Do They Know It's Christmas? Helen&Andy-Nov17. Day 4: Hollywood Studios, CBR & Disney Springs

[HelenJNT]

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Day 4 – Disney Hollywood Studios, Caribbean Beach Resort, Disney Springs & Blaze Pizza

“Toy Story Midday Mania”

For those of you who read my last trip report, and were wondering if my previous ranty self had disappeared altogether, you’re in for a treat. Enter at your own risk…

I learned an interesting fact this morning – that the alarm on my phone does not work when the phone is switched off. I had turned it off last night (risking potential maiming and decapitation were there to be any any night time toilet trips) as I didn’t want to be distracted with notifications flashing up when I knew we really needed a decent night’s sleep. So the alarm I had remembered to set for 05:45, which seemed optimal “arriving for the start of EMH” didn’t happen and I woke up a little later, at 06:05.

Still early, I know, but not quite early enough as it would turn out. We got ready fairly quickly and by 07:00 were downstairs waiting for a bus to Hollywood Studios (or MGM, as I still think of it – side note, I really hope they don’t give this park any of the atrocious new names that have been mooted thus far). I was excited to get back to DHS, I know it has a rough rep now but I just really love the park. I love the atmosphere, the classic Hollywood music and the ambience and if pushed, I would name it as my favourite park – although definitely not if you’d asked me at any point today – read on…..

Where were we? Oh yes, still at the bus stop at AKL, where we waited. And waited. And waited some more. And just for the hell of it, we did a little more waiting. All told, we waited 30 minutes for a bus to come. In EMH. I was pretty annoyed – I was going to type “seething” then but that’s pretty first world isn’t it? You know what I mean though.

Turned out even if my alarm had gone off, we’d still have been waiting a while as the queue at the bus stop was a pretty angry one that had been there for some time. I don’t understand. I mean, sure everyone wants to go to Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom is always popular, but to have not a single bus for that day’s EMH park for 30 minutes? It makes no sense.

Finally, at 07:30, the bus turned up. And as luck would have it, we had the slowest bus driver in the world. It was ridiculous. On our other journeys to and from the Studios, it took around 15 minutes. It took this lady THIRTY minutes to get us to the bus stop at the park. At one point (and I am not exaggerating), people were actually overtaking us on foot. Impressive clutch control maybe but this was just bonkers.

As a result, we didn’t get through the turnstiles until 08:10, where we quickly hotfooted it over to Toy Story Midway Mania. We were excited to ride this again as it really is one of our favourite attractions.

However, the standby line was already at 45 minutes which we just weren’t prepared to do. Absolutely crazy. A 45 min wait when the park had been open less than 15 minutes? Nope.

This sign did raise a smile though:

I was starting to realise that not getting to rope drop early was annoying for us, the same thing had happened when we arrived at Animal Kingdom yesterday. I think some of our best memories and moments are arriving in a quiet park and being able to do (often repeat) rides on our favourites. Some of it can be blamed on us being a bit tardier on this holiday perhaps, but a lot of the blame lay fairly squarely at the bus service. Now I know some people might wait 20 minutes for a bus that other people walk on to and it’s all just in the luck of the timing but you’d think if you got to a bus stop an hour in advance that you’d stand a chance of getting to the park before it opened.

Anyway, we looked at the wait times for the other rides and Rock & Rollercoaster was already up to an hour and we were starting to stress that we weren’t going to be able to do anything this morning. It was Sunday today and we hadn’t really been expecting the Thanksgiving crowds for another day or two so it all caught us a little off guard.

Luckily, the wait times for Star Tours hadn’t yet built up like they had everywhere else, and Andy was especially keen to ride this given that Disney had debuted scenes from the new movie that isn’t even out yet as part of the new stories. It started kind of disappointingly as was just the same as all the other Star Tours rides we’ve been on but there were a couple of new characters featured and some great scene where the screen went red and we fired at one of those things in the photo below? Not really a spoiler is it but then again I’m not the avid Star Wars fan that Andy is. Maybe it’ll make more sense when I see the movie next week.

