#USAnumber3- Helen&Andy Nov 18 - Day 13 – Epcot, Magic Kingdom & Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party

[HelenJNT]

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Day 13 – Epcot, Magic Kingdom & Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party

Last full day. SAD times. It’s always a total bummer when you find this on your door.

No, no thank you.

We were determined not to be sad though and to have lots of fun. This morning we were off to Epcot to do some last things (such as try to ride Frozen, as we hadn’t got a fast pass for it and hadn’t been able to get anywhere near it after it had gone down on our first EMH day). And, as you know, we’d bought tickets to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party (MVMCP) for the evening, as, well, we had to. We hadn’t yet done a proper evening in Magic Kingdom thanks to the fact that there were parties on about seven nights of this trip, so we were looking forward to it.

Side note – it had come as a bit of a shock to us this trip just how many party nights there were. I mean, we were here this time last year and it was a nuisance, but I don’t remember it being as much of a pain that time. The party frequency plus the hassle of getting fast passes for Hollywood Studios meant our planning was all over the place and I don’t think we’ve ever park hopped as much as we did on this trip. Going out of party season (i.e. during the first six months of the year) you really take it for granted that you can just rock up to any park in the evening. And you don’t have the hassle of the non-party crowds flowing over into another park either.

Anyway, back to today. It was a beautiful day and the Beach Club was looking fine.

We took a nice leisurely walk into Epcot, at about 10:00.

I took some photos of the gondola construction. The posts for this were everywhere and didn’t look particularly magical, but I bet the whole thing will be pretty awesome once it is properly up and running, and we can’t wait to ride it – despite being mildly terrified too.

The park had already been open for an hour, so the International Gateway was lovely and quiet. We had a few photos taken here. I quite like these ones as we don’t look too hot and bothered.

Our first stop was a new stop for us -we were going to Les Halles to grab some breakfast.

We’ve never been in here before, so it was cool to see something new. The place is pretty big inside and a little confusing. Still, it wasn’t long before we’d made our selections – a croissant for Andy, and a Napoleon for me. What? It was the last day of our holiday and therefore I think having a cream cake for breakfast was perfectly acceptable – they wouldn’t sell them at that time of day otherwise, right?

There was some sort of kerfuffle over getting the coffees; apparently the folk of France-land didn’t understand the concept of decaff, and so we were waiting around for Andy’s coffee for ages.

Finally sorted, we went outside to sit at one of the little bistro table and chair sets they have there (which cost a fortune in Homebase and I can never understand why as they are tiny). The Napoleon was really good. I’d had one years ago in Starring Rolls (RIP) and didn’t like it as found the cream to taste odd, but this one was perfect. Yum.

What was less than perfect was the fact that whoever prepared my coffee had neglected to put the lid on it properly, so the next thing I knew, scalding hot coffee was cascading down my top, and onto my (white) shorts. Brilliant. And also, ouch. I spill stuff on myself all the time, so this was no surprise to Andy, but this time it genuinely wasn’t my fault.

I quickly made for the nearest rest room which was actually a little way off, in Morocco, I think. Hurrah for the fact that this was another unoccupied rest room! I was doing well for those this year and thank goodness as I quickly took off my vest and washed the coffee stain off it as fast as I could. Then, checking to make sure no-one was around (I’m sure people ≈≈≈≈ themselves in Epcot all the time, but I didn’t want anyone to come in and think I had) whipped off my shorts and used the hand soap to scrub out as much of the coffee stain as I could. It wasn’t really coming out (in fact, this stain has survived several goes in the washing machine at home too, so god only knows what is in the France-land coffee) but it was better.

Dressed again but covered in wet patches, I emerged from the loo to find Andy there waiting for me, sniggering away. For the first time on this trip, I was grateful for the punishing weather as I knew at least my outfit would dry quickly.

Andy had been looking at MDE, and booked us a fast pass for Spaceship Earth for later on.
You may not believe this, but we had not made a single fast pass for today. I wanted to play the final day by ear as we hadn’t been sure where we were going to be spending it – I had thought it was going to be in Magic Kingdom during the morning and Epcot in the evening, up to the point that we had bought the MVMCP tickets earlier in the trip, so obviously that had switched around and we didn’t have any fast passes at all.

