WDW 2019 - day 9

[Silvercat]

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DAY 9 – Thursday 05 December – Walt Disney’s birthday

Plan : Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party
Actual : We slept in a bit this morning, and then just relaxed in the room until about 1.30 p.m., drinking coffee and having our leftover desserts from last night for breakfast. We then packed up a bag of laundry, grabbed a washing pod from our Owner’s Locker box, and headed over to the pool for a couple of hours. I put the washing into a machine, paid $3 by credit card to do the wash, and then we pottered about in the pool. It was really quiet there, we could watch the Skyliner sailing overhead above us, and the weather was gloriously sunny and warm. We felt very relaxed. Once the washing had finished, I put the underwear in the dryer, and spread the t-shirts around on some loungers – the pool area was almost completely empty, there was only one other family with a small child there, who stuck around the shallow end of the pool, (we were in the deep end), so I felt okay about using up a couple of loungers to dry our washing!

At around 3.30 p.m. we collected the laundry and went back to our room. We took it in turns to use the shower, and then I hung up the t-shirts that hadn’t quite dried in the sunshine earlier. We finally left our room at 4.30 p.m. and drove to Old Port Royale to get coffee in our mugs, as we knew the food court would be closed by the time we returned later. DH went off to get coffees, while I took a parcel to reception for posting – a friend of ours was expecting a baby boy and we were sending the couple some things I had hand-knitted for the baby, and a tiny vest with a UK flag printed on it! We also had some Christmas cards to friends and family in the USA that I wanted to post. A Cast Member took care of all this for me, and I was really happy to pay Disney for the parcel to be delivered and not have to try and find a post office myself to do this.

We then drove to the Magic Kingdom for our Christmas Party night. There were a lot of people streaming in, and we hoped the park tonight wasn’t going to be too crowded. We have done this party before, and our strategy is to go on as many rides as possible while wait times are low, such as when families with young children are watching the first parade, and then to watch the second run of the parade ourselves, fitting in the shows as and when we are in the right area for them. We then watch the firework show, and wait for everyone else to leave before either continuing with our rides, or leaving ourselves, depending on how tired we are at that point.

We rode across from the Ticket & Transportation Centre to the Magic Kingdom on the monorail, collected our party wristbands as we went in through the tapstiles, and then headed for City Hall. I wanted to get a birthday badge, and got a Cast Member to write “Happy Birthday Walt” on it for me. With hindsight, what I thought at the time was a wonderful idea, turned into my spending all night having to say, “not me, Walt!” to every Cast Member who wished me a happy birthday!

We noticed that Christmas Party attendees were being ushered in through a backstage entrance, over to the right hand side of the entrance hub, where the parade sometimes goes into. Everywhere backstage was all decorated up for the party, and immediately as we entered there was a couple of Cast Members handing out sugar cookies shaped like Minnie Mouse from a large cart full of them. (These cookies were really yummy, they were strawberry flavoured!) DH bought an event pin from a merchandise cart, too.

Because of the party start time, and the time we were expecting to get to the Magic Kingdom, I had only managed to book one FastPass for today, and this was for the 7 Dwarf’s Mine Train, so we headed there first. The ride was great fun, and we were happy to be in the Magic Kingdom, having had a relaxing day.

We realised we hadn’t eaten much all day and were starving, so we went to Cosmic Rays. Big mistake. It was absolutely heaving, DH went off to find a table and I stood in a queue for over 45 minutes before getting the food! They were prioritising mobile phone orders, which is fine but the rest of us were just left standing there like lemons. I waited over 20 minutes from placing my order to actually having the food delivered to me as I stood at the counter and watched a zillion mobile order people collecting their food. What a waste of our precious party time! Anyway, we got carved turkey sandwiches and fries, which were delicious but we barely tasted them as we were so hungry by then. DH had had to give up his table twice, as he waited ages and then came to look for me to make sure I wasn’t looking elsewhere for him, then he had to find another table. I remember reading somewhere that other folk had said to eat before you go to the party, but I forgot about that. Never again!