We decided the best course of action was to have breakfast. The first place we came to was Min & Bill’s Dockside Diner which didn’t have much of a queue but Andy had a squint at the menu and decided he wasn’t sure about it. We wandered over to Starbucks, but the queue was out the door and halfway back to the entrance turnstiles. Oh. So, for want of any better suggestions, and feeling a little fraught, we went back to Min & Bill’s. Where, you guessed it, a big queue had just built up. We joined it anyway.

I can’t remember if I’ve already mentioned this in the trip report thus far but one of my favourite things to be annoyed about on this trip was people ordering food who didn’t know what they wanted before they got to the front of the line, and having a huge debate with each other and usually with the cast member on duty as well. Most quick service food queues, especially over Thanksgiving, were fairly lengthy so people had ample time to make up their minds as to what they wanted. Yet below are some samples of overheard conversations from people at the counter of the quick service queues:

• “What does the cheeseburger come with? Fries? Parker….Parkeeerrrr? PARKER! Find Parker. I need to know if he wants fries with his burger?”
  
• “Can I have this that and the other with this on the side but none of that and a little more of that?”
  
• “Do you sell beer? No? Why not? Darn it, what does a man have to do to get a beer in this g-d place?”
  
• “Honeeeyyyyy, the kids’ meal comes with apple slices. STEVIE. WANTS. FRIES.”
  
• “What’s in that? Tell me all the ingredients. No, we don’t have allergies but we want to know. OK. Do you want that? No, we don’t want that. What’s in this one? How about this?”
  
• “Bobby, ya wanna hot dog? No? You wanna burger? No? Ya wan’ chicken? Oh, ya wan’pizza? Yes? Kids’ pizza please. Bobby, they don’t sell pizza. Ya wanna hot dog? Ya wanna burger? Ya wan’chicken?”
  
• <in Epcot> “No, I don’t want any food or drink but I want to know - where’s the Pirates of the Caribbean ride? We can’t see it on the map”

Cut to us:
“One egg white breakfast burrito, one bacon breakfast burrito, one bottle of water and one coffee please”. Done. Easy. I do wonder if Bobby ever got any pizza.

Happily (and really we needed a lucky break by now), the breakfast was really delicious.

I’ve never been sure about a burrito as a breakfast food (sour cream and salsa seem like dinner condiments to me) but this was really very good, and it came with a heap of my newfound friends, the Tater Tots. Andy also polishes off his egg white burrito which has cheese, egg (whites, obv) and spinach inside. Yum. Very happy we didn’t queue for Starbucks.

We watched the ride wait times build and build as we tried to make a plan of action. It was about 09:00 by now and we only really had an hour to kill before our fast pass, so we headed for the Muppets, figuring that couldn’t have been too busy at that time in the morning. On the way there, we passed the brand new Baseline Tap bar that had only opened a few days previously – I made a mental note that it opened at 11:00; something told me I was going to be banging on the door at 10:59.

The Muppets was a walk-on, if you can call the rather long 11 minute wait in the pre-show a walk-on.

I still really love this show – I’ve always been a big fan of the Muppets and as I said last year, whilst I could still cheerfully knock Waldo, the spirit of 3D (I have a different name for him but it isn’t appropriate in a family forum) into the middle of next week, I really enjoy the show and I hope it doesn’t become a casualty of future development in the park. I know people want new and fresh but I still find this quite charming. It’s bad enough that the gift shop next door barely has any Muppet-specific merchandise there now and for some boggling reason it’s mainly Jack Skellington stuff, who doesn’t appear anywhere else in this park as far as I can tell.

It was then time for our actual Star Tours fast pass, and what do you know? The ride was the same as the one we had been on earlier.

