle, which was cute, and then we were seated and unleashed on the buffet! We had a small selection of cold meats, cheeses, bread rolls, and salad, before our main courses arrived. DH had ordered a venison stew, (which I then ribbed him about mercilessly – *Sven*coff*Bambi*coff*), and he said it was delicious, if very rich. I had a pork chop served with macaroni & cheese, which was really good. We then shared a dessert plate of chocolate mousse, rice cream with strawberry sauce, (lovely, but very heavy and dense!), and apple cake. We had Sprite to drink, and the food was all very good indeed.

During our meal, we were visited by Aurora, Snow White, Ariel, Cinderella, and a squirrel! He suddenly shot into the restaurant, and then there ensued the funniest 15 minutes! He was clearly frightened, and kept dashing under tables, making ladies scream! He visited the restroom, which emptied quite quickly – screaming females running out and waving their arms, it was like a comedy movie! At one point there was a chef running after him with a big white bucket, into which they had placed some bread to tempt him out. People were asking where Snow White was when you needed her! Poor little thing. In the end, they managed to chase him back out again through a back door (we think!).

After dinner, we took a slow walk round World Showcase, stopping just after Morocco in order to watch Illuminations – Reflections of Earth, with no-one in front of us and only a few folk behind us. I very nearly managed a whole show without tears!

Afterwards, the weather had turned a little cooler, and as we had been in the park for just over 12 hours, we decided to leave, even though the park was offering Extra Magic Hours that night. We had one last ride on Spaceship Earth, choosing German as our language and hoping for, but not getting, a German Dame Judy, before driving back to Saratoga Springs for hot drinks and bed.

DAY TWENTY-TWO – Saturday 15 November

Plan : Magic Kingdom

Actual : We were up nice and early this morning, and after our usual showers and coffee, headed out to the Magic Kingdom.

The ferry queue was huge, as was the queue for the parks monorail, so we bypassed all of these and caught the resort monorail instead (we are clever and know that the second stop the train makes is at the Magic Kingdom!).

We stopped in Goofy's Candy Company for a rice krispie treat for DH and a cashew chocolate puddle for myself, but had to stand round the corner in our usual spot to eat them as all the benches were taken.

After breakfast, we walked over to Fantasyland through the castle, and went to Mickey's Philharmagic, which was about to start so we had no wait at all.

Our first FP+ today was for the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train, and we had decided that we would ask for 2 rows, the way we always do on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, so see if spreading out a bit would help with the lap bar situation. We were through the queue quite quickly, and we asked for 2 separate rows. The CM stared at us blankly. We then tried to explain that the lap bar cuts into DH's legs, and we had thought a row each would be a bit better for him. The CM told us we still had to sit in one seat, but eventually loaded us into the front of a train with a row each. He made us feel really uncomfortable about it! We got into our rows, and DH sat slightly sideways, with one leg each side of the centre, and both lap bars down. This was a lot better for him, as each bar securely held him in place without cutting into him. However, the CM really didn't like this, and told him he had to sit properly in one seat, despite our explaining that this wasn’t as secure as DH wasn't held in place properly. We really did feel awful about making such a fuss, and he didn't help at all – he made a big deal of the whole thing, making us feel as if we were causing trouble for him, and being awkward! It really took the shine off the ride, and we didn't enjoy it as much.

When we got off, DH asked to speak to a manager, who was very unsympathetic and told us to speak to Guest Relations about the situation. Whilst we can understand that CMs need to keep the load speed up and not allow any more empty seats than necessary, we did feel that we could have been listened to and dealt with a little more sympathetically – the problem was not how fat or thin someone is, it is their leg length, and DH can't help being 6'2" tall with very long legs!

We stomped off in disgust, and I took us on It's a Small World to make DH laugh, as I said it was to cheer him up. I sang loudly at him all the way round, I am such a good wife!

It was time for lunch now, so we decided to stay where we were and eat at Pinocchio's Village Haus. We had chicken nuggets and fries, coffee and chocolate milk, and chocolate cake for DH with Mango Gelato for me. The gelato was extremely dense and heavy, I couldn't eat very much of it which was a waste really.

The park was very crowded again, and we hit the Village Haus at just the right time, as while we were eating, we watched the queue to get in get longer and longer! There was also a mildly amusing scene featuring a balloon – we watched a family put their balloon on a trash can, as it was a Mickey head shaped balloon and one of the ears had gone down. A lady cleaning the tables saw it a few minutes later, and thought it had become detached from a stroller, so she draped the weight and thus the balloon over the handle of the nearest stroller. The family who owned that stroller came out, saw the balloon, undraped it and put it back on the trash can. A few minutes later, the cleaning lady appeared again, and put the balloon back on another stroller! That family appeared soon afterwards, looked at the balloon, shrugged, and gave it to their child, who seemed ecstatic, despite the deflated ear! Funny.

After lunch and the unexpected entertainment, we walked back to New Fantasyland for our FP+ for Under the Sea, which hadn't got much of a queue anyway. We had fun with Ariel again.

When we came out of there, we walked across to the Beauty & the Beast store as I was looking for a gift for my sister, (this is her favourite Disney film). We found a gorgeous book, which is the story of Beauty & the Beast but told from the Beast's point of view, so we got that for her.

We visited the restrooms here, before going back to Frontierland and the Country Bears Jamboree, which is always fun – I love the inappropriateness of the songs in here, and happily sang along to "Blood on the Saddle", and "Mama, Don't Whip Little Buford"!

Our final FP+ of the day was for Big Thunder Mountain, so we went there next. We did our usual thing of asking for a row each, which we have been doing for several years now with no issues at all, but today we had a shocking time! The CM, who was called Ricky, just stared at us when I asked for 2 rows, then insisted that we ride together. I told him no, we always have 2 rows because the lap bar curves at the sides and is uncomfortable for Mr Long Legs here, (pointing at DH in a jovial manner, to try and keep the situation a bit light). He tutted, waved us to one side, and told us we would have to wait for several trains then! We gawped at him a bit, and then another CM came over and waved us onto the next train, in 2 separate rows. The last we saw of Ricky was him stomping off with a nasty scowl on his face, as he went off duty. Whether he was due a break anyway, or had been told off for the way he dealt with us, I have no idea.

I came out of there spitting feathers, I mean it was no big deal really, no-one died, but we have just come to expect such high standards from Disney CMs that when something like this happens TWICE in one day, it does upset me. I was all for going to City Hall to report him and shout at someone a bit, but DH made us go into the Enchanted Tiki Room (payback for It's a Small World, I guess), and I calmed down a bit after that, realising that shouting at someone who wasn't at fault wouldn't really have achieved anything.

I was still a bit grumbly as we cut through the walkway with restrooms towards Liberty Square, where we paused to sit down and rest a bit, away from the crowds and the heat. We looked up just as Larry walked towards us! He sat with us for a few minutes and let me rant at him a bit, before telling us that he had eaten too much waffle and fruit and had to visit the restrooms, and directed us to Robin who was sitting in Liberty Square at a table with some handy stools. We made our way over to her, and sat and chatted for a while, before deciding to watch the parade together. We moved over to the other side of the walkway, near the Christmas store, and stood a little way back from the 2 lines of people at the edge of the parade route, giving us a really good view.

This was our first experience of the Festival of Fantasy parade, and we had really been looking forward to it. We weren't disappointed! We thought the whole thing was amazing, from the brand new costumes, floats, and characters you don't normally see, (there was one huge character, who looked like a mime, that we didn't recognise), through to the incredible, fire-breathing dragon who we LOVED – everything was so bright and vibrant! It did have the unfortunate effect of making some of the older characters, (Peter Pan, Wendy etc), look a bit drab, plain, and old-fashioned though, which is a shame. The stilt walkers were fabulous, we just loved the whole parade, and were really glad we would be seeing it again at some point.

