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-   -   Garth and Louise's Graduation Celebration June 2017 - Day 17 - Celebration, DisneyQuest and HS (https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=1077629)

LostPrincess 28 Apr 18 01:09 PM

Garth and Louise's Graduation Celebration June 2017 - Day 17 - Celebration, DisneyQuest and HS
 
Welcome to my trip report! The index is here, and day 16 is here.

Thursday 29th June – Day 17

After going to bed at 1.30am yesterday I woke up at 7am! I felt pretty awake but I knew I’d suffer for it later so I managed to get back off to sleep and woke up again at a more reasonable 9am. This morning we were going to explore Celebration so we weren’t in a rush at all. We got ready slowly and were leaving the room at 9.45am.

We went to the front of French Quarter and ordered an uber to take us into Celebration. Randy was with us at 9.50am. I know people say that having a car is best for flexibility but to be able to order an uber and be on our way within 5 minutes of leaving the room is about as flexible as you can get! We loved being able to use uber and I really hope Disney don’t put in an on-property ban any time soon. Randy was really friendly and chatty. He told us he used to work at Magic Kingdom and then ESPN and was full of stories. He also told us about a snowstorm in 1977 in Orlando. He was reliving all his old memories on this ride! When we got into Celebration he was telling us all about the Christmas decorations and all the wonderful things the community does in December. When he pulled up to drop us off he said I’d plotted the drop off pin perfectly, and told Garth as we got out of the car “she’s a keeper!” Well, at least I know Garth will always stick with me for my ability to plot uber pick up points! We arrived at 10.12am, the journey costing us $10.48.



It looked beautiful! This was a first for both of us and we were already so glad we’d come. We were planning on going to the Market Street Café for breakfast but it was all shut up. We were starving so we went on a hunt for food. We walked in one direction and found a Starbucks but we didn’t really want that when we could have Starbucks food at Disney for free :d: We walked back up the street we had driven down and found Sweet Escape. It looked perf for breakfast.


They had so many yummy looking treats.




I chose The Pick Me Up sandwich and Garth chose The Cattleman. We ordered at the counter and they took Garth’s name and said they’d bring it over. We also got a large cappuccino each. It came to a very reasonable $16.62. Our sandwiches came in 5 minutes.



It was all really yummy. We were so hungry it didn’t take long at all for us to hoover it all up! We popped some dollars in the tip jar on the counter on the way out. We’d definitely consider coming here on future trips to Celebration, it was a cute little place with a kind of locals atmosphere and the food was great. We were ready to walk it off now!

We played in the fountains for a little bit! It was pretty hot already.



We saw this little guy basking in the sun.

We stopped off at a bench in the shade to finish our coffees.


We were so relaxed. We got a bit sad thinking about how the trip was nearly finished and we didn’t know when we’d be back. We’re at such an uncertain time of our lives. Garth has a life plan but I’m so uncertain about what I want to do when I finish uni so we can’t really make any plans until we finish our courses and I get myself a proper job. It’s so frustrating just not knowing when we’ll be back in our favourite place! But we still had a few days to enjoy so we tried not to get too upset thinking about the inevitable 3+ year gap until our next visit :( While we were talking I noticed a rather large ant on my hand. I tried to brush it off and it kind of bit me and I had a bit of a panic :d: It left this nasty mark on my hand.

It didn’t hurt it just felt super itchy. A lady bug also came and landed on my head which Garth thought was hilarious. As I was a beacon for wildlife we decided to get up and moving before any other insects decided to land on me. We carried on our walk around the lakes.


This sign said there were armadillos around! We walked through to the next lake. There were tons of crickets about giving each other piggy backs.


Oh, to live here!

There were so many on each others' backs. We tried to google it but I don't even know what the insects are. We were calling them crickets but I really don't know! So who knows what they were and why they were piggy backing :d: Through the woods into the next lake along we actually saw an armadillo! Garth was only just quick enough with the camera as he scurried away. We loved all the wildlife and the views as we walked around.


There were dragonflies everywhere too. It was hard to believe we were so close to the hustle of WDW. We started to slowly walk back passing a few really friendly bike riders on the way. We got to the main square at 12ish. We hadn't seen any gators which was a shame but we'd seen loads of turtles. We went into the dog bakery to pick something up for Garth’s parents’ dogs. It was full of cute stuff.




We picked up two treats for $3.99 each. Molly didn’t like it so Charlie actually ended up eating both treats, greedy dog! At least they were enjoyed! We were craving an icecream so nipped next door to Kilwin’s. On our way in I asked Garth if he could take a picture of me with the sign. There was a young teenage boy just unlocking his bike behind us and he thought I was talking to him! He just said out of nowhere “yeah sure! ” and then took our camera and took 3 pics for us! :d:

It was so sweet of him and made us laugh so much! Bless him. When we went inside we didn’t even know where to look.



Garth went for a s’more sundae- ice cream with chocolate covered graham crackers and marshmallow in a waffle bowl with hot fudge sauce and a cherry on top. I wasn’t feeling quite that hungry so I got a cup of peach yogurt icecream. It came to $12.09 all together. We went to sit in front of the lake on some rocking chairs while we ate.



