The Big Family Adventure - WDW 2016, part 1 About This Page:

[Silvercat]

Cast : Carolyn, trip planner obsessive
DH, goes along with all plans, gratefully
DSis, my sister, very happy to be going back to Walt Disney World after a 4-year hiatus
DSon, my son, also very happy to be going back, after a gap of 15 years!

Experience : Carolyn : 15th trip to Walt Disney World (over a 25 year period)
DH : 8th trip
DSis : 7th trip
DSon : 7th trip
Resort : Disney's Old Key West Resort
Transportation : Aeroplane, rental car
Dates : Saturday 07 November – Saturday 21 November 2015

PLANNING

We booked this trip in May 2014, for two weeks at the beginning of November 2015, staying in Disney's Old Key West Resort, with our usual excellent offers for UK residents – free dining, 14 day tickets for the price of 7 day ones, $200 gift card etc. However, after a couple of months, and as we were approaching our holiday in California and Florida at the end of 2014, my sister seemed convinced that she would never have the chance to visit Walt Disney World again, and we began to feel really sorry for her! We discussed it between ourselves, and decided that as we enjoy her company so much, we would ask her if she wanted to join us this time. She very quickly said yes! We therefore looked at the accommodation options, as DSis said she would like her own room. We decided to change the booking from a Studio to a two-bedroomed villa, still at the same resort, and so I rang the Disney Holiday Company to see if this could be done. They happily helped us to change the reservation, and we thought we were all set!

Meanwhile, before we had made any real plans for the holiday other than the dates and the Resort, my son went through quite a bad break-up with his then-girlfriend, and was very unhappy for a while. He kept saying how much he wished he could go back to Florida again, as he hadn't been since he was 19, and really loved the place. So feeling sorry for him too, the 3 of us discussed the situation and decided to ask him if he would like to join us, although he would have to sleep on the sofa bed in the lounge, unless he wanted to pay a lot of money and we could move the booking to a 3-bedroomed villa – he jumped at the chance, and opted for the much cheaper option of sleeping on the sofa bed! So we added him to our plans with Disney Holidays, and this time we were definitely all set! (Subsequently, a few months later, DSon got himself a lovely new girlfriend, and after a whirlwind romance, they are now engaged and getting married in August 2016, plus they have a baby on the way! Unfortunately, it was too late in the proceedings to include her in the holiday at that point – we would have had to change the booking to a 3-bedroomed villa and that would have proved cost-prohibitive).

We booked the flights, flying from Manchester in the UK directly to Orlando International Airport, although we were reluctant to use Virgin Atlantic again as we think their service has got worse over the last few years, and we had had a particularly bad experience with them on our return journey last year, but in the end they were the cheapest option, and also we prefer to fly from Manchester rather than London, where most other airlines fly from. Flights are shockingly expensive of late, compared to what we used to pay years ago! Anyway, we paid for extra luggage coming back, and DH also coughed up £25 each to pre-book our seats going out, as we wanted to ensure we were all sitting together in a set of 4 seats in the centre of the plane. We chose the very back row, thinking that at least we wouldn't have anyone behind us in case we were a bit noisy and excited flying out!

Next up was the car hire, and here was where I made a small, rookie mistake, which is very unlike me. We discussed what size car to get, and agreed that we would only need a standard car. The only time this would be cramped would be on the journey from the airport to the resort, as we would have 4 adults, 4 suitcases (all of us taking a second case inside our checked luggage, for the return journey), and various bits of hand luggage, and we reckoned we could put up with this for the short trip to Old Key West. Our journey back to the airport two weeks later would be by the method we used last year – we were going to take the cases via the ferryboat from Old Key West to the Virgin Atlantic check-in desk at Disney Springs, so could take the cases to the ferry dock in batches. Anyway, to book the car I used the agency that I always use, and booked us a Ford Fusion saloon (or similar) through Budget, for a reasonable price for 14 days. What I didn't realise at the time of booking was that I had only booked a 2-door car! This didn't become obvious until we went to collect the car on our arrival day …

We discussed long and hard the issue of how to get to Manchester airport, about 1½ hours journey from home. We were originally going to use DH's car and my car, as they both are 5-door saloons with lots of boot space for luggage, but then my car started to play up a bit so we had to switch this to using DH's and DSon's cars. I pre-booked two car parking spaces at the airport, and the cheapest option this year was the valet parking one, which I was quite impressed with – we haven't used this option before, usually the cheapest is a long-term car park which is a shuttle bus-ride away from the terminals.

Our ESTA Visas from last year were still valid, and I booked travel insurance online quite cheaply. Just before DSis's birthday in February, I asked if she wanted me to buy her a "Keys to the Kingdom Tour" as a birthday present, and she was very happy about that! I also offered the same thing to DSon, for his birthday in July. DH and I had already done this tour previously, (and really loved it!), so this time around we were interested in the "Undiscovered Future World Tour" in Epcot. I therefore booked these tours for us all when our booking window opened.

We also mutually agreed on a date to do the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, which neither DSis nor DSon had attended since it was a complete washout due to torrential rain in 1999, so I picked up the tickets for that too.

Sometime in March, we had a 'dining reservation' meeting, where we sat down with copies of a guidebook and tried to decide where we wanted to eat during our holiday. This was a bit of a challenge, as we had too many restaurants we wanted to try versus how many days we were going to be there! DSis came up with a couple of new suggestions, and then DSon also had some suggestions (they both wrote up a list!). Luckily, some of these were Quick Service restaurants, so we knew we would be able to fit these in fairly easily. DSis suggested the Coral Reef in Epcot, which we had never eaten in before as I assumed it was only a fish and seafood restaurant, and we aren't particularly fish fans; however, on looking at the menu online, it did look like there would be some interesting items on offer, so we all agreed to give it a try. She was also interested in Le Cellier, but once I related to her the issues we have had previously there, we decided to drop that one. (We think the menu there is very restrictive now, with lots of garlic, onions, peppers and spices on the menu – even the risotto is heavily laden with garlic! I have food issues with all of those items, and over the years there has become less and less on offer there that I have been able to confidently order).

We made a list of places for me to try and book, and at the 180 day mark I duly got online and managed to secure most of the places we were interested in. I was unable to get a reservation for Fulton's Crab House, for some reason, and also the Yak & Yeti in Animal Kingdom on the day we wanted, so I had to look at alternatives. I also wanted to try and reserve a breakfast slot at Be Our Guest, which was on a trial basis to start with, as Beauty & the Beast is my DSis's favourite Disney movie and she had never been to (or even seen) Be Our Guest in all its completed glory, so I was excited to take her there for the first time. However, I couldn't get a breakfast booking until the trial period was over, so I managed to get a very early lunch booking there, for 10.30 a.m., and watched the Disney website eagerly, awaiting the results of the trial and to see if it was made a permanent event. Eventually, an announcement was made that the trial had been successful and the bookings window was opening for reservations. I jumped on the website quickly and was lucky enough to get a reservation for 8.25 a.m. on our first day in the Magic Kingdom, so I then cancelled the 10.30 a.m. booking.

We also chose our Magic Band colours at this point, with myself having orange, DH having green, DSis having pink, and DSon having yellow. (My intention was to get DH to draw Tigger stripes on mine before I coated it with clear nail polish in order to customise it. However, in reality, we never actually got around to doing this!). The Magic Bands would be waiting for us at check-in at Old Key West, as Disney don't ship these internationally at the moment.

Next up on the planning list was FastPasses! A couple of weeks prior to the 60 day mark we all had a chat about this, and it was agreed that I would just book the ones I thought we could all enjoy, bearing in mind our dining reservations. At the 60 day point I logged onto My Disney Experience and tried my best to get the attractions that I knew everyone loved, or hadn't tried before as they were new since my family's last visit. Trying to fit these around the dining reservations was also a bit of a challenge, but eventually I thought I had managed to get everything we wanted. There was a lot of interest from everyone in the Food & Wine Festival in Epcot, so I tried to ensure we visited that 3 times in total. At this point, the document known as "The Spreadsheet" with all our plans and booking reservation numbers on it was finalised.

Six weeks before departure, I applied for a Disabled Parking Permit, (DSis has a UK 'blue badge' permit), which would enable us to utilise the disabled parking bays wherever we went in the USA. This arrived within a couple of weeks, would be valid up until the end of November 2015, and cost $15.

At this point, I also ordered us some customised "Family holiday" t-shirts from a company based in the USA, as it was almost impossible to find a UK company doing this. I needed character pictures for each one printing onto the shirts, alongside the legend, "XXX's WDW Family Adventure 2015". I found some really good pictures of each of our favourite characters – Dsis got Belle, I got Tigger, DSon got Pluto, and DH got Ariel. The shirts arrived really quickly and were perfect – pink ones for us girls, and white for the boys. The only downside was I had to pay an unexpected import duty on them to FedEx, which pushed the price up a bit.

One final thing I needed to do was to order some Disney Resort Blend ground coffee from Joffrey's Tea & Coffee Company. My dad absolutely loves this coffee, and sadly Joffrey's don't ship outside of the UK, so last year we had had some sent to our resort a few days before our arrival, where they held it for me. I went online and ordered two packs of French Bistro Blend In-Room coffee, 2 packs of Pumpkin Crème Brulee for DH, and one pack of Tiramisu blend for DSis, all to be delivered to Old Key West Resort in my name.

Nothing left to do now but save spending money, and wait …..

DAY ONE – Saturday 07 November

Plan : Fly to Florida, dinner at Trail's End
Actual : After doing online check-in for Virgin Atlantic yesterday, we knew we were still going to have to make an early start today for our drive to Manchester. So, we were up at 4.00 a.m., grabbing quick cups of coffee, loading up the car, and being out of the door for the drive to mum and dad's to pick up DSis by 5.30 a.m. DSon arrived at the same time as we did, and we were all on the road by 5.45 a.m.! For the first time in forever, there were very few roadworks on the drive there, and it was a fairly quick and easy drive. We followed the directions that the parking agency had emailed to us for valet parking, and were pulling up in their parking lanes by 7.30 a.m. We were really impressed by this parking service, as all we had to do then was unload the car, walk about a hundred yards to the office, hand over the car keys, and keep safe for the next two weeks the receipt they gave to us! We were alongside the short-term car park, right in front of the terminal then – a far cry from the 15 minute shuttle-bus ride we normally have to take! The staff there were really nice too, friendly and efficient.

We excitedly walked round to the terminal, really looking forward to the next couple of weeks together. I had bought a set of luggage scales a few weeks ago, because although I had got pretty good at guessing the weight of our cases at any given point, it was still always a worry that the cases would be overweight and I would have to pay charges on them (I've had this happen to me loads of times!). Therefore, I had weighed our cases before we set out this morning and they were very underweight, according to my new scales. (To be fair, most of what we need for holidays is already in a locker box in the USA, things such as chargers for electronics, sunscreen, spare shoes, first aid kit, toiletries/toothbrushes/deodorant etc. So we only really needed clothing to take with us, and we had packed less than we normally take as we knew we had a washer/dryer in our room). We went to the bag drop area for our airline, and I was right – all our cases were extremely underweight, which was good news!

Bags dropped off, we headed upstairs to immigration, where there were HUGE queues! Luckily, it all went down quite quickly though, as there were a lot of scanners open for folk to go through. We queued up together as a family, but were then split up a bit as I was at the back of our group and was held up at the passport check bit by them letting some premier passengers through in front of me. I eventually got through and rounded the corner to see my family several people ahead of me, but they all hung back a bit so I could catch up. Everyone got through security okay, including DSon who has a magnet implant for his hearing aid, but this wasn't queried by security at all. I was pulled aside for a random explosives swab on my hands, which was fine, I didn't mind this as it only makes us all feel safer.

