Today is a cloudy one but still very warm although there is a chance of rain later into this evening.
We have changed our itinerary a little as the good weather is all at the beginning of the week so we have shuffled all our park visits over the next couple of days to make the most of the sunshine. Yesterday we sat around the pool until after lunch. We were heading to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and as we would stay for Fantasmic at 8pm we didn’t want to get there too early. It was warm and sunny and really nice out back. The buzzards were circling and I swear I hear the wild boars from the swamp area.
We eventually left the house about half past 1 and decided we would go to Animal Kingdom first to go and see the Festival of the Lion King show. It has to be one of the best shows with the tumble monkeys, the fire dancer, the acrobats and not forgetting Timon and Pumba!! We got seats in the Lion section at the back but had a really good view. We caught the 2:30 show so came out about 3pm. We left Animal Kingdom straight away and went for a quick food stop at McDonald’s. Paul is quite taken with the third pounders they do out here!
We got into MGM, sorry the Hollywood Studios (it will always be MGM to us) at just after 4pm. There was a HSM show just about to start so we waited to see the start of that. We couldn’t stay for it all as we wanted to go into the 5pm American Idol Experience. The 3 contestants we saw were Morgan, a 15 year old girl who looked about 30!!!, Angela, a 35 year old woman who looked about 45!!!! and Nick an 18 year old who actually looked his age. Nick was part of a chior group who had been performing at the Epcot carol evening and had his entire choir and their families in the audience. He was also from Pennsylvania and the entire state seem to be in Florida at the moment so he had way more audience support that the others. Since the winner is voted by the audience it was no surprise that Nick won a place in the daily final. The English judge playing the Simon Cowell role was as insulting as ever telling the 15 year old who stumbled during her performance that he hoped she got a pitch pipe for Christmas! Mind you, she was pitchy (to quote Randy Jackson).
After Idol we made our way towards the Osborne Family spectacle of lights. We saw this last year and thought it was fab. We had coffee and a cookie on the way as the lights get switched on at 6pm. Just before the big switch on it started snowing all down the street (not real snow of course as this is Florida and it was 20 degrees!!). At 6pm all 10 million lights went on. Apparently many of the items such as the 70ft tree and the huge carousel of angels are actually from the Osbornes house (a reminder for anyone who doesn’t remember from last year this is nothing to do with Sharon and Ozzy but was a family from Arkansas who decorated their house each year). The guy even bought the 2 houses either side if his so he could decorate with even more lights (money no object for him we can only assume!). There was a sign up saying that there were 36 hidden Mickeys in the lights. This is one of the first times we’ve seen Disney officially acknowledge the hidden Mickeys. We wandered through hidden Mickey spotting and counted about 21 – not bad for a first pass. Paul managed to get some photos of the lights and hopefully we can post some pics here soon.
We then wandered out of the street of lights and headed over to the great movie ride. It was the usual Gangster routine but we still love the movie montage at the end – I could watch that over and over. We came out of the ride and decided to head straight up to the Fantasmic auditorium as it often gets full an hour before the show. It was about 7:15 and as we headed up the ramp after the Tower of Terror we hit a queue of people. There had been an earlier show as there are now 2 to help ease the crowds and it seemed as though that was still being emptied out. We queued for about 20 mins or so and eventually got seats quite near the entrance (which we want for a quick get away at the end). By the time we had sat down the announcement came on that the show was in 15 mins. The view we had was really good and the evening temperature was still at about 18 degrees so we didn’t need anything more than our hoodies.
We managed to get a really good get away after the show and headed straight for the exit. We had to wait on the tram for a couple of minutes but all in all exited in record time. We got in the car and came straight home getting in around 9pm. We watched Harry Hill on ITV player as there was nothing on TV here!
We’re off to Epcot now…..