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.

[Silvercat]

DAY NINE – Sunday 15 November

Plan : Pool, shopping, Studios
Actual : We all had a long lie-in this morning, and a very slow and lazy start to the day. Eventually, after the usual coffee/tea and toast, we headed out around 11.00 a.m.

We had talked about the medical back belt that Dad needed, and thought that Walgreens was a better bet for it, as they sell more medical-type stuff than Wal-Mart do. DH remembered that there was a big Walgreens on the 192, a bit further to the right hand side, so we set off to see if we could find it. We turned right at the traffic lights near Taco Bell, and drove for a few minutes. Just as we were thinking the store must have closed down, we spotted it!

We parked up and went into the store, splitting up to search for what we needed. DSis easily found the belt, (and when she later told Dad she had got it from Walgreens, he said that he probably got it from there in the first place and not Wal-Mart – argh!), and it was reasonably priced too, so she got him the last one on the shelf.

DH and I were shocked to discover one aisle full of suitcases! They had EXACTLY what we were looking for, two that matched and were different sizes so would fit inside each other, in a fantastic bright orange colour, and really well priced, too! I hadn't wanted anything really cheap, as they don't last, but equally I didn't want to pay a lot for them as they only get knocked about by the airlines. These two were perfect, and we got the pair of them for less than $100. We found some other goodies in there like pumpkin spice Oreos for DH, more peppermint ones for me, and one or two stocking-filler type presents. There was so much good stuff, we could have spent a fortune in there!

We finally left, dumped all our stuff in the trunk, and got back on the road. As we were heading back down the 192 towards Super-Walmart, we suddenly saw another Walgreens and decided to check there to see if they had another belt for Dad, as he had really wanted two. We managed to get another one, and I also bought one for DH. We picked up a couple of padlocks for the new suitcases, and DH got some Ghirardelli Holiday Squares in a big bag, as we hadn't been able to find him just the pumpkin ones and he loves those.

Bags in trunk, and off to Wal-Mart! Again, we split up and went off in search of stuff. I got 6 sticks of Dove deodorant in scents that we can't get in the UK, such as Powder, and Blue Fig, and various other bits and pieces, including a huge container of Equate paracetamol for our Locker box, as we had used all the ones in there. I also got some pumpkin spice baking chips, an assortment of flavoured water powders, some Birthday Cake Oreos for my daughter, and two HUGE Reece's Peanut Butter cups, that I sincerely hoped would survive the journey home!

DSon finally found the Millennium Falcon he had been after, and it was indeed about half the price it would be in the UK, but the problem was that he had no money left by then, so I offered to buy it for him as a Christmas gift.

I also began to seriously look at the X-Box One packages. I could get a unit from here with a 1TB hard drive for the cost of a 500GB hard drive back home, but I still wasn't sure about this. I knew I would have to get a UK Power Unit for it, but that was easy enough to do and would only cost around £20 from the Microsoft site, but the whole package was rather bulky and extremely heavy, and I was worried about it being too big and heavy to get home. I dithered about, not able to make a decision, and in the meantime the poor shop assistant called Christopher was holding onto this really heavy box for me, until I could decide what to do. In the end, DSis got fed up with my dithering and called for a vote – "who thinks she should get the X-Box?" Everyone put up their hands, including Christopher the salesman! We laughed a lot, and I decided to just get the thing. I also got a copy of the new Tomb Raider game, which I had played a demo of at a games expo recently and really loved.

We took all our loot back to Old Key West, freshened up, and set out for the Studios. Getting there later in the day, we did worry that we wouldn't be able to find anywhere in the disabled area to park, but there was another area set aside at the very top end of the normal parking area as an overspill, so we were okay. (The Swolphin game was getting out of hand by this point, and HURT!)

DSis and I sent the boys off to ride Star Tours with our first FastPasses of the day, as neither of us felt like riding it today. DSon gave us his camera to look after, and we had the genius idea of taking some really random photos with it and then not telling him – snigger! We got a Cast Member standing near Star Tours to pose for us, we told her to do something funny and she leapt up in the air, arms and legs akimbo!

The boys came back to us, and DSon said there had been a section of film relating to the new Star Wars film in there, to their surprise! (We later found out that this was in soft opening, and wasn't supposed to be in there for another few days). They had really enjoyed themselves, so took our Magic Bands and went to ride again.

We had FastPasses for Tower of Terror after this, but were too tired to walk all the way over to the other side of the park, so just let them go. Instead, we went to the Muppets 3D show with barely any wait, and as we exited we were 30 mins away from our dining reservation time at 50's Prime Time Café. We walked slowly over there, pausing for an e-cig break nearby, and checked in for dinner.

We were seated fairly quickly, and our server was lovely! She sat DSis and DSon on a bench seat, and they were slightly too low for the table so looked like little kids – she kept calling them 'the kids'. We ordered strawberry milkshakes for me and DSon, vanilla for DSis, and DH just had coffee. The others were really impressed with their milkshakes, they were so thick and creamy, they loved them! I had had one before here, and knew how good they were.

DH couldn't decide what to have for his main course, so I suggested he have the sampler platter as that would give him a bit of everything! DSon and DSis had fried chicken, garlic mashed potato, and corn; I had the same but substituted the garlic mash for fries. It was all really, really good, we loved all of our food. There was a massive amount of chicken pieces, it was like we got a whole chicken each! DH was really hungry and wolfed his down quickly. Our server came past, saw him scraping up the last bits with his knife, and said to me, "when did you last feed him? Don't you know that boys need to be fed every 45 minutes?" She was so funny. I was lounging with my elbows on the table at one point, saw her coming, and whipped my arms into my lap. She said, "oh, you thought I was going to tell you off for putting your elbows on the table, didn't you?" Nod, nod. "Well I'm not, I'm going to tell you off for not wearing sunscreen today!" (I was a bit sunburnt at this point!) We had great fun with her, and all made sure to eat all our veggies.

We were all VERY full after all that chicken, so asked if we could get our desserts to go. DSon decided though that he could manage to eat his, so he had some cheesecake with strawberries, and ate it all. The rest of us got the world's biggest slice of peanut butter and chocolate layer cake each, to go. Our server also brought us takeout cups to put the rest of our milkshakes in, as the serving is also huge and none of us had finished them! She put the slices of cake into a big polystyrene container each, along with some cream, and gave us them in a carrier bag complete with forks and napkins.

We left her a cash tip, and a written tip of "As we're in 1950, put a bet on colour television coming in 1974". However, we didn't see her again to get a reaction from her, sadly.

We made our way over to Sunset Boulevard, with the intention of DSon and DH riding Rock & Roller Coaster with FastPasses, and DSis and myself watching the Beauty & the Beast stage show, only to discover that the last show is at 5 and we had just missed it. So we went to the restrooms, and then sat on a low wall near the entrance to the Fantasmic theatre, in order to be first in the queue for the 2nd show that night. We may have also taken a couple more photos with DSon's camera!

This was DH's first ever trip on Rock & Roller Coaster, he is not a rollercoaster fan at all and has never ridden a coaster with an inverted loop, although he has been saying for several years now that he would ride this one. I think the fact that his stepson was all gung-ho about going on made him decide it was now or never, so off he went. We sat and chatted, and about 15 mins later the boys appeared, coming back towards us. DH looked pale and shaky, and was staggering – uh-oh, I thought. DSon looked grim. They got back to us, and suddenly DH broke out into a huge grin – he had loved it! He claimed it was "fluffing awesome", and he had had the time of his life! DSon was laughing at all this, and we realised the pair of them had tried to trick us. Just to double check he really had enjoyed himself, I asked them if they wanted to ride again using our FastPasses, and they said yes! So off they went with our Magic Bands.

In the meantime, the Cast Members suddenly opened the gates to the Fantasmic theatre, and I realised we were in danger of losing our head start on the huge queue that had begun to build up. DSis told me to go ahead and walk up the ramp, and she would wait for the boys and then catch up with me when they got back. I therefore strode up the walkway, all the way to the top, where we all got caught up in a roped-off holding area. I was anxiously watching for my family to catch me up, and it seemed ages before they suddenly appeared, politely moving through the crowd to get to me. It turned out that Rock & Roller Coaster had gone down when they were in the car, at the loading bay, and after a few minutes they had been evacuated! They had been given paper FastPasses to use on another day.

Eventually, we were all let into the theatre, and we managed to get really good seats just off centre. DSon had never seen this show before, and he absolutely loved it – his face was a picture during the show, and at the end he was speechless! He just kept saying, "wow", all the time. We thought it had recently been updated, as there were lots of new clips of up-to-date films in the floating water bubbles, and the projections and sound were very clear and crisp. We loved the way the princess's floats all lit up in the colours associated with them, and in sync with the music.

At the end of the show, we sat for a few minutes to let the crowds thin out a bit, and this was when DSon decided to edit his last few photos – oops! He suddenly burst out laughing, and asked us what we'd done! He had pictures of random Cast Members, people's feet and bums, someone's stroller, it was brilliant! We were really pleased with ourselves as he mutteringly deleted the photos!

We left the theatre, and went to see the Osborne Lights again for a short while, as we were all very tired by now. We just walked slowly down the street, listening to the music, looking at the snowfall and the lights, and enjoyed being there. The whole thing was so pretty, yet we felt so sad as we knew this would be the last year we would see these lights.

We eventually left, and drove back to Old Key West. We stopped at Hospitality House so that we could collect some parcels from the store, and also get some hot chocolate in our refillable mugs. We had a bit of a scare when the Cast Member couldn't find our bag of 'stuff' and told us it had already been collected! I was horrified, and demanded to know who had signed for it then, because it hadn't been us and we had the receipt to show we hadn't already collected it! She went off for another look, and thankfully found our parcel, although she didn't really apologise for the mix-up.

We finally got back to our room, added Baileys to the hot chocolate, and relaxed. We had spent 6 hours in the park today and walked for 5 miles. Bed.

DAY TEN – Monday 16 November

Plan : Epcot, last day of Food & Wine Festival
Actual : So this had now changed into our day of splitting up and pursuing our own dreams today. We were up early and did the usual tea/coffee/toast thing, before DH, DSon and I set out in the car, leaving DSis to have a slightly more leisurely start to the day. She was taking herself to the Magic Kingdom on the bus today, and wanted to relax a bit first.

We dropped DSon off at the Studios, waved him happily off on his own, and headed out to Epcot, arriving just after rope-drop. We had to park on the grass again, oddly.

Our first FastPass was for Soarin', which by 9.30 a.m. was already showing a standby time of 120 minutes! We were on fairly quickly though, and loved the ride as usual.

Spaceship Earth was next with our second FastPass, and I made us smile nicely for the camera this time as I wanted to send the virtual postcard at the end to my boss at work! We did the build-a-skeleton game thing before leaving as well, as we really like doing this.

Sunshine Seasons for a second breakfast was next, pumpkin cheesecake for him, strawberry shortcake for me, coffee for both. DH suffered an enforced eyebrow pluck in here – I was quietly sipping my coffee, minding my own business, when he suddenly shrieked and clutched his face! I thought he was having some kind of brain bleed or something, but it turned out that a slightly over-long eyebrow hair had caught in the hinge of his glasses and he couldn't take off his glasses to release it because it was stuck fast and tight! When I could see again through the tears of laughter, I helped him to remove the glasses but in the process it plucked out the eyebrow hair. Dearie me, how I laughed! He didn't, funnily enough.

