Probably the most boring trip report in the world... ever. Part 14 Magic Kingdom

[Dizzy]

Part 14 – Magic Kingdom

CAST
Shannon - 8 - I want to be a princess
Dale - 15 - I'm not that bothered about going
Martin (DH) - 40 - Things don’t need planning they just happen
Sarah (ME) - 38 - Chief organizer and peacemaker

We all woke up really early this morning, it was our last full day and we were determined to make the most of it. While I waited for everybody else to get ready I threw as much as I could into the cases ……OMG, I couldn’t shut them and we still had more to pack. Oh well, I thought, worry about that later…we had a date with a cute little mouse at 8am.
We found the Contemporary Resort easier than I thought we would, told the security guard at the car park entrance that Mickey was expecting us, got our parking slip and had parked by 7.30. We decided to advantage of the early arrival and have a look round the hotel. We walked round the ground floor and then took the escalator up a floor. We saw Chef Mickey’s straight ahead of us but as we were still too early we did a bit of window shopping while we waited, shame the shops were still shut. The kids thought it was great seeing the monorail coming through the hotel.


At 7.58 we arrived at Chef Mickey’s, checked in with the hostess and were ushered forwards to have our photo taken. We then had to go back and wait to be called through. Goofy was greeting everybody and Shannon had a good 5 minutes talking to him and having hugs.



Then we heard “M…..I….C…K…E…Y…….M…O…U…S…E, Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse”, everybody in the restaurant was waving napkins round their heads and Mickey and gang were dancing around the room. Poor Shannon was having a really tough time stopping herself running in. We were waiting 25 minutes for a table which was made worse by the fact that a lot of other families who came afterwards were called through. This was my only complaint about Chef Mickey’s though. The restaurant was bright and cheerful, the staff were lovely and the food excellent. Plenty of fresh fruit, yogurt, cereals, scrambled eggs, corned beef hash, frittata, cheese potatoes, bacon, sausage, French toast, etc. Of course when the kids saw the Sundae bar they thought they would be able to have ice cream as well. Thank goodness it was shut, muffins, etc for breakfast is bad enough, ice cream for breakfast would be disgusting.
We were shown to our table and served drinks. Shannon didn’t want to go and get anything to eat in case she missed anybody. Finally after 5 minutes of persuasion from Martin and see what Dale had on his plate when he came back, off she went. Wouldn’t you know it, 2 minutes after she went who should come along but Chip. Shannon had wanted to see Chip and Dale so much but every time we saw them in the parks I had told her we didn’t need to queue because she’d see them at this breakfast and now she was going to miss Chip..Oh no! I got a photo of Chip and MY Dale but short of tying him to the table there wasn’t a lot else I could do.


I did try talking to him but I’m sure he was just nodding his head out of politeness, I can’t imagine the characters can actually hear too much through the costumes.
Shannon’s face fell as she hurried back to her place with her food and saw that Chip had moved on. Phew, the relief, Chip saw her and came back to make her day. We were then visited by Dale before we all finally got to wave our napkins in the air and sing. We then spent a few minutes each with Mickey and Minnie, trying to eat as much as we could between visits. We got to do the napkin twirling and singing again before we left and I did notice that Martin seemed to be enjoying it more than some of the kids.
We may have managed to find the resort easily enough but it wasn’t so easy to find our way back to the Magic Kingdom car park. We couldn’t find our way and ended up having to go back to the Contemporary and asking the nice security guard for directions.
We parked, caught the tram and then the ferry across to the entrance and got into the park for about 10am. Just inside the entrance Shannon saw Dopey who she loves (OK then, so do I) so we had to join the queue for a cuddle, photo and autograph then we spotted Robin Hood near the City Hall and had to go through it all again.

