Team Groves are Florida Bound! October 2017 Day 13

[berniegroves]

Day 13:
Wednesday 18th October 2017

Epcot and Red Lobster:

We left the Villa at 8:15 and got into the Epcot car park at about 845. The turnstiles weren’t too busy and we were through into the park at 9 am. Some cast members slowly walked the crowd through the park and eventually split off into three directions. The crowds are either going to test track on the left soaring on the right or straight onto frozen ever after. I said I’d like to watch this from above as it must look so funny having the crowd split into three.
We followed the crowd straightforward and we were around at frozen after ever after by 9:10.

Even with the cast members controlling the speed of the walk people were going crazy. We saw so many grown ups pushing their way through the crowds to get further forward. One couple we saw actually knocked a young child over as they pushed her out of the way!
I will never understand why people think it’s okay to behave that way to get to a theme park ride! I felt so bad for the little girl.
And another family were physically dragging their young children through the crowd to get closer to the front!
We went with the flow of the crowd and joined the queue with it being about 20 minutes long at that time.
The queue is very pretty and I think the theming is really amazing. We queued for 20 minutes with no issue, then as we were about to get on the boat Miley said she didn’t want to ride! Argh!
I was a bad parent and said she had to as we were at the front now and we wouldn’t be coming back again. I knew she’d enjoy most of the ride, it’s just the snow monster that scares her.

The ride was nice, the animatronics are good and we enjoyed it all. I really like the frozen film so I was bound to enjoy it.
Typically at the point where they take the photo you see the snow monster and Miley pulled my hand over her eyes as he scares her. So we have a photo of her eyes being covered! Lol.
But honestly she was absolutely fine for the rest of the ride!

We came out at 9.40. So it had taken 30 minutes to queue and do the actual ride.

We went into the bakery next door for some school bread as I’d heard it was good. The kids had a cookie each as well.
As we ate our snacks we walked around to the meet and greet for sadness and joy as the kids enjoyed meeting them in 2016.

I liked the school bread but I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy it again.

We joined the queue for Sadness and Joy at 10am and again queued for 20 minutes. I think this is one of the worst queue areas in Disney. It’s just so boring.

Both kids loved this meet and greet, they had massive cuddles and were being spun around My the characters. It was lots of fun.

After this we walked the short distance over to the Finding Nemo ride. This section of the park always seems to be overflowing with strollers and it can be tricky finding somewhere to leave one.
This is a nice ride, I like the shell seats that you sit in for it and I love the bubble effect lighting, it really calms me. I think I’d like some at home.
We all enjoyed this and we can’t find anything bad to say about it. It’s a really nice family attraction.

It was now time for some more characters! We always use the time guide to check when different characters will be around the world showcase and then we plan accordingly.

Up first was Belle in the France pavilion in her blue dress. We like meeting characters here but sometimes the queue can feel worse as they are all out in the open and we know how hot the Florida sun can be.

Today was hot but not unbearable so it wasn’t too bad. We waited about 15 minutes in the actual queue and enjoyed the views and some people watching whilst we were waiting.

It was soon the kids turn and they ran up as eager as ever. They do love characters and are always particularly in awe of the princesses. Belle being no exception.

It’s always like magic for us as parents watching the pure joy on their faces and their excitement.

We walked back over to England and the kids made the most of the park being quiet and ran slightly ahead of us.

They wouldn’t do this if there were people around so they were excited to have some space to play with.

It was around 11.30 when we joined the queue to meet Mary Poppins in England. There were only a handful of people in front of us but there were lots of random people scattered around as it wasn’t really clear where the queue would be.
I do find that problem in world showcase, nobody is ever completely sure where the queue will be! I think it would be easy enough to put out a sign at least to show where it should be.
This was again a fab meet. We have had nothing but awesome meet and greets with Mary Poppins. She is probably one of our families favourites as the interaction is always amazing with her.

In keeping with the rest of the day we now walked back to the main park for our Soarin fastpass. We really were bouncing back and forth all over the park today! I’d love to know how many steps we racked up!

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[berniegroves]

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Miley didn’t want to do soarin again. I think it had been a sensory overload for her the first time. But I had loved it and was desperate to go on again, so Grayson came on with me. We had a fastpass but we ended up waiting for ages! Or at least it felt like ages as the queue was just a plain grey narrow corridor. I was getting very tense that Grayson would decide enough was enough and we would have to try and squeeze our way back out again!
We eventually got on to the ride and we were in the middle row this time.
I still loved it, but it isn’t as good having people above you. Being at the top makes a huge difference to the experience.
Grayson enjoyed it as well thankfully so hopefully he’ll go on with me again on our next trip.

