Return of the Rescuer – Day 15 – 17.7.19 - 16 and a Half Hours of Hopping

[Rescuer]

Return of the Rescuer – Day 15 – 17.7.19 - 16 and a Half Hours of Hopping

Index is here

This morning we were up at the crazy time of 6.15am. When we booked the holiday my friend and I had thought it would be a good idea to try Early Morning Magic at HS. It seemed a good idea when we booked it but afterwards, I read really inconsistent reviews for a while so I was a bit in 2 minds but we stuck with it. We also thought that this would be a great start to a 4 park challenge day.

The sun was rising as we left the room.

We met up at reception at 6.45am and requested an Uber to HS. This took no time at all. I have to say I was fairly impressed with the efficient set up to get in. They had Cms in rows, one to check in and one to give you your wristband.

You could head for breakfast first but we’d read not to do this so just headed over to the arches, we got over there at 7.13am and they held us there till exactly 7.30am.

Before they let us in there was a fairly sizable crowd.

It was busy but not mad, most people though were heading round to Slinky, as we were quite close to the front, we thought we’d just go for it. We were on Slinky by 7.45am. It was great fun as this was the first time our friends had ridden it.

We stopped for a quick photopass and headed on to Alien Swirling Saucers, straight down the fastpass line and we were off again by 7.53am. I think it's really cute but maybe not a favorite with the pre teen and teen market

Toy Story Mania next and we were discovering some of the secrets of how to get a higher score by making the volcano explode thanks to ds.

We made the decision to try Slinky again even though it stated that the line was 35 minutes (not great for an ‘exclusive’ event). It didn’t take quite as long as that and we were back on again at 8.38.

We darted back across to TSM for another go, our scores were getting better, we came out at 8.55am and the morning crowds were in, this annoyed me a little as the 2 other mornings we were there at rope drop they didn’t let you in until 8.58am. We wanted to go back on TSM and they were just opening up the fast pass. I asked if we could use the fast pass lane as it wasn’t 9am yet and they let us.

Unfortunately, one of the guns wasn’t working in one of our cars and when we told the CM they offered us another go. This round we all beat our personal bests and dh was over the moon to beat 200,000.

As we left Toy Story land at 9.30am the crowds were streaming in.

We headed over to breakfast and lots of people seemed to have the same idea as us and it was a bit manic but we eventually found a table for the 6 of us.

You could help yourself to cereal, fruit, yogurts and pastries. There was soda, milk, juice, tea and coffee available.

You could then order mains at the counter, as many as you wanted.

We each had the charcuterie plate. They sprinkled egg over the smoked salmon, why would you do that? Apart from that it was ok.

I then shared the chicken and doughnuts with Dh which was actually really nice, really hot and crispy and a nice combination of sweet and savoury.

Ds had some shrimp and grits to try which he thought was ok, but not a patch on the Cali grill ones obviously.

The fruit was lovely and the pastries were nice.

We didn’t really do it for the food but it was all nice enough and we were happy enough with the event itself, 4 rides on TSM, 2 on slinky dog and 1 on aliens. They cleared everything away pretty quickly at 10am, we grabbed some drinks to go and headed out the park.

1 down – 3 to go.

It was roasting so we decided on the boat to the yacht club. We walked into Epcot.

We arrived at Epcot just after 11am and headed straight for Soarin as we had a fast pass.

The line was not the quickest and we suspected it had gone down at one point. While we were in line, we picked up a fastpass for Living with the Land. Ds and I love this ride and we really enjoyed doing the Behind the Seeds Tour a few years ago.

Afterwards we headed into Starbucks for drinks.
APP]https://www.thedibb.co.uk/postImages/64936/a2f9e036095ed4.jpg[/APP]

I love these massive refreshers as snack credits. I’ll be thinking I can carry on this habit at home.

We were all roasting so we went into the long character beside Character Spot and found a cool air-conditioned seat to have our drinks. Our entertainment was provided by some American kids who we running around, well I say running, with a buggy which was not really the right size for them and they were either struggling to push each other or managing to narrowly avoid those walking through, goodness knows where the parents were. If they’d been mine, I’d have taken them home. We re-christened this spot the Corridor of Doom for the rest of the holiday

While we were here though we all managed to book a FP for FOP for 2pm so we left Epcot and headed for the AK bus.

2 down - 2 to go!

It arrived fairly quickly and didn’t take long and we arrived at 2pm.
We headed straight to FOP, no issues this time with breakdowns. I’m not sure I’ll ever get fed up with this ride, although I have already grown tired of the pre ride chat. LOL Our fastpass luck continued and we managed to snag fastpasses for the 2 kids to ride FOP again in an hour.