As we were watching the parade, Larry suggested we should all go to Disneyland Tokyo together in a couple of years. He and Robin had been, and had loved it – they said they would go back again in a heartbeat, although it was very expensive to visit. It is somewhere we would love to go, but hadn't seriously considered it just yet. We weren't sure whether he was joking or not when he said we should all go, and as they left us, skipping off hand in hand, to go back to their resort for a rest, we were left pondering the idea ……… (and feeling a bit sad, as that would be the last time we would see our lovely new friends for the foreseeable future. They were flying home very early tomorrow morning).

We walked to Tomorrowland via a water fountain and the Tangled restrooms, (I had a case of liquid misdistribution, which was a phrase Larry had coined – I needed both a drink and a visit to the bathroom at the same time!), where we spotted a poster with the unknown mime character in the parade on it – aha, he is Ulf the Pub Thug in Tangled! We rode the TTA with no wait, where we spent some time discussing the possibility of a trip to Disneyland Tokyo, via a visit to Hong Kong Disneyland, as they are both on the same side of the world. Maybe …..

We then went to the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor show, as we haven't done that for a few years, and it was good fun, but reinforced our feeling that we don’t need to do this too often.

It was now time for our dinner reservation at Crystal Palace, so we wound our way round the construction walls, with DH stretching his arms about so he could surreptitiously take some photos of the building work going on to extend the walkways at the hub, and checked in for dinner.

We were seated about 5 mins later, and enjoyed couscous salad, turkey corn dog nuggets, (just me!), edamame salad, chicken nuggets, corn bread, rolls, and then beef, mashed potatoes, peas & corn, and macaroni & cheese. We followed all this with apple & cranberry cobbler, and soft-serve ice-cream. What we love about this kind of buffet is the choice – we are able to have tiny, bite-sized portions of lots of different foods, which is really lovely. We were also visited by Piglet (grr! I still don't like him!), Tigger, Pooh, Eeyore, and our server with lots of orange Fanta! I had 3 full glasses of Fanta, which was way more than I normally drink with dinner, but I had a slight headache and think I must have been a bit dehydrated. The weather had been really hot and sunny all day, so I probably hadn't drunk enough throughout the day.

After dinner, we exited into a still very crowded and busy park, not sure how much more we wanted to do today. Everything had long wait times, and there were people and strollers everywhere! We braved one long queue and rode Pirates of the Caribbean after a 30 min wait, justifying this to ourselves as time to let our dinner go down, but were beginning to flag after this. We checked both the Haunted Mansion and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, but both had 40 min wait times, and we had just had enough of battling the crowds, so we decided to call it a day. We wove our way round people crowding the parade route waiting for the Main Street Electrical Parade, and left around 8.30 p.m. There were still more folk pouring into the Magic Kingdom at that time of night!

We caught a ferryboat back to the Transportation & Ticket Centre, drove back to Saratoga Springs, picked up coffee and hot chocolate in our refillable mugs, and headed for TV and bed, exhausted but happy.

DAY TWENTY-THREE – Sunday 16 November

Plan : Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios

Actual : It took us a while to get going this morning, over 3 weeks of vacation touring was catching up with us! After the usual showers/coffee, I attempted to add a FP+ for Fantasmic for tonight; however, as we already had one for Toy Story Midway Mania, and they are both classed as a 'Tier 1' attraction, we couldn't add Fantasmic without losing Toy Story, so we decided to leave things as they were.

We drove to the Animal Kingdom and headed for Pizzafari for one of our favourite breakfasts at Disney World, the Bounty Platter – bacon, scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, French toast, sausage, and a yummy biscuit. Coffee and chocolate milk topped off the feast!

After breakfast, we walked round the park a little, stopping to watch the otters and the big, fat fish that are in the same tank. DH went for a restroom break while I watched the Flights of Wonder pre-show, then we went into the theatre and found seats for the show.

We do love this show, and really enjoyed it today too. A CM brought out a red-tailed hawk that was almost completely white – she wasn't quite an albino, as she still had coloured eyes and feet, and we were told she would never have survived in the wild as she would have been attacked by other birds due to her colour.

We took the train over to Rafiki's Conservation Station, where we petted a rare Florida python called "Noodle", who was very cute! We went into the petting area, and once again happily patted sheep and goats, whilst watching a very small goat trying (quite successfully) to eat a little girl's long hair.

Hands well washed, we avoided the CM trying to get a bunch of people to play a game with Chip & Dale, (we hate organised games!), and caught the train back to the mainland, glad of a bit of shelter from the relentless sun today!

We walked to Harambe, where the Kilimanjaro Safari ride was showing a 20 min standby time, so we did that. Still no lions, though!

After this, we left the Animal Kingdom and drove to the Hollywood Studios, as we had a dining reservation later this afternoon, and the Animal Kingdom had been a bonus visit for a spare morning.

We went straight to Toy Story Mania with our FP+, and DH beat me for the first time! He was ecstatic, me – not so much. I'm still not sure how he is managing to improve on these games, and my pride is severely dented. And I got Toy Story Arm again!

As we left the building, we turned immediate left and found a FP+ CM with an iPad. I asked her about the possibility of getting a FP+ for Fantasmic that evening, and after some juggling around as the system was offering FP+ for the 8.00 p.m. show but we were after the 6.30 p.m. show, she successfully secured us tickets for the earlier show, plus FP+ for Indiana Jones which was starting shortly. We went straight round to Indy, and thoroughly enjoyed the show again.

Afterwards, it was time for our early dinner reservation at the 50's Prime Time Diner. We checked in, but had quite a wait to be seated. However, once seated in a small side room, we had great fun. Our 'mom' was really good, she told me off for inadvertently putting my elbows on the table, and made everyone say 'please' all the time, she was really good! We chatted a lot with the families on both sides of us – to our left was a mother and daughter, who were on the Deluxe Dining Plan – I have no idea how they were coping with that, as they were both quite slim and the bigger dining plan is 3 courses per table service credit, twice a day! I would have exploded with all that food! They did say that they were eating at signature restaurants a fair bit, which takes up 2 table service credits per booking, but that is still one heck of a lot of food in one go! The family on the other side of us were really nice, too – they had two extremely well behaved little girls, which was lovely to see.

Anyway, we ordered our dinner and both had Aunt Liz's Golden Fried Chicken, DH having the garlic mash and me substituting fries, and both with corn too. DH got Sprite, while I opted for a vanilla milkshake, which was so thick I could hardly get it out of the glass! The chicken was gorgeous, and the portions were huge! We struggled to pick a dessert that didn't sound as if it would be too large, and DH got a Dad's Brownie Sundae, while I had a 50's Boston Cream Parfait – layers of chocolate fudge, pound cake, and vanilla cream, topped off with more cream – it was so delicious that I managed to eat most of it!

We waddled out of there and slowly across the park to the Fantasmic theatre, past the huge crowds, and managed to get really good seats in the Scar section again, using our FP+. We spent quite a bit of time watching the Glow with the Show ears this time, noticing that whenever water sprayed out over the audience, the Ears all flashed blue, it was interesting. The show was beautiful, as always.

We left the park after this, and drove over towards the Magic Kingdom to get some gas from the Hess station there. We reckoned that another $20-worth should last us until the end of the holiday.

We then drove back to the Saratoga Springs boat dock, parked up, and waited about 15 mins for the next boat to Downtown, where we walked to World of Disney to pick up our $200 Disney Gift Card. We also checked to see if Ghirardelli's had the chocolate drops in yet, but they didn't. We caught another boat to take us from the Marketplace back over to the resort dock, where a boat was waiting to go back to Saratoga Springs so we boarded that and were back home quickly. Back to our room, TV, bottles of iced Starbucks Frappuccino, bed.

DAY TWENTY-FOUR – Monday 17 November

Plan : Epcot

Actual : When we got up this morning, it was to find a pizza advertising leaflet pushed under our door, to my intense irritation. This was the first one we had found this year, and I had been commenting to DH last night that I liked the fact that the security officers ask for your parking pass and Magic Band to scan every time we enter Saratoga Springs, as it made me feel more secure here. In previous years we had received loads of these leaflets, and I hate the idea that someone is skulking around the resort rooms during the night.