Anyway, after we finished with Cosmic Rays, we walked back to the Fire Station so I could collect my Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom card, not that we ever play the game, but I like to collect the special event cards. We walked back to the hub and watched the Frozen castle light up show, which was amazing. Then we went into Adventureland to check out Pirates of the Caribbean, but were very surprised to find it wasn’t running at that time. Captain Jack Sparrow was doing a meet & greet in front of the stage where he used to do his pirate tutorial show, with a very short queue, so we went to meet him. He wished me ‘happy birthday’, and I pointed out it wasn’t me, it was for Walt, “you know, your boss”. He gave me a very withering stare and said that Captain Jack has no boss except for Captain Jack. Hilarious! We got some photos taken with him before he dismissed us with a contemptuous wave of his hand – brilliant character.

We tried to get over to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, but got stuck as the first parade was going through and we couldn’t even get close to the walkway to cross during a break, it was a bit frustrating. The park seemed to be really crowded, much more so than we had expected for a ticketed event evening. Eventually, we managed to get across to Big Thunder, as did loads of other people, and were pleasantly surprised to see there was only a 5 minute standby queue, and we were on the ride really quickly. We love this ride anyway, but in the dark it is really great fun, you are not sure where the drops are and it makes it much more exciting.

After this, we walked round to see how busy the Haunted Mansion was. There was a 25 minute standby queue, so we got a GA Pass and went to sit on a nearby wall, as we then had a 10 minute return time. Once the 10 minutes were up, we boarded through the FastPass queue and were on the ride within 5 minutes. We had a lot of fun, although the doom buggies did stop a couple of times for a minute or two each time. It was now nearly time for the fireworks, so we made our way to the hub and found a fence to lean on, to wait. Minnie’s Holiday Fireworks was a wonderful show, we thoroughly enjoyed it. There were loads of fireworks, pretty snow, and Tinker Bell flew from the top of the castle, it was all lovely.

Afterwards we went to Tomorrowland and got some apple juice and gingerbread cookies from The Lunching Pad, and then went to ride the People Mover, always good for a lovely view of the hub and a nice sit down. Next up was Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, we were on that within 10 minutes but were quite shocked at how appalling the guns were on the cars, they barely worked. DH beat me by miles!

We walked to the end of Main Street to use the restrooms, and then debated on where to stand to watch the parade. I couldn’t see a disabled viewing area, so asked a lovely Cast Member, (called, ooh, I want to say Derry?), who instead pointed us in the direction of a bench on the other side of the road, with no-one one it or around it, and it was outside of a roped off area. We thanked her profusely, and made our way over to the bench. There was no-one in front of us, and we were directly in front of the roadway, it was amazing! We could see all the other guests giving us daggers as they were all crowded in together, up against a rope. After a couple of minutes another Cast Member came over to us and tried to get us to move by telling us this area was for disabled viewing only, but we said Derry had put us there and as soon as she heard her name, she backed off, apologising! No idea who Derry was or how important she was, but she clearly had some authority! A PhotoPass photographer came over and gave us a “happy holidays” sign to hold while she took our picture, it was really cute!

When the parade got to us we had the most amazing view we have ever had in all the years of going to Disney parks, it was just wonderful. All the dancers and characters waved to us, we felt so special! I was singing the “Once upon a Christmastime” theme song for weeks ….

Anyway, after that was over, we were very tired, so decided to call it a night. Overall, we had had a wonderful time, but the sheer numbers of people has put us off doing one of these hard ticket events again for a while. These events used to be great, ticket sales were very controlled and we used to be able to get lots done at them, but of late I think Disney have greatly increased the numbers of tickets sold, making it as crowded as a normal day now. It’s just not worth the high admittance price to us any more, for just a handful of cookies and cocoa, which is what it now boils down to once you factor in the hugely increased attendance.

It had been a bit of a cool evening temperature-wise, and we were glad to have worn our sweatshirts that night. We fought out way out with the hordes, heading for the ferry, and luckily we didn’t have to wait too long for a boat to take us back, we managed to board the 2nd boat to arrive. We drove back to our resort, watched a bit of TV, and then lights out and a well-deserved sleep.

Next day is here

[mick]

A nice relaxing day followed by a lovely evening

Joan