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WDW 2013 – The Pre-Christmas Trip

WHO :
Carolyn – Trip Planner, 13th trip to WDW
DH – Husband of above, 6th trip to WDW

WHEN :
Saturday 02 to Saturday 16 November 2012

ACCOMMODATION :
Disney’s Old Key West Resort

PLANNING
We succumbed to the special offers to UK residents only and booked this trip in July 2012, even before our trip to WDW in November 2012! We therefore had plenty of time to plan our two weeks in Florida in 2013. We had been given the Dining Plan for free as part of our package, 14-day Ultimate Tickets for the price of a 7-day, a $200 Disney Gift Card, as well as a booklet of money-off vouchers, too.

One of the first things we did was sit down with an empty spreadsheet and plan our days, so that at the 180-day mark I would be able to book our dining reservations. We also discussed any ‘extras’ that we wanted to do this time, and decided we were interested in booking the Keys to the Kingdom Tour, attending the Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, (we did this a couple of years ago and loved it!), and having a look round the Festival of the Master’s exhibition at Downtown Disney. We were also hoping to fit in the Osborne Lights at the Studios at some point, if possible.

We sketched out a rough plan, and would firm this up once the dining reservations were in place.

At the end of February 2013 I booked the flights, the hire car, parking for our car at Manchester Airport, and purchased travel insurance. Our ESTA visas are valid for 2 years, so they don’t need to be updated this year.

In early May I went online during my lunch-hour at work one day, and managed to get all the dining reservations we wanted. This included the much-coveted dinner reservation at Be Our Guest, a dinner reservation for the new-to-us Tokyo Dining in Epcot, and the Mama Melrose Fantasmic Dining Package, which we had also never done before, (I wasn’t sure if this could be done under the Dining Plan, as it is a set price event, but was pleasantly surprised to find that we could indeed do this). That took care of the first 10 days of the holiday, and over the next 4 days I managed to add each additional day’s dining reservation. Some of the dining times are a bit odd, for example 3.50 p.m. was the latest one I could get for Mama Melrose’s, but they will be fine, we’ll just work around what we’ve got.

As soon as the Christmas party dates became available, we bought tickets for the 14 November one, we had guessed there would be a party that day having looked at the closing times for the Magic Kingdom, so had deliberately not made any dining reservations for that day. I also booked our Keys to the Kingdom Tour, which we have never done before and are desperately excited about!

In August, a band that we would really love to see live announced a tour for later in the year. The Boomtown Rats were reforming and playing a series of gigs! Except – when we checked the dates, they were playing Birmingham in November, while we were away. Boo! Then DH checked again, and mentioned that they were playing Manchester on Friday 01 November … so, we began planning, and ……

I booked the afternoon of Friday 01 November off work, bought tickets to see the Rats, and then quickly searched online for a nearby and inexpensive hotel for one night only. I found one, and booked that too! So now the plans are that we drive up to Manchester once I finish work on the Friday lunchtime, and stay overnight after seeing the show, before driving to the airport the next morning. We usually drive up very early on the morning of the flight, so it will be nice to get a bit of extra sleep on the day we go – not that we ever really sleep much, what with being TOO EXCITED TO SLEEP and all!

In the meantime, I spent the usual amount of time refining our daily itinerary, which tends to fit loosely around our dining reservations, reading and contributing to the Disney Fan website boards on a regular basis, (including arranging a meet-up with a long-time online friend, for the first time), and thinking long and hard about whether to resist going back again next year or whether to take a break and travel somewhere else in the world.

Unfortunately for us, in June Disney released special offers for UK residents only, for 2014. We resisted for about a week, but finally caved in and booked again for next year – drat! (DH : “Just book the bloody thing, you are driving me up the wall!!”) We collectively have the backbone of an amoeba. We got the same deal as this year, free dining and a 14-day Ultimate Ticket for the price of a 7-day, plus all sorts of goodies – preferred viewing for Wishes & Illuminations, 10% off at Ghiradelli, a $200 gift card, 20% off Characters in Flight bookings, etc. The price had risen by around £200, but we didn’t think that was enough to put us off, so having tried Old Key West in 2011, Saratoga Springs in 2012, and being booked for OKW again this year, we opted for SS again for 2014 (these are the only two resorts in the offer).

2013 will be the first time we have had the $200 gift card as part of the offer, so we were quite excited by that – we can get some nice bits and pieces for the house with that, and some Mickey salt & pepper grinders I have had my eye on!

At this point, we also discussed getting a lock-up box in Florida. We always take small bottles of suntan lotion, shower gel, shampoo etc with us, but always seem to end up bringing lots of that kind of stuff back with us too. This usually ends up contributing to the overweight luggage fees we inevitably end up paying on our flight home, every year. However, if we invest a small amount of money in a lock-up box, we can leave lots of things there for next year, and the cost of that would be more than covered by what we will save in luggage fees. I emailed a guy called John at Owner’s Locker, (a company recommended on one or two Fan sites), and got a lovely reply from him, assuring me that what we had planned for this year and next would be completely possible. You see, by this point, we had decided that as we were purely visiting Disney theme/water parks this year, next year we would come over for 3 weeks, spend the first week in a privately-rented villa, visit Kennedy Space Centre, Sea World, Legoland etc., before moving into Saratoga Springs for the next 2 weeks and doing the Disney stuff again. Therefore, I needed to clarify whether he could drop off our box at a private villa next year, and collect it from a Disney Resort at a later date. He agreed that this was entirely possible, and not a problem at all.

This idea made a lot of sense to us, so we booked the box, and began to make a list of all the things we could leave in it for a year, such as the USA cellphone, the SatNav, rain ponchos, a collapsible laundry bag, and the usual toiletries. We also tend to have to buy extra coffee bags and coffee whitener during the holiday, as we use more than the free daily allotment we are given, and don’t like to keep asking for more. That does mean we also inevitably end up with extra left over at the end though, which we usually bring home with us, so we could leave those in our box too. I’m sure when we get there, we will find loads of things we can leave there!

The week before we were due to depart, I spent several fruitless days attempting to check-in online into Old Key West, having read on one of the Disney Fan Boards that check-in could be done 10 days in advance. However, I kept getting a message saying that details of the booking were incorrect, and to telephone them. I thought maybe I was trying to do this too early, so kept trying on and off over the next couple of days, but kept getting the same error message. Eventually, I got fed up with this and rang the UK Disney Travel-Line, only to be told that unfortunately guests from the UK could not do an early online check-in – grr! I was just trying to save a little time, as our flight is due to land at MCO at 4.40 p.m., then we have to collect the luggage, pick up the hire car, drive to OKW, check-in, drop off the luggage, freshen up and head out to Trail’s End at Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground for our 8.30 p.m. dining reservation! We should be okay, as long as the flight is on time and there are no other delays. Fingers crossed.

A couple more things that I did in preparation, extra to the usual packing etc., was to pick up a couple of special Christmas cards to post to family and friends in America, as it is cheaper to post them from Florida than from the UK, and to prepare, print off and bind a copy of our CVs and a covering letter, to drop off at the Disney Casting Centre near Downtown Disney. This is something we have been meaning to do for a while, and will probably result in nothing, but hey – you never know!

And so the waiting begins …….

DAY MINUS ONE – FRIDAY 01 NOVEMBER
Plan – Drive to Manchester, stay overnight
Actual – I finished work at 12.30 p.m., and got the train home. I only live a short drive from the train station, so was home by around 1.15. I grabbed a quick cup of coffee, freshened up a bit, and we were on the road by just after 2.00 p.m. DH had spent the morning prepping the car and loading it up with the cases, as well as putting some excellent CDs in the car, and thoughtfully filling a couple of Disney refillable mugs with hot coffee for the journey! We had one suitcase each, with a third case stashed inside one of them ready for goodies to bring home! We also had a small, wheeled case each as hand luggage, plus DH had a rucksack and I had a HUGE handbag, although this was purely to use for anything we were bringing back that wouldn’t fit in the cases, as I had no intention of carrying this around with me every day – I had already packed a very small shoulder bag for daily use.

We encountered masses of road-works on the drive to Manchester, plus an awful lot of the type of traffic that is horribly built up and slow, before clearing, with no apparent cause as to the delays! The result was that instead of the usual 1½ hour drive to Manchester, it took us just over 3 hours before we were pulling up at the hotel.

We were supremely irritated by the delays, but at least we were there and the hotel looked really nice – clean, neat, and exactly what we needed just for one night. We checked in, and our room was just around the corner from the reception desk, and on the ground floor, which was helpful as we had to get all our luggage in there. Whilst I pottered about making hot drinks and sorting out our overnight bags, DH fetched the luggage from the car, and then began idly perusing the information manual that was in the room. He was looking at the map of the area in there, when he noticed that we appeared to be quite close to a Metro station. He popped back to reception to confirm this with them, and then we realised that rather than try to drive into the centre of Manchester, which is an unfamiliar city to us, find the venue, and then try to find somewhere to park nearby, it would be much easier to leave the car at the hotel and walk to the Metro station, catching the train into the city centre.

We left about 6.00 p.m. and the Metro station was literally a 5 minute walk away. A train arrived within another 5 minutes, and it was a 20 min journey right into the city centre. We disembarked, but had a bit of trouble finding the venue – it was much further away than we thought it would be, right in the heart of student country, and we only found it in the end because a ticket tout tried to buy our tickets off us in the street outside the venue!

Anyway, the concert was great fun, we really enjoyed it, and after a quick stop at McDonalds to fill DH up with cheeseburger & fries, we finally got back to the hotel around midnight.

DAY ONE – SATURDAY 02 NOVEMBER
Plan – Fly to Florida, check-in at Old Key West
Actual – We checked out of the hotel fairly early, having opted not to have breakfast there as we wanted to get something at the airport. We had taken today’s travelling clothes, toiletries etc in an overnight bag, which we were going to leave in the car once we got to the airport.

It was a short drive to the pre-booked parking lot, where we then boarded a shuttle bus to take us to our terminal. I had already checked us in for our flight online the day before, so we made our way to bag drop-off at the Virgin Atlantic desk. They were advertising that they had extra leg-room seats available (at a further charge on top of the ticket price already paid), and I began to think this sounded like a good idea. Every time we fly, I always seem to get the person in front of me who reclines their seat the second we leave the ground and leaves it that way until we are landing, resulting in me having their seat back an inch from my nose for 9 hours! Therefore, when the check-in lady was sorting our seating out, I asked if I could upgrade to extra leg-room seats, and she said that they did indeed have availability. I paid the extra £25 each for this quite happily, knowing we would at least be a bit more comfortable – DH is 6’2” tall with very long legs, so he always has scrunched up knees on flights and I knew he would appreciate the extra room!

Bag free, we then went through immigration. The ‘naked body’ scanners are not mandatory now, unless you set off an alarm on the ordinary scanners. DH got through okay, but for some reason, I beeped! I was wearing a loose, floaty top, loose cotton trousers, socks and underwear – my trainers had gone into the tray to go through the x-ray machine along with my bags. There was literally nothing that should have set off the alarm! I was asked to step into the full scanner, and several areas showed up yellow on the screen. I was then wanded and patted down! I have no idea what was causing the problem, but I was eventually waved through. I collected my bag etc and we walked to a nearby bench to get dressed again.

Eventually, we set off in search of breakfast, making a small detour to W H Smith to pick up some mints and bottled water for the journey. We decided on Frankie & Benny’s for breakfast, as we had eaten there previously and enjoyed their food. While DH had a full English breakfast and tea, I couldn’t find anything I really fancied at the time, and asked whether they could just make me a bacon sandwich, which wasn’t on the menu. The waiter said of course they could, so that was what I had, along with a cup of (very strong) coffee. The food was really good, hot and fresh, and delivered fairly quickly. We relaxed and took our time over breakfast, as everything had gone really smoothly this morning and we had plenty of time before we had to get to our gate.

At around 9.30 a.m. we set off for our departure gate, as boarding was due to begin shortly. We were to be seated in the middle of the plane, and we sat in the seats at the gate quite comfortably and watched all the frantic pushing and queuing going on as people waited to be called to board. Don’t these people already have allocated seats? Why do they need to queue up like that, when they won’t get on board any quicker? Foolish mortals.

Boarding went really quickly, and the new seats we had been allocated were in Premium Economy and were lovely! The flight was full, and we had the window and middle seat in our row, so there was a young man sitting next to me; however, he was nice, polite, and kept to himself for the journey. We actually took off 25 minutes early, as everyone was boarded and there was a slot for an early take-off, so that was good.

We settled ourselves in, and, as predicted, the minute the seat-belt signs went off, the woman seated in front of me reclined her seat and didn’t move it again until we were landing – grrr! Still, at least I had the extra bit of room this time, so I could get my tray table down without any problems. She didn’t sleep on the flight, so how much more comfortable she was with the seat reclined by an inch or two I have no idea. Anyway, we watched a couple of films, (Behind the Candelabra, and Man of Steel), both of which were extremely good, and we also enjoyed the food we were given. However, I do have a slight issue with the offerings these days – they seem to be spicing up the food on airlines, which is not a good thing for anyone with food issues. I have problems with onions, garlic, and most food spices. Our food choices were sausage & mash, vegetarian pasta, or chicken curry with rice. Curry on a flight? Hmm, not sure this is a good move. DH and I both chose sausage & mash, which came with carrots and gravy, and was really rather nice. There was a side salad and a bread roll with butter, plus choice of drinks.

The stewards brought round plenty of coffee/tea, soft drinks, juice and alcohol, and then later in the flight we were given a Gü Key Lime Pie, which was tiny but delicious! We also watched a documentary about world travel, read a little, and played the odd game of Bejewelled.

The 9-hour flight was extremely smooth, unlike our flight last year where we caught the tail-end of Hurricane Sandy, and the ‘fasten seat-belts’ sign never came back on again until we were landing. There was the tiniest bit of turbulence a couple of times, and we waited for it to get worse, but it didn’t, and we landed 25 minutes early at Orlando International airport.

Customs was relatively quick and painless, and the luggage was out really quickly. We grabbed our cases and headed over on the monorail and through the airport to the car hire desks. We had hired an intermediate vehicle, (Dodge Avenger), using the agency based in the UK that we normally use, and had been allocated a car with Budget. However, they didn’t have exactly the car we had requested, so we went with a Chrysler 200. Despite there only being the two of us, with 2 suitcases and a bit of hand luggage, they did the usual thing of trying to get us to upgrade to a larger vehicle! We politely declined, and set off for the parking garage to collect us a bright red, shiny Chrysler. Nice. Although upon leaving, when DH was asked for the paperwork at the security point before you leave the garage, (which I had stuffed into the trunk, assuming we wouldn’t need it again!), he caught his brand-new Mickey watch on the door as he got out of the car to get the paperwork, and lost the tiny spring that connects the strap to the face. We decided to leave looking for it until we got to the resort. Needless to say, we never did find the spring and will now have to get the watch repaired in the UK!

I had printed off the driving directions to Old Key West, but DH remembered the way without my help, and about 20 minutes later we were pulling up at the security gate – “Welcome Home!” - before stopping in the guest parking area at the front desk. We made our way to check-in, and were assisted by a lovely young lady, who rather to our surprise, handed us two grey Magic Bands. We asked if this was right, as we hadn’t been told we would be getting these, and she confirmed that we were indeed to be allocated these Bands. I was a teeny bit put out that we hadn’t had any prior notice of this, as not only had we not had the opportunity to choose our colour, but they also weren’t personalised with our names inside. I had set up a My Disney Experience account quite some time ago, but had only recently been able to link our package reservation to the system, and had never had the opportunity to link our tickets to it, as we only had unnumbered ticket vouchers, and not actual tickets or booking numbers. Anyway, she activated the bands for us, and we put them on. First impressions were that they were quite comfortable, if a bit hot and sweaty as the rubber coating is very unforgiving in the heat! I asked if they had any of the “2013” sliders that help to stop them coming undone, but after checking she said they had all gone, unfortunately. We also got given a separate, hard plastic Key to the World each as a backup. We were told that we would be in room 5220 in building 52, and were given a map and some leaflets.

We then walked across to the Concierge desk, as I wanted to check how to book our Fastpass+ tickets as we had the Magic Bands. I was told that I could only book 2 days in advance at the desk, and when I requested Soarin’ and Test Track for the next day, it turns out we could only book one or the other but not both, and that we would be randomly allocated other Fastpasses to make up our allowance to 3, whether we wanted the others or not. I was tired and a bit testy at this point, and told the Cast Member to forget it, we would sort it out ourselves somehow.

From there, we walked round to Goods to Go to collect our refillable mugs and get our first cups of coffee in them! I picked one with purple trim, and DH got one with green trim. We also collected our Owner’s Locker purple box from Bell Services, which we stashed in the car.