Anyway, crisis over, we checked out Living with the Lettuce, which despite the 35 min standby sign, looked shorter than that to me, so we joined the shuffling masses and were on a boat within 20 mins.

After a very pleasurable journey, we walked over to Mousegear in order to do a little shopping. As DSon had now spent all his money, he wasn't able to get the matching wedding t-shirts he wanted for himself and his fianceé, (I'll be Your Mickey/I'll be Your Minnie), so DH had decided he wanted to buy them for them as Christmas gifts. I also subbed DSon some money and picked up a lovely item for him, as he had seen something he wanted to give to his fiancée as a wedding gift from him. (He was touched and grateful when I told him I had got this for him, and promised to pay me back when we got back to the UK). We also got a couple of Christmas gifts in the form of pins and toy cars, for friends, and I got DSon a lovely Pluto pin. I found a really cute, tiny Duffy bag on a long string that I loved, and DH got it for me for Christmas. All packed up and shipped back to Old Key West.

Next up was Test Track. We checked the single rider line, and it said 30 mins, so we decided to just go with it. However, we were on the cars within 10 mins, which was great. I got chatting to the guy in front of me, who said he worked for Disney as a consultant and was at Epcot several times a month. He only had a couple of hours in the park today, in between meetings. He was really nice, and interesting to talk to. When the 3 of us were allocated to rows, he insisted on swapping places with DH so that DH and I were sat in the same car together, albeit in different rows! How sweet of him.

We decided to start on our final foray into the Food & Wine Festival now. DH wanted the cheese platter from the Cheese booth again, so I went to get him that while he stood underneath the monorail track and tried to get an arty photo of a train going over, with the background of Spaceship Earth from an unusual angle. He succeeded, too!

When he was done with his cheese platter, which he wiped clean with a finger, we realised that we had totally missed out Scotland on our previous trips, as we had started with Cheese and then cut off the corner before, so we headed there next. DH got the Tipsy Laird, and I had a really delicious scallop on a bed of cheesy, bacon-y spinach.

We had a quick look around the Port of Entry store, before walking round to France. DH got the garlic snails in a croissant, (yurgh!), and I had the beef bourguignon with mashed potato, which was really good. It was a very hot and humid day again, and we struggled to find somewhere shady to eat this, so we ended up round the back of the Festival booth in a tiny area with some tables. There were benches behind us, but they were all in the full sun. After we finished our food, one of these benches was a little bit shady, so we moved and sat there for 10 mins, and relaxed.

We had a look around the France pavilion, avoiding the perfume shop that chokes us to death, and browsing the merchandise store. While we were in there, we saw a guy dressed all in black who had a dog on a harness with him, and the dog had a jacked on that identified him as a military service dog. The guy was casually walking round, looking like a tourist, but we wondered about that, as there had been some horrible bombing and shooting incident in the real Paris a couple of days ago. Anyway, we had read online that guests were leaving floral memorials in Epcot's France pavilion for the Paris victims, so we had a quick scout round but couldn't see anything.

I suddenly remembered that I had wanted to try the ice-cream macarons in here, so we went to the new ice-cream shop to see what they had. Unfortunately, the macarons are pre-made, and they only had chocolate or pumpkin, neither of which I wanted. DH did, though! So I got him a pumpkin ice-cream macaron, and I had a coffee ice-cream scoop in a waffle cone. We found a seat outside, in the shade, and sat there to enjoy our ice-cream. As we sat there, we saw the military dog guy wander casually back into the store again, looking like he was blending in with the tourists. In all, we saw him nonchalantly wandering around 3 times.

After we had finished off our ice-creams, we took a slow walk round World Showcase, to the Brewer's Collection booth near Germany, where they had a lemon flavoured beer I wanted to try. DH said he would like some too, but I forgot this when I was in the line and only got one! Oops! I did offer to share it with him, but after one sip he said he wasn't bothered about it. I loved it, though! It was very light, and really lemony. I paid out of pocket for this, everything else we'd had today had been got on snack credits.

I had also been wanting to try the grapefruit beer from this Festival for the last few years, and hadn't got round to it. This year, they had replaced it with the lemon beer though, but at a nearby pretzel stall we noticed they were selling the grapefruit beer, so I went to check it out. Yikes! It was a full-sized glass and cost $8! I didn't want that quantity at this point, and I certainly didn't want to pay that much for it, so we passed on by.

We carried on walking, and when we got to Mexico we decided to go inside for a look round. We browsed the stalls, not buying anything but just enjoying looking, and then decided to ride the Fiesta boat ride in there. There was a short queue, and we were soon in our boat. This was more fun than we had remembered it being!

Afterwards, we exited the pavilion and noticed for the first time that a printed sign had suddenly appeared on the front of the pyramid that stated, "No Climbing". It had a hastily-applied, temporary look to it, and we think this was as a result of the incident a couple of days ago when a drunken guest had attempted to climb the front of the pyramid! We found a couple of seats off to one side, and had a 5 minute break to catch up on the trip report and for DH to edit some photos.

Eventually, we left World Showcase and walked back into Futureworld, where we rode Mission Space (green) with no wait. We then headed for Test Track single rider again, which was down to 20 mins but looked much shorter, but it broke down just before we were boarded. We spent an anxious 15 mins in there, as we were approaching the time we had agreed to meet DSis and DSon in front of Spaceship Earth. Just as we were making the decision to quit and leave, the ride started up again, so we carried on with it.

Afterwards, we walked to the designated meeting place, but found out that they had been there for an hour already! They had both arrived back early, and we didn't know. I had originally said we would meet up at about ten past 6, as we had a 7 p.m. dinner reservation that night.

Anyway, we greeted each other, and set out for a slow walk round to Akershus, catching up on each other's day. They had both had a lovely time. DSon had ridden Rock & Roller Coaster twice in a row, followed by the Tower of Terror, and then another go on Rock & Roller Coaster! He walked around and took loads of photos, then rode Star Tours with his FastPass, had a quick e-cig break, then watched the Indiana Jones Stunt Show. He also saw the Frozen Singalong show again, this time ON HIS OWN - *obsessed*coff*, before picking up an ice-cream cookie sandwich from Gerties Ice Creams of Extinction. Rock & Roller Coaster followed this, and he then checked the queue for Toy Story Midway Mania but as this stood at 120 mins he had another e-cig break before standing and watching Goofy Santa greeting kids for a few minutes. He then wandered around Watto's Grotto without buying anything else, took more photos, and then left the park. He caught a bus to Epcot, and was there around 4.00 p.m. so rode Test Track single rider, before getting some cheese fondue from the Cheese Studio. Next was Mission Space (green), then Journey into Your Imagination, (which he hadn't ridden for many years and was shocked at the lack of Dreamfinder!), watched Captain EO again, then decided to ride Spaceship Earth. He bumped into DSis in the queue and they rode together, before then sitting on a nearby wall and waiting for us! I can't believe how much he achieved in this one day, but then as he said, when you are on your own you can get so much more done.

Meanwhile, at the Magic Kingdom, DSis had done quite a bit of Christmas shopping, ridden Pirates of the Caribbean, watched the dance parade thing again, and had a pulled pork hotdog with fries from Casey's for lunch. She chose candy floss as her dessert, and was amazed at how much strawberry flavour was in this, as normally candy floss just tastes of sugar and air! At some point in the afternoon she also got a Dole Whip Float, and got a replacement Simba pressed penny for DSon, as he had lost the one he got a few days ago – it fell out of a small hole in his wallet, and he had been really upset about this as it was intended to be a present for his fiancée. She finally left her favourite park via the monorail, and arrived at Epcot around 4.45, deciding to ride Spaceship Earth as she was early, which is where she met up with DSon.

We were about 15 mins early for our dining reservation, and were told we were too early to check in and to come back in 10 mins. We were a bit miffed by this, as the dining reservation guidelines tell you to check in 15 mins before your booked time, so I told the Cast Member this. He told me again that we were too early, so I told him we would just hang around then, as we weren't going anywhere else. At that point, he spotted my name badge, the one that looks very much like a Cast Member nametag, but is green and with "Guest of Honour" on it. He looked faintly panicked, and blustered out that actually, he could check us in now, and we could join the queue of people waiting to be seated. I have no idea whether this was coincidence, or whether he thought I was someone important, but anyway, it did the trick.

We joined the queue, and were checked in by a lovely lady called Dolores, whom I remember from previous visits. She is very distinctive, and easy to remember. She is really nice! She guided us over to meet Belle when it was our turn, and we posed for our photos with Belle. Unfortunately, where this used to be a lovely free service where they then brought you a package of complimentary pictures to your table, now it is scanned onto your Magic Band and you can choose to purchase the photos if you wish at a later date.

We were then seated at our table, and our server took our drinks order and explained how the starter buffet worked. We helped ourselves to some lovely rolls, cheeses, salads, etc. DSis and I tried slices of one cheese that looked like a pale, caramel chocolate, and we weren't sure whether we would like it or not, but it turned out to be gorgeous! Very creamy and rich-tasting, with an underlying sweetness there; it also had the consistency of a fudgy peanut butter, in that it clung to the inside of your mouth! We had no idea what it was, but we really liked it! (I have since Googled it, and it turns out to be Gjetost, a caramelised cheese from Norway).

DSis and I chose the pork chop for our main course, which was served with a baked mac & cheese. DH got ravioli, and DSon had meatballs. The food was all really good, very delicious, although the mac & cheese was quite heavy and dense. Luckily, this is one of DSon's favourite foods, so he helped us to finish it! During dinner, we were visited by Princesses Aurora, Cinderella, Ariel, and Snow White. We posed for photos with all of them, and had just enough interaction with them to be fun and not awkward. We had to restrain DH from being a bit over-familiar with Ariel, as she is his favourite Princess and he has a tendency to tell her this, if given the opportunity, making the poor girl squirm!

The dessert platter arrived, and we shared some strawberry-topped rice cream, chocolate mousse, and an apple crisp with salted caramel sauce. It was all really good, although the rice cream was a bit heavy and slightly under-cooked. Anyway, we polished the lot off pretty quickly, and our server asked if we wanted a second platter! I felt a bit guilty about that, as this isn't an all-you-can-eat buffet, but she happily brought us some more dessert and we managed to finish that too! She was really lovely, very chatty and personable. We did the usual thing of writing a tip on the back of the receipt, and this time we told her "Don't buy your furniture from Ikea!", and wrapped it round the cash. She came back to us just as we were leaving, and thanked us and told us how much she loved the tip! She said it was really funny, as all her family just love buying furniture from Ikea but her grandad thinks the store is awful, and trying to take over the world! We told her we love Ikea really, and we buy a lot of stuff from there.

We took a slow walk back round to Mexico after dinner, and found the perfect spot to watch Illuminations from. We were at the railing, with no-one in front of us, and we had a lovely view without trees or buildings being in the way. We watched fireworks exploding above a very bright, white moon, and it was so beautiful.

We finally left and drove back to Old Key West via Goods for hot chocolate, to which we added some Baileys and relaxed for a little while in the room. (DH drank from the wrong cup, and had drunk my entire cup of hot chocolate and Baileys before he realised it was mine! Luckily, his was still sat on the worktop, so I had his!)

Today we spent 12 hours in a park, and walked 7 miles. Bed.