He’d also seen that the wait time for the Frozen ride had dropped to 20 minutes, which was fab news, so we powered it round to Norway.

However, by the time we got there, it seemed that the rest of the park had seen the same thing, and the queue had shot back up to 50 minutes. But, seeing as we were there, we headed on in and decided to queue.

It’s a fairly boring queue, this one, as you’re only in one room so there isn’t a lot to look at. We amused ourselves by watching daft cat videos on Andy’s phone, and although it went slowly, it wasn’t tooooo long before we were at the Oaken section of the queue, which is really sweet and funny.

Speaking of funny… we’d been using Airdrop for Andy to send me all of his photos of the trip – he had a newer phone than me and the camera was better quality. He had a fair few pics from yesterday to send over, so I turned the Bluetooth on in readiness. The second I had done it, a message pinged up from “John” who wanted to send me a photo…of a certain part of his anatomy. Thanks John. I was torn between being completely freaked out (after all, I could have been a kid), to finding it bewildering that John had chosen to spend his 50 mins in the queue Airdropping unsolicited photos of his knob to total strangers.

Right. Let’s wash out our brains with some nice photos of Arendelle.

Olaf had clearly just received one of John’s mucky photos:

Not the best ride photo thanks to the lady in front. I’ve lost count of the number of ride pics I have where it looks as though someone is smacking me in the chops.

Back outside, it was gone 11am by now and World Showcase was properly open for business. We had a little potter around, stopping for some photo passes in Italy:

Then we saw that the American Adventure was due to be starting shortly, and that seemed as good an idea as any, so we headed in that direction.

Ahh, air con bliss.

We were a few minutes early so had a little look around the rather skimpy museum there but before long it was time to go in.

I’d forgotten how long it takes to get to the actual theatre inside but luckily we had a cast member who clearly loved his job. One of my abiding memories of this trip was this chap shouting at us that we had to pay due respect to the “corriiiiiidooooooor of flaaaaaaaaaags”. I’ve got some hilarious video of this guy shouting “on your left there is a Mexican flaaaaaag…. And on your right, a red flaaaaaag, haha”.

Even now, I’ll randomly say “corriiiiiidooooooor of flaaaaaaaaaags” to Andy and we’ll crack up. Here it is. Respect it.

I quite like the American Adventure, you know. Clearly, not as much as the actual Americans in the room, but it is interesting, and well done. I always manage to stay awake, at least, compared to Andy, who I don’t think has seen it all the way through yet.

Oh, and Lance Armstrong has now finally been cut from the end montage…

Those who have read my previous trip reports will know that I am a puerile child who cannot hear Golden Dream, the theme from the show, without cracking up. This is probably the kind of behaviour that would stop me from getting an ESTA these days. Nevertheless, I had to take these photos on the way out #spreadyourgoldenwings:

Following this, we changed direction again and went to look in the shops in Germany.

Another first here – we always stick our heads into Karamell-Kuche as it smells so good, but we’ve never actually bought anything. Here, I decided to use a snack credit on a salted caramel square.

It was really small (or else I have massive thumbs) but it needed to be, as wow, this thing was dense. Imagine the top layer of a Mars bar, only even more compact.

I had one little bite (“and my mom got scared, and said you’re moving to your auntie and uncle in Bel Air”) and that was enough. Andy wasn’t going anywhere near it on account of having several fillings that he didn’t want to dislodge, and so I carefully wrapped it back up and packed it away in the bottom of my bag.

Next up, Mexico. This is such a pretty pavilion. We went inside and as ever, there was no queue for the Three Caballeros ride, so on we went. I like this more than Andy does.

I couldn’t leave Mexico without a frozen margarita. There didn’t seem to be any point buying one from the margarita stand or La Cava there when we had so many meals to use up, so instead we went over to La Cantina de San Angel and used a couple of quick service meals on some nachos, with a margarita for me, and a beer for Andy.

The nachos were pretty good. Neither of us fancied school dinner mince so got the vegetarian alternatives and they were tasty. The drinks were also very welcome.

This massive bird (no, I am not talking about me here) was also eyeing up our nachos.

It was here that I had a bit of an attack of the going-home-blues. We’d had such a lovely morning and apart from being desperate to see the mogs, I didn’t want to go back. I’m sure everyone has that moment on their last day where they come over all Les Miserables, and begs the universe for one day more. It was harder on this trip as we had no future plans to return. – I mean, we knew we would, of course we would, but it was hitting me hard that this was the last of our “trilogy” of annual visits. Sad times.