We then drove round to our building, which was quite a hike away, and parked up. After a couple of wrong turns, we finally found our room, which was on the first floor – we were home!

We were really tired at this point, so we did a very small amount of unpacking, changed our clothing for something more suited to the wonderful, warm weather, and relaxed for an hour. Well, I say “we”, what actually happened was that DH dragged a couple of things out of his suitcase, pulled on a pair of shorts and a fresh t-shirt, then slumped all over the bed whilst cuddling the TV remote control protectively. Whereas I opened my suitcase, took out the small handbag I had for daily use, packed it with the usual handbaggy stuff, put the remainder of the spending money, our passports, the car and house keys from the UK, my iPad and my UK mobile phone into the safe, plugged my USA phone in to charge, changed into a floaty dress, put my silver glittery Minnie ears headband on, put away toiletries and ran a quick assessment of the kitchen and its contents. Hmph.

Around 7.30 p.m., we set out for Fort Wilderness campground, for our 8.30 p.m. reservation at Trail’s End. This meal is a kind of first-night tradition with us, and we really do love this place. As in previous years, the car park was quite busy, but we managed to find a space, and then caught the waiting bus to the Settlement. We had to pass a massive queue of people and sprawling kids, who were waiting to be seated for the first show of the Hoop De Doo Musical Review, but we successfully negotiated our way round them and checked in at the Trail’s End podium.

We were about 25 mins early for our reservation, so walked round the porch to try and sit in the rocking chairs, but everywhere was insanely busy and crowded, and the only seat we could get was right round the corner on a table & bench seat. I relaxed a bit, while DH whizzed round taking photos.

Our pager went off after about 10 minutes, and we were seated in the upstairs section of the restaurant. By now we were seriously flagging, but didn’t realise how hungry we were until we were sat at our table with plates piled high with fried chicken, mashed potato, brown gravy, sweetcorn and beans. (DH added some salad to his, too – this was to try to balance out the amount of potato on his plate!). We wolfed this lot down pretty quickly, and were surprised at how revived we felt after eating. We both had a small second plateful, then followed this with some apple cobbler and ice-cream. We commented to each other that we had both forgotten how good the food is here! It was just so delicious, we really enjoyed this meal. We had Sprite to drink, ‘paid’ with our Magic Bands, left a tip, and walked down to the beach for a quick look round. We had missed Wishes, which had been on while we were dining, and the Electrical Water Pageant was still 45 mins away, so after a quick wander down the pier to take some pictures, we decided to head back to the Resort.

When we returned to OKW, I finished my unpacking, which didn’t take long. The clocks were going back tonight, so that meant an extra hour’s sleep – yay! We never did work out how to adjust the clock in our room though, so I continually had to use the wake-up call service to ensure we got up at the right time each day. There seemed to be buttons to set up an iPod and the radio, but no way to adjust the clock, which was about 2 hours ahead, or set an alarm. I therefore rang the front desk to set an alarm call for the next morning, and we finally fell into bed, exhausted yet happy.

DAY TWO – SUNDAY 03 NOVEMBER
Plan – Epcot
Actual – We both slept very well, and DH continued to sleep very well when the alarm call went off and woke me up! I was expecting a character to be on the phone, giving me a recorded message, but all we got was some random recorded guy giving us a run-down of what Disney resorts have to offer.

Leaving DH to snore like an asthmatic hippo, I put some coffee on to brew, then went for a shower. When I came out, he was just rousing, and eventually he got up, showered, then finished his unpacking. We picked up the refillable mugs, and drove to Epcot, briefly stopping at Goods to Go to get coffee on the way.

The car park was rather busy, and we were directed over to the left hand side of the car park, for the first time in many years! (This confused the bejesus out of us when we tried to find the car again, at the end of the day!)

The bag check line was rather long, but went down very quickly, and we were soon tapping our Magic Bands and sticking our fingers into one of the new ‘lollipop’ style entrance thingies. This made for a much quicker experience than the old turnstiles. (This was one of the reasons we were a bit concerned that our individual Bands were not personalised, as they were now linked to our fingerprints and it was therefore essential we did not mix them up! I know we could have bought decorations to help distinguish them from each other’s, but I was reluctant to spend extra money on frilly bits that I might lose in the parks!)

We headed for Test Track first, as that had been in the middle of its major refurbishment last year and not open, but the information boards showed that the standby line was at 50 mins and all Fastpasses had been distributed. We decided to do the single rider line, so carried on round there. However, as we approached, we could see that the FP machines were still open, so I decided to try an experiment and managed to get two FPs for about an hour and a half later, using our plastic KTTW cards. I have no doubt this loophole will be closed eventually, but for now we found this to be really useful.

Test Track used to be DH’s absolute favourite ride, so we were a bit apprehensive before we rode this, as the refurb had been so total on this ride. We used the single rider line, (10 min wait time showing), and were able to do some basic design on a vehicle each. I loved being able to link the design to our Magic Bands! (We later found that this design stays on your Band until you design and link another vehicle, which is fun because there is a tendency to forget what you designed last time on future visits!)

Our first impression of this newly refurbished Test Track was that it was fun, and definitely faster in parts. However, we felt that a lot of the educational aspects had been lost, and the speedier inside sections took away some of the excitement of the fast outside section. For this first ride, we were delayed in one or two of the track areas which meant that the noise and lights of the speeding truck were not synchronised with our arrival, therefore the surprise of the truck lost some of its impact. However, I especially loved the ‘sci-fi’/futuristic feel to the ride, with all the lights and images. We also enjoyed the competitive aspect, as we were able to see who’s car was fastest or more environmental out of the two of us.

After we got off the ride, we perused the lovely Chevys on display in the exhibition area, glanced at the interactive elements but couldn’t get anywhere near them because they were all in use by kids, and then finally looked around the shop, which had some lovely new stuff in, making a mental note of things we wanted to buy at some point.

DH had been moaning non-stop about the fact that he hadn’t got a watch after yesterday’s accident, so we went into Mousegear at this point to try and replace it. He found a lovely one with a square, retro 1950’s style face and a blue leather strap, so I bought it for him just to shut him up.

We then walked across the park to The Land pavilion, and again the info board was showing all Soarin’ Fastpasses as having been distributed, but the machines inside were still open. However, we couldn’t get any more FPs at that point due to already having some for TT, so we had a quick trip on Living with the Land (5 mins), before heading into Sunshine Seasons in search of breakfast. I bought coffee for both of us, and used snack credits to get a Pumpkin Cheesecake (DH) and a Strawberry Shortcake (me). Cake for breakfast is allowed on vacation!

When we had finished our breakfast, our Test Track FP window was open, so I was able to pick up a couple of Soarin’ FPs with our KTTW cards again, before crossing the park again for another ride on Test Track. This time we were able to design our car together, and we really began to enjoy this bit of the ride. Additionally, you can make your design much more detailed in the standby/FP queue rather than the single rider queue. We also changed our minds about the educational aspect, beginning to realise that where it lacked education regarding the testing of the safety and efficiency of vehicles, it now concentrates on the design aspect and how difficult it is to get a balance between, say, power and reliability etc. The more we rode this ride, the more we began to enjoy it.

We decided that our cake had gone far enough through our respective digestive systems to enable us to ride Mission Space (green) without too much worry, so this we did, with a mere 10 minute wait. While we were in that area, we then visited the Festival Centre to pick up some Food & Wine Festival passports and to have a look at the F&WF merchandise, but didn’t buy anything yet.

Spaceship Earth was next, also with a 10 min wait, and our photo bizarrely had small and seemingly random lumps of our heads missing! It made for an interesting film at the end, and we found ourselves laughing more at our poor, misshapen heads than at our odd choices of our future!

We now felt ready to begin our first foray into the Food & Wine Festival, and whilst we normally begin to the left and work clockwise round, I had the feeling that the Scotland booth would become mobbed later in the day as it was new, so we began there. We both got the Banoffee Tart, which was as delicious as we thought it would be! Very sweet, but with enough banana to balance out the caramel. Canada was next, where DH got the Cheddar Cheese Soup (yuck), and I got the Filet Mignon (yum!).

We walked onwards, the crowds weren’t too bad, but we still think there is a lack of eating tables – a lot of time we had to either balance foods in our hands or on top of a bin, which isn’t ideal.

We reached France, where DH made a decision he has been dithering about for the last 3 years’ worth of visits to this Festival – he got a portion of snails! There was so much garlic and parsley in the buns with the snails that I am not sure he got any actual snail flavour, but he seemed to enjoy it all (gag).

Next on our hit-list was Florida Local, where despite not really being a wine drinker, I had been tempted by the sound of the Key Limen, a Key Lime wine. I paid out of pocket for a small glass of this, and LOVED it! It was like drinking neat lime juice - it was sharp, tart, and mouth-shrivellingly good! DH had a (very) small sip, and he liked it too, but declined a glass of his own at this point.

We meandered on to Italy, where we both had a portion of ravioli, which was very delicious and rather filling, and we now noticed that we seemed to be running out of food room.

It was a very hot and sunny day, and I felt in need of something cold to drink, so we stopped at the Terra booth and paid out of pocket for a glass of watermelon juice (all other food had been purchased with snack credits). It was really lovely. Cold and refreshing, and just what I needed.

As we were drinking this, we noticed that Duffy was out in his little meet & greet area, dressed up for Halloween as a pumpkin! He looked so cute, and we are very fond of Duffy, so we joined the small queue to have a photo taken with him. We don’t often meet the characters, but we do make an exception for Duffy.

After this, we needed a sit down and a plan of action. We decided to check out the new Starbucks location, so went in there and picked up a hot pumpkin latte for DH, and an iced peppermint mocha for me, then took these to a bench in the shade, near the Character Spot, and rested for a few minutes. We were approaching our FP time for Soarin’, so after we finished our drinks we went to see the Captain EO show, which we still love, then we used our FPs for Soarin’, scoring row 1. We just had time for a quick ride with Figment in Journey into your Imagination, before heading over to Germany for our dinner reservation at Biergarten.

We arrived about 10 mins before our reservation time, but had to wait for about 20 mins before being seated. We were joined by a lovely young couple from Connecticut (hello, Frankie & Sabrina!), and we had a lovely time chatting with them, while thoroughly enjoying our salad, yummy pretzel bread, hot roast pork, hot and cold potato salad, schnitzel, pickles, and finally Bavarian cheesecake, Black Forest gateau, and some sort of fruit compote thing that DH had, that looked delicious but I could not have fitted in on pain of death! We had orange soda to drink.

We finally waddled outside about 10 mins before Illuminations was due to start, only to find that the park had mysteriously emptied and there were not many folk around at all! We were too full of food to walk far round the lake to find a viewing spot, so just stood where we were, taking a few steps towards a railing, which turned out to be a good place in the end – we had a great view, with no-one in front of us. The show was wonderful, as usual – my favourite bit is the very beginning where they blow out the torches, no wait, the middle bit where it all builds up to a crescendo, ooh, no wait, near the end when the globe opens and flames shoot out of it ……. Ah what the heck, I love the whole thing!

When the show had finished, we decided that tired as we were, this was a good opportunity to go to Wal-Mart for our basics shopping, which we hadn’t had time to do yet, so we went back to the car, (where the h*ll is it??), and drove to the Super Wal-Mart on the 192, where we picked up bottled water, coffee bags, coffee whitener, water flavouring powders, a pair of tweezers to replace the ones I had somehow lost, (that I then found again in my travel bag when we got home 2 weeks later!), some nail clippers, phone credit for my GoPhone, another set of rechargeable batteries because DH clearly doesn’t have enough sets yet, deodorant, and some Banana Boat Aloe Gel in case of sunburn, (I wanted a small bottle but they only sell it in gallon containers!!).

This didn’t take too long, and we were soon on our way back to OKW with our loot. We stopped at Goods to get coffee for him, and I wanted some hot chocolate, but there wasn’t a machine. I asked at the counter about it, and was given two sachets of Nestle Hot Chocolate, which was lovely!

Back to our room, put the shopping away, bed.

DAY THREE – MONDAY 04 NOVEMBER
Plan – Magic Kingdom
Actual – I had set the alarm call for 15 mins early this morning, so I could get up and attempt to sort out the FP+ situation on my iPad. I managed to log into My Disney Experience, and as if by magic, our ticket media was on there, so I was able to quickly book the ones we were interested in for that day, and for tomorrow too.

After showers, coffee, and filling our refillable mugs, we drove to the Magic Kingdom, parking in Zurg 102. We were slightly too late for the opening ceremony, but we weren’t too fussed about that. We walked under the bridge, and stared up Main Street at the Castle for a few minutes.

Our first stop was on Main Street to pick up breakfast. Goofy’s Candy Company provided us with a Rice Krispie Treat in the shape of Mickey ears, and a Cashew Cluster (both got with snack credits). We sat in a quiet little side street to eat these, and were able to see bits of the Trolley Show from where we were.

After breakfast we decided to begin our clockwise tour of the Magic Kingdom, and so walked slowly round to Adventureland. We were about to walk past the Swiss Family Treehouse, when we had a conversation about this – we had never investigated this area before, thinking it was somewhere that wouldn’t interest us, but we thought that today we would give it a go. So we veered off the beaten path and wandered through this attraction. It was lovely! Fairly quiet, not crowded, and you get some great views from the tops of the trees! It was great fun, seeing how well themed it all was and trying to guess which bits of the boat various things were made from. There was no wait to get in, and we were really glad we had explored this.

We carried on round, avoiding the spitting camel and the hissing Tiki totem poles, to Pirates of the Caribbean, which was showing a 10 min wait. This was about right, and we yo-ho-ho-ed our way round. The mermaid effect was working, but the projection of Davy Jones or Blackbeard or whatever they are doing these days wasn’t working at all – the voiceover was there, but there was no mist and no projection.

We then walked round to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (my favourite ride in this park), and using our KTTW cards, picked up a couple of Fastpasses for about an hour later. We then rode via the standby queue, (20 mins), and thoroughly enjoyed it, as usual!

A restroom break was required, so we walked round to Splash Mountain and used the ones there, before actually going on the ride with only a 10 min wait. There was a father and son combo sitting in front of us in our log, and the son, who looked to be around 8 or 9 years old, was clearly terrified of getting wet. We reassured him he would be fine, (and sincerely hoped he actually would be!), and I think his fear was greater than his overall dampness when he got off the ride at the end!

Our FP window for Big Thunder was almost open, so we walked slowly round there, and were allowed through a couple of minutes early. Did I mention I love this ride? Yee-ha!

We were hungry by now, so walked back to Casey’s to get some lunch. DH went to find us a table, while I went inside, avoided the huge queue right in the middle, and veered off to the right where there were much smaller queues. I had corn dog nuggets and fries, and DH had a BBQ Hotdog with fries. We both had coffee and a brownie, although I put my brownie in my bag as I was too full for it at that point. Lunch was smashing, and we ‘paid’ with a counter service credit each. We managed to avoid feeding the white birds and the aggressive ducks, who looked most offended, (eat worms, duck!).

We wanted to look round the new Tangled themed restroom/stroller area, so walked towards Fantasyland, but as we were unable to go through the Castle, (it was blocked off because of the Castle Forecourt show), we wound our way through the rose garden and past the wishing well. The new Tangled area is lovely! We spent a few minutes exploring and taking photos, then had to use the new restrooms just to see what they were like! It is so pretty there, and all the lights looked so cute. It wasn’t until we saw this area later on, when it was dark, that we realised that the orange lanterns that are strung up look like the Chinese lanterns in the film, at night – it was a subtle but quite spectacular effect.

We walked past Its a Small World, not wanting to wait the 15 mins to ride this just yet, and past the closed-for-refurbishment Peter Pan ride, to Mickey’s Philharmagic, which only had a 5 min wait. The show was good fun, but the scents weren’t very strong today.

It was nearly time for our Dumbo Fastpasses, so we headed round there, although the actual standby queue wasn’t too bad at that point. The circus tent area that you walk through to get to the ride is quite fun, although we went through so quickly that we hardly noticed anything really! When we arrived at the front of the FP queue area, however, the ride went down for about 5 minutes while the CMs fiddled about with some controls. They had to stop the ride, clear everyone off, and then once it was working again, they had to run a complete cycle with the elephants empty, before putting everyone back on who had just got off! All of this didn’t take too long though, and it was only a matter of minutes before we were flying high above Storybook Circus land, waving cheerily at each other (separate elephants make for a happy marriage!). I am always mildly startled as to how high both the Dumbo ride and the Magic Carpets ride takes you!

Afterwards, we had a quick look around the lovely circus tent-shaped store there, before walking round to Under the Sea for our next Fastpass experience. This ride is so cute!