DAY ELEVEN – Tuesday 17 November

Plan : Water Park, Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom
Actual : We had a discussion late last night about the planned visit to Typhoon Lagoon this morning, and the consensus of opinion was that while we loved the idea of going to a water park, the reality was that we couldn't be bothered with the hassle involved in getting up early, packing stuff to take with us, and then the decisions as to whether to shower there or come back to the resort soaking wet and shower then. So, we decided to just have a lie-in this morning, followed by a couple of hours in the resort pool nearby.

We therefore got up when we woke up, had some toast (and I had my leftover key lime pie from Olivia's the other night), and went down to our pool. We spent a lovely couple of hours there, lazing around, dipping in and out of the hot tub, and laughing at DSis's other new swimming costume, which was the same design as the pink one but was black in colour, and therefore still had the waving tentacles!

We eventually went back to our villa, had showers, and finished off the peanut butter layer cake from the 50's Prime Time Café that was still in the fridge, before heading over to the Magic Kingdom for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, around early-afternoon. (The Swolphin game very nearly caused us to crash the car as it was by now getting a tad violent! We were unfairly accused of making up and/or changing the rules to the game, and we decided that maybe it was time to change to another game, although we never actually got round to this ……)

We parked up at the Ticket & Transportation Centre easily, and then as we started to head towards the ferry terminal, I decided that I wanted to ride the monorail, so we split up with DH and I catching the monorail, and DSon and DSis catching the ferry across. Our glee at beating the others to arrive at the Magic Kingdom first soon seeped away though as we had to hang around for a good 10 minutes just inside the entrance waiting for them!

Reunited again, we strolled happily under the railway station (closed, for refurbishment – drat!), and noticed that the park was definitely quieter today. I thought that we were in our window for our 7 Dwarfs' Mine Train FastPass, so that was our first destination. However, when we scanned our Magic Bands, the Mickey lollipop turned blue. Huh? I double-checked my handy portable mini-spreadsheet, and it turned out that we were an hour early – oops. However, we were in our Big Thunder Mountain Railroad FastPass slot, so rather sheepishly I led the way over there, and we all enjoyed our trip on the Wildest Ride in the Universe.

We started to head back through Frontierland, and noticed that folk were lining up for the Festival of Fantasy parade. As we were near to its starting point, we decided to linger for a while and watch it. Everyone else stood in the shade to watch and take photos, while I found a bit of wall beside a food cart and sat in the sun. The parade was so lovely, we do love this one.

Once it had passed us by, we headed down the side walkway by the river and went back to 7 Dwarfs' Mine Train. DSis decided that she had been shaken about enough by Big Thunder though, and opted to ride the carousel instead, so the remaining three of us zipped our way through the FastPass line and rode the Mine Train again, having great fun.

It's a Small World was next, which we hadn't done yet this holiday, although this was a 20 min wait. Peter Pan's Flight was showing something ridiculous in the way of standby, so I told everyone it would be a lot better later, once all the folk without party tickets left the park.

We found a Cast Member as we left Small World, and I asked her where the nearest place was to get our party wristbands. She directed us to a line just across the way, by Mickey's Philharmagic, so we joined a small queue and were soon proudly sporting our snazzy party wristbands!

It was now time for our early dinner reservation at Be Our Guest, so we made our way over to New Fantasyland. The weather had been quite cloudy and humid today, and as we walked towards the Beast's castle we felt a small sprinkling of rain – my heart sank, as DSon and DSis hadn't attended a Christmas Party event since one night at Christmas 1999, when it had rained so hard that the parade and fireworks had been cancelled. As is usual in our family, we ignored the tiny bit of rain this time and pretended it hadn't happened – no-one mentioned it to each other, but we all secretly panicked a bit!

We checked in for dinner and were seated quite quickly, being given a lovely table at the very back of the ballroom. DSon, DSis and I all went with the steak, while DH got a chicken dish, and we all had the Grey Stuff for dessert, (DSis cried again, as the idea of actually eating something that was sung about in her favourite film was a bit overwhelming!). The food was all really good, there were no complaints from us tonight! We had an assortment of orange soda, coffee, and Minute-Maid Lemonade to drink. It was so lovely to relax in this beautiful dining room, chatting and enjoying our delicious dinner, while watching the snow out of the nearby window. We paid for the meal with table service credits, but forgot to leave a written tip for our server, who wasn't particularly attentive or memorable. After dinner was over, we explored the other dining rooms briefly, and I topped up my Lemonade from the dispenser in the Music Box room, as I was really thirsty.

We then went into the smaller room to meet the Beast, and there was quite a long queue already. It went down fairly quickly though, and soon we were all milling around, trying to decide who wanted photos taken with him and who didn't! DSon volunteered to be our photographer, and suddenly he had 3 cameras around his neck! The Cast Members were pointing him out to the Beast, and saying he had a lot of 'magic mirrors' to work with, it was really funny!

Once we were done in the Castle, we walked back over to Frontierland to get some Christmas party merchandise. I decided not to get a party pin, but the other 3 wanted one so we went to the Frontierland Mercantile for those. I also got an event t-shirt for DH.

We were now within the official Christmas Party timeframe, and the park was a lot emptier, which was brilliant. We went to the Haunted Mansion, and this was a straight walk-on, with no time to play in the interactive queue! A little bit of backstory here – DSon is a high producer of 'wind', shall we say, something we hadn't been very aware of before this holiday. So bearing this in mind, we whisked through the Haunted Mansion queue area, including the stretching room, and were fast approaching the moving walkway to board our doom buggies. Suddenly, just before we stepped on the walkway, the ride came to a halt and we all had to stand still. DSon looked shifty and tried to back away from us all slightly. Then the smell hit us! We now blame him entirely for stopping the ride with a toxic and probably green-coloured cloud! We laughed about this quite a lot over the next few days. Anyway, luckily the ride restarted again quite quickly and we were soon being rapidly doom-buggied away from the obnoxious gasses.

After we left the Mansion, we called into Columbia Harbour House for complimentary cookies and cocoa, which was delicious, before walking round to ride the Jingle Cruise – great fun, and our skipper was really funny! We loved the Christmas overlay on this ride, it is so good. As we exited the ride, which had been almost a walk-on, we saw that Aladdin's Magic Carpets was very quiet, so we rode that. It was also lots of fun and we laughed a lot, as DSis and I tried to make our Carpet go as high as possible without doing the sudden drop thing it sometimes does!

Pirates of the Caribbean was next, although DSon and DSis opted to wait on a nearby wall while we rode. We got straight onto the ride, and when we exited, we couldn't see them anywhere! We looked all around the area, and then suddenly they emerged from the ride exit, having decided they did want to ride after all! We went to the Tortuga Tavern for more cookies and cocoa, and also some apple juice.

We walked slowly towards the hub as the first showing of the parade was just ending, and we didn't want to watch it until the second showing later. We got there nicely in time for the castle projection show, which was really Christmassy! And then we watched Holiday Wishes, which was absolutely wonderful and really long. There were fireworks shot from all around us, something which I had forgotten Disney used to do years ago, but we hadn't seen this for a very long time, and it was lovely to see again.

DH was getting a bit tired by now, and we still had to collect our special event Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom cards, (we don't play the game but like to collect the cards!), so we left him perched lightly on a bit of narrow fencing, (where have all the benches gone??), while the 3 of us nipped down Main Street to the Firestation. Cards collected and admired, (Olaf and snowgies!), we collected DH and moved slightly to be more centrally in front of the castle stage for the Christmas show, "Celebrate the Season", which was really fabulous. By then it was time for the second showing of the "Once upon a Christmastime" parade, which is one of our favourite Disney parades. DSis and DSon hadn't seen this before, and DSon spent a LOT of time waving to the characters on the floats, much to our amusement! They both loved the parade, as we knew they would do, and we had great fun together watching it.

DSon had wanted to watch a show in Tomorrowland called "A Totally Tomorrowland Christmas", but we seemed to keep missing it as it was only showing every hour or so. We walked over to Tomorrowland at this point, and realised we were between shows again, so decided to ride Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin as this was a walk-on. DH won this easily, again. We then seemed to forget about the show and grabbed some more cocoa and cookies from the little food place there. DSis was suffering with her back a bit now, so she opted to stay there and bag-sit while DSon went on the Speedway, and DH and I rode the TTA.

By now it was around 11.30 and we knew the park would be closing soon, plus we were all really tired, so we took a slow walk back to the entrance. We stopped off in Goofy's Candy Company to pick up some treats to take home with us, using a total of 16 counter service credits to get rice krispie treats, cookies, lollipops, and bags of candy, some of which would be gifts for neighbours and friends at home. I'm not sure what happened at the till, but the Cast Member couldn't seem to get the sale to register, so she just wrote on the receipt that we had used 16 credits and had something like 23 left.

We finally got back to Old Key West at 1.30 a.m., having spent 12 hours in the Magic Kingdom and walked 9 miles! We also suddenly realised that while it had sprinkled lightly with rain as we approached Be Our Guest, and had rained hard while we were in there, it had stopped by the time we had finished dinner and stayed dry for the rest of the evening – phew! That was close!!

DAY TWELVE – Wednesday 18 November

Plan : Disney's Hollywood Studios
Actual : Despite our really late night, we were still up at 9 a.m. and had our usual coffee and toast, before heading out to the Studios. (With hindsight, this made us all a bit tired and cranky today, and we narrowly avoided another family row later in the day!)

When we got to the Studios, it was a bit crowded and we struggled to park, again. DSis took herself off to watch the Beauty & the Beast stage show, which we had kept missing up to this point, while the 3 of us went to use our Toy Story Midway Mania FastPasses. I won, for the first time in ages!

We then went into the Disney Junior area to look for a souvenir for my boss's youngest son, and picked up a Jake & the Neverland Pirates-themed toy car, which was cute. We then had a quick look around the Frozen store, where I picked up a lovely pink, braided bangle, wearing it straightaway. (Within an hour it had begun to unravel and I had to go back and get it replaced!) We collected DSis at the end of Sunset Boulevard, then went to Writer's Stop for a look round there, but didn't buy anything.

It was now time for our lunch reservation with Fantasmic FastPasses, at Mama Melrose's. We checked in, had a quick restroom break, and were seated reasonably quickly. DSis and I ordered the battered calamari to start with, but without the peppers and onions on top. DSon had a Caesar salad, and DH had buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes. We loved our calamari, it was really yummy! DSon tried some and he liked it, too. For our main course, I asked the server, (Jason, I think he was called), if the chef could prepare something for me without onions or garlic, as last year I had had an amazing meal here made especially for me, that was just cream, parmesan cheese, grilled chicken, and spaghetti, and I would have liked the same thing again this year. However, Jason told me that I could only order things off the menu and they couldn't prepare anything specific. I thought this was a bit odd, as it had been done before, but didn't want to make a fuss so didn't press the issue. I therefore ordered a chicken and spaghetti dish with a cheese sauce, but despite my telling Jason I could not have onions or garlic, there was onion in the cheese sauce, so I had to scrape most of it off, leaving me with quite a dry meal sadly. DSis had steak, DSon had breaded chicken with spaghetti and a marinara sauce, and DH had meatballs with penne pasta and a cheese sauce. Everyone really enjoyed their meals, and the meatballs in particular looked really good.

We were then given a dessert platter each, with 3 small desserts on each one – a chocolate orange cake that was gorgeous, a tiny tiramisu that was delightful, and an almond cheesecake, although DH ate mine, as I am not a fan of almond flavour!

