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Old 26 Feb 21, 03:43 PM  
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Silvercat
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Join Date: Apr 08
WDW 2019 - days 12 & 13

Previous day is here

DAY 12 – Sunday 08 December

Plan : Animal Kingdom
Actual : We were up bright and early, and after coffee were on the road to the Animal Kingdom. Our first FastPass today was for the Na’vi River Journey, which was already showing a 70 minute standby time, but before going there, we walked round to Flight of Passage, where I booked us a GA pass time of 12:46 – this ride was at 165 minutes standby at this point. We went back to the River Journey and rode with our FastPass. We both really like this ride, it is relaxing and fun, and so beautiful to look at.

After our trip on the Pandora river, we went into the Satu’li Canteen for some breakfast. We both had coffee, and I got DH chocolate cake which was dome shaped, with a crunchy base and a banana cream swirl on the top, while I had the seasonal bombe again – peppermint white chocolate mousse. They were both delicious, mine was a really light and fluffy mousse with a strong yet not overpowering mint flavour, yummy. The Canteen was quite quiet at that time of the morning, as it was pre-lunchtime really. We like the theming of this place a lot.

After breakfast, we took a slow stroll over towards Discovery Island, going into the Discovery Trading Company where we picked up Briar Rose Gold Spirit Jerseys for myself and my sister, (she had asked me to get her a couple of Spirit Jerseys and had given me the money in advance, the Briar Rose Gold and the Belle Bronze), and I had also decided to buy her the white, fluffy Spirit Jersey for her birthday, which is in February, as I knew she would love this one as well, so I got one for sis and one for myself. We had everything sent back to the resort. The Cast Member who assisted us here was a bit weird – he offered me his pen to complete the necessary form to have our purchases sent to our resort, then said I could keep it as a gift, so I went to put it in my bag. He then promptly said that guests weren’t allowed to keep them and asked for it back! He didn’t smile or appear to be joking with me at any point, he was just a bit odd.

Anyway, it was now time for our FastPass for Dinosaur, so we took a stroll round to DinoLand. This time we walked through the whole of the FastPass entrance, which was fine by us, and had loads on fun on the ride. I was more relaxed on it this time around, so enjoyed it more. When we exited, we sat on some sheltered benches nearby to drink some water and relax for 10 minutes, before heading back to Pandora. Standby for Flight of Passage had dropped slightly to 130 minutes, but we joined the short FastPass queue, and as we made our way into the building, I was looking at MDX on my phone to check out our next FastPass, where I discovered that my Guest Assistance passes show up in the My Plans section – very helpful! I hadn’t realised that would happen. We boarded our banshees and once again this was a breathtaking and exhilarating ride. My favourite bits are when you swoop very close to bodies of water and get a light water spray on your face. I also noticed today that you experience different scents in different areas during the ride, good grief I love this ride!

After our ride was over, we walked around the corner to the park entrance, where I sat on a bench so that DH could go to the smoking zone. This is the closest of the smoking areas in the parks, it is not out of the park entrance but is tucked around a corner in a small, open area. DH’s leg was also feeling better today, he had decided to forego his socks and trainers in favour of sandals today, which was less restrictive on his ankles, and I think taking ibuprofen instead of just paracetamol was also helping.

When he returned, we walked over the Asia, riding Expedition Everest with our next FastPass. The ride had a 70 minute standby wait at this point, but we were on relatively quickly. Great fun! I am normally terrified of the bit where you go up the very long, steep incline, as the track looks very narrow and I am convinced I am going to fall over the edge, but having experienced this ride many times over the years and having NOT fallen off, I am now a bit more relaxed and try to look around a bit more on the ascent.

The time was now approaching 3 p.m., and we realised we were hungry, so we went to the Yak & Yeti Café where I got us both honey sesame chicken and rice, with Sprite for DH and chocolate milk for me. While we enjoyed our lunch, I used MDX to book us FastPasses for Rivers of Light later on, as we had now used all our official FastPasses for the day so could book another one.