Anyway, we showered, dressed, etc., and drove to Epcot, a bit later than planned as we had faffed about a bit this morning. There was a little lizard darting about the queue at bag check, which was causing some consternation as he was nearly run over several times by wheelchairs and strollers! A woman was trying to catch him with her hands, to put him safely out of the way, but of course this just made him dart about faster! It was quite amusing, seeing the amount of kerfuffle caused by one small lizard!

By the time we reached the Land pavilion, it was 9.30 a.m. and Soarin' was already showing a 50 min standby, so we just went onto Living with the Land (Lettuce), as it was a straight walk-on. Breakfast was next, a couple of Breakfast Platters from Sunshine Seasons, plus coffee. Yum!

We decided to watch the Circle of Life film, as we hadn't done that for years, and it was really lovely, we'd forgotten how interesting it was. We seemed to be doing a lot of rides and shows this year that we hadn't done in a long time, this was definitely our year for slowing down and smelling the roses a lot, rather than rushing from ride to ride.

It was now time for our FP+ for Test Track, but the queue still took 35 mins to get through! As we exited, we had enjoyed ourselves so much that we went straight back on again, in the single rider queue, not bothering to redesign a new car but just using the one we had just designed. We were back on again in just a few minutes, which was great.

Mission Space (Green) was showing its usual 5 min wait, so we rode that, and followed that up with a quick trip on Spaceship Earth using our FP+, opting to stick with English this time, but trying again to pull extreme faces during the photo, and choosing options at the end that were different to previous choices, for a bit of variety!

We had now finished all our FP+ passes for the day, so we went into Innoventions East to try and secure one for Soarin', at some point today. We weren't really sure where the FP+ machines where, and the first place we went to, (that we thought was the right place), turned out to be just computer links for accessing your "My Disney Experience" account, which doesn't yet have the ability to give you FP+ choices in-park, (the CM I saw there told me it was 'coming soon'). I left DH in there taking photos, (we haven't been in either Innoventions for years, and we were quite surprised at how much has changed in them!), and followed the signs for the FP+ machines, which turned out to actually be outside, in between the two Innoventions buildings.

I approached the machines, and a CM called Paul came over to help me. It turned out he was originally from Glasgow, so we chatted about that for a little while, (we had been to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games earlier in the year), before he asked me what I was looking for. When I told him I was after a couple of FP+ for Soarin, he told he they were all gone for the day, unfortunately. He was able to give me two paper FastPasses that didn't expire until 30 November, and were good for riding Test Track, Living with the Land, and Spaceship Earth, but didn't cover Soarin'. I thanked him and went back to DH, who was fascinatedly watching The Sum of All Thrills. We had been on this simulator a few years ago, (when it was a standard simulator that people sat in), after having designed the mildest roller coaster ride that we could. It is now an individual seat that is mounted on a long robot arm, that kind of waves about wildly in the air, while the rider is half-encased in a touch-screen device thingy. We didn't want to ride it, but it was very interesting to watch other people experiencing it, little legs dangling in the air! Amazing technology.

On our way out of the building, we noticed a show was about to start called StormStruck, about the potential effects of a big storm on houses, so we joined the small queue and went in to watch. It was interesting, and we hadn't done this before, so we quite enjoyed it. However, it isn't something we felt we needed to do more than once. As we were waiting to enter the tiny theatre, we were fascinated by the Cast Member running the attraction, as she had clearly done this so many times that she was absent-mindedly miming along to all of the automatic announcements!

After the show, we waked back round to Test Track thinking to go on the single rider version again, but the weather had taken a turn for the worst and it was raining a little, so the ride had closed down. We decided to visit Club Cool as we hadn't done that yet this trip. I got some Vegibeta, which is my favourite as it tastes like apricots, and then we tried something new that tasted like raspberry flavoured medicine – yuck! DH decided to drink a full cup of Beverley, just to be contradictory – his face was a picture!

We took a quick restroom break, then went to explore the Living Seas. This area was quite crowded, as people were sheltering from the rain! I wasn't bothered about the clam shell ride, as this just doesn't appeal to me, but DH wanted to do it as he said it was cute, so we joined the short queue and were soon pointlessly clamming past a handful of real fish and substantially more projected cartoon fish. Still, DH was happy.

We explored the fish tanks, trying to avoid people in dripping ponchos, and watched some divers in the main fish tank for a while. We couldn't see the dolphins anywhere, no idea where they were, but there were a couple of cute manatees which entertained us for a bit. I love manatees, and they do reinforce my thinking that eating lettuce clearly makes you rotund …..

We weren't fussed about Turtle Talk with Crush, as we saw that last year, so we fought our way past all the sheltering people in the doorway, and paddled over to the Imagination pavilion, (it was raining quite heavily by now!). Captain EO was 7 mins away from the next show, so we went in and waited, enjoying the pre-show first. I really enjoyed the film again, but DH napped throughout the whole thing!

The rain was slightly lighter when we exited, so we began a slow stroll around World Showcase, starting with Mexico. We didn't explore any of the Countries in detail, just walked slowly round, stopping in Norway for coffee. When we got to the American Adventure, we discussed watching the show there, but as it wasn't due to start for another 15 mins, and is then 30 mins long, we realised that it would run into our dinner reservation time, so we just turned around and walked back to Germany. I wanted to get an engraved glass for my sister as a Christmas gift, so we selected a really pretty one with Belle on it, and completed the personalisation form, and the form to have it delivered directly to our resort.

It was nearly time for our dinner reservation, so we checked in at Biergarten in Germany. We had to wait an age to be seated, probably about 15 mins past our reservation time, and for the first time in our dining experiences here, we didn't really talk to our table-mates at all. We normally get on really well with them, and spend lots of time chatting away and learning about each other, but this time our dining companions were a family of five, and one single male, none of whom even attempted to talk to us at all! The family only had one child with them, a girl of about 11 or 12 years old, who was very precocious and self-confident, to the point of being irritating and attention-seeking. We did try to engage them in conversation, but they gave us one-word answers to our questions and then went back to talking amongst themselves, (although the family did include the single male in with their conversations), so we gave up on them and just talked to each other. Maybe they just didn't feel like being sociable. Anyway, we enjoyed roast pork, salads, hot and cold potato salad, and pretzel bread, before finishing this off with Bavarian cheesecake, Black Forest Gateau, and fruit compote. It was all delicious!

After dinner, we continued our walk around World Showcase, stopping when we got to France in order to watch Illuminations. The area was very quiet, in fact the whole park was really quiet by now, it had stopped raining, and we were able to lean on a damp railing and enjoy the show without anyone else around us. I actually managed not to cry this time!

We walked slowly back towards the park entrance, stopping at a kiosk on the bridge between World Showcase and Future World to pick up a really cute Tinker Bell phone charm, that is just a green, sparkly ball of foam with tiny wings on it, and a Mickey & Minnie 'Feliz Navidad' pin, to remind us of the Christmas song we had kept hearing this visit.

We then went into Mousegear, and picked up the things we had spotted previously – a really sweet little Mickey Mouse fridge magnet clock, a cooking timer that was also a fridge magnet, and was modelled on the "Standby Time" countdown timer at Peter Pan's Flight, and some tiny Mickey ears shaped post-it notes. I used the Gift Card for the fridge magnets.

We were pretty much done by now, and the park was closing, so we headed back to Saratoga Springs for some last minute TV, and bed.

DAY TWENTY-FIVE – Tuesday 18 November

Plan : Possible Blizzard Beach, shopping, Magic Kingdom for dinner

Actual : We slept in this morning, which was lovely! When we finally got up, we spent our time relaxing, having showers and coffee, and generally getting a bit of much-needed rest. The weather was quite cool, and I know that Blizzard Beach closes when the temperature drops, so we decided to just leave the water park for this trip.

Around 11.30 a.m. we drove out to the 192, (weirdly, just before we left Disney property, I spotted a full-size military tank reversing into some shrubbery at the side of the road – what was that about?? Maybe Disney are cracking down on queue jumpers …..), and went to Denny's for a late breakfast, with DH getting a Pumpkin Pancake Slam, and me having a Build Your Own Slam. Both were very good.