Jason brought us our Fantasmic FastPasses for later, and we left him a written tip about visiting England and bringing an umbrella, which he loved!

We waddled out of there, stuffed to the gills with lunch, and decided to visit the Frozen Singalong show as it was nearby and was just about to start. DSon was pleased about this! It was just as much fun as last time, with the Historians ad-libbing some different jokes this time.

We went towards One Man's Dream after this, as I had wanted to see the preview film of The Good Dinosaur, but because DSis and DSon hadn't been in the exhibit before, they wanted to stop and read everything and take photos. DH was keen to just move into the theatre for the film, and then come back afterwards to see the exhibits. This lead to the near-argument, as he sprinted for the film doors which were just about to close, and got the Cast Member to hold them open for us all, but the other two were busy taking photos and in the end he had to leave the theatre and rejoin us, (I was hovering between DSon and DSis, and DH, trying desperately to stay neutral and not get drawn into another argument). He was a bit cross, and stomped off to watch the Voyage of the Little Mermaid, rather than wait for the next showing of The Good Dinosaur. We 3 hung around until the theatre doors opened again, then watched the preview, which was really lovely.

We were approaching the time for our Lights, Motors, Action FastPass, which DSon really wanted to see – he loves cars and speed, and had never seen this show before. Therefore, he was keen to get to the theatre to get a good seat. However, DSis and I had to go and find DH before we could go anywhere else, so we dispatched DSon off to the smoking area near the old Backlot Tour entrance, with instructions that we would join him in a few minutes. He said he would give us 10 minutes and then would make his way into the LMA theatre. Meanwhile, we sat outside the Voyage of the Little Mermaid theatre and waited for DH.

When he came out a couple of minutes later, he asked how The Good Dinosaur preview was and we said it was lovely, so he said he wanted to see it now! I checked my watch, and thought he had time to see it before LMA, so off he went. DSis didn't think there was time for him to watch it though, and was then a bit cross with him for making us sit outside and wait for him! He was back out again within 10 minutes, and we made our way towards LMA. As I thought though, DSon had already made his way into the theatre and I was disappointed as I had wanted to share this show with him, and I thought there was no way we would find him now, as this open-air theatre is massive.

As luck would have it, we were seated just two rows and almost directly behind him! So I was able to watch him watching the show for most of it, which was nice. We sat there for a few minutes waiting for the show to start, and the weather got more and more humid, with heavy clouds rolling across the sky. Then it began to absolutely POUR with rain! This went on for about 5 minutes, before the sky cleared and the storm passed. There was a perfect rainbow in the sky, directly in front of us!

DSon absolutely loved the show, as we had thought he would. As we all got up to leave, we called to him as he hadn't seen us sat behind him, but he didn't turn round and acknowledge us. We called again, but thought he still hadn't heard us, so DH yelled his name quite loudly. DSon turned round and snapped, "I heard you the first time!" "Oh gawd, here we go again", I thought. DH and I made our way to the end of our row to start down the steps, and DSis, who had clearly had enough of the bickering today, made her way to DSon and gave him a bit of a talking to. She then dragged me off to one side and completely of his own accord, and having had the situation explained to him, DSon apologised to DH for snapping at him. They shook hands, and all was well.

Our final FastPass of the day was for Star Tours, but DSis and I felt a bit too full of lunch to ride this, so DSon and DH rode on their own while we had a restroom break. The boys rejoined us and we started to walk away, but I could feel something brushing the top of my leg, under my floaty skirt. I had to move off to one side to discretely investigate the situation, and all I am going to say at this point is that toilet paper has a nasty habit of sticking to skin when it is least wanted ……

We began to make our way back to Sunset Boulevard, after I had nipped back to the Frozen shop to change my bangle, as DH was keen to use his anytime FastPass for Rock & Roller Coaster that he had been given last week, (DSon had used his on his lone visit to the Studios a few days ago). DSon said he would ride via the single rider queue, so off they set. Meanwhile, DSis and I began to investigate food options as it was approaching time for the first showing of Fantasmic and I thought it would be a good idea to take some food up to the theatre with us. It had now been 6 hours since our lunch and we were just about ready to eat again! We queued up at Fairfax Fare and I ordered 4 bacon cheeseburgers with chips, 2 banana parfaits, 2 chocolate mousses, 2 hot teas and 2 coffees. I also asked for milk for the tea and had to then explain patiently to the Cast Member that coffee creamer will not go nicely with hot tea! She tried to make me buy a carton of milk, but after I objected to that, she eventually just gave it to me. (You can't sell me hot tea and then not give me milk to put in it!)

They boys reappeared, DH had enjoyed his ride but DSon hadn't been on, as he had spent 35 mins in the single rider queue without moving, before giving up! They took the trays of food off DSis and I, and we went into the Fantasmic theatre via the FastPass entrance. When we got to the top of the theatre, we found our way carefully to the Dining FastPass section, and managed to find a row to sit it, with a little difficulty – folk were just sitting anywhere, without moving up to make room for other guests. We went all the way down to the end of a row and neatly sat down. We shared our dinners out, and really enjoyed them – the chocolate mousse in particular was really good!

The show was wonderful, as usual, and we all felt very relaxed and happy. I was glad that the minor irritations we had all had due to overtiredness and the weather being very hot and humid hadn't blown up into another argument, and I was particularly proud of my son for being a big enough person to realise he had misunderstood the intention behind shouting his name earlier, and to therefore apologise without prompting.

We left the theatre after the show had finished, and although we were really tired, we wanted to pay one last visit to the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. DSon decided he wanted to just linger around Sunset Boulevard to take photos and soak up the atmosphere for the final time, so we left him there and the 3 of us walked round to the lights. The Streets of America was quite crowded, and this was when we discovered that the purple cat had been moved! We hunted high and low for him, and finally found him completely by accident! He had been moved to the very far end of the street, above the video showing the history of the lights. This was also the night that the Empire State Building cutout at the far end of the street was lit up in the colours of the French flag, in tribute to the tragedy that had just taken place in Paris a few days earlier. We played in the snowfall, we laughed and danced, and we may even have cried a little. It was really hard to tear ourselves away from the Lights at the end of the night, knowing that this really was the last time, and we spent quite a lot of time just saying, "right, time to go!" and then not really going anywhere!

The lights all looked so bright and lovely this year, but I do think that this view was coloured by the fact that we knew it would be the last year we would see them here, so it made the whole event beautiful and yet terribly poignant. I have many wonderful memories of seeing this display over the past years, from walking the streets when they included Residential Street with my parents, sister, and my young children, through showing them to my (at the time, new) husband for the first time, right through to seeing them last year with some new American friends we had made online, and whom we were meeting for the first time in the flesh! I sincerely hope that Disney manage to find somewhere to move this wonderful display of lights to, elsewhere on property, as it has always been a very popular and well-attended event.

Anyway, we finally managed to drag ourselves away and met up with DSon again, before leaving the Studios and heading back to Old Key West. We stopped off at Hospitality House to pick up some shopping from a previous day, and get some hot chocolate in our refillable mugs. Back to the villa, added Baileys to the hot chocolate, (finishing off the bottle!), and relaxed online for a little while.

We read that there had been a monorail crash earlier that day, but this then turned out to be a bump between Monorail Coral and the tractor that was moving it around at the time, so fortunately no-one was hurt.

We had had a really lovely day overall today, had spent 10 hours in the park, and walked for 7 miles.

DAY THIRTEEN – Thursday 19 November

Plan : Tours day
Actual : We had to get up stupidly early this morning, setting an alarm for 6.00 a.m., as we had to be on the road by 7. We had tea/coffee and a quick slice of toast, and then set off for another fun-filled day of adventures!

We dropped DSon and DSis off at the Ticket & Transportation Centre first, as they were both booked to take the Keys to the Kingdom tour at the Magic Kingdom. They were both really excited about this, and looking forward to the tour, which began at 8.30 a.m. We drove to the gas station nearby to get some fuel, and stuck $15 in the tank. With hindsight, we only really needed about $5 worth for the next couple of days, as $15 got us over half a tank of fuel! We are so used to UK fuel prices, which are shockingly high, and didn't realise just how much gas we would get for $15.

Then we drove over to Epcot, and sat in the car park for a while, as our tour didn't start until 9.00 and we were quite early. We just sat and chatted for a bit. At one point, we watched a squirrel race across the car park towards the entrance; we reckoned he was late for a princess breakfast at Akershus. A few minutes later, he came slouching back again, all disconsolate and downhearted-looking – clearly, he was either too late and they wouldn't let him in, or he had his dates wrong and had got the wrong day.

Anyway, at around 8.15 we left the car and walked towards the entrance, as DH needed a restroom. I sat on a nearby concrete bench and waiting for him, and then we bypassed the queue already forming to get into the park, and went up to a Cast Member to explain that we were here for a tour. We had our Magic Bands scanned, and were allowed in.

We went to Guest Relations and checked in for the Undiscovered Futureworld tour. They said we could go off and get some coffee or something as we still had a little time to spare. We therefore walked across to Starbucks by the Fountain of Nations, and went in. However, despite the doors being open, they said they wouldn't start serving until 8.30, so we had to go back outside again! We sat on a wall with 3 or 4 other guests, and waited patiently for Starbucks to be open. Eventually, we went back inside at 8.25 and got a Peppermint Mocha Frappuccino for me, and just coffee for DH.

We carried our drinks over to a bench outside Guest Relations, and spent the next 15 mins enjoying our drinks and relaxing. After a quick restroom break, we joined our group inside the building and were introduced to our guide, who was called Julie. She was lovely, really friendly and fun. There were 15 people on our tour that day, and after being given headsets so that we could hear our guide at all times, we started off by being given a brief rundown of the history of Epcot, both Futureworld and World Showcase. Julie spent a lot of time asking if we knew certain facts about the park, and sadly because I am somewhat of a Disney obsessive, I knew the answers to almost all of the questions. One or two other guests chipped in with ideas and suggestions, but I couldn't help trying to answer everything she asked, and eventually the others gave up! I felt a bit bad about that, and tried to stop being such a clever clogs/showoff – that didn't last long, before I was at it again. The other guests were marvellous about it, they kept telling me how clever I was, which unfortunately just fed my ego and made me carry on! Julie did encourage us all to ask as many questions as we wanted throughout the tour, but made it clear that photos were only to be taken when she gave permission for this, and reminded us to be respectful to any Cast Members we may encounter who were either on a break, or were on their way to work in a particular area.

Anyway, after the history lesson, we were taken backstage at Guest Relations, where we got to look around the Cast Member locker area, and were taught more about audio animatronics. We also got to carefully examine the head of a President Lincoln figure that had been put together for us from old parts, to show us how it all worked. We chatted a bit more there, then were taken round to the Coral Reef restaurant in The Living Seas. We sat in there and were given loads of interesting information about the pavilion, the big fish tank in there, and its occupants. From there we went over to The Land pavilion, and again we had a brief overview of the history of the building and its attractions and rides. We were then given a 15 minute break and told to reconvene near the restrooms downstairs. Just before we all split up, Julie asked if anyone wanted to ride Soarin' – 15 sets of hands went up in the air! She said she couldn't promise, but she would see what she could do.

People all trooped off to various points in the pavilion then. We went downstairs to Sunshine Seasons, (marvelling at the fact that we had just learnt that the four separate seating areas in there are all colour-themed to Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter!), and grabbed a cold drink each and an M&M cookie to share, which we sat in Summer to enjoy. We then took a restroom break, and waited for the rest of our group nearby. One member of the group seemed to be missing, and it took Julie ages to find him! He was a good 20 mins late for our reconvening, and didn't apologise or seem bothered about it!