Mine was so nice and refreshing. Sitting here was absolute bliss! Garth somehow managed to get icecream on his forehead :erm::d: When we were finished we cleaned ourselves up and headed back up to Sweet Escape to use their wifi and order an uber.

Hopefully we’ll get chance to try the Market Street Café next time. Eliseo was with us at around 12.30pm. We were going straight to Disney Springs. We are (were) Disney Quest fans and with the news that it would be closing at the end of our trip we definitely wanted to squeeze in one last visit. Eliseo was a silent driver. We actually went under the WDW sign this time on our way in! We had bypassed it due to roadworks previously so we were glad to finally get chance to get that special pic.

We were pulling up at 1pm.



Disney Quest wasn’t included in the Disney tickets this year like it had been previously, but we’d heard about people chancing it and getting in anyway. We went to the turnstiles and asked the CM if we could get in using them but unfortunately he said no and said we’d have to queue for tickets :( We had budgeted for it anyway though so we joined the queue. We waited around 20 minutes before getting to the front of the queue. Garth tried to chance it again and asked if we could get in with the Disney tickets we already had… and the CM this time obliged! She added entry on to our magic bands :grin: I can’t remember how much this saved us but I’m pretty sure it was at least $60! Love a bit of Disney magic. We headed in and our first port of call was the loos! I took some pics on our way to the toilets.

I noted that the soap smelled of cherry bakewell hehehe. We played Donkey Kong first but I can’t have done very well, I wrote “this game is a joke” :d: I didn’t take many notes in here as we were rushing around a bit from game to game.



This one was very stressful. I think I was the driver and I did NOT do a very good job :blush:




Garth was in his element.

I loved the Mighty Ducks Pinball game and I think I did really well:grin:

We adore CyberSpace Mountain. Sum of All Thrills in Epcot didn’t live up to this but that’s gone as well anyway! I love the design a coaster idea. We named it the Screamin’ Banshee.

We made it as crazy as it can get!

Thanks Bill Nye the Science Guy. After you design your coaster they give you a card to take to the simulator so you can ride it. It was crazy fun. We did the Magic Carpet ride next. I’m awful at this. I just kind of hovered round on my VR carpet, going all the wrong ways.

I’m pretty sure Garth won. We also did the Jungle Cruise game but we were absolutely awful and I kept nearly falling out the boat! The whole thing inflates and you sit in the boat with an oar and it’s kind of like a wii game with the oar as the wii remote. It really throws you about! We did the Pirates came next. You stand on a pirate ship with screens all around you and there are cannons all around the ship. You have to shoot all the bad guys. We were in with another couple and we managed to win! At around 4.15pm it was getting busy and we’d done most of the things we wanted to do so we left DisneyQuest for the last time :cry: We were so glad we’d had a final visit though. We looked in the shop for any commemorative tshirts but unfortunately they didn’t have any. After being in the dark so long it was weird to be out in the sun again. We headed towards World of Disney for some shopping.


We were quite disappointed with World of Disney. There wasn’t really anything we hadn’t seen elsewhere and it was really hard to navigate. Garth’s Mum had wanted a Tinkerbell hoody but we couldn’t find one. We did pick up a Beauty and the Beast puzzle for my sister as a graduation present ($19.99) and a spoon rest for my Mum- she said she wanted one when Dad redid the kitchen ($9.95). I took pics when we got back to FQ later. We went to Uniqlo next.

Nothing really grabbed me but Garth managed to spend $68.80 on a variety of tshirts and sweatshirts! Makes up for all the Primark stuff I bought myself before the trip :d: Again, I took pictures later. It was raining as we left. Our next port of call was Ghiradelli. The taster was really yummy so we got 2 snack credits worth of chocolate- but it was buy 2 get 1 free so we got 3. Next we went into Mickey’s pantry and got 2 bags of filter coffee which came to $27.67. Then it was time for the Christmas shop were we got a Chip and Dale ornament for $17.99 and a pack of baubles for $27.99. For people who don’t shop, we’d done a lot of shopping! It was enough to work up an appetite so we went over to Wolfgang Puck Express.

We chose our food quickly as we were starving- I went for the chicken alfredo pasta and Garth chose macaroni and cheese. I got a coke and Garth got a coffee. It would have come to $36.11 but we used 2 QS credits, bargain! We went and sat down and our server Hans bought the food over soon. He was dreamy!



It was all great, definitely a top use for a quick serve credit. We left a tip on the table as Hans had made quite an effort to make sure we had everything we needed. The Express part of the name was right as we were out really quickly! We nipped into Art of Disney to get my Haunted Mansion Hitchhiking Ghosts Disney Tradition. And what do you know, it wasn’t there any more :( We asked a CM but he said they didn’t have any left. I should have bought it when I saw it last week! He showed me all the other Haunted Mansion traditions but I had my heart set on Hitchhiking Ghosts. We decided to come back and check on our last day. We also looked for a Haunted Mansion book Garth had been eyeing up but that was gone too! We’ve all learned this lesson the hard way. Buy things when you see them! We were positively shopped out so we went to leave to Springs on the boat but they were still off because of the rain. We went to the bus stop and luckily there was one waiting so we jumped straight on and we were back in the room by 6.53pm. We changed our clothes very quickly, dropped our shopping and headed straight out again for a night at Hollywood Studios! On the way down to the bus stop we saw they had put these around the resort.