In the meantime, we headed to the Nomad Lounge for some hydration and air-conditioning.
Kiamma mamma again for ds

Snow leopard for me - I loved this so refreshing,I may have had a second one...

Snow Leopard vodka, Belle de Brillet pear liqueur, mint, and lime juice topped with ginger beer
Df had an Annupurna Zing. She liked this and it came with a fancy lotus glow cube.
Bombay sapphire east gin, passion fruit puree, mint, and lime juice topped with ginger beer

My Dh had a kungaloosh beer followed by a Hefeweizen.

Other Dh had wine

Ds and friends dd went off to do their 2nd fop Fp, we watched for them scanning in and managed to get them a fp at Everest for after. Unfortunately, Everest went down before they got to ride so they went for Dinosaur instead with their anytime fastpass. They also had their own own snacks at Mr Kamals, no photos...

We decided we also needed some food so we ordered the bread service which was really nice

And the truffle poutine again

A lovely afternoon, very chilled considering this was our 3rd park out of 4. I love the Nomad lounge, although we ended up staying there far too long and had to shelve the afternoon break, we’d planned at the hotel. We did have 5 minutes to stop for some photopass pictures to document our 3rd park of the day.

3 down - 1 to go!

Having stayed out too late we had to get an Uber back to the hotel for a very quick 20-minute change before another Uber over to the Wilderness Lodge for our dining reservation.

I’d really like to stay here at some point. We checked in, they had loads of really nice but expensive Snow White art set up outside Artists Point.

We checked in and relaxed in the rocking chairs while waiting on our table.

Our table was booked for 7 and we were seated about 7.20pm.
We ate at Storybook a few weeks after it opened and really loved it. We came away feeling like it should have been a 2-credit dining experience. Spoiler -the only really consistent thing between that visit and this one was the excellent character interaction.

Our server was fine but not great. The first time she poured us water it was warm. It was almost like well you are a table of 6 so I’ll get my tip anyway.

I had the enchanted apple which was good again. Skyy citrus vodka, DeKupyer pucker sour apple and white cranberry juice

Df had the Alchemy.
Uncle Val's gin, St-Germain elderflower liqueur, watermelon. She thought this was a little strong for her.

Ds had the through the Forrest. wildberry monin, lime juice, mint. This was ok.

The others had normal drinks. I did hear the server mention to the table behind that you could have a soda in addition to the speciality drink on the dining plan but she didn’t share that info with us or I’d have had a cold soda rather than a lukewarm water.

Starters were fine.
I really liked the mushroom soup, this was the stand out starter for me.

The hunter’s terrine wasn’t really for me but the others really liked it.

The wicked shrimp were good.

So, all good so far. We were barely finished the starters when the mains appeared. Now it did annoy me that main plates were put down practically on to of the starter plates. Our server reappeared afterwards and started clearing around us as we were eating our mains without an apology.

Ds and I had the magic Mirror Slow-braised Pork Shank,
celery root mashed, wilted winter green.
Mine wasn’t as warm (I say warm not hot) as it should have been and I should probably have sent it back, it was cooked well and the flavours were nice.

Dh had the Brother's Grimm Roasted Chicken,
Herb-crusted Potatoes, Fire-roasted Petite Squash, Golden Raisins. He liked this better than his main at Christmas.

Df had a Stroll Through Nature,
asparagus, leeks, arugula, gnocchi, sage, parmesan. She thought this was ok but a bit salty.

Df had the royal prime rib. horseradish mashed potato, carrots, popover, jus. He thought this was ok.

Their Df had the land and sea which was pork and clams with noodles. She thought it was ok but not that tasty.

The server popped by to check we had everything but did not enquire to the quality of the food at all and only filled our water on our request.

Dessert was set
Miner's Treasures,
sponge cake, chocolate gems, and berry panna cotta. I don’t eat this, way too sickly for me.

Fairy Tale Gooseberry Pie, meringue, gooseberry. I like this one.

"Poison" Apple, dark chocolate-apple mousse, sour center – this was totally different from the Christmas version and not as nice and felt cheaper.

The Hunter's Gift to the Queen,
crackled maple popcorn, ganache heart

I’d say overall. I felt that they had cut costs a little, veal to pork, the little apple puddings and more tables. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t a bad meal it just wasn’t great. Again, the server wasn’t bad, she just seemed to be uninterested and going through the motions she had to – needless to say we didn’t leave anything above the 18% tip that was already on the bill.