We came out of there feeling quite tired and in need of a caffeine fix, so walked round to Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café for a cup of coffee and a rest. While we were sat inside there, by a window, a Cast Member began cleaning the windows outside. He would draw a picture of Mickey Mouse using a bottle of spray cleaner, before cleaning it all off with a cloth. He saw us watching him, and came to our window. Using mostly sign language, he asked us whether we wanted Mickey or Minnie! We said Mickey, and he drew him for us, waiting till we had taken some photos before adding a bow on the top and some long eyelashes to make Minnie instead, and then wiping the whole thing off. He then came inside to talk to us, and we had a lovely long chat with him, learning several new things about Walt Disney World in the process.

For instance, he told us that Epcot was originally supposed to be built 300 feet over to the left hand side of where it is now, but that when the land was being cleared, a paid of rare, nesting woodpeckers was found in one of the trees that was due to be cleared. In order to preserve the nest, the whole project had to be moved by 300 feet, causing months of delay and adding millions of dollars to the project cost. On opening day, the explosive fireworks frightened the woodpeckers away and they never came back again!

He also told us that Main Street slopes upwards slightly towards the hub, and the reason for this is twofold : 1) to ensure that guests walk more slowly towards the castle, thus appreciating the splendour and majesty of it, and 2) so that as guests are leaving the Magic Kingdom, the walk down Main Street towards the exit is a downward stroll, and is therefore easier on the legs and makes for faster emptying of the park!

We were frantically trying to remember everything he told us, so that after he moved away, we could write everything down! Anyway, we eventually left Casey’s after finishing our coffee, and walked over to the Carousel of Progress. We love this show/ride, even though the very last scene is a little out of date now.

It was now time for our Big Thunder FP+ window, so we walked back over to Frontierland and enjoyed another Wildest Ride in the Wilderness, before walking round to Liberty Square again and hitting the Haunted Mansion. This took a while, the listed wait time was 15 mins but it actually took a lot longer than that. I think there was some kind of issue, as we waited for ages at one point without actually moving. I’m not keen on the fact that the queue to bypass the interactive element is now reserved for FP+, as we have done the interactive side lots of times and are quite happy to give this a miss now, but don’t have the option to do this unless we FP+!

By now it was around 6.15 p.m. and we were quite tired, so we headed for New Fantasyland and our much-anticipated dining reservation at Be Our Guest, although the reservation wasn’t until 7.00 p.m. We checked in at the window, but were told they were running about 45 mins late, so we took our pager and while I waited out of the way on the bridge, DH went off to take some photos. He was just wandering back to me about 20 mins later when the pager went off, much to our surprise! We went up to the entrance, where we were greeted by a server who took us to our table in the Dining Hall. She pointed out the chandeliers, the snow through the windows, and the room where the Master would greet us after our meal. She also told us that when we had finished dining, we could take our time and explore the dining room if we wanted to, there would be no rush to leave.

We had a hard time choosing from the menu – everything looked so good! Eventually, DH went with the Chicken Breast Provençal, (pan-seared and simmered in a rustic blend of Heirloom Tomatoes, Olives, White Wine, and fresh Herbs with Seasonal Vegetables and Roasted Fingerling Potatoes), while I had the ThymeScented Pork Rack chop, (with Au Gratin Macaroni, Seasonal Vegetables, and Red Wine Jus) – both were utterly yummy. The macaroni cheese gratin that came with mine was gorgeous, I could have eaten that on its own. We had the same problem trying to pick desserts, particularly as the trolley was sitting there in front of us, filled with tempting treats! In the end, we both chose The Grey Stuff, which was a cookies & cream mousse on a crunchy, chocolate biscuit base, and was indeed delicious! We both had lemonade to drink, and after dinner we explored the Dining Hall a bit more, taking lots of pictures and just enjoying the atmosphere. We found our way into the Master’s Room, and joined a short queue to meet him. He was lovely! Big and cuddly, and not at all scary. Once we had got the obligatory photos out of the way, we waved goodbye to him, and finally left the castle, having had a lovely time and a thoroughly relaxed and enjoyable meal.

We took a slow walk round to the TTA for a relaxing ride above Tomorrowland, and then battled our brains out in Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, before walking back to the Hub to watch Wishes. This was made all the more poignant for us because the CM we had encountered earlier had told us the story behind the narration, and so we listened to it with a different ear this time. We ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ in the right places, then fought our way past the crowds to enter the Emporium, walking down the length of Main Street through the shops. We didn’t see anything we needed to buy there and then, and emerged at the City Hall end in plenty of time to take a curbside place to view the Main Street Electrical Parade.

The Parade was lovely, and we had a great, front-row view from the curb in front of the train station. The great thing with viewing it from there is that once it is past us, it still has to travel all the way round the rest of the route, but we can hightail it out of there pretty sharpish, avoiding the crowds. We did exactly this, unfortunately arriving at the Ferryboat terminal just in time to see one pull away! However, it wasn’t long before another boat was on its way over to us, although it had started to rain by now so we were grateful for the shelter of the boat dock. We got chatting to a lovely young couple while we waited, who were on their honeymoon - they were going home the next day and dreaded doing their packing, they told us! We watched the Electrical Water Parade go past, but for ages it was only displaying the Stars & Stripes; eventually, just before it sailed out of view, the regular light show started on it.

We were soon on the Ferryboat heading across the Seven Seas Lagoon, and we were a bit puzzled as the central benches all seem to have been removed from the boat. We stood near the exit though, and tiredly trudged back to the car, drove to OKW, and fell into bed, totally exhausted.

DAY FOUR – TUESDAY 05 NOVEMBER
Plan – Animal Kingdom
Actual – We slept like the dead, and managed to therefore get up quite early this morning.

We did our usual morning routine of coffee, showers, refillable mugs filled, then drove to Animal Kingdom. It seemed quite quiet, this morning, and we were able to park with no problems.

Our first mission was breakfast, which today was a Bounty Platter each at Pizzafari, and then we headed to Festival of the Lion King, using our FP+ that had come as an additional choice when I had picked our FP+ for Expedition Everest yesterday. This show really doesn’t need FP+ in our opinion, but there again it was nice to just rock up at the theatre 10 mins before showtime and know that we would be able to get a decent seat, rather than having to queue for 45 mins or so beforehand. We were in the Lion section, and thoroughly enjoyed the show, as usual.

We then wandered along the Pangani Trail, which we love, stopping in a shop at some point to pick up a Kilimanjaro Safari pin, and a really cute furry scarf with paw gloves attached, that I fell in love with, and DH offered to buy me as a Christmas gift! We arranged for that to be sent back to the resort, and continued round to the Safari to use our next set of unplanned FP+.

Our jeep ride was great fun, we saw 2 or 3 baby elephants, and a couple of huge white rhino began to cross the road directly in front of our jeep, before stopping in the middle of the road and staring at us, staring at them, staring at us, well, you get the picture. They finally moved on, but then walked beside the jeep for quite a way – we could even see them still following along through some trees, when the road veered away from their pathway. There were loads of animals out and about, including both lions and a couple of cheetahs, it was a really good safari.

After this we needed coffee and a break, so we headed for Kusafari Bakery and picked up coffees, and something we had wanted to try for a couple of years – elephant cupcakes! There was nowhere to sit, but behind the bakery we found a very tiny, quiet spot, with some high tables and a rather low wall to sit on. The elephant cupcakes were delicious, but extremely sweet, and with hindsight, we would have been better off sharing one between us. I wasn’t able to finish mine, and DH really regretted his offer to finish it for me AFTER he had finished his own, as it made him feel slightly sick to have eaten one and a quarter of those things! The white chocolate elephant on top was cute and tasted lovely, though.

Asia was next, for the Flights of Wonder show, which we have only ever seen once before. We love this show, it is such fun! The theatre was quite full, and so at the end of the show we sat and relaxed a bit, admiring the owls, whilst most of the audience fought their way out. There were only around 20 of us left in there, and we were about to get up and leave, when suddenly the guy who narrates the show stood in front of the stage and asked if we would all mind staying a little longer. He told us that they were training some Guinea Fowl to take part in the show, and they needed to run their section in front of a live audience for the first time, to ensure the birds weren’t distracted by having people in front of them. It was a very short sector, just a few seconds really, where they played some music and the birds ran on stage, then continued straight across the stage and off again. Everyone there was pleased to stay, so they ran the segment twice, and the birds performed perfectly! We were told that as they had done so well, the section would be put into tomorrow’s shows! It was great fun to be part of this experiment.

After this we walked the Maharaja Jungle Trek to see the bats, tigers etc. I love this walk, it is so pretty and makes you feel as though you are very nearly in the real jungle, (apart from the distinct lack of things trying to eat you, and the addition of restroom facilities and refreshments!), particularly as it was a very hot day today. There were loads of bats just hanging around in a bat-like way, but we did watch a couple of them being fed bits of something gloopy off the end of a long stick, which was interesting, as they also stretched out their wings and we were able to appreciate the full majesty of these magnificent beasts. The tigers, on the other hand, were just lazing around and not doing much – but they were still interesting to look at, for a short time anyway. Maybe they were trying to consume the deer in the enclosure next door by osmosis?

It was now time for our Expedition Everest FP+, so we walked round towards it, feeling a mixture of excitement but also somewhat nervous, (not that we told each other that we were nervous!). Eek! This was definitely faster than I remember from last year, and therefore somewhat scarier! I had really enjoyed this ride previously, and could not understand why we found it more scary this time. For the second year in a row, we both missed seeing the giant audiomatronic yeti, so in the twice we have now been on this ride, we have failed spectacularly to spot the yeti both times!

It was time for the Jammin’ Jungle parade when we staggered off EE, so we found a place to watch it from near a bridge, and stood behind someone’s empty stroller, which was a very good viewing place. It was fun, we sang along and really enjoyed it!

Still feeling a bit shaken by EE, after the parade finished we walked back to Asia and found a quiet spot opposite the Yak & Yeti to sit down and recover. We were both really tired by now, but were still half an hour away from our reservation at the Y&Y so just took the opportunity to sit, rest, and watch the world go by. This was a lovely little place to hide away, it was a handful of small tables and stools down a couple of steps and by the river.

After about 25 mins of rest we felt a bit brighter, and went to check in at Yak & Yeti. The park had been really quiet today, and was now 15 mins away from closing, so was even emptier! Y&Y was almost deserted, which unfortunately resulted in an over-attentive server – he checked on us every couple of minutes! We have eaten here twice before and really love the food, so it was difficult to make a choice this time. Eventually, we decided on dishes we had had before though, and DH had the duck with Anandapur glaze, and I had the Shaoxing steak & shrimp. Both were outstanding, thoroughly enjoyable, and we finished with the Mango pie, which we also love! We both had some kind of Sprite and cherry thing to drink, which was really refreshing and sharp.

When we emerged from Y&Y, full of delicious food and thoroughly tired out, the park was closed, so we took a slow stroll through, taking photos as we went, before heading back to OKW. I went online briefly before bed in order to book more FP+ for the rest of our trip, and lights were out by 10.00 p.m.!

DAY FIVE – WEDNESDAY 06 NOVEMBER
Plan – Blizzard Beach, Winter Summerland Golf, Fantasmic in eve
Actual – We slept really well again last night, waking up without an alarm call at around 8.00 a.m. We had coffee, relaxed and watched a little TV, before heading out to Denny’s for breakfast. There is a particular Denny’s that we like to go to, just down the 192 a little way – it is only small, but is usually quieter by the time we get there!

DH chose the Lumberjack Slam, while I had the Build-Your-Own Slam, which I really like as I am able to vary what I have each time. Today, I went with bacon, sausage patty, hash browns and a biscuit. Yum.

My USA cell phone wasn’t working at this point, as the SIM card had expired due to not having been used for a year, so we popped into Super Target to pick up some information about how to reactivate it. I got a leaflet, to peruse later.

Having already dressed in our swimwear and thrown ordinary clothing over the top, we now headed to Blizzard Beach for a couple of hours. The car park was middling busy, but we found a space easily and upon entering the park, we booked a locker and hired a couple of towels for DH. We then walked round to the right hand side inside the park for a few minutes before finding some unoccupied chairs with a bit of shade, and dumped our towels, shoes, glasses and suncream.

Our first destination was the lazy river, which we rode round 3 times, before heading for some wave pool time. The weather was ideal for water parks today, being very warm but quite cloudy, so we were less likely to burn. We spent about 45 mins in the wave pool, DH loves this but I am not so keen as sometimes the violent movement of the water can unsettle my stomach a little, so he waded out to the deepest part while I paddled with the small kids in the ankle-deep bit!

After this we took another couple of turns round the lazy river, before calling it a day here. DH had a shower and got dressed while I collected our stuff from the locker, then with my bottom half wrapped in one of the Resort towels that we had brought with us, I sat on another towel in the car while DH drove us back to OKW. I don’t mind being damp for a while, but he HATES this, which is why he showered at Blizzard Beach – I would rather wait to get back to the Resort first. (We had given up on the idea of playing a round of golf today, at some point we will get round to this!)

Back at OKW, I showered and dressed while he watched TV, then we drove to the Hollywood Studios. Our first stop was Toy Story Mania with FP+, which was great fun, (I won!), and then we went on the hunt for food. Having tried the ABC Commissory for the first time last year and really liking it, we decided to return there again. I gave DH my order and sent him off to get the food – he doesn’t normally do this, but now he has his Magic Band with the Dining Plan on there, he can get the food for a change!

We both had bacon cheeseburgers, fries, and coffee, and then he also had a pumpkin cupcake whilst I had the strawberry parfait. All was delicious!

We took a slow walk round to the Fantasmic theatre, having got FP+ for this. After my initial scepticism about this whole FP+ thing, I must say I was enjoying some aspects of it, as it had meant that we could do a late visit to Toy Story Mania without having to be at the park for rope drop, and now we could do Fantasmic without having to queue for an hour beforehand. There were a LOT of people with FP+ for this show, they were seating us all in specific areas, but we still got a reasonably good seat – although to be fair, no seats in here are bad ones! We loved the show as usual, (this is DH’s favourite Disney show), and thought that the dragon was new, being more skeletal and scarier than the last time we had seen it. All the lighting and fireworks were very bright and colourful, the whole thing was just brilliant.

After the show, we were directed out through a backstage area, which we had never been in before, and behind the Beauty & The Beast stage, emerging back onto Sunset Boulevard. A slow walk out, and back to OKW for a little TV and a well deserved bed!

DAY SIX – THURSDAY 07 NOVEMBER
Plan – Hollywood Studios
Actual – Up early, coffee, showers, off to the Studios again! We got there just after rope drop, and hot-footed it to Pixar Place to pick up ordinary FPs for TSM, using our KTTW cards, and even this early in the day, the return time was late afternoon, and the standby line was already 50 mins long!

We walked round to the Backlot Tour, skipping the Pearl Harbour bit at the beginning as we are really bored with this now, and thus being able to spend a bit more time looking through the props warehouse without queues of people trying to shove past us to get to the trams! When we heard people coming into the warehouse entrance after a few minutes, we speeded up and quickly got onto a waiting tram.

We noticed that there were some new exhibits along the tram tour - some props from the film Planes, and bits of wall/doors from the now-demolished Adventurer’s Club at Downtown. When we exited into the AFI exhibition, we were shocked at how small it was – temporary walls made of screens and curtains had been used to reduce the size of the exhibit area to about half of its normal size. There were quite a few new exhibits though, including some scripts, which was fun to look at. We had a quick look around the store before leaving, although we didn’t buy anything.

It was now time for our Toy Story Mania FP+, (he won!), and by this time we were peckish, having not eaten yet. The problem with this park is that there are very limited options for breakfast, so we went to Starring Rolls to have a look at their offerings. I got DH a peanut butter chocolate cupcake, and I had what turned out to be a cherry Danish, which I had thought was strawberry until I took a bite! Anyway, both were delicious, and we also had coffee. I paid out of pocket for the coffee, as I have a tendency to do, and got the food on snack credits. DH did feel a bit queasy after his cupcake, which never seemed to quite settle for the rest of the day.

After our late breakfast, we went to the Great Movie Ride, which was showing a 15 min wait time, but we were through in about 10 mins. We decided not to request a particular ‘show’, but went with where we were placed, which turned out (predictably) to be the Gangster show. We do love this ride, but wish the CMs that act the characters paid a little more attention to their diction – both the Gangster and the Western characters can be quite hard to understand, sometimes.

We walked round to the Muppets show, and for the first time I remembered to look under the doormat for the key! This was only a 10 min wait, so we got to see most of the pre-show, which is always fun, and still makes me laugh despite having seen it a million times! (I do find myself quoting lines from that pre-show sometimes in the real world ……)

We really enjoy the Lights, Motors, Action! show, and it was about half an hour to the next one, so we made our way into the stadium for that. Again, we actually had FP+ for this, but it wasn’t needed. There was a new segment where Lightening McQueen chases and blows up a baddie! The whole show is just really good entertainment.

