theDIBB - Day 20 – Princesses, Potions, and Phantom Manor

Day 20 with photos

Ok – we aren’t in Paris, so Phantom Manor is a stretch, but I am running out of P words….

First, the end of day 19...
Well, after the show we all met up and went into the atrium to watch the goodbye party. We got a cocktail from the bar, and watched as all the characters waved. I thought it would be more of a party, but it was a big meet and greet. The kids went down and met Daisy Duck but we just watched from Deck 4. After 20 minutes or so they all waved goodbye, and said ‘See Ya Real Soon’, and then they were gone.

We fancied a drink before bed, and searched around for a bar where we could all sit, even the kids. The only choice appeared to be a loud Bar with party games, but we eventually found a quiet spot on the very top Deck where we were able to sit out under the stars and have a drink.

All too soon the evening was over, and the following morning we were up early to disembark. We decided to skip breakfast in favour of an extra hours sleep, but it’s still very early when we leave the ship and return to the car. We drive back to Orlando and decide to stop at Cracker Barrel for breakfast. This was a favourite of ours a few trips back and we have been meaning to return. We have a lovely breakfast with pancakes, sausages etc. Molly really fancies a Sausage sandwich and we manage to fashion her one from a side of sausage and a side of toast.

Cracker Barrel has a lovely old fashioned shop attached, so we have a mooch around, but we don’t buy anything. We pop into the nearby Target and spend some cash in there instead. We have a $30 gift card to spend, and we manage that quite well. We find a nice small bag for Phil’s netback, some new sheets for Molly’s bed, and some sweets for her birthday party.

It’s around 11ish, so we decide to head to our hotel and see if our room is ready. We are all really tired and the thought of being homeless does’t appeal at all. For our final stop, we are staying at the Wyndham Downtown Disney, this was called the Regal Sun when we booked it, but it’s changed hands. Since it was taken over, they are doing quite a bit of work on the entrance and it all looks a bit of a mess when we pull up. However, we get checked in, and our room IS ready, so we are quite pleased with this. I booked this online and we paid very little for the room, so my expectations weren’t too high. Which was good.

The room was ok, but it was nothing special. It was quite drab and had 2 very small beds, I think they were standard doubles, they seemed tiny. There was a sliding door to the bathroom which was broken. It wasn’t a bad room, it was just very ordinary and we’ve been a bit spoiled unto now, so ordinary was a bit disappointing.

We chuck all our bags just inside the door, and all collapse on the bed. Everyone is exhausted so a nap is at the top of our priority list. Unfortunately, Molly can’t relax and after a while we give up on getting her to nap, so Phil takes her down to the pool and Katie and I crash out completely. I think we would have slept all night if we’d let ourselves, but we drag ourselves back awake and decide to head to MK for the evening. This is probably not our most sensible decision, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

We drive to Magic Kingdom, and we have to pay to park. This is not good, I like staying in the Disney bubble and getting free parking, but we will live! We park up in Goofy and get the tram and monorail to the parks.

We decide to start with an ice cream sandwich from Main St Bakery, and the CM makes the biggest Sandwich’s I have ever seen. They were so big they were hard to eat.

Whilst we were eating, the parade was postponed due to the wind (I am not sure if it was ever run, or if they cancelled it). I don’t think I’ve ever known them postpone the parade, and the weather didn’t really seem that bad to us, so it was a bit strange. We decide to walk up to Fantasyland, and it is heaving. Even Snow White’s Scary adventure has a 20 minute wait.

Every where we turned there were people, people and more people. We decided to get fast passes for Pooh Bear, and then do Mickey’s Philharmagic whilst we waited. Katie was not pleased with this plan and had a teenage mood whilst we waited, but bizarrely seemed to really enjoy the show. Such is life when you are 13. When we came out of the show, we thought we’d do it’s a small world but the queue for that was 40 minutes. It was just insanely busy. The kids decided to hope on the Carousel as that had a short queue, and I went for a little browse of the shops.

After the Carousel it was time for Pooh Bear, and this time it was time for Molly to have a moody moment. She wanted to walk through the standby line as there are new activities in line. The Standby line was long and we had fastpasses, so we weren’t about to walk though the standby line, but I did have to agree the activities looked good, in particular the honey covered touch screens.

When we came out of Pooh Bear, Molly decided she wanted to try Haunted Mansion, so we walked around in that direction. It’s a Small World had a 10 minute line, so we decided to ride this on the way. It wasn’t really a line at all, by the time we had walked around to the boats we were straight on.

When we came out of It’s a Small World it was raining, and all the people had disappeared, it was as if they’d all just evaporated.

Molly and Phil went on Haunted Mansion, and Katie and I went for something to eat. She grabbed a Jacket Potato from the cart, and I got a Tuna Sandwich in Columbia Harbour House, and we met upstairs in our favourite spot. It was deserted, I mean, completely, and totally empty. We were the only people in there. In the space of an hour the park had gone from crazily uncomfortably busy to completely and totally empty. It was most bizarre.

We had a quiet half an hour just chilling and relaxing, and then Molly and Phil returned. Molly was really pleased with herself as Katie is too scared to ride Haunted Mansion and so she felt very clever. I thought Katie was going to take a huff but she was ok as we hadn’t made her do it as well.

We decided to have one last ride on Pirates, and then head out of the park as we were really all just too tired to do much more. Pirates had a nice short queue, so we more or less walked straight on there and had a little Yo Ho Ho’ing.

After Pirates, Phil tried to eat at the Tortuga cafe again, he’s tried about 4 times but it’s only open for a few hours at lunch time and we had once again missed it, so we walked around to Pecos Bill’s and he ate in there. I ran (well walked rather slowly) unto Liberty Square and got Molly a Jacket Potato. It was 5ish by now, and we were done, totally burned out and ready for our beds. We headed back out of Magic Kingdom, onto the monorail and back to our rather disappointing hotel.

We hit the bedroom and everyone just flaked out and fell asleep, even Molly. I don’t know why we were so tired, as the past week had been lazing on the beach and the cruise, but we were absolutely shattered.

We woke up around 9ish and we were hungry but noone wanted to go out for a meal, so we went down to the cafe in the lobby of the restaurant. It’s a grab and go type place, and they had some nice sandwiches, so we got ham and roast beef sandwiches and took them back up to our room.