It's The Greatest Hits Tour August 2018: Day 11 - Four Parks Challenge

[moosha]

Day 11 - Tuesday 21st August 2018

The first photo today is randomly of my Woody and birthday badges and Mat's Grumpy badge:



Today was our attempt at Four Parks In One Day. I had chosen today because we had Extra Morning Magic booked at Magic Kingdom which would definitely make things easier, although I wouldn’t call it a cheat as either way a Four Parks challenge is going to be a long day. We were of course also in the fortunate position that we had two parks within walking distance of our resort so we wouldn’t have to rely on Disney transport for those, or faff about with parking. I was conscious that WDW would be very busy while we were there so I hadn’t made the list of things we had to complete in each park too taxing. I know some people choose to include riding a headliner but I didn’t think that was particularly do-able without pre-booked FastPass+ in more than one park given the crowds and the popularity of Toy Story Land and Pandora at the time. I wanted us to be able to have fun rather than get stressed with long queues or running out of time. So our list of challenges looked like this (put together by Seren) :



Readers of my previous reports may remember that we did Extra Morning Magic in 2017 and thought it was great. We had eight rides on Mine Train plus one each on Winnie The Pooh and Peter Pan, all without waits and within just over an hour. Plus a head start on a Frontierland rope drop and a really nice buffet breakfast. We were keen to repeat that experience this year because we thought it was worth the cost for the benefits. Unfortunately it didn’t go quite so well today but we’ll get to that in a minute.

First though, we had set the alarm for 5 am as EMM began at 7.45 am.. Mat went to get coffee from downstairs and took these photos:







Somehow there was so much faffing that we were out the door ten minutes later than the planned time of 7 am



We were still on a Taylor Swift high after seeing her in concert in Tampa a few days before.






When we got to Magic Kingdom, we found the parking kiosks were attended whereas the year before they hadn’t been staffed this early. We parked up in Aladdin and walked to bag check.



I was greeted with an enthusiastic ‘Happy birthday!’ from Vito, a security CM. He also gave me a high five and said ‘You got a happy birthday and a high five!’ It was a pretty good way to start the day.

We were sent to the resort monorail as the express one doesn’t operate this early.



As we were walking up the ramp the CM closed the gate at the top. He said there’d be another one along in five minutes. It was a bit annoying but we were chill about it. The next monorail arrived and we got on. It was about 7.30 am at this point. I was starting to get a bit annoyed as I knew we were unlikely to be entering Magic Kingdom just before 7.45 am as planned.



When we stopped at The Polynesian we were held up there for five minutes. They were holding the monorail for guests coming out of the hotel and going through bag check on the platform. This was annoying because we were late but also we’ve seen them not wait when we’ve been going through bag check here and at Grand Floridian. Also annoying because the guy at TTC hadn’t held that monorail for us when we’d been walking up the ramp earlier.

There were then a lot of people waiting to board at the Grand Floridian. As they boarded we heard people saying they were going to be late for their breakfast reservations so I assume there had been quite a wait here too. The unreliable monorail service puts me off staying at The Polynesian even though I’d like to as I love the hotel [edit: since writing this six months ago I have booked a few days at The Polynesian for our next trip but we will probably make use of the new walking path from the Grand Floridian to Magic Kingdom as much as possible rather than rely on the monorail.] The monorail resorts carry a premium for their location and for being on the monorail loop but the service isn’t frequent or reliable enough in my opinion to justify it. I’m glad Disney are now opening up a walkway from Grand Floridian to Magic Kingdom as it makes me much more likely to stay there at some point (you know, after I become a millionaire.) I’m much happier walking somewhere at my own (impatient) pace than relying on infrequent Disney / public transport with lots of other people.

By the time the monorail pulled into the station at the Magic Kingdom, it was past 7.45 am and I was feeling quite peed off. It was a chain of mini delays starting with leaving ten minutes late than now meant we wouldn’t have the calm, relaxed and in-plenty-of-time entrance to the event that we’d had the year before. I dragged Mat and the girls off the monorail and down the ramp at full speed so we would at least be among the first people from the train to check in for reservations / special events rather than wait in line for however long to do so. We checked in with a CM and her iPad about 7.50 am. There were an awful lot of people doing the same, certainly more so than there had been in 2017.