Reluctantly, we left World Showcase. However, no need to be sad as at least it was time for our Spaceship Earth fast pass.

As soon as we tapped in, we looked at MDE and managed to snag a fast pass for Soarin’, which we were really pleased about, as for some reason, this ride – which we usually do multiple times in a trip – had eluded us. I think because we hadn’t yet entered the park from the main entrance.

For the first time ever, they had had to open the overflow fast pass queue which goes all the way round to the left of the ride. Epcot was clearly getting busier – either that or maybe the crowds had built up as the ride might have gone down or something, who knows? Anyway, like yesterday at Everest, we had to queue to get in the queue, which was nuts.

Andy always laughs in the face of this warning, which makes the ride sound far more perilous than it actually is:

We played around with the questions on the ride this time, as we always come out with the same “future” but this time it was different. How cool do we look?!

We disembarked, and decided we were thirsty again so went over to Starbucks. On the way, Andy made us stop to look at the wait times board. For all the tech available on an app, he still loves these boards and every time we see one in a park, we have to stop for a while, so he can read it.

On this occasion, I don’t even know why as we were almost done in Epcot and about to head off. Still, the wait times were pretty short considering it was mid-afternoon. Those Food & Wine and marathon crowds really had finally died down, just in time for us to go home.

It’s cool that on the MDE app, you can track your meal plan credits. Here’s where we were at this point in the trip:

I’m not entirely sure how we ended up with six table service credits at the end of the holiday as we didn’t cancel any reservations that weren’t replaced somewhere along the line. I think I did leave some floating in case we wanted to use them ad-hoc. For example, I was holding four for our last night in case we - I mean, I – wanted to go to the Flying Fish, which is a signature restaurant, and I’d forgotten that was the case after we’d booked to go to MVMCP that night instead.

I didn’t think we’d done too badly on the whole though. I was surprised at the number of snack credits we had left, as these are usually the first to go. Andy decided he wanted a biscuit, so we ended up using a quick service meal credit here, on three snacks – two venti refresher drinks, and his chocolate chip cookie.

I never, ever do the conversion of credits to cash value, as what’s the point? The dining plan is "free", so if you want to use a snack credit on a bottle of water, get the bottle of water. If you can’t face another $70 steak, have the $30 chicken. If you're not hungry, don't eat. I don’t agree with having stuff you don’t always want, just to rinse more "value" out of something that was included in the price in the first place. Sure, it’s an expensive holiday and you’re paying for the food somewhere along the line, but, well, you know what I mean.

Anyway. Time to Soar.

A few very blurry and surreptitious action shots from inside:

Continued below...

[HelenJNT]

It was now about 4pm and time to say goodbye to Epcot. We were on our way to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom, but we had a secret mission first.

Last year, when we were visiting a couple of weeks later in the year, all of the Christmas stuff was in full swing, and we had paid a visit to the gingerbread house pop up shop in the Grand Floridian where I had purchased some of the delicious peppermint bark there, for us and also for Christmas gifts for my friends Rach and Lisa. We knew that the shop was due to open tomorrow (typically, on the day we were due to leave) but we decided to pop our heads in to the GF, on the off-chance that there was some kind of soft opening.

We changed monorail at the TTC - as we never seem to get on the right bloody one - and zoomed into the GF. It’s such a pretty resort. I am as far from being a girly girl as you can probably get, but I do love the pink themed Christmas trees they have there. We knew the gingerbread house shop had been assembled as we could smell it from the moment we stepped off the monorail. Yum.

Alas, the shop wasn’t open for business, and was being guarded by a very smart man in a suit. Part of me was relieved as I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do MVMCP laden down with several kilos of minty chocolate (a locker would have been needed) but I was also really sad, as that stuff was delicious, and I had wanted to surprise my friends with some again at Christmas. Boo.

Side note, I decided to make my own peppermint bark this year instead, and ended up making about 20 kilos of the stuff to send to friends, for Andy to take to work, for me to give to my team. It took me significantly longer than I expected – another reason why it’s taken me so long to get this trip report up, haha – and the kitchen was sticky for months afterwards.