I thought that my judgement was clouded by having such a good experience before but our friends felt this was a once and done meal. It’s a lovely setting and the characters are great. I’d only go back if MIL was with us again and wanted to meet her favourite characters again otherwise that’s it for us.

Afterwards we had a wander around the resort, it’s lovely. We waited for the boat to MK and HEA was on while we were sailing across.

We entered MK at 9.40pm as streams of people were leaving after the fireworks. We had a fastpass for Buzz lightyear and followed this with a ride on the people mover, always a favourite.

Just as we were getting off it stopped, ds had been riding with our friends and they had got off but dh and I were stuck for a few minutes. We were winding him up that he'd just have to leave us there

The park was open till midnight but we were flagging and it was pretty busy. We decided on one last photopass picture before heading for the bus back to the hotel and left at 10.30pm.

4 down - all done!

We arrived back at the hotel at 11.15pm, 16 and a half hours after we first left in the morning. We’d had an excellent, long and exhausting day.

Day 16

[MrsSilverStar]

Love that last photo! Shame about the dinner, but I’m glad the characters made it worthwhile. I’m exhausted from just reading about the four parks in one day challenge! Sounds like a fun day.

[mick]

That was a very long but great day

Joan

[4fromsuffolk]

Wow, what a busy day. Love your outfit and last photo. Thank you for sharing.

[Rescuer]

Originally Posted by MrsSilverStar

Love that last photo! Shame about the dinner, but I’m glad the characters made it worthwhile. I’m exhausted from just reading about the four parks in one day challenge! Sounds like a fun day.

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Thanks.

The dinner was fine just not as good as when we'd been there at Christmas.

Overall we had an excellent and exhausting day though.

Originally Posted by mick

That was a very long but great day

Joan

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It was one of our longest Disney days but great fun.

Originally Posted by 4fromsuffolk

Wow, what a busy day. Love your outfit and last photo. Thank you for sharing.

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Thank you, I bought that dress years ago from Lindy Bop, its so comfy and got so many compliments that night.

Thanks for reading.

[collybird]

Such an awesome day, I really want to try 4 Parks in One Day sometime. I always imagined it to be completely manic but your day seemed really chilled out, especially finding time for a lounge and an ADR at a resort.

[caitlinsmummy]

The extra hours looked fab and you got so much done!

In fact, you got so much done all day. I love how you managed to go to the Nomad lounge again too.

It's a shame SBD didn't live up to last time, I've sadly not heard many good reviews about it lately

You did so well lasting 16 hours, well done xx

[Rescuer]

Originally Posted by collybird

Such an awesome day, I really want to try 4 Parks in One Day sometime. I always imagined it to be completely manic but your day seemed really chilled out, especially finding time for a lounge and an ADR at a resort.

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You should try it. We did 3 parks on Christmas Day and that was quite chilled to. Tbh, this time if we'd only done 3 parks before being completey exhausted then I'd just have called it a day. EMM certainly helped.

Originally Posted by caitlinsmummy

The extra hours looked fab and you got so much done!

In fact, you got so much done all day. I love how you managed to go to the Nomad lounge again too.

It's a shame SBD didn't live up to last time, I've sadly not heard many good reviews about it lately

You did so well lasting 16 hours, well done xx

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EMM was good but I think I liked After Hours better the year before. We got loads of top rides done that day, we had great luck with fastpasses.

Storybook was just so good at Christmas I think that was why it seemed so meh this time with an unenthusiastic server and the menu changes.

Our day was never meant to be 16 hours but it worked well

[Goldia]

That's the way to do a 4 parks 1 day, nice stop in Nomad Lounge plus a lovely sit down dinner! Well done on picking up a FOP FP for the afternoon you did well with that. I love your dress too, but I seem to always be commenting on your attire as I loved the one you wore to Cali Grill brunch too.

[Rescuer]

Originally Posted by Goldia

That's the way to do a 4 parks 1 day, nice stop in Nomad Lounge plus a lovely sit down dinner! Well done on picking up a FOP FP for the afternoon you did well with that. I love your dress too, but I seem to always be commenting on your attire as I loved the one you wore to Cali Grill brunch too.

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The day worked out very well for us, Nomad Lounge is one of my new favourite places.

We had great luck with FOP fastpasses, 2 back to back pretty much on the same day.

Thanks for the outfit compliments Feel free to compliment any time you want, lots of outfits are the perk of my massive over packing!