Walking up Main Street, there were a lot of people about, although we knew that a good chunk of them would be heading to early breakfast reservations at Cinderella’s Royal Table, Crystal Palace and Be Our Guest. They say there is no such thing as an empty Main Street first thing in the morning anymore with all the early breakfast reservations, and I don’t think we’ve seen Main Street really quiet first thing since probably 2015. This was also our first visit to Magic Kingdom this holiday, and it was a bit sad that our first experience of walking through those tunnels under the rail station and taking in Town Square and Main Street was all a bit rushed and stressful. Booking EMM for today was the only way I could get it to work with all our other plans, but obviously I hadn’t planned that we would be arriving a bit late and with me feeling a little fed up.

A few months after this visit, Disney expanded the capacity of Early Morning Magic at Magic Kingdom by extending the number of attractions included which in my opinion made it less worthwhile. This is because the Fantasyland attractions they added weren’t exactly headliners / priorities and so most people would still be heading for Mine Train and Peter Pan so there would just be more people doing so. For us, Disney had definitely sold more tickets for this morning’s events than when we had visited in May of the previous year which obviously makes a difference to your enjoyment of the experience. If the park is really quiet and you can ride Mine Train over and over again with no resistance, you’re going to feel that this premium event is very worthwhile. Unfortunately that wasn’t our experience today, partly because there were more people attending the event and partly because we ran into some bad luck with technical problems.



Our walk to Fantasyland wasn’t exactly a brisk one as we were stuck behind some slow people. I know I’m showing my impatient side here and that some people would be enjoying the moment and taking everything in, but as we’d paid a lot of money for priority access that lasts 75 minutes and we’d already lost 20% of that with delays getting in, not ‘wasting’ any more of that time was highly important to me.

Beautiful Carrousel :



We got to Mine Train at about 8.03 am but unfortunately it wasn’t operating due to technical trouble. You can imagine what good news this is when the purpose of the event is largely to avoid the long waits that are always present at this ride. An important Cast Member (she had an ear piece) was on hand to advise guests that because Mine Train would be having a ‘delayed opening’, the tea cups I think it was would be opening early (erm..yay!) and that our event wristbands would be good at Mine Train until 11 am to compensate, giving event guests what amounts to unlimited FP+ access at the ride for an additional hour this morning. That’s pretty good compensation, but with our Four Parks in One Day challenge, we wouldn’t be hanging around in the park that long so it wouldn’t benefit us. I really hoped it wouldn’t be down for too long so we got some benefit of our event admission.

As we couldn’t ride Mine Train, we walked over to Peter Pan where there was a little bit of a queue, unsurprisingly since none of us could ride the Dwarfs ride. I was feeling pretty annoyed at this point. It had been one of those mornings where one little inconvenience or delay led to another and now here we were, $276 down and unable to ride the main attraction. Plus, with no Mine Train, there were now more people pushed to Peter Pan so it was having a knock-on effect on the other two attractions. I was really hoping our luck would turn around soon.

We waited a few minutes for Peter Pan, a ride that the girls and I still really love (Peter Pan is one of Seren’s favourite Disney characters.) When we got back outside, Mine Train was running so we headed over. It had just gone 8.10 am when we joined the line. We waited five minutes which was a bit of a surprise since at the previous year’s we had literally walked on every time, with only a few people around us for each ride. I thought that it was probably just because the ride had only just opened, and so it was an initial rush. We were allocated rows two and three which was a bit of a disappointment as we much prefer riding at the back. Oh well, at least we were finally on the ride and it was loads of fun of course. Mine Train is a big favourite with us all. I love the two little drops, how beautiful the Mine part is (we always sing and clap along with Heigh-Ho during the hill lift because we’re embarrassing like that) and above all I love how Magic Kingdom looks from the ride and how classic Disney it feels.