Lunchtime was approaching, so we went to our favourite lunch destination in the Studios, the Backlot Express, for a turkey & cheese sandwich, fries, coffee and a chocolate mousse (DH), and chicken nuggets, fries, chocolate milk and a strawberry parfait for me. Superb food, and the place was really quiet, too. We sat outside by the prop gangster car from Roger Rabbit, and watched a family with young children – the adults were drinking wine by the glassful, while the kids ran riot and lost bits of Lego all over the place.

DH expressed some interest in Journey of the Little Mermaid, (or as I call her, the Fishy Tart), and although we had just missed one show, there was another starting in 20 mins so we waited for that. This Ariel was quite pretty and could sing and act too, which does tend to be a bit hit and miss here – sometimes they can act but can’t sing, other times the singing and acting is fine but, man, is she UGLEE! Of course, this is just my opinion, and tends to quite often differ to that of DH, who is quite keen on Ariel for some reason. Hmph.

Anyway, next we nipped into One Man’s Dream just to see the film at the end, which I had had to sit through TWICE in a row last year while DH napped TWICE in a row, and we only had to wait a few minutes for the next showing, which was really lovely, and made all the more enjoyable by the opportunity to elbow DH in the ribs occasionally in order to ensure full wakefulness!

DH was convinced we had never been into the Captain Jack Sparrow attraction next door to One Man’s Dream, and I was convinced we HAD been in there, so we went in anyway just to be sure. Oh, okay, we’ve never done this before, he wins. But it was great fun, we thoroughly enjoyed it! We had about a 5 min wait, and I don’t think it is worth a very long wait, but it is something we would do again.

Star Tours was next, showing a 10 min wait, but was a straight walk-on, (or, as we like to call it, a run-through!). We did this twice in a row and got different beginnings and endings, although we still got the pod race in the middle both times. We have never had a different middle, yet! Out of the ones we have had so far, my favourite end bit is the one where we crash into the robot spaceship thing with the long, pointy nose and his nose comes through our windscreen – it is so funny! I also love the squabbling robots in the pre-show, where one gets the blame for everything going wrong, and gets bonked on the head by the bossy one!

Back to TSM to use our paper FPs, (he won again – grr!), and we were now feeling quite tired. We found a bench to rest on for a little while, before doing a bit of window shopping down Hollywood Boulevard. We dipped in and out of some of the stores, and then did a quick walk round Sid Cahuenga’s and had a quick mourn for the way the store used to be. It is now mostly posters and signed photographs, with a few bits and pieces from the estate of Barbara Streisand and some books from Truman Capotes’ estate.

It was now time for our dining reservation at the Hollywood Brown Derby. It was also approaching time for Fantasmic, but as this was the only time I had been able to book our dining reservation for, we knew we would not see it tonight. (Which is why we had deliberately been to see it last night!)

We were seated quite quickly, and both had the Filet of Beef, Sprite, and the Grapefruit Cake for dessert. Service was slow in here, but it usually is, so we were prepared for this. The food was sublime!

DH wasn’t feeling too well, he had been a bit off colour all day, and the park was now closed anyway, so we had a slow walk back to the car, drove ‘home’, and he went to bed as soon as we got in, falling asleep straight away. I picked up our laundry bag (we bring a collapsible one with us), and went down to the laundry room, which was about a 3 min walk from our room. I spent the next hour washing, drying, and checking email etc in between. DH never woke up through all of this!

I also had to contact Mousekeeping, as the room had been serviced but we hadn’t been left any coffee or shower gel. About half an hour later, a lady appeared with a couple of coffee bags, creamer, and a large bag of shampoo and conditioner but no shower gel! We still had about half a tiny bottle of shower gel left though, so I didn’t bother calling them again.

My third task tonight was to call and reserve viewing spaces for Illuminations at Epcot tomorrow night. In our vacation package, we received a booklet of vouchers that included one for a preferred viewing of Illuminations, and one for Wishes. We usually get these with our vacation packages, and normally we just turn up with the vouchers and are let in without problems, but on our second day here we had been unable to get into the viewing area at the Magic Kingdom for Wishes, as we were told the viewing area was full – this had never happened to us before! Therefore, I decided I probably ought to follow the actual redemption instructions and phone to book our places this time.

I rang the number on the voucher, and was initially told that there were no spaces available for either Illuminations or Wishes for the entirety of our stay!! Understandably, I went a tad nuclear – I know these vouchers are a nicety and not a guarantee of anything, but they are one of the incentives to book that Disney offer to UK residents, and for us to be then told that we can’t actually use them was rather annoying. The cast member told me that this was because for the first time the vouchers had been offered to a variety of other ‘premium’ guests this year, and this had greatly increased the numbers of people using them, making it harder for Disney to fulfil the number of vouchers issued. She was very apologetic and said that they are not going to offer them to other guests in future. She then checked again and managed to find us spaces for Illuminations tomorrow night, but there was still no spaces for Wishes, so I guess that is one perk we won’t be able this use this year.

I finally got to bed around 11.30 p.m., and slept really well again.

DAY SEVEN – FRIDAY 08 NOVEMBER
Plan – Epcot
Actual – We were up bright and early, with DH feeling mostly better today. We did our usual morning routine, and then headed out for Epcot via Goods to Go for coffee in our refillable mugs.

Our first priority today was to get our favourite rides in Future World done, so we quick-stepped over to Test Track and picked up some paper FPs, before joining the regular standby line as we wanted to fully experience the new themeing. This took 25 mins, but was a lot of fun – the ride is definitely growing on us.

It was now time for our first FP+ of the day, Soarin’, so we crossed over to the Land side and were quite shocked at the length of the FP line – it took us 20 mins to get on the ride! We were on the second row, which is probably the least preferred, but it doesn’t really make that much difference and we still loved it. I always look forward to this ride so much, and hate the fact that it is over so quickly! We always find ourselves fascinated by the spiel that Patrick gives in the pre-show, and can quote whole sections of it off by heart now, (sadly), always looking out though for the bit where the words “over California” have been edited out of his speech, and he closes his mouth quickly and slightly unnaturally!

As we exited, we were able to pick up paper FPs for later, and DH bought a copy of a book about growing plants hydroponically, as this is something we are both very interested in. We also spotted a lovely Mickey bird feeder, which was a green, cast iron swirly Mickey head shape with a glass bowl set on the front of it. We really liked this, and thought it may be a contender for a purchase with our free Gift Card, but wanted to see what else we could find first.

We crossed back over the park AGAIN to use our paper FPs for Test Track, and then realised that all this activity had made us starving (no breakfast!), so we went to the Electric Umbrella for brunch. I was keen to try a new offering that I had read about that was being served here, so we both had the Mac ‘n’ Cheese Burger with fries, and DH got coffee and chocolate chip cookies, while I had chocolate milk and a strawberry cheesecake. We LOVED the burgers, they were yummy! I have to try and make this at home, although UK mac ‘n’ cheese tends to be quite runny, so I need to look into this …….

Suitably full, we then walked round to Spaceship Earth for our second FP+, although this definitely wasn’t needed as the standby queue was listed as 5 mins but in reality was non-existent. After the ride, we did our traditional ‘put the skeleton back together again’ game as we love doing this, it is fun, (and because we are highly competitive, can result in rows and sulks, but we’ll gloss over that ….).

Time to move on a bit now, so we went to the Festival Centre first and did something we have NEVER done at Epcot before, we bought a bottle of wine! We are not teetotal, but neither do we drink much alcohol, probably because we think we drank enough of it years ago to last a lifetime! However, the tiny glass of Key Lime Wine that I had had earlier in the trip had made me hanker after a bottle of my very own, so we hunted it down and paid a very reasonable $15 for a bottle. We also picked up a couple of sachets of wine, (something we had never seen before), by the same vineyard – a mango flavoured one and a blueberry flavoured one. They wouldn’t ship this back to the resort, but would hold it at the front of the park for us, so we arranged to collect it later.

We visited the Ghirardelli stand and interacted with a lovely CM there who was gathering up guests and then playing games with them, before handing out free chocolate square samples (pumpkin spice, yeurgh! DH had mine). He was a bundle of energy and lots of fun! We then had a quick restroom visit, as these were next to the Ghirardelli stand.

While we were in the Festival Centre, we also got a Food & Wine Festival t-shirt and pin for DH, and then used part of our Gift Card to pay for a lovely wine-bottle stopper, shaped like the bat stanchions in the Haunted Mansion.

We finally left there and decided to visit the Universe of Energy, as we hadn’t done that for a while. We had just missed one show, so stood through the pre-show thingy, which is always fun anyway, before heading for a long sit down and being spat at by dinosaurs! I have a recurring problem with the radio room in here, it is dark and I am comfortable and the voices drone on and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ……………………

Ice Station Cool, sorry, Club Cool was next, where we were delighted to find new flavours on offer! We tried all the new ones, plus my own personal favourite, the Vegibeta, was still there, so I was happy. We thought that the watermelon, and the pineapple Fanta were particularly yummy.

We now began our tour of World Showcase and our last stab at the Food & Wine Festival for this year. We walked slowly clockwise around the Showcase, not really stopping in any of the countries but just taking it all in. (We did stop at the Bead Outpost, and bought a couple of necklaces each, (and I got matching bracelets), as we really like these and we both had some birthday money to spend). DH got the cheese platter he had been craving, which he really enjoyed. We both like the fact that the cheese and accompaniments change each year, as this gives him a chance to try new and different cheeses. We both then got glasses of the Key Lime wine again.

Our final F&W foray was an orange Dole Whip – we love Dole Whips, and the chance to try a new flavour was an exciting one! It was incredibly refreshing, more so than the regular pineapple flavour we thought, we really loved it.

We were now in our FP window for Soarin’, so went back to the Land pavilion and were soon happily on the ride. We then walked across to the Living Seas and looked at the fish for a while, watching the dolphins frolic, divers in the main fish tanks, the fat manatees eating lettuce, (how does that work??), and then watched the Turtle Talk with Crush show for the first time, (10 mins wait), which we quite enjoyed but don’t think we need to do again for a while. On our way out of the Seas pavilion, we picked up a really cute “Mine, Mine, Mine!” vest for our neighbour’s daughter’s new baby back home.

It was time for our dinner reservation at Tokyo Dining, so we made our way over there and checked in. They were very, very busy, and told us they were running about half an hour behind, but we just sat in the waiting area and were fine about it. We only waited for about 15 mins anyway, before our pager went off. We were looking forward to this dinner, as we hadn’t eaten here before and had read good things about it.

The restaurant was very busy and noisy, but we soon got used to the noise levels. We had a nice table near a wall divider, with views of a constantly changing screen showing beautiful pictures of what we assumed was Japanese scenery. We both had orange soda to drink, and after perusing the menu decided to be brave and try Bento Boxes. This quite literally was a black, wooden box containing a variety of small dishes. We had sirloin steak pieces in sauce, sashimi, California Rolls, tempura vegetables, some kind of light broth, and a beef rice dish that I really didn’t like, so DH ate that for me. We had never had sashimi before, I think it was raw tuna but we really liked it. The California Rolls were lovely, as was the tempura. There was something that looked like a tiny, green plasticine pyramid that I wasn’t going to touch as I had no idea what it was, but DH popped the whole thing in his mouth and ate it. He chewed, paused, then gulped, swallowed, and reached for his glass of water quickly while his eyes watered! I still have no idea what it was, but it was funny to watch! He also ate something that looked like a neat curl of thinly sliced ham, it was pale pink; I wasn’t touching that either, but DH ate his and said it was lovely, “try it!” he said. I ate it and wished I hadn’t – I think it was some kind of weird ginger thing, it could have been wasabi, I have no idea. I hate strong ginger flavours, so that was the last time I listened to him!

Anyway, we both had the chocolate ginger cake for dessert, and that was light but very rich at the same time (although the ginger flavour wasn’t too strong!). Overall, we thought the food was lovely, very fresh, and we were glad we had tried the dining experience there, but I don’t think we would rush to go back as some of the flavours were a bit overwhelming to us.

After dinner we had a look around the large store there, picking up some Super Lemon candy for both myself and my mum, as I had read that it is really sour and we both love sour lemon flavours, (it turns out that it has an incredibly sour powder coating, and once that has gone, the hard candy has a lovely, really lemony flavour – mum and I loved it!), before wandering round to the American Adventure to watch the show in there and let our dinner settle down.

By the time we exited there, we only had about 10 mins before Illuminations, so we briskly walked round to the preferred viewing area near Morocco, which was FAR from full – there was us, another 2 adults with 2 small girls, and another couple. The viewing area is quite large, being beside the boat dock, and I have no idea what their idea of a full area would be, or maybe a lot of people booked it but didn’t turn up? Anyway, we enjoyed the show, my favourite night-time Disney show, before taking a slow walk out of Epcot, picked up the shopping from the tiny store at the front of the park, went back to the car, and ‘home’ for bed.

DAY EIGHT – SATURDAY 09 NOVEMBER
Plan – Shopping / pool
Actual – We were both so exhausted last night that neither of us slept very well, being over-tired unfortunately. We therefore got up a bit later than normal, and struggled to get going.

Eventually we managed to head over to the 192, turning right instead of our usual left, as we had consulted our map and there was allegedly an IHOP down there. We found it really easily, although it was very busy, but we only waited about 15 mins to be seated.

I had peaches & cream brioche French toast, with a side order of bacon, and DH had ham & eggs with pumpkin pancakes. We both had coffee. The food was gorgeous, really delicious. This was only our second ever visit to IHOP, and I think they have, in my opinion, the slight edge over Denny’s purely because the pancake stack is not as high and therefore easier to finish! I also like having the different flavour syrups on the table to choose from, and their pancake choices are many and varied.

We waddled out afterwards and headed back down the 192 to Super Wal-Mart to pick up some cinnamon toothpaste and Dove “Powder” deodorant, (for my sister, who is obsessed with both and can’t get either in the UK!), some lemonade powder sachets for my mum, a new SIM card for the phone, (which still wasn’t working, despite several calls to the support helpline), packs of Cheetos and Lays chips, a couple of large boxes of Reece’s Puffs, and some soothing throat sweets as I had the start of a sore throat. I also found some excellent Fruit of the Loom undies that were good quality yet inexpensive, and a purple lightweight fleece top with sparkly snowflakes on it that I loved.

We took this lot back to OKW and DH had a brief nap while I sorted out the phone and texted people with our new number.

About an hour later we left again, stopping at the Concierge desk as we now had not been left any shower gel for 3 straight days; they came back with a big bagful for us, and more apologies.

We dropped this back in the car, then walked round to the boat dock and after about a 5 min wait caught a water taxi to Downtown Disney. We had never done this before, I have no idea why – it was lovely! Such a relaxing boat ride through the resort and then across the lake, it was so much fun. We were dropped off behind the House of Blues.

We started off by walking to the very far end of the Marketplace, carefully avoiding the Festival of the Masters stalls because we were planning to visit them tomorrow, and meandered our way through the stores. We checked out the Christmas store for a tree decoration for my daughter, but didn’t find anything she didn’t already have. We walked round the kitchen store and looked at a few items, but didn’t buy anything in there. I had a quick look round Once Upon a Toy while DH perused the Pin Store, then we attacked World of Disney for our big shopping expedition!

Using our free Gift Card, we got a Mickey silhouette cutlery set, salt & pepper grinders, the bird feeder we had seen and loved in Epcot, and a small Mickey gnome for our garden. Then we also picked up Christmas cards, lots of stuff for gifts for family and friends, Minnie dressed as a princess, (which a work colleague had requested I get for her baby daughter), a pack of postcards, etc etc. It got to the stage where we had to take it in turns to stand to one side, out of the way, with our huge haul of stuff, while the other one ran off and picked up more stuff. We spent a ridiculous amount of money, but on the plus side we had got most of the Christmas present shopping that we wanted to get! We had the majority of this stuff shipped back to the resort, apart from a cookie that DH wanted and some mint/choc popcorn for me, which we took with us, (I ate most of the popcorn in one sitting at some point over the next few days, I couldn’t stop eating it, it was amazing!).

DH then asked me to take a seat outside World of Disney, as he said he wanted to have a look at something on his own. He came out stuffing something into his rucksack, and then said he couldn’t remember what it was! It turned out to be a gorgeous Madame Leota snow-globe, with a light underneath that changes colour, as I found out on Christmas Day when I unwrapped it! We had been looking at the Haunted Mansion merchandise in WOD that day, which I was really pleased to see, but I somehow missed seeing this. He is such a sweetie!

