Category Archives: WDW – August 2014

Last Disney Day :(

With a 2.25pm Magical Express waiting to take us to the airport, we didn’t have a whole lot of time left for park action (although I think everyone else was feeling a bit Disney’d out), so we spent our morning enjoying one final character breakfast at Ohana, in Disney’s Polynesian Resort. The breakfast was served family-style, where a selection of food was brought to the table and we all helped ourselves, while we got visited from Mickey and Pluto, as well as Lilo and Stitch, and drank way too much ‘Stitch juice’ (yum!).

We then headed down to the dock and took the boat across to the Magic Kingdom for a final trip down Main Street USA, last minute souvenir shopping, and a last viewing of the Move it, Shake it Street Party, before making our way to the buses for the last time 😦

See ya real soon Disney World!

°o°

Leave a comment

Day 13: Last Park Day :(

So this will be my last post from the happiest place on Earth 😦

Looking at the positive side, from here this blog will blossom into a beautiful site of Disney World planning, tips and more!

It did mean that today was my last day in the Magic Kingdom, my home away from home. So today we had a chilled day of meeting characters, getting autographs, snapping pics etc, as well as having our last few trips on our favourite rides.

It also meant last Festival of Fantasy for me, a parade I would watch every day if could. We stood on the other side of the road this time, purely for Flynn Rider (he winked at me omg), and while I said I wouldn’t take as many photos, I took more..

SONY DSC

We had dinner at Chef Mickey’s before heading back into the park for a last Celebrate the Magic and Wishes *sobs* and now as a family we have the phenomenal task of attempting to pack all our suitcases to include all our fabulous Disney purchases!

Tomorrow we’re having a final character breakfast at Ohana with Lilo and Stitch before catching the Magical Express to the airport for an exciting (not) 8 hour overnight flight back home..

Catch you on the other side dreamers!

Leave a comment

Days 11 and 12: Well, all over the place really..

Yesterday was another Universal day, mainly for the minions, so kept short and sweet and wrapped up with dinner at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney. I personally didn’t eat but that’s a whole other story..

After a much needed lie-in, we started the day with a trip into Epcot. While we’d covered all the rides we wanted to do, I was seriously lacking in the photo department and wanted to have a proper look round the World Showcase during the daylight hours, so had some quality photo-snapping time with my dad, while Mum browsed Innoventions; that place is a magnet to science teachers!

SONY DSC

Also dropped into the Art of Disney store there and treated myself to a total beauty of a canvas: a print of a stunning painting of a Tangled, gah!

We then monorailled from Epcot into the Magic Kingdom (via the transportation center as there’s no direct line) to meet up with the rest of the group for lunch at Be Our Guest, but unfortunately we’d left it too late to chance a walk-in and they were at full capacity 😦

SONY DSC

After another lunch at Pinocchio’s Village Haus, we headed across to Tomorrowland for a Space Mountain. The previous few times we’d done it we were lucky enough to have short wait times without a Fastpass, but the standby queue time had hit 85 minutes when we arrived, so we were very grateful that this time we did! Shooting past a queue of slightly disgruntled people, we boarded the ride on the opposite track to the regular riders, and to our surprise had a totally different ride experience.. The right side track was much faster, but felt longer, and had more wild twists and turns, it was great!

We also rode the Liberty Belle around Frontierland and caught a bit of Dreams Come True and the Move it, Shake it Dance Party Parade before heading out of the Magic Kingdom.

SONY DSC

Oh, and fall/autumn has begun in Main Street!

SONY DSC

So beautiful °o°

Leave a comment

Days 9 and 10: Typhoon Lagoon and Festival of Fantasy

Another two in one blog.

Yesterday started with cake, wahey! On my adventures the other night, I’d made a trip to the Boardwalk Bakery and placed an order for a cake for a certain special occasion..

SONY DSC

So following cake for breakfast, we headed over to Typhoon Lagoon, where we spent the day swimming with sharks, catching some waves and generally splashing around! We had dinner at T-Rex in Downtown Disney; an absolutely fab meal in an awesome location where the Jurassic era is brought to life!

We also headed across to the Magic Kingdom for the Main Street Electrical Parade, Celebrate the Magic and Wishes.

Today we had a lazy morning before heading over to the Magic Kingdom in time to camp out for the Festival of Fantasy Parade, which we’d missed due to rain before.

Wow, wow, wow! Well worth sitting out in scorching heat for 30 mins!

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

°o°

Leave a comment

Day 8: One Day, Two Parks

Today we had a mission: get on the Seven Dwarves Mine Train.