We watched the Jedi Academy for a bit too – not purely because the guy playing Obi-Wan was quite handsome.

After that, a show was just starting on the main stage – well, I say a show, I’m not entirely sure what it was. Oppressive music was playing and a live camera was showing a feed of a load of storm troopers walking up the road from the park entrance, stopping every now and again to check the ID of people in the crowd and intimidate them. This must be new; coinciding with the new president taking office as it was a little…fascist perhaps? Or maybe that was just my interpretation.

We sat on the wall and watched this parade make its way up to the stage…and then away from the stage again. Nothing really happened – it was all very strange. Still, nice to get a bit of sunshine – that spot by the main stage in DHS has got to be one of the hottest places on the planet, it’s a real sun-trap.

We weren’t too sure what to do after that so we decided to go and have a look round One Man’s (hopefully-not- fascist) Dream. This was a bit odd as they’ve taken down the name of the attraction from the front of the building, and replaced it with the info about the Guardians of the Galaxy meet and greet and a poster for the Coco trailer – which came out whilst we were on holiday and was everywhere, there was no escape from the promo stuff for it.

Anyway, inside is still the same museum that has always been there, you just wouldn’t know from the outside of the building. Bit of a shame really. We had a look round and also at the models of what the new Star Wars area is going to look like. We had zero interest in meeting any of the Guardians characters – although we absolutely love the movies, and Groot might have been fun, as Andy said, meeting face characters is just a step too far for us. We watched the Coco trailer and it looked good – as ever here though, you pretty much feel like you’ve seen the movie in five minutes as they show all the best bits.

After this we had a photo pass done, which took forever as the family in front of us wanted every possible configuration of their group. It was worse than being at a wedding. At least someone hands canapés round at a wedding.

We then saw the Star Wars characters exit the stage show. A woman (not me) was having total conniptions over Chewbacca.

It was now time for our Toy Story Midway Mania fast pass.

They’ve moved the Fast Pass entrance to this attraction now so you have to walk past the ride and then double back on yourself. It’s quite a confusing little web of ropes and quite a few people were getting in the wrong line.

I think this must have been our first time riding it since they opened the second track here – not that it did much to alleviate the standby wait times – and I was glad we got to go on it as I have been keeping an eye out to see when they are likely to close it to move the entrance before the new Toy Story land opens next year.

We love this ride – what’s not to like? So much fun. Andy won by a clear margin – I always seem to beat him on the first round but then I must peak too soon as it always goes to pot after that. I did take some real pleasure in slinging a custard pie in Jessie’s face though – dear lord she is annoying!

We looked at the app for the wait times for the rest of the rides in the park and it wasn’t looking good...

...so we headed for the new bar, the Baseline Tap. We walked behind the stage and jumped out of our skins when the flares went off for the show that was happening.

Hollywood Studios knows it’s Christmas.

The Baseline Tap is a cool place. There isn’t a lot of seating inside but there’s a big industrial style bar and they serve quite an interesting range of drinks – mainly craft beer but also a few ciders.

I think things got a bit fraught here as there was no sensible queuing system for the bar which aggravated me (maybe Captain Phasma should recruit me after all, I do like routine and order) I went off to find a seat and left Andy to get the beers in.

Disney love a flight don’t they? Margarita flights, dessert flights, flights of wonder, flights of passage. And in this instance, a beer flight. We don’t wear checked shirts or cripplingly skinny jeans, and only one of us has a beard (I shaved mine off before the trip) but we both really like craft beers – it’s become a bit of a hobby to taste different ones and see what we like and we now far prefer beers to lager or wine. I didn’t think the flight was bad value actually, it was $10.50 before tax and the little cups were a decent size. For some reason – I can hardly imagine why – the 7.7% IPA was really hitting the spot that day.

