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Old 12 May 18, 12:36 PM  
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LostPrincess
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Garth and Louise's Graduation Celebration June 2017 - Day 18 - Blizzard Beach and Animal Kingdom

Welcome to my trip report! The index is here, and day 17 is here.

Friday 30th June – Day 18

I woke up naturally at 6.45am and was wide awake! I couldn’t get back to sleep at all. I sat on my phone and talked to my Mum who was travelling back home today after her holiday in Italy. Garth woke up at 7.30am to the alarm and we chilled and got ready slowly. We were going to Blizzard Beach today so we weren’t in a rush. We left the room at 8.40am.

We stopped off in Floatworks for some breakfast. Garth got coffees in our refillable mugs and I ordered the beignets and chocolate sauce. It was really busy but we still managed to grab a table.

For some reason I only managed to eat 2 beignets this morning (what a waste) but Garth had no trouble finishing them off. We looked at MDE and we had a bonus fastpass because Fantasmic had been cancelled last night which was a plus to missing out last night! We got to the bus stop at 9.10. We knew we had to go to Animal Kingdom first for Blizzard Beach but the sign was saying one wasn’t due until 9.30! I was sulking at this point because I wanted to be there for opening at 10am, but there was really no need to get an uber today as we really weren’t in a rush. Fast forward to 9.30am and there was no bus! It got to 9.35am and we just went for it and booked the uber. As soon as we’d done it two AK buses turned up, typical! Our uber arrived almost instantly- I have no notes about our driver but it cost us $7.22 and we arrived at 9.47am- well in time to satisfy my rope drop anxiety!


We waited in the crowd and we were let in at 10am. It was really quite hot today. Garth realised he’d forgotten his waterproof phone case which was a shame but it didn’t matter too much. When we were let in we grabbed some towels and headed towards some sunbeds in the shade near some restrooms.

Perfect location! I went to grab a locker as we had the purse and phones on us today. It was $10 and I rearranged all our stuff so we had 1 bag for the locker and 1 to keep on us with suncream water etc. On the way back to the sunbed we walked past the chicken gyro stand, I put in my notes “we are coming back for that” Spoilers: we did! I’ll say now, this morning was really chilled out and there are no pics as the camera was in the locker and we didn't have the waterproof phone case. It might not be the most interesting read! We suncreamed up and used the loos and went on a little kids’ slide nearby. The kids’ slides are my favourite ones! We went in the lazy river next- this was exactly what we came for and it was so nice to just be chilling, relaxing and recovering! Apart from when the flipping cold drips of water fell on me of course After we had done a loop we got out and walked up the stairs to the green slope. It was an amazing view over to Animal Kingdom, we could see Pandora and Everest and over to Tower of Terror too. We waited for Teamboat Springs for 15 minutes and got called forward to go with a party of 3. There was plenty of room in the boat luckily, I hate being crammed into a dingy with strangers!

We went back to the sunbed for suncream and water and then got onto the lazy river again. We got off at the Double Dipper slides which were showing 15 minutes but we waited ageeeees. I was irritable too because I was getting hungry and a child kept hitting me in the queue. We eventually got to the front and it was a pretty terrifying slide! It went so quick! It timed us going down and I beat Garth by half a second, not that I bragged! We hopped back onto the lazy river to take us round to lunch. We went to Arctic Expedition where we had seen those chicken gyros earlier and we both got crisps and cokes to go with. No photos this time I’m afraid! It would have come to $25.56 but we used two QS credits. The food was really yummy. We normally love a waterpark burger but it was nice to have something a bit different. It was around 1pm at this point so we’d spent a good three hours lazing around and not doing much! We used the lazy river and the wave pool before deciding we’d had enough waterpark for one day. We were planning Animal Kingdom this evening but we had some time so decided to play some golf at Winter Summerland. We chose the winter side, which was very ironic as it suddenly got very, VERY hot and we were sweating buckets!

This is Garth’s new tshirt from Animal Kingdom the other day. It was tough getting round the course, I think this was the hottest we’d been the whole trip.



His ball got so close without going in


The theming of the course was really nice though. We absolutely love Christmas.


I think I was very happy to be finished! I got loads of nice comments about my Moana top today. I think it was something like £3 in Primark! Garth scored 58 in total and I scored 56, both pretty rubbish! It was fun though, and next time when we go at a cooler time of year I’d definitely like to play again. We left at 3.30pm heading straight to Animal Kingdom.