The Magic Kingdom had an early magic hour, so we got into the park at about 8.30am and marched straight over, expecting to find a relatively short queue.. We found a queue working all the way round the outside of the ride, as far as Ariel’s Grotto. Luckily (sort of), however, the queue was this length due to the fact the ride wasn’t open yet, and therefore no one was in the main queue area, so once the ride opened we flowed fairly quickly. Once inside, the queue was fairly entertaining, with plenty of interactive activities and fabulous surroundings. The ride itself was a nice combination of rollercoaster (think Big Thunder Mountain), and classic ride along (Winnie the Pooh style) inside the mines, and the whole time we spent at the ride was about an hour; queuing and the ride itself.

SONY DSC

Mission completed, we had a wander around Main Street USA, stopping for a treat in the confectionery shop and grabbing a drink from the Main Street Bakery, and even managed to squeeze in seeing the Move It, Shake It Street Party before hopping on a bus to the next park..

SONY DSC

Hollywood Studios afternoon!

We had all our Fastpasses for the day booked for the studios, as well as dinner, and got into the park just in time for the first: Indiana Jones stunt show. Personally I enjoyed this a lot more than Lights, Camera, Motion! as it was more personal; volunteers were picked out of the audience, the cast of the show explained how stunts are shot for real movies etc. We headed straight from there to Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage, our second Fastpass. Another great production, it summarised the film (one of my favourites!) into a short and sweet 30 minute show while keeping all the key aspects of the story, and most importantly: the songs!

SONY DSC

Onto dinner: 50’s Prime Time Cafe!

The restaurant was a great atmosphere, and we had a fabulously funny waitress, Mary Ann, who made sure we enjoyed our meals as well as maintaining our manners – no elbows on the table, pleases and thank yous etc. At this point in our trip, a major flaw in the dining in Disney World is really emerging: absolutely no variety in kids meal choices. Our poor youngest two of the group are being subjected daily to three options in almost every restaurant – mac and cheese, chicken nuggets and burger/hotdog/pizza with either fruit salad, apple slices or ice cream for dessert.

With everything at the park completed, we’re drawing a line under Hollywood Studios for the rest of our trip; its not quite as kid friendly and there’s nothing else we’d go back for now.

°o°

Leave a comment

Day 7: A Not Entirely Disney Day

Today we went to Universal Studios, cue the booing and hissing of die hard Disney World fans..

But I like to think anyone who has the good taste to love Disney can appreciate the pure brilliance of Harry Potter, and enjoy the truly marvellous experience of the Harry Potter worlds that have been created there. We were incredibly lucky to get all of it done in one day, only possible as we got into the park as it opened so didn’t get stuck in a minimum hour wait for the castle, but we did have to queue for just over 2 hours for the new Gringotts Bank ride, mainly due to it breaking down several times during our wait!

The heat of the day got too much after we’d finished in the magical world, so we headed back to the hotel, via Walmart, so everyone could chill out by the pool for a bit.

Except me. I chose to use this down time to make a solo excursion for some intense exploring/research. I bused from our resort to Epcot, from the park itself cut across to the Boardwalk by the International Gateway, then once I was done scouting that out, hopped onto another bus to Downtown Disney, wandered there for a bit and caught another bus back to the resort: about a 2.5 hour round trip, and I’ll be sharing some of my findings in later posts 🙂

1 Comment

Days 5 and 6: Hollywood Studios, Blizzard Beach and Spirit of Aloha

Beginning to realise there just isn’t quite as much time for blogging while I’m out here, given the amount of sleep I need anyway!

But still, I can squeeze a few days together 🙂

So yesterday we hit up Hollywood Studios for a real scorcher of a day! When we got into the park we were greeted by the glorious Olaf Distribution Center, where Olaf fans were being handed out, and we would not have survived without them!

SONY DSC

The beauty of this park is while there are fewer rides, there are more indoor, air conditioned activities like Muppet Vision 3D, Star Tours etc, so we saved those for the middle of the day heat.

We grabbed early lunch at Pizza Planet, an absolute must-do for Toy Story fans, and had bookings for an early dinner at the Sci-Fi Dine In Theater (full reviews to come), so we really didn’t go hungry..

SONY DSC

We also encountered the longest ride queue we’ve had so far: Rock’n’Roller Coaster, 75 minutes, and at over an hour and a half, we weren’t going to attempt Toy Story Midway Mania, so we’ll save that for another day. Other activities included The Tower of Terror and Voyage of the Little Mermaid, and the evening was wrapped up with Fantasmic, which we would have never got into without a Fastpass, it was phenomenally busy.

Today we had a lazy Blizzard Beach day; the girls could just swim all day and be perfectly content, but we didn’t need more than a few hours before we’d done most things and the heat had got to us, but that was fine because we had a booking for the 5.15pm Spirit of Aloha Dinner show at the Polynesian Resort.

