Stranger Trip, The Report. Day 8, MK, Hollywood Studios and travelling home.

[spencem]

Day 8 October 12th 2018

Sad, sad day today, we were checking out and going home, but on the plus side our flight wasn’t scheduled to depart until 23:45 tonight so we had a full day in the parks ahead of us. As I commented on yesterday’s post I should have booked the hotel for an extra night, to give us a chance to come back to shower and change in comfort before heading for the airport. Thinking about it now the reason I didn’t was that tonight was our only chance to see Fantasmic and there would be no time to come back to the hotel after the show and get to the airport in time.

Whatever the reason we were up fairly early and packed up to be out just before the cut off of 10am. I got some grief about why hadn’t I arranged a late checkout, but again this was for scheduling reasons. Checkout was very simple, call the number on our card, leave a message and the drop the room keys in the box as we drove out the gate. If we had of run up a bill they would have simply taken the balance from our credit card and emailed the receipt. As it was we had not spent anything at all at the resort all week and so our total accommodation spend was £0.00, got to love IHG points!

We had a set of Fastpasses for Magic Kingdom this morning and were hoping to pick up some more for Hollywood Studios later before Fantasmic, or even some for Fantasmic itself. We got a clue about how busy MK was when we had to queue to pay for our parking.


It was not a quiet day.

The parking lot was rammed and we got directed to the overflow disabled lot the other side of the tram way. This wasn’t a problem as I think it was closer than the far end of the normal disabled parking area. Both the express monorail and the ferry had huge queues snaking around the TTC so we jumped on the resort monorail, just waiting for the next one to pull in.


Should really have taken this the day we went to the party.


11:15 and I was in the park.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it this trip report yet, but ever since Julia has been using an ECV she has had problems getting in the parks with her fingerprints not reading properly. If she’s on foot then they normally work, but sitting they never let her in without a manager being called.


As usual Mickey is blue, don’t ever join a queue behind my wife.

First order once we were all in was to try to exchange that 2018 t-shirt I got at Epcot that had a printing mark on it. Edward and I walked the entire length of the Emporium without seeing another one, so I had to go to the desk without one to swap. Luckily as the cast member was trying to find me a replacement on her iPad a manager came over and offered to go and physically look in the stock room. A few minutes later she returned with a pristine shirt and I was on my way.

Walking out of the shop our friends walked in so we had a quick catch up before heading off for our first FP on Space Mountain. It was also their last day so none of us were happy.


The Halloween decorations looked lovely in the sunshine.


The entrance to Space Mountain was a bit of a scrum.

Julia walked the line with us at Space Mountain, both to give her legs a stretch and to use up her FP as we were hoping to get some more later in Hollywood Studios. Edward and I were quickly on the ride, which was much better with the lights on and the normal sound track.


Why is there no single rider line?

Once back from our strange walk around the back of Space Mountain (what are they doing to the exit?) we saw a most unusual sight, both Carousel of Progress and the People Mover had queues. It took us about 10 minutes to get onto the People Mover, a ride I have never ever seen with a queue before.


This would be a lovely picture, if it wasn’t for that stupid lamp post.

Our thoughts turned to food and so we walked off into FantasyLand in the direction of Pinocchio and his flat breads. On the way past the mine train we noticed it wasn’t running at all, I bet that it had some incredible queues later in the day.


Who knew Southern Rail were expanding into Florida?


Sorry the scale is just a bit too much for the model castle to look real and far away.


Destination Lunch.

Julia and Edward split a Capris flat bread, while I had one of their salads. We were all a little down, realising we only had a few hours left of our holiday, but I managed to lighten the mood somewhat by tipping a cup of ice all over my face. I didn’t find it that funny, but Edward nearly rolled off his chair when I tried to get a single cube out of the cup and instead got the whole thing over me.

Our next FP after lunch was for Big Thunder, although Julia decided not to ride so soon after lunch. Even with our FP Edward and I waited about 20 minutes. Julia amused herself in the nearby gift shop.


World’s poshest bathrooms, as seen on the way to Big Thunder.


It was another gorgeous early Fall day.

