[Gill H]

By now it was nearly time for Peter’s FP (yes, we’d been a good 45 minutes even in a very small queue). So we moved on to BTMR. Peter gave me his video camera, phone and wallet for safe keeping, and I said I’d go and have a look round the shops on Main Street and he could come and find me after his second ride. Can you see the flaw in this plan, readers? Yep – Peter’s phone was sitting snugly in my handbag, and without a definite location and time to meet, we could spend ages missing each other. I realised just too late!

So I figured the best plan was to wait at the exit and meet Peter coming off his first time round. Which, considering he’d got a Fastpass, seemed to take ages. There was plenty of opportunity to watch the large numbers of people who strolled happily in through the exit. I know it’s the disabled entrance (which doesn’t seem very well planned, as going against the flow of the crowds coming out must be a pretty stressful experience). And yes, I know ‘not all disabilities are visible’ but I think a lot of people just assumed this was actually the way in! Surely a case for a helpful CM to be stationed right at the exit?

Anyway, eventually Peter came off the ride and I managed to flag him down. I told him I’d check out the Frontierland shops while he went round again, and he could meet me in there. Which, about 10 minutes later, he did. We had a quick look round at all the Christmas merchandise, but didn’t buy anything for the moment. But we did decide the next thing on the agenda should be a nice hot drink to warm us up.

One problem with going to DLP in the winter is that a lot of places which just sell drinks don’t have indoor seating. If we wanted to have a hot drink and sit down in the warm, it would take a bit of planning. Nowhere in Frontierland was open yet, and so we headed to Main Street. Normally Cable Car Bakery would have been a good option, but it was closed today, as was Gibson Girl. So Market House Deli was the only choice currently open on Main Street. (We didn’t even bother looking at Casey’s, where the queues were already out of the door.) Inside Market House Deli there was only one till open, and as always the queue moved agonisingly slowly. I always wonder why they put the hot food so far back from the till – it can easily be 20 minutes from picking up your croque monsieur to actually getting to eat it, and that’s if you can find a seat.

Fortunately today all we wanted was a hot chocolate, and a long, long time later that’s what we got. Sadly the famous ‘chocolat viennois’ seems to have largely disappeared from DLP and most places now serve what is rather clumsily called a ‘boisson lactée cacaotée’ or ‘milk chocolate drink’. If you ask for hot chocolate, that’s what you get. It’s straight out of a machine, and while it’s OK, it’s nothing special. Still, right now it was what we needed. However, our hopes of somewhere to sit were dashed, since as usual people with no food were hogging all the tables. We were about to take our drinks out to the arcade and sit there, but just then we heard the Christmas parade music and our plans changed!

We rushed back out to Main Street just in time to see the parade coming past. We decided not to bother taking photos or film as we intended seeing it another time – but alas (spoiler!) we never made it. Still, it was great to see the parade. It’s really grown since the days of the tiny ‘Christmas cavalcade’ they used to have, but I think my favourite characters are still the airmen in their toy planes, complete with Allo Allo-style moustaches! I could have done without the fake snow (aka ‘snope’) as I prefer my hot chocolate minus soap bubbles and was having trouble keeping them out! But nevertheless it was a really lovely parade and we were glad we got to see it.

Once the parade was over we decided it was time for lunch. In all our visits, we’ve never managed to get to Restaurant Hakuna Matata as it’s always been closed, but we knew today it was open so headed over there. When we got in, however, it was utter chaos. Rather than being a relaxing location Timon and Pumbaa might hang out in, it looked like the wildebeest stampede had got there before us. There were no CMs on hand to manage the queues, and everyone was just milling around, pushing in front of others, with no queue visible at all. After a few frustrating minutes attempting to impose a little order on our surroundings, we decided to leave it and go elsewhere. We did manage to flag down a CM and explain that we weren’t happy with the lack of a queueing system, but while she was very apologetic, she said there was nothing she could do apart from tell her supervisor. Sort it out, DLP!

So instead we decided to try somewhere else, stopping off for a quick visit to POTC to see the Pirates on the way. This ride is just so good, I’m always amazed the queues are so short. The wait time jumped from 10 minutes to 20 just as we joined the queue, and indeed it’s actually the first time I’ve stood still for any length of time once inside. But it does manage queues very well, and soon we were on our boat and shouting ‘Bon Appetit!’ to the diners at Captain Jack’s restaurant. We really love this ride (even though I always tense up before the drop, and then wonder why I bothered!) The new elements have taken this ride to a whole other level, and while I know the ‘redhead’ storyline is not universally loved, the redhead herself is superbly done, and the Captain Barbossa section is really effective.