theDIBB - ... and Then There Were 3 -Day 13- Pool Time, O‘Charleys & Epcot

This morning none of us were up before 8am. The plan was for a lazy morning and then a return to Epcot later this afternoon to end the final night of the holiday watching illuminations.

The weather today was bright and sunny although not much warmer than yesterday.

DD was keen for a last swim and we wanted to encourage her new found confidence in the water so when we were all ready we headed down to the hotel pool.

We all had fun playing in the water for an hour or so. The water temperature was lovely but it was a bit chilly when you got out!

For most of the time we had the pool to ourselves.

When we'd had enough we braved the air temperature and returned to the room where I started a bit of packing whilst DD & DH got dressed and showered.

Once we were all ready we went for a last wander round the shops on I-Drive, stopping at Walgreens and picking up some sweets to take back for DD's school friends and the grandchildren.

We long since stopped bringing back tourist tatt for the older grandchildren (aged 11, 12 & 14). They would much rather have the money to spend. They'll get a big bag of M&Ms each + cash to the equivalent of what we've spent on the little one!

For dinner today we decided to try somewhere different. Due to the general apathy around food I still had a lot of unused vouchers and discounts codes, we looked at a few online menus before settling on O'Charleys where I had a $25 restaurant.com voucher to use that I'd bought for $5.

This was a 10-15 min walk from our hotel up Sandlake Rd. - despite 2 previous stays at the Rosen, DH has never before ventured in this direction. DD18 and I did once walk all the way to Walmart on Turkey Lake Rd. just out of curiosity - I wouldn't bother again. Anyway, I digress, back to the food!

I must confess that I totally forgot to take photos until after everyone had started eating. Despite all the careful consideration of the menus, DH and I both ended up with burgers again (this is my mushroom & Swiss, which did look much more appetising than this when it first arrived!)

DD had another cheese pizza.

These burgers were nice enough but nothing special, they weren't as juicy or full of flavour as the ones that we'd eaten earlier in the holiday at Perkins so we were slightly disappointed. DD said her pizza wasn't as nice as the one she'd had in IoA the other day.

No-one fancied dessert so we didn't spend enough to use the restaurant.com voucher after all! (There was a minimum spend of $50). Even with the tip we paid under $30 - I've lost the receipt so not sure exactly how much but the burgers were definitely under $10 each.

Our first FP wasn't till 3.50pm so we returned to the hotel and changed into jeans and hoodies before setting off to Epcot. As we were planning to stay till the end tonight we were expecting the temperature to drop further still after dark.

We called an Uber, who are still offering 30% off, so this cost $11.36.

By the time we arrived our FP window for Mission Space was already open so we headed straight there. We had originally been intending to all do the Green Mission together but DH decided that he didn't even want to do that so he opted to wait out while DD and I did the Orange. I must admit that it made me feel slightly queezy but DD was completely unfazed!

Our next FP, for Test Track, was opening in 10 minutes so it wasn't worth wandering away from this part of the park. We had a quick look in Innoventions but were pretty unimpressed by what is left in there so we took some pics of the topiary - Stitch, of course being DD's favourite.

The time passed quickly and we were soon inside Test Track. We let DD design the car. She loved doing this but was disappointed that the ride vehicle didn't actually look like her car!

We won on the power score but came last on everything else - getting an overall score of 200. We all enjoyed this ride. DH and I agreed that we'd forgotten how good it was.

DH spent some time admiring the cars in the show room - he was particularly impressed with this one!

Our final FP wasn't until 7pm so we resumed our tour of World Showcase - starting in Mexico.

We didn't bother riding 3 Caballeros. The queue snaked around the whole building and we couldn't even get close enough to see the wait time. We do like it - but not enough for this!

So we moved on to Norway.

DH is fascinated by the Vikings - I don't know if anyone has noticed this from his tattoos - so he enjoyed looking at the exhibits and reading the information about the Norse gods.

Unfortunately Frozen was still a no go with a wait time of 95 minutes.

Next stop was China - for a sit down as much as anything!

The buildings here are probably my favourite out of all the World Showcase Pavillions however, the inside is just like one huge advert for Shanghai Disney!

We carried on round the lake to Germany - a country that DH says that he would like to visit in real life, so it will probably figure in future travel plans.

DD loved the Christmas decorations here. Not for the first time this holiday I was blown away by the prices!

We stopped to watch the miniature railway for a while before eventually arriving outside The American Adventure - just as a show was about to start.

We had never bothered watching this before but felt that as America is the host nation and it is a celebration of their history we really should!

As expected it was a very sanitised and patriotic version of events. I was glad that I'd finally seen it but don't think that I'd bother again.

It was getting dark by now and even in her sweatshirt and jeans DD was getting cold (we'd now seen several people coming into the park in coats, hats and gloves!) so we stopped at Mousegear and bought her a blanket to wrap round her. This cost $49.99 - the service in here was so slow that we thought we would never get out. The cashier was having problems with his till and then spending an eternity with each customer apologising for it!

We only just made our last FP, on Spaceship Earth, we weren't too bothered about this one as we'd already ridden it last week. By the time we came off there were no more FPs left for anything.

The fireworks weren't starting till 9 tonight so we still had a little bit of time to fill and decided on a final ride on Nemo which only had a 5 minute wait. (We would all have preferred another go on Soarin' but with a wait time of 35 minutes this would've been pushing it to get back in time for Illuminations). So our WDW adventure ended in exactly the same place that it had begun 2 weeks previously.

After our ride we wandered back towards the lake and found a bench to sit on while we waited for the show to begin ... and DD promptly fell asleep!

We decided that it was too cold to let her stay where she was and that if we woke her to watch the fireworks she would probably be too tired to enjoy the show anyway, so with just 20 minutes left to go, we reluctantly left the park and headed back to the Uber pick up point.

Not quite the ending that we'd hoped for but for the most part we'd all had a good day.

Tomorrow, packing, Disney Springs and home ☹️

Day 14 is here:- https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho...6#post13724456