One the way off the ride we saw a photographer in the exit path and took advantage of the lack of queue. As he was taking our picture another photographer arrived and stopped anyone else queuing, explaining they were going on a break.


I think we were told to be scared of an earthquake for this picture.

When we got back to Julia we had a look at the app and on seeing everything had an hour plus of queue decided that we’d take a lap of the park on the train to kill some time. About now I got grumbled at again for not booking an extra night in the hotel so we could take an afternoon nap. As it turned out Julia and Edward got their nap anyway, on the train.


Not been up these steps since 2006.


You do get some interesting views on the train.


Not sure how long this will stay in today’s politically correct climate.

As we got toward the next station we got held up at the signals, causing the recorded messages to get out of sync. After a couple of repeats extoling the virtues of visiting FantasyLand the conductor cut in with his own announcements apologising for the delays and then pointing out all the trees around us and inviting us to photograph Disney’s extensive tree collection.


Trees, not even interesting trees.

After a few minutes we moved on, waking Julia and Edward briefly. Further round the park I caught the odd glimpse through the trees of some dirt being pushed around on the site of the future TRON coaster.


A few years away yet.


I was amazed at how many people were still entering the park at 2pm.

Once we’d completed our lap of the park I woke the others and we collected the ECV before deciding to take in the Country Bears Jamboree for the first time in a dozen years.


One of the classic MK attractions.


It looks cute, but listen carefully and it is actually quite a dark show.

Out of the bears we realised we had not had any ice cream this holiday and that needed correcting immediately. Julia went to try and find us somewhere to sit while Edward and I got in the rather long queue.


I thought we might get a Dole Whip and so came this way, but no, proper ice cream was required.


The ‘new’ hub certainly spreads the crowds out.


Proper ice cream shop.

It was so hot that by the time we’d found Julia who had managed to snag us a small bit of wall under the Tomorrowland Terrace our ice cream was melting and so I didn’t get any pictures. I did make a note that Julia had a kid’s vanilla, Edward a double strawberry tub and I had a pumpkin and chocolate brownie diabetic coma surprise.

By the time we’d eaten, cleaned up and I’d been resuscitated our FP for Buzz was open and we made our way over. I’m glad we had the FP as it got us past a 60 minute standby line. I’ve not got a note of the scores, so I must have won again. Once we had passed the second FP check point in the queue I looked at MDE to see what other Fast Passes were available, but with the queue moving well from that point I didn’t have a chance to look properly. Back from beating Zurg once more I had a proper look and didn’t find much of interest either here in MK or over in Hollywood Studios. Checking wait times it looked like both parks were equally busy. The best we could do was to book some passes for the Indy show later that afternoon, which gave us just enough time to wait the 30 minutes for Philharmagic, I thought…

Philharmagic was as amazing as ever, but we did indeed wait 30 minutes for it. At least it was inside and Julia provided some entertainment attempting to slalom her way around the queue on the ECV.

Once Mickey had control of the orchestra again we made our way out of the park for the last time this holiday, pausing for a few pictures on the way.


The back side of castle, staring Mr Crane behind his hording.


Final MK Photopass of the trip.


Not sure we have the same definition of ‘real soon’.

By the time we got over to Hollywood Studios it was obvious we would miss the FP for the Indy stunt show, so I cancelled them rather than try to race across the car park. I checked to see if there was anything else available and was delighted to get offered Fantasmic. I snagged these quickly, so we didn’t have to worry about queuing for hours to see the show.

With nothing to rush off for we once again settled into the seats outside Starbucks and then I stood in a long slow line to get coffee. At least today there was no rain to spoil the wait. Once we had drunk our drinks and munched our muffins we thought we may as well go and see what the standby line was like for Tower of Terror.


No rain today, it was in fact a lovely evening.

There was a 40 minute wait, so after swapping Julia’s ECV for a courtesy wheel chair we joined the mist soaked queue around the back of the hotel.


Very atmospheric. I thought the wait might be overestimated, but the line goes off round the gardens.


Disney really need to look at these outsourced cleaning contracts.