The Super Wal-Mart was next, when we went in with a big list of things to get, and got most of it! Things like Reece's Puffs, Dove deodorant, cinnamon toothpaste, Cheeto's and Lay's chips, peanut butter M&Ms, Cheezits, etc. We were pleased with our haul, a lot of what we had got was for Christmas presents for friends and family. In addition, I managed to get a SIM card for the phone, although by now I would only have half a week to use all the credit up, as it expires after a couple of months! (After a discussion about this with Larry last week, I have decided to give up on this phone and pick up a cheap Pay As You Go phone from the UK, to use for next year).

We drove to the Nike store as I was thinking of getting some new trainers, but it has really gone downhill over the last couple of years. There was nothing in there that I liked, but in addition, everything was really expensive, compared to how it always used to be. I wasn't really disappointed, as I hadn't expected to find anything I liked, but we were shocked at the prices – I used to be able to pick up trainers from there for around $20-30 a pair, now they started at $50+! It was all expensive and yet rubbish quality, and cheap-looking styles. Unsurprisingly, we left without buying anything.

We then drove to Super Target, as we were having problems with our Bobble refillable bottles – the filters were blocked, making it very difficult to actually get any liquid out of the bottles. I bought these last year, and we were using them for a second year now, but I think putting the drinks powders into the water in them had caused the filters to block up. I had checked on the internet, and Target was supposed to be stocking the replacement filters, but unfortunately this Target didn't have any.

We drove back to Saratoga Springs, where I threw away the old Bobble filters, washed out the bottles and put them into our Owner's Locker box, and ordered some new filters from Amazon to be delivered to our home in the UK, and we will bring them with us next year. For the rest of this year's vacation, we could just reuse some ordinary water bottles we had.

We unloaded the shopping, added the credit to the phone, then went back out again, driving to the Magic Kingdom. At least the weather had dried up today, it was sunny, but the temperature had dropped quite a bit, now being in the upper 40's to lower 50's.

It only took us 35 mins to get from Saratoga Springs to actually walking into the Magic Kingdom, which wasn't bad for mid-afternoon, we thought. Our first FP+ today was for Peter Pan's Flight, and it was a good job we had the FastPasses because the standby time was 80 mins! We do like this ride, but can never understand the perpetual and huge queues for it – it never seems to get less, no matter how old the ride becomes. With our FastPasses, we were on the ride really quickly, and we enjoyed our Flight.

We next checked the Haunted Mansion, but the park was quite crowded and this was showing as a 35 min wait, so we went shopping in Memento Mori instead, using our Gift Card to pick up a couple of cushions, a big egg-timer with purple sand, and a candlestick. We had this all sent back to the resort, apart from a bag of purple and green popcorn (for my daughter), which we had to take with us as they wouldn't ship it for some reason.

We walked round to Fantasyland, and checked out Winnie the Pooh's Hunny Ride, but that was 35 mins. Everywhere was so crowded and busy! We gave up trying to ride anything, and just sat on a small wall by the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train for a little while, until it was nearly time for our dinner reservation.

At about ten to 5, we checked in at the podium for dinner at Be Our Guest. We were asked to wait on the bridge, which was strangely empty when we got there, and a CM there told us that due to the weather being a bit cold, we could wait in the foyer of the restaurant. We went inside and discovered that that was where all the crowds were! We hung around with everyone else, and a CM came round with tiny cups of complimentary hot chocolate for everyone, which was lovely. We had to smile at how wrapped up against the cold everyone was – we thought it was a bit nippy out, but it didn't call for hats, big coats, gloves and scarves, which a lot of folk seemed to be wearing! I guess if you are used to hot and sunny weather all year round, when the temperature drops below 60 degrees you are going to feel chilly. Being from the UK, we are used to much cooler weather than this, even in summer!

We were called about 15 mins late for our reservation, but we kind of expected that, as the place was so busy. We were seated in the West Wing for the first time, which was exciting! The atmosphere and theming in there is amazing, we couldn't stop watching the rose drop its petals, and the portrait flashing between a picture of the young master, and the Beast. Our server was really busy, and it took her a while to get to us, but that was okay, it wasn't her fault. DH ordered the pan-seared chicken breast, while I had the herb-crusted lamb rack, which was served with what I thought was mashed parsnip, but according to the menu, was buttered celery root; either way, it was buttery and delicious! The food was gorgeous, really good quality ingredients.

Dessert was : DH – the grey stuff; me – an orange chocolate éclair. We had to wait quite a while for dessert to be served, our poor server was rushed off her feet and she brought the dessert trolley to us, but then had to rush off somewhere else and just left it there for ages. She was very apologetic when she did reappear, and we told her not to worry, although she was lucky we hadn't just opened the trolley and eaten its entire contents! Our desserts were yummy.

After we had finished dinner, we walked round the Ballroom to have a look round, and watched the snow falling out of the back windows. Then we queued up to meet the Master in his greeting room, and have our photo taken with him. He was lovely!

By the time we left, the park had quietened down quite a lot, which was nice. We went to the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train with our FP+, and got straight onto the ride. This ride is AMAZING at night! We suspected it would be, as Big Thunder Mountain is fantastic at night, and it more than met our expectations. We squished into one row together, and DH just sucked up the leg discomfort and concentrated on enjoying the ride.

We walked round to It's A Small World, which was a straight walk-on and was fun, as usual. The park really was a lot more empty now! The Main Street Electrical Parade was scheduled to be on twice this evening, so we took advantage of this and when it was on for the first time, we hit a couple of rides – Haunted Mansion was a walk-on, and then we followed this with our final FP+ for the night, Big Thunder Mountain – just "wow" in the dark.

We went back to the hub to watch Wishes, and noticed that this area was quite crowded. CMs were stopping people from walking to the hub from the sides, and telling them that the viewing area was full and their best option would be to watch the fireworks from near the Haunted Mansion. Huh? We have seen it from there before, it is a rubbish place to watch them from as they don't frame the Castle! They were being very shouty, but it didn't stop a couple of people from ignoring them and just walking across the bridge from Adventureland to the hub. Eventually, so many guests were complaining and moaning at them, that they let us across the bridge, and we found somewhere to stand and watch the show quite easily. I have seen this area much, much more crowded than this before, and was therefore surprised at how controlling the CMs were attempting to be here. This was something new to us, we had never noticed them trying to control the crowds to this extent before.

Anyway, we really enjoyed the fireworks show, and when it was over, we made our way back round to Adventureland for Pirates of the Caribbean, with a mere 5 min wait. Back round to Big Thunder Mountain, which we rode twice in a row with no wait (and with separate rows, with no fuss!).

Back to the hub again, for the Main Street Electrical Parade's second showing, and there was almost no-one else there! We were able to sit on a nice bench near the Partners statue for 10 mins, and didn't get up and stand by the kerb until we heard the parade music starting. There was just one row of very spread-out people standing in front of us, we had an excellent view of the parade floats.

Afterwards, we wandered slowly back down Main Street to Goofy's to pick up some fudge with our snack credits, (peanut butter x 1 piece, and chocolate peanut butter x 1 piece). It was a bit more crowded in there, as lots of people had the idea of getting something on their way out. There was a HUGE family in front of me, they ALL joined the queue, and all wanted something different from the cabinet. They also didn't know how many snack credits they had left on their plan, and took the opportunity to get the CM on the cash register to check for them, despite the MASSIVE, TIRED, and IRRITATED queue behind them!

Fudge finally in hand, we walked to the Ferry terminal, which was empty apart from us and one lady with a pushchair (and child in it!). The ferry arrived quickly, we both got on, and it departed with just 4 passengers!

We were quite cold and tired by this point, and were glad to get back to Saratoga Springs and bed!

DAY TWENTY-SIX – Wednesday 19 November

Plan : Hollywood Studios

Actual : We slept well again, got up and did the usual coffee & shower thing, and then headed out to the Hollywood Studios for the last time this trip.