Anyway, Julie told us that she had indeed been able to pull a few strings and get us a ride on Soarin', without queueing! The standby line at this point was around 80 mins, but we got to go out of the exit near the restrooms, round the side of the pavilion, and back in through a back door. We were amazed to find ourselves walking alongside the back area of Canada, and realised that we had no idea of the footprint of the backstage areas at Disney parks! As we walked, one of our group members asked Julie if she ever worked as a tour guide for VIPs, and she said that she tended not to, as she had reached a level in the company that allowed her to make those decisions herself. She said that it could be incredibly hard work being a personal tour guide, as you could potentially be 'on duty' 24 hours a day for anything up to 5 days.

We looked around us in vain for the new building work that will extend the Soarin' theatre, but couldn't see anything from where we were. Julie told us that the entrance we would be using would be the one reserved for VIP guests, usually celebrities, who obviously wouldn't enter the theatre through the normal queue route, so we felt quite honoured! We stood in a very small room together, and Julie ran through a brief history of the ride, and talked a little about the new film being made. She also told us one or two rumours that she had heard about the new film, and its possible permutations at other Soarin' theatres. And she also mentioned a couple of things that we think she shouldn't have told us about, too!

We were then warned that we may be subjected to stern looks and/or comments by other guests as we basically cut in line for the ride, but she said to stick closely together and ignore anyone else. We were led through a nearby door, which brought us out immediately outside one of the numbered queue areas for the ride. She had cleared two front rows for us to use! So we all got to line up in row 1 for a minute, before the pre-show film started. To be honest, we weren't aware of any grumpiness or curiosity from other guests, which was good. After the ride, which we all loved, our group cheered as we landed, and then we went back out the backstage door again, feeling really lucky and privileged!

After another quick chat outside about how and where Cast Members take their breaks from The Land pavilion, we walked back the way we had come and out into the park again, where we were taken into Innoventions East. Julie talked us through the ideas and attractions in here, including the Sum of All Thrills simulator ride, before we went back outside and talked about Spaceship Earth. Did you know that there are 11,324 tiles on the exterior of this ride? (I almost got this number right, when she asked if anyone knew how many tiles there were!) All of the tiles are held together with some sort of complicated string affair, which means that any rainwater runs into the gaps between the tiles and onto an inner skin, where it is channelled away from the attraction so that guests can walk underneath it in the rain and not get wet! Fascinating stuff, and very technical.

Next up was the Mission Space pavilion, where we were taken to the VIP lounge. This is a small lounge area mostly used for employees of the pavilion sponsor to take a break in, and we felt quite special being taken in there! Again, we were told a lot of the history of this pavilion.

From there we went to Test Track, and through a side door to the massive backstage area. We stood in front of a car garage, and spent a fascinating 20 mins or so going through the details of the pavilion. We were shown where there is a conference centre in this area, that VIPs and celebrities can use for private parties etc. As we were standing there, a large group of people who were dressed up to the nines walked behind us and into a side entrance of the building. We all tried not to stare, but couldn't help it, as we tried desperately to see if there was anyone we could recognise amongst them! They looked a bit like a large contingency of the Michael Jackson family, but Julie said they were just going to a private event and weren't celebrities.

Suddenly, Mickey and Minnie walked round the side of the building, holding hands and waving to us as they passed! Julie called out, "morning, boss!" and we all laughed, and waved to them. They were perfectly in character, despite being in a backstage area, and looked really cheerful. Apparently, they were on their way out to a meet & greet event.

Julie then asked for a volunteer, and every single one of the rest of the group looked straight at me! So I took one for the team, and stepped forward, laughing. Julie said that in order to enter the next areas, we were supposed to be guests of a Cast Member, and therefore I had to be an honorary Cast Member for a little while. I leapt at the chance, and was very keen to get my own name badge, but sadly that bit didn't happen!

We were then led further into the backstage area, and were really shocked at just how massive this area is! It was like a small town, with loads of big roadways, lorries, car parks, and huge buildings. I spotted a store called Company D, which I knew was the Cast Member-only merchandise store, and which excited me beyond measure! I had read about this store before, and now I was actually seeing it for myself! I so wish they had let us in there for a few minutes …..

We went into the main building, and saw where the Cast Member lockers were, their break rooms, restrooms, canteen etc., and Julie asked if anyone needed a restroom before we moved on. Of course, several of us had to use them, whether we needed to or not, as the opportunity to visit a Cast Member restroom wasn't going to come around too often! I dashed off for a quick visit, and then after receiving a small reminder not to touch anything, we were led into Cast Member Costuming. We learnt how the Cast Members check out their various costumes, the options for cleaning them, the rules and regulations regarding costumes – such as the, to me, obvious fact that you are not supposed to wear costumes outside of the parks unless you are directly travelling to work or home from work. Julie told us that she had heard of a Cast Member spotted shopping in Wal-Mart in full Haunted Mansion costume! We were led up and down a few aisles, being pleased to recognise some costumes as we went. The racks and racks of clothing went on for miles! They are all separated up into sizes and styles, it was so interesting to see all this.

We gathered near another doorway, and Julie told us in great detail about characters at Disney. She explained about 'face' and 'fur' characters, and how some jobs at Disney entailed being a 'friend' of a character. I loved this - it is how Disney keep the magic going, without ruining the illusion for guests, young or old. She was explaining this to us because the next two departments we were going to see, and be allowed to peep into, were the wig department and the make-up department. This only related to the 'face' characters, mostly Princesses. On this tour we didn't cover anything to do with the 'fur' characters.

She peered through the glass of the doorway we were about to enter in, and gasping, stepped back again. She looked really worried, and then warned us that we may be haunted by what we were about to see! She said it shouldn’t be there, and she had no idea what it was doing there. We wondered what on earth we were walking into! She opened the door, and we reverentially filed into a large room ….. Where, on a tabletop, was GOOFY'S HEAD!!! We all over-acted a bit, and had a good laugh about it. Anyway, we looked around the room, which is the costume repairs department, and then filed past a very small room off to one side that was full of Princess wigs. Off to the opposite side was a room full of very pretty girls all applying make-up to become 'friends' of the various Princesses, and Aurora nodded politely at us as we passed. We went through the next door and found ourselves in an outside rest area, where we stood and discussed what we had just seen, and Julie answered a few more questions. Snow White and Ariel, both in make-up and wigs but not in costume, approached the nearby door, chatting to each other. They smiled and said hi to us, before going inside the building.

Our tour was sadly now over, and so we walked across a road and up some steps, in through a door, and found ourselves in the China pavilion. We were all given a really lovely pin, with Figment on it, and we all thanked Julie profusely for being a wonderful, friendly and informative tour guide. We had had great fun, and thought the tour was well worth the cost. Several other group members came up to me to thank me for my enthusiasm and knowledge of the park as well! I was really pleasantly surprised, as I had been quite irritated at myself for being unable to stop myself from acting like an over-enthusiastic puppy the whole time. What a lovely and fun time we had had.

We were quite shocked to realise it was almost 2.00 p.m., as the tour had been advertised as taking up to 4 hours. Before we left the group, Julie said that if anyone was still going to be in the park that evening, all our names were on a list to watch Illuminations from the reserved VIP viewing area that night! That would have been wonderful, but we had a dining reservation at the Contemporary Resort for dinner, and we were hoping to watch Wishes from the top of the resort afterwards. Such a shame!

We were due to meet DSis and DSon at Disney Springs once all our tours were over, so I texted DSis to let her know we were done, and we drove back to Old Key West, where we parked up and caught a shuttle boat over to the Springs. We met at the bench we had been sat on a few nights ago, near Basin, and the first thing I spotted was that DSon was wearing a different pair of shorts than the ones he had gone out in that morning.

We sat for a few minutes and caught up with each other's news. They had both LOVED their Keys to the Kingdom tour, they thought it was wonderful! (The pair of them then drove us nuts for the next couple of days, by keeping telling us little facts and figures about the Magic Kingdom! To be fair, I think we also drove THEM nuts, by keeping telling them secret things about Epcot.) I questioned DSon about his shorts, and he had the most wonderful story to tell. Apparently, he had caught the pocket of his cargo shorts on a wooden post as they were leaving a backstage area, and they tore all the way down one leg! Their tour guide had checked he wasn't hurt, then when they took a break before going to the Utilidors, he took DSon into the Emporium and told him to basically pick any kind of clothing that he wanted. He could have had trousers, joggers, shorts, anything really. He picked up a lovely pair of cream coloured, heavy cotton shorts with a discrete Mickey Mouse embroidered on the leg, which should have cost just over $50, and the tour guide had cleared the purchase to be free of charge with security and the Cast Members on the cash registers. Wow, kudos to Disney for going above and beyond. That was definitely a Magical Moment!

In the Emporium, DSis had also managed to find the Christmas tree decoration we had been unsuccessfully looking for, for the last couple of weeks – it is a miniature of the "Partners" statue, painted to look like cast bronze, and is really lovely, so she had picked one up for both herself and us.

We then finished off a bit more shopping in World of Disney, and got half a ton of chocolate from Ghirardelli's. They really do seem to have stopped selling the yummy chocolate buttons that we all loved, as we haven't seen any in there for 3 years in a row now. But we got some bars of chocolate, bags of squares, and a jar of salted caramel chocolate spread for DSon's fiancée as a Christmas gift.

Laden down with several heavy bags of goodies, we caught the boat back to Old Key West, and drove to our villa with a plan to start the packing. However, by the time we got back, we realised that there wouldn't be time to do this as we were due at the California Grill at the Contemporary soon. Therefore, we just freshened up and changed our clothing, before setting out again.

We had never dined at the California Grill before, and weren't entirely sure how to get there. The weather had turned cloudy and damp today, and by the time we were pulling into the driveway of the Magic Kingdom it was raining steadily, making visibility a bit difficult. DSon had spotted the signs pointing to the Contemporary Resort a few days earlier, so we drove along the "Buses & Taxis" lane, and explained to the Cast Member at the parking lot entrance that we had a dining reservation at the Contemporary. She waved us through, and we followed the roadway off towards the right.

We managed to find the parking lot for the resort, but it was absolutely packed, and we drove round it 3 times without finding somewhere to park! Eventually, we began to panic as we were rapidly approaching our dinner reservation time, and pulled into the valet parking area so I could ask someone for advice. We didn't intend to use the valet parking service, as it costs $25! I jumped out of the car, and asked at the parking podium what we should do. They said they could valet park for us, but I reiterated that we didn't want to use the service, we just needed to get to our dining reservation! However, what I didn't know was that any guest with a disabled parking pass can use the valet parking service at no cost, and once they realised we had a pass, they told us this, which was brilliant news. Therefore, we all hopped out of the car, and handed over the keys.

At this point, I was quite tired as we had had a long and busy day, plus I was hot and sweaty from the humidity, plus I was stressed as I had been desperately trying to find a parking space for us, and then it suddenly dawned on me that I was also extremely hungry, as we hadn't eaten anything since a slice of toast over 12 hours before! Because our tour finished later than we thought it would, we hadn't bothered getting lunch as I was worried we would be late to meet DSis and DSon at Disney Springs. They had been given lunch as part of their tour, so it understandably didn't occur to them that we would be hungry! All of this made me really quite irritable as we tried to find our way up to the California Grill, but I tried not to let this spill over and spoil the evening.