“Patriotic pool party”… if only we were staying until 4th July :d:

It was just past 7pm when we made it to the bus stop which meant it was tomorrow at home… our best friend’s birthday! We sent her a message as we waited for the bus. Garth was on twitter as we waited and he saw that Tim Tracker had been at Disney Quest today. For the 2nd time this trip we’d been in the same place but hadn’t seen him! We were in the park by 7.30pm.

We had a fastpass for Star Tours 6pm-7pm but we'd obviously missed that. Our ToT fastpass was active until 8.10pm so we headed there. We got some photopass pics on the way.


While we were waiting there was an announcement that the wait might be longer than expected and we waited around 20 minutes. For some reason this ride felt different. We were in a different shaft and we saw a screen we didn’t think we had seen before. Garth had a dance for the ride picture and I was just scared as usual!

As we were leaving the ride we saw lightning, that didn’t bode well for our Fantasmic fastpass! We went into some shops and picked up a castle Pandora charm for my work friend. We looked for a purse to replace mine from 2014 but there wasn’t one that I liked more than the one I already have, and there’s nothing wrong with mine anyway! The fastpass queue for Fantasmic was bending round the whole street all up Sunset Boulevard and down into the main path of the park. They weren’t letting anyone in yet because they weren’t sure of the weather. We nipped into another shop and picked up a photo album for $19.99. After this the queue for Fantasmic had gone down a bit so we presumed they were letting people in. On the way to join the queue though we overheard someone say it had been cancelled :( At least we had already seen it once, it just would have been a bonus to watch it again! We weren’t up for the stress of getting a bus home after the Star Wars projections after the looong wait the other day so we just headed home. We got to the bus stop at 9pm and were on our way by 20 past. Traffic was crazy and we seemed to be at a standstill for ages. We got home at 9.35pm. We nipped into Sassagoula Floatworks as Garth was a bit hungry. He chose a mardi gras cupcake for a snack credit. It would have cost $4.49. We paid off the room balance (over $200 after today’s antics!) before heading up to the room. I took pics of all the stuff we bought today!

Garth enjoyed his cupcake.


These were the dog treats for Molly and Charlie.





Garth’s uniqlo haul!





Our Christmas decs and Mum's spoon holder were wrapped up safe. We started packing it all up in a suitcase to make our job easier later. We managed to get one suitcase pretty much packed with dirty laundry and souvenirs. I hate packing for the way home, it’s so stressful! One of the channels was playing Avatar on a loop so we put that on and crashed out into bed. We were asleep by 11pm!

Today was different in that we didn’t aim for rope drop and we were recovering from yesterday but it was lovely and relaxing. We’re so glad we got to go to Disney Quest one last time :)

Tomorrow we go to Blizzard Beach, play some golf and spend the evening in Animal Kingdom.

Steps today: 18552

collybird 28 Apr 18 05:56 PM

Lunch looks SO good. Great pictures from Celebration, we’ve only ever driven through.

We really liked DisneyQuest and I’m sad it’s gone, it was a nice way to spend an afternoon. I was TERRIBLE on the Magic Carpet thing, I couldn’t go anywhere, I wondered if it was because I wear glasses but my OH didn’t have much luck either.

We were disappointed with World of Disney last year too, Mouse Gear totally beats it, still an impressive shopping haul though.

Goldia 29 Apr 18 09:08 AM

Ouch the red and bite doesn't look good, at least it wasn't hurting and just itchy. Celebration looked good, nice to be able to have a relaxing stroll and not feel like you have to rush around.

I'm glad you put in the photos of your shopping haul, the puzzle looks like it would be fun.

yellowrose78 29 Apr 18 01:30 PM

Great day, food looks fab! We love Celebration :)

Our Grumpy1 17 May 18 06:39 PM

Glad you enjoyed celebration, it's a lovely relaxing way to spend a couple of hours without having to travel too far.

You certainly aren't alone in leaving your 'must have' purchases to last minute. Hope you managed to get them before the end of your trip.

Glad you got to go under the WDW entrance sign today. The photo in my signature is the best one I've taken over the years and use as one of my screen savers.

Cazzius 1 Jun 18 01:25 PM

That was a really nice chilled out day.

We went to Celebration when we were feeling a bit sunstroke-y and off, and it was perfect for a mooch around. Such a pretty town with some lovely shops. That breakfast menu looks great, will have to add Sweet Escapes to the list!

Great shopping in Disney Springs too. I like the shirt Garth got with the different stages of drawing Mickey on.

Disney Quest looks so much fun. It had already closed when we went which is a shame. I'm not excited for the NBA Experience they are replacing it with as I do not give 2 hoots about basketball!

At least you had already seen Fantasmic! once, but disappointing the bad weather meant you couldn't squeeze in a second viewing.


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