Once we were done we met Simon and Miley outside. They were getting worried that they had missed us as we had been gone so long.

We now once again walked back across the park to return to world showcase as it was time for another character!

This time we were meeting Aurora, also in the France pavilion, but a different place than earlier.
We joined the queue at 12.45 and this took around 20 minutes. It was tucked out of the way and so was a bit dull and the kids got a bit bored at this point. But they wanted to meet Aurora and this was the only place to meet her. Miley found herself some leaves that she kept sticking in her hair. She was very pleased with them!

Take a girl to Disney world and her highlight will be some leaves!

When it was their turn to meet her Grayson initially refused to interact with her at all and walked away to stand to the side with Simon. Miley went up and had cuddles and got both autograph books signed.

Aurora was really trying to encourage Grayson to join in and he did eventually go over and have a cuddle. Little so and so, he made Aurora work hard for that cuddle!

We decided to take a walk around the lake and do set off at a stroll. The kids walked, ran, skipped and jumped in the stroller at times too. It was a nice walk, seeing the sights and some of the entertainment provided by each pavilion.

I think on our next trip we will spend more time exploring World Showcase as I think Miley and Grayson will be more engaged in it then.

Do you see she still has the leaf?! She kept it for days!

We stopped in Morocco for photos at the fountain. We did this on our 2016 trip as well and have lovely ones of Miley, but Grayson would not sit still and just kept turning his back on us.
Photo from 2016:

So I thought we’d try again in the hopes that I could take photos of them here on each of our trips. Well again, Grayson wouldn’t cooperate. It was like deja-vu!

Perhaps in 2021 he will let me get a photo of him! But then I’ll need to try and get Oakley to join in and I don’t like my chances of three kids cooperating.

We walked all the way around and as we passed Germany the kids found some drums to play. We were here for quite a long time as Miley was enjoying playing with some of the other children. She found one little girl in particular who she liked and they played together for a while. Afterwards she asked if we could see her friend again whilst we were on holiday - I love the innocent and simple way kids think.

Anyway, Grayson was playing the drums but was getting annoyed that other kids were also playing them! Doh!
He had an enormous tantrum!
He would not leave the drums but he did not want to play with anyone else. It was catch 22!
Then when one became totally free we’d try and get him on it and he was so moody he wouldn’t even do that!

It was 2pm by now and he was obviously tired, hot and cranky, which we understood, but he really dug his heels in and would just not budge at all.
We tried everything we could think of to get him away from the drums as we knew staying there would only continue to annoy him (and us!).
In the end I had to pick him up and carry him away from the drums. It was quite busy by this time and so this wasn’t my finest moment and I know we must have been getting some looks. But we really had tried everything else!

Once we’d crossed the bridge to the next pavilion I put him down and he got in the stroller and promptly fell asleep. But not before giving me some evil stares.

We made a slow walk out of the park stopping to enjoy some of the park entertainment on the way and enjoying the atmosphere.

I have a feeling that we went to some shops afterwards. But I cannot find any notes or photos so it’s purely a hunch.

We did however go to The Red Lobster on the 192 for dinner that evening.
Simon and I used to go to the Red Lobster a lot before we had kids but hadn’t been there for years.
We were seated really quickly in a booth table by the window.

This meal was a lot of fun. It’s a really nice option for a family meal and our server was great with the kids. He had a lot of tattoos which Miley found fascinating.
The one down point was that Miley did not like the lobsters being in the tank, waiting to be eaten. She found that quite upsetting as I’m sure many people do.

When we left the kids were in good spirits and did a mini photo shoot for us on the bench outside!

They are such characters and I love that they have no inhibitions and are so confident in themselves.
I think red lobster will definitely be on our ‘to do’ list next time we visit Florida.

We were all done by 7pm and so headed back to the villa. We put the kids to bed and they were fast asleep not long after 8pm.

Simon and I stayed up and watched some tv, Simon did some work on his laptop and we ate some of the ice-cream that was building up in our freezer!

[Lisa29]

Another lovely day with great photos. So many character meets too.x