SONY DSC

Absolutely cannot deny the service and the food were fantastic! The show itself left a little to be desired; it could have easily just been song and dance performances, but it had been scripted into a story of a group of dancers throwing a party (I’m not even entirely sure what the story was if I’m honest), but overall it was a great meal and the Samoan fire dancer really stole the show, although my aunt and uncle did give him a run for his money!

SONY DSC

°o°

Leave a comment

Day 4: Animal Kingdom, and a little Downtown Disney

Finally getting adjusted to the time difference, wahey!

Today we tripped it over to the Animal Kingdom first thing to take advantage of Extra Magic hours, so we got into the park around 8.30 before it opened to the public at 9am. This was perfect timing as it meant we could dash over to Expedition Everest, which we hadn’t managed to get a Fastpass for, and queued for less than 5 minutes as the park was almost empty! So empty in fact, we rode it twice a) cos we knew it’d be a long wait if we came back later, and b) because it was awesome!

By the end of our second go it was just coming up 9 so we shot across to the Kali River Rapids just as it opened and managed to sneak another incredibly lucky short wait. The ride comes with the warning ‘You will get wet, you may get soaked!’ and well, soaked is what we got..

DSC01686

Like, literally wringing out clothes sort of soaked.

We then wandered across to Africa and completed the Pangani trail before out Kilimanjaro Safari Fastpass then after a quick shopping break got in line for The Festival of the Lion King performance. This 30 minute tribute to the Lion King was a great production (full review to follow) involving acrobats, floats and live singers.

Lunch was at Tusker House (table service), another Advanced Dining Reservation, which we’d originally booked just based on a recommendation from a friend of the great food, but it actually turned out to be a character meal as well, so we dined with Mickey, Donald, Daisy and Goofy, all kitted out in their safari gear! Food lived up to its reputation, and the atmosphere was great.

SONY DSC

Lunch was followed by another show, this time Finding Nemo, the Musical. Similar to the traditional Lion King Musical, the show was done in large scale puppetry, with live singers, and was an excellent condensed (40 minutes) version of the film. The puppets themselves were incredible, but the music lacked the classic Disney catchiness.

From there we finished up our day in Dinoland, and left the park surprisingly early with everything done by around 4/5pm, so we caught a bus across to Downtown Disney for a little look around (NB. No buses ran directly from Animal Kingdom to Downtown Disney, so we had to bus over to the Animal Kingdom Lodge Resort and switch buses there).

First stop, obviously was World of Disney, the largest Disney store in the world, although it didn’t seem overwhelmingly large. Due to the offer we had when we booked our trip, we went to collect out $200 gift cards from the information desk inside, which was a bit of a faff but got there in the end. Our group then split in two for the shopping bit as 9 is too large a group for a smooth shopping experience. Our group got a taxi across to Walmart as well for some essentials before we all re-convened at the resort pool for dinner by the poolside with Tarzan on the big screen, and a quick swim!

Tomorrow we’ll be heading to the fourth and final park, Hollywood Studios!

°o°

Leave a comment

Day 3: Epcot

What makes a good morning? Well today it was a lie in and a swim in the hotel pool 🙂
One Mickey shaped Rice Krispie treat later and we jumped on the bus to Epcot and were soon greeted by the familiar sight of Spaceship Earth.
Gonna keep this one short and sweet as it’s been a long day, and I’ll stick photos in later on, but here are the main points:
1. Soarin’ totally lives up to the hype. We were lucky enough to get an early fast pass, and Disney well and truly put in a phenomenal effort to make it a true experience for all senses.
2. Akershus Royal Banquet Hall was a booking well worth making – 5 princesses, 3 course meal, 1 table service credit
3. Great lunch at Seasons in The Land
4. Bella got to ask a question in Turtle Talk with Crush.
5. Illuminations was a perfect end to the night 🙂

Final Fitbit stats:
Steps: 16388
Distance: 6.86 miles
Calories burnt: 2197

Full posts about various activities will go up once I have some time, but for now, goodnight dreamers!

Leave a comment

Day 2: Magic Kingdom

Today was the day I’d planned to be totally magical; for a first day in Disney World you’d want nothing less, and I was going to make sure of it.

Although it may seem crazy over-organised, we booked our first day breakfast almost 6 months in advance to ensure we got it: Crystal Palace, 8.15am. The beauty of this is that the park doesn’t actually open until 9am, and therefore our reservation granted us early access to the Magic Kingdom, so we could make the first turn onto Main Street and see this..

SONY DSC

Main Street leading up to the castle, almost entirely uninterrupted.

