It's all about the mouse - 6th August 2018 day 6 TL and HS

[Goldia]

Welcome to the It’s all about the mouse trip report. We are a family of four and this is our 4th trip to Orlando. I'm Abby, my DH is Dave and our children are Max (13 at the time of the trip) and Kate (11). This trip is all WDW and we stay inside the Disney bubble for the entirety of our holiday.

If you haven't read the previous day it can be found here

Today we had our first day at a water park this trip - Max was desperate to go earlier in the trip, but I do as all good dibbers do and don't plan a water park day at the weekends, so that meant we had to wait until Monday. His favourite Disney water park is Typhoon Lagoon so that's where we were headed today.

The alarm was set for 7.45am so quite a lie in really! In the end of course I woke up pretty early still at around 6.20am and went to sit out on the balcony. Our swimming stuff had been drying out on the seat so I moved it all out the way and then managed to sit right in the wet puddle as they had all dripped onto the seat, which I didn't spot before sitting down. It was nice sitting out there in the early morning and I pootled around a bit on the Dibb.

We had a really good view from the room as we faced the waterway that the boats used to go to Disney Springs.

The others eventually woke up. Kate watched a bit of the Disney channel on tv and Max played around on his tablet. It was quite nice to not rush and get ready.

For some reason I thought I'd take a photo this morning of the coffee machine in the room and the toaster...we used the coffee machine every day, but the toaster remained unused throughout the trip.

Here are the plans for the day.

As you can see they aren't too detailed really as we just ride the slides at the water park until we've had enough. I'd thought about us going to Blaze for a late lunch or early dinner as we would have to go via Disney Springs on the buses...but as we'd already been there for dinner earlier in the trip we didn't bother returning. My grand plans for the evening were to try out one of the lounges in HS and after the success of the Nomad Lounge I didn't want to kick this idea to the curb!

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself, back to the morning and we were all ready to head out for the bus.

The bus goes via Disney Springs and we were there by 9.10am. We had loads of time and I had promised the kids they could get something from Starbucks as Typhoon Lagoon didn't open until 10am.

Dave ordered a small latte, which I deemed a ridiculous waste of a snack credit. Why oh why not order a large one?

Kate had a strawberry frappe. Max had a double chocolatey chip.

I didn’t really fancy anything so went without, although I did manage a sip of both the kids drinks. We managed to use 3 snack credits here and so I had high hopes we would actually manage the full 8 today...but following on from the epic failure of all the other days where we seem totally incapable of eating all the snacks we are given of course we didn't manage a full 8 snacks in 1 day.

Even with our stop off at Starbucks we made it to Typhoon Lagoon before rope drop and they hadn’t even let anyone inside the park yet.

There were long lines at the tapstiles, but at around 9.50am they let us all in.

I always feel it's better to get a photopass at the start of the day when we first arrive at the park, rather than at the end when I'm all wet and dripping.

We went around to the right side of the wave pool and waited by the donut stall. There is a little countdown here for park opening and then everyone does some super speedy fast walking to get to their favourite sun lounger spot. We always grab sunbeds on the path to the right near Typhoon Tilly's. This is very close to the entrance to the new (well, new for us) raft ride Miss Adventure Falls.

We dumped our stuff and plastered on the sun cream and we were off. First ride of the day was Miss Adventure Falls, obviously it was a walk on at this time of the day. It was fab, much better than the other family raft ride and I really enjoyed it.

Then we went around pretty much all the other slides. We did the body slides, which I’m not a big fan of really as I don’t like going down the slide without a mat or without being in a tube. So we did this once.

The kids and Dave then did Humunga Kowabunga while I waited at the bottom. They were off really quickly, so they can’t have waited at all. Then we went over the Falls area and did the old family raft ride, Gangplank Falls, and the other rides Mayday and Keelhaul Falls. All of these were barely any wait and we were quite pleased with how well we had done.

We then decided that we needed to go around to Crush N Gusher. As usual we had to do all 3 of these rides. These I absolutely love as you sit in the 2 person boat, well I love that ride I don’t love the carrying of the boat up the stairs! First up was Banana Blaster I went with Max.

Dave and Kate were together.

Then we did the pineapple one and then the other one that I have now forgotten the name of! We always swap partners on these and so manage to ride each one as a different pair. I’m least in favour of going with Dave as I don’t like sitting at the front! I much prefer to ride with the kids as that means I get to be at the back of the boat, not that it really makes much difference, it’s just that I don’t like seeing the ride in front of me as we’re going down! I’m such a wimp. If I’m in the back then I can just focus on the back of the other persons head and not the ride!

After that the kids were desperate to get into the wave pool and so that’s where we went. I managed just 1 of the massive waves and that was enough for me so I retreated to the shore and then to the sunbed.