We grabbed a cherry Danish and coffee at a very crowded Starring Rolls, and at the bottom of our receipt was a voucher for 20% off merchandise at a variety of stores, all over Disney World property, although it had to be used before 1.00 p.m. So after breakfast, we went into Mickey's of Hollywood, and did the shopping that we would have done anyway, but with 20% off! I picked up some Disney food air fresheners for gifts, (popcorn, Dole Whips etc), a couple of bags of Holiday Pretzels for work, some fluffy, red bed socks for my daughter, etc. We had it all sent back to the resort, except for the pretzels, which again they wouldn't ship back. I made DH go out of the store then while I picked him up a Grumpy Christmas t-shirt, and then he sent me out while he got me a lovely Tinker Bell watch for Christmas, and a couple of Tinker Bell pins – one for me, and one for a female friend. While I was waiting around near the entrance to the store at one point, a guest came up to me and asked me where the nearest mailbox was! She saw my silver Minnie ears, and apparently assumed I worked there! I wouldn't mind, but I didn't even have my "Guest of Honour" nametag on, as I was wearing a floaty top that I hadn't wanted to pierce with a pin today! (That nametag was still getting me lots of attention from CMs, all of whom wanted to know where I had got it from, which division of Disney I worked for, or what made me a 'guest of honour'.)

It was time for our FP+ for Toy Story Midway Mania, so we headed round there, but there seemed to be a suspicious lack of people queueing for it – when we arrived, we discovered why – it had gone down. We were told we could either wait, but they didn't know how long we would be waiting for, or we could use our FP+ at any time throughout the day and it would be honoured. As our next FP+ was time-specific for a performance of Frozen Singalong, we hung around for a few minutes, but then opted to come back later.

The weather was a bit weird today, it was still cool and cloudy, but there was a point at which we happened to glance into the sky and DH saw a very long and thin tornado! We warily watched it for a few minutes, although no-one else seemed to be panicking, and it finally dissipated.

We made our way over to what used to be the Hunchback of Notre Dame show theatre, and joined the huge FP+ queue for the next Frozen Singalong show. The queue began to move, and then wound its way into the theatre quite quickly. We thought it was warmer in the theatre than it was outside, which was a bit ironic, given the show we were about to watch!

The theatre was packed, but we found seats quite easily, right in the centre, (once the woman in front of us had stopped faffing about with her child and had finally picked some seats!). The show was incredible! It was so much better than we were expecting, I had only booked these FastPasses to see what all the fuss was about, but it really entertained us – it was very funny, the two narrators, (the Arendelle Historians), were so good, they really made the adults laugh with some of their more subtle jokes, (apparently, they used to be Comedy Warehouse performers), and the whole show was really well done and very moving. We were so surprised to enjoy this as much as we did! (DH calls the Frozen girls, Elsie & Agnes – he thinks he is funny). This show was the surprise hit of the vacation.

After the show, we went back to Toy Story Mania, which seemed to be up and running again, and joined the FP+ queue. It seemed to take ages to get to the front of the queue, almost as if they were still having trouble with the ride ….. We boarded, rounded the first corner, did the practice shots, and then the ride VERY abruptly came to a complete stop. We sat there for a couple of minutes while 'stay in your vehicle' type announcements were made, (we have been trapped by a very strong metal lap bar, how are we going to NOT stay in the vehicle??), and then the announcement changed and we were told we were going to be evacuated. In all my 25 years of visiting Walt Disney World, I have never been evacuated from a ride before, and whilst it was not quite my dream evacuation, (which would be from Spaceship Earth), it was still quite cool! I was quite excited by this, and DH was very quickly taking lots of surreptitious photos. This was an amazing co-incidence as well, as Larry & Robin had been evacuated from this ride a few days ago, their first one too! Larry had been told off a number of times for taking photos as they were exiting, so this is why DH had to be sneaky about it. Really, there aren't many surprises to the pictures he took though – just some of the ride projectors, and the floor around the vehicles. We were told our FP+ would be put back on our Magic Bands for use again later.

We were a bit hungry by this point, but not sure what we wanted to eat, so we ended up going back to Starring Rolls to get a turkey sandwich, chips, and a huge white choc chip cookie, to share. We also had coffee.

We timed this a bit badly though, as we had to shove the food down quickly, and then rush round to the Lights, Motors, Action theatre a bit sharpish – our FP+ booking only had a very small window for the show. We just made it!

It was a fabulous show, and we really liked the new, (if a little short), segment with Lightning McQueen in it halfway through.

We went back to Toy Story Mania AGAIN, and this time, we finally got to finish the ride, with DH winning by a small margin. Hmm - he seems to be getting better at these games! We sat down for a couple of minutes on a bench near the Voyage of the Little Mermaid, to have a drink and just rest for a moment. While we were there, a CM came up to me and told me how gorgeous she thought my dress was, she said she had seen it earlier in the day and thought it was lovely! That was most kind of her, and I thanked her for her comments. (I was wearing a very flared, long blue skirt that was darker at the bottom than the top, and scattered with silver sequins. Over the top, I had a very bright white, floaty, sleeveless top, with a big, blue and silver butterfly hand-painted on the front, and with 2 rows of silver sequins around the neck.)

The Great Movie Ride was next, as it was down to a 10 min wait, and we got the Western side again, without asking – maybe this will turn into the only one we ever ride now, and in the future we will have to request the Gangster side!

We spent some time looking at the hand and footprints outside the Movie Theatre, as this is something we don't normally do and we were keen see who was represented there. It was interesting, and we spent about 20 mins doing this, as the weather had warmed up a bit and it was quite pleasant out now.

Time for our next dinner reservation loomed, and we walked across to the Hollywood Brown Derby to check in. The young lady who showed us to our seat was from the UK, and we got chatting to her. She was on the student programme, had been in Florida for nearly 6 months, and would be heading home in the next few weeks. She had had a wonderful time, and it was really interesting talking to her, she was lovely! She told us she really wanted to eventually work full time for Disney, and we wished her luck with her future aspirations.

Our server appeared, and DH ordered the pork tenderloin, with ginger ale to drink, whilst I opted for the Filet of Beef. Both were really good, and we had high hopes for our desserts, which have been quite spectacular here in the past. There was a new dessert menu on offer, so we picked 3 mini desserts each, and this was what we had and our verdict :-

DH : warm berry cobbler – blueberry, but unfortunately the fruit had no flavour whatsoever
Amaretto flan – light, whipped mousse, which he loved
Chocolate sphere with orange white chocolate mousse – delicious flavour, but VERY weird, chewy texture.

Me : banana toffee cake – not much toffee flavour, everything overwhelmed by banana
Chocolate sphere – I felt much the same as DH about this, very odd texture
Mini Grapefruit cake – very little actual cake, and a lot of very, very sweet frosting with a tiny sliver of dried grapefruit, (which is normally my favourite bit!).

We thought that the best bit of the desserts was the orange & strawberry pearls on the banana toffee cake, which burst in your mouth and were full of flavour. The rest of it was a huge disappointment! We have eaten here several times before, and we loved the idea of being able to choose 3 tiny, different desserts, but sadly they just didn't deliver on their expected promise. Such a shame.

After dinner, we walked round to the Streets of America to have a look at the Osborne Lights, but the area was very crowded and we were tired by now, so we only spent about 30 mins watching the lights and then left, driving back to Saratoga Springs.

When we got back, we changed our clothing for swimwear, and in my case, a dress over the top, collected all our dirty laundry, put it in the car, and then drove to Congress Park. We found the swimming pool and laundry room we had used 2 years ago, and put the laundry on to wash, before walking across the new bridge to Downtown Disney. We picked up a couple of small items from World of Disney, then checked Ghirardelli's for chocolate drops. They still only had the ones with the white bits on them, (non pareils), so we took a chance that they would be okay, and bought 4 tubs of them. I was able to use my 10% discount voucher here, and they gave me another one, which I consequently folded up carefully and left in our Owner's Locker box for next year!