We were all finally clear, and headed into the Duty Free shop for a little retail therapy! We found a stand offering free samples of a new flavour of Baileys, vanilla and cinnamon, and we all tried a small cup. It was nice, but the vanilla flavouring was very sweet, and most of the cinnamon flavour seemed to come from the flavoured rim on the plastic cup, so we decided to pass on this as the bottle was quite heavy and we would have to lug it all the way to the USA and then home again, (DSis wanted it as a Christmas gift for her, and I felt guilty about not getting it, but it would have been a nuisance to carry around). I did buy a litre bottle of normal Baileys, because I had read someone's trip report recently (a lady from the UK), and she had said that she always bought this for trips to Disney World so that she and her family could have a glass of it while sitting on the balcony some evenings, and we all thought that sounded a lovely thing to do! (This was tip number one from her report that I used) I also treated myself to a bottle of Paco Rabanne Lady Millionaire perfume, but upgraded this to a bigger bottle of perfume and a tube of body lotion for just a few pounds more. DSon got himself a bottle of 007 Aftershave, and I had to talk my bearded hubby out of buying himself a bottle, too! (He never wears aftershave, I bought him a bottle of Joop! several years ago and he hardly ever wears it).

Shopping done, we went in search of breakfast. I had a voucher that I had downloaded the day before for 15% off the bill at Frankie & Bennies, so that was where we headed. The two boys both ordered a full English breakfast, I had scrambled eggs on toast, and Dsis had a hash brown. We all had tea or coffee, and I also got a glass of water as I was hot and thirsty. DH kindly paid for everyone, and we did indeed get 15% off the total bill!

Knowing that Virgin Atlantic have a habit over the last few years of trying to serve me something curried, or cooked with onions or tomatoes, none of which I can happily digest, I now utilised a tip I had read from fellow IBS sufferers on a British Disney fan forum, and went into W H Smiths to pick up a sandwich. I got a tuna and cucumber sandwich, packet of salt & vinegar crisps, and a bottle of lemon Fanta, as a meal-deal.

We then went to our gate, which was quite nearby, for what I thought would be a long wait before boarding. However, I barely had time to put my flight socks on before they started calling for First Class and anyone who needed assistance to board! I then used tip number 2 from the lady's trip report and also donned a pair of pink, fluffy ballet slippers, much to the embarrassment of my family! But because my feet usually swell up on a long-haul flight, I thought this would be more comfortable than my usual trainers for flying in, and I was right – it was incredibly comfortable!

With the rest of my family trying to walk a little distance away from me because of the slippers, we all then boarded and settled in for our long flight. DH and I watched the first half of a documentary film about Amy Winehouse, but thought it was a bit drawn out and slow, so gave up on that and watched Ted 2, which was really funny. DSis and DSon watched a film called Vacation, which is a remake of the original National Lampoon's Vacation, and they said it was really good! DH fell asleep for about an hour, while DSis and I chatted. Dinner was served, and, as predicted, was a choice of chicken curry pasta in a tomato sauce, or beef & onions. I chose the beef, and only ate the bread roll and the dessert, having my tuna sandwich in between those for my main course. DH had my beef dinner. We also got given the world's smallest FAB ice-lolly at one point! Overall, the flight was quite smooth and went fairly quickly. DSis hates taking off, so myself and DSon held her hands and talked to her during takeoff; I hate landing, so when we started to descend, she began telling me about a computer game she has been playing in secret for the last 12 months, which shocked me enough to make me forget about my fear of landing! (It is a game called The Sims Freeplay, which I have been playing for about 4 years and she thinks I am obsessed with because I rave about it all the time, but then it turns out she has been playing it for quite a while and never told me!)

We disembarked the plane, thanking the stewards as we left, and went into the immigration hall. I had changed my slippers for sandals while we were waiting to get off the plane, and was very impressed by how comfortable my feet had felt during the flight. They were still slightly swollen, but not as much as normal. There was the usual quite long queue for immigration, but it went down fairly quickly and we were soon through there and on our way to the luggage conveyor belts. Our luggage was one of the first out, so we grabbed our cases and headed for the next bit – the monorail across to the main concourse. We really like this little monorail, I think it is where we realise that we are really in Florida!

We sat DSis down in a waiting area with all the cases, DSon headed outside for a quick drag on his e-cigarette, and DH and I went to check in with Budget for the car. This was where they pointed out that I had only booked a 2-door car! I hate the upsell thing normally, but in this instance the guy was right – we would be much better off with a 4-door, due to having 4 adults in the car. He told us how much more it would cost, and it seemed quite reasonable to me, (on our return, I checked the credit card bill and we were only charged around £25 per week to upgrade), so we agreed to upgrade, and also to pay for a full tank of fuel, as we could then return the car empty if we wanted to. The car hire guy disappeared for a while, and when he came back he said they were out of 4-door intermediates, and he was going to give us an SUV at no extra cost! We were quite happy with that, and after collecting DSis and DSon, we all walked across to the parking garage to see what vehicle we had got. Unusually, we were given a specific row and space number for our car – this used to be the case years ago, when the car hire places were almost all offsite and had huge car parks, but in more recent years we have got used to being told to pick anything from a particular section. Anyway, we had been given a black Ford Escape, which was nice.

We easily fitted all the luggage in the boot, and piled into the car for the drive to Old Key West. I had printed out directions prior to our journey, but DH didn't need them, as he remembered exactly how to get there, even as it was getting dark!

We were all very excited by now, particularly DSon, as he had never stayed onsite before. (DSis has stayed at Caribbean Beach previously) They both seemed very happy with Old Key West, and thought it was a really pretty resort, although it was difficult to fully experience it as not only were we all very tired by now, but it was dark and they couldn't see much of the layout or amenities.

We parked up at Hospitality House, and went in to check in and pick up our Magic Bands, and collect my coffee order from Joffrey's. We were seen quite quickly, and assigned room number 4724, quite a long way from Hospitality House, but we weren't too worried about that. We all jumped back in the car, and drove round to our room. We were a bit confused by the room number signs when we got there, as it wasn't immediately clear where our room was, and we were all really starting to struggle at this point, being hot and tired. We finally found it though, and dragged our luggage up the 3 flights of stairs as there are no elevators here!

The room was absolutely amazing – we all really loved it! I think it may very well have spoilt DH and I for future stays here though, as we are used to a studio room! There was a huge lounge with a balcony off it, and a fully furnished kitchen behind a breakfast bar. DSis had her own room and bathroom off to the left, then to the right and down a short corridor was our bedroom, a bathroom with a huge Jacuzzi bath and a built-in wardrobe (with the room safe in it), a second bathroom with the loo and a big, walk-in shower in there, and a laundry room with a washer and dryer. We kept thinking we would get lost in there! It was such a lovely set of rooms, all bright and clean, we just fell in love with it.

We didn't really have time to unpack much, so we pulled out the sofa bed and made it up for DSon, freshened ourselves up a bit, changed into cooler clothing, and then set out again for the Fort Wilderness Campground. We always struggle to park here, and today was no exception – we drove round and round the car park before finally finding a parking space. Luckily, it wasn't a long walk to the bus stops from there, and we were soon on a bus driving through the pitch darkness of the Campground – we always forget how dark it is here! We could see lots of lovely Christmas lights and decorations set up by campers at their pitches as we drove along.

We arrived at Pioneer Hall in plenty of time for our reservation, and took a slow stroll down the driveway, past the Hoop De Doo Musical Revue, and checked in at the podium. We were about 15 mins early, and they said they were running a little behind, so they gave us a pager and we walked over to a nearby fence to lean against (all the rocking chairs were already in use!). After about 5 mins, a bench became vacant, so we moved over to sit down properly and wait for our pager to go off.

About 10 mins after our reservation time, the pager did its happy little beepy, flashy thing, and we walked over to the restaurant entrance. It was very busy and loud in there! We were seated on the lower level, at the far end of the right hand side, and ordered Sprites all round. We had all been quite hungry up to this point, but then suddenly over-tiredness set in and both myself and DSis just felt shattered now and not at all like eating. DH and DSon both attacked the buffet and had plates of salad, fried chicken, pizza, mashed potatoes and veg, but DSis just had one piece of chicken, which she barely picked at. I did have some mashed potatoes and corn, a piece of chicken, and some gravy, but I really struggled to eat this, delicious though it was. The boys both had some dessert, DSis didn't have any, and I managed one mouthful of apple cobbler, before admitting defeat. We normally manage to eat much more than this at Trail's End, we really love the food there, but I think the very long day coupled with the extra excitement of having other family members with us this year just about finished us all off!

We had intended to stay and watch "Wishes" from the beach, and go for a walk around a bit after dinner, but all agreed that we just needed to go back to Old Key West and get to bed. We settled the bill with 4 table service credits, left a tip, and were headed out by around 9.30 p.m. As soon as we got back to our room, DSis went to bed. I was glad we had taken the time to make up DSon's bed before we went out, as we were too tired to do it when we got back! I had a quick shower and unpacked a few essentials, and was in bed shortly after. We all slept a bit fitfully, I think through overtiredness that night.

The weather today had been very hot and sunny, with fairly high humidity. It hadn't cooled down when it got dark, either!

DAY TWO – Sunday 08 November

Plan : Magic Kingdom
Actual : We had set an early alarm for this morning, as we had a breakfast reservation at Be Our Guest, (although we normally wake up at around 4 a.m. on our first day at Disney, but not this year!). Therefore, we were up at 7.00 a.m., and after a quick coffee (tea for DSis and DSon – there was no kettle in the room, so each day we had to make tea in the coffee machine, which I thought wasn't ideal, as I thought the taste would transfer and their tea would taste of coffee! We genuinely didn't mind doing it, and took it in turns to make it, but it would have made things easier for everyone if we'd have had a kettle, which we had expected to have), and all wearing our matching Family Holiday t-shirts, we piled into the car and drove to the Ticket & Transportation Centre. Along the way we introduced DSon and DSis to the delights of the Swolphin game, (which we lived to regret ….), and they joined in with a little too much enthusiasm for our liking! The Swolphin game is very simple – it goes like this : the first person to spot the Swan and the Dolphin resorts yells, "SWOLPHIN!" and GENTLY punches the arm of whoever is closest to them. As the holiday progressed, it was hilarious to note how the occupants of the car suddenly went deathly quiet when we approached certain parts of the roads around Disney, and you could almost feel people trying to surreptitiously look for the resorts without being too obvious – we took the whole thing WAY too seriously!

Anyway, we arrived at the Magic Kingdom and parked up quite easily, as we were there very early. DSis loves the ferryboat, so we waited a few minutes for the next one and happily sailed our way over to the Magic Kingdom.

We had to go through a specially opened turnstile for folk on tours or with dining reservations, as the park wasn't open yet. However, our Magic Bands were scanned and we were let into the park.

It was lovely to see all the Christmas decorations up, and we were really surprised to see the big Christmas tree up as we walked onto Main Street – I had thought that didn't go up until the beginning of December.

We took a slow stroll down Main Street, pausing slightly to admire the new Castle Gardens – they were absolutely amazing! They were so beautiful, they made me cry a little – I had known they were under construction, that had been going on last year when we were here, but I hadn’t realised just how lovely they are. They look as though they have been there for years, you can't tell they are new, and they are so pretty!

We walked through the Castle, and into New Fantasyland. Now DSon had never seen this area at all, and DSis had only seen it half finished, so it was really lovely to see their reactions to the Seven Dwarfs' Mine Train, Belle's cottage, and the Beast's castle. I went over to the podium to check us in to Be Our Guest, and we were directed straight over the bridge and into the castle entrance. DSis was uncharacteristically quiet as we walked in, and I turned to check she was okay – she was in tears! We were instructed to turn right and walk past the suits of armour, who muttered and whispered as we passed, and then went into the side room where the Beast meets his guests later in the day, to use the machines to order our food. I tapped my Magic Band on the reader, and we all chose breakfast. Myself and DSon had Eggs Florentine, DSis had the open bacon and egg sandwich, and DH had the Croque Madam. I ordered chocolate milk, and the others had tea and coffee, (although when we sat down, because the hot drinks were a 'help yourself' affair, I helped myself to a cup of coffee too!). We asked DSis where she wanted to sit, explaining that there were essentially 3 rooms she could choose from – the West Wing, the Ballroom, and the Music Box room. She asked for the Ballroom, so we stepped inside – and it was so wonderful to watch her face as she saw this room for the first time. She had exactly the same reaction to it that I had had a couple of years ago, e.g. she cried her eyes out! For someone who talks a lot, it was interesting to see her rendered speechless for once!