My notes tell me it was 12.17pm so we had done really well to get all the slides in and I decided it was definitely cocktail o'clock! I had a frozen strawberry margarita and I also had a cup of water.

The others all came back pretty quickly though and Dave joined in with the cocktail fun getting himself a sangria.

We chilled out and chatted for a bit. After we’d finished our cocktails we all decided we were hungry and we went to Leaning Palms for lunch. We ordered 3 QS meals. Max wanted chicken nuggets and fries which he shared with Dave, so they ordered a Sam Adams beer as the drink with this meal.

Kate had a pulled pork burger with coleslaw and fries. She shared this meal with me. I had a Frozen blue lagoon tidal wave cocktail slushy.

We also got a chicken wrap with tortilla chips.

This was cold and not really very nice. I wouldn't order this again, we each had a small piece of it. The kids shared a coke.

We had to go around the lazy river a few times after lunch as we hadn’t done this yet. The kids and Dave went back into the wave pool and seemed to be in there a long time.

Here is a photo of the little sandy area with our sunbeds.

It was now just before 3pm and so we had to head back to the resort, via DS of course with the buses. On the way back the rain really came down and we got soaked running back from the bus stop to the room.

We didn’t have time to spare though as our FP for RnR was booked for 4pm, so we had a quick shower and changed then ran back out again. I’m not quite sure how we managed all that in with such a short time as we had to navigate the bus from TL to DS then get the bus from DS to the resort and then four people showered and changed and back on a bus by 4.35pm!

We managed to get off the bus at HS at 4.55pm and our FP for RnR was due to expire at 5pm so we really had to hustle to try and get there. Those who have been recently will know that it is not a quick walk from the bus depot to the park entrance as I’m pretty sure the buses are dropping off closer to Epcot than to the entrance of HS.

Anyway we ran to the bag drop and Dave kindly said he would do that and we could race through the tapstiles and see if we could get to the ride in time. We tapped in at 5.07pm and were really pleased when we were waved through! Phew, the 3 of us made it…I’m not sure Dave tried that hard to get there, he may have just slowly wandered down.

We were given the back two rows of the ride. So Kate and Max rode together in the back row and I was just in front of them.

We met up with Dave outside and went straight onto Tower of Terror. The kids had the front row again and Dave and me sat behind them.

We had no ADR planned for today. We ended up choosing to have dinner at ABC Commissary, which we haven't been to since 2014. You order at the counter and are then given a table tracker and the food is delivered when it's ready.

Again we shared 3 QS meals...we couldn't believe the size of the portions, 2 meals would have been enough.

We had a rib BBQ platter with fries and coleslaw.

Plus 2 of the shrimp, fish and chicken combo platters with fries and coleslaw.

These fish/chicken platters would have easily been enough for us. We ate these first and then none of us really had room for the ribs. Both Dave and myself had a nibble of the ribs, but they were a bit too saucy - the ribs over at Flametree BBQ in AK are much nicer.

Again, I forced the kids to share a coke (they are huge though!) so that we could get a cocktail each.

We both had a Happy Daze cocktail.

We were also given mints and a wet wipe each.

The incident that follows is one of our magical moments for this trip. It's utterly ridiculous but was very funny at the time.

Kate was showing her mint to me so it could be photographed for the trip report - she's very helpful.

After she'd had it a while, she was about to talk when the mint popped out of her mouth, bounced off the table and landed on her hand. She couldn't have caught it if she tried.

Obviously, I took a photo before she put it back in her mouth.

We found this hilarious.

After dinner we went around to Toy Story Land and used our FP for Alien Swirling Saucers. Dave was with Kate and I was with Max. I booked up a 4th FP for just the kids for Star Tours while Dave and myself went to the Hollywood Brown Derby Lounge.

I already knew what we were going to order - the flights!

Dave had the martini flight.

I had the margarita flight.

All of these were yummy! I'd definitely go back.

We couldn't book anymore FP for the kids as the only things that were left were the shows Muppetvision, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, Frozen Singalong, Fantasmic or more Star Tours that they'd already done. So I booked the Fantasmic FP for all of us (we were going to see it anyway) and we stopped off at Hollywood Scoops for dessert on the way in.

We had a rather lovely brownie sundae which Dave and Max sort of shared, I suspect that Max had the best of this.

Kate and myself did share the ice cream cookie sandwich as we both had a cookie each and then halved the ice cream.

2 snack credits used here.

Then we made our way into Fantasmic. I absolutely love this show. I love the songs at the start in the build up to the show. I love that the cast members get everyone doing a Mexican wave. I love the cheesy story that no one seems to get. I love Mickey right up at the top. I love the boat with all the characters on. I LOVE IT ALL! So, I just enjoyed it and didn't bother taking any photos at all.

After the show we came back to the resort and it was around 10.40pm before we all made it into bed.