We saw Aladdin outside Tony’s Town Square Restaurant, Shannon had wanted to meet him but after queuing for so long with the sun beating down on us to meet Dopey and Robin Hood she didn’t want to wait, so we just took a photo of him and walked down Main Street in the shade.
As we started from the left hand side of the park on our previous visit we turned right this time as we reached the Central Hub. We grabbed FP’s for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin and joined the queue for Stitch’s Great Escape. We only had a ten minute wait, Shannon and Dale thought the scented burp and the spitting was hilarious, I on the other hand didn’t. Maybe I’m just getting old. We headed for Space Mountain next. I had been on the Space Mountain in Euro Disney 7 years ago and loved it. Dale was looking forwards to going on it as he wasn’t big enough when we went to Euro Disney. I was puzzled and Shannon was over the moon that she was tall enough to ride even though Dale had been taller than her when we went to Paris. There was no queue, we just walked straight on. Shannon and Dale loved the ride but I was so disappointed. If you haven’t yet experienced this ride but have had the pleasure of enjoying the one in Euro Disney don’t get your hopes up. They are very different rides and this one IMO is nowhere near as good. Maybe if I hadn’t have been on the one in Paris I would have enjoyed it more with nothing to compare it to.
It was time for our PS at Buzz Lightyear so we backtracked, topping our water bottles up on the way. I rode with Shannon and had a great time spinning the cruiser around. Needless to say my score was pathetic….beaten by an 8 year old again, but I had loads of fun. Martin had been watching the Tomorrowland Transit Authority cars going round and finally decided it was a ride he might be brave enough to attempt. So he took the kids on it while I sat down and watched a marching band.
We walked towards Tomorrowland Indy Speedway, this looked great but unfortunately there was a 30 min wait. We did say we’d go back to it..lol…something else we didn’t get to go on.
We carried on to Mickey’s Toontown Fair and spent a while looking round Mickey and Minnie’s houses. Three of us thought these were great and enjoyed it, Dale on the other hand really didn’t like it – definitely ‘not cool’, but he had at least come round to having his photo taken with some of the characters on the holiday so I couldn’t complain too much. The funny thing was thought that he insisted he be the one to take Shannon on The Barnstormer at Goofy’s Wiseacre Farm – obviously that’s not too ‘uncool’. Shannon played in Donald’s Boat for a few minutes while we sat down with some cool drinks and snacks. We decided to go into the Toontown Hall of Fame Tent and see which of the characters were there. The queues here were massive but luckily the characters were one’s that we had already met so we decided to do some shopping instead. We bought some jumbo pencils, a Minnie and Daisy friends photo clip frame for a friend and a Tinkerbell one for me, a Princess Club t-shirt for Shannon and, I admit it, I also got the new Kingdom Hearts game for the game boy (shame it meant I would have to pinch Martin’s new DS on the way home to play on it. Lol). We told the CM that we would pick our things up at the entrance later on and left Toontown going into Fantasyland. Shannon was disappointed to see that Dumbo the Flying Elephant was closed but soon cheered up when I told her we would go and see if there were any FP’s left for The Haunted Mansion. Luckily there were, I say luckily because it was already early afternoon and the last time we went to Magic Kingdom the FP’s for this ride had all gone by the same time and the queue was huge. We decided to walk back to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. There was a 30 min wait and to be honest if it hadn’t been for Shannon’s pleading we would have given it a miss. We stood queuing for what I am sure was longer than 30 mins in the sweltering heat, a little girl in front of us was sick, poor little thing, narrowly missing Shannon’s shoes – I really don’t know how people get anything done if they visit in the summer months. When we finally did get on I told the kids what I had read in the Dibb’s secrets section about being able to smell the honey. They said they could smell it but I couldn’t….maybe after that queue the ‘magic’ just wasn’t working on me. We would have liked to watch Mickey’s Philharmagic again but the queue was too long and we couldn’t get another FP so we had a look round the shops instead. I love Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe and could have spent a fortune. It was then time for our FP at the Haunted Mansion. This was great fun, I thought Shannon might be a bit scared but she thought it was hilarious when she saw the ‘extra passenger’ in our car.
When we got off we caught the last part of the parade and decided to go to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride to see if we could finally get to meet Peter Pan. We were disappointed to only find Wendy there, this was the third or fourth time we had been back over our couple of days in the park and we had met Smee, Capt. Hook and now Wendy but still no Pan. Shannon had a photo took and got an autograph. We then realized that we hadn’t done Peter Pan’s Flight so we headed back to Fantasyland. There was a queue but we managed to get FP’s with a return time of 5.30-6.30pm. This was perfect because it meant we could return after our PS at Crystal Palace. We wandered back to the Central Hub just as the characters were coming out. Shannon hadn’t seen Daisy Duck yet so she was over the moon to see her and we were among the first in the queue for the obligatory photo and autograph. We then met Rafiki and Timon and made our way to Crystal Palace. We arrived about 15 minutes early so we checked in and sat outside in the shade to wait. Shannon amused herself picking up shiny, little Mickey heads (confetti) up off of the floor - Oh the shame of it, my poor deprived child. So hard done by that her mother couldn’t buy her a box. Lol. Her excuse was that we could use it for our scrapbook. This had become a running joke throughout the holiday with Dale asking me all the time if I was ‘sure I didn’t need this or that bit of rubbish for the scrapbook’.
We were shown to a table next to the window and our drinks order was taken. Our server showed us where the food was (as if we didn’t know, we could just have followed our noses, it smelled delicious…good enough to eat) and told us to help ourselves.
Martin went straight for the Carvery and came back with his plate piled high (not for the last time that afternoon). I absolutely loved the Salmon, Peel and Eat Shrimps, Seafood Caesar Salad……….Oohhh I could go on forever. We enjoyed the food here more than anything else we had in the Disney restaurants and that is an achievement. Dale got a mixture of food from the kids and adults buffet. Shannon got loads and ate next to nothing, a real waste. The desserts were lovely and I had the Cherry Cobbler. I felt awful when the server came round and took Shannon’s food away and felt just as bad when she brought us the bill and told us she hadn’t charged us for Shannon as she had hardly eaten anything. Oh well, I suppose they can afford it.
Pooh Bear, Eeyore, Piglet and Tigger spent plenty of time with the kids and got all of the kids up twice while we were there to dance around the restaurant. The kids had a great time and so did we.