We went up a couple of flights of escalators, and found the check-in area for dinner. After checking in, we were directed to a bank of lifts, where an extremely 'tour-guide Barbie' Cast Member ushered us into a lift and took us up to the 15th floor, where the restaurant is located. We were seated immediately, and our server introduced himself as Donald. He was very posh and we felt like a group of naughty schoolchildren as we were giggling a lot! We ordered soft drinks, and perused the menu.

We loved the restaurant itself, it was beautiful, with stunning views of the Magic Kingdom. DSon, DSis and myself ordered the oak fired filet of beef, and DH had the bison. I asked that the tomato risotto that came with my steak be prepared without any onions or garlic, and when Donald brought the dishes out, the chefs had replaced the risotto with delicious, creamy mashed potato, and green beans. It was absolutely gorgeous! I was really impressed with the quality of the food, as was everyone else – they all loved their meals. DH's bison was so tender, it just fell apart on his fork. Our steak was incredible, and was hands down the best steak we had had on property so far. We still talk about how good it was, now! For desserts DSon had banana fritters, DH got the cheese board, and DSis and I had the coffee cheesecake.

The bill in total came to almost $300, but the food was exquisite, and worth the money, we thought. We paid with 2 table service credits each, and put a written tip on the receipt for Donald – we said that if he ever visited London, to call in to Buckingham Palace and have tea and scones with the Queen, as she would love to meet him! He took the receipt away, and we didn't see him again though.

It was still too early for us to go to the rooftop viewing area for Wishes, so we started to leave. We were waiting by the lifts for Tour-Guide Barbie again, when suddenly Donald flew round the corner, calling to us. We panicked a bit, wondering whether we hadn't left enough money for the tip and he was coming to tell us this, but he dropped all pretence of his posh accent and aloof manner, and began hugging me! He told us he LOVED his tip, and thanked us profusely for it! It was a lovely moment, we laughed with him, and had a few moments of sheer fun.

After he left, and we had visited the restrooms, Tour-Guide Barbie took us back down to the check-in podium area again, after we had ascertained that we would be able to get back up there in time for the fireworks, using our dinner receipt. We sat on some beautiful couches for a couple of minutes while we had a chat about a looming problem – how to get all of us plus the suitcases to Disney Springs on Saturday for the airline check-in process, and between us came up with a very good plan.

We then decided what to do next, and took the escalator down to the 4th floor. DSon had kept going on about visiting the 4th floor, but we didn't know why, or what was there!

We browsed a couple of stores, not buying anything, and then suddenly spotted the gingerbread house, which is what DSon had wanted to surprise us with! He said he hadn't seen one before, and really wanted to see it. However, once we discovered it was Frozen themed, we ribbed him mercilessly! It was a lovely house though, and we spent some time counting the hidden Olafs on it. We decided to use a counter service credit to get some minty popcorn, and a snack credit to get a gingerbread Olaf for DH. We were a bit surprised by the total of counter service credits left on our plan according to the receipt though, as it looked as though we had twice as many left as we thought we should, which was odd.

Anyway, eventually we got the escalator and then lift back up to the California Grill, and went out onto the rooftop viewing area. Again, we had never been up here before, and the view was incredible! The fireworks started, and the music and narration was relayed to speakers in the viewing area. We were really surprised to realise that there must be a Christmas Party on at the Magic Kingdom, because we were watching Holiday Wishes! It was just amazing to see from up there, particularly when the perimeter fireworks went off all around the Magic Kingdom, and we were able to fully appreciate how far away from the Castle the fireworks are actually detonated. It began to sprinkle with rain again while we were out there, but we ignored the rain and just enjoyed the show.

At the end of the show, we also saw the Electrical Water Pageant go past, and then we finally left and went to retrieve our car. This was interesting – we all stood at the podium and waited for our car to be returned. There was a young, male Cast Member standing nearby, who was complaining quite loudly to his colleague that the previous guests hadn't tipped him enough money, and he began to mimic the way she had talked in quite a spiteful way. We looked at each other, quite surprised that he would do this in earshot of other guests! He then noticed us, and led us over to where another Cast Member had just parked our car. We began to get into the car, and he held my door open for me, clearly waiting for his tip – then he noticed my name badge, remember, the one that looks like a Cast Member one and says "Guest of Honour" on it? The look of panic on his face was compounded somewhat when he stutteringly asked me, "oh, do you work here?" and I looked at him quite sternly and replied, "no, not HERE ….." (which was perfectly true). I then smiled sweetly at him and closed my door, without giving him any money. I'm not saying that all guests are wonderful, but at least if you are going to complain about them, don't do it in front of other guests, you muppet!

We finally got back to Old Key West absolutely shattered again, having spent just over 12 hours on the go today, and having walked 8 miles. We were all too tired to start the packing, and our wonderful plan of getting it done a couple of days early had spectacularly failed!

DAY FOURTEEN – Friday 20 November

Plan : Animal Kingdom
Actual : Our final full day. Sad.

The day dawned bright and sunny again, and very hot and humid – just what we wanted for a day in the park with the least shade! Anyway, we were up and showered relatively early, tea/coffee and toast again, and out to the Animal Kingdom.

The park looked to be quite quiet, and we parked easily near the very front of the disabled parking bays. Our first FastPass of the day was for the Safari, and we were soon on our 2-week long journey in our jeep! Amazingly, we saw loads of lions again today, all strutting about and being liony, and also lots of cheetahs – we'd never seen so many big cats on the Safari before! There were also lots of white rhinos about, and someone behind us said that rhinos are just chubby unicorns, which made us all laugh! It was a really great safari ride.

We were ready for breakfast after this, so went to see what was on offer at the Kusafari Bakery. They had some breakfast wraps which looked good, with scrambled eggs, sausage, spinach and goat's cheese. We got three of these to share amongst us, with a counter service credit, and some tea/coffee. They were really nice! DH and DSon wolfed theirs, while DSis and I shared one as we both found them to be quite filling, so a shared one was enough.

Our next FastPasses were for Expedition Everest, although DSis decided not to ride again to protect her back, so we left her near Flights of Wonder as we were planning to see that next, and hopped over to Everest, thoroughly enjoying the ride again.

We rejoined DSis and found some seats in the theatre, fairly centrally. DSon obviously hadn't seen this before, and he really enjoyed it, as did we all. I got a shock when a hawk flew straight at me though! He skimmed over the top of my head quite gleefully – and as the handlers tell you, ducking doesn't help because he only flew lower!!

When we left the theatre, I suggested ice-creams from the nearby stand. We were all quite thirsty as it was so hot, so we got ice-cream cookie sandwiches and bottles of Sprite. Something weird happened when the cashier tried to ring these through as counter service credits though, and she told us we had 4 credits left – huh? We had loads left yesterday! We wandered off thinking that wasn't right, and DSis went back to her to double check what she had done. It turned out that she had rung them through as table service credits, not counter service! This could have been a disaster which we wouldn't have discovered until our dinner later that night! She attempted to put it right, and it took her ages. In the end she had to enlist the services of her manager, who was standing nearby, and they said they thought it was right eventually. (I went over to see what was happening and got chatting to her manager, who happened to be from the UK – he used to live in Cheltenham, which is where we got married 3 years ago!).

After we had finished our ice-creams, we decided to walk the Maharaja Jungle Trek, where we watched one of the female tigers paddling about in some shallow water to try and cool down – did I mention it was hot today? We enjoyed walking through the bird enclosure with free-flying birds all around us, and in there I found a really plain, brown-coloured bird that looked like nothing special at all, but had the sweetest song I had ever heard! I could have listened to him for ages, he sounded so musical. DSon got a bit bored in there though, so we told him to go ahead and head for Dinoland, which was where we were going to next. (We had explored Dinoland once, a couple of years ago, and found it to be an area we weren't keen on, but DSon had never been there, so he was keen to explore it).

We left there eventually, and found DSon waiting outside for us! He had been to a restroom and then had a look round a nearby merchandise stall while we finished looking at the birds. We walked over to Dinoland then, and were reminded why we didn't like it much – we hate the carnival-like atmosphere and the games stalls with prizes for cash. To appease DSon though, we had a good look round, including the quite nice store that was full of dinosaurs, and then sent him off to ride Primeval Whirl while we watched (none of the rest of us fancied it, too much spinning for us!). We stood in the blazing sun for about 20 mins without spotting him, with our cameras poised, and then he suddenly came strolling towards us. We hadn't realised that there were two sides to this ride, and he had ridden on the opposite side to where we were waiting! We fell about laughing for a bit, then made him go on it again, getting him to text us to say where he was. We originally thought he was heading for the opposite side, so we made our way over there, only for him to text and say he was on the side where we had originally been waiting! Anyway, we eventually got pictures of him, and he enjoyed both his rides on there.

It was now time for our final FastPass of the day, for the Finding Nemo musical, so we made our way round to the Theatre in the Wild and were seated quite near the front. We had to wait about 20 mins for the show to start, so I busily sent texts to folk at home in order to use up some of the phone/text package I had bought for use in the USA, after last year's fiasco of spending nearly 2 weeks trying to buy a small credit package and then a new sim card for my USA phone, only to finally get it up and running 5 days before we left for home! So this year I had just bought an International Minutes/Texts package from my usual provider, and used my everyday phone; however, the original plan had been to use it to keep in touch with DSis if we got separated or went to different parks, and in reality we had hardly had to be in touch by phone at all, so I still had lots of credit left that would expire when we left the USA. Meanwhile, DSis and DSon chatted, and DH napped for a bit.

We enjoyed the show, and I'm glad we saw it, but it wasn't as good as I remembered it being (we hadn't seen it for a few years), and it is nowhere near as good as the Festival of the Lion King, in our opinion.

We were all in need of a cold drink again now, and after the lack of tangerine lemonade last week, there was another one in particular I had been wanting to try from here, so we headed to The Gardens kiosk and got raspberry lemonades for everyone else, and a cucumber, mint & pomegranate lemonade for me. The raspberry lemonade was incredibly sharp, and I was glad I didn't have that one! But I LOVED my lemonade, it was so refreshing and clean-tasting, and you could taste each of the ingredients in it. Again though, the counter service credits seemed to be messed up, and the cashier couldn't get anything to tally. We were there for a good few minutes trying to sort it out, and eventually she said to leave it with her, and if she couldn't straighten it out, the drinks were on Mickey!

As we were going to leave the park at this point anyway, we decided to call into Guest Services at the park entrance to get them to check our dining plan balances, as we had had problems all day. We saw a very nice and friendly Cast Member, who checked our balances and printed them out for us. The table service credits looked right, as did the snack credits, but we still seemed to have loads and loads of counter service credits left. I think that what happened was that the day we bought lots of goodies from Goofy's Candy Company in the Magic Kingdom, the cashier somehow didn't manage to deduct them from our total, and so they were still showing as being available.

Anyway, we got back into the car and drove to the Magic Kingdom, as we had a dining reservation at Tony's Town Square restaurant for dinner. We got there a couple of hours early, as we understood that the Railroad, which had been closed for some weeks for refurbishment, would be opening up today, and we wanted to ride it. However, we got there to find it was still closed! The park was quite crowded as it was a Christmas Party day, and we were hot and tired having been tramping round the Animal Kingdom all day, so we didn't really feel like walking across the Magic Kingdom to ride anything. We went into Goofy's Candy Company to pick up some more lollipops, rice krispie treats, etc., as we seemed to still have so many counter service credits to use up!