It’s quite a pleasant spot there and we were really enjoying sitting in the sunshine and watching the world (ALL of its population apparently) go by. We couldn’t believe how busy it was in the park that day, constant streams of people going past that never seemed to let up. I’ve never seen DHS that busy before, and I was really glad to be parked off to one side enjoying a cold beer and being glad I wasn’t caught in the very slow moving stampede.

We probably spent an hour here and whilst the bar was busy, at no point did it ever get to standing room only, which was nice – maybe as parents didn’t want to bring their kids there (indeed, I read some very disparaging and slightly hysterical reviews of the bar where people were simply disgusted at the concept of there being another bar in a park) or perhaps because it was new and therefore not really a destination place. It didn’t have a loo though, the nearest were these ones:

Either which way it was a little oasis for us and the only thing I would change about it would be the terrible, terrible music piped into the place. I think I described it on Instagram as “John Lewis’ Christmas advert featuring the Walking Dead” as it was mainly atrocious laborious slowed down whimsical cover versions of songs and the inevitable Coldplay cover versions, and let’s face it, you can’t polish a ≈≈≈≈.

Sorry to any Coldplay fans. No, really, I am genuinely sorry for you.

Continued below...

[HelenJNT]

Most of this hour was spent debating the fact that our Tower of Terror fast pass was looming and I was completely bricking it. Rewind the clock quite some way, back to about 1993 when I was in WDW with my family and the construction had just started on the ride. We were seeing trailers for it around and about and we rapidly learned that this new attraction was going to drop you 13 whole storeys in a lift. Noooo! I distinctly remember my mum saying something along the lines of “not in a million years” and indeed, the construction shell of the building looked even more terrifying than it does today, and I must have made some sort of deal with myself that I was never going to ride it, no way no how.

And, three or four additional trips to WDW and a couple to Paris occurred and I stayed true to my word, steadfastly avoiding Tower of Terror. Andy says he won’t ride anything I won’t, so it was becoming a bit of a nemesis for both of us. This was compounded by a trip to the London Dungeon a few years ago where they now have a drop ride that is meant to emulate being sent to the gallows (cheery wholesome fun for all the family) which Andy made me get on and I absolutely loathed, much to his amusement.

Fast forward to last year, where I had booked a fast pass for Tower of Terror “just in case” but then I never ended up using it as following Andy’s heart scare just before our 2016 trip, he had decided not to ride anything out of his comfort zone and I sure as hell wasn’t going to fly solo on it so the fast pass was cancelled and the ride was unridden.

Anyway, this year I literally has no choice as apart from Disney Juniors there was absolutely nothing else to spend that third fast pass on in DHS so I reluctantly made a couple for Tower of Terror, thinking it HAD to be less terrifying than Disney Juniors Live On Stage.

Andy was excited, and my Dibb friends LisaLollipop, RedRach and Toff Princess were all egging me on via the means of Whatsapp so I didn’t really think I was going to get away from it this time. I debated another 7.7% IPA but actually I was pretty tipsy already from the flight (of wonder) I had just had, so had a stern word with myself about manning up and off we walked down Hollywood Boulevard before I could change my mind. I swear the only thing that got me on the ride wasn’t the thought of finally being able to tick it off my list – as this was the only ride in Disney that we’d never been on (barring the Na’vi River Journey but that didn’t count as it was so new), it was more the fact that I got to exit via a shop I had never seen the inside of.

Weirdly, as we were queuing up I wasn’t nervous at all. These photos are 100% posed, I swear. Thank you, beer.

I was more interested to see the queue area and finally experience it all for myself. What an amazing queue, everyone is right – it’s so well done, even the fast pass one. It wasn’t like the first time I rode Space Mountain or the Mummy where I felt so sick with nerves beforehand, in fact I was disappointingly calm I think. Unlike the poor girl in the library with us who was wailing and begging her dad to take her out. He didn’t – mean dad.