We had a quick restroom stop (decent loo roll in the GF too, as you’d expect) and headed back out to the monorail. It was mobbed, with people all going to the party. We didn’t get on the first one as it was so packed, but we made it on to the second. I really wish you could walk to the Magic Kingdom from here, it’s so close but feels like such a faff. Still, monorail > buses.

The entrance to the park looked beautiful and very festive.

We queued to get in and receive our party wristbands (nothing special, just a paper one). As we made our way up Main Street, we could see how busy it was – lots and lots of people.

Given that we had attended the party last year, we knew what to expect, and so we planned to spend as much of it as we could riding our favourites. Maybe we should have checked out some of the shows, but it never feels as though there is enough time on your last night – perhaps if we had attended a party earlier in the trip it would have been different and maybe feel a little more special than just an average late night in the Magic Kingdom, getting into the Christmas spirit a little more, but we were fine about it.

Speaking of spirits, our first port of call was the Haunted Mansion, where we were thrilled to see this:

Doesn’t it look spooky?

Next up was something that was very much on our list to do tonight – Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. If you recall, the only fast pass we had for this all holiday had been rained off earlier in the trip, so we were happy to be able to ride it tonight.

The queue was about 35 minutes long, but I didn’t really mind as I was using the time to try and do our flight check in.

There was a lady in front of us in a mobility scooter who had refused to get out of it to stand in the queue, and it was taking ages for us to get through – I’d never noticed how many right angles there were in this queue, and she was having to Austin Powers every single one. Frustrating as she was getting dangerously close to our toes each time.

Eventually we made it on to the ride – I was there, although you can’t tell from the photos! This was fun at night though; we’ve only ever ridden it in the day before now.

One of the things we learned – painfully – from our last time at MVMCP is that the “free” cookies they hand out really aren’t worth the queue, and the food places are always massively busy. We didn’t really want to waste precious time queuing up for grub, but we were ravenous – all we’d eaten all day was the pastry for breakfast and some nachos for lunch. Andy was up by one chocolate chip cookie, but it hadn’t really been a substantial eating day, and we needed some sustenance.

Knowing that it has a massive upstairs seating area, we made for Columbia Harbor House. There was a bit of a queue but nothing terrible. I ordered the tuna sandwich – I have this on every trip and I don’t know what it is about it but it is just one of the best tuna sandwiches I have ever had – and a side of fries, and Andy had nuggets and fries (not pictured).

This was devoured in seconds, and really hit the spot. I also remembered that I had my caramel square from earlier on in the day which I had only had one bite of, so pulled that out, and we finished it off. Luckily it had survived the heat!

Suitably fed, we decided to go and check out the limited edition party merchandise in the Big Top. It was basically all the same gear as there had been in 2017, only with the updated year on it, so we decided we didn’t need any of it, and went off to ride the Barnstormer…

…followed by Dumbo….

And then made our way over to Tomorrowland, to see what we could achieve there.

First up, Andy wanted to have a go on the Astro Orbiter. We hadn’t done it for a couple of years, so I made my peace with the stinky lift, and up we went; there was no queue.

We know, from painful previous experience, that we can’t both fit in one of the rockets, so we asked for separate ones, which was fine.

Great views…

But goodness, this ride makes me feel terrible. It’s not so much the height of it that bothers me, it’s the fact that the rockets tilt on an incline, which a) makes you feel like you’re going to fall out, and b) really messes with your vision and inner ear when you’re spinning. Ick. I’d do it again, as I’ll have forgotten this by the next time, but I do remember feeling pretty horrible afterwards. Again, Mr No-to-Flight-of-Passage had no issues with it, and could have gone again.

What do you do when you’re feeling a little wibbly? Space Mountain, of course!

Unlike the last time, where we rode in the light – and saw ALL the dust, which I mentioned the other day, they had the lights off.

We then rode Buzz Lightyear; felt like an eternity since we’d last ridden this.

So we rode it twice, as it was a walk-on.

It was pretty hot and muggy tonight and we had been on the go all day, so decided we needed to take a load off our tired feet and went for a spin on the Peoplemover. It’s great doing this at night!

Once we came off, it was time for Holiday Wishes, so we scampered into the hub to watch the show. I’m on the fence about the “value” of these party nights but at least they put on a show that is exclusive to MVMCP, so that helps a little. My photos aren’t brilliant, but here you go.