We found a nice table quite near the doorway, and got ourselves some hot drinks. DSis stayed sat at the table, just gazing around in awe at the sight of her favourite film brought to life, it was lovely to see! After a few minutes, a server brought us a tray of pastries to share, which looked delicious, and then quite quickly our hot food arrived, along with my chocolate milk. It all looked really good! The Eggs Florentine were sort of scrambled eggs in a puff-pastry case, and were so good – the pastry was crisp and fluffy, not at all soggy, and there was a little bit of spinach in there too for contrast. Unfortunately, what was not mentioned at all either on the menu or online before we got here, was that there was a hollandaise sauce on the eggs that was loaded with garlic! I managed to scrape most of it off, and I only wish I had been told about it in advance as I may have been able to ask the chef to leave it off my breakfast. That was the only downside to the whole breakfast though, the rest of it was just really, really good. Everyone else seemed to enjoy their food, and they all said it was delicious. We just about finished what was on our plates, and some of the pastries, but wrapped a couple of them up in napkins and took them with us for later on as we were too full to eat them at the time. We paid with 4 counter service credits, and before leaving, had a walk around all 3 rooms to have a good look around at everything. The Beast doesn't make an appearance at breakfast, but that was okay as we knew we would be back later in the holiday for a dinner reservation. DSis was entranced by the falling snow outside the back of the Ballroom!

We used the restrooms in here just so we could have a look at them, and also took some photos of ourselves holding a Lumiere that was just sitting on a table in the foyer area, too.

Eventually, we left the Castle and walked back to Storytime with Belle, which we hadn't done for a couple of years and was showing a 30 min wait time, which we didn't think was too bad. The time passed quite quickly as we spent time admiring Belle's cottage and taking lots of photos. We were finally led into a small room, where I was able to watch the mirror effect for the first time – last time we did this attraction, I was stood right at the back of the room and wasn't able to see over other guests' heads enough to watch the mirror change. Once we were in the next room and folk were being chosen for parts in the story, we stood right at the back in the far corner, assuming we were out of the way and not being noticed at all. Suddenly, the Cast Member choosing the participants came hurtling towards us and selected DH to be Madam Wardrobe!! He looked shocked, as he hadn't really been paying attention, and insisted he didn't want to do it – although the rate at which he stripped off his backpack and camera, and thrust them at DSon as he almost ran to the front of the room, was hysterical! We laughed and laughed, as he was the most enthusiastic wardrobe I'd ever seen! Talk about over-acting!

Anyway, the show was really cute, we all enjoyed it, and DH seemed to be really proud to have been part of the show – we haven't let him forget it, either.

We left there, and began looking for a smoking area so DSon could use his e-cigarette, but couldn't find one anywhere around where we were – they used to be quite prevalent, but seem to have been cut back a lot. We walked through Liberty Square without finding one, but paused at the kiosk near the Hall of Presidents to pick up some cold drinks as we were all very hot and thirsty by then. DSon and I got a bottle of pink grapefruit juice each, DSis had a bottle of coke, and DH got cranberry juice. I paid out of pocket for these.

We walked round to Frontierland, and finally found a smoking area near Big Thunder Mountain, where we sat around for 5 mins and had a drink, before using our first FastPasses of the day to ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. This was loads of fun, as usual.

We wandered round to Frontier Mercantile for a quick browse, but didn’t buy anything, before visiting the Country Bear Jamboree and singing along with all the wonderful, wrong-but-somehow-right songs in there! We were heading towards Pirates of the Caribbean after that, but were a little early for our FastPasses, so paused to watch a pirate training show that was about to start nearby. We were stood at the front, and when Captain Jack Sparrow came out, (he was a bit dreamy!), he started selecting children to be trained as pirates. I watched him as he sashayed towards me, and I glanced down to see who he was heading for, but when I looked up he was looking me straight in the eyes and asked me if I wanted to be a pirate!! Unbeknownst to me, my entire family was stood behind me, pointing frantically at me when Captain Jack had asked for volunteers! He took my hand and draped my arm through his, and a bit like DH and the whole wardrobe incident, I felt at once mortified and elated – I couldn't wait to get up on that stage! Kids-schmids – get outta my way, small-fry! We had to repeat the pirate code, and swear to always be good and fierce pirates. It was great fun, and at the end we all got a certificate stating we were honorary pirates. Whilst it was quite embarrassing to be chosen, the characters made me feel more comfortable by not concentrating on me during the training, but by focusing on the kids instead. This meant I could relax and enjoy myself, without worrying that I was going to get too much attention.

Anyway, after I had sworn my allegiance to Captain Jack, we were in our FastPass window for Pirates of the Caribbean, so off we went, eager to experience this ride as it had recently undergone a major refurbishment. We weren't disappointed, either – the costumes were all really bright, the voices were slightly louder and clearer, everything just looked so much better than the last time we rode this. We did notice that the mermaid projections seem to have gone now, although their singing voices are still there, and the Davy Jones smoke effect didn't work for the whole time we were there, but we weren't sure whether it had been removed or not. I tried to sniff a lot as we rode, as I had heard that different scents had been added to some scenes, but they must be really subtle as we didn't really notice anything different. I did have a sense of ownership over this ride somewhat though, what with my recent pirate training and all.

We planned to walk over to Tomorrowland next, but were distracted by the idea of a Dole Whip, so we used 4 snack credits to get an assortment of Dole Whips and Floats, and luckily found a table to sit at once we had them.

Ice-cream ingested, we then paused for an e-cig break just before the hub, and then began to make our way over to Tomorrowland, except that DSon got a bit drawn into the stage show that was going on in front of the castle at the time! We stayed and watched what turned out to be the last 10 mins of the show, and it did look lovely. When we got to Tomorrowland, we sent DSon off to ride Space Mountain, while we three took a leisurely trip on the TTA Peoplemover, and then enjoyed the Carousel of Progress, both of which had minimal wait times.

We all met up again and decided that we were a bit hungry again, so we went to Cosmic Rays, where we shared two counter service meals of chicken nuggets and fries between us, swapping out one of the desserts for a bottle of water. All was very good, and just what we needed. The other dessert I chose was a 'seasonal cupcake', which I knew was pumpkin. DH really loves these, and had been trying to persuade DSis to try one, as he knows she likes cinnamon and spices like that. A few years ago she had tried some pumpkin bread and hadn't liked it, so she was convinced she wouldn't like pumpkin cheesecake or cupcake etc. However, today DH managed to get her to try a tiny bit of his cupcake. This was really funny then, as we watched her face change from wary to "ohmigodthat'sdelicious!", and she promptly began enthusiastically digging her fork into his dessert, much to his dismay! We also had another amusing moment, apparently, when DH seemed to forget that we were sharing a large cup of coffee, (he is an only child, and doesn't share well with others), and drank the last half of it without thinking. My face, when picking up the cup for a bit more of the shared coffee and finding it empty, warranted a photograph which ultimately appeared on social media. Humph.

After our light lunch, we left Tomorrowland and stopped on the bridge to get a passing Cast Member to take a photo of all of us with the castle in the background. We then walked through Fantasyland, stopping to use the Tangled restrooms on the way, as they are so cute! Our destination was Memento Mori, where I wanted to see if the spirit photos were still being offered. They were indeed, so while DSon stayed outside to phone his fiancée, and DSis mooched around the shop, DH and I followed a Cast Member into a tiny room in order to have our photos taken. We paid $19.95 each for these, and then had to wait about 10 mins until the photos were delivered. We were really, really pleased with them – they are printed on a sort of textured board, that shows the photo looking 'normal' when viewed from one angle, but then when you tilt the photo to one side, it shows us with skeletal features. They are brilliant! We were really pleased with these, when we saw them last year we really wished we had got them at the time, and were a bit worried that they wouldn't be doing them by the time we went back this year, but obviously they were!

We had the pictures packaged up to be sent back to the resort, and then rode Haunted Mansion with our FastPasses. The wait time was minimal, which was a bit of a shame as it meant we didn't pause to play with the interactive queue area, but just whizzed round there and straight into the stretching room. DSon particularly enjoyed this ride, as there had been a few new additions since he last rode it.

The Magic Kingdom was closing early today for a Christmas Party, so as we still had a lot to do, we decided to call it a day for the park, and we walked towards Main Street. As we approached, the area was quite crowded and we caught the end of some kind of party parade, with characters dancing on floats wrapped up like Christmas parcels. We watched for a short while, then weaved our way around the crowds and ducked into the Emporium. We spent more time in there than we anticipated, as we all split up to have a look around. I quickly spotted something I had been wanting to get for quite some time – Shellie May! I have had a Duffy bear for a few years now, but really wanted to get his female equivalent. She was originally only for sale in Disneyland Tokyo, but had very recently been brought to Disneyland Paris, I had read; and now there she was for sale in WDW! I decided to get her, as while I stood looking at the display, she appeared to be very popular and was flying off the shelves! I selected my very own Shellie May, and browsed the clothed versions of both bears, and the range of outfits on offer, but didn't find anything else I needed to get straight away. DSon reappeared, and showed me a set of gorgeous snowflake Mickey ears, (I think they are "Frozen" themed), that lit up and flashed, they were lovely – and he had just bought me a set! I put them on straightaway, and wore them almost every day until we left Florida, by which time the batteries were fizzling out, (they are replaceable, though). Those ears got a LOT of attention over the next couple of weeks, and I was asked 3 or 4 times every single day where we had got them from, by both Cast Members and guests!

We all bought a few things, then finally left the Magic Kingdom, catching the ferryboat back to the Ticket & Transportation Centre. We drove to the Super Wal-Mart on the 192, where we got a couple of gallon bottles of water, soda, a variety of chips (Cheetos, Cheetos White Cheddar Puffs, Lays, and some sweet cinnamon Cheetos puffs), water flavouring powders, donut holes, a box of slices of pumpkin loaf (cake), a big slice of red velvet cake, bread, butter, milk, and, after some debate as to what we wanted for dinner that night, an enormous pizza. (The original plan had been to go to the Polynesian resort for dinner, and eat at Captain Cook's, but we were very tired by the time we left the Magic Kingdom and just wanted to get the shopping over with.) DSon was also looking out for a remote-controlled Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) that he had seen advertised in the UK, and knew he could get for a fraction of the price in the USA, but they didn't have any in stock.

We drove back to Old Key West, and put away the shopping. DSis had a brilliant idea of keeping the bread in the freezer, as we were only intending to use it for toast in the mornings and it could be toasted from frozen – this then kept the loaf fresher than just leaving it in the fridge or a cupboard.

Then, while myself, DH, and DSis unpacked our suitcases, DSon quite happily cooked the pizza for us! (My son is old enough to live in his own flat, and has been looking after himself for a number of years now; however, I was still surprised that he was competent enough to cook pizza, using a cooker he wasn't familiar with!) We all had some pizza, which was really good, and relaxed for half an hour, although I was really, really tired by now and only managed one slice of pizza. Before we had got here yesterday, DSon had expressed an interest in going swimming each night after we returned from whatever we had done during the day, so he said he was going down to the pool for a while. I opted to go with him, but DH and DSis said they were too tired and preferred to stay put. DSon and I got swimsuits on, and walked the short distance to the quiet pool near our room, where we were the only people in there. We spent a lovely hour there, he swam a few lengths while I paddled around, then we floated about a bit and chatted, it was really relaxing.

Eventually, there were a couple of spots of rain and we began to get cold, so we wrapped ourselves up in pool towels and went back to the room. I had a nice, warm shower, and we were all in bed shortly afterwards.

Today we spent 10 hours in the park, and walked 8 miles in total. (DSis had an application on her phone that told her how far we had walked every day). I always knew we walked a lot when in Disney World, but had no idea that we usually averaged 7-10 miles a day, which we did this year!

The weather today had been hot, sunny, and very humid.

DAY THREE – Monday 09 November

Plan : Epcot
Actual : We all slept really well last night, and again didn't wake up as early as I'd expected us to, although DSon is naturally an early riser anyway. When we had been planning this holiday, DSis, who suffers with travel sickness, said that she would be happier having some toast each morning before we went out and drove to a park, or wherever we were going. We don't normally bother much with breakfast before we leave for a park, preferring to get something when we get there. However, over the next couple of weeks, it was really nice to have a couple of slices of toast before we went out, and I think this is something we will continue in future holidays, as we really liked this – it didn't stop us from having cake or other snacks when we got to a park, but we felt more ready to start touring each day than we usually do. So we started today with what became our usual routine of making tea in the coffee machine, then rinsing it out and making coffee, and in the meantime I would begin shoving slices of frozen bread in the toaster, buttering it, and handing it out until everyone had had enough! At home, DSis normally has her border collie dribbling on her knee until she feeds him her last bite of toast, so today DH suddenly sat at her feet and dribbled on her knee while she had her toast so that she didn't miss Max too much! He's such a thoughtful brother-in-law ….