We all got off feeling very happy and exited the ride. In 2017 there had been a rope open just as you got back outside so EMM guests could swing back through the entry door without going all the way back up to the ride entrance. So from getting off the ride, and with so few people there, you would be boarding again within a minute. That shortcut wasn’t open today, so we had to go right back out and through the entrance again and there were still quite a few people waiting. We probably waited five minutes again. I know five minutes is nothing, but I guess it all depends on your perception of the situation and what you’re paying for. I saw two different people question a CM about having to wait for the ride during the event. If you queue for five minutes at a time and you only have 75 minutes exclusive access, it’s going to impact the number of times you can ride. For us, because we had ridden so many times repeatedly with no wait the previous year, our expectation was that it would be the same this year. We had paid the same amount for the same event after all. But what was clear today was that in 2017 Disney had not sold as many tickets for the event we attended. I guess it just wasn’t popular or busy enough. Whereas today the event could well have sold out. So I guess it just came down to luck. As I said earlier, when Early Morning Magic was last offered in 2019 or 2020 before the parks closed, it had changed and expanded a bit anyway. But I did not consider the event we attended today as worth the high cost and if it had been my first experience I wouldn’t have booked it again. Whereas in 2017 I spoke highly of the same event in my trip report and recommended it.

For our second ride on the Mine Train of the morning, we asked if we could please sit at the back. The CM was a bit grumpy but said we could. We all loved our ride in the back and put our arms up (except Mat who is always too scared to do that.)

We queued up again (waiting another five minutes or so) and were allocated the front two rows. For our fourth ride Seren asked politely if we could sit in the back again and so we did. After four consecutive rides it was 8.55 am so considering we spent about 35 minutes there in total without doing anything else, our wait time must have been about six or seven minutes average.

The previous year we had followed easywdw.com’s advice (as I usually do, big Josh fan) and used the first hour or so to hammer the rides as much as possible, then used the slight head start to rope drop another ‘land’ at 9 and then headed to the included breakfast at the end of the event, around 9.30 / 9.45 am. This seemed to be the best way to maximise the value of the EMH, so that is what we did.

We were probably about five minutes ‘behind’ the ideal timing to get ahead of the Frontierland rope drop but we wanted to have a quick go on Winnie The Pooh as it was the only included attraction we hadn’t yet done. It was a walk-on luckily. This is another favourite of ours.

After that we walked down to Frontierland and ended up just behind the rope droppers being slowly walked round to Splash and Big Thunder. We were heading for the latter, and the posted wait when we got there with all the other first riders of the day was five minutes which turned out to be accurate.





When we got to loading we asked for for the back as we always do. The CM said it would be three trains wait but he was going to give us rows 13 and 14 anyway so we’d be two rows from the back. That was fine with us. BTM is one of our favourites and always another of those ‘we’re actually here’ moments.

When we got off Freya started moaning that she wanted to ride Splash as well. We told her that we couldn’t do that today because we needed to get back to Fantasyland for the included-in-the-event breakfast, and we couldn’t hang around at MK that much longer because of our four parks challenge. She knew all of this already, she just really wanted to ride Splash Mountain in the moment, so she was grumpy for a bit.

Construction work was taking place on the Rivers of America:

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When we got to Pinocchio’s Village Haus for the breakfast, a nice CM host greeted us and told us we should find a table wherever we liked. I had been a bit concerned about the event breakfast as vegans (we hadn’t been vegan when we had done EMM the year before) but I had read a review somewhere online from a vegan who said the restaurant had been accommodating and offered vegan cakes or pastries as well as whatever was vegan on the buffet. It had said just to mention being vegan when checking in. So I went in feeling reassured that we wouldn’t have any problems today. When I told the host about our vegan requirements she passed us over to a colleague. This lady took us to a register and got out the allergy binder. She said ‘What’s the allergy?’ I explained politely that it wasn’t an allergy, just that we were vegan and that I had seen somewhere that there were vegan pastries available on request or something. She was pretty rude and said ‘We have oatmeal, do you want that?’ I said ‘No thank you, so there isn’t anything else?’ She pointed to three vegan cakes in the binder and said she had those and could bring them out. I was very grateful and she said she’d meet us at the buffet.

We found a table right by the window overlooking It’s A Small World. On the table were signs for us to hold up for the people on the boats saying things like ‘YMCA’ and ‘Chicken Dance’. Mat and Freya were loving life with this. Quite a lot of people on the boats were responding and getting involved with the dances and it was really funny. Like there would be some dad on the boat looking really grumpy and then he would just break into the chicken dance (The Birdy Song).