After this, we made our way out to one of the furthest reaches of the park, Big Thunder Mountain. Whenever I ask Andy what his fondest holiday memories are, it usually goes in this order:
1) whatever mishap has befallen me on the trip. He has real bitter disappointment that I had no issues getting in and out of the rubber rings at the hotel lazy river.
2) Riding Big Thunder at night.

We rode this two or three times, as it was a walk-on. It’s just so much better at night, and has now become our traditional last ride (steady) of the holiday.

We did consider having a go on Splash Mountain, actually, but there was a 20 minute queue for this one and we wanted to catch the second parade of the night, so sadly, had to walk on by. Splash is also fun at night and I encourage anyone who hasn’t ridden it after dark to try to do so if you can.

Last year, we’d found a great viewing spot for the parade, right where it starts, opposite Pecos Bills, so this is where we went and stood again. It wasn’t busy there at all and we easily got a spot.

The parade was exactly the same as last year’s, and although I don’t claim to be much of a one for a parade, I loved it. It did feel early to be thinking about Christmas (usually the time between my birthday and Christmas goes really slowly), but just for one night, it was great.

M

Once the parade had finished, we decided, regretfully, that it was time to head back to the Beach Club for the final time. We were a little concerned about how long we might have to wait for a bus otherwise and we knew we needed to get up early-ish to pack up the room. Ugh, it’s paining me to even write those words, and this is nine months later!

Oddly, we needn’t have worried, as we had a whole bus to ourselves. What?

Tired and sad.

Back at the hotel, everything was closed and quiet.

I took a photo of these chairs as they were part of a trip-long joke, which was referenced every time we came out of the lift.

Before coming away, I’d read a review of the Beach Club on TripAdvisor where someone had complained about every single thing but had decided that the only reason they weren’t giving the hotel zero stars was because they had really enjoyed sitting on these chairs by the lift. Speechless. I mean, they’re alright, but…?

We decided we really couldn’t be bothered to start packing now, so fell into bed, exhausted and sad.

Looking at the performance stats from this day, I can’t believe it wasn’t higher. We were on the go for 12 hours, covered a lot of ground across two theme parks and barely sat down for longer than 30 minutes. Given that on a normal Disney day we’ve broken 10k steps by lunchtime, I can only think that my phone must be broken!

Thanks for reading along. Please do join us tomorrow as we have breakfast with Donald (not that Donald) & the gang, and – boo hiss - travel home, which can now be found here

[4fromsuffolk]

Helen you are hilarious. I’ve been cleaning out cupboards and sat down for a drink and a look on the DIBB, again I’m laughing out loud - the corridor of flags 😂. You did lots in a day and I can see from your countdown you are going back so I look forward to hearing about that.

[ely3857]

Totally in agreement on the dining plan and not concerning yourself with the value. Eat/drink/snack what you need/want when you need/want! I’m always baffled by the x credits left over and want to ask how much money they spent on staying hydrated 😆

[Goldia]

Personally I quite like the school dinner mince on the nachos from Mexico, plus the margaritas they serve somehow make the mince taste really good.

We've never had the problem of planning a trip during party seasons, I think it would be a real pain to have to factor that in to your trip planning.

I'm sad that this trip report is now coming to an end, but I'm hopeful a pre trip for next year's adventure is in the offing? Fingers and toes well and truly crossed for that.

[emmabanana]

Another great day, you fitted a lot in! Shame 5hatbits your last full day, I’ve enjoyed reading along.

[emmabanana]

Another great day, you fitted a lot in! Shame that its your last full day, I’ve enjoyed reading along.

[Nesbits]

Aw,it’s coming to an end ☹️ Your trippies are ace. It happened to me too, I was airdropped an explicit photo on the bus the other day, new craze maybe?

[eleele]

A sad but almost perfect day by the sounds of it (minus the coffee incident)

Thanks for the pics, especially the ones of the parade - I love the dancing reindeer, you can see them on YouTube videos and It’s one of my fav things to do in December to bring back happy memories

Your peppermint bark looks lush btw

[MrsSilverStar]

Oh John, and at Disney World too?! Filthy animal.

Great last day, the Christmas party looks so cute, loved your parade photos.