We were out of the door by 8.40 a.m., and headed to Epcot, which is a very short drive away from Old Key West, with DH spotting the Swolphin first and me being the unlucky recipient of the arm-punch. The parking lot looked to be quite busy, and following the blue line towards the disabled parking area, we were suddenly waved onto an area of grass by a Cast Member. Uh-oh – if they are parking us on grass, that must mean they were expecting a lot of guests today! There were still lots of disabled parking spaces free in the main car park; however, in reality, Epcot never did get very crowded today.

As both Soarin' and Test Track are classified as 'Tier 1' attractions, we had picked Soarin' to have FastPasses for today, so as planned, we headed straight over to Test Track as we were there at rope drop. The standby time was already listed as being 30 mins, but we didn't think that was too bad and so we joined the queue. DH and I then realised we had never gone through the standby line before, (since the ride was reimagined from the old test track dummy version), always having used either FastPass or single rider lines! It was really interesting to see the displays along the queue line, and we found a tiny hidden Mickey on a dotted line between pictures on the wall. Before we went inside the building, when the queue line was still outside, DSon had measured himself on the height restriction marker for a joke, and he was taller than the whole sign!

The queue actually took slightly more than 30 mins, but DSon and DSis, neither of whom had seen the new incarnation of this ride, both really enjoyed it, and we had great fun. We spent a little time looking round the interactive area at the end of the ride, plus the displays of cars, so we were in the ride building for around an hour in total. However, this meant that we exited into Futureworld a little later than we had anticipated, so we decided to let our Spaceship Earth FastPass lapse, as the queue area for it didn't look too busy and we were running out of time to fit everything else in.

We walked over to The Land pavilion, trying to distract DSon from seeing the timings board as we went, as we were trying to keep from him the fact that Captain EO had returned to the Imagination pavilion, (he had no idea this was playing again. In the 1990s, this film had turned him into a massive Michael Jackson fan, but he hadn't seen it for years and I wanted to surprise him with it!) We then rode Soarin' with our FastPasses, and DSon LOVED it! This was his first time, and he was amazed at how much fun the ride was!

We checked out Living with the Land ( or, "Living with the Lettuce", as one of our friends calls it!), and that was also a 30 min wait, so we again broke our 'no queues longer than 20 minutes' rule and joined the queue, which actually went down quite quickly. The ride was lovely, and is one of our favourites at Epcot, although for the first time in years, there was no 9-pound lemon tree in there!

Next we left that pavilion and walked towards Imagination, finally entering the Captain EO theatre with just 5 mins to go till the next showing. I turned expectantly towards DSon, expecting him to be amazed and excited, but he just looked puzzled. I asked him if he remembered that this had been such a favourite attraction of his years ago, but he said he barely remembered it! I was really disappointed, I'd been looking forward to his reaction to this for months, and now he was just ambivalent about it! Ah well. He quite enjoyed the film, and said he vaguely remembered it in the end, but it certainly wasn't the wow moment I had been expecting. Never mind.

We didn't have time to ride Journey into Your Imagination, as we were approaching our dining reservation, so after Captain EO we headed over to The Living Seas. We had a quick restroom break, and looked around the downstairs aquariums, taking some photos of DSon inside Bruce the Shark from Finding Nemo, but then no-one could be bothered to go upstairs to look at the fish up there as we were hot and fading a bit by now, so we walked round to Coral Reef for our lunch reservation. We were pleasantly surprised by the complimentary water cooler and cone-shaped cups near the check-in desk, and after checking in and being given a pager, we all helped ourselves to cups of cool, citrusy water, which had big slices of fresh lemon and lime, and chunks of ice in it. It was lovely!

Our pager went off at exactly our reservation time, and we were seated on the lower level of the restaurant, in a booth, across from the big fish tank. We had a fantastic view of the tank, it was amazing to watch the fish, sharks, sea turtles, and divers in there while we dined. We hadn't eaten here before, and were really looking forward to this meal. Our server welcomed us, and took our drinks order of coke and sprite, while we perused the menu. DSis and I ordered the steak, DH ordered chicken, and DSon had some kind of seafood and pasta concoction. The food was absolutely delicious, we all tried bites of each other's lunch and agreed that it was all wonderful. Time for dessert – DH went with the Chocolate Wave, I had a Jack Daniel's Mousse, DSon had a Turtle Cheesecake, and DSis had a Panne Cotte. Again, we all tried each other's and everyone loved their dessert. (The Turtle Cheesecake turned out to be the dining highlight of DSon's holiday, and is the one food item he still talks about now). The family sitting alongside us in the booth had been eyeing up our desserts as they were ordering theirs, and they ended up ordering exactly the same ones as we had!

The bill should have come to $178 plus tip, so we 'paid' with 4 table service credits, left the tip in cash, and prepared to leave. However, DSon came up with a brilliant idea – he said we should write an actual tip on the back of the receipt for the server, to make her laugh. We came up with lots of ideas, and over the next 2 weeks we always tried to make sure we did this, using a different, (and quite often, themed), tip whenever possible. So I signed the receipt, and wrote "PTO for Tip" on it. Then on the back, I wrote, "If you visit England, always take an umbrella". Then I wrapped the receipt around the cash tip we were leaving, and tucked it back into the little folder to give back to our server. She took it away. We sneakily watched her unwrap it, read the tip, laugh, and show it to other Cast Members, who also laughed!

We took a few photos of the big fish tank, and then slowly walked round to Spaceship Earth. This was showing a 20 min wait but was only about 10 mins in reality, and we all really enjoyed this. Next, we walked round to the Universe of Energy and joined Ellen as she taught us about energy, and tried desperately not to fall asleep during the long trip into the past – we love this ride, but we were very full from lunch and a bit tired at this point!

DSon hadn't seen what used to be the Wonders of Life pavilion since it closed, and we knew that it was currently being used as the Food & Wine Festival Centre, so we went there next. He was surprised at how much he remembered the pavilion and what used to be in there, but he also enjoyed looking around it as the Food & Wine centre. We looked at the wine for sale, and picked up 3 bottles – one each of Blueberry, Key Lime, and Tropical Fruit. (When we got this wine home to the UK, I was shocked to compare the price I had paid this year per bottle compared to last year, as we still have a bottle of Key Lime and a bottle of Mango at home – it has gone up by $6 a bottle!!) We arranged to collect this from the package collection centre at the front of the park later on. We then went to the Ghirardelli kiosk, were given a free sample of a milk chocolate & caramel square, and had a look at all the amazing chocolate sculptures there. We then browsed the Festival store, picking up t-shirts for DH, DSon and DSis, and I got some Mickey stickers for my boss at work's children. DH had wanted a Festival pin, but the Cast Member told us that they had sold out weeks ago, which was a shame. DSon got himself a small food tray with the Festival logo on it, and I also got a gorgeous chalk board for our kitchen, with a white outline of a Disney castle on it. Again, we arranged for all of this to be sent to the package collection centre.

Time to hit Mission Space now, which as usual only had a 5 min wait time. We discussed with DSon which version he would be happiest riding – he used to ride simulators a lot when he was younger and loved them, but a medical issue with fluid retention around his brain a couple of years ago, leaving him with a shunt in his head, has meant that he won't be able to withstand the sort of g-force pressure that Mission Space Orange would give him. Therefore, he decided to ride Green with us. We joined the queue, and in the room where Gary Sinese as Capcom gives his talk about what to expect from the 'training', DSis and I were watching a woman in the queue line next to us. She was watching the bit on the video where they show real NASA astronauts undergoing training, and becoming more and more horrified – she thought that what she was watching was what we were going to be doing! When the woman on the screen hugged her knees and floated in zero-g, the poor woman next to us shrieked, panicked and tried to get out of the room! We were laughing so loudly at her, that DSon couldn't hear the video, and he got a bit upset by this. I had to promise him we would ride it again so that he could watch it properly next time. Anyway, we all thoroughly enjoyed our mission to Mars, and as usual, I was quite disappointed to exit the ride and find myself still on Earth.

We walked round to Test Track to check out the status of the single rider line, and as it was showing a 10 min wait, we immediately went in. There was no queue at all, and we were all loaded straight into cars! Great fun, again.

It was by now early evening, and time to begin our first exploration of the Food & Wine Festival. We had been quite pleased with the changes recently to the Dining Plan, which had stated that if we had 3 items from the same Food & Wine Festival booth, we could use a counter service credit to pay for these, as opposed to using 3 snack credits; we were keen to try this out! Any time that we got less than 3 items, we used snack credits.

Deciding to walk all the way round the World Showcase and check out each Festival booth's offerings, we cut across to the new booths in the walkway at the back of the Imagination pavilion, the ones sponsored by some American TV cooking programme we have never heard of, but that I think is quite popular. DH was quite keen on trying some cheese from there, so that was where we started. This is what we visited and who had what that night :-

The Cheese Studio
DH – Trio of Artisan Cheeses – he loved this, but then he does love cheese!
DSon – Cheese fondue with sourdough bread – really good, apparently

Canada
DH – Cheddar Cheese soup – one of his favourites from the F&WF
DSon, DSis, myself – wild mushroom beef filet with truffle butter sauce – we all loved this, (although I thought there were just a few too many mushrooms this time) – paid for with a counter service credit

Ireland
DSis & DSon to share - Lobster & Seafood Fisherman's Pie
DH – cheese plate
Me – Warm Chocolate Pudding with Irish Cream Custard – we shared bites of all 3, paid for it with a counter service credit, and the Cast Member insisted on giving us a bottle of soda as well as she said it came with the CS meal, so we got a Minute Maid Lemonade to share.

Hops & Barley
DH, Dson, DSis – New England Lobster Roll – they all said this was really good - counter service credit again, although they refused us a bottle of soda when we asked for it, because Ireland had given us one and we then assumed that all the booths would do this! But she said it wasn't a proper counter service meal and thus we wouldn't get a drink with it. Bizarre.

We took a short break here, and sat at a table near the American Adventure – I used a restroom, DSis got the food, DH found a table, and DSon went round to the American Adventure Coffee Cart and picked up a couple of drinks for himself and DSis - Frozen Strawberry-Lemon Sunset: Frozen Strawberry and lemon, topped with Grey Goose Vodka. We all tried a sip of this and it was lovely!

On with the Festival :-

Italy
All – Ravioli alla Caprese – really good, we've had this before and thoroughly enjoyed it – we had a problem here wanting to pay with a counter service credit, as they said it wasn't allowed! We told them it had been fine at other booths, but they were insistent it could not be done. We gave up and used 4 snack credits.

Germany
DSon – pasta gratin with ham & cheese

Africa
DSon & DH – Buttered chicken with naan – they said this was very creamy and not too spicy, but it smelt very spicy to me!

Mexico
DSon - Chilaquiles de pollo – he really enjoyed this, said it was very good

We finished there, with DSon having packed away more than the rest of us! It had been good fun though, and I think everyone enjoyed it. The booths weren't too crowded, some had had longer queues than others, but I have seen it more crowded in previous years so it wasn't too bad.

It was by now nearly time for Illuminations to start, so we walked back towards Germany a little, and stood by the railing to watch the show. The park was quite empty now, so it was easy to find somewhere to watch without having to look over people's heads. The fireworks were really lovely, and a lovely way to end the day.

DSon had been a bit tense today, his pregnant fiancée was suffering from quite bad morning sickness and was feeling particularly poorly that day. She was also (understandably) missing him a lot, and had been texting him throughout the day. DSon had arranged to contact her via Skype at 10 p.m. USA time, which was 3 a.m. UK time, (she was going to get up in the middle of the night to do this!), so he was anxious to get back to Old Key West. Once Illuminations had finished, we power-marched to the package pick-up store, collected our goodies from earlier in the day, then headed to the car, and drove 'home'. We dropped DSon and DSis back at our villa, then we drove back to Goods to Go in order to get some hot drinks in our refillable mugs. We returned to the villa, DSon was on the balcony Skyping his lovely lady, who was feeling a lot better for seeing and speaking to him, and we were in bed shortly after that. (DSon went swimming for half an hour but we were too tired! Although I did throw a bit of washing into the washing machine, it was brilliant to have a washer and drier of our own in the villa).