We then called into Earl of Sandwich and got 2 counter service meals – a Full Montague sandwich, an Hawaiian BBQ sandwich, two brownie crème sandwiches, and coffees. Everything except the coffee would be put in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch.

We walked back over the bridge to the laundry room, put our newly washed clothes in the dryer, then sat in the pool hot tub, drinking our coffee and relaxing for half an hour.

We eventually gathered up the dry laundry, and drove back to our room, where we showered, hung up the wet t-shirts to dry, and watched some TV before bed. Another very full and exhausting, but fun day!

DAY TWENTY-SEVEN – Thursday 20 November

Plan : Pack, Magic Kingdom for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

Actual : We slept in a bit, then got up to do the dreaded packing this morning! We hate this job, but because we hate it, we usually leave it till the last possible minute, then are up till stupid o'clock in the morning doing it the night before we fly home. So, this time we wanted to get it out of the way as soon as we could.

Therefore, we spent the next 2½ hours with all four cases spread out on the beds, very carefully and cleverly packing so that everything fitted into the cases, and managed to get 90% of it finished. (DH really is The Master of Packing, he always manages to fit "Oh my life, we bought all that??" amounts of stuff into the cases!) The last few bits can be done on Saturday morning. We also had a break at midday and ate our sandwiches and brownies from the Earl of Sandwich.

By 1.30 p.m. we had done as much as we could, and we were bored of packing by then, so we headed out to the Magic Kingdom. As we were driving there, we saw an armadillo on the grass verge, followed a couple of miles later by another one!

We caught the ferry from the Ticket & Transportation Centre, and were pleased to note on our arrival at the park that it was only moderately busy. We made our way down Main Street, (via the Emporium to pick up a bronze-coloured Mickey ears wine-bottle stopper), to the hub, where we found the FP+ viewing area for the Festival of Fantasy parade. We entered, it was already quite busy in there but we walked round a little and found a good viewing spot, directly opposite the castle, and had half an hour to wait. We watched a couple of young lads try to step over the taped barrier to get into the viewing area, and they were promptly descended upon by 3 CMs, who smartly turfed them out again!

The parade was amazing, we loved it as much as we had the other day, and were so glad we had managed to see it for a second time. The dragon was still the highlight!

We walked round to Adventureland to check Pirates, but it was showing as 30 mins and we knew it would be less later, when the general crowds had left the park, so we had a quick restroom break and then went to sit by the entrance to Big Thunder Mountain for 5 mins, to pass some time.

The standby wasn't too bad, 30 mins, but we went on with our FP+ and were quickly on board the Wildest Ride in the Wilderness.

After this, we took a break near Columbia Harbour House, with cups of coffee. The small stools there are not the most comfortable, but the area does have a tendency to be quiet.

At about 4.00 p.m., we walked all the way back down Main Street, looking for the Christmas Party wristband distribution, but couldn’t see anything promising. We picked up a party guide map, went out to the entrance, and were told that we would have to exit the park and then come back in again if we wanted to get our wristbands from there, which we didn't particularly want to do, or we could just go to Tomorrowland. Grumbling a bit, we went back down Main Street again and turned right just before the hub hoardings, cutting through the Tomorrowland Plaza, and into Tomorrowland that way. There was a small queue which we assumed was for the party wristbands, so we tagged onto the end of it.

The queue went down quite quickly as they had a number of CMs with iPads doing the wristbanding, and when our Magic Bands were scanned, our tickets showed up so we got our lovely wristbands, did a little happy dance with the CM, and went off to do fun things!

DH wanted to try Stitch's Great Escape, but I have never fancied this ride/show, so I held his backpack and camera, and he went in on his own. It was only a 5 min wait, and I found a bit of wall to sit on outside. He came out afterwards, and said he was glad he had done it, but he didn't feel the need to ever bother with it again. I gleefully said, "told you so!"

Our final FP+ of today was for the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train, so we went there next, and it was great fun again.

The park was still quite crowded, but people were beginning to leave, so we decided to eat next. We walked round the back of the Castle to Pecos Bills, and went up to order our Deluxe Angus Double Cheeseburgers, the yummy ones with BBQ sauce and onion rings on it, nom nom nom. Only to find out that just one week earlier, they had been discontinued!! We were quite upset about this, but quickly realised that moaning about it would get us precisely nowhere, so we just got ordinary bacon cheeseburgers with fries, and chocolate cake, coffee and chocolate milk. Plus lots of fixin's, and pots of Heinz BBQ sauce! The CM serving was quite sympathetic, and said it had been her favourite too, and lots of guests were unhappy that it had been discontinued. I guess they must have discontinued it for a reason, though.

After dinner, we walked to the Frontier Trading Post to get DH's Party pin. We were surprised that there was a lot less choice in the design this year, but we still really liked the bauble design, so he picked a colour and character he liked. While he was browsing the store, I stood to one side out of the way of the crowds, next to two CMs who were chatting to each other. A guest approached them, and asked where the Party pins where, (right next to me lady, use your eyes!). Without thinking, and as one, the 2 CMs and I all did the 'Disney point' to the display next to me! The CMs laughed, and said I could work there (give me half a chance!), particularly when they saw my nametag!

We walked towards Main Street with the idea of picking up our special event Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom cards, but it was packed with exiting guests, and guests waiting for the first Christmas Party parade, so we backtracked and went to ride the Jingle Jungle Cruise (10 mins), and then Pirates (5). The park was rapidly emptying of non-Party guests now, which was great!

We stopped at Tortuga Tavern for cookies and hot chocolate, and then happily rode Big Thunder Mountain twice in a row, with virtually no wait.

We headed over to 7 Dwarf's Mine Train, as I had wanted to check out the regular, standby queue to see what the interactive elements were like, but I knew it would be too crowded during regular park hours, so reckoned a Party night would be our best shot. I was right, it was a 30 min wait, and was well worth it as the interactive parts are really fun! There is a long trough of virtual gems that you have to swipe into same-shape holes to the sides, and then a bit further on there is another bit where you play with musical spigots. When you finally enter near the boarding area, there are barrels full of gems that you have to spin, and if you and other guests manage to get them all to spin at once, an image of Snow White dancing with all seven Dwarves appears on the ceiling. We really enjoyed the ride, in the dark again.

We tried to get a good spot to watch Holiday Wishes, although the hub area was quite crowded, and we had to stand by Sleepy Hollow near some easels, but it was still a good view. (CMs were a bit shouty at folk again, who were trying to get over the bridge to be near the castle!) The fireworks were wonderful, and again we noticed a lot of pale pink fireworks in this show. The holiday additions were gorgeous, and there were projections onto the Castle like they had used last year.

Afterwards, we walked round to Haunted Mansion, which had no wait, and then decided to try Big Thunder one last time, but at 20 mins we decided we had probably ridden it enough for tonight. We had a look at Pirates of the Caribbean, which said 5 mins but looked much, much longer to us, so we gave up for the moment and had a restroom break before finding a spot to watch the Christmas parade, where it began in Frontierland, opposite Splash Mountain. The parade was really lovely, we had forgotten about the scents of peppermint candy canes, sugary sweets, and gingerbread that float out at various points. Predictably, Frozen had been shoe-horned in there, but it kinda fitted with the snowy themes, and the rest of the floats were fabulous too. Santa waved to us, the dancing reindeer were really cute, and we loved the toy soldiers again, they are the best bit!

We decided that we had been wrong to give up on Big Thunder Mountain too early, so walked over there after the parade, and rode twice in a row with minimal waits. We were getting a bit cold by now, and it was getting late, so we went to Columbia Harbour House for more cocoa and cookies, then walked through Fantasyland and back to the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train which we rode for the 7th time this trip, with a 35 min wait!

Everything was closing as we exited the Train, as it was after midnight, so we went into the Emporium and got DH an event t-shirt, and then realised we had missed the timeslot for collecting our Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom cards! We don't play the game, but like to collect the cards, and I knew this year's was Frozen themed so was quite keen to get ours (I think I am more of a fan of this film than I am letting on). The fire station was well and truly closed, so we went into City Hall, where a very nice CM happily fetched us two cards with Elsa on them. We were pleased with this!