I went to the buffet to find out what we could have which turned out to just be breakfast potatoes and fruit. I got a plate of each but the potatoes were burnt and unfortunately with it being the end of the event, they weren’t replaced with a more appealing tray while we were there. They look pretty unappetising:



The fruit was of slightly lower quality than last time too, there were less fruits on the plate and the strawberries were mushy. Also, in 2017 they had offered individual cartons of juice and milk and bottles of water but this year it was big dispensers of apple juice, orange juice and water. The previous year it had felt like quite a luxury breakfast and it definitely seemed like Disney had cut costs on it which I could completely understand them doing. But as a guest it felt of a lower quality in comparison which was a shame.



When I got back to the table the CM had brought out a plate of the three vegan cake slices which I believe were ginger, lemon and chocolate chip. Mat said that when she had come back with them she had been much nicer and apologised that there wasn’t more we could eat. She had said she was going to bring out another plate of the cake slices but it never arrived and by the time we saw her again, we were getting ready to leave. The cakes were very nice though.



Mat and the girls went to the buffet and Mat got the same as me. The girls had some pastries (I believe there were chocolate twists, cinnamon rolls, apple Danishes and croissants) and some fruit as well as some hot buffet items (scrambled egg, breakfast potatoes and French toast for the girls.) Freya also had some cubes of cheese from the cold buffet as she would never pass up an opportunity to do so (she is the only one in the family who isn’t vegan now, her love of cheese and Dairy Milk prevent her from joining in.)

So yes, overall the breakfast was disappointing in comparison with the previous visit but none of us left hungry. The high points were definitely the signs we held up to the Small World riders and the vegan cakes. When we left it was just after 10 am so we could have gone back to Mine Train with our wristbands for a few more rides but we were conscious of time with it being Four Parks Challenge. We still had other parts of the challenge to do in Magic Kingdom so we needed to get a wriggle on.









We walked over to Main Street but had just timed it wrong as the Move It! Shake It! parade was out and so moving down Main Street wasn’t easy with the floats and the extra people around. Seren was happy to see Stitch and Judy Hopps in the parade. She does get excited about seeing characters (she was 12 then but she’s still the same now at 14). I love it.

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The things we needed to complete for our challenge were all in this area and the need for coffee was strong so decided that Mat would join the line in Starbucks while the girls and I went to the Emporium to get the park pin we needed for the challenge.





We chose a Cinderella Castle pin...



...and went back to Starbucks.







Mat was still in line so we walked up to the train station to get a pressed penny so we could tick that off for Magic Kingdom too.









We bumped into the parade again so walked through the shops to meet Mat who now had the coffees. The Starbucks CM had told him that all sizes were a snack credit so he may as well get Ventis which he did. I guess a bucket of black Americano was fuel to power through the Four Parks Challenge.



Main Street was still really busy and we needed to get a PhotoPass photo taken with the castle in the background before we could leave for the next park. We joined a line for a photographer and there were three parties in front of us. Each of the PhotoPass photographers on Main Street was just as busy as so many people were entering the park with it being mid-morning on a busy day. I’ve said it before but I have to admit to being an impatient person in situations like this when things aren’t going quite to plan. I was getting stressed because of our (self-inflicted) time pressure with having so much to do and since we had arrived in Main Street things hadn’t run all that smoothly. It had probably taken about 15 minutes longer here than I would have hoped and we were still waiting to get our photo. When it was our turn we stepped up to the photographer and put our coffees down on the ground ready for our photo. He turned around to check behind him and saw the horse-drawn carriage coming down the street so he got us all to step aside while it passed. We then got our photo and left the park. Amusingly (?!) we have barely any of our PhotoPass photos from this trip. It's so lomg ago now that I can't remember exactly what happened but I think we didn't download them quick enough when we got home and although we chased up with Disney, we were only able to retrieve some of them which ended up being mostly ride photos. So I don't actually have any of the shots that were taken in front of the park icons as per the challenge. But I promise they did happen.

The Express Monorail was closed for construction or renovation work at the time so it was Resort Monorail back to TTC. As it was quieter it didn’t take as long as it had earlier this morning. We got in the car and drove to Animal Kingdom, arriving about 11.15 am.