We were also starving hungry, as because we had been so hot all day, we hadn't felt like any lunch earlier, so we picked up an extra 4 rice krispie treats to have now. We stood by the big Christmas tree and watched the Frozen-themed Castle light-up show while eating our treats. As it finished, we turned back towards the Christmas tree and saw a Cast Member standing there with a Snow Minnie picture on a stick, to indicate a Party wristband pick-up point, and DSis and I asked him if he wanted to build a snowman, which made him laugh!

We just hung around a bit, chatting and watching guests lining up for photos in front of the Christmas tree, before finally checking in for our dining reservation about 15 mins before our chosen dining time. We were told to take a seat, and we struggled to find somewhere to sit, as the foyer area was extremely busy. We had to split up in order to sit down. A tiny TV screen nearby was showing Lady & The Tramp on a loop, which we all managed to watch for a while. We were 20 mins late being called up for dining, which meant we had sat in the foyer for over 30 mins!

Anyway, our server was a bit lacklustre, but we were seated right at the back of the restaurant, near the window which was showing snow falling outside. After getting some soft drinks, DSis and I ordered steak and spaghetti, and while I opted to have this without sauce, DSis asked for some marinara sauce. However, there did seem to be a tiny bit of garlic butter on my steak when it arrived, but this was fine and was merely enough to enhance the flavour, rather than so much that I had to scrape it off. DSon had spaghetti and meatballs, and DH had chicken parmigiana. All of this was very good indeed. For dessert, DSis had crème brulee, DH had pumpkin cheesecake, DSon got chocolate gelato, and I chose tiramisu. Again, this was all really good. Our server seemed to be rushing us a bit, although I think this was because we seemed to be one of the last tables left with guests dining by the end of our meal. We paid with 4 table service credits, and wrote her a tip about "throw your spaghetti at the wall to see if it is cooked, but don't forget to take out the meatballs first!", but she just seemed in a dreadful rush and didn't bother to read it, sadly.

As we left, the park was closed to regular guests and the Christmas parade had started, so we watched the first few floats come past us, but then realised we were really tired and so made ourselves leave, as we still had the dreaded packing to do. We caught the ferryboat back to the Ticket & Transportation Centre, and were soon back at Old Key West, where we stopped to pick up coffee and hot chocolate in our mugs.

We could procrastinate no longer, and spent the next 2 hours packing up, finishing around midnight. This wasn't bad, as we have spent up to 4 or 5 hours packing in the past! DSis and DSon were packed much quicker than we were, and sat around relaxing, but we still had the Owner's Locker box to sort out, which we decided to leave till tomorrow morning as we had had enough by 12 o'clock!

We weighed all the cases using ours and DSon's scales, and every one of them were underweight, except for one single one of ours, coming in a half a kilo overweight, which we though would probably be okay. We went to bed utterly exhausted!

Today we were in the parks for 12 hours, and walked 6 miles. The weather today had been incredibly hot, humid, and sunny.

DAY FIFTEEN – Saturday 21 November

Plan : Last day in parks, fly home
Actual : We slept quite well, and got up with our alarm at 8.00 a.m. We all pottered about finishing off our packing, and DH stripped out the Owner's Locker box and repacked it all properly. We had to carefully consider what we were leaving in there, as we knew we wouldn't be opening it again for two years, so we removed some things like prescription medicines, and one or two things that would go out of date before we got back, such as the big tub of coffee creamer, which we threw away. There were a few things that would need to be replenished next time we visit, like ibuprofen, toothpaste, hair styling gel, and coffee bags, so we made a careful note of these to enable us to change our online contents list. I also threw away the big tub of prescription face cream that I had bought with me this time, instead of leaving it there which had been my original intention, because the pharmacist had given me ointment rather than lotion without me noticing it, and the ointment was more greasy and didn't smell very nice. I will replace it with lotion before we come back again, and leave it here next time.

We had been making full use of the laundry facilities in our villa over the last 2 weeks, so all our clothes were clean. This meant we could pack clean undies etc back in the box, and also pack our suitcases with clean clothes to take home.

Once we had finished off the remaining bread as toast, cleaned out the fridge and left 2 gallon containers of fresh water for housekeeping, along with a final tip for her and a box of English chocolates, we did a quick sweep of the villa to make sure we hadn't left any washing hanging up anywhere to dry, or left anything under the beds etc. We made sure the dishwasher was filled up and running, the sofa bed was put away neatly, and the worktops were clean.

All neat and tidy, we put the Owner's Locker box in the car, and then leaving DSon to carry all the suitcases down the stairs to the car park, DH drove DSis and I to Hospitality House. She and I went in to check out, and DH took the box to the Concierge desk, where he left it on a trolley for later collection by the lovely company who will store our stuff for us for the next 2 years! He was then going to drive back to the villa to collect the suitcases and DSon, and they would drive to Disney Springs, hoping to find somewhere to park near the back of Cirque du Soleil.

In the meantime, I checked us out, and there were no charges to pay. DSis and I popped into the resort store for a bit of last minute shopping – we were looking for a resort pin that we had heard about but hadn't seen yet, it was a pair of really cute mittens with fluffy bobbles on them. There had literally only just been a delivery of these as we got there, so we were able to pick up a couple for Christmas presents for the boys, (DSis wanted to get DSon one as it had Pluto on it!). We then walked round to the boat dock, where we intended to catch a boat over to Disney Springs and then walk from the Landings over to Cirque. However, we got to the boat dock to be presented with a notice saying that the boat service wasn't running today!

Okay, don't panic, we can catch a bus from in front of Hospitality House. We walked back there, and after just a few minutes, a bus marked 'Disney Springs' turned up. He was also calling at Typhoon Lagoon, but we reckoned we would still be okay for time. We boarded the bus, and chatted merrily away as the bus drove to Typhoon Lagoon, dropped off a couple of passengers, and then turned and began to go back the way he had come ….. We were a bit concerned, so DSis leaned forward and asked the driver if he was going to the Springs next, and he confirmed he was. He drove the long way round though, past Old Key West and Saratoga Springs first! We eventually got to Disney Springs, and were dropped off at the very far end of the Marketplace – ugh. It was hot, sunny and humid, and we had to trek all the way from the Marketplace to Cirque – about a 25 mile hike, it felt like.

We arrived at the airline check-in point to find the boys calm, cool and collected, while we were late, hot, sweaty, out of breath, and a little bit irritated! It turns out that the traffic was almost non-existent on the roads to get there, and they had made really good time. They had also been able to park practically next to the check-in area, which we've never been able to do before! DH said that we should have called them, and he could have dropped off DSon with the luggage, before coming back to fetch us, but we hadn't thought of that and had just been intent on making our own way there.

Anyway, we paid our $10 each to check in, and our luggage was weighed. As we had found last night, they were all underweight except our largest orange one, which was half a kilo over, but the guy dismissed it as being fine. As we were checking in at the desk though, the agent kept looking at DSis's passport and then looking up at her. We began to worry she had become a wanted criminal in the last 2 weeks without us realising it! Then he said that he was the same person who had checked her in there during her last visit to Florida, in 2011! He had recognised his own signature on the stickers on the back of her passport – apparently, he has a very distinctive way of writing his initials. We were relieved that that was all it was!

He asked me if I'd already paid for the extra cases, as our allowance is one case each and we were taking back two each, and I told him I had indeed, (although in reality I had only paid for 3 extra, not four, but I forgot that until afterwards and he never questioned it!) He assigned us our seats, row 63, seats D-G, which were almost the same ones we had had coming out.

Once we had our boarding passes and our cases had been taken care of, we were free to spend the next few hours having fun!

We drove to the Magic Kingdom, and parked up at the Ticket & Transportation Centre, where we made arrangements to meet up with DSis and DSon at 4.00 p.m. We all left our hand luggage (and I left my handbag) securely locked in the trunk of the car. Those two then caught the monorail to the Grand Floridian first, in order to go and see the Gingerbread House, before going on to the Magic Kingdom. They told us afterwards that they loved the Gingerbread House, it was gorgeous and smelt so good!

They then rode the steam train around the park, (which had re-opened today), went on the TTA Peoplemover, met talking Mickey at his Town Square house, and had lunch at Cosmic Rays. (As we still had lots of counter service credits left, they bought lunch for the English family queueing behind them, who didn't have the dining package!) They had pulled pork burgers, fries, and chocolate fudge cake, with Sprite to drink. They then watched the Festival of Fantasy parade, and followed it down Main Street as it finished, before catching the ferry boat back to the Ticket Centre to meet us.

Our day went like this : we caught the monorail to Epcot, and was able to go through the 'no bags' security line to enter the park, which was brilliant as there was quite a queue to get in by then. We used our first FastPass of the day for Spaceship Earth, and then went straight onto our second FastPass of Test Track. Both were heaps of fun, but tinged with sadness as these were our last rides on a couple of our favourite attractions at Disney World, for now anyway.

We were ready for lunch after this, so went to the Electric Umbrella for bacon cheeseburgers with fries, a chocolate cupcake for DH and a strawberry cheesecake for me, coffee for him, and a pineapple/coconut slushie for me, which was a bit too sweet and sticky to be very refreshing.

We had a FastPass for Mission Space that was open now, but we let it lapse as we had just eaten! Therefore, after lunch, we walked over to the Land pavilion and rode Living with the Land twice in a row, with a wait time of around 10 minutes per time. We felt it was only right to finish this holiday by riding another of our favourite attractions here! (To be honest, I was hoping that Soarin' would have a manageable standby line, but it wasn't to be, and I should have known that really).

We had about 45 mins before we had to leave now, so bearing in mind we had checked in our luggage and would have to put any shopping in our hand luggage, we went into Mousegear. I wanted to pick up a couple of pins I had seen, for DH as Christmas gifts, and also an Ariel fridge magnet and hand sanitiser gel holder for him too. He wandered off and I think he may have also picked up some Christmas gifts for me.

At 3.15 we headed for the monorail station, but got there just as one was about to leave. The gates were closed, but the actual monorail train sat there for a good few minutes with its doors open before it left, which was a bit worrying. Then after it had gone, a Cast Member came up to us and said that there would be a bit of a delay before the next one arrived as they were experiencing 'technical issues'. We still had plenty of time, so weren't too worried at first. However, we stood there for about 10 minutes getting more and more anxious before another train pulled in, much to our relief! We arrived back at the Ticket & Transportation Centre, and raced back to our car, arriving there bang on 4.00 p.m. However – the others were late! They came strolling back over to us at about 10 past 4, while we smugly stood around with, "we were on time!" looks on our faces! But despite the roasting we had got when we had been a couple of minutes late meeting up at Epcot a few days ago, due to being stuck in the Test Track queue, today we were magnanimous in our magnificence and forgave them without a fuss. We are so superior!

We piled into the car, catching up on each other's day, and left the Ticket Centre about 4.15 to head out to the airport. Now, in previous years we have had a really hard time finding the Rental Return garage at the airport, two or three times recently we have completely missed the turnoff and found ourselves heading out of the airport and towards Tampa! We have had to drive round and round, trying to find our way back to the airport, it has been so stressful before now! However, I think we have now found out where we were going wrong. We were carefully looking out for the tiny brown sign that said Rental Return, and as usual sailed straight past it. But instead of panicking and taking the next exit out of the airport, I told DH to just keep driving towards Terminal A, which is the terminal we were leaving from. We continued towards it for a few minutes, and then suddenly saw a huge sign for Rental Return, with plenty of time to get in the right lane and turn into the garage! I think we have peaked too soon in previous years, and left the airport before we needed to – there must be more than one entrance to the parking garage, and what we should have done before was just continue towards Terminal A. It was really easy to return the car for the first time in forever!