When we got to the elevator car I was shocked to hear Edward say he didn’t want to ride, apparently his lunch was not sitting well and he didn’t want to risk anything ahead of our flight later. He took the chicken exit, which I am always amused to see is an actual elevator here.


Did you know there are animatronics half way up the lift shaft? That’s what Julia is pointing at.

Edward was waiting for us just outside the gift shop and when we walked around the corner and found Fantasmic admitting people we made our own way in. We got directed round to the far left of the seating bowl, which was not at all where we wanted to be for a quick exit later. I stopped as soon as we could and made sure we were in a position to make a sharp exit after the show. There didn’t seem to be long between us sitting down and the show starting, but in that time we all went to rest in rooms and I looked briefly at snacks before deciding I couldn’t be bothered to wait in the queue for what was on offer.

The show was a good as ever, but I have to say out of all the Disney night time shows it is the one I’d miss if I had to drop one. Not wanting to get caught in the crush getting out we started to make our way slowly around the arena just after the fire sequence, leaving altogether as the character boat went past.


Mickey starts things off.


Sparky


There is quite a lot of this snake, I’m sure it must be fun to run around in it.

Fire, lots of fire.


Mickey seems to have it all under control, safe for us to go.


The whole gang are here.


The boat is just about gone, and so are we.

We went down the ramp over on the right, thinking it still comes out by the garage just inside the park, you can imagine how happy we were to discover it has been re-routed to come out on Sunset, right next to the other entrance and straight into the people watching the Star Wars fireworks. Thankfully we were still ahead of most of the crowd and were able to get out of the park without too much of a hold up.

We drove the 528 out to the airport, using the cash toll station as we had on the first day to avoid Avis charging us their ‘convenience fee’ for our whole holiday. Having not been offered the option of buying a tank of fuel when we collected the car I needed to fill up. This I did by turning left rather than right when we exited the 528 at the airport and heading north. The first gas station you come to on the route is a scam, their sign is ‘broken’ and so it is only when you get to the pump that you discover they charge more than twice the going rate for fuel. Thankfully I already knew this and simply drove north one more intersection to the Wawa, who charge the normal rate for their fuel.

Everyone helped me navigate the car back to the airport, helpfully calling out every sign we came to regarding car hire return. This year there were no issues dropping the car off, no phones were thrown away and there were no odd small charges on the receipt. The only issue we had was that there were no luggage trollies available in the garage and so getting everything over to the terminal was an adventure.

We used the restrooms opposite the deserted Norwegian check-in desks to get changed into our long trousers and sleeves. The staff here had no issues with the ECV and knew exactly what to do with it. We also found that Norwegian pool your weight allowance and so were not at all bothered that the case we’d just stuffed all our park gear into was now some 6kg overweight. They simply put a sticker on it to warn the baggage handlers. Our other two cases were well under weight, so I could have juggled stuff if needed.

Security was deserted and they were equally happy to deal with the ECV. It became apparent as we got to the gate that the flight was not going to be full, or everyone else was hiding somewhere. I walked over to the desk to let them know we had an ECV and they could take it whenever they were ready. A short while later one of the ramp staff did exactly that and took it away. We boarded not long afterward and sure enough the plane was less than half full. Boarding took no time at all and we actually pushed back 15 minutes ahead of schedule. The captain had already told us the winds were in our favour and it should be a quick flight.

Once the seatbelt light went off I moved across the aisle into one of the many empty blocks of three seats in the middle of the plane. Having not eaten since our lunch I waited for the chicken or beef before settling in for some sleep. Sleep we all did, right across the Atlantic. I was woken by the crew bustling about with breakfast and landing cards somewhere over the western approaches about an hour and a half before landing.


Tasty Norwegian breakfast, well at least there is plenty of it.

We landed back at Gatwick at 12:11pm and were on a stand 6 minutes later. After the usual route march we were met with the usual rubbish automatic passport gates. I noticed that Gatwick have a different model to the ones I’ve used at other European airports, the main difference appears to be the Gatwick ones reject far more people than they let through. Once we were past the queue of everyone waiting to see the single human dealing with a dozen gates rejecting 80% of the people we quickly had our bags, but not our ECV. We had seen two others get loaded at MCO and sure enough all three groups were waiting by the oversize luggage belt when some baggage handlers appeared pushing ECVs from the direction of the gates. I suspect they had been returned to the gate before the staff realised their owners had gone.

