The “Whips, Dips, Hips and Chips” tour – day 3

[BONZO]

The “Whips, Dips, Hips and Chips” tour – day 3
Saturday 18th August

The Cast:
Me – Shaun 40 something ~ chief snorer
DW – Alison 40 something ~ chief planner
DD – Alexandra 14 ~ daredevil with attitude
DD – Laura 12 ~ coupon queen

Weather: Hot, sunny and quite humid. Very little cloud, blue sky all the way.

Alison and I woke up this morning at about 5.30 or so and I marched off for the morning caffeine fix and drinks for the girls. For some reason it took the girls a while to rouse themselves from their slumbers and we don’t actually get going until about 07.25!

It looks like all our years of commando training is steadily going down the pan much to further disgust from Alison – ho hum.

We drove to Crossroads for a Golden Coral buffet for this morning’s breakfast. It really is a much bigger and better selection of food on offer than Sizzlers but tardy coupon queen lets us down as we pay full whack at $30 for the privilege. Alexandra adores the cheeseburger in toast for breakfast here (total artery clogging junk IMHO – I mean, what’s wrong with the egg, sausage patties, bacon etc?)



MGM hat in all its glory

Today we’re off to MGM and the weather is very hot and humid so thank heavens the park is manageable in terms of size. Straight through the turnstiles and yes you’ve guessed it, Alison got asked to do a survey again! This time though they asked if it was the first park we visited this holiday and when we said no they weren’t interested in us! Alison barged past with a ‘humph’ and we set off on our mission to get FPs for Tower of Terror and ride Rock n Roller coaster. Being mindful that we’d not long had breakfast and didn’t want to see it again just yet we went over to the Backlot Tour for an easy option first.



Quiet time at RnR

On the way in it was my turn to be stopped by a CM but more for a general chat than anything else, I thought it might be some prize but no such luck. Shortly after we were stopped again by a British photographer, not sure how he picked us out…..nothing to do with my hankie on my head, grey socks and brown sandals! (Alison here…I don’t think so..I wouldn’t let you out dressed like that!)

As we arrived at the Backlot tour we had a few minutes to wait as it was going to be the first tour of the day and they were still setting up. We watched the first section (filming the bombing in the boat scene) then queued up for the actual ride. As we went forward to get in the tram some CMs were standing there and started handing out Dream Fastpasses to all of us! – Yipeee! Felt really chuffed about this. It was a lanyard with removable tabs down the sides for all the fastpass rides in MGM. It’s dated so you can’t use it on other days. We couldn’t believe it – how lucky to get this! Woo hoo! We carried on to do the tour the highlight of which is Catastrophe Canyon.




Dream fastpass

Feeling rather smug with Year of a Million dreams fastpasses around our necks we grabbed FPs for RnRC before heading back to ToT but Alexandra is still apprehensive about the ride so she just potters around the shops until we return. She’s never done this ride and we keep telling her it’s really not that bad!

I must say that ToT ranks as the best themed attraction in any of the parks in Florida IMHO as the attention to detail is really superb. Laura particularly loves it.



The leaning ToT! - LOL

We head over to do the Great Movie Ride while we wait for our FPs for RnRC to open up (we thought we’d save the Dream ones for later when the wait time was longer). Alison and the girls really like this ride but I think it’s a bit tired now.

Luckily our good old tour guide rescued us from the baddie gangster and so released us to go over to RnRC.

This really is such a good ride – such a rush as you launch! And we all like the pre show film too – it isn’t shown at the ride in DLP more’s the pity.

The girls were feeling the dollars burning a hole in my pocket so needed to do some shopping so we pottered around the shops a bit until we realised that our ADR time was rapidly approaching for Sci-Fi Dine In. We wandered over there all feeling the heat a bit. We only had to wait a couple of minutes for our table but even in that short time they turned several groups away saying they were taking reservations only, no walk ins.

We all like this restaurant although I struggle a bit with the dim lighting (Alison here…he needs to get glasses but keeps denying it!)

Laura had the kids pizza meal, Alexandra had a burger meal, Alison had a chicken fillet burger and I had the chicken Caesar salad (in a vague attempt to appear healthy!) We all had copious amounts of soda – refillable of course. Quite possibly Disney may reconsider their policy of unlimited drinks for one price after our family holiday this year!

The food was good although nothing special but the atmosphere is quite unique and we all enjoyed it here, watching all the tacky films while we ate. Strangely enough the waiters are no longer on roller-skates and no luminous Frisbee for the kids either.

We decided we’d head back to the hotel, have a swim and cool down and then come back later in the afternoon to take advantage of the dream fastpasses, and probably stay on for Fantasmic.

When we got back to the room we found more towel animals, so took the obligatory pictures and then we all flopped for half an hour or so.



Can you see what it is yet?

After we’d perked up a bit the girls asked if we could go to Blizzard Beach or Typhoon Lagoon instead and we then realised that it was extra magic hours at TL tonight – so it was open til 10pm! How cool – to swim/ride slides etc in the dark!

So we packed up our gear and headed over there arriving about 4.30pm I think. We bagged a couple of seats, dumped out stuff and headed for the big wave pool. We just love this – that big WHUMFF as the wave releases, followed by the screams from everyone in the pool! I remember when the girls hated this whole water park because they were so frightened of that noise (they were only 5 and 3 at the time though!)

After several goes of riding the big wave we headed off to find Crush n Gusher – what a cool ride but a bit on the painful side if you let your back side touch the slide! Ow!

There were quite a few queues all around the park but it wasn’t too bad, however it was much better at 7pm when all of the off site guests left the park. The queues went down significantly then. We just kept going round and round doing all the slides we liked (can’t remember what half of them are called now!)

At about 8.30 we were all really hungry so visited the various food outlets to get something to eat….but they were all shut! We couldn’t find one place open! (Later on, on the way out we saw the hot dog stand ‘surf doggies’ open!) We ended up going into the main shop and buying miniature pretzels and snack mix just so we wouldn’t fade away and expire before getting something to eat!

We headed back to the main pool and spent the last hour or so in there riding the waves - the sky was totally dark by now although the park was quite well lit by lights.

At 10pm we wrapped towels round ourselves and traipsed wearily out to the car under the galre of the floodlights (not that there were that many left in the car park by this time!). Back to the hotel (via the food court for drinks and snacks – carrot cake, croissant etc)

Finally crashed out about 11pm.

A really good day today – we’ll definitely do the EMH at Typhoon Lagoon again, something very atmospheric about being in the water park late at night.

[spenners]

Hi. Great report. Did you not use your fastpasses? I would love to go to Typhoon Lagoon at night, that must have been great

[BONZO]

Hi,

We'd grabbed ordinary FPs as went along so didn't have the need to use the Dream Fastpasses in the end.

[Guest]

Luck you getting the Dream Fast Passes. I had to laugh at this Quite possibly Disney may reconsider their policy of unlimited drinks for one price after our family holiday this year!

[Sue]

A good day there, I love MGM and ToT in particular.
Never thought of doing a water park at night - guess it makes sense in the hot months - remind me to take a packed lunch though lol!

[WTP]

Great report . I've all intentions of staying on-site in 2009 just to do TL in the dark... cool! Guess your dreams fast passes are stashed away as valuable souviners now Thanks for sharing and can't wait for the next one...

[ely3857]

WOW! TL Sounds amazing in the dark!



Jodie

[TinkTatoo]

Sounds like a great day and I love the idea of a waterpark after dark

[Guest]

Would love to visit TL at night

[Guest]

Really enjoying the reports - keep 'em coming!

Diane x