When we arrived we headed straight to Starbucks. Going from overheating during golf to the hottest Disney park wasn’t the best idea so we needed some big drinks to cool us down. I got a vanilla coffee Frappuccino and Garth got a java chip Frappuccino. I kind of described to the lady that I wanted an iced vanilla coffee and she recommended this and it was definitely the drink I’d been waiting for, it was amazing. We both got ventis using 2 snack credits. It would have cost $11.58.


I noted that they struggled with my name. They always try and call me Louis. It’s funny because Louise is such a common middle name here, yet over there it’s as if they’ve never heard it before. It’s a lot easier than trying to give them Garth’s name though, he’s used to everyone thinking he’s just got it wrong and his name is actually Gareth We walked over to Flights of Wonder with our drinks as we hadn’t caught it yet. They weren’t letting people in yet so I sat on the floor as I waited. I was a lot cooler now.

I’m glad we saw this show because obviously it’s changed now.


It’s fun but I won’t miss it! I’m sure the new Up show shows off the birds just as well. They cut the show short because there was an incoming storm so we popped our ponchos on and headed to the Maharajah Jungle Trek but they had closed that because of the weather too It was really coming over dark and gloomy but hadn’t started raining yet.


We decided to head to Dinosaur to use the bonus fastpass from the cancelled Fantasmic last night. On the way it started absolutely hammering it down. Mickey went green and we bypassed the 45 minute queue. It was so handy having this fastpass to get us out of the rain for a bit. We hardly waited.


After the ride Garth needed the loo so we headed towards the Primeval Whirl loos. On the way the puddles were literally ankle deep, one lady was walking through one and her flipflop started floating away We were peckish and it was around half five so we went into Restaurantosaurus for some nuggets. We got one serving of nuggets to share and a hot chocolate each. It would have come to $15.07 but we used a QS and a snack credit. At this point we had 3 full days left, and 14 snack credits and 26 QS credits. Who knows why we were sharing a portion of nuggets!

We went a bit mad at the toppings bar. There was a delicious chilli and we loaded it onto mushrooms it was great.


We sat in there for ages warming up with our drinks and then realised at 6.20pm that we were the only people left in there and it had shut! Woops. We hot footed out of there and over to It’s Tough to Be a Bug to shelter from the rain. When we got out the rain had eased to we wandered over to Everest. We got some photopasses on the way which turned out to be some of our favourites of the trip.



When we got there a gigantic tour group had just got in the line and we didn’t fancy waiting behind them so we went to Pandora. We had another FP for Flight of Passage which was just about active.




As we were approaching the queue two girls asked if we wanted to ride with them as they had a paper fastpass for 5 people. We could have gone with them and used our own FP afterwards but we thought that seeing as people struggled so much to get fastpasses we should let them find other people who would have had to queue up otherwise. It was very kind of them to share their fastpass rather than just going in alone. We scanned in and enjoyed the ride just as much as we had the other day. I really loved it. As we left we stopped off at Pongu Pongu to try the Lumpia snack. It would have cost $2.99 but we used a snack credit.



It was weird. It was like pineapple and cream cheese I think. It was really messy and such an odd texture. I would not get one again, to be honest I thought it was vile. Garth thought it was ok but said he couldn’t eat both. We wanted to head back to Everest now. I'd got my gowalks soaking in the rain and they were so uncomfortable so I put my flipflops on instead. It was a choice between wet feet and sore feet and sore feet seemed like the better option! As we were walking we passed Tamu Tamu and saw they were advertising dole whip with rum which intrigued us both.

We were definitely in “last-few-days-of-the-holiday-mode” and got one each I went for coconut and Garth went for dark rum. We showed the lady our driving licenses but she got confused with Garth’s birthday. 11-03-1996 looks like 11th March to us, but to them it looked like 3rd November, and of course that would have made him 20 and not 21! We had copies of our passports anyway so that cleared that up.

They were so good. Garth’s was reeeeally strong but mine was ok. We will definitely be getting these in the future! We were slowly walking towards Everest and on the way we asked a CM what time we should aim to get to ROL for the 10.30pm show. It had been really busy so we were worried about getting in but they said 10.20pm would be fine. We made it to Everest and scanned in for our FP.

I felt braver with a drink in me and put my arms up the whole way around! It was so much fun in the dark.

We came out, took some pics and then went on again using our paper fastpasses that had been given to us by a couple earlier on in the week.



Garth adopted a child while we were taking pics apparently. We waited for the front row and it was so much fun. We saw fireworks over in the direction of Hollywood Studios which was amazing. We decided to do scared faces apparently

Our safari fastpass was active now so we walked in that direction. Animal Kingdom is very pretty at night.