We called the car people once we had our bags, and a few minutes after we got to the car park our car was returned to us at 13:25. The drive home round the M25 on a Sunday afternoon was its usual slow self and we got home to Northampton about 4pm, after a brief stop to pick up milk at our local shop. Once we had unpacked a bit there wasn’t too long to wait before we could go to bed at a reasonable hour.

There is a post script to this story, Edward had slept the whole flight home and the whole drive from Gatwick, so he was awake again about 3:30AM. He used his early start to look for flights to California for me and him. You’ll see from my signature that we are booked for a long weekend in LA in October to experience HHN Hollywood style, as well as Knotts Scary Farm and Magic Mountain. Julia has rather sensibly decided that 98 hours is far too short a stay for a trip 8 time zones away.

Final Thoughts

A week is nowhere near long enough for a trip to Orlando, but it was a great trip none the less. We have been often enough to be able to concentrate on the things we really wanted to do and leave ourselves time to relax. If the crowd levels in Disney had been as quiet as they were the week before our trip then we’d have got a lot more done, but we still got all our headlines done.

The standout attractions were undoubtably Pandora and HHN. Pandora is just incredible, it is amazing to see the film built as a physical space. I’m so happy that Edward enjoyed his night at HHN so much that he’s booked to go again and that even Julia had a good evening despite the unsettling show.

Our accommodation was great, I’m sure there is a lot more to the resort, but as I told the lovely time share lady to us it was just a really nice place to sleep. I think we would all be happy staying there a lot longer in the future if I have the points balance to fund it.

Meeting up with such good friends was fantastic, having more time with them would have been good, but that was never going to be with the constraints on our time.

The weather was lovely, a little warm maybe but nowhere near as bad as our recent August and September trips. We did see some rain, but nothing persistent like some of the evenings we lost on our last holiday in 2016.

The only negatives were that we didn’t go for longer and the crowd levels in Disney. The length of the trip was our own fault and with a bit of planning the crowds were manageable.

I just need to thank you all for reading and your comments, until the next time…


Link back to the index.

[MrsSilverStar]

Thanks for sharing, sounds like it was a great trip. Good to see you can still get plenty done despite the crowds.

[spencem]

Originally Posted by MrsSilverStar

Thanks for sharing, sounds like it was a great trip. Good to see you can still get plenty done despite the crowds.

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Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.

Yes, we didn't get as much done as we'd like because of the crowds, but still got most of our favourites done.

[klr15]

Thank you for the writing up the report, it was really interesting to read.

[spencem]

Originally Posted by klr15

Thank you for the writing up the report, it was really interesting to read.

See more...

Thank you for reading along and taking the time to comment.

[Supersuzie]

Finally finished, thank you for taking the time to write this up, I really enjoyed it. We went home from our trip a couple of weeks before you arrived so it was nice to reminisce.

Looking forward to read what you make of HHN at Hollywood - I really hope the rumours for Stranger Things 2 are true.

[spencem]

Originally Posted by Supersuzie

Finally finished, thank you for taking the time to write this up, I really enjoyed it. We went home from our trip a couple of weeks before you arrived so it was nice to reminisce.

Looking forward to read what you make of HHN at Hollywood - I really hope the rumours for Stranger Things 2 are true.

See more...

Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.

We also hope to see Stranger Things back at HHN. Season 2 would make sense with season 3 due to come out later this year.

[Palm trees]

I've really enjoyed your report, hope to see one after your flying visit to California.

[spencem]

Originally Posted by Palm trees

I've really enjoyed your report, hope to see one after your flying visit to California.

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Thanks, I'm sure we'll post something after California. I suppose I really should do a pre trip soon.

[Excitedx4]

Brilliant trip report and thanks for sharing! Wow LA is certainly a long way for a weekend! Sounds like an adventure though!