Today we were in Epcot for 12 hours, and walked 8 miles. The weather was very hot, sunny and humid. (We saw a weather reporter on TV tonight who said that Florida was breaking all records for the heat at this time of the year!)

DAY FOUR – Tuesday 10 November

Plan : Hollywood Studios
Actual : Another good night's sleep, and we even had a bit of a later start this morning. We made a breakfast of toast, doughnut holes, pumpkin cake, coffee and tea, and had all this sitting out on our balcony, which was lovely! We were watching various birds flying around, and then we saw a red cardinal – none of us have ever seen one in the wild before, it was really cute!

We finally got going and headed out to the Studios. For the third day in a row, DH won the Swolphin game, much to the irritation of the rest of us. The traffic to get into the Studios was really bad, backed up down the road nearly as far as the fire station. We followed the blue line and parked with some difficulty, taking the last spot in the really tiny disabled parking area. This park is the one with the worst disabled parking area – you have to drive in amongst the buses and pedestrians crossing, it can be really difficult to negotiate your way into the very small disabled area.

DSon was really excited to be going to the Studios today, it is his favourite park in Disney World. He was eager to get round to Rock & Roller Coaster, so we sent him on ahead to run round there, while we browsed the shops down Sunset Boulevard. We picked up a few items, one of which was a lovely purse and mobile phone holder in a very shiny red fabric, for me! By the time we had walked a bit further down the street, DSon was off the ride, having had a great time. We walked round to Toy Story Midway Mania to use our first FastPass of the day, and were really looking forward to this, as DSon had never ridden it before.

We had about a 10 min wait even with FastPasses, and it was cool to point out all the detail in the queue area to DSon. I opted to ride with him, as he is a video games player and I thought we would have a good chance at beating the other two, but sadly it took him a little while to get the hang of the controls and he didn't get the top score, which somehow went to DH!

When we left there, we turned right and walked towards the Streets of America. DSon raced ahead to use the smoking area, and we paused at the Coca Cola kiosk there to pick up some bottles of soda and water, having forgotten to bring our water bottles with us today. (Each night, we used to fill up our Bobble filter water bottles with the bottled water we'd got from Wal-Mart, add a powder flavour to it, and put it in the fridge overnight. DSis used an ordinary water bottle and froze hers, which was a good idea. However, we forgot to pick them up on a couple of occasions! We also used to take an extra sachet of flavouring with us so that if we topped up our water bottles at a park, we could add the powders to it to disguise that interesting Florida water flavour …)

When DSon was ready to move on, we carried on and spotted a sign for Watto's Grotto, pointing to the place where the Frozen snow area and store had been last year. I couldn't remember what Watto's Grotto was, and so we went for a look. It turned out to be a massive amount of Star Wars stuff, and this store was HUGE! It seemed to completely fill all of the old AFI Backlot Tour building, and was at least a couple of rooms filled with Star Wars merchandise. We spent a good half hour in there, browsing around and admiring things like the leather ankle boots with light sabre heels, the gorgeous little handbag that was like a patent R2D2 but square, the amazing and very swirly mini-skirt with a Star Wars print on it. There was some fantastic merchandise in there, we could have spent a fortune! DSon actually did spend a fortune, picking up a huge amount of stuff, although not much of it was for him apart from the really cool pyjama trousers he got. He bought light sabre pens, an incredibly cute onesie for his unborn baby, a whole mass of stuff! He arranged for it all to be shipped back to the resort, luckily – I would have hated to see him carry that lot round all day!

We eventually left the store and headed to Star Tours to use our FastPasses. The queue was small, and we got a really cool ice planet scene for the first time, followed by the bounty hunter. DSon hadn't seen the new version of Star Tours, and was very impressed with it. DSis had never ridden it before, and we hadn't realised that! She really seemed to enjoy it though.

We were all a bit hungry by now, so after we exited Star Tours, we walked to the nearby Backlot Express, one of our favourite quick service places in the Studios. DSis and I shared a chicken nuggets with fries meal, and had lemonade; DH and DSon got a meal each of bacon cheeseburger with fries, and tea/coffee. We sat outside, near the gangster car.

Muppets was next, showing its usual 5 min wait time. We noticed that whereas last year the pre-show film had had the addition of a short segment with Constantine in it, this year they shoehorned a large segment of film in there. It was really irritating because we lost a big chunk of the main pre-show film, which we really love, and they hadn't put anything to do with Constantine in the stage show, so it just seemed like a pointless promotional thing for the film, (which we still haven't even seen!). We all really enjoyed the show, and despite having seen this multiple times, we both still laugh at the same bits every time!

Our final FastPass of the day was one I took a gamble on – we had seen the show last year in a more temporary setting and loved it, so we hoped the others would too. We had tickets for the Frozen Singalong show! We went into what used to be the American Idol theatre, and got seats fairly near to the front. The show started, and I think it is fair to say that we all LOVED it! The Royal Historians are really, really funny storytellers, ad-libbing a bit to make it even more funny, the singalong bit was fun, the snow at the end alongside the soaring music made me bawl my eyes out, and the best bit was glancing across at my burly, 34-year old son, singing his heart out all the way through! DSis managed to make me cry within 30 seconds of "Do you want to build a snowman?", by singing it at me, and it turned out that she had had a bet on with DSon as to how quickly she could make me cry, which I thought was a bit mean of her! (But a fair point, though – she knows me too well). We had a really great time in there, and left feeling very uplifted.

DSon and DH shot off to ride Tower of Terror next, while DSis and I took a more leisurely walk down Sunset Boulevard, just chatting and enjoying the atmosphere. DH has never ridden the Tower here, only in Disneyland Paris, and he really liked it. They were back with us within about 20 mins.

We then backtracked across the park for our dinner reservation at Sci-Fi Dine-In. They were quite busy, and we had to wait for a little while, but we didn't mind – we were kept amused by a Cast Member playing a Disney Trivia game with everyone waiting to be seated. I am quite a competitive soul really, and ended up shouting out the answers to some of the questions a bit too enthusiastically!

We were seated a little after our reservation time, and were given a really cute pink car to sit in. We ordered milkshakes for 3 of us, and DH had coffee, while we perused the menu. Finally, DH decided on a turkey clubwich followed by brownies & ice-cream, I had the steak followed by Turtle Cheesecake, DSis also had the steak but followed hers with a hot fudge sundae, and DSon chose a pulled pork burger and a brownie for afters. The food was really good, everything tasted fresh and delicious, and we all enjoyed watching the film clips. Our server was a lot of fun, and kept calling DSis and DSon the 'kids' in the back of the car! We wrote her a tip about looking both ways before crossing the road, and again wrapped the receipt around a cash tip. We could see her unwrapping it and reading it, then she laughed and showed it to other Cast Members before coming over and thanking us profusely! This was proving to be a great success so far.

We hadn't been planning on watching Fantasmic tonight, but as it is DH's favourite Disney show we thought we'd give it a go, so after dinner we walked over to the theatre. However, it was packed round there, and then there was an announcement that the show was standing room only. Knowing that we would be back to see it with a dining package later in the holiday, we decided to leave it for tonight, as no-one really wanted to stand at the back to watch it. Therefore, we went for a look round the Tower of Terror giftshop, as I had read that they were introducing some household merchandise and I wanted to see what they had.

There wasn't anything that was grabbing me, although I really do like the themed bathrobes! We had kind of all drifted into different parts of the store, and I suddenly spotted that they had a Pandora display in there. For my birthday this year, DH had bought me (at my request!) a beautiful silver Pandora bangle, as I wanted to start collecting Disney Park charms. I only want charms for the different parks, and had already got a friend of mine to pick up the Disneyland Sleeping Beauty Castle and California Adventure Fun Wheel charms from California when she visited a couple of months ago, as we had been there ourselves last year but at that time I had no idea I would want the charms! Therefore, I engaged the Cast Member in looking for the charms I knew I wanted. I had some cash from selling some old, broken jewellery earlier in the year which I had saved for this, and then DH had said he would buy me a couple of charms as Christmas presents. I ended up getting the Cinderella Castle, the Animal Kingdom Tree of Life, a Mickey's Sorcerer's Hat (with blue enamel and silver stars) to represent the Studios, Spaceship Earth with a tiny monorail on it, and also a Mickey/Minnie safety chain. Then she showed me the ball with "Walt Disney World" written on it and I had to get that too! I had to add some extra cash to it, and DH bought me 3 charms rather than 2, but I was very, very happy with what I had got! Of course, I now need to get a "Disneyland" ball at some point ….. (I also need to get Disneyland Tokyo and Hong Kong Disneyland charms when we visit in 2016!)

We walked back toward the Great Movie Ride, admiring the lovely view of the Chinese Theatre that can be seen clearly now, although I was always quite liked the hat, just not positioned where it was! DH hadn't seen the Studios before the hat was placed there, so he didn’t think he was bothered about whether it was there or not, but then when he saw the magnificence of the Chinese Theatre with nothing to obscure it, he did agree it looked much better.

The Great Movie Ride was showing a 10 min wait, but we walked almost straight on, getting the gangster version. We were sat in the very front row, which I always like best because sometimes it can be difficult to hear the character actor if you are seated at the back. I absolutely hated the amount of sponsorship that has been added to this ride though – it is a ride I always really enjoyed, and I understand the need for sponsorship, but in my opinion this has been way overdone in here. Some bloke has done loads of narration for it, and the whole ride now comes across as a massive advert for Turner Classic Movies. Even the movie montage at the end is like one big advert now. I thought it would be lovely to have the montage updated a bit, and there are some nice new clips in there, but I was very saddened to see everything cheapened this way. This upset me so much that we didn't ride this attraction again for the remainder of the holiday, which is very unlike me!

Anyway, when we left there we walked round to the Streets of America for our first viewing this year of the Osborne Family Lights. The first thing we saw as we drew alongside the bit just past the Studio Catering Co was the purple cat, up high on a side wall on the right-hand side (no spoiler alert as a few days later, they moved him!). I was very pleased we had spotted him quite early on!

We then rounded the corner and stopped near the Dessert Party area, under the globe, in order to gaze in wonder down the street at this wonderful, bright and colourful spectacle of lights. I couldn't see the snow at first, and then just after that the lights started to dance to a very upbeat and modern song, so we watched and waited for that to finish before starting to walk down the street. After the song had ended, the lights all came back on again and the snow began to fall.

We explored the whole area, including the side street with its canopy of changing lights, making sure to look out for hidden Mickeys everywhere. I think we found about 25 of them in all, although I knew there were loads more than that there. In the side street, we also found a Dr Who TARDIS outlined in blue lights, which was amazing! There was also a huge fireplace in the main street, and above it were three stockings made of lights, and named for the Osborne family members.

We stayed for well over an hour that night, just watching the dancing lights and enjoying the music, hunting for displays we hadn't seen before, and enjoying the snow (while in the UK it was apparently snowing for real in some places!). We found Kermit the frog perched high up on the side of a building near the end of the street, and we also found a window display that had a video film playing on a loop, telling the story of the Osborne Lights and how they came to end up at Walt Disney World, which was really interesting. DH spotted several people wearing a really cool Osborne Lights-themed sweatshirt, which he loved, but it turned out to be one that was only available to Passholders – he was devastated! We eventually got to the end of the street, and having danced, laughed, and played in the snow, we left, knowing that we would return again the following week for another visit.

We made our way slowly out of the park at this point, and drove back to Old Key West. Again, myself and DSon went for a swim, leaving the others to relax in the room. I spent a leisurely 15 mins in the hot tub on my own, before floating gently about in the pool for another half an hour. Showers and bed followed shortly after!

Today we were in the Studios for 11 hours, and walked 7 miles. The weather was very hot and sunny, but the humidity began to drop now.

DAY FIVE – Wednesday 11 November

Plan : Water Park & shopping – Veteran's Day
Actual : Knowing that today was Vet's Day, we had planned to stay away from the parks, as they were all expected to be pretty crowded. However, we decided to postpone the Water Park visit till next week, and we were going to go shopping followed by a relaxing couple of hours in our nearby quiet pool, before dining at Olivia's at Old Key West tonight.