On the way we realised we could now change our plane seats as we only had 72 hours to go. We had already paid for bubble seats but we wanted to change them to the aisle seat instead of the window seat if we could. It had been trying to charge us before but now we were within the 72 hour period we could move them for free. All sorted and we continued our walk. We stopped off to watch the Tree of Life Awakenings on the way. I decided to actually put my glasses on at this point and realised it was so much better when you can actually see I wear my glasses all the time now, but I used to be so embarrassed about them. I definitely prefer being able to see now!

We got into Africa and got distracted by the sweet shop. A CM in the store complimented us both on our tshirts! Garth wanted a snack and I wanted to pick up some animal crackers as gifts so I picked up 2 boxes and we tried to use a QS credit for all 3 things. The CM at the till was earning her ears so called someone else over and then that person called the manager over and eventually we were sorted. Annoyingly I can’t find prices for these, but I’d guess the lot would have cost around $9.



Garth enjoyed his snack! We scanned into the safari but it was actually pretty naff. I thought doing it in the dark would be really cool but we barely saw anything and the pics are all rubbish. We got off at 10.05 and walked towards ROL. My feet hurt where I had been in my flipflops, I don’t know how people wear flipflops the whole time!

We arrived at 10.20 and had really good seats. It was pretty quiet.



Rivers of Light was ok, neither of us thought it was amazing but it was good. It was quite Eurovision. Definitely not a contender for my favourite night time show. Afterwards we went into Pandora to see it in the dark. This was slightly underwhelming too. There were some really pretty bits but we just expected more I think. It was nice to get some pics though.



Maybe we were just too tired to appreciate it all! It definitely seemed like the colours were more vivid in these pictures than they were in real life. We left Pandora and went to get a final Tree of Life picture in the dark. We overheard a girl in the queue behind us say “why are there no princesses here?” The family in front were doing a mega photoshoot and then when they’d finished the Mum had to search through her bag for her magic band. It seemed to take forever! It was finally our turn.

We were well and truly pooped now so headed straight back to the bus stop. We got there at 23.40 just as a bus was pulling away. A bus arrived 10 minutes later so it wasn’t too bad, but we were sharing with Riverside which was a shame. We got seats and I was so relieved to rest my achey flipflop feet, until some kids came on looking exhausted so we got up so they could sit down. Within a few minutes they were conked out so it definitely made it worth it to give our seats up. We were back at ten past midnight and realised it was now July! It had gone so quick. We hung out our wet clothes and swimwear and had quick showers. We put Shrek on tv and Garth rubbed my sore feet for me (he offered, I promise! ) We finally crashed at 1am. Another fab day!

Tomorrow we have breakfast with some favourites and spend the day in Epcot

Steps today: 19744 (not including water park)
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Old 12 May 18, 01:43 PM  
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MrsSilverStar
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What a great day with loads packed in. I've seen other reports saying the same thing about Pandora at night and RoL both being underwhelming - they look pretty in your pictures at least!
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Old 12 May 18, 07:27 PM  
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I told my boyfriend last year that mini golf is a rainy day or evening activity not for a hot day, but he wouldn’t listen… It is actually like being tortured and there’s no surprise there was no-one else there. Never again.

I can’t believe how far you are into your trip and you still have all this energy.
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Old 12 May 18, 08:17 PM  
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Great day, you did loads, your snacks at the end of the day looked awesome
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Old 13 May 18, 08:48 AM  
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What a lovely day!
Love lazy water park mornings and you still got so much done in the evening!
Jealous of the rum dole whip! I’d love one of those right now.
Thanks for posting I’m loving reading along
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Old 13 May 18, 07:11 PM  
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Well all those people were right your Moana top is beautiful. My DD is Moana mad, she loves her. Primark you say? I need to get down there although I suppose it won't be there this year.

Crazy golf in the middle of the day heat is a special sort of torture!

You made it through to the show though, what a fab day.
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Old 17 May 18, 07:40 PM  
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Have not done the Safari at night, shame you couldn't see anything.

You did well completing Mini Golf in the afternoon heat
Fantasia Golf is nice to do of an evening when the sun goes down. The 'Gardens' course if good fun. There's also a "fairways' course.
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Old 1 Jun 18, 01:41 PM  
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Your morning at Blizzard Beach sounds perfect, really chilled out.

You are having a lot of luck with FastPasses on this trip, well done for turning down the FoP offer so others could ride. I'm not sure many others would be so generous

Those alcoholic Dole Whips sound really good, I will have to look out for them.

A shame about Rivers of Light being a bit disappointing, but at least you did not queue ages for it and you got a nice sit down to rest your poor feet.

Pandora at night looks so pretty in photos. maybe it is just very photogenic! The photos of you and Garth there are lovely too.
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