A quick restroom visit after lunch, then we made our way over to the Maharaja Jungle Trek – we love this walk-through attraction. We saw the Komodo Dragon, (very cute!), and there was one tiger visible in one of the two enclosures, but there was no sign of the other tiger or the 2 babies, sadly. To my dismay, the bat enclosure was closed, which was a shame as I really like bats. At the end of the Trek, we boarded the Wildlife Express after only a short wait, and enjoyed the ride over to Rafiki’s Planet Watch, but were really disappointed with the area. The whole of the centre section that used to be interesting display boards of animal facts, a meet and greet area for live animals such as snakes, and Rafiki himself, was now taken up by seating for an animation drawing class. The booths of animal sounds were closed, so we looked at the reptile and snake enclosures before heading back to the train station. There really wasn’t much going on in that area at all, which was very odd. I know it had been closed down for a while, looking as though it wasn’t going to reopen, so I was really surprised to find that nothing new or fun had been added.

When we arrived back on the mainland, we decided to take a quick coffee break at the nearby Kusafiri, which has outdoor seating. Fully rested, we then took a slow walk back to Asia to take our seats in the theatre for Rivers of Light. We were a bit early and had to wait about 45 minutes before the show starting at 6.30 p.m., but we used our time wisely with some star gazing, and managed to find both Venus and Saturn in the sky. When the show started, it was really beautiful. We have seen this a couple of times before, but always forget how lovely it really is.

Once the show was over, we walked to the Tree of Life, where we were able to watch a beautiful snow projection show on the tree. Then we made our way to Pandora. We’ve never been in this area at night before, and had been wanting to visit it during the dark for ages, so tonight was the night! Wow - we were totally blown away by how gorgeous Pandora was at night! The walkways and rocks are painted with bioluminescent paint, and glow and shimmer as the low lighting hits them, it is just amazing. Most of the plants also glow, and the trees twinkle. We spent a while just walking around and admiring how this area looked, it was so beautiful.

One of my other objectives for visiting here tonight was to try the Pongu Lumpia from a food kiosk called Pongu Pongu. These are deep fried spring roll wrappers filled with pineapple cream cheese and dusted with powdered sugar. We found the kiosk and I joined the queue, while DH took a seat nearby. The queue was quite long, but eventually I got to the kiosk and asked for 2 Pongu Lumpias, only to be told they were not selling them at this time. Grrrr. I asked what he meant by that, and the Cast Member just said they were out, and moved onto the next guest without any apologies or anything, he just dismissed me. I was a bit cross, but more with his attitude than anything else, so just gave up and walked away. DH was disappointed too, but we knew we would be back here again soon, so we would try again then. We walked around Pandora a bit more, and found a Photopass photographer to take our picture in front of a waterfall. It turned out lovely!

We decided we were ready to leave then, so popped into Creature Comforts on our way out for a look around first. I picked up a really pretty, animal-print trimmed, Mickey ears-shaped handbag that I had admired several times when I’d seen it around today, and decided to buy it. I also tried to pick up some bags of Lion King themed candies in exchange for a Dining Plan Counter Service credit, but the Cast Member who served me said they couldn’t make that exchange there, so we didn’t bother buying them, as I knew I could get them elsewhere for the Plan credit.

As we were walking through the car park to our car, we saw loads of coaches unloading what looked like hundreds of kids who all seemed to be going into the park. I looked this up when we got back to our resort, and it turned out to be something that the Gary Sinise Foundation does annually. Children of fallen soldiers and their surviving parents get to go to Disney World on the “Snowball Express” trip annually, thanks to this Foundation – how wonderful! We drove back to our resort, stopping off at Old Port Royale to get coffee and hot chocolate, and watched some TV before turning in. A long but lovely day, again.

DAY 13 – Monday 09 December

Plan : Magic Kingdom
Actual : We were up bright and early to another hot and sunny day. Well, we were up, I’m not sure it was that early, so I nipped onto MDX and changed our FastPasses for slightly later ones. With hindsight maybe we should have got going a bit earlier, as by the time we arrived at the Magic Kingdom, (our choice of crossing from the car park to the park today was the ferry), it was really crowded. We saw loads of kids from the charity foundation that we saw last night, making for an extremely busy park.

Our first FastPass today was for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, always a favourite, so we swam against the current of folk and thoroughly enjoyed our ride on the Wildest in the Wilderness. Great fun. Having missed out on breakfast, we headed into Pecos Bills for an early lunch. I got us both bacon cheeseburgers with tortilla chips, for a change from fries, and loaded up at the fixings bar – lots of cheese, dill pickle slices, mushrooms, and some onions for DH – yum! We both also had chocolate milk to drink. All was very good, and we found some outside seats after a hunt around.