From there we headed to Ghirardelli’s. After last year’s fiasco where they had run out of large tubs of chocolate buttons before we could get any, we were hoping they had some in this year, so we were delighted to find that they did indeed have some in stock! We bought 5 of the 8 tubs on display, (3 of which were gifts for family), (startling the guy handing out the sample squares into asking whether we wanted to take all the tubs!), and when we checked again at a later date the other 3 tubs had sold out, and were not replaced at all during our time in the USA. We also got some flavoured chocolate bars, and a couple of bags of squares to give as gifts to friends back home. The free sample today was peppermint bark, my favourite, and we got 10% off the total bill thanks to a voucher in my booklet from WDW Travel.

We next made our way back to the boat dock, (all that chocolate was HEAVY!), and again had about a 10 min wait for a boat back to Old Key West. We dumped all the stuff in the car, refilled our mugs with coffee, and went back to our room, where we unloaded everything into one corner of the room, (trying not to be horrified at the amount of stuff we had actually bought), and relaxed for an hour.

We eventually made our way to Olivia’s for our dinner reservation. We were quite hungry as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so we quickly devoured the gorgeous pineapple bread that we were given, and had to have a second loaf! We had glasses of Sprite, and DH ordered the shrimp pasta dish, while I had the prime rib (which was enormous!), with beans, carrots and Olivia’s potatoes. It was all delicious, although I was so full from all the bread and rib that I couldn’t make much of a dent in my vegetables. We then had Key Lime Tart, but I opted to get mine ‘to go’ as I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat it tonight.

One of the new practices that we have noticed when dining this year is that the wait staff bring you the bill at the end of the meal, and expect you to leave a tip which they then collect BEFORE you sign the cheque at the end. I find this really embarrassing, I prefer to leave the tip as we are leaving the restaurant. British people hate tipping anyway, we just don’t feel comfortable with the whole process, and now being a) expected to leave a tip rather than it being optional, and b) having to hand it over then wait to sign off before we can leave, the whole process left me really uncomfortable, sorry. I had assumed that tapping the Magic Band was enough to cover the bill, as we were on the Dining Plan, and we would then tip and leave, rather than also having to wait and sign something. Hmm. Not liking that bit.

I was feeling slightly off colour tonight, a bit like DH had a couple of days ago, so we made our way back to our room and called it a night.

DAY NINE – SUNDAY 10 NOVEMBER
Plan – Downtown Disney - Festival of the Masters
Actual – We slept in massively today, and again found it difficult to get going, so we didn’t leave the room until around 11 a.m. We had last night’s leftover pineapple bread, and a stray brownie from Casey’s for breakfast, while sitting out on our balcony – lovely!

We again caught the boat across to Downtown Disney, and the first thing we wanted to do was find the Casting Centre. We had optimistically brought a booklet with us that we had made up consisting of our CVs and contact details, as we would both be more than happy to do some kind of time-limited, seasonal position at WDW for a while. Unfortunately, we debarked from the boat at one end of Downtown, and the Casting Centre was at the other end! It was a shockingly hot day as well, so after walking for quite a while we checked with a passing CM that we were going in the right direction, and she told us yes, but it would be closed on a Sunday! We gave up at this point and cut back into DD, deciding to try and drop it off tomorrow instead. DH took the opportunity to take lots of photos of the construction work going on around the car parks.

Downtown was very crowded again, but we were prepared for this, so we decided to pick up an early lunch at Earl of Sandwich first. I joined the massive queue, which snaked out of the building and round the side, while DH went for a restroom break, then found a table for us indoors as he still wasn’t feeling too good and needed to sit down out of the sun for a while. The queue went down surprisingly quickly, and I ordered an Earl’s Club sandwich and peppermint brownie for myself, and a BBQ Hawaiian sandwich with a pumpkin cupcake for DH. We had coffee and lemonade, too.

After this, we popped into the Christmas store to pick up the Holiday Wishes soundtrack CD, and in Little Mismatched I picked up 3 packs of single socks for my sock-obsessed daughter for Christmas. Basin was next, where we got a couple of bars of soap, (again scoring a 10% discount with my voucher book), although we were looking round the Festival stalls as we went. We then walked slowly round the Marketplace, really enjoying the displays and things for sale at the stalls, there was some really lovely stuff and we could have spent a fortune! We resisted though, until we saw some photos done by an artist called Bill Sargent – he had taken photos of rusty, beaten up old cars, mostly VWs, and they were really lovely in a desolate kind of way. We picked out one small print that we thought my daughter would like for Christmas, and bought it. We loved being able to buy art directly from the artist himself, it was such a nice feeling. (She consequently loved the print, she said it looked like the Beetle was hiding in a bush, waiting to jump out at someone!).

By the time we reached Splitsville, we were hot and tired and in desperate need of a sit down and a drink. But we couldn’t find anywhere! There were lots of places to get food, but we don’t like to take up a table when we would just be having a drink and a sit down, and we really couldn’t find anywhere for this, so we ended up going into DisneyQuest just to go to the Wonderland Café. We got 2 huge cups of lemonade and ice, and sat in a booth for about half an hour. I would have liked to have played some of the games while we were in there, but it was really crowded, none of the machines were available without a wait, and we were nearly done for the day anyway.

So we eventually went back out into the masses, finished looking round the stalls, very nearly bought a print of Mickey Mouse in the big tent, and then spotted a huge print of Pluto that my son would love, but eventually decided against these purchases as we already had enough stuff to try and get home as it was, and then caught a boat back round to the Marketplace as we were peckish. We picked up some cookies from Goofy’s and ate them sitting on the wall outside. While we were sat there, a CM from Goofy’s came out and gave us a sample size tasting of some kind of frozen apple juice, which was delicious!

After this we went into the kitchenware store, where we got some pumpkin pie spice mix, and then a set of Mickey-themed measuring cups with the last of the Gift Card credit.

We looked in Ghirardelli’s, got free peppermint bark square samples, and saw that all of the tubs of chocolate buttons had indeed gone! It was a very good job that we got ours when we did.

We then took a slow walk to Fulton’s Crab House, as our dinner reservation there was for 7.30 p.m. and it was now 6.50 p.m. As we walked, I double checked this on my credit card-sized laminated spreadsheet that I carry round with me, with all our dining reservation details on it, and – eek! The reservation was actually for 7 p.m.! We dashed in, and luckily were checked in and seated fairly quickly.

We hadn’t dined here before, not being big fish eaters, but we had been persuaded to try it by one of my work colleagues who had raved about the place. Our server was quite charming and helpful, so we thought. We ordered Sprite and lemonade, and DH ordered the crab cakes while I requested the Mahi-Mahi over mashed potato as the risotto it should have come with apparently has garlic in it, and I have dietary issues with garlic. While we waited for dinner, we were brought some yummy warm bread rolls, and crackers with something called crab boursin – DH absolutely LOVED this, told our server that he did, and he immediately printed off the recipe for us to make it at home!

The food was really good, very fresh and tasty. I had never had Mahi-Mahi before, and really liked it. For dessert, we both ordered the flourless chocolate cake, which was really nice but very rich and heavy; I didn’t finish mine, DH had to finish it for me!

I tapped my Magic Band to ‘pay’ for our meal, signed the cheque and left a tip, and we headed out to the boat dock at the Marketplace, where we quickly caught a boat to the dock on the other side. Again, we only waited about another 5-10 mins for a boat back to OKW. We really loved this water taxi transport, and couldn’t believe we had never used it before, particularly as this was our second stay at OKW and we had stayed at Saratoga Springs last year, where the service also runs to/from.

We picked up the huge amount of shopping that had been delivered to the OKW store from our trip to World of Disney yesterday, refilled our mugs, and went back to our room. I wrote some postcards to family, friends, and Fairy Godmailers, before bedtime.

DAY TEN – MONDAY 11 NOVEMBER
Plan – Hollywood Studios / Osborne Lights
Actual – We were in no rush to get out today, so had a bit of a sleep in, before driving to reception. I got some stamps from the store to enable us to post the postcards, and some Christmas cards for family & friends in the USA that we had taken with us – it is so much cheaper to post these from there than from the UK! We stuck on the stamps and popped everything in the post box near reception.

We then walked round to Goods to Go for a spot of brunch. DH had a cheese & ham sandwich, and I got a turkey sandwich; we both had Key Lime pie, and a bottle of orange juice. We got coffee in our mugs too. The food was nice, and did the job.

We next drove over to the Casting Building, near Downtown. It was really exciting going in there, there are lovely photos and paintings everywhere, as well as some stunning murals painted on the walls. We were really nervous about this, but figured we had nothing to lose! However, it was all a big letdown. We got to the reception desk, and were told that they didn’t accept CVs or anything, it all had to be done online! We had spent quite a bit of time putting this together, and were really disappointed that we couldn’t even leave it there. The CM gave us some business cards with website addresses on, which we could use to apply IF we lived in the USA, but there was no information for international applicants, so I guess we will have to go back to the UK company we have applied to previously. Never mind.

We trudged sadly back to the car, and drove to the Hollywood Studios, trying to cheer up and not let this ruin our day. We got to the Studios, parked quite easily, and were through the ‘lollipops’ before we knew it!

Star Tours was to be our first call today, and we picked up some paper FPs for this before joining the very short standby line, (10 mins advertised but was straight walk-on). We finally got some new scenes, an ice planet (which I loved!), and a bounty hunter, both with meteor showers in the middle section – no pod racing, for the first time!!

We had a quick look round the store, but as usual, didn’t find anything we needed to buy in there. I really like the Wookie backpack, but can you imagine carrying that big lump of fur around on your back all day in this heat? I don’t think so! I also seriously considered getting a light sabre pen that lights up for my daughter, but then wondered whether it was a useful item or just something else to collect dust in her flat, so didn’t get it in the end.

We wandered round to Muppet Vision 3D, which was showing a 5 min wait but was almost ready to begin loading. We continue to find this show really funny, even though we have seen it a gazillion times now. Afterwards, we looked around the tiny Christmas shop outside, but again didn’t find anything to buy. I will still looking for some kind of tree decoration for my daughter, but everywhere was selling the same stuff, most of which she already has. I had picked up a Mickey & Minnie sitting on a big bell thing from World of Disney for her at the weekend, so I guess this will have to do her for this year.

We went back to Star Tours to use our FPs, and this time got a Wookie world and the bounty hunter, but with the pod racing in the middle though. Still fun!

We decided to try and see the Indiana Jones show, as we haven’t done that for a few years. It was a few minutes in but the CMs still let us in, to sit on a wall at the very back. We had a really good view from there! The stunt member of the audience was really funny and clever – when he was punched for about the third time, he fell over and stood on his head completely straight up for about a minute, before falling flat on his face! After we exited, I was hunting for the rope gag as I had never remembered to look for it before. We found it and I pulled the rope – the sign says “DO NOT PULL ROPE”. I pulled it 4 or 5 times, and each time a clipped British architect said something really funny, it was excellent fun! No-one else came anywhere near it while we were there, and I wonder how many people actually know about this?

We walked over to the Hat next, as DH was looking for an Osborne Family Lights pin. He found one he liked, and we bought it.

The Great Movie Ride was next, it was showing a 10 min wait but looked a bit longer than that. However, when we moved into the room with the zig-zag ropes and the movie clips showing, a CM was holding up a sign that read, “party of 2”. We made ourselves known to her and she unclipped a rope, directing us straight down the side, across the bottom, and to the opposite side of the podium to everyone else in the queue. We were a bit mystified, but quite chuffed about this, until we had to stand there for about another 10 mins while everyone in the OTHER queue filed into the loading room! Eventually, we got pulled in and this queue was obviously going to be used as a ‘filler’ queue. Having gone through all this, we completely forgot to ask if we could wait for the Western side, which is something we have done previously, but luckily we got the Western show anyway! Brilliant.

We were quite tired by now, so went to the ABC Commissary for a quick coffee and a rest. We had a dining reservation coming up, and didn’t want to get stuck in any more queues for the moment.

About 20 mins later, we left there and walked round to Mama Melrose’s for our Fantasmic Dining Package. We haven’t done this before, and were quite surprised to find it was available on the dining plan, as it is a premium paid experience. We were given a pager, and I took a quick restroom break, before we were seated after about 10 mins.

We loved the atmosphere and décor of this place! It was very pretty, with lots of twinkly fairy lights, and seemed such a fun place to eat. We ordered Sprite, and were told that because this was the Fantasmic plan, we would get an appetiser included. DH therefore ordered a Caesar salad, and I had the crispy calamari, (without the peppers and onions on top), something I hadn’t had before and probably wouldn’t normally order if I was paying out of pocket for it, in case I didn’t like it. However, I loved it! It was so delicious, very crispy coating and soft and melty calamari. Yum! We then had : DH – chicken campanelle, me – chicken alla parmigiana. This was all very good, although DH’s was nicer than mine as mine was very tomato-ey, a bit too much for my taste. We were given a dessert platter to share, which had vanilla panacotta with mango puree (yum! DH not keen so I ate all of this!), amaretto cheesecake with tiny amaretto biscuits, (okay-ish – I don’t like amaretto! DH had this one), and a chocolate & cherry mousse, (we shared this one). We were very, very full after all this!

We blobbed our way slowly down Sunset Boulevard, stopping to pick up a FP for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster on the way, as a souvenir for my daughter – after the amount we had just eaten, there was no way they could have got the cars to zoom down the track with us in them – which is something I do for her each visit, just to remind her that she isn’t here with us to go on her favourite ride! I am such a good mother. Unfortunately, they were out of FPs for the day, so when I explained to the CM what I was looking for, she kindly opened up a machine and took out a ‘switch’ pass (parent swap) for me to take with me.

When we got into the Fantasmic theatre, we were seated in the Dining Package area, in the centre, after showing our special dining ticket. The show was fab again, and we really enjoyed watching the synchronisation with the Glow with the Show ears that lots of folk were wearing. (We had looked at these in the Emporium at Magic Kingdom a few days ago, but didn’t get them as they were expensive ($25 a pair!), very heavy, and full of thick foam, which we thought would probably be really hot and uncomfortable to wear for a prolonged period of time. I am personally not keen on these half-head hats anyway, preferring a headband type of headwear if I am wearing ‘ears’).

After the show, it was time for our only FP+ of the day, (I can’t remember what the other ones I had been given were, as the only ones we wanted for today were these), for Toy Story Mania. I won this time, which now makes the score 2/2! The FP queue was very long and busy, and it took us a while to get onto the ride.

Quick restroom break, and then we headed over to Streets of America for our only chance to see the Osborne Family Lights this year. They were already up and running, and were really lovely! We spent over an hour walking round, looking at and photographing the lights. I wasn’t really looking for it, but almost immediately spotted the Purple Cat, up a tree near the Herbie Snack Van by Lights, Motors, Action!

The snow effect was so lovely, I kept getting snow on my nose and it made me laugh out loud. At one point, a young couple came up to us to say how cute we looked, as I was laughing at the snow and DH was smiling at me – aw!

We finally left around 9.00 p.m., the park was still open for another hour but we were tired and had done everything we wanted to at that point. We were back at OKW within 10 mins, where we filled our mugs, drove to our room, and did a little TV before lights out. Early start tomorrow!

DAY ELEVEN – TUESDAY 12 NOVEMBER
Plan – Magic Kingdom, Keys to the Kingdom Tour
Actual – We set the alarm call this morning for 6.30 a.m., grabbed a quick shower and coffee, then set off for the Magic Kingdom as we were booked into the 8.30 a.m. Keys to the Kingdom tour, and wanted to be there for around 8.00 a.m., bearing in mind we have to park at the TTC and then monorail or ferryboat across to MK!

We made it in plenty of time, and were the first people to check in for the tour. We signed in at the Chamber of Commerce, and were given a bottle of water, and a badge with our names on. We also had to choose what we wanted for lunch, which would be at the Columbia Harbour House. We both chose chicken nuggets, fries, and orange soda. Then we were given radios on a neck strap, with an earpiece so that we would be able to always hear our tour guide, even in crowded and noisy places.

The tour was utterly and totally amazing. We learnt so much! There were 17 of us on the tour, and we were regularly counted in and out of places by our tour guide, Lisa. The whole event took about 4½ hours, although there was talk at one point about our finishing the tour with a video screening that would talk about the costuming department, and that never actually happened, I don’t know why.

Anyway, once everyone was there for the tour, we moved into the empty Santa greeting area, and Lisa showed us how to tune the radio into her broadcasting channel, and then how to fit the earpiece. Once that was done, we walked together across Main Street and down a side street, where she began the tour properly. The first thing we learnt was that when you work for Disney, you have to adhere to the “Four Keys” – (in this order) – Safety, Courtesy, Show, Efficiency. Lisa explained what this meant in some detail, using examples such as the dedications in the windows on Main Street, the little details you can hear around you all the time, such as the dancing lessons going on in an upstairs room down this side street, that you can’t see but can hear. It was really interesting!

We then walked across to Adventureland, again with Lisa pointing out lots of little details as we went, such as the differences in floor coverings between lands, etc. We went to the Jungle Cruise and she commandeered a boat just for us. As we went round the cruise course, she explained lots of things about it – the ride’s origins, how it altered during development and building, how it has changed over the years due to ‘political correctness’, right down to how to spot which one of the dancing natives is chanting, “I love disco!”.