We parked in Giraffe 49 and walked to the entrance. It was really hot. I really should stop bothering to write that as it’s a given for August in Florida, but this was another of those moments where we just really noticed the heat as it tends to get on top of us, being heat wimps.

We were in the park by 11.30 am and went straight to Dinosaur.



We had a FP+ and pretty much walked on but the ride was busy. I do love Dinosaur. When we got off, we restroomed and did sunscreen and then grabbed some iced waters from Trilo Bites which we were very much in need of.







The girls pin traded somewhere and then we walked up to Mr Kamal’s to get a snacky lunch.



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[moosha]

...continued

As we needed to eat or drink (‘buy a snack’) in all four parks we wanted to keep it light for the sake of our tummies and wallets. I had read that the seasoned fries here were a good use of a snack credit. We got two seasoned fries which came with a sriracha dip (they also come with tzatziki so we asked for them without because vegan.) We also got two portions of hummus, pita, celery and carrots (again two snack credits).





We were planning to have a sort of picnic so we could all share but there were no free tables in the area so we ended up sitting at the edge of the walkway by the kiosk which made it a bit tricky to share (on the floor) and not the most comfortable way to eat (again on the floor, and with lots of people walking right in front of us.) The girls didn’t like the hummus (not sure why as they love hummus and it tasted like ‘normal’ hummus to me) so they ate the carrots and pita and Mat and I used the hummus to cool down the spice from the fries and sriracha. The fries were really good though.

When we were all done we found a PhotoPass photographer down by the water in a little secluded area and got a photo taken with the Tree of Life in the background. She also did a magic shot. And we don't have any of these either.



We headed back towards the exit to Discovery Trading Company which is one of our favourite shops in the whole of Walt Disney World.





We had a little browse and chose a park pin. We struggled to find a pressed penny machine but eventually found one outside the store with a penny we liked the look of.











That was all the boxes ticked for Animal Kingdom so we exited the park...



...and waited a couple of minutes for a tram back to the car.



We drove back to the Yacht Club and decided to take a bit of an afternoon break as we were so hot. We don’t have a problem with park touring early to late usually but the August heat this trip meant we usually took an air conditioning and cold water break in the afternoon. We were all feeling pretty sweaty so everyone changed their clothes and I jumped in the shower quickly. Showers after a hot day at a Florida theme park are the best showers of all and it was so nice to feel refreshed before we set off again for the second half of the challenge.

Our room, as far as I can recall 16 months later, was the second one down on the left.



The column immediately to the left of the window is a staircase straight out onto The Boardwalk which was so handy when we were coming out this way, for example to walk to The Studios or Epcot. It saved having to walk all the way through the corridors to the elevators down to reception and then out onto The Boardwalk.



We set off on foot for Hollywood Studios and it took about 20 minutes.











As I mentioned in a previous day’s report, the Skyway construction meant the walking route was a bit around-the-houses so it was taking an extra five minutes or so to get to the park.





Once inside, we got a PhotoPass on Hollywood Boulevard and the photographer was a bit grumpy. Once again I don't have the photo, but I do have one from another day so I'm going to include it and we can pretend it's from today:



I must have made our FP+ for this park after we had ridden Dinosaur at Animal Kingdom. Even though it seems like a million years ago now (partly because it was 18 months ago and also because making FP+ now seems like another life) I’m pretty sure that’s how it used to work back in the day. As I mentioned at the top of this report, I didn’t make riding a headliner at each park part of the challenge as we would have spent hours in line across the parks. Let’s go with a ‘classic’ attraction. I had booked Star Tours and I assume that was the only attraction available a few hours before with the exception of shows.

We walked over and the ride was really quiet. The inside queuing area was completely empty. We were given the front row, plus all the scenes were new to us and Seren was the rebel spy! This was the one and only time this has ever happened to any of us so it was very exciting. All of those things meant this was definitely our favourite ever ride on Star Tours. In the photo they put up of Seren, her 3D glasses were pretty much hanging off her face which was amusing.



Instead of getting a small snack at this park, we decided to have a very early dinner. It was about 4 pm. Seren didn’t want anything as she wasn’t hungry. Having had a good lunch at ABC Commissary a few days before, Mat and Freya wanted to go back there. Mat got a Beyond Burger and fries again and Freya had shrimp and fries.