We had had a fabulous evening, and had really enjoyed Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. We caught the monorail back to the car park, and as we were leaving the parking lot, saw a huge deer lurking at the edge of some shrubbery there. What's with all the deer this year?

We went back to Saratoga Springs, but I had trouble getting off to sleep that night – I was over-tired, and my ankles were killing me from all the walking, so I couldn't relax properly. I must have eventually slept, though.

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT – Friday 21 November

Plan : Animal Kingdom

Actual : We were quite tired from our full day yesterday, and my lack of sleep, but we still got up at a reasonable time for our coffee, showers etc. We drove to the Animal Kingdom and went to Pizzafari for Bounty Breakfast Platters – yum! I was frantically sending update texts to my parents, sister, son and daughter, in order to try and use up all the credit on the phone I had left, as it will expire within a month but we will be back in the UK by then! Next year, I'm definitely bringing a Pay-As-You-Go phone from the UK!

Next was the Kilimanjaro Safari, with our first FP+ of the day, and we finally got to see the very tippy-tops of two lions this time. Lots of animals were out and about, and they were nice and easy to spot in the sunshine.

We walked round to Expedition Everest, and I chickened out of riding it, no idea why. DH went on and used the single rider line, which was a 20 min wait, and I used his camera to take photos of the ride and construction walls next to it. When DH got off the ride, he, (being tall!), casually stretched his arms above the walls and took some photos of the work being done, we think for the new water projection show being built at this park.

It was now time for our next FP+, It's Tough to be a Bug, so we headed round there and had to wait for the next show, but at least we were inside and out of the heat. I always forget that I only quite like this show, a lot of elements of it make me shudder as I'm really not a fan of bugs, but DH really likes it so I tolerate it for him.

When we came out, we spent a little time watching a couple of lovely vultures, who were building a nest. We got chatting to the CM there, who told us lots of really interesting facts about the vultures, such as the fact that they are starting to breed again this year, having lost a baby last year, and then she got chatting about the mosquito fish in the water around the vulture enclosure. She told us that they are terrible invaders, they will take over vast areas of water, and Disney normally take steps to ensure this doesn't happen. However, with all the construction work currently going on, the fish are being allowed to just roam free at the moment, as there isn't any point in trying to keep them out of all the areas that are being redeveloped, and Disney will deal with them after all the work is finished. Then she began to tell us about the huge fish that are in the otter enclosure, (fish are her speciality!), that are called Pacu, eat fruit, are related to piranha, and have teeth that look eerily like human teeth! She was fascinating to talk to.

We went down the steps to the otter enclosure to look at the Pacu, and marvelled at how much they look like they have human smiles! They are so weird to look at, and it was great fun watching them for a while, while imparting our new-found knowledge onto anyone else that ventured down there!

We walked round to Kusafari Bakery, and picked up some coffee, sitting in our usual spots on the wall behind the coffee shop. After our rest and refreshment, it was time for our next FP+, which was the Festival of the Lion King again. This time, we were elephants, and we had great fun trunk fighting!

We took the train over to Rafiki's Conservation Station, where we watched a lovely boa move up and down a tree for ages, and also a really interesting presentation involving a Hyacinth Macaw, who could crack the hardest of nuts with his beak, really easily. We also discovered the animal cams, which we hadn't noticed before, and spent quite some time watching the gorilla and tiger enclosures, and a rhino who was still in the animal house.

After this, we boarded the train again and walked over to Asia to follow the Maharaja Trek. Unfortunately, it was coming to the end of the day, all the bats had gone indoors to bed, and there was only one tiger out, again hiding in the undergrowth like the last time we were here. We should have known better than to walk this Trail late in the afternoon!

Eventually, we made our way to the Yak & Yeti for our dinner reservation, being seated quite quickly. Unfortunately, we think our server was coming to the end of her shift, as she seemed to be rushing us quite a bit throughout the meal, bringing out our desserts before we had finished our main course!

I ordered the steak & shrimp, and DH had the chicken, both of which were really delicious. I also had the drink I love here, it is a cherry/lime/Sprite mix, and is lovely. DH had just Sprite. Dessert was Mango Pie (me), and cheesecake for DH. It was all very good, as it always is here, and the only downside was the urgency of our server!

When we had finished dinner, the park was closed, so we took a slow stroll out, and drove back to Saratoga Springs. We packed up our Owner's Locker purple box, put the last bits and pieces into the cases, and closed up what we could.

We made a plan for tomorrow, and I went online to do online check-in for the flights, and set us up some FP+ selections for our last trip to Epcot.

TV and bed soon followed.

DAY TWENTY-NINE – Saturday 22 November

Plan : Check out of resort, Epcot, to Airport

Actual : We had a good night's sleep, and got up feeling sad that our adventure was nearly over. We showered, finished the packing and locked the cases, left a box of Cadbury's Roses chocolates and various money-off vouchers we had for Mousekeeping, and left the room.

Getting everything back to the car was quite funny – there were two of us, and a total of 4 suitcases, 2 carry-on wheeled cases, one handbag, one rucksack, and one purple box! We had to move things in clumps, from the room to the end of the corridor, then round the corner to the lifts, then into the lifts, then out of the lifts again after we had descended, and then across to the car park!

We finally got the car all packed up though, and drove to reception, where we dropped the Owner's Locker box off at Bell Services for collection, and checked out of the room.

Then we drove round to the boat dock, parked the car, and took the 4 suitcases, my handbag and DH's rucksack with us to catch the boat over to Downtown. This was DH's bright idea – Virgin Atlantic have a check-in desk located at Downtown, where you can check-in for your flight, pick up your boarding pass, and hand over your luggage. Virgin load the luggage into huge trucks and take it to the airport for you, you don't have to see it again until you get off the plane at your destination. It is a great service, and only costs $10 each to do. It is so worth it to be luggage free all day, particularly if, like us, you aren't flying until early evening. We normally drive there, but every year we struggle to find somewhere to park, and end up having to drag the luggage miles across the vast car parks. And last year, to add insult to uncomfortableness, it was POURING with rain on the day we had to do this! So this year, DH had the bright idea of taking the luggage across on the boat – the boat dock at Downtown is literally just around the corner from the check-in desk.

It was spitting with rain a little as we sailed merrily across the seven seas to Downtown Disney, and a very nice male guest on the boat helped us with our 4 cases, both onto the boat and then off again at the other end. We took the cases round to the check-in area, worrying as usual about the weight of them, although I have got to be a bit of an expert guesser at suitcase weights now, and I had reckoned they all felt okay. We tentatively put them on the scales – one was actually slightly underweight! Two of them were whisked on and off so quickly that I didn't see what they weighed, but they must have been okay because the guy checking them didn't say anything. We put the last case on, and it was 0.7 kg overweight – he sucked in his breath and told us we had to pay $60 in overweight luggage fees. Then he looked at our shocked faces and laughed – he told us he was only kidding, and not to worry about it! I didn't know whether to hit him or hug him!!

Luggage tagged up and gone, we went to the desk and collected our boarding passes, which showed us which gate to go to and when, for our flight later. Everything was easy-peasy!

We took a quick restroom break, then waited a few minutes for a boat back to Saratoga Springs, feeling really pleased with ourselves for this great idea. Back at the resort, we drove to the Carriage House to pick up coffee in our refillable mugs for the last time, and to take some photos of the lovely Christmas tree that had suddenly appeared in the reception area. We then sat in the rocking chairs opposite the main pool for 10 mins, to reflect on our wonderful adventure.

Time to be off. We drove to Epcot, parked, and walked in to ride Spaceship Earth with our first FP+ of the day. To be honest, this was a bonus day at a park for us, up until last year we had always spent our final day pottering about the Boardwalk or Downtown, waiting for it to be time to leave for the airport, but then last year we had decided to spend our last day at Epcot, so we continued this for this year. We only get about 4 or 5 hours in the park, but it is still worth doing.