I was up first this morning, and walked into the lounge to find DSon lying in bed, watching Frozen Singalong videos on YouTube! He began gleefully telling me how many different versions were on there, from the different Disney parks around the world – bless, he really was turning into quite a fan! We had our usual coffee/tea and toast, then got ready for the day.

We drove to the Super Wal-Mart on the 192 again, and split up to do our shopping. DH was looking for some plain black joggers for work, and we found some that were very reasonably priced (he is a mine guide in The Black Country Living Museum, but doesn't get a uniform so has to dress in black). We picked up 3 pairs for him, and I also found a lovely white long-sleeved t-shirt with sparkly snowflakes around the neck for me. We got some postcards as I was sending my bosses' children Fairy Godmailers – my boss and his wife are big Disney fans and have been to Disney World several times, but are going as a family with his kiddies for the first time next year. He has 8 year-old twins (boy and girl) and a 6 year old son, and I already quizzed him about their favourite characters, as I was planning to take them back a little goodie bag each, and send them these postcards from their favourite characters. I needed a Frozen one for the daughter, and a couple of Pixar ones for the boys.

We were also looking for an X-Box One for me, (as I knew it would be considerably cheaper than I can get one for in the UK), and a couple of suitcases. We have had two suitcases badly damaged by airlines over the last few years, each time we use them they get more and more damaged, and having had to throw them away previously, this year we were down to two huge cases, which we don't take to the USA as if we fill them they are hugely overweight, one medium sized case, and one smaller one. Therefore, we were hoping to pick up a 28" and a 24" case. We had a good hunt around Wal-Mart, but they had neither the X-Box I was looking for, nor suitable suitcases. And still no sign of the remote-controlled Millennium Falcon.

DSis was looking for a medical supportive back belt for our Dad, who had had one previously from Wal-Mart and worn it till it fell apart, so wanted DSis to look out for another one for him. However, after much searching in here, we couldn't find one.

Anyway, DSon and DSis picked up a couple of things, and we left there and drove to the Super Target just down the road a bit. We picked up some peppermint Oreos from there that we hadn't seen before, but had no luck with the suitcases or the back belt. Everyone was a bit hungry now, so after a quick consultation in the car park, and at my suggestion, we drove a short distance to Taco Bell. This is DSon's favourite fast-food restaurant! We all got different combinations which included soft tacos, crispy tacos, bean burritos, pintos & cheese, fiesta potatoes, and soft drinks. DSon had as much food on his own, as DH and I had together! I swear he has the appetite of a teenager. Anyway, it was all very good, and we really enjoyed it. This is another restaurant chain we don't have in the UK, so we really appreciate the opportunity to visit it here.

Still on a suitcase and belt hunt, we tried the nearby Publix. Nope, only food in there, so we left. We had another shopping day planned for next week anyway, so we knew we still had plenty of time to hunt out the things we wanted to get.

We drove back to Old Key West, via Goods to Go for coffee/tea. I popped into Hospitality House to check with the Concierge whether there is any kind of package pick-up service that we could use, as I had a couple of parcels to send to family and friends in the USA, and was pleased to learn that there is a USPS collection service, for a small fee. This was great news, as in previous years we have had to hunt for a post office, which isn't always easy to find as they seem to move about the place!

As we got back to our room, Mousekeeping arrived and although we asked her if she could give us a few minutes as we all wanted to get changed for the pool, she insisted that she could work around us. We understand that she has a lot of rooms to service and limited time to do this in, but this was really awkward for us as we felt like we were in her way all the time, and we couldn't seem to find anywhere to just get changed in that she wasn’t dotting around in! We spent an agonising half hour trying to act like a normal family for a change, rather than the mad idiots that we usually are, and trying to find things to occupy us while she cleaned. I wrote the Fairy Godmailer postcards, getting DH to look up on Google how to sign them from Buzz Lightyear and Queen Elsa, and also some information about Jake & the Neverland Pirates, which is my boss's youngest son's favourite character and about which we know nothing at all! We found out Jake's catch-phrase and how he signs his name, and was able to copy it sufficiently well enough to convince the 4 year old that Jake had sent it to him!

Finally we were left on our own, so we all quickly got changed and headed down to the pool, taking our refillable mugs with us filled with soda and ice. DH popped his small camera, (a small digital one that he uses to supplement his main, big camera) into the pocket of his swim shorts as he was also carrying his refillable mug and his swim goggles. Predictably, he promptly forgot this and got into the pool with it in his pocket! He realised he had done this the second his waist was encircled with water, and shot out of the pool but the camera was full of water by that point, so he wrapped it in a towel and decided to deal with it later. We then spent a lovely couple of hours in the pool, dipping into the hot tub occasionally. There were a few other people down there, not many though, and it was lovely, really relaxing. We watched a sky-writer writing messages for a while, trying to guess what his next word would be, which was interesting. DSis had a new swimming costume, which was really pretty – it was bright pink, with a very long fringe around the top. It looked lovely, until she got into the pool and the fringy bit kept floating all around her, getting stuck in her hair and on her face – how we laughed! She looked like a really irritated jellyfish, and got really annoyed with her own swimwear! Great fun.

Around 5 p.m. we went back to our room, had showers and got dressed. DH dismantled his camera and carefully dried off the bits he could get to, then left it on some absorbent paper. (Ultimately, it dried out and was fine, it worked with no issues and he didn't lose anything on the memory card). Meanwhile I wrapped up my parcels – one was a Christmas gift of t-shirts for my brother and his family, and the other one was a surprise gift for an online friend. Her daughter had sadly passed away aged 26 in 2012, and since then whenever my friend or her husband see a white feather, they believe their daughter is still keeping an eye on them. I happened to find a lady in the UK who makes these clear glass Christmas baubles containing a single white feather. It is inscribed on the one side with, "Feathers means an angel is near", and on the other side is space for a name, so I had my friend's daughter's name put on there, and a Tinker Bell-green ribbon tied through the top after her daughter's favourite character. I carefully wrapped this up in tissue paper, bubble wrap, and small air cushions, then brown paper, and addressed it.

We then headed down to Olivia's for dinner. DSis and I both had prime rib with Olivia's potatoes, DSon got chicken pasta, and DH had something called a Duval burger. We followed this with key lime tart and mascarpone cheesecake. However, I was really full after the steak and potatoes so I got my dessert to go. We love the warm pineapple and coconut bread at Olivia's, although DSis didn't much like it as she is not a fan of coconut. (I have tried to make this at home with totally disastrous results!) The food was good, but I am always a bit disappointed at the steak here, I have had it a couple of times and it has always been a bit fatty, tough and chewy for me. With hindsight, I should have had the pork chop as I have also had this here before and really enjoyed it.

I sent DH to the store to collect some shopping we had done previously at the parks, while I went to Concierge to drop off my parcels. I had to complete a couple of forms and pay by credit card, but it was an easy operation. DSis also went into the store and took hers and my Christmas cards, plus the postcards I had written, to get some stamps. Once my parcels had been dealt with, I joined them in the store and we all did a little shopping, picking up Christmas gifts for family. We took this lot back to the car, picked up our refillable mugs, and got some hot chocolate in them from Goods to Go.

Back at our room, I sloshed some Baileys into the hot chocolates, and we sat out on the balcony, sipping our delicious drinks and talking about the fun we had had up to now. After a little while, we noticed an enormous lizard on the balcony ceiling, he was really cute! But very big, and when he began to run about a bit on the ceiling, we were worried he would drop onto one of us or worse, into a refillable mug full of hot chocolate and Baileys! So we decamped inside, and it wasn't long before we were all headed to bed anyway. It was 11.00 p.m. by then and despite having had a non-park day, we were all still very tired. We only walked 3 miles today, but swimming is always tiring.

The weather was much better today, we had lost all the humidity and it was still hot and sunny, but with the odd bit of cloud cover, which was nice.

DAY SIX – Thursday 12 November

Plan : Epcot
Actual : We got up fairly early, had our usual coffee/tea and toast, and then headed out to Epcot. We got there just after rope drop but it was really packed, for some reason.

Our first FastPass today was an early one for Mission Space, so we once again did the Green non-spinning version, and made sure that DSon could hear the pre-ride video this time! This was followed almost immediately by our second FastPass of the day, which was for Test Track. Both these rides were great fun.

DH was already ready for a coffee break, but DSon was a bit antsy and wanted to carry on with rides, so DSis took him to experience Turtle Talk with Crush which we went to Sunshine Seasons for coffee, pumpkin cheesecake (DH) and Whoopie Pie (me). They really enjoyed Turtle Talk, which was a surprise as we had thought it interesting last year, but not something we felt we needed to do again, and I didn't think DSon would be interested in it. Anyway, they got back to us just as we were finished and ready to move on, so we all walked over to Spaceship Earth for our final FastPass of the day, and all managed to pull very funny faces for the on-board photo!

DH and I had wanted to get the new Starbucks "You are Here" collection mugs, so we now picked up our first one from Epcot, which is a lovely pale grey and purple one. Starbucks don't ship to the resorts, so I had to dash over to Mouse Gear with it and get them to ship it for me. Meanwhile, the others had gone into Club Cool as DSon hadn't seen it since it was Ice Station Cool, and they all wanted to try some new flavours of the drinks. I caught up with them, (after taking a moment to just stand near the Fountain of Nations, look at Spaceship Earth, and quietly sob at being in my favourite place in the world!), and we sampled all of the flavours on offer. My favourite is still the Vegibeta, which is apricot flavoured, but I also like the Fanta Pineapple and the Melon Frosty. The Sparberry is really odd, it sounds like I should like the flavour, as it is described as being a raspberry cream soda, but personally I thought it tasted like medicine! Everyone had their own favourites, and we enjoyed trying them all. My weird son seemed to like Beverley …..

From there, we moved into World Showcase to try and mop up the Food & Wine Festival booths we had missed before. We started the opposite way round to last time, so began with Farm Fresh on the right hand side. DSon and DH got a portion of mac & cheese, which they both really liked but said it was very peppery. I had been going to try the griddled yard bird here, and I can't remember now why I didn't get it at the time. DSon also had a glass of raspberry hard cider, which he really liked.

We didn't really find anything else that was looking good until we got to Brazil, where I was keen to try the layered meat pie with mashed yucca, so we ordered 3 of those to share, using a counter service credit to pay for it. However, the mashed yucca turned out to be absolutely full of garlic, something that was not mentioned at all anywhere before we ordered it, so I couldn't eat it, sadly. DH and DSon polished it off for me.

We walked round to Japan as I had wanted to have a look at a new exhibition in there, which I had seen advertised, that supposedly explained the Japanese obsession with cuteness. It was a very interesting exhibition, and we felt it went a little way into explaining why this seeming obsession exists, but it seemed to be more of an exhibition of cute Japanese merchandise, rather than explaining the culture in any depth. We went into the store in Japan for a look round, and found some merchandise themed to Domo, a brown, furry monster that for some unknown reason my daughter loves. I bought her a little Christmas Domo, which is wearing a Santa hat. I also bought her a rather large badge with his face on it.

DSon was getting a bit bored by now, and disappeared off to check out the single rider line of Test Track while we carried on browsing, but he was soon back with us. The line was 35 mins and he didn't feel like waiting that long. We took a slow walk round to Living with the Land, as we had a dining reservation at The Garden Grill for dinner.

We checked in, were given a pager, and asked to wait off to one side. They seemed really busy and we weren't seated until 20 mins after our reservation time, by which time we were quite hungry, as we hadn't had much to eat during the Festival.

The food also seemed to take quite a while to come out, but we did have some bread and a lovely honey butter, followed by a giant bowl of salad. Eventually, we got the platters of meat and fish, some mashed potato, sweet potato fries, vegetables, rice and mac & cheese. We were all very hungry and demolished this in very short order, so our server brought us second platters of everything! The character interaction in here was nothing short of brilliant – we had originally booked this restaurant as not only have we eaten here before and really liked it, but we knew it featured visits from Pluto, DSon's absolute favourite character of all time. DSon was wearing his Pluto t-shirt, (which we had had to wash especially for today!), and he also has a really cute Pluto tattoo on his upper arm, which was visible as he had rolled up his t-shirt sleeve. So as soon as Pluto appeared, DSon's face lit up like a Christmas tree! Pluto came over to us, spotted the tattoo and DSon's t-shirt, and proceeded to nearly hug him to death! It was brilliant, so cute. They fooled around a bit, then Pluto high-fived him and moved onto other tables, but periodically for the next hour, he would make a point of coming back and interacting with DSon again. At one point, he fed DSon a sweet potato fry, and although he hates them, he ate it because it was Pluto that was feeding him! The other characters that came round were great fun too, and all seemed to react to DSon's t-shirt and tattoo. We had such a laugh that night, it was really lovely.