This is Mat's terrible photo of his burger and proof why I usually take ownership of the photos for the trip report:



It was dead inside as it wasn’t really meal time so we sat inside. It’s not the nicest inside but of course the biggest benefit was air conditioning. Mat was a good boy and got two Happy Daze cocktails as the beverages with the meals so we could have one each. These were pre-mixed but we enjoyed them each time we had them as they were tasty and pretty strong.



We also got some iced waters and Seren had an apple juice. When Mat and Freya had finished their meals we walked round to Dockside Diner so I could get some nachos.



This definitely became my favourite quick service meal over the trip. At the counter I asked for the vegan nachos (i.e. the vegetarian nachos made vegan) and the CM replied ‘They’re already vegan’ which threw me as the nachos are served with sour cream and cheese. I guess he just got vegetarian and vegan confused, so I explained that I would like them without the sour cream and cheese please. I got the Blue Long Island Iced Tea cocktail as my drink on the dining plan. It was really strong and Mat and I shared it. Not something I would usually pick but it was very good.



The nachos were delicious. Tortilla chips with a vegan mince chilli, salsa and guacamole...what’s not to like?



We sat on a bench across from Dockside Diner. At one of the tables, a little girl was asleep lying on the table. The Star Wars show was taking place on the stage behind us and we weren’t taking much notice of it but it was pretty loud.



When I had licked the nachos plate clean after fighting off as many of my family’s hungry fingers as I could, we took a walk up Sunset Boulevard to the pin kiosk.





We chose a park pin for the challenge and then I bought the girls a pack of pins to trade as they were running out of pins they didn’t want to keep. It’s an expensive hobby though. A pack of seven pins cost us $32.

Not sure where we got these waters from but Mat did a great job of holding them whilewe looked for the pins.





We continued on to the Rock N’ Roller Coaster shop as Seren wanted to buy something she’d seen in there on our previous visit. She got a Star Wars glow in the dark beanie for her boyfriend at the time. It was a nice hat as well, she should have kept it for herself as they broke up two months later. We found a pressed penny machine somewhere in the vicinity of the store and chose a penny, completing our challenge for this park.











We took a walk towards the exit and popped in a couple of the shops on the way out. There were some really cute things in the stores:









I got one of the Chip & Dale bags of nuts and dried fruit to carry around with us for when we needed something to nibble on. We also went to Starbucks to get the new park mug and the mini tree decoration version of it. Mat was in need of another coffee and chose a coconut milk latte. He said they were nice so I got one too. I have absolutely no idea why I did this as I don’t like iced coffee (I don’t even like coffee when it has cooled down too much) or milky coffee so it was never going to be a winner for me. I gave it to Mat after a few sips so he had two.







I have no idea where this, Mat took this photo:





It was around 6 pm when we left our third park of the day.



Continued below...

[moosha]

...continued

Skyway construction:







Random cone:







We walked back to the Boardwalk and stopped at Ample Hills as the girls fancied ice cream, taking this lovely photo of the beautiful Yacht Club first:





We like Ample Hills having been to the original Brooklyn store and the Manhattan outlet a few times, and we’d been to this one a few times the previous year when we were staying at The Boardwalk Villas. It took ages today especially as the girls couldn’t decide what they wanted.





Mat and I waited outside but the CM was a bit funny when Freya asked to pay for her ice-cream with a snack credit so I went back in to assist. Seren chose one scoop of Oatmeal Lace in a cup and Freya got one scoop of sweet cookies and cream in a cone. They really enjoyed them.





We sat at a table outside while the girls finished their ice-creams and it started to rain a little.



We walked the five minutes from Ample Hills to the International Gateway. The sky was looking pretty ominious:



My lefty:





We were probably entering our fourth and final park of the day a bit later than I would have imagined, having had the afternoon break but that was definitely much needed. As I said at the beginning of the report, having two parks within walking distance of our hotel room definitely took some of the time pressure and faffing out of the day and for us meant it was less tiring. With the weather on the turn I was glad we wouldn’t be waiting around for Disney transport once we’d completed the challenges at our fourth park.

