August 2018 Wishing on a Star: Day 9 MK...at last! Last hotel move Bay Lake Tower

[Niki T]

I genuinely can't believe we've been in Orlando for over a week and I've not yet seen the castle...crazy ! Oh, well, today's the day we move to Bay Lake and we'll be within a 5 min walk, so be prepared for Magic Kingdom overload :thumbs:!

After that word of warning, back to the report. We woke up and I felt lots better. Those horrible yellow spots on my throat were shrinking and with the medication we'd bought I felt as right as rain - mostly . We swept the room reminiscing about the time we did this and discovered my shoe under the bed...nearly let if there. No left shoe today - haha , or anything else for that matter. We closed our door and took our bags downstairs. We had $255 of resort fees, standard charges made by the hotel, we'd budgeted for this prior to the trip, so it didn't eat into spends. We paid and left our bags at bell services and told them we needed them transferring to Bay Lake. There is no charge moving luggage between Disney hotels you just hand them over and tell them where they need to go. They tend to do the moves between 2 and 4, but with park time this isn't an issue. And that's it. Our Dolphin stay was done.

Was it a nice hotel? It was just ok. We are used to the luxury of DVC or POFQ pre-DVC membership and this hotel didn't compare to that. It was very corporate and there was little to remind you of Disney, but I guess some people would like that. We didn't get to the pool because I was sick and we are full on theme parkers (probably not next time - I'm sure we'll get a little pool time on that visit) but it looked lovely from what I have seen. I wouldn't rule out staying here again as it was considerably cheaper than the other hotels in the area and being able to walk to Epcot and HS is fantastic - essentially, it's worth staying in for location, but that's its biggest draw .

We sauntered over over to Epcot with the intention of riding Test Track before getting the monorail to Magic Kingdom, but it was down, so we just headed to the monorail instead.

It was a lovely ride to Magic Kingdom, there's not many people going that way at that time in the morning so we had a whole car all to ourselves. When we arrived at the transportation and ticket centre both monorails were down and the boat was a 20 min wait . Instead we were directed to a bus. I was a bit disappointed as the only thing I miss when we stay at Bay Lake - or any Disney resort - is getting the ferry. It's years since we've done it and I absolutely love it, but 20 mins was quite a long time considering we weren't there at rope drop. So sadly, it was not to be and our dingy little bus took us directly to MK. One positive was that we'd been through security to get into Epcot and they kept us within Disney boundaries, so we didn't need to go through security again at Magic Kingdom - good job as it looked manic !

And there it was. The castle. I didn't cry this year, which is always a sign I'm in a much better place that previous trips, instead I just got that warm, happy feeling nowhere but Disney gives me.

We pin checked our way up Main Street towards 7 Dwarfs, using our fastpass to bypass the 90min queue.

We were starving after this, so stopped at Cosmic Rays for 2 stretchy burgers, which we loaded up using the toppings bar. $43 with drinks and additional cheese sauce. We enjoyed our stretchy burgers, to be honest, we like Cosmic Rays in general. Classic theme park junk food. There's plenty of choice nowadays in the parks, so you could completely avoid burgers if you wanted to, but we do love a good theme park burger.

Once we'd finished we headed to Tomorrowland and got int the FP queue for Space. There was still a little wait so we used the app to play one of the games which passed the 15min wait quickly.

As soon as we'd done this our Buzz fastpass had opened up, so that was next. If you've read our trip reports before you'll know this is a firm favourite of ours, we try to go on it a lot. We have booked Disneyland Paris for a few days in January and there's a whisper Buzz will be down while we are there...I hope not as I'll be lost without it.
While we queued for Buzz, we got a fastpass for Little Mermaid. This would open straight up after our ride, so perfect timing. John did the notes for this part of the report and he didn't write down who was victorious on Buzz. I seemed to beat him a lot this year, so I'll just say I won.

We headed over to ride Little Mermaid, which is always a cute ride. We didn't really need a fastpass as the queue was only 15mins, but I suppose it saved us a bit of time. Once we'd scanned I we checked the app and a Buzz fastpass was available for 5 mins time. Booked.

Off to ride Buzz again, we scanned and checked for more fast passes.

We could have booked another Buzz, but decided on a Big Thunder one for later in the day. We enjoyed a little park atmosphere after our Buzz ride, pin trading and relaxing. As much as I love hopping from ride to ride, some of my favourite parts of the day are when we are busy doing nothing but wandering aimlessly looking at the details and smiling faces.