We finally managed to plough our way through most of the desserts – we had a big apple sponge cake with ice-cream and strawberries, and 3 kids' chocolate cupcake cones, which we all shared. The food was all really good, we enjoyed it a lot. We put a 'tip' on the back of the receipt for our server, who had been lovely – we reused the one about always bringing your umbrella if you visit the UK, but we also told her that we knew the Queen and if she was over our way, (the server, not the Queen!), to pop in to see us for tea and scones. She absolutely loved her tip, and laughed and laughed over it, plus we left her a 25% cash tip as well, as she had been so lovely.

We took a quick restroom break, then DSon went back into the restaurant to say goodbye to Pluto, although he couldn't find him at first, and then when he did, Pluto weirdly acted as though he hadn't met him before. We think it may have been a different "friend of Pluto" by that point.

Feeling very full and happy, we wondered back round to World Showcase to find somewhere to watch Illuminations from, but the place was still really crowded. We finally found a spot behind a couple of rows of folk towards Germany, and enjoyed the show again. We left after the show, drove back to Old Key West, and did some more washing.

DSon had said earlier that he was a bit fed up with Epcot and the Food & Wine Festival now, and that rather than come back here on Monday, he would rather go to the Studios. DSis was also keen to go back to the Magic Kingdom again rather than Epcot on Monday. Therefore, once I had sorted out the washing and got our water bottles ready for the next day, I fished out my iPad and rebooked DSon's FastPasses for Monday, changing them from Epcot attractions to ones at the Studios. DSis didn't want any FastPasses for her trip to the Magic Kingdom, she just wanted to wander around and enjoy the park, so we cancelled her Epcot ones and left it at that.

We finally went to bed having spent 12 hours at Epcot and having walked 8 miles. Still hot, sunny, and with no humidity – bliss!

DAY SEVEN – Friday 13 November

Plan : Animal Kingdom
Actual : Up early again, coffee/tea & toast again, then off to the Animal Kingdom today. DSon claimed to have never been here before, although I thought he had, so he was keen to explore the park fully. We had a FastPass for the Festival of the Lion King at 10:30, and were there by 9:30, so explored the area near the Harambe Theatre first. We couldn't spot any otters, but did see the fish with the human teeth, which was fun! I popped into Starbucks to pick up the second "You Are Here" mug, and again had to take it to a nearby store to have it shipped back to our resort. We then went into the Harambe Theatre, where we had about a 15 minute wait before being seated in the Elephant section. We always enjoy this show, and DSon LOVED it! The Lion King is his fiancée's favourite Disney film, and he just knew that she would have really loved this show.

We were ready for coffee and cake now, so we went to Kusafiri Bakery and bought 3 cupcakes to share using a counter service credit, one of each of the 3 on offer. (We got one tea and one coffee, also to share). We went round to the side of the bakery and sat on the low wall there, by the high tables, to enjoy our treats.

A quick restroom break, then we went off to explore the new Harambe Market. We thought this was really lovely, incredibly well themed, and looked like it had always been there! I was a bit concerned that there didn't seem to be much there that I would be able to eat though, as the corn dog had a curried batter, and the kids' version came with vegetables, which I wasn't sure about.

We carried on round to the Pangani Forest Trail, where there was a big crowd around the viewing window for the gorillas. When we managed to get to the window, it turned out to be because there were two new babies in there! They were both around 1 year old, had the same father, but different mothers, and were very, very cute. We watched them playing for ages! We eventually moved on, and looked at the rest of the gorilla enclosures, but the rest of the Trail was closed off due to the massive amount of construction work going on at the Animal Kingdom at the moment.

We were now in our FastPass window for the Kilimanjaro Safari trip, so we joined the ENORMOUS queue and slowly shuffled our way to the jeeps, although admittedly this did go fairly quickly. Again, DSon really enjoyed this, and we saw 3 lions for the first time ever! We usually don't see any lions at all, and occasionally have seen one or two, but this time the male was actually sleeping in full view of us as we approached Pride Rock, and then as we turned the corner, there were 2 females also sleeping in full view of us. We didn't see any cheetahs this time, but we did notice loads and loads of baby animals, including a couple of baby giraffes, a tiny and very cute herd of baby warthogs, and a baby elephant or two.

After we disembarked, we were all feeling a bit hungry, so we went back to the Harambe Market to have a more intense look at their offerings. (We had originally been going to hunt around a bit more to find somewhere to eat, but were all a bit hot, tired and ratty by then!) We got 2 chicken skewers for DSon and DSis, a curried corn dog for DH, and I had the kids' corn dog meal which actually came with broccoli, which I like. We got some apple and carrot slices, as they don't do fries there. Desserts were these slightly weird coconut custard pudding tarts, in a chocolate crust, which actually turned out to be quite sweet but rather nice overall. I was really disappointed though that the drink I had wanted to try here, a tangerine lemonade, wasn't available (no idea why, the Cast Member who served us was a bit short with us and wouldn't explain why I couldn't get the drink!), so we ended up with just Sprite. After we had eaten, we got chatting to a Cast Member who was in the area – she asked where we were from, and when we painstakingly tried to explain exactly where in the UK we live, she laughed and told us she was originally from a town just around the corner from us! We had a lovely long chat with her, discovering how and why she was now working for Disney, and all about her family in the UK. Her name was Joy, and it certainly was joyful to talk to her!

We wanted to check out Rafiki's Planet Watch, so we walked round to the train station where a train was just about to pull in, so we were able to board quite quickly. We usually like to explore the Conservation Station quite thoroughly, but I think DSon was a bit bored in there, so we eventually wandered out. There was an animal presentation going on outside with an enormous owl, that we caught the end of, and no-one was bothered about petting goats or sheep, so we walked back to the train station and had a short wait for a return journey.

It was now time for our Expedition Everest FastPasses, although DSis decided not to ride. I loved this ride when I first experienced it a couple of years ago, but then talked myself out of riding again when I became convinced that it was scary, (stupid, I know). This time I just got swept along with DH and DSon, and after leaving our bags with DSis, who was seated on a convenient rock and used her time usefully to ring our mum for a chat, before I knew it we were walking very quickly through the FastPass entrance. We barely paused before we were loaded IN THE FRONT ROW! Yikes! I shut my eyes tight on the long ascent to the top of the mountain, and could hear DH pointing things out to DSon over his shoulder; however, there was no way on earth I was opening my eyes to see what they were looking at!

Once we got started on the ride after that, I relaxed a bit and really, really enjoyed it – it was great fun, and I shall never talk myself out of it again! It was fun being in the front row, as everything is a bit slower and it gives you time to prepare before any drops, but when we went backwards we were then obviously right at the back of the train of cars, so we were going really fast! We had no idea until we got off the ride that DSon doesn't like going backwards on roller coasters, and it hadn't occurred to us to warn him in advance that this coaster had a backwards bit – oops!

We finally saw the big, hairy yeti in the ride for the first time, too. I have no idea how we have missed him before, but we happened to look up just before the final big drop and there he was, all menacing and hairy and VERY close! I would imagine that he was absolutely amazing when he used to actually move, before he went crock and he now only has a disco light on him ……. DSon had a great time, as this was his first ride on Everest – he had so much fun that when we got off, he used DSis's FastPass to ride it again.

DSon wanted to go on Kali River Rapids, but we all bottled out of that because we didn't want to walk round soaking wet, so we accompanied him to the ride and then browsed some nearby stalls while we waited. We went and stood on the bridge where we were able to spot him swirling round the corner towards us, and frantically tried to set off the jets of water that further soak passengers, but they didn't seem to be working at that time. Anyway, he still got absolutely soaked, and had a lot of fun.

We wandered round the Tree of Life, looking at the carvings, before heading inside to experience It's A Bug's Life. I'm still not a fan of this, purely because of the bug spray bit, but I sat next to DSis and she held my hand while I shut my eyes and held my breath, until the spray had gone!

It was now time for our dining reservation at Tusker House, so we headed round there and were seated really quickly. I think we were one of the last tables to be seated as we had deliberately picked a late reservation time. We ordered drinks, with me getting chocolate milk – yum! Then we all helped ourselves to plates of really delicious buffet food. We were visited by Mickey, Daisy, Donald and Goofy during the meal. I love that they still visit us even though we don't have small children with us, and their interaction is fun and just long enough. We had 2 or 3 plates of buffet food each, and then followed this with some fabulous dessert items. We all really liked this buffet, it has some exciting and different foods that we wouldn't normally order full-sized portions of in case we didn’t like it, but would still love to try. We 'paid' with 4 table service credits, left a 'tip' of look both ways before you cross the road, (although we didn't see our server actually read it, so we hope he liked it!), and left the now-closed park.

DSis had been on the lookout all holiday for a pair of Mickey ears with a zebra stripe on them. We had seen them with cheetah or leopard spots, and giraffe stripes, but not the black and white ones she wanted. We were convinced we would find them at the Animal Kingdom, but hadn't had any luck so far, so we decided to try one last store before we left. However, the big one near the entrance was closed as we approached it, even though we could still see guests inside there. We walked round the side of it to another entrance, and spotted one door still open. There were no visible Cast Members near the door, so we snuck in and did a quick hunt for the ears. No luck, although DSis did find a pink and black leopard spot pair that she liked, so in the end she settled for them.

It was still relatively early, so we decided to go back to Old Key West and catch the boat to Downtown Disney, oops, sorry, Disney Springs, to do some shopping. So this is what we did! We had to wait about 15 mins for a boat, but the ride across to the Springs was really lovely. However, some bad news was broken to us on the boat. You may recall we were planning to catch the boat across to the dock near Cirque du Soleil on our departure day, to check in with Virgin Atlantic, and save having to try and drive to Disney Springs, as there is still loads of road construction work going on there. Well, we just happened to overhear the boat driver tell some guests that about a week ago, the boat landing near Cirque had been closed down and they no longer called there! Eek! We were a bit shocked at this, and after having a quick "ohmigod what are we going to do now" moment, we promptly tucked the information away to be dealt with nearer the time. No point worrying about it now, we thought.

Disney Springs was absolutely packed! We disembarked the boat near the new Landings area, stopping for a quick look at the amphicars outside The Boathouse. They look like fun, but are shockingly expensive to ride! We fought our way round to the Marketplace, thinking we would start our shopping at the furthest away point. However, everywhere was so crowded that we were rapidly going off the idea of shopping tonight! Ghirardelli's was rammed, so we decided to leave that for another day. DSis and I went into Basin to get some seasonal soap, I bought a couple of slices for us to use over the Christmas period, (there is one we really like with green fir trees in it, that smells of pine and eucalyptus), one for my daughter, (the one I usually get her with pumpkin heads in it), and a couple for my mum and DSis, which I offered to buy them for Christmas. We had a 10% off voucher for use in here, which was useful!

DSon was mooching around somewhere, and DH was huddled on a bench outside, really disliking the crowds, so we decided to tackle the World of Disney without him. DSis was looking for some jewellery and maybe a handbag, and I was after a nice 2015 t-shirt and a couple of other bits. As I had remembered to bring the voucher with me to redeem for our free $200 gift card, DSis and I tried to find where this had to be collected from. The place we got it from last time had been moved or gone, and we couldn't see anywhere else to go! We finally asked a Cast Member, who told us to collect it from someone at the back of the jewellery desk. It wasn't obvious that this was the place to go, but we did eventually manage to get the card without any problems. We looked around a bit, picked up a few things, but then got really fed up with the crowds, so gave up quite quickly. DH hadn't moved from the bench! But he had been joined by DSon at some point.

We couldn't bear the thought of fighting the crowds to do anything else, so just walked all the way back to the boat dock at the Landings, and waiting for a return boat to Old Key West. We got back there too late to refill our refillable mugs, and just headed back to the villa. It was very late by now, and we were shattered.

Today we spent 10 hours in the park, plus a couple of hours at the Springs, and walked a total of 9 miles. The weather continued to be hot and sunny, with little humidity.