We made it into the boiler room and then before we knew what was going on, we were being loaded into the lifts that I have seen so many photos of and watched so many videos of on You Tube. I’d braced myself for the fact that this is one of the longest rides in Disney apparently (3.10 minutes, fact fans) but that it was all OK as it would be over soon. And then…. I can’t remember a thing! So weird. I can remember subsequent rides (spoiler alert) but I can’t remember anything about the first one other than it must have been hot in there as I came off absolutely wringing with sweat. I don’t think it was stress but then again Andy was bone dry so maybe it was. Anyway, I do remember thinking “oh, is that it?” and then feeling very pleased with myself but also a little foolish for being so scared for so long. It’s honestly a piece of cake. Mind over matter. I do think that the physics explanation I’d read of the fact that you’re being pulled down really quickly rather than freefalling genuinely helped (thanks to whoever posted that on here) and weirdly I found the zooming up to be worse than the dropping down but “worse” is probably still the wrong word as the whole thing was totally smooth and, well, a hoot. Who knew?

The less said about this photo the better but I thought I should post it as evidencethat we didn’t just sneak into the shop, bypassing the ride:

Reward purchases were made in the shop as I felt we needed to commemorate the occasion so I bought a keyring, a fridge magnet and, just to prove what a brave little soldier I am, the Tower of Terror t-shirt. Yeah! Badass!

It was about 13:45 by now and we looked at other fast passes available but there wasn’t anything at all so we decided to leave DHS on a high – very different to how the day had started out - and make for the exit, having a commemorative photo pass taken on the way:

We stopped at Starbucks on the way out to get a coffee….or a “good delight” as the sign said. I had another caramel brulee latte, and Andy had a decaff chestnut praline latte which he really enjoyed.

We left the park as the Stormtroopers were doing their rounds again, and headed for the Disney Springs bus stop.

However, just as we were looking up which one it was, we saw a sign that said that Disney Springs buses weren’t running until 16:00 so we were a couple of hours too early. We decided to hop on the first resort bus that came, and then change there, so that was what we did.

As luck would have it, there was a bus bound for the Caribbean Beach Resort that was there and waiting which was great because a) CBR is really close to DHS so we knew from experience that it would be a short journey and b) we were intrigued to see what the resort looked like now with all the construction work, compared to how it was when we stayed there 18 months previously.

It was nice but strangely eerie to hear those calypso tunes again on the bus, and before we knew it we were pulling into the resort. We could see the construction from the moment the bus turned off the main road – I mean, I knew it was a big thing but this was really vast – it looked quite apocalyptic from the bus windows. Wow.

We disembarked at Martinique, which was the area we stayed in last year and I was pleased to see it was still standing as we honestly thought we’d never see it again – I was pretty sure I had read somewhere that it had been condemned.

It felt so funny standing at “our” bus stop again and really like no time had passed whatsoever. Much like so many times last year, we spied a lizard, and it was really nice waiting there for the bus and finishing our coffees.

Perhaps as we had barely been there much yet other than to sleep, but we didn’t really feel at this point of the holiday as though we had clicked with Animal Kingdom Lodge. I don’t know why, it’s hard to explain but maybe because we’d had such a good time at CBR and it holds very happy memories for us that construction work aside, we were a bit sad not to be staying there again this time. I don’t know if we would have missed it as much had we not visited it – you know how you see someone eat KFC on the TV and then you really want KFC but if you hadn’t seen the advert it would have been fine – maybe it was like that?

Anyway, the Disney Springs bus soon arrived and we got on. It went round the entire resort before leaving but we didn’t mind as it gave us more of an excuse to have a good beak around what was happening there. I seem to remember it taking quite some time to get to Disney Springs last year but either there was no traffic this time or some of the roadworks had finished as we were getting off the bus within 15 or 20 minutes.

Ooh! New Disney Springs. Now this WAS exciting! The new section opened on the day we flew home last time so we were really looking forward to seeing some of the new shops (correction, I was really looking forward to seeing some of the new shops) and having a mooch about.