As it was nearly parade time, we decided we'd watch then head our chancing our room being ready. On the way we stopped at Starbucks where I had a vanilla bean cold brew and John had a salty foam cold brew. I didn't despite the cost of them, but they were both weird - John's was awful, a real acquired taste. We both drank them, but didn't order either again.

The parade was fantastic. It's not my favourite Disney parade, that accolade goes to either the Aladdin one in the 90s (you can still see one of the spitting camels from that near the ride) or the snow globe parade, but we do love it. Obviously there was no dragon. We got a decent spot, but the balloon CMs took ages moving, I thought they were there to stay, but they headed off as the floats turned towards us.

On our way out we stopped at the hat shop where I bought a Jessie and Ariel bow. They were 2 for $20 so, with our discount it was $17.02. There were a lot of people just arriving at the park, many of them had phones in their hands and kept stopping or cutting us up - it was a little annoying, but a sign of the times I guess.

We walked to the hotel and checked in. Unfortunately, our room was not quite ready so we walked to Contempo to get something to drink and to look in the shops. About 15 mins later we got an email and headed back to the front desk.

After researching our options we had requested high floor north side using touring plans. We'd read that with a lake view and this request there was a potential for a castle view. We didn't get our request of North side, but they did the high floor. We were on floor 12 and from our room we could see Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Blizzard beach and Animal Kingdom. It was fabulous; I'm glad we had this room and would request Southside in future; our room was 8238. We watched the fireworks a few nights from our balcony.

These were taken using my zoom on my point and shoot camera

Our collection of magic keepers keeps growing

As we were getting sorted our garden grocer arrived, so we unpacked that and did some washing.

We hung around for that to finish (38 mins) passing time playing ping pong and bean bag toss in the hotel grounds. That beanbag game was impossible, we each managed to get only 2 bean bags in the holes.

Our drying was set to take 45mins, so we put that in and headed to Contempo. I had a flatbread and John had a French dip sub. I took a mountain dew with me and John bought a drink, it was $29. This was definitely a stand outcounter service and would highly recommend a visit to Contempo if you are in the area.

After filling our faces our washing was done, so we headed back to the room and put everything away. Even though we had been doing the necessary job of washing it hadn't impacted on our fun, we'd had a lovely afternoon.

We walked back to Magic Kingdom via the walkway; I love being so close to the magic. Next time we go, hopefully with a little one, we'll do 2 weeks here. It was the right resort for us to purchase our points in - John was right about that (but sssshh, don't tell him or he'll think he's right about everything ).

Once in the park we pin traded with a manager who looked incredibly important; he also had lots of pins we needed.

We headed to Big Thunder to use our fastpass before finding a spot in the hub to watch Happily Ever After.

We got a decent view even if we did need to peer around kids on shoulders. If you read our report last year, you'll see I said it was good but no Wishes. Well, I've changed my mind. I absolutely loved it; we both did. It had real impact. Perhaps we were in a better place, or perhaps we don't like change, perhaps it's that we are more forward focused on getting our own "happily ever after" but wow...this year it blew us away.

We hung around the hub before watching the storybook show on the castle. We loved that too. By 22:15 we were in bed ready to dream about yesterday, today and tomorrow.

[The Durrigan's]

What a great day in MK

[RachelE]

Yay, you're back - love your trip reports.

[Niki T]

Originally Posted by The Durrigan's

What a great day in MK

See more...

We had a great day, thanks for reading

Originally Posted by RachelE

Yay, you're back - love your trip reports.

See more...

Thanks for sticking with us while we've been MIA. Hopefully we'll get another couple of days up later

[Cinderella]

Great room view!

[Steffib]

glad you’re back! love your trip reports

[Niki T]

Originally Posted by Cinderella

Great room view!

See more...

We loved it, can definitely recommend southside. The fireworks we good as we could see Illuminations and Star Wars; unfortunately, they didn't photograph well. Thanks for reading

Originally Posted by Steffib

glad you’re back! love your trip reports

See more...

Sorry we took a while, life and work has been getting in the way. Finally we've managed a couch day aka a Dibbing Day

Thanks for reading

[mick]

A great day in the park your room and view are lovely

Joan

[collybird]

We’ve decided that Cosmic Ray’s is our favourite QS, like you say, classic theme park junk food, and it’s done well! They weren’t doing the stretchy burgers during our trip boo.

I love your view!

I agree that John was right to purchase points at BLT , it would be my resort of choice if we ever buy in, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to stretch to it.

[yellowrose78]

Great day, we love Bay Lake too, it's a great resort, love being able to walk to MK. Glad you were feeling better