Spaceship Earth done with, we used the paper FastPasses we had been given a few days ago to ride Test Track, although the ride kept stopping every few yards, which was irritating. Still, at least we did the outdoor portion in one go, and didn't stop once we were out there.

The rain had mostly cleared away by now, it was cloudy and starting to warm up a bit. We walked to the Electric Umbrella for a spot of lunch. I fetched the food while DH dried off an outdoor table for us. He had a bacon cheeseburger, and I got chicken nuggets, both with fries. (Unfortunately, the burger we had both loved last year had disappeared off the menu – the mac & cheese cheeseburger.) We got coffee, a chocolate cupcake, and a strawberry cheesecake too.

After lunch, we realised our Mission Space FP+ had expired, but the green side was only a 5 min wait, so we rode it anyway.

Next we walked over the The Land pavilion, rode Soarin' with our final FP+ and a 15 min wait, and then finished our Orlando adventure with the ride we started it with, Living with the Land. Lovely.

We went to Mousegear to spend our leftover snack credits on rice krispie treats and sour cherry balls, and finally left Epcot for another year. I hate this bit, I always feel so sad to leave.

We drove to the airport, but managed to miss the car rental dropoff turning for the second year in a row! It is so badly signposted, the signs are there for a bit but then they disappear and we had no idea which way to go, so found ourselves heading towards Tampa! Luckily, unlike last year when we drove around in a huge circle to get back, we managed to find a way to come off the main road we were on and back on the opposite side quite quickly. We finally found the dropoff garage, and returned the car. All was fine with that.

We then went into the airport, through customs, (HUGE queue! And I had been randomly TSA pre-approved, which was a bit weird), and made our way to our gate. We were a bit later getting there and had rushed a bit down the long corridors, only to find the flight had been delayed! There had been a medical emergency on the flight before ours, and this had backed everything up somewhat, so we were an hour late boarding and taking off. Fortunately, we were able to take advantage of the free Wi-Fi at the airport so we just sat and browsed the internet for a while.

We eventually boarded, and the flight home was smooth, if somewhat unpleasant. First of all, the evening meals offered to us were a choice of chicken curry, (what is it with airlines and their insistence on trying to feed everyone curry all the time, I HATE the flavour of curry!), beef in an onion gravy with garlic mashed potato, or some vegetarian pasta thing in a tomato sauce. I have IBS, and my food issues are onions, garlic, and cooked tomatoes. There is no way of communicating this to the airline in advance, you are only able to order specific meal requirements such as vegetarian or diabetic, there is no option for food issues. In the end, I had the beef meal, scraped off the gravy, and only ate the meat. Luckily, I wasn't very hungry anyway. Shortly after this, the lights went off and we were left on our own all night – no stewards came round with drinks or anything else, until just before we landed. This was such a different flight to the one coming out here!

In addition, there was a child sat in front of DH, whose mother reclined her seat suddenly as soon as the lights went out. The seat slammed into DH's knees, making him jump, and he instinctively pushed the seat back upright. The mother slammed it back down again, and DH politely asked her not to do this, as it was painfully digging into his knees. She said her child needed to sleep and the seat was staying back. He told her it was hurting him, and rather than apologise, she called a steward over who also didn't apologise, but told us it was our own fault as we knew what we were buying when we bought the airline tickets! He sympathised enthusiastically with the mother, and told us it was basically tough. Everyone got a bit heated, the steward aggressively accused DH of swearing, which he didn't do – I heard what he said, and he was just repeating a question the mother had asked. I told the steward this, he just grunted and again didn't apologise for accusing DH of something he hadn't done! Eventually, the only way we could resolve this was for DH and I to swap seats, as the mother wasn't reclining her seat so he could sit behind her more comfortably. This involved waking up the man sitting in the third seat next to us, asking him to move out into the aisle, and us all having to squeeze past the grandmother, who was sat in their row's third seat, with her seat reclined, and no intention of helping to make things easier for us all!

All in all it was a bit of a nightmare, and made for a very uncomfortable 9 hour trip back. We were so glad to get off that plane in the end! We asked to speak to a supervisor as we disembarked, and told her of Simon the steward's attitude and actions during the night. She didn't look best pleased with him, and I sincerely hope he gets retrained. I know he had a tough job to do, trying to mediate between us over a difficult situation, but a little more sympathy towards someone who is 6'2" tall and just trying to travel wouldn't have gone amiss! When you think about it, the reclining angle of airline seats is never enough to comfortably sleep in, anyway, and the child was very small – I looked at her later in the flight, and she was curled up in the seat without touching the back of her chair! Grrrr. I think if this had been handled differently in the first place, we could have quite happily changed seats early on and avoided all the assorted levels of stroppiness.

Just before we landed, the stewards finally appeared again, and gave us coffee, a pot of strawberry yoghurt, a blueberry muffin, and a cereal bar.

Anyway, we got a taxi back to the hotel, collected our car, and drove home without incident, arriving at about 11.00 a.m. We tried to stay awake as much as possible, and luckily my lovely sister had been round to our house with some milk and bread, so we didn't need to go out again. She also sorted out the massive amount of post we had received, and had bought me a pretty bunch of flowers as well!

FINAL THOUGHTS

We had an absolutely amazing holiday, we loved every aspect of it, and would love to go back to California again some day.

These are the things we noticed and/or thought about the trip :-

1. This seemed to be the year of the wild animal! We spotted so many animals this trip, way more than we ever have before. There were bunnies everywhere!
2. We did encounter quite a few rude folk this year – we were talking to a CM at Downtown Disney at one point, trying to find where the new bridge walkway was to Saratoga Springs, and a woman physically pushed past us, and began to ask the CM about restaurants! We had to point out that we were in the middle of a conversation with him! Also, we found we were pushed out of the way on several occasions when people were trying to pick up coffee creamer or sugar from the counter at Artist's Palette.
3. We quite liked the changes to the design elements of the cars at Test Track, although this does increase the wait time a lot, even with FP+.
4. We noticed loads of pale pink fireworks in the shows, as opposed to last year's surfeit of orange coloured ones.
5. Animal Kingdom had a vastly reduced number of animal enclosures due to all the construction going on there, and the huge amount of construction hoardings meant a loss of atmosphere as well. It was also much more difficult to negotiate your way round the park because everywhere was so crowded, due to the smaller walkways. However, we LOVED the new Lion King theatre!
6. Don't even get me started on the lack of atmosphere and reduced walkways at Downtown ….. We spent much less time here that on previous visits, because it was such a nightmare to negotiate. Even the pockets of musicians everywhere didn't really help!
7. With the exception of our week in Disneyland, we found that we were getting up nearly every day when we awoke naturally, rather than when we had set an alarm. We took more time to get ready and leave the resort each day, and walked more slowly round the parks, appreciating them more rather than rushing everywhere. I think this is a combination of having visited the parks many times now, and also the fact that we are getting a bit older, and need more rest! But we found we really, really enjoyed the time we had in the parks; we were often still spending 11 or 12 hour days in them, but there was less personal pressure to dash between rides this time, which was lovely.

So, that was it for our big Coast to Coast vacation. We will be back in Florida in 2015, this time with my sister and my son in tow, for the first time in many years. Next year – who knows? Possibly Disneylands in Tokyo and Hong Kong?

Thanks for reading!

[disneycast89]

I would LOVE to do a Coast to Coast trip!

[lauriep]

What a fantastic trip! You do get a different feeling when you've been to WDW many times and you're on a long stay. You can settle in and relax more. So great! Too bad they're in the midst of so much construction at every park. At AK and DD especially, it sounds like there are walls everywhere. Sorry for the increase of rude people, CMs included. Unfortunately, it's everywhere, real world and WDW. You have a very entertaining writing style and I've enjoyed this TR a lot!

[Timon-HakunaMatata]

Thank you for the long (just the way I like my trip reports!) report. I wish we were going tomorrow.

[taylan1]

What a great coast to coast trip! Thank you so much for sharing it with us! I really enjoyed it and took notes on your Disneyland trip as we hope to go out there in a couple of years. So sorry you had such a rough flight home with rude people but glad you got home safe and sound.