After we disembarked, we walked on past Pirates of the Caribbean, and all the time Lisa was regaling us with fascinating facts and figures. We got to a dead end just before Splash Mountain, and Lisa used a bunch of keys to unlock a padlock and count us through a gate, which she carefully locked behind us. We nearly picked up a couple of extra travellers here, who began to tag onto the end, but she stopped them from following us through the gate. They asked what we were doing, and she told them it was a private tour – this happened a couple of times during the tour, where we nearly picked up extra people, and was probably one of the reasons she kept counting us!

We walked a few steps down a roadway, and then went round a slight bend, (and over a yellow painted line on the floor, which is apparently the onstage marker!), and through another locked door in a wooden stockade type wall. As soon as we were all through, Lisa showed us the back of this wall, and how it was just a plain structure on the back – it’s all about the ‘show’! There was also a huge mirror on the back of the wall, which is used to check appearance for one last time before CMs appear onstage.

We were backstage! And very excited! We saw the water holding tank for Splash Mountain, and were told that the water runs continuously through this attraction, as it would take too long to turn it off and back on again each night and morning, and we also saw a massive pool area which is where anything that is dropped on Splash Mountain, ends up!

Being mindful of where we were walking, and the fact that it is a working area, we were encouraged to stay close together, not drift off on our own, not to pester anyone we met, and not to take photos, something that nearly drove DH nuts because he is a very keen photographer! We were then taken over to a garage where the parade floats are kept for storage and maintenance. We saw floats from several different parades, and were told that the Celebrate a Dream Come True parade will be retiring soon, to be replaced with a brand new parade called “Festival of Fantasy”. Lisa pointed out how the floats are quite often recycled with each new parade. We also saw some stripped down driving units, that are the basic units without the float bits on – these are used to train new float drivers backstage. She also explained how the floats are driven and how they keep on track in the parade.

We moved into other garage sections, where there were more floats and also storage of some banners and signs from previous parades and shows. Any CMs we encountered made a point of either waving to us, or coming over and exchanging a few words with us, they were really friendly and all of them looked so happy to be at work!

From there we walked around the back of the Pirates and the Splash Mountain buildings, which are all painted in the same shade of ‘go-away green’ to discourage anyone from lingering near them, apparently! We were told that the drop you go down in Pirates is in order to take you underneath the Railroad track, as it was easier to do this that to re-route the Railroad to make room for the Pirates ride, which was added at a later date.

We were given the chance to ask some questions, so someone asked about costuming, and this is where we were told that we would be watching a video later. Lisa explained about her own different costumes, how they are cleaned and maintained, and that all costume pieces now have RFID chips in them so they can be tracked at all times.

We had been given some time to sit down while some of this was explained to us, in a tiny bleacher section off to one side, but we now retraced our steps and went back through the door and gate again, back onstage near Splash. We saw a squirrel that didn’t look too well, he was just sat in the middle of the walkway, hanging his head – Lisa said she would radio this in, as they have a whole team to take care of natural wildlife in the parks.

We now headed through Liberty Square to Columbia Harbour House, where we were met by a nice young man who directed us upstairs. We had our own, roped off and private dining space in the restaurant! Everyone’s lunch was on the tables awaiting them, along with a named placemarker which turned out to have a special “Keys to the Kingdom” pin inside it! We were asked not to venture out of our secured area for anything - if we needed anything else, the nice young CM who had greeted us would fetch stuff for us. There was a condiments station there, with pretty much everything we could need on it.

We were sat at a table with Lisa, and tried not to make her talk too much as she had been talking all morning, but we couldn’t resist finding out a little more about her! She is a transitional CM, who does quite a few different jobs – sometimes she runs a tour, which is pretty much all she will do in one day as they are very tiring for a CM, sometimes she will be in a parade, or on the desk in City Hall. (She had a chicken salad in Columbia HH, by the way!)

After lunch we all took a quick restroom break, and then walked round to the Haunted Mansion, gathering under a small covered area off to one side. We were given some more details about this ride, and then led to a “servant’s entrance” which is near the exit. We followed Lisa down a tiny, narrow corridor and out of a doorway into the loading area, where we all boarded Doom Buggies for a fun haunted trip round the Mansion!

Afterwards, we gathered in front of the big tomb area, and then progressed back towards the Crystal Palace, where we were offered a final restroom break before we would be going backstage again. We filed through a tiny door behind the Palace, round a zig-zag corner, and we were behind the Emporium. We had been warned that if we saw any half-dressed characters we were not to stare or laugh at them, as they were merely folk taking a well-earned break from work, not that any of us would have done that anyway.

We walked almost the full length of the rear of the Emporium and finally reached a large metal door, which lead to the Utilidors. Again, we were reminded not to interact with CMs unless they approached us first, not to wander off, and not to take photographs. I have to say that everyone on our tour was very well behaved, and personally we were too overawed and grateful to have the opportunity to be able to see areas that are normally out of bounds to guests, (even though we had paid good money for this!), to break any rules here!

We then spent the next hour walking basically round in a big square, underneath the Town Square. We saw break rooms, storage areas, photo and pin displays, a pin exchange area when CMs pick up pins for a day’s trading, the long corridor that CMs have to walk down from their parking or bus stops, that goes underneath the Castle moat, and an awful lot of utility pipes! There were loads of golf buggies parked around, and several times we had to flatten ourselves against a wall to get out of the way of one zooming past! We encountered quite a few CMs, (no half-dressed characters though, luckily), and without a single exception, every single one of them smiled and waved, or came over to talk to us. No-one looked miserable or unhappy!

Lisa spent quite some time explaining details of the photo exhibitions we saw, and at one point she made me cry, as she told the story about how Mickey Mouse had unexpectedly joined Roy Disney at the podium for the opening of The Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, because he sensed that Roy needed some support as he opened up his beloved brother’s park, that Walt had not lived to see the opening of.

Music is played in the Utilidors, although unsurprisingly it is NOT Disney music, and there are signs EVERYWHERE telling you where you are and which direction to go in next to get to other places in the Magic Kingdom. It was a really incredible experience, and one we feel really lucky to have been able to have.

Eventually, we ended up back where we had started, and we all exited the Utilidors together, walking across from where we were and out into the Town Square through a small door, next to the Fire Station. We grouped back in front of the Chamber of Commerce, and were mildly surprised to hear our tour guide announce that that was the end of the tour – we had been expecting to watch a video at this point. However, no-one questioned her, I think we were all a bit tired now, so we thanked her profusely, handed back our radios, and went off in different directions.

DH and I walked to Tomorrowland for a nice sit down on the TTA, while we tried to decide what to do next. I wanted an ice-cream, but DH needed coffee. We couldn’t make a decision, and after our ride sat at some tables near the Lunching Pad, (which had neither coffee nor ice-cream!). We began having a rather heated discussion, as apparently I hadn’t mentioned ice-cream before, when we were actually on Main Street and near the Plaza Ice-Cream Parlour, but I hadn’t thought of it then! Suddenly, we heard a snigger, and looked up to find a cleaning CM standing next to us, leaning on her broom and laughing at our irritation with each other! (To be fair to her, we are a bit childish when we bicker!) This made us laugh too, and dissipated the tension (brought on by tiredness), so we thanked her for making us laugh, before heading over to use our FP+ on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. (He won).

We went back to Main Street and the Ice-Cream Parlour, (I won, *smug*), where I got a Sugar Holiday Cookie with mint choc-chip ice cream cookie sandwich, and DH had a chocolate chip cookie with chocolate ice cream cookie sandwich. We sat in the virtually deserted Tomorrowland Terrace under-cover seating area to enjoy these. I was still feeling a bit queasy, and DH had to finish my second cookie for me. This nausea does seem to be affecting us both on and off, occasionally.

After we had finished our ice-creams, we walked round to visit Ariel in Under the Sea with FP+ and almost no wait, and then walked to Pirates of the Caribbean (standby, advertised as 15 mins but which actually took 25 mins due to some problem or other, we didn’t find out what it was but we didn’t move for ages at one point!), before finishing off in this area with Its a Small World (which also took us 25 mins).

We walked to the end of Main Street to watch the Flag Lowering Ceremony, something we hadn’t watched before, as because it was the day after Veterans’ Day, there was still a big fuss being made about this and we wanted to witness the special ceremony. It was lovely, really patriotic, and incredibly professionally done and precise, we thoroughly enjoyed watching this.

Afterwards, we went into the Town Hall as we had FP+ to meet Mickey Mouse in there. DH had taken a cuddly lion with him called Pride, who is the mascot they have at his workplace, and he had wanted to get a photo of Mickey with Pride, so this was why I had set up this FP+, as we don’t usually go out of our way to meet characters really. We walked straight into the waiting area, and only had a couple of families in front of us to meet Mickey. It was VERY weird to see him blink, and hear him speak, too! He did a magic trick with us involving a pack of huge playing cards, which was funny and cute, but he seemed confused when we tried to play a trick on him by saying the card he held up wasn’t the one we had picked, which made us wonder if he only has a stock set of words or phrases that he can use. We told him about Pride, and asked about a photo, but again Mickey didn’t answer, and his handler had to explain it to him. He was quite happy to have his photo taken with Pride though, and then with us too.

We waved bye to Mickey, and headed over to the Main Street Railroad Station, where after about a 10 min wait we boarded a train and rode it all the way round the park. I love this train ride, it is relaxing and fun to do.

We shopped our way through the Emporium for pins, and came out at the top end of Main Street to watch the castle ice lights show, which is GORGEOUS – my favourite bit is when it goes from sparkly purple to sparkly pink, ooh, it is so pretty! We took a few photos by the Partners statue, then it was time for our dinner reservation at Crystal Palace.

We checked in, and had to wait about 15 mins, which was unfortunate as we were starving by now! We eventually got seated, and we really do love this restaurant, it is another one that we would pay out of pocket for if we hadn’t been on the dining plan. We had turkey, mashed potato, green beans, mac ‘n’ cheese, couscous, endemame salad, chicken nuggets, plus DH added a little green salad too. This was over the course of 2 visits to the buffet. We then finished with a tiny lemon curd tart, turtle cheesecake, and a peach in batter pudding thing, all of which was absolutely delicious! We met Tigger, Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, and to my dismay, Piglet. (I hate Piglet, and told his handler this – she said a lot of people say this, and she wasn’t keen on him either!!).

We were completely stuffed at the end, and after a quick restroom visit, took a slow walk round to the Jungle/Jingle Cruise, as we wanted to not only try this out after dark, but also to see the new Christmas overlay. There was almost no wait for this, and it was brilliant! All the CMs had Jungle Cruise coloured hats on, but in the Santa hat style, and the boats had all been given funny Christmassy names. There was a brilliant Christmas tree, that was so bad it was good, and the dreadfully corny jokes all had a seasonal theme to them! We really enjoyed the Cruise!

Wishes began while we were on the Cruise, which was excellent because it meant that the rides were really quiet as everyone was watching the fireworks, so we went on the Flying Carpets next with no wait at all! We both really like this ride, but won’t wait more than about 5 mins for it, as it is so short as to not make it worth a really long wait.

We wandered back to the hub and caught the end of Wishes, before making our way with the mob down Main Street, on the Ferryboat to the TTC, and back to OKW for a well deserved sleep!

DAY TWELVE – WEDNESDAY 13 NOVEMBER
Plan – Animal Kingdom
Actual – Another small sleep in this morning, before showers and coffee.

Our first stop today was Guest Relations, as when we had settled our bill at Crystal Palace last night, the receipt had showed that we only had 4 table service credits left. According to my records, we should have had 6 left, so a lovely CM printed off a complete list of what we had used and where, and helped me to go through it. It turned out we did indeed only have 4 left, and this was because dining at Fulton’s Crab House had ‘cost’ us 2 table service credits each. We were horrified at this, because at no point had we been told this. At all the other Disney-run restaurants that took 2 credits, we had been reminded several times during our dining there that it would cost us 2 not 1 each, but the dining locations that were not directly run by Disney do tend to be a little more lax about this, according to the CM we spoke to.

We had to decide which dining reservation to drop then, as we still had another 2 reservations to go, one of which was Le Cellier and would also take 2 credits each. Eventually, we decided to cancel our dinner reservation for that evening at Tusker House, and the CM, who was very apologetic about the whole episode even though it wasn’t Disney’s fault, cancelled our reservation and waived the cancellation fee, as she said it wasn’t our fault either! To be fair, we should have read the Dining Information leaflet that we had been given at check-in, as it turned out that it does tell you about Fulton’s in there, but we had already made the reservation by then anyway. The staff at Fulton’s should have reminded us about the number of table service credits we were being charged. We hadn’t checked the bill there, as because we weren’t paying any actual money for the meal, I didn’t think we needed to check it. Anyway, another reason for us not to visit Fulton’s again in the future, I think.

By the time we got to Animal Kingdom, we were too late to get breakfast at Pizzafari, but were still quite hungry, so opted for cheese pizzas, side salad, cheesecake in a glass, and coffee. I was a bit grumbly as I love the breakfast here, and have never been a big fan of pizza, having to be in the mood to eat it. DH made me stop moaning about it though as he said there was no point in spoiling our day over pizza!

While we ate, we perused the map we had picked up, and planned our day around things we still needed to see and do here. I deliberately hadn’t booked any FP+s for today, so that we could run things the way we wanted to without being slaves to our FP+ times.

The first thing we did was ride the train over to Conservation Station, and briefly visited Rafiki’s Planet Watch, petting goats, pigs and sheep. We have been to this area often, but have never bothered to pet the animals before! It was cute, and we enjoyed talking to the animals.

We sat and watched several short films about conservation, before stopping to say hello to Rafiki himself, who was dancing around on his own with no-one waiting to have their photo taken with him! We didn’t do anything else here, as we had pretty much covered it all last year.

We headed back to Discovery Island, where we did the Its Tough to be a Bug show with a 5 min wait, and then walked over to explore Dinoland, as we had never bothered with this area before. We hated it! I understand what the thinking behind the whole area is, but we really didn’t like the atmosphere, the carnival games, or the rides, which all looked very spinny or bumpy.

We gave up on this and walked over to the Theatre in the Wild for the next showing of Finding Nemo the Musical, which was loads of fun! A fabulous show, we really enjoyed it.

We came out just in time for the Jingle Jungle parade, which we hadn’t seen before, and also really enjoyed. This parade has a very catchy theme tune!

We needed to find somewhere to eat for dinner, as our Tusker House reservation had had to go, (and we had never done this restaurant before, either!), so decided to try the Anandapur Café, as I had heard good things about their honey chicken, and they were part of our favourite Yak & Yeti restaurant too. I had the honey chicken, which had some rice and vegetables with it, and DH had an Asian Chicken Sandwich. Both were really, really delicious, and more than made up for the disappointment of having to cancel Tusker House. DH then had triple chocolate mousse, and I finished with banana pudding – I LOVED my banana pudding, it was so yummy! We also had Sprite and lemonade, but the temperature around us was dropping (we had been warned there would be a cold spell starting), and by now it was around 60˚ so the iced drinks weren’t the best idea! We drank as much as we could, but had to tip some away in the end. (We had had trouble finding straws for our drinks, and a very kind fellow guest eventually handed us a couple, but we have no idea where he got them from! The CMs serving here were a bit unhelpful, and didn’t really seem to understand me when I asked them for straws. I had already watched the fellow guest return his egg roll after he had been given one that had been returned by a previous guest, which the CMs didn’t seem to think we had noticed! They made him a fresh one at his insistence, and I agreed with him that he shouldn’t have had to accept a second-hand egg roll!)

We slowly walked out of the park, which was closing anyway, and drove to the Transportation & Ticket Centre, where we parked the car before catching the monorail to the Grand Floridian resort to have a look at the Gingerbread House. I had wanted to buy a couple of the roof shingles for Christmas presents, but the House wasn’t going to be open for another couple of days so we were too early to buy anything. Also, the Christmas tree wasn’t up in the GF lobby yet, either. This was something we had noticed in particular this year, the Christmas decorations were really slow to appear both around the parks and the resorts – Olivia’s at our resort only ever had the Halloween decorations up, right until we left.

We had a look around some of the shops upstairs, and I nearly bought some soap from Basin for our neighbour’s daughter, but then didn’t for some reason.

We went back out to the monorail station, and caught the next train to come along, staying on it all the way round to the Polynesian stop, where we disembarked for a look around the lobby and shop there. We picked up a couple of pins for DH.