Once through the gates we popped into the shop just inside the International Gateway entrance to look for a pin and penny but they had neither. It was still only raining a little and we fancied a drink so we walked over the bridge to France and both got a lemon citron slush.



We found an umbrella to drink them under by the Food and Wine Festival kiosk (F&W was about to open in a few days.) While we were sat drinking our drinks a lady came over to ask where we got them from as her party were drinking around the world. We pointed her in the right direction as we wouldn’t have wanted her to miss out on one of the best drinks at Epcot.





We walked up to Future World once we’d finished our slushes and found an Epcot pin in Mousegear. I had made FP+ for Spaceship Earth earlier at Hollywood Studios so we rode that as our our classic ride for this park.







By this point it was raining quite heavily.





We still needed to get a pressed penny for this park so we tried the Camera Center just across from Spaceship Earth. They didn’t have any machines nearby so Mat asked the CM whereabouts in the park there was one. She didn’t know so she phoned some corporate HQ which was very nice of her but she was on hold for ages. Mat and the girls were hanging about in the store waiting for her to get her response while I waited outside in the rain.

There was a large family group hovering right where I was standing and all of a sudden they realised they had lost a four year old boy. There was a lot of panicking and one of the adults went into the Camera Center for help. A good few people walking past were stopping to try and help which always restores my faith in humanity but the family were kindly rejecting assistance. It was horrible. After a few minutes, a couple of guys appeared who were walking back from the exit with the child who was crying as was his sister when she saw him. I couldn’t help but get emotional.

Eventually Mat told the CM not to worry about the penny because who knows how long she would have had to wait for a response. Our next challenge was our photo with a park icon. All of the PhotoPass photographers had gone because of the bad weather so we had to take our own selfie. The girls are selfie pros of course being (almost) teenagers at the time so we got them to do it. It was quite a challenge with the light and weather being so bad and needing to get all four of us plus Spaceship Earth in shot. It took a good few attempts and lots of messing about before we got a photo we were happy with.





This one is probably my favourite:









We started walking up towards World Showcase again as we had a feeling we would be able to get a pressed penny there. We had an idea that there were machines around Gateway Gifts and we were right, inside the shop there were quite a few pressed penny machines.





We chose the design we liked the most and then we were done; our Four Parks challenge was completed at 8.30 pm (well, to the best of our ability with the weather shutting down PhotoPass.) We high-fived and we all agreed we would definitely do it again on a future trip as it had been fun. Here are all of our pins and pennies:



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We were a bit hungry and planned to get some food from Liberty Inn on the way out but we got there at 8.40 pm and a CM told us it closed at 8.30. Plan B was the pizza window at The Boardwalk. The CM said they could do a pizza with no cheese as they don’t have vegan cheese but we didn’t really want that. I read a blog post a few days later that said they do have vegan cheese so it was possibly just a CM that didn’t know they carry it.

Plan C was Ale and Compass to see if we could sit in the bar and have one of their delicious vegan burgers but they also closed at 8.30 pm. It was now just before 9 pm. I said this in my previous year’s report but it’s worth repeating here; Disney definitely don’t have enough restaurants open in the evening for people looking for a fairly late meal after a long day in the park. It’s not like it was 11 or later, it wasn’t even yet 9 pm. I know it’s a cost-cutting thing but surely there would be some money to be made from families hungry after a busy day who want to relax with some food and drink before bed?

Plan D (!) was a little stroll along to Crew Cup Lounge by Yachtsman Steakhouse but there was nothing vegan on the menu which was a shame as this had been our solution the previous year when we couldn’t find anything else around the same time of night around The Boardwalk. They’d had a couple of decent vegan sides then that went down nicely but the menu had changed since. We really CBA by this point so we cut our losses and went upstairs for a glass of wine from the bottle we’d bought from the marketplace earlier in the week and some Kettle Chips and cashews we had in the room. It’s fair to say we were all really worn out after a super long but really fun day. The girls crashed really quickly and we were in bed too around 10 pm.

[MHM]

I’m so happy you are continuing with this🙂 thanks for sharing!

[moosha]

Originally Posted by MHM

I’m so happy you are continuing with this🙂 thanks for sharing!

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