DAY EIGHT – Saturday 14 November

Plan : Magic Kingdom
Actual : We were up early again, had toast and tea/coffee, and headed out to the Magic Kingdom. We decided to ride across on the monorail for a change, well I say we decided, I sulked till I got my own way as DSis wanted to go on the Ferry again!

Our first FastPass today was for the 7 Dwarfs' Mine Train, a first for DSis and DSon. We were through the queue really quickly, and I warned DSon, (who is tall), that he would be a bit squashed in the leg department on this ride – and he was, so at least he had been prepared for that. They both really loved their ride, and were very impressed with the level of theming everywhere. They particularly liked (as do we) the bit where the mine cart slows down in the gem mine, it is so lovely!

We walked round to Gaston's Tavern, exploring the area as those two hadn't been in this bit before. At Gaston's Tavern, I joined the HUGE queue and got 2 HUGE cinnamon buns and a chocolate croissant, (with a counter service credit), which I then had to try and carry on my own, back outside! There were no seats, but we managed to find a bin to balance our snacks on. DSis and I shared the bun, there was plenty enough for both of us, DSon had the croissant, and DH ate an entire bun all to himself (oink oink).

We had a good look round Belle's shop, used her restrooms, then went to visit Ariel's Under the Sea ride. This was showing a 40 min wait, but it was almost all in the shade and we thought it might be nice to see the queue area, so we entered the standby line. In reality though it only took us 10 mins before we were boarding our clam shells! Again, another enjoyable ride that everyone really liked.

From there we went to Storybook Circusland, and I spotted a popcorn cart ….. I have a bit of a popcorn obsession going on at the moment, (DH hates the stuff!), so after some consultation with the guys, I joined the queue and got 3 boxes of salted butter popcorn, (counter service credit), and a Mickey pretzel with cheese for DH (snack credit). We found a handy wall nearby, and sat there just watching the (Disney) World go by while we had our food.

After we were done, we walked around the area just taking photos and having a look at everything. This area was very crowded and hot, and we didn't fancy the big queue for Dumbo, so we ducked into the big circus tent store for some air conditioning! We all bought a couple of things in there, I got a lovely Walt Disney World fridge magnet that matched the Disneyland one I bought last year, and we also looked at the really cool 'food' fridge magnets that are new for this year.

Next we walked to Tomorrowland and checked out the queue for Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, but this was showing as 50 mins and as most of that is outdoors and unshaded, we decided to pass for the time being. We decided instead to ride the TTA Peoplemover, which we all love and which didn't have too much of a queue. Weirdly, when we were riding, it came to a very sudden stop in the indoor section above Buzz, and all the lights came on momentarily. We sat there looking puzzled for a few minutes, there was an announcement about staying seated, DH surreptitiously began taking photos of anything he could see, and then the lights suddenly went off and we were moving again.

DSon expressed an interest in the Astro Orbiter, which DH did last year and DSis had never ridden, so I offered to bag sit while they rode this – it goes way too high for my liking! They had about a 20 min wait, and enjoyed the ride. Meanwhile, I sat on one of the round little concrete seats there, updated the trip report, and watched as the TTA stopped again. A few minutes later, a couple of maintenance guys went up the down ramp, and disappeared up there. Time passed, and Cast Members began to close the queue, telling guests the ride was out of action and would be for a little while. Shortly after that, the ride was evacuated and I watched all the guests come back down the entrance ramp! How interesting.

My family eventually reappeared, and we walked round to Auntie Gravity's for iced coffee floats. We got 2 mocha floats, 1 French vanilla float, and a chocolate sundae with strawberries for DSon. We found a bench nearby, and really loved our icy treats! Another score for the counter service credit and one snack credit.

Once we were finished, we walked to Mickey's Philharmagic and watched the film after a 10 min wait. It was very hot today, and the park was quite crowded, which went some way towards what happened next.

We had FastPasses for the Festival of Fantasy parade, but weren't too sure where the viewing place for this was. We thought it would be in the centre of the hub, where it was last year, but when we asked a Cast Member, we were told it would be right at the entrance to the park, at the far end of Main Street. A bit disgruntled, we walked all the way down there, but it still wasn't clear where we were supposed to go – there was no obviously roped off area. We asked another Cast Member, who pointed us in one direction, and then finally asked a third one, as we still couldn't work it out.

Everyone was very overheated and tired by this point, and when the third Cast Member gave us a third different answer, things got a bit shouty-shouty between certain members of our party. A really horrible, (but surprisingly short!), argument then ensued, which ended up with a lot of finger waving and threats to "go outside and sort this out" which I interpreted to mean they wanted to belt the living daylights out of each other.

The whole thing was pretty nasty, but luckily was over in a flash. We watched the parade (which was super-lovely) in stony silence. (I found out much later that a woman had been surreptitiously watching to make sure that DSis was okay, and told her she had done a sterling job of sticking up for herself!) DH was adamant he was going to leave the park after the parade, and we could all find our own way back to Old Key West. I thought we were probably best off splitting up into DH and I, and DSis and DSon on their own for a while. I managed to talk DH into staying in the Magic Kingdom, and quietly told DSon that we would go our separate ways for a while, meeting up again in front of the Crystal Palace at 6.45 for our dinner reservation. He said they had already decided to go off on their own for a bit anyway. I was still angry with the shouty pair, and miserable that it had happened.

As the last parade floats made their way back up Main Street, DSon went off to see if Space Mountain was doable today, and DSis went to Fantasyland.

We hung back a bit, and after giving DH a good telling off for the argument, we walked slowly back up Main Street with no real plans in mind. I checked the Main Street Bakery to see how busy it was, as I wanted to get the third "You Are Here" mug from Starbucks, but it was really rammed in there, so we carried on round through Fantasyland and to the Tangled restrooms, where we took a short break.

We went into the Memento Mori store next to check out the picture frames for our spirit pictures. I really liked the look of these frames, they were green, made of resin, and had the Haunted Mansion gargoyles on the top of them, but I thought they were going to be really expensive. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find they were only $25 each! We bought a couple, using some of our half of the gift card to pay for them, and had them shipped to the resort.

Next we decided to go on the Liberty Bell boat, and only had to wait a few minutes before the next boat pulled in and we boarded. We always forget how nice this ride is! As we sailed past Tom Sawyer Island, we agreed to go there next to just find a couple of rocking chairs to sit in for a while, so this is what we did. We were first in the queue for a raft, and despite the park being packed, there didn't seem to be many folk going over to the Island.

We discovered why shortly afterwards. We found some rocking chairs near Aunt Polly's café thing, (which wasn't open), and settled ourselves in them for a rest. I got my Carmex out of my bag to apply some, fumbled and dropped the pot, and watched in horror as it rolled towards the edge of the dock ….. Luckily, it rolled itself round in a circle and came to a stop near my feet again! Phew.

Suddenly, a Cast Member appeared, and unapologetically told us we would have to get the next raft back to the mainland as the Island closed at 5 pm! This explains why it was nearly empty; however, why were we allowed to come across when it was obviously going to close soon? Bizarre.

We made our way back to Frontierland, and walked round to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The wait time was showing as 45 mins, and after some discussion during which we agreed that the Magic Kingdom was very crowded and everywhere would have long queue times, we just gave up and joined the queue. In reality, we were on the ride within 35 mins or so anyway, so it wasn't too bad, and we had fun playing with some of the interactive queue elements. I would wind up the blaster, press down the plunger, and DH would take a photo of the resulting explosion! Each one blasted a different part of Big Thunder Mountain, and it was great fun!

We left that area and walked round past Pirates of the Caribbean, (60 min standby!), and everywhere else that was packed, and just found a little covered bench area near the Flying Carpets, where we sat for about 10 mins away from the crowds.

I was really nervous about meeting up with DSis again, as I didn't know how we would all act around each other, and I had no idea as to how to fix this. We eventually made ourselves walk round to Crystal Palace, and we got there first. The other two arrived shortly afterwards, and we acknowledged each other a bit stonily. I went to check us in at the podium, and we had a 15 min wait to be seated, during which time we all stood apart a bit and watched some kind of show going on in front of the Castle.

We were called in to be seated, and as soon as we had given our drinks orders, DH and DSon went off to get some food. DSis and I stared at each other for a bit, she was in tears, and I finally said I didn't know how to make this right. She was upset because she thought I had sided with DH and had been running her down to him, but I said I had sided with no-one and was cross with the pair of them! Eventually, and in between lovely visits from Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet and eventually Winnie the Pooh, and several visits to the buffet for delightful salads and meat and bread and potatoes and desserts, we all made up and apologised for the way things had gone. (Except me. I didn't do anything wrong. And I had to endure a hug from Piglet, and I really don't like him much but wasn't allowed to stab him with my fork!)

We caught up on what each other had been up to. DSon rode Space Mountain, checked out Small World but it was too busy, so rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and did some shopping. He found a Simba pressed penny machine that he had been looking out for, in the restroom area/cut-through between Frontierland and the Dole Whip place. He also watched the Street Party parade, and the Frozen Castle Light-Up show. DSis checked out the Christmas store and then went on the Liberty Bell boat, before getting a Spirit Photo done in Memento Mori. She then rode the Haunted Mansion, where a small kid had gone nuclear and had somehow managed to escape from his Doombuggy, to the horror of his parents! He had tried to run away near the part with all the scary doors! The ride had stopped, but the lights didn't come on, and security officers ran past DSis, saying into the radios that this was a "111 situation", whatever that means. Eventually, they persuaded him to go back to his parents, and the ride continued. She also did some shopping, and overheard an off-duty Cast Member in one store telling his colleague that apparently the park had reached capacity by mid-afternoon, and this was caused by the fact that there are so many Christmas Parties on at the moment, and there was one on last night, that any day there isn't one (like today), the park becomes absolutely packed with guests.

We also expressed surprised that we didn't bump into one another during our couple of hours apart, as we seemed to have been in the same areas at around the same times!

Once we had finished dinner and everyone was friends again, we went to the new Castle Garden area, as this was where the FastPass viewing area was for Wishes. We had our Magic Bands scanned by a Cast Member with an iPad, and were let into this fabulous and spacious Garden. We wandered around a bit, agreeing that this area would benefit from a few benches, and then had a long discussion about how benches in general have disappeared from around Walt Disney World, and the Magic Kingdom in particular. Whilst we can understand that Disney want to maximise space available for guests to stand, there did used to be little benches everywhere around, and it wasn't until this visit that we noticed how few of them are left, which is a big shame. DSon noted that the quietest places to sit and rest now are actually the smoking areas!

After a while, the Main Street Electrical Parade came past, although we were a bit far away and didn't get a brilliant view. It was lovely though, as DSon hadn't seen it for years and he kept saying, "oh wow, Pete's Dragon!" and things like that. (He really surprised me on this holiday with his love of parades and shows, he wanted to see them all and I never expected him to be like that!)

The Castle projection show began next, which was fantastic, and DSon really loved this as he hadn't seen anything like it before. That was closely followed by Wishes, which we all really enjoyed.

We were all very tired by now, so decided to call it a day. As we left, fighting our way against the foot traffic, we were really surprised by the number of guests pouring INTO the park, and it turned out that because of the crowd levels, Extra Magic Hours had been added to the opening hours of the Magic Kingdom, and a second showing of the Main Street Electrical Parade was added.

We got to the bottom of Main Street again, and decided to call into Goofy's Candy Company to get some Rice Krispie Mickey Ears for tomorrow's breakfast. We got the ones with peanut butter chips on them, and paid cash. I only hoped that we could be restrained enough not to eat them tonight, as we have done that before!

We headed for the Ferryboat dock, which had a massive queue line, shaped by barriers. We joined the queue and had to wait for over an hour to catch a boat, having to wait for the third boat to arrive before we were able to board.

We finally got back to Old Key West at 12.30 a.m., and everyone was absolutely shattered. We had been in the Magic Kingdom for 14 hours, and had only walked 7 miles, but had had to do a massive amount of standing around all day, which is much more tiring really. After another hot and sunny day, we were all really glad to fall into bed that night.

Whilst this day had had a briefly horrible bit towards the end, it actually turned out to be really nice eventually, because everyone went off and did exactly what they wanted to do and then we all had different things to catch up on together afterwards, which was fun.

PART TWO COMING UP IN NEXT POST.