Back on the monorail and to the T&TC, where we had a look in the small store there too. We found some lovely mugs in there, and got a Grumpy one and a Tinker Bell one. We had been looking for a couple of nice mugs, and these were the first we’d seen that had caught our attention. The CM that served us kept looking nervously at my name badge, which I had worn all the time I was in WDW. Eventually, he asked me politely how come I had a green name tag, and when I told him I had bought it at MGM Studios about 15 years ago, he visibly relaxed! It turns out that earlier last year, the Walt Disney company had issued a very small number of blue name tags, to very important members of the company. He had seen my green tag, and thought I must be a super-important member of the company, particularly as the name tag also says, “Guest of Honour” on it! Wow, I felt really important for a little while there!

We headed back to the car and drove back to OKW, stopping at the store there to pick up some donuts for tomorrow’s breakfast, coffee in our refillable mugs, and a couple of the pale blue coloured Conservation badges, which we had only very recently realised came in different colours for different resorts and attractions!

We went back to our room, only to find that Mousekeeping had once again not left us any shower gel, or coffee and creamer. We still had enough shower gel from last time, but the lack of coffee and creamer were an inconvenience, so I rang them and complained a bit more vociferously than normal, as this was the 3rd time it had happened! A short while later, a lady turned up with a coffee bag and a small amount of creamer, and stood there expectantly. I thanked her and shut the door, thoroughly fed up with them now and certainly not going to give them a tip for not doing their job in the first place!

We fell into bed at 11.00 p.m. and slept very well indeed.

DAY THIRTEEN – THURSDAY 14 NOVEMBER
Plan – Shopping / Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party
Actual – We got up reasonably early, and shared a very healthy breakfast of donuts, mint choc popcorn, and a peanut butter cookie! We also took some washing round to the laundry room so that we would have mostly clean clothes to pack tomorrow.

While the clothes were drying, we took showers and relaxed in the room for a while. Thankfully, the weather had improved and it was back to being super-hot again!

Around 11.00 a.m., we drove to Super Wal-Mart on the 192 to pick up some more Dove deodorant, and some socks and underwear, as DH had realised that several pairs of his white socks had developed holes, and I wanted to get some more of the really nice Fruit of the Loom undies that I had bought last week. I left DH perusing the menswear while I picked up the socks and underwear, and got back to him to find him trying on a new jacket. It is a Dickies workjacket, quite thick cotton with a fleece lining and a hood, which looked really nice on him. He picked out the tan coloured one, and it was so reasonably priced that I insisted he had to have it! At the same time, there was another gentleman trying on the same jacket, and where DH is 6’2” tall and broad shouldered, with a full head of hair, this other gentleman was about 5’5” and rather round, and bald. I looked at him for a moment and then said, “wow, you could be twins!”. He burst out laughing, and we got chatting. It turned out he was also from the UK! What a coincidence!

We eventually parted company, paid for our shopping, and left. We began to drive back towards WDW, when I suggested we pop into Taco Bell for a late lunch, as it would be some time before we ate again today, and I LOVE Taco Bell! Thanks to the Disney Dining Plan, we don’t often get the chance to eat offsite at the moment, so wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. I knew there was a Taco Bell on the corner of the road that we normally turn right off, so we found it and parked.

The place was almost empty. I ordered 2 crunchy tacos for me, a side of pintos & cheese to share, 2 soft Tacos, a side of cheesy fiesta potatoes, and a caramel apple pie for DH. We also got 2 refillable soft drinks, and as it was “happy hour”, they only cost $1 each. I tried some Mountain Dew as my brother raves about this, and it wasn’t overly sweet which was good, but it was very bubbly! It was slightly limey in flavour, but without any real taste to it. Anyway, this is just my opinion! I only tried a small amount, before getting some Minute Maid Lemonade instead. We really enjoyed our lunch, and we got a lot of food for not very much money!

After lunch, we then drove to the TTC, parked up (leaving all the shopping in the boot of the car), and caught a monorail to the Magic Kingdom, arriving around 5.00 p.m. As we went through the turnstile, (which is actually no longer a turnstile, merely a really cool Mickey lollipop on a big stick!), we stopped at a nearby CM and swapped our ticket vouchers for Party wristbands. We then picked up the event map, and went to collect the special MVMCP Sorcerer’s of the Magic Kingdom card from the Fire Station, (not that we wanted to play the game, I just wanted to collect the special card!), before hot-footing it down Main Street and round to Adventureland to ride Pirates. This was a very weird ride – there was only a 10 min standby wait, but the queue was EXTREMELY slow to load, and once we had boarded a boat, it kept feeling like it was sinking! We were sat at the very back, and not only did the boat keep veering from side to side and bumping into the guiderails, it also kept scraping its bottom on something! Then at the bottom of the small drop, it sank that much that about a gallon of water slopped over both sides and soaked us all! When I exited the ride, I had to quite literally wring out my skirt and top, I was dripping with water. And once again, neither the Bluebeard projection nor the mist effect were working today.

With hindsight, we should have said something to a CM about the water/boat issue, but we didn’t think to at the time, we just carried on round to Big Thunder Mountain. However, this was showing a 30 min wait time, with no FP available, so we thought we would wait until the park emptied out a bit, as it was still full of regular guests, and wasn’t due to close to them until 7.00 p.m. The park was very busy at this point, and we knew it would get better in the next couple of hours.

We walked round to Liberty Square to visit the Haunted Mansion, which was showing a 25 min wait time, but it didn’t look that long to us so we joined the queue, and were on there within 10 mins. We then checked out the wait time for Peter Pan, but it was showing as 70 mins!! Another one to leave for later.

Afterwards, we carried on to Pecos Bills to pick up dinner. This was really crowded, so I went off in search of a table while DH got us both the Deluxe 1/3 LB Angus Cheeseburger meal with fries, coffee, chocolate milk, and chocolate and carrot cakes. We love this particular burger here, it is topped with the only BBQ sauce I actually like, because it is sweet and honey-like, and a couple of giant, very crispy battered onion rings! We really enjoyed it all.

A quick restroom break later, and we again did something we don’t normally do – we joined a queue for the special MVMCP pins! Last time we did this Party, we didn’t realise you had to queue in advance for the pins you wanted, so we just picked up a nice one at the Emporium later in the night, but this time we thought we would be more organised and thus get more choice in the design of pins we wanted. We joined quite a short queue at the Frontierland Trading Post store, which was due to begin sales in about 45 mins. CMs were walking up and down the queue, handing out laminated cards with the pin designs on so you could choose in advance, which I thought was a really good idea. The queue got longer and longer while we stood there, and we were glad we had joined it when we did! We kept hearing announcements saying the park was closing for the event, and that guests without tickets for it either had to leave, or if they wanted to buy a ticket, there were still some for sale.

The pins were gorgeous, all tiny snow globes with moveable snow, and a different character in each (I think there were about 6 different ones). DH chose a Mickey & Minnie one, and I got one with Duffy wearing a Santa outfit in it. Once they had begun selling the merchandise, the CMs were really quick and efficient, they kept out anyone who wasn’t buying the merchandise, and just allowed us in from the queue. They had a one-way system going, so you went in one door and out another, and they had lots of tills open so they could serve several people at once. We were in and out in 5 mins!

By now, the park had emptied out dramatically, so we walked back round to Big Thunder and it was now showing a 5 min wait time. However, we almost ran all the way through the queuing area and straight onto a train! We did this 3 times in a row, which was HUGE fun but rather exhausting!

We would probably have carried on doing this for a bit longer, but the time was now 7.30 p.m. and we were due to meet up with some online friends for the first time, at 8.00 p.m., so we left there and walked round to the Heritage House store in Liberty Square to look at the other Party merchandise on offer. There was a small queue to get in, but we were only in it for 5 mins or so. We picked up a short-sleeved, green MVMCP t-shirt for DH, and a long-sleeved, red t-shirt for me. I was standing in the queue to pay, and DH wandered off – never a good thing! He suddenly called me, and when I turned round, he was holding up a gorgeous pair of Mickey Christmas pyjamas! They were a soft flannel material, red and green and cream squares, with Mickey in a Santa hat printed on them – we both loved them! He raced over to me, carrying two pairs! (We do look rather cute, wearing them at the same time, I’m afraid!) So that was another $120 spent without really trying. We couldn’t have them shipped back to the hotel as they weren’t allowing that at the Party, so we had to lug them round with us all night – we didn’t think that one through, did we?

Anyway, we made our way round to the Winnie the Pooh ride in Fantasyland, and although we were about 10 mins late for our appointment, I had received a text from our new online friends to say they would be a bit late too, as they had dined at Chef Mickey’s earlier and this had over-run. We waited a short while and then they came up to us. (We had met on a Disney fan website, on the forums, and both being from the UK had been chatting on and off for quite a while, arranging this meet-up when we realised we would both be at WDW at the same time!). We introduced ourselves, hugged, and then decided to go and join the queue to meet the 7 dwarves, as they are only all out together at special events like this one. The dwarves were all lined up near the new castle segment area between old Fantasyland and New Fantasyland, but 3 out of the 4 of us missed this completely and marched off towards the area near Its a Small World, which is apparently where they had been situated before. C, the one lone person who hung back taking photos, phoned me and told us to get back there, the dwarves were there! (This made sense when we thought about it afterwards, as they were near what will be the 7 Dwarves Mine Train ride fairly soon).

We fast-walked back to her, and joined a queue, which took about half an hour to get to the dwarves. We used this time to get to know each other better, which was lovely. When we got to the dwarves, they were just off for a quick cookie break, so we hung around talking to the handlers for a few minutes. One of them recognised me, and it turned out she had been Piglet’s handler in Crystal Palace a couple of days ago! We had a lovely time with her, and then with the dwarves when they returned, as they were all full of jokes and fun. Doc said I looked just like him, as we both had glasses on! (Of course, they don’t actually talk, but it is amazing what can be communicated with hand waves and pointing!)

Eventually, we moved on, and decided to all go on the Haunted Mansion together. I checked the wait time for Peter Pan as we passed, but it was still at a ridiculous level, so we moved on. Haunted Mansion was only a 10 min wait, and we all enjoyed the ride. We hadn’t had any cookies and hot cocoa up until this point, so we popped into the Columbia Harbour House to get some. However, we mistimed this slightly, and as we came out, Holiday Wishes was just starting. We didn’t have time to get round to the front of the Castle to watch this, so we just stood in Liberty Square and watched it instead. It was very different, seeing the show from here, and made us appreciate just how far away the fireworks are detonated from. There was also water POURING from the roof of Columbia Harbour House, which puzzled us somewhat, until M told us that Disney spray water over the roofs of some of the buildings here during the firework shows as a fire precaution – we never knew that! Unfortunately, we also missed the lights on the Castle, and I don’t know whether Tinker Bell flew across either as we were too far away to see, but we did still enjoy the fireworks.

We were an hour away from the second showing of the parade, which we prefer as it tends to be less crowded than the first show, so we walked round to Frontierland and staked a spot behind a rope, where we could sit on some crates and wait. Again, we used this time to chat and get to know each other a bit more. No-one tried to stand in front of us, which was nice, and we had a fantastic view of the parade. I really love this parade, it is my favourite out of the current ones, the toy soldiers are just amazing! When Goofy’s Candy float went past, we could smell candy, and the Chip & Dale float smelled of fresh snow; there was also gingerbread scent with another of the floats, and there may have been peppermint too. How lovely!

We were beginning to feel a bit tired, but no-one was ready to give up yet, so we headed for the Jungle Jingle Cruise, which was a straight walk-on; M&C hadn’t seen this yet, and they thought it was great fun!

After this last ride together, and a quick restroom break, we finally parted company. We hugged again, took some photos together, and then M&C went off to take some photos of the Castle, while we headed back round to Columbia Harbour House for more cocoa and cookies, and then to see how Peter Pan was doing. This was now down to a more respectable 20 mins, so we joined the queue and were soon flying to Neverland! This ride had been down for refurbishment up until very recently, and we do really like it, but don’t get to ride it very often as we refuse to wait the ridiculous standby line times, and never think to pick up FP for it!

As we came out of there, it was midnight and the park was closing, so we took a slow walk round to Main Street, where we were able to walk through the Castle for the first time this year! It is usually closed off for the shows on the stage there, which made us realise we had also missed the special MVMCP show on there earlier; oh well, there is always next year! We hung around there for a little while, taking photos and just enjoying being able to walk under the Castle.

We had had a fabulous day today, and meeting up with new friends was a lovely part of it.

Eventually, we made our weary way back to OKW, and fell into bed at about 1.30 a.m.!

DAY FOURTEEN – FRIDAY 15 NOVEMBER
Plan – Epcot
Actual – So on top of the slight queasiness we both feel occasionally, I have now developed a chest infection and have been hacking and coughing for 3 days, with my voice gradually fading away! Why do we always get ill when we visit WDW?? The cough and breathlessness woke me up at 7.30 a.m., and I had to get up then as every time I lay back down again, I couldn’t seem to breathe, so I gave up and had a shower. I made coffee and generally pottered about (quietly!), until DH finally woke up at around 10.00 a.m. We finally managed to get going at about 11.30 a.m. and headed over to Epcot.

We had been looking forward to this day, because as much as we enjoy the Food & Wine Festival, it is also nice to visit Epcot when this is over and the park is quieter, which is what today was! As if by magic, the Cranberry Bog had gone, to be replaced by – actually, quite a disappointing display of poinsettias, no lovely parcels and topiary figures, like last year.

Our first stop was Test Track, which was quite busy at standby, but we nipped into the single rider line, although this still took 20 mins. We were loving this ride by now, and took great delight in trying to beat each other’s designs with efficiency or speed etc. I alternated between being really ‘green’ and saving the dolphins from extinction, to not caring a jot about the dolphins and just going for pure SPEED!

We then went into Mousegear, where we found a fabulous rucksack for DH – we had been looking for one for him the entire time we had been there, to replace the one he uses at home that had worn out. We got that, a really cute hat & mittens set for next door’s new baby, and also used our last 4 snack credits on packets of Goofy’s Candy, all of which we had sent to the front of the park for later collection. The CMs weren’t happy about this, as they said there was a chance the candy would melt in the heat, but we insisted we would take that chance, as this was all quite bulky and heavy, and we really didn’t want to carry it round all day. Besides which, the temperature had been dropping over the last day or so and it was now quite cool, cloudy, with sprinkles of rain.

We left there and walked round to Spaceship Earth, to use our FP+, but this was a complete waste as there was only a 5 min wait time posted, with guests walking literally straight up the walkway and into the building, without snaking round the queue area at all. The ride was lovely, we do enjoy this.

We needed to eat as we were 6 hours away from our dinner reservation later, but neither of us were hungry yet and couldn’t think of anything we fancied to eat. We checked out the offerings in Sunshine Seasons in the Land, but nothing appealed to us. While we were in there, we rode Living with the Land which had a zero wait time and no queue.

We walked back across to the Electric Umbrella, where we made ourselves have some food. Looking for a lighter option, DH got a chicken caeser salad, and I had chicken nuggets & fries, with coffee and water to drink. We both had fruit bowls to follow, which were delicious as they were light and refreshing. The coffee was a bit of a fiasco – there are two coffee machines in there, the first one I went to was out of regular coffee, so I went across to the second one. A CM was just filling that one up, and said it would be another 5 mins before it was ready. However, she also noticed the cup I was trying to fill, and told me I had got the wrong cup – the one I had was for cold drinks and wouldn’t hold a hot drink! She fetched me the right one, and apologised as I had obviously been given the wrong one at the counter, although I hadn’t noticed this. Anyway, we left it for 10 mins and finally got DH’s coffee.

After lunch, we walked back across to the Land pavilion, where we rode Living with the Land again, just because we love this ride, and then did Soarin’ with our FP+. The queue for the FP entrance was HUGE, it stretched right across to Sunshine Seasons, and it took us 15 mins to get on the ride! This is one of the disadvantages of FP+, it has massively increased wait times on the FP side, without seeming to reduce the standby lines.

We crossed back across the park again, getting slightly damp as it was sprinkling with rain, and the Test Track single rider line wait time had reduced to 5 mins, so we did this 3 times in a row! Great fun!

It was raining a bit harder when we came out, so I sent DH to Mission Space as I didn’t feel safe even doing the Green side of this today – this is a shame, because I do love this ride, but my insides didn’t feel up to it! While he was there, (10 min wait), I went into the shop to wait for him, and had a good look round, buying him a really cute Yoda pin as a surprise for Christmas while I was there.

When he emerged, having had fun but saying it wasn’t the same without me, (bless!), the rain had reduced a lot again so we went back to Spaceship Earth for another straight walk on ride.