After lunch, we unfortunately got trapped by the parade, so we ended up watching most of it, although we could only see the high floats! After it had passed, we made our way to Splash Mountain, riding this for the first time in a few years. We had FastPasses, which was a good job as the standby line was 100 minutes! We were on in 10 minutes, and got totally soaked faces and bums – we constantly forget how wet we get on this ride, which is why we only go on it every few visits. Ah well, we still really like the theming. Which is a shame really, as next time we see it, it will probably have been re-themed to the Princess & the Frog!

We walked round to Tortuga Tavern for a coffee break, only to find they don’t actually sell coffee, so we sat outside on a wall for half an hour for a rest. Pirates of the Caribbean had horrendous wait times, so we just chatted for a while and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Moving on, we tried Sunshine Tree Terrace for coffee – success! Although there was a huge queue, but I was keen to try a new flavour of Dole Whip here, so I didn’t mind waiting. DH secured us space on the wall nearby in the shade, while I waited, finally getting coffee for him and something called Redd’s Revenge for me. This is strawberry soft-serve Dole Whip swirled into strawberry Fanta, decorated with a strawberry flavoured white chocolate pirate hat. It was gorgeous! DH isn’t a fan of strawberry flavoured food, but I love it, so this was exactly my kind of thing!

After this we walked over to Tomorrowland, deciding to give Monsters Inc Laugh Floor a go, as we hadn’t seen this show for several years. The wait time was supposed to be 15 minutes, but it took much longer than that for some reason and it was more like 30 minutes before we were seated. However, the show was very funny and we enjoyed it, although it probably isn’t a staple each time for us. As we exited, we noticed that the Carousel of Progress was just loading, so we raced over there to get in, as this show we really do love, and it is one of our regulars. It was lovely as usual, but we are starting to think that the last scene is incredibly dated now. Maybe it’s time for an update, everything that is “futuristic” in this last scene is actually going on or available these days.

We checked out the line for the TTA Peoplemover, which was very long but constantly moving, something I can cope with, so we joined the line and were soon seated on this great ride, we really love this one. While on there, I made us another FastPass on MDX, for Pirates of the Caribbean. Afterwards, we checked out Mickey’s Star Traders for a holiday Spirit Jersey I was after, but I was beginning to realise I had maybe missed out on this one as once again they only had size small left. I had been looking for this everywhere we had been so far, but they were either sold out or only available in small.

We took a quick restroom break, then walked over to Adventureland to ride Pirates with our FastPasses. As we got to the start of the first shipwreck scene, I noticed a skull-shaped rock for the first time, I don’t think it’s new, I think I just hadn’t seen it before! Anyway, the ride was fun and we sang along tunelessly yet lustily, although hopefully without annoying other riders, unlike the folk who decide to take flash photographs throughout the ride – grrr!

We walked back to the hub and down Main Street, and while DH went outside the park to the smoking area, I went into the Emporium to pick up one of the new Belle Bronze collection long-sleeved t-shirts for us each, as we had seen these earlier and really liked them. They are a sort of pinky-bronze and black graduated colour, really nice. I opted to take them with me rather than have them sent back to the resort, as we were nearly finished at the Magic Kingdom by this point.

We met back up, and went to the disabled viewing area to watch the Happily Ever After firework and projection show on the castle. The area was absolutely packed, (as was the whole hub area), and we were told by the Cast Member at the entrance that there was no more room in there, so we had to stand next to it. A couple of guests already in there kindly moved around and made room for us, as they were in there to accompany family members and weren’t actually disabled themselves, so we ducked under the rope barrier and managed to get in, then a young teenage girl insisted on giving me her seat on a wall in there. DH and I took turns to sit down for a few minutes each while we waited for the show to start.

The show was beautiful, and as everywhere was so crowded, I had to try not to cry and sob like I normally do at Disney firework shows! Once the show had finished, we thanked those around us who had been kind, bade them farewell, and shuffled our way along with the crowds down Main Street, stopping at the Main Street Confectionary store to pick up 3 HUGE Mickey-ears shaped rice krispie treats, in boxes, for Christmas gifts for family. I was surprised that the choices that had been shown online weren’t all available, and they only had the ones with M&Ms stuck on the top with white chocolate, but that would do so I got them. They were $20 each, and very heavy!

We drove back to our resort and were too tired to stop at Old Port Royale for drinks, so we just went back to our room and I made a decaf coffee for DH, and made up a sachet of Swiss Miss hot chocolate for myself. TV, bed.

Next day is here
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Silvercat
Disney fanatic and trip report e-book writer!

Edited at 04:45 PM.
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