After we had eaten our fill we made our way back to Peter Pan’s Flight. I had really enjoyed this in Euro Disney as well so I was quite prepared to be let down again but I wasn’t. This is a lovely ride. We walked back up to Main Street and grabbed some drinks and places on the kerb ready for Spectromagic. This is just as awesome second time round. I nearly cried as Shannon was crying out “Mickey/Belle/ etc. It’s me Shannon, I’m not going to see you again because I’m going home tomorrow”. As soon as the parade finished she burst into tears.
I finally got to watch Wishes without the camcorder in front of my face and it wasn’t just Shannon that was crying anymore. Afterwards we sat on a bench for ages just looking at the Castle all lit up and Martin put his arm around me and said “Don’t worry, we’ll be back”. We really didn’t want to leave but eventually started making our way up Main Street walking through he shops. I bought Martin a little surprise (a pair of satin Stars ‘n’ Stripes boxer shorts) and a MM Baseball for Dale. I then bought Shannon some new earrings, a Tinkerbell ‘Warning Mood Subject To Change Without Warning’ t-shirt for our oldest DD (so perfect) and some mugs (one of which Shannon wanted for her teacher).
We picked up the rest of our shopping and very sadly caught the ferry and returned to our car.
Martin dropped Shannon and myself off back at the hotel and took Dale with him to Walmart to buy a new case to get everything into. I took Shannon for Cocoa in the lobby for one last time and then took her to our room to watch cartoons in bed while I checked we had everything together. Dale and Martin arrived back with the case and I packed as much as I could while they polished off what was left in the fridge before we went to bed.

[AlisonB]

That last day is just sooooo sad isn't it! I had a lump in my throat when I read about Shannon crying!

[highlander447]

What a lovely day thanks for sharing

[janeywaney]

Oh Sarah what a lovely report, such a shame they are coming to an end. I have loved reading them. At least you have got a countdown ready for next year! Lovely photo's of the kids by the way.
Jane

[Guest]

Last day What a lovely report thank you for sharing.


Jools

[Dizzy]

Thanks everybody, I have now nearly finished my last report which is nearly as sad as the end of the holiday itself. What am I going to do with myself it has been so much fun reliving the holiday.

Sarah