Take a look through my eyes, day 13. Magic Kingdom, giant cheese balls, Sanaa and Fireworks. 11th September 2019

[Chloeoeysmum]

We both felt so much better today after crashing out yesterday afternoon, still didn't make it into Magic Kingdom until just before 8:30 though 😊

Saw a Dumbo bus this morning! the new buses are great, they even have usb charging points between the chairs.

We had a 7DMT FP for 8:30 to use (love this cottage) before going for breakfast at... Drum roll please... Gastons again!

We sat inside to share the cinnamon roll then finished our Le Frou's brews sat on the wall, Disney imagineers are so clever with the theming, I haven't ever noticed this tiny little door before.

I managed to convince John to go on the carousel with me, he had to focus his eyes straight ahead for the whole ride to avoid motion sickness 😀 I think that he secretly enjoyed it.

We walked into Frontier land and I stopped to buy a cold brew, it was gross! All I could taste was the dreaded Florida water taste, I was so looking forward to this, I'll stick to Starbucks in future.
We sat on the benches beside the river for 10 minutes or so, saw a lost pair of sparkly Mickey ears floating in the water, how sad... I wonder what the back story is? 😊

Big Al was wandering round so I started to film him, as he got closer I could hear John laughing as he told me to turn around...

...this is the view I got! Frightened the life out of me!

Splash mountain next, made sure that John sat on the right again, yup he got soaked!

We managed to catch the muppets show in Liberty Square telling us the muppets version of great moments in American history, I didn't realise that this little show has now closed, we didn't manage to catch this in 2016 so I'm glad we did this time.

We then hot footed it over to Haunted Mansion for our next FP, halfway round the ride stopped, its funny how much more you notice around you when a ride stops. The piano that appears to be playing by itself has a shadow cast on the floor of a person sat playing it, I've have never noticed it before!

We decided to have our lunch at Columbia Harbour House today.

I've never had the lobster roll before, so wanted to try it and I'm glad I did.

We did plan on staying in MK today until about 3 but we had pretty much done everything we wanted to so decided that we'd make a trip to Walmart as I wanted to get a couple of bits and see if they had any Dunder Mifflin tshirts (The American Office), and some bars of Velveeta plastic cheese to take home 😀 then come back to MK tonight for fireworks after our dinner at Sanaa.

I know that these photos have all been seen before but even so! Everything is just ginormous! They had bags of treat sized chocolate for trick or treating that contained 1000 bars!
We arranged a Lyft back to AKL, with the discount I think it cost us $5, bargain. The driver was from Sri Lanka and we knew his and his family's complete life history by the time we got back!

We took a stroll over to Kidani Village around 4:30, it's a shame that its only accessible by walking through the car parks, I mentioned earlier that it would be lovely if you could walk to AK from AKL, and it's also a shame that the walk over to Kidani isn't a pretty walk. That's the only negative that I can think of for staying at AKL, there are no pretty walks.

We had 15 minutes or so to kill before checking in so went to check out the Savanah, its very pretty here and we managed to catch the giraffes being fed. We also managed to get told someone's complete medical history, that'll teach us to talk to strangers! We did manage to make our excuses and leave before it got too gory 😂

If you are dining at Sanaa then it's an unwritten rule that you must have the bread service, can I also have it for mains and dessert please?
We paid extra for this as its not included on the dining plan, but its such good value at $18. We managed to finish the lot!

We then both had items from the Potjie inspired menu, we were allowed 3 items plus a rice, we ordered a mixture so that we could share but the stand outs were the braised beef, butter chicken and the cilantro coconut vegetables, all utterly delicious. How on earth are we going to manage dessert!

Magic Star cocktails should also be counted as one of my five a day now 😂

John went for the Spice Trade Candy bar, oh my goodness, this was delicious and I must try to recreate it at some point but can't find a copy cat recipe anywhere. I went for the espresso chocolate mousse, which doesn't appear to be on the menu now, this was also lovely, but not as lovely as Johns choice!

Dinner over, we rolled ourselves to the bus stop at Kidani to catch the bus back to Magic Kingdom. While waiting for the bus I was listening to other people's conversations (favourite pastime of mine). An American couple had a 7:30 adr at Citricos and were complaining that a bus hadn't turned up and they had been waiting since 6:45, bearing in mind that they had only given themselves 45 minutes to get to the Grand Floridian for a meal, it was now 7pm so they would have been late regardless.

The bus arrived just after 7, but she was then quite vocal about the mobility scooter that was waiting to get on the bus as it was going to hold them up even more. She was asking out loud how long it would take her to walk to the Grand Floridian from MK, I did tell her that she had to get a boat or the monorail, she couldn't walk, I don't think that it improved her mood. I also don't think they realised what Citricos was like either as they both had short and t shirts on, he was a rather large guy wearing a sleeveless t shirt, the type where the armholes are realllllly low down. I wonder now if after all that, the lateness and the dress code, they were even allowed in
😂

We managed to make it to MK in one piece (leaving the American couple with about 30 seconds to get to their meal) and no fights breaking out!

In Liberty Square we spotted one of the popcorn carts selling Mickey Mouse popcorn buckets, these are so cute! We were racking our brains trying to think what we could use this for at home to justify buying one, neither of us like salty popcorn so we wouldn't be buying it for the cheap popcorn refills. Eventually we decided that we didn't need a reason and just bought an empty one, I'd find a use for it somehow! The cast member did tell us that you can buy freshly popped sweet maple popcorn in the Canada pavilion in Epcot.

We wanted to sit behind the castle to watch the fireworks, I had read on a blog somewhere that it's a nice place to sit away from the crowds, obviously you don't get to see the projections, so that's what we did. We walked over to fantasy land and found an empty wall to sit on.

I don't know if I would recommend it, it was very different, but I don't know quite what I expected. There are fireworks going off all around you, to the front, the sides, above and behind, there's too much going on for your eyes to have the ability to keep up with it all. Still we've done it now so that's another tick off the list.

We did walk back up to the Main street station to watch Once Upon a time, nearly had our heads taken off by following a man carrying a fold up pushchair on one shoulder, he turned around a few times and nearly took other peoples heads off too, it was like a scene from only fools and horses!

Got back home at about 11:15, pleased with ourselves that we had managed to cram quite a lot into today we celebrated with a coffee before falling into an exhausted sleep. Only 14,736 steps, it felt like this figure should have been a lot higher!

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New Photo Added by Chloeoeysmum - 15 Oct 19 1:47 PM.