And that's the end of another day. It was quite a laid back day and I suppose our first rest day of the trip. It was nice spending a good long time in the water park and then just chilling out really at HS not fussing about getting to all the rides or shows. I'd have been happy to just see Fantasmic and had booked the FP as I know the kids love the rides. I really thought we would eat into the credits today as we had no ADR. We did use up some of the QS but still doing very poorly on the snacks.

Statistics for the day:

Credits Used - 5 snack, 6 QS and 0 TS. 3 of the snack credits were the drinks from Starbucks, so this is pretty poor. Plus 2 of the QS meals we could have done without as the wrap at TL was dire and we had way too much food at dinner with the 3 platters.
Credits Remaining - 82 snack, 35 QS and 36 TS
Parks: 2
Rides: 4 (at HS, not counting all the slides at TL as I lost track of all those)
FP: 5
Characters: 0
Steps: 14,318 (but of course I didn’t wear my fitbit at TL)

Tomorrow we are back to AK in the morning, with a sort of lie in as there was no EMH and then we changed our plans for the evening as we did have an ADR for Narcoossee’s but I decided to ditch it for 2 reasons. Firstly, I was planning to use TS credits for me and Dave and pay OOP for the kids but it seemed utterly ridiculous to pay for extra food when we couldn't eat all the food we had already, we had QS and snacks coming out of our ears and it just felt like a real waste. Secondly, we wanted to spend the evening in MK as we hadn’t been there since Friday morning and hadn't had a chance to catch HEA yet. So, the Narcoosee's meal was canceled and to use the 4 TS credits I booked up a last minute ADR for Jungle Skipper Canteen (which turned out to be an inspired choice as it was a great meal!).

[MrsSilverStar]

Another lovely day! And for a rest day, you packed a lot in again!

That margarita flight is on my list to try, looks great.

Glad you’ve preserved Kate’s amazing mint trick for prosperity

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by MrsSilverStar

Another lovely day! And for a rest day, you packed a lot in again!

That margarita flight is on my list to try, looks great.

Glad you’ve preserved Kate’s amazing mint trick for prosperity

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Yes, I'm not sure we ever really have rest days! But people do sort of count the water parks as rest days. We did have a little bit of lounging around.

The flights were pretty good value really as they were $15 so not bad for the 3 drinks. Plus they looked really cute.

I love the look on her face, she's so surprised at herself for catching the mint!

By the way, I'm going to have to re-read your DLP trip report as I've been really naughty and booked a 4 day trip for Kate and myself in February half term! Max is away on a school skiing trip so it's just the 2 of us. I booked it just before the free dining ends. So we have the Eurostar, 4 nights in Cheyenne and the full board dining, but I don't really know what that means restaurant wise! So I'm now scouring the DLP area on the Dibb for tips!

[caitlinsmummy]

Another fab day. I'll update my reply properly when I can get on the laptop. My memory is horrendous so I like to have 2 tabs open, one to read and one to write my comments as I go xx

[DisneyDaffodil]

Another great day. We always get caught in heavy showers at water parks, we didn’t go this year, and we barely saw a shower 😀. I love Kate’s face with the sweet, as we said before, it’s those little things that make a holiday memory.

[Eccle]

Great day, and a busy one for a rest day! Good going making it to your FP in time too.

I'm a Fantasmic fan as well, I don't get fed up of seeing it

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by caitlinsmummy

Another fab day. I'll update my reply properly when I can get on the laptop. My memory is horrendous so I like to have 2 tabs open, one to read and one to write my comments as I go xx

See more...

I'll look forward to the proper reply!

Originally Posted by DisneyDaffodil

Another great day. We always get caught in heavy showers at water parks, we didn’t go this year, and we barely saw a shower 😀. I love Kate’s face with the sweet, as we said before, it’s those little things that make a holiday memory.

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Actually, I meant to say that this was the first time we've ever been to typhoon lagoon and not been rained off...The rain didn't start until we were on the bus, so we timed it perfectly!

Originally Posted by Eccle

Great day, and a busy one for a rest day! Good going making it to your FP in time too.

I'm a Fantasmic fan as well, I don't get fed up of seeing it

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Fantasmic seems to polarise people as some love it and some hate it...I think it's the marmite of the night time show! I have to watch it every trip!

[i love jack]

Another great day

[tory79]

We got told by a cast member that fast passes will still work up to 15 minutes after they’ve expired. And yes, getting in to HS takes forever at the moment!

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by i love jack

Another great day

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It was nice to have a slower day, I think it felt more relaxed as there wasn't really a plan for while we were at the water parks and we just took each slide in turn.

Originally Posted by tory79

We got told by a cast member that fast passes will still work up to 15 minutes after they’ve expired. And yes, getting in to HS takes forever at the moment!

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Yes there must be a bit of a grace period, I'd heard 10 minutes, But I still wasn't certain of it. I can't wait for all the construction to be done at HS!