It was now nearly time for our dinner reservation at Le Cellier. We were too tired and I was feeling really under the weather by now to hang around waiting any longer, so we made our way round to Canada, and tried to check in. However, at 7.20 p.m. we were told we couldn’t even check in for our 7.30 p.m. reservation, for at least another 10 mins. Plus they were running 25 mins late!! This is our third visit to Le Cellier in 3 years, and every single time we have been over 20 mins late being seated. I don’t know if this is a regular occurrence here, or we have just been unlucky, but we were already thinking that this would be the last time we visited here. (On our previous two visits, it has been the quality of the food that has kept us coming back). The CM was really short with me, she kept staring at my name tag, and seemed to want to get rid of me quickly, for some reason.

We took a seat in the waiting area, grumbling to ourselves and saying we wouldn’t bother with this place again next year. A couple of minutes later, the CM came back over to me and asked about my name tag. She repeated what we had been told previously, that a small number of blue tags had been given out as “legacy” awards recently, to a very small number of CMs. I was beginning to get the feeling, for the first time in 15 years of wearing this name tag, that some CMs were intimidated by it, because of the unusual colour and the fact that it says “Guest of Honour” on it.

After our 10 min waiting time was up, we were allowed to check in, and were seated 15 mins late. I was a bit surprised by the menu, I knew it had changed since last year, but there was so much on there that I couldn’t eat due to various food issues that I have, (which is not that abundant, I just have to avoid onions, garlic, peppers, and anything too spicy!), that I again questioned whether we would return again in the future. The last thing I really needed that day was a menu full of food that would adversely affect me, on top of the illnesses I already had!

Eventually, not having found the cream-cheese mashed potato listed that I had previously enjoyed there, I settled for a Mushroom Filet Mignon, but asked if they could leave the onions out. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise there would still be garlic in the risotto! I was still feeling quite ill, so managed to eat the steak and a couple of mouthfuls of the risotto, which was still quite tasty despite the garlic, and had to leave it at that.

DH had the Veal Tenderloin, which was very tasty but extremely rich – I had one small bite to try it, loved it at first, but then realised I wouldn’t have been able to eat very much of it as it was a very heavy and dense meat. He enjoyed it, anyway.

The desserts menu was also very different, and the chocolate ‘mousse’ appears to have disappeared. I had the white chocolate cheesecake with citrus shortbread, which I have had previously and really enjoyed, but this time it just seemed really sweet. To be fair, this could have been because I wasn’t well and didn’t feel like eating anything at the time. DH picked an espresso cake dessert, which was quite nice but had rather an overwhelming coffee flavour.

Service had taken ages, and we finally left there just as Illuminations was starting. We walked slowly round towards the entrance, as we hadn’t planned to stay and watch the show, and it was also still spitting with rain. We did stop for a few moments when the music reaches a crescendo and the globe opens, releasing the flames. As a result of my feeling over-tired, very poorly, and over-emotional as this was the end of our holiday, I wasn’t just tearful at this point, (which is my usual state of emotion during Illuminations!), I actually began to sob! Luckily, it was dark so no-one could see me, and the music from the show drowned out my pathetic sobbing noises! DH patted me, and led me out before I could get any worse!!

I attempted to make myself look a bit more presentable, as we still had to collect our shopping at the gift shop, from earlier. I got chatting to a CM while waiting for another CM to fetch the shopping from the store room, and somehow got round to the story of DH napping through the film in One Man’s Dream, twice in a row last year – her reaction was such that we may as well have burnt the Stars & Stripes in the middle of the park! It was really funny!

We eventually got back to OKW at about 10.15 p.m., and began the dreaded packing. It went very well, but we gave up after 2 hours as we were shattered. Sleep called and we would finish the packing tomorrow!

DAY FIFTEEN – SATURDAY 16 NOVEMBER
Plan – Check out, drop off luggage, Boardwalk, fly home
Actual – I slept really well, probably out of exhaustion! I woke up feeling a little better, and while DH took his shower, I went online and booked a FP+ for Test Track for today. This was because we had decided to do something new and radical today, something we had NEVER attempted before – we were going to a theme park on the day we left the USA!!

Usually, our final day is spent pottering about and wasting time really, until we leave to drive to the airport at around 2.00 p.m. However, this year, our return flight was a couple of hours later than normal – I had booked this later flight deliberately this year, as I knew this would give us more time to have fun before having to start the journey home! Our park passes were 14-day ones, but that was 14 CONSECUTIVE days, and as we hadn’t started using them until our second day here, I had an idea they would still be valid. I checked my “My Disney Experience” account, and it showed they were indeed still valid, so yesterday we decided to spend some time at Epcot today. How exciting, an extra park day!

We quickly finished the packing, including leaving about a suitcase-worth of stuff in the Owner’s Locker box, and were really pleased that everything we had bought all fitted into our cases with no problems. Amongst other things, we left our refillable mugs in the OL box as next year we will be in an offsite villa for our first week, not visiting Disney parks until our second and third weeks, so I thought as we have loads of these at home, we would leave the new ones here and then we could take them out with us, filled with coffee, when we visited elsewhere next year. I also left the spare coffee and creamer that we had bought, our refillable water bottles and drink flavour powders, sandals, clothing, maps, battery chargers, my Minnie ear headband, toiletries, some non-prescription medication, my ‘touring’ handbag, the collapsible laundry bag, suntan lotion, umbrellas, one (unused!) rain poncho, Purex washing sheets, swimwear, and our USA satnav. The box was full to the brim! I had listed everything as I packed it, so I would know what I had left when it came to packing for our next trip.

Showered and full of coffee, we left our lovely room for the last time, dropped our OL box off at bell services for them to collect later, and checked out.

It was raining really hard now, and as we drove to Downtown Disney to check in with Virgin Atlantic airlines, we were a bit worried that we would have problems parking, as huge amounts of the car park are currently being dug up to make new parking garages. We were right, we circled round several times before finding an empty space, and even then we had quite a hike to the check-in area. We ran through the puddles, trying not to let the cases (or ourselves!) get too wet. We had to take the cases over in shifts, as we had 3 large cases and 2 hand luggage-sized cases, but just the 2 of us to take it all! DH was an absolute angel, and did most of the running around in the rain! The check-in area was quite busy as well, but everyone was very good natured and helped each other to keep everything under cover and move cases about.

We couldn’t believe it when it was our turn – ALL our cases were UNDERWEIGHT!! This has never happened to us before! Last year, everything was so overweight that we ended up paying about £150 in excess luggage fees – it was so worth it to us to leave loads of stuff with Owner’s Locker, (and the annual cost of that is less than last year’s excess fees). We were allowed up to 23kg per case, and ours weighed in at 17, 18, and 20kg! Luckily, they didn’t weigh our hand luggage, they just glanced at the small, wheeled cases and said, “oh, those are okay, they don’t look heavy”. “No, they’re not!” we said, frantically trying to make them look lightweight by hefting them up and down rapidly. One of them contained 5 tubs of Ghirardelli chocolate buttons, weighing an absolute ton, and the other was equally as heavy!!

As we had been so comfortable in the extra leg-room seats coming out, we enquired as to the availability of exit row seats this time, and were told they were indeed available, at an extra cost of $60 each. We booked them, as it would be lovely not to have someone in front of us all the way back, we thought it would make it easier to try and sleep on the plane if we had that bit of extra room.

Our luggage was tagged and put into the back of the huge van for taking to the airport, we were given our boarding passes, and about an hour after we had arrived, we were free to leave.

We drove to Epcot, having about 6 hours to spend there. Our first port of call was Spaceship Earth with zero wait, and then it was time for our Test Track FP+. We designed a vehicle together, which we loaded onto DH’s Magic Band, and I also tapped mine on the monitor as we boarded, so it showed the car we had designed yesterday, too. We LOVE this ride!

We were hungry by now, having not had anything to eat yet today, so went to the Electric Umbrella for lunch. DH had the mac ‘n’ cheese burger again, but much as I loved it, my stomach was still a bit churny so I opted for the chicken nuggets; both with fries. I also got the fruit cup again, as I had really enjoyed that yesterday, with melon, grapes, pineapple, and apple slices. DH had some chocolate chip cookies, and we both had coffee.

We strolled around the World Showcase, really enjoying being there for an extra day. The weather had settled down a bit and there were only occasional sprinkles by now. We checked out the Karamel Kuche store in Germany, as my sister had asked me to pick her up something that she described as a puddle of melted chocolate, but with Werther’s caramels melted in the middle. I couldn’t find anything that fitted that description, only something similar with pecan nuts, and I couldn’t remember whether she liked pecans or not. (It turned out, when I asked her a few days later, that she had been talking about a chocolate square, not a puddle!)

We were beginning to get a bit wet, as we had left our umbrellas and our only rain poncho in the Owner’s Locker box, so we eventually took a slow stroll out of the park and back to the car.

We drove towards the airport, stopping at a gas station on Boggy Creek Road, that we knew the location of from previous visits, to fill up the tank. It cost $40 in total, which wasn’t bad for 2 weeks worth of driving! We carried on to the airport, but got confused over the location of the rental car return garage, and missed the turning as there were not enough signs for the number of turnoffs. We had to go through a couple of unexpected toll booths and drive in a big circle to get back to the entrance again! We eventually found our way in by repeatedly turning left, and dropped the car off with no other issues.

We went into the airport, and while one of us sat with the bags, the other one went off for a bit of last-minute retail therapy! First of all, I went into the Disney Earport store, and picked up a gift box of rice krispie treats for DH, as he loves them and had hardly had any this trip, and I also got him a pale blue pyjama top/t-shirt. Both of these were for Christmas gifts, so I hid them from him and stuffed them into my hand luggage. Then he went into the Kennedy Space Centre store, and picked up Buzz Aldrin’s biography for me for Christmas, which he also hid from me! (It is now after Christmas as I write this, and I have started reading the book – it is great!).

We then gathered everything up and went through security, which took AGES, as the queue was massive. We boarded the monorail without really taking much notice of where we were going, and when we got off at the other end, we realised we were in the wrong place! Our gate was number 84, and we were in the departure area for domestic flights. We caught another monorail back, then got on the right one for our departure area. I have no idea what we were thinking about, we have never got on the wrong one before!

We finally got to our gate, only to be told they were running about 15 mins late, so we just settled down to wait for boarding. We sat there and watched while people once again queued, jostled, and generally wound themselves up about the whole boarding process. We were one of the last groups to board, but fortunately there was still enough room in the overhead lockers for our bags. Our seats were fantastic! I think I will try to book these in advance next time, even though they cost more money, because they really were worth it. We settled in, watched a film called Epic, had a few snacks, and eventually I slept, something I don’t normally do on night flights. I can only put it down to illness! DH played computer games all night, and didn’t sleep, but I was out for the count for about 3½ hours!

We landed safely and on time, collected the luggage, caught the shuttle bus back to our car, and drove home, arriving there at about 10.30 a.m. on the Sunday. We couldn’t believe how cold the weather was!!

SUMMARY
This was another really great trip. We did unfortunately have to cope with more illness than usual this time, resulting in our not quite tackling the parks in our usual commando-style, and also not being able to enjoy the wonderful snacks and meals we so look forward to. DH usually gets a cold or cough, and I have the occasional slight upset tum, but this time we both really suffered. I looked up our symptoms on our return to the UK and it would appear that we both caught a dose of gastro-enteritis in our first week, plus I also got a chest infection in the second week. We tried not to let this affect us, but sadly and inevitably, it did. However, we did the best we could, and still had an amazing time!

We once again played the Swolphin game this year, I can’t believe how much fun we get from playing this, considering it is a made-up game! Basically, the first person to spot the Swan or Dolphin resort each day shouts, “SWOLPHIN!” as loud as they can, and that means they win the day’s challenge! Simple, yet satisfying.

Thoughts on Magic Bands
1) We hadn't been made aware of the fact that we were going to be issued with Magic Bands until we actually checked into Old Key West. Therefore, we were never given the option to choose our colour, and ended up with two grey ones, neither of which were personalised, so we had to make sure we kept them separate at all times as they were linked to each of our fingerprints.

2) Had I not taken my iPad with me, we would have found it really difficult to pick FP+ passes, as our USA cellphone is not a smartphone, and we were only able to book the passes on a daily basis in the parks, and on a 2-day basis at the concierge desk at our resort.

3) We HATED the fact that you can only pick FP+ for one of the major attractions in each park, e.g. you can have EITHER Soarin' or Test Track. but not both at any one time. This is fairly understandable, as you don't want all the big FPs going out quickly, but it is not easy picking between one or the other, if the major attractions are the only ones you wish to have fastpasses for.

4) The Haunted Mansion in the Studios now ONLY has a FP+ option, the regular FP machines no longer exist. Therefore, if you are not in possession of a Magic Band, you cannot have a FP for this attraction at all. That is surely discriminatory against anyone who is not staying onsite?

5) If they are getting rid of the ordinary FPs in the near future, how will that affect anyone staying offsite? Or day visitors? A lot of International travellers stay in villas, as this is a cheaper option for them, particularly if they have children. Does this mean that FPs become an exclusive option for those staying onsite? Again, this strikes me as being discriminatory. I understand that the 'best perks' should be kept for onsite guests, but we already get a lot of lovely perks by staying with them, and exclusive access to Fastpasses was never one that was part of the package.

6) I understand that Disney will not ship these bands overseas. If that remains the case, we are never going to have the option to personalise our bands with names and/or colours. I understand that posting the bands to the UK is prohibitively expensive, but booking a WDW trip from the UK is also extraordinarily expensive and I see no reason we should receive a second class service from Disney, as we don't pay a second class price. If we have to speak to a US operative we have to pay for international calls. I just accept that, we are booking from another country. Disney should also accept if they take bookings from other countries their postage and packing will be more expensive. They are providing us with a service we pay for, not a favour.

7) The addition of this new FP+ system has had a significant effect on queue wait times, for FP queues. We have NEVER before had to wait for up to 30 mins in a FP queue, yet this is exactly what happened on our last visit to Soarin' - we were there for 25 minutes! The FP queues now extend way out of the FP entrances to attractions, to the shock of most people trying to get into the attraction.

Summary : We did like the bands, and having the room key, dining plan, and park entrance all linked onto this one instrument was extremely useful. However, we were not happy with several aspects of the whole process, and will be very interested to see how this all evolves before we return in November 2014, as we accept that this is all still in the testing phase.


Thank you for taking the time to read this trip report, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Coming next : Three week vacation in November 2014, to celebrate 25 years of going to WDW!

[chezp]

I'm printing this off to read on our flight to Mallorca in the morning!

[ath334@aol.com]

Absolutely LOVED you report!!! Having been able to read the entire trip without interuption was great! It sounds like a great trip besides getting sick (I usually end up with an ear infection every time at WDW). Loved hearing about the parts in the UK, I've always wanted to go there. Thanks for writing this!

[taylan1]

I really loved your trip report! The whole magic band and fastpass+ is something we have yet to experience. I was very interested to read on your experience with this. I can see the pluses and the minuses with it and hope all the kinks are worked out by the time we go back. I can't wait to read about your trip next year or rather this year I enjoyed your writing style very much.

[Cam22]

Sounds like you all had a mainly wonderful time. My DH for many trips got a sore throat and head cold at some point. But he is always a trooper. I'm another who appreciated your information on the Magic Bands and FastPass+ as event though we went in October our resort had not been rolled out yet, so we have tried neither. But we will be experiencing both for the first time in May. for sharing your trip and experiences with us.

[chezp]

I've just finished it on the plane on the way home. It was so good to meet up with you guys - and we must do it again as it was such a fun night.

Mark loved your description of meeting Piglet and I was falling about laughing on the plane (quite a sight!) with your description of Ariel. My favourite bit though was the bit about Tokyo Dining. That was wasabi that Chris had - and I so knew what was coming when you said he ate the whole thing!

Thanks so much for sharing this - I really enjoyed reading it and it livened up the flights to and from Mallorca.

[Colexis Mom]

Thanks for sharing your trip with us! It sounds like you had a great time, despite the illnesses!

[Silvercat]

Quick update here - I have written a book of trip reports spanning 2006 to 2010. If you're interested, PM me for details. Thanks!

[Timon-HakunaMatata]

Just was a wonderful trip report! I am glad I am going to WDW in 7 days, because this is almost painful to read if you are not going soon as it makes you feel like you NEED to be there. NOW!! lol

I learned quite a bit too about some things I didn't know, and will be adding to our 'things to do' list for this trip. I have looked up the pictures of the mac and cheese burger to show to my daughters and they are ready to get one right now too!

Thank you for the wonderful TR!!

[Silvercat]

Thank you for the kind words! Funnily enough, I have just flicked through it again, and you are right - it does make one yearn to be there again! Luckily you will be there very soon, and we are following in 7 weeks time.

I used the Mickey measuring cups last weekend, as I made my first peanut butter cheesecake, and the recipe was American. Folk in the UK don't use the 'cup' as a form of measurement in recipes, so my Mickey ones made it so easy to follow the recipe and the cheesecake was delicious!

[lfredsbo]

Great trip!! . And glad you were able to easily use the Mickey measuring cups