Today will be my last blog written in Florida this trip as in a few hours I have to board a plane back to old Blighty – Gutted.
I’ll try and add more when I am home to finish off the trip but firstly let’s cover yesterday’s events. We slipped into our usual routine of staying around the villa for the morning. Having brunch, checking emails and writing blogs! We eventually set out about 1pm. It was very cold so we had lots of layers on. We took an initial stop off at Downtown Disney as we wanted to buy some gifs and a Tink hoodie (for me obviously!). With our annual passes we get 10% discount in the World of Disney store at Marketplace Downtown. We also wanted to but Candy Canes to take back to work but can you believe nowhere in Disney sold them? We were amazed as we thought this was such an American Christmas tradition. We managed to get everything else we wanted and headed off to Magic Kingdom. By the time we got there, parked and travelled in on the monorail it was about 3:30. Since it was a day for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas party (that we went to on Tuesday) the park would close at 7pm so we didn’t have long. It was long enough though as we have done quite a lot of Disney this week and could really use a holiday now to relax after all the activity!!
We decided to go on Philharmagic first (Paul’s all time fave ride), then Pirates (probably both our second fave ride). Both had little or no queues which was good. The park itself seemed reasonably full but nothing seemed to have big queueus. Even big rides like Splash Mountain were only showing 10 mins – mind you given how cold it was who would want to be on a water ride?! We decided to use the steam train to get from Frontier Land to Tomorrow Land to rest our feet a bit. In Tomorrow Land we did Carousel of Progress (my all time fave ride) and rode the TTA. As the TTA train picked up speed and the wind blew it felt mighty cold. We looked in a few shops and went in an arcade too. In this Arcade there was a machine like a photo booth where you could make a silly DVD of yourselves singing. Since it was only 5 bucks and we are big idiots we decided to go for it!! We chose a suitable festive song for you and hopefully Paul will post it here on the blog for you to see. There were little instructions, no words printed and it took until about halfway for us to look at the camera but it’s the thought that counts so Merry Christmas to you all – enjoy!
There’s also a few more Disney pics.
I commented on how few character’s I’d seen in the parks. If I was a child on my first trip I’d have been very disappointed. We did see Buzz Lightyear briefly and Chip and Dale the Chipmunks but that was about it.
This was pretty much all we wanted to do in terms of rides but we had wanted to try and get a shot of the castle with its icicle lighting. We hadn’t got the camera on Tuesday so couldn’t take any pics. It was after 6 and dark but sadly no lighting. We figured they must turn it on at 7 for the start of the evening do so we would miss it again. We left just before 6:30 and on the monorail looking back guess what the Castle looked like? Yep, you guessed it, lit up in its icicle lights. We must have missed it by 5 mins – that’s been a bit of a theme this trip – remember the ears?
Since there was crowds of people leaving the park at this time and a huge queue for the monorail to the parking lot Paul reckoned we should go and get the Resort Monorail. Sure enough when you got closer to it the sign said that the second stop was the parking lot. We had to wait a little longer as the normal parking lot service was definitely more frequent but I’m pretty sure we still got on before we would have if we had queued – so there’s a tip for you if the Monorail queue is down to the bottom of the ramp. The one we used was still full but we got back to the car and out of the Park for about 7ish.
We had already decided we would go and watch the fireworks from the Polynesian beach and had brought out extra layers for this so had a couple of hours to kill. We hadn’t visited a Wall Mart so far this trip so thought that would be a good thing to do. We went to a new one just off I4 near the Universal end of I Drive. We got our candy canes for work as well as a few other bits – coat hangers for Paul and some vanilla candles. It was busy in both Premium and Wall Mart with Friday night shoppers.
We came out of WallMart and I wasn’t really hungry, plus we didn’t have that much time for dinner and we both said we fancied a Starbucks coffee so took a quick detour to Premium where we knew there was a Starbucks. Whilst in Premium we wanted to go to Rack Room shoes as this is where Paul gets his trainers. We somehow missed it when we were there earlier in the week. Paul managed to get 2 pairs although we both thought the price had gone up. I got some wickedly soft furry slipper boots too – they’re definitely coming home!
It was now about 8:45 so we needed to get over to the Polynesian. On the way into Disney everyone was being stopped by Security. Don’t know why. We parked up about 9:15 and added our extra layers and put our gloves on. It was so NOT Florida weather! We got to the beach and there were plenty of beds to sit on – it was nowhere near as popular as when it’s warm, surprise, surprise. We sat on a bed and huddled together for warmth. We seemed to sit for ages and still no fireworks. I checked my watch and it was 9:35 so they were definitely late. We had no idea why as we would not be able to hear any park announcements from there. We waited and waited and began to talk about giving up. Eventually at 9:45 they started. They do look good from this vantage point as you get the 360 effect really well. Paul even managed to get some video footage on the new camera, which should be posted here for you too.
Having waited so long we got back to car freezing and blasted the heating up! We were now hungry so decided to go to Applebees. Being Friday they serve food right up to 1:30am. Paul had his usual dynamite shrimp and I had a chicken ceaser salad. We ended up getting home well after 11 again.
This morning we both had a bit of a lie in, put some washing on and are now having to think about packing 🙁 We’ll leave most stuff our here but have to get all the Christmas shopping back.
Like I said, I’ll try and finish off the trip with any more that we do after I get home. See you all real soon (to quote a famous mouse).