WDW 2019 - day 17

[Silvercat]

Previous days are here

DAY 17 – Friday 13 December

Plan : Magic Kingdom
Actual : Another warm and rainy day dawned. We were up and out fairly early, driving to the Magic Kingdom for our last full day at Disney. The rain was very heavy as we left the resort, but lessened somewhat as we were parking up at Magic Kingdom, although the cloud and humidity persisted.

Our first FastPass was for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, and although there was still some drizzle, we didn’t get too wet, luckily. We had great fun on this ride, the whole train was very excitable and vocal. After we exited the ride, I wanted to check that it would be okay to extend our lunch reservation at Be our Guest to 2 persons, as if this wasn’t going to be okay, I would then cancel the reservation and we could dine elsewhere. However, the Cast Member assured me that this would be okay, after I explained that my husband had changed his plans for the day and now wished to dine with me, (teeny fib!). We then went to the Enchanted Tales with Belle attraction, with our next FastPass. It was very cute, and we really enjoyed it, although since his debut as Wardrobe in 2016, DH is very critical of whoever plays that role, as his was clearly the Laurence Olivier performance of Wardrobe. Huh.

After this, we walked round to Journey of the Little Mermaid, and rode this standby, which was a straight walk-on. This is such a cute little ride! Then we walked round to the circus area, partly to see the poster of Goofy juggling with tigers, which I really love, and partly to have a look at Big Top Treats, which apparently had a fire yesterday, and we wanted to see whether this was true or it was open. There were no outer signs of a fire, but there was a Cast Member standing guard outside the closed door, who had a look of “don’t ask me about a fire!” about her, so we carried on round to look at my favourite poster, then round to have a look at the Tron building work to see how much progress was visible. Quite a lot of work had gone on since our last visit, and it was really interesting to see how far they had got with the construction, none of which seemed to be screened off from view.

DH suggested a trip on the Peoplemover, so we walked round to Tomorrowland to check out the wait time. There was a bit of a queue, but it looked to be moving quite quickly, so we joined the queue and were soon seated in our car, gently swooping above the crowds. This is one of our favourite Disney rides, and we try to do this several times each trip, if possible.

It was now time for us to check in for our lunch reservation, so we headed back to Be our Guest, and when I checked in I explained once again that there would be 2 persons instead of one due to changed plans, and they were kind enough to allow this. We were seated in the Ballroom, although we don’t actually have a favourite room here, they are all beautiful and so wonderfully and deeply themed. DH ordered the French Dip Sandwich with fries, and coffee to drink, and I ordered the Coq au Vin with mashed potatoes, and pink grapefruit beer to drink. The food arrived quite quickly, and was absolutely terrific – DH said his beef was really tender, and when dipped in the au jus it just fell apart, (in a good way!). My mash was creamy and delicious, the chicken was tender and flavourful, and the tiny, lightly roasted tomatoes were lovely. We thought the quality of this food was definitely more table service than counter service. My beer was so sweet/tart and refreshing, I really enjoyed it, and I don’t normally drink much alcohol. We really enjoyed our lunch, and thought it was a fantastic use of counter service credits on the dining plan.

After lunch, we decided to leave the park as the rain had now stopped but everywhere was still very damp, and humidity was high, plus the park was really crowded. There was nowhere we could sit and take a break to let our lunch go down as all outdoor seats and low walls were still wet. The parade was about to start, so in order to bypass the folk waiting down the sides of Main Street for this, we cut through the Emporium, although we didn’t stop to browse or buy anything. When we exited near the Fire Station, I left DH standing outside and I went into the Main Street Confectionary Store and spent 34 snack credits and one quick service credit on a range of things from there – fudge, chocolate pecan puddles, packs of large chocolate coins packaged into a hidden Mickey shape, and rice krispie treats. To be honest I was surprised at the number of snack credits we had left on the dining plan, we normally use a lot more than this. Having said that, we normally visit during the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot, where we spend a lot of snack credits eating around the World, but as our visit was a bit later this year, we had barely spend any of them at all so far.

We hauled this lot back to our car via the ferry, and then drove to the nearby Speedway service station to fill the hire car up with fuel. It cost $30 to fill up completely, and then we drove back to our resort. We parked up at Old Port Royale and took a walk around the resort and main pool area to take some photos. The main pool looked lovely, it was a shame we hadn’t had time to visit there this year, (but also we get put off main pools at these resorts because they are always very busy, and we much prefer a quiet pool with no-one splashing us or getting in the way of our relaxation time!). We filled our mugs up with coffee and hot chocolate, and then drove back to our room. We were a bit surprised that the room hadn’t been cleaned at all during our stay; we had expected a trash & towel service after 4 or 5 days, but hadn’t received anything. This hadn’t really been a problem, we are quite clean and tidy, and we use our own coffee, coffee whitener, etc., so didn’t need those, and we had asked for a couple of extra toilet rolls whenever we saw a mousekeeper near our room, plus there were loads of trash bags in the room for us to use and then we just handed them to a mousekeeper occasionally. But going on previous experience, we had expected the occasional visit from them, even if it was just to ensure we weren’t lying dead in our room!

We relaxed for half an hour and enjoyed our hot drinks, and I checked us in online for our flight tomorrow with Virgin Atlantic. We then packed up the suitcases and our Owner’s Locker box. Showers, TV, bed.

Final days are here