All was fine with the car, and we grabbed our hand luggage and headed into the Terminal. We found a couple of seats near the elevators, and then took it in turns to stay with the luggage and put on our flight socks and long trousers (rather than a skirt, in my case!), and visit the restrooms.

We moved into the main part of the building, and again took it in turns to have a quick look around Disney's Earport store, and the Kennedy Space Centre store, (where DH picked up a couple of really pretty necklaces for me as Christmas gifts, that I didn't know about – one is a silver, stylised sun with a sparkly stone set in it, and the other one is a half-Saturn, studded with pink stones). We didn't buy anything else though.

Security had HUGE lines, so DSon said we should probably start moving towards there, and he was right. We joined a random queue as they all looked about the same length. I was behind the others, and we were once again briefly split up when the security officer was working both sides of a line and she let my family through but held me back while she let someone from the other side of the line through; however, I soon caught up with my lot. This had now happened both on the way out here and on the way home again! I was also singled out for a pat-down, but found it difficult to understand what the security officer was saying as she didn't speak to my face, as she was busy looking round all the time, and I couldn't catch exactly what she was saying, so I felt like it was all a bit tense.

Anyway, we were all finally through there and onto the monorail across to our gate. DSis wanted to pick up a sandwich for the plane, as she is never keen on the food served going back to the UK, the same way I felt about the food coming over here, so we left DH with the bags and went into a small general store. We hadn't got a lot of dollars left at this point, so I had to be careful what I bought! I got a couple of bottles of soda, an Almond Joy bar for DH, and a bag of Cheezits for me. DSis couldn't see anything more substantial in there, but I spotted a sandwich store on the other side of the shopping area, so she popped over there and bought herself a turkey sub, (that she didn't actually eat until 2 days later!). I was now left with just $2 so couldn't buy anything else!

We finally made our way to Gate 83, which was quite a long way away, and sat down for a little while. We were late boarding for some reason, and then once we were all seated and settled, (including me donning my lovely slippers again!), a passenger had a medical issue and had to be unloaded – which meant they also had to find and then unload his luggage! Apparently, he had twisted his ankle earlier in the day, but it was now very swollen and turning purple, so the flight attendants thought it best he seek medical assistance before he attempted to fly back to the UK, (the pilot told us this over the tannoy). This resulted in an hour and a half delay in takeoff, but we did manage to make up some of that time on the flight home.

The flight was fairly smooth, with just a couple of episodes of mild turbulence. DH and I watched "Inside Out" together, which was really good, although I wasn't sure about the amount of peril in it – every time something went right, something else went wrong, and I thought it was a tiny bit overdone myself. Anyway, we tried to watch a couple of other things, but were too tired – I hate overnight flights coming home, they are impossible to sleep on and we always land back in the UK feeling like we have been awake all night. DSon slept a bit, as did DH, but DSis and I merely napped rather than properly sleeping, and we pretty much all felt rubbish when we landed. I tried to listen to some music on the seat-back system, but found the touch screens too hard to negotiate, so gave up in the end. The man in front of DH reclined his seat a bit, but it wasn't as bad as last year when some horrible woman slammed her kid's seat into his legs within minutes of taking off and we had nearly had an argument with her! My comfort during the flight was compromised a bit when I suffered from one restless leg for about an hour and a half as well, and I kept bumping into DSis with my right leg, which must have irritated her no end, but she was so good and never said anything other than to ask if I was okay!

The plane landed really smoothly, and we were soon off and through customs, despite the very long queues. Our cases came out quite quickly, but DSis had an issue – she had used non-TSA approved padlocks, and one of them had been cut off as her one case had been searched. She was just starting to stress slightly about this, when her other case appeared – and that one now had a broken zip, so that as she pulled it off the conveyor belt, the contents started to spill out all over the floor! She was pretty sure that she had lost something from in there, as there seemed to be a large gap inside the case that hadn't been there before, but further investigation later showed that nothing was missing, so the contents must have just shifted around during the flight. At least her underwear hadn't spilled all over the conveyor belt, we've seen that happen to other women before!

With DSis's case repacked, we walked the short distance to the valet parking pick-up, and our cars were happily there waiting for us. As is usual when we return from the USA, we were horrified at how cold England was!

The drive home was quick and uneventful, we then waved DSon off as he was anxious to be reunited with his fiancée, and we had a quick coffee at mum and dad's before heading to Tesco for bread and milk, and finally getting home.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So as my normal travelling outfit consists of a pair of peach-coloured, crinkle-cotton trousers, (and a floaty top), I had learned that as it always seems to rain on our departure day from the USA, my carefully ironed trousers always recrinkle in the damp and end up hugging my legs like a pair of very unflattering tights. Therefore, this year I had replaced the trousers with a pair of fuchsia pink, wide-leg jersey trousers – still lightweight and comfortable, but guaranteed not to shrink in the damp! This was a great idea, and worked really well.

The weather in Florida this year had been glorious in the main, we had had 2 days of cloud and occasional sprinkles of rain during those days, but the rest of the time it had been 85 degrees or over. The humidity took us by surprise for this time of year, as it was very humid for the first week, then it got better, but the humidity returned for the second half of the 2nd week. And it did indeed sprinkle with rain on departure day, for about the 4th year in a row!

The general consensus of opinion afterwards was that we had had a really brilliant holiday, we'd had loads of fun and had really enjoyed ourselves, acting like a bunch of kids for most of the time, and in desperate need of a responsible adult! I really enjoyed spending time with my grown-up son, something I didn't expect to be able to do once he was no longer a little kid, and I also enjoyed my sister's company very much. I hope that coming away with us like this has given her the confidence to visit Disney World again on her own, or with DSon and his fiancée, in the future.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing and reliving the holiday!

[Cam22]

I am so sorry that you were too exhausted to enjoy your meal at Trail's End. Travel days can just be hard. Luke and I mostly stay in studios since it is just the two of us, but every now and then the only option is a one-bedroom. I love all the space and having a washer and dryer is so helpful.

By the way, I'm going to take one day at a time, so this trip last longer as I really do enjoy reading your trip reports, but I usually fail to comment as much as I'd like.

[Silvercat]

I did worry about putting the whole thing on at once as it is so long, with no photos to break it up! I hope that people still enjoy reading it, even though it is more book-like than trip report!

[Colexis Mom]

Glad you had such a great time! Thanks so much for taking us along for the ride!

[Cam22]

Originally Posted by Silvercat

I did worry about putting the whole thing on at once as it is so long, with no photos to break it up! I hope that people still enjoy reading it, even though it is more book-like than trip report!

I don't mind it this way at all. I've just found that I remember what I want to say in comment better if I break it up., and selfishly, I want to savor it for a couple of weeks. Day Two then -- I'm thinking we might need to do breakfast at BOG after reading your review. But the best part was your sister's reaction. My DSis Pam is a huge B&B fan and she reacted similarly. Just made both our days! I had no idea (don't know what hole my head has been stuck in) that there was a Shellie May. So sweet that your son bought you those earrings and so sweet that you wore them the rest of the trip. I love your family's bond and that Swolphin Game is priceless. Your WDW days just make me smile!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Silvercat

I did worry about putting the whole thing on at once as it is so long, with no photos to break it up! I hope that people still enjoy reading it, even though it is more book-like than trip report!

I've actually printed it off and I'll be taking it with me on our trip to Iceland at the end of February, as usually on the flight out somewhere, I don't have much to do, as there's no trip report to write. Given this is an EasyJet flight, there'll be no in-flight entertainment, so this gives me a nice book to read on the way out there.

I did the same thing with your last trip report and read it on the way out to Florida last spring and then finished it during down time on the Dream.

[Cam22]

Bummer that your son didn't remember his earlier love of Captain EO. Your meals at Coral Reef sounded very good, but I was most taken with the desserts, any of which I'd have been happy with. Reading your reviews of the F&WF booths made me a little sad as we forfeited that for our first trip to DLR, but we'll be back this year. Sanaa serves a butter chicken that is my absolute favorite dish at WDW. I wonder if the one at the Africa booth was the same or similar.

[Cam22]

Day 4 -- I smiled when you said you'd never seen a cardinal in the wild. They are Kentucky's state bird and we have them in our backyard trees all summer long. I do love them. I'm glad I'm not the only one who cries easily at Disney's magic. Frozen had me all teary eyed the last time we saw it, too. Watto's Grotto was opened during last May's Star Wars Weekends, so I'm hoping it will be open when we are there this May. It really does have some interesting SW stuff. Your Pandora bracelets and charms sound beautiful. BTW I have quite a few of the same charms.

[Cam22]

Day Five -- Neat that you got some shopping in, though I hope you'll still be able to find the XBox One, suitcases and the belt. You had me laughing so hard at your DSis and her bathing suit -- irritated jellyfish. The feather ornament is still out as it will be all year long, reminding me of Stefanie and of you! Bailey's and hot chocolate sounds heavenly.

[Silvercat]

I love that you are reporting on each day as you read it!

(By the way, DSon bought me Mickey ears on a headband, not earrings! I looked for a picture of them but we haven't finished uploading our holiday photos yet, and I couldn't find anything online! Odd.)

I'm really glad you are enjoying it, and Cheryl - I hope it provides an interesting read for you on your flight! Safe journey and have a great time.

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Silvercat

I'm really glad you are enjoying it, and Cheryl - I hope it provides an interesting read for you on your flight! Safe journey and have a great time.

I'm sure it will.

[Nemo125]

Thanks for writing such a great TR!!!

[Cam22]

Day 6 -- You all worked through your first three attractions with quite a bit of speed. I like the "You are here" mugs, too, but since I don't drink coffee or tea, I've not picked any of them up. Luke hasn't seemed as interested in them. Fanta Pineapple is my fave at Club Cool. I love pineapple. I have kept forgetting to mention that I love your "tips" with the tips. Such an easy way to make someone else's day.

[Cam22]

Day 7 -- I love Animal Kingdom and you got to see some of my favorite friends there. With the baby gorillas that window stays crowded. They are such cuties and I can't believe it will have been a year since I've seen them when we get back in May. I'm so excited about getting to see the baby giraffes on the safari, too. Disney Parks Blog had an article about the giraffes when they were first introduced to the savanna and I'm pretty sure one of them is the baby of Stefanie giraffe as she was in several of the photos always with a baby by her. FotLK is my favorite live show in all of WDW and Tusker House is my favorite place to eat at AK. Like you, I enjoy trying small samples of dishes to see if I'll like them. The desserts here are very good, too. I don't mind the character interaction either. Glad you had the courage to ride Expedition Everest and found out you do enjoy it. I've had to give it up because as I've gotten older the going backwards makes my brain feel just like it does when I've gone through a loop on a coaster. I get so motion sick that I'm ruined for the rest of the day. Luke and I have been trying to avoid Disney Springs on the weekends because it seems even more crowded since the refurbishment began, and especially on Fridays and Saturdays.

I'm still enjoying reading a day at a time, but it dawned on me today that the first week is already over.