Well worth and early morning (left our resort on the 7am bus to get to the park in plenty of time).

Breakfast was fab, and we were joined by Winnie the Pooh and his friends who visited and signed our autograph books before posing for numerous photos in varying poses.

photo 4

Tummies (and bags) full of food (buffets are great), we headed into the park.

I won’t list all the rides we went on, cos quite honestly we didn’t get a chance to do them all in the one day, especially not with Snow White’s Mine Train and Peter Pan’s Magic Flight wait times never dropping below and hour (we’ll Fastpass them on our next day in MK), but we were incredibly lucky with queue lengths, not waiting more than 30 minutes for any ride.

SONY DSC

In between rides we caught a few shows, and set up camp on Main Street for the Festival of Fantasy Parade, only for it to be cancelled last minute due to the threat of rain, which was a bit of a disappointment 😦 but we made up for it with snacks!

photo 3

If I’m honest, I was a little let down by the Main Street Bakery, expecting it to be what it says on the label, but really it was just a glorified Starbucks, which I’m really not a fan of, but I managed to pick an Olaf Cake Pop up from a few shops down.

More rides, more time passing, girls are getting more and more tired..

By 9pm, the Main Street Electrical Parade, Liv was unconscious and Soph not far behind, so despite my hopes of them staying for the whole parade and the following fireworks, they headed back to the hotel for the night.

(I’ve spent all day alternating between my camera and my phone for photos, and as my phone takes better night time photos, I’ll sort those out another time to fully glorify the beauty of the evening)

After the parade ended, we simply turned to face the castle and plonked ourselves on the floor, and I think I’m going to struggle to describe the beauty and true magic of what followed..

Celebrate the Magic was everything and more. Don’t believe me? See it for yourself.

The show consisted of a series of projections, set right onto the castle itself, and wow. Just wow. It had me tearing up, mouth gaping open, eyes fixed on the beauty before me, and totally speechless afterwards.

It was followed by the Wishes fireworks show, but unfortunately we were sat a little too close to the castle to fully appreciate it as the fireworks are mainly fired behind it, but it was still beautiful, and a man sat a few rows in front even proposed right as the show was going; totally beautiful.

Drained, we called it a night after that spectacular end to a magical first day of our trip.

Final stats:

Steps: 18159

Distance: 7.58 miles

Calories burnt: 2365

Stats provided by my Fitbit Zip

°o°

Leave a comment

Day 1: A Very Long Day

I am not a morning person, not in a million years. For Disney, however, I can make an exception.

Alarm goes off 5.15am GMT, rush around doing the last of the packing and sorting the house before piling into the car for the 2.5 hour car ride to the airport.

Lots of waiting in queues and sitting around before boarding our plane at about 10.30ish for an 11.15 departure.

We felt pretty excited to be travelling Virgin Airways from previous experience well in the past, but man were they a let down! While the entertainment system was fairly decent and the films weren’t awful, the food was. I know plane food isn’t highly rated but this was a real poor effort..

With the majority of passengers being families travelling to Disney, you’d expect kid friendly meals, right? Nope. Beef chilli, chicken in some form of a sauce with liquid mash potato, or mushroom pasta as a veggie option. Our girls aren’t fussy, but the poor things hardly touched it.

But who cares?! Its Disney time!

Once past security, baggage claim etc, we simply skipped on down to the Magical Express bus terminal at the airport, hopped onto a bus, and about 25 minutes later arrived at our home for the next two weeks: the Caribbean Beach Resort!

For a big group of us, with some complex arrangements, the girl who checked us in was lovely; explaining everything clearly without patronising, got us celebration buttons and even arranged for our rooms to be moved closer to each others before bring out our Magic Bands..

SONY DSC

From there we got dropped to our rooms, did some settling in and exploring before The Disney Fairy visited to deliver goodie bags for everyone (see here), and as our bodies were set to around 10/11pm GMT, while it was only 5/6pm EST, went to grab some noms at the resort food court and test out our dining plan!

Wow. Quick service meals are huge.

For one QS credit, I got:

IMG_1798-0.JPG

8 large chicken nuggets and a decent portion of fries, a bottle of Fanta and a Monkey Cupcake, as well as filling up my refillable resort mug!

By this point the girls were itching for a swim, so after a quick twilight swim (the resort is gorgeous!) we called it an early night: 8.30 EST, 1.30 GMT and body clock, bringing us to the end of our 20 hour day!

To top it off, while I’ve been writing this I’ve been darting in and out of my room because you can see the fireworks from just over the pool 🙂

Tomorrow we hit the parks hard, starting with the Magic Kingdom! °o°

Leave a comment