Sephora was the first shop I came to and this was exciting for me as after years of being a beauty blogger and avidly collecting more makeup than I am ever going to be able to use ten lifetimes over, Sephora truly is the mothership. Brands you can’t easily get in the UK and I had a big old list of stuff that I wanted to check out. With a promise that I was going to be as quick as was humanly possible – as it didn’t look like a MASSIVE store (Andy lost me for a good hour in the one in Paris), I despatched Andy off to Jock Lindsay’s Hangar Bar and proceeded to step into Aladdin’s cave.

I actually feel like I was a little bit restrained as I was mindful of the fact that I do already have a fairly sizeable makeup collection room at home and also that I was on the clock. Skip this bit if you aren’t interested in make-up.

I bought the new Huda Beauty Desert Dusk eyeshadow palette which had been seeping into my consciousness via Instagram and I knew I really wanted to check out the Tarte holiday collections. Sadly – or happily, depending on how you view it, I didn’t really like the holiday stuff this year (too glittery) but I did pick up the Pro eyeshadow palette and a liquid lipstick. I also bought two Kat von D liquid lipsticks - I know she is stocked in the UK now, but nowhere near me – one of which I really wanted and the other one of which was an impulse purchase. I actually discounted a few others that had been on my list so I was quite pleased with myself, money in the bank and all that. I like liquid lipsticks as despite loving make-up, life is far too short for looking at yourself in the mirror all the time and these matte ones last for ages before fading. Then I went to the Anastasia Beverly Hills stand and braced myself as this was where I was expecting the damage to take place. I knew I needed some new Dipbrow eyebrow gel (seriously, this stuff is phenomenal and gives amazing brows even if, like me, you have a bald face because you tweezed off 99% of your facial hair during the 90s and a pot lasts for ages – I’ve had mine for two years and it is still ¼ full) and I also wanted to get a back-up of one of my favourite lipsticks of all time, my search for which actually prompted no fewer than six wonderful friends from all around the world to stalk their local branch of Sephora for me for about a year before it was finally back in stock. Phew. I didn’t really fancy anything else from the stand and my final purchase was a Sephora own brand powder as I prefer their ones to any other brand I have tried, which is fortunate as it is cheap as chips - well, not all chips, eh D-Luxe Burger?

<end make-up waffle>

I then decided to pop into Free People as I really liked the look of the stuff they had in the window, and I ended up buying a grey jumper. This will not surprise any of you who know me in real life and have an appreciation of my fear of brightly coloured clothes. I must have over a dozen grey jumpers in my wardrobe but they’re all different, yeah? I was getting a bit stressed in there as all of the staff were serving some wacky lady who was obviously a regular customer as they were just chatting away to her and ignoring me so I nearly put the jumper down and walked out but by that point I had committed to buying it as I really did need another grey jumper.

After this I thought I had better rein myself in although I could have happily spent a little more time wandering around the shops, especially as Disney Springs was blissfully quiet. Of course it was – every other bngger was at Hollywood Studios. I didn’t really have any concept of the layout of Disney Springs though and I wasn’t really sure where I was going or how to get back to the bit that I knew so that I could find Andy. Very confusing. Luckily I saw someone handing out maps so I took one and spent a little while bouncing around trying to find the Hangar Bar. It wasn’t actually very far away in the end once I had navigated that strange Bermuda triangle around Morimoto Asia and Andy and I were soon reunited. Phew. This was the longest we had been apart in six days, bet you were starting to get worried.

Andy was sat at the bar, chatting away to the barman and drinking a beer. As soon as I sat down, Andy asked the barman to give me a sample of the fabled Reggie’s Revenge, which is a cocktail they serve there that comes from a strange illuminated green tank on the edge of the bar.

Andy had asked what it was when he saw it, and the barman had given him a little glass to try and so he was keen for me to do the same.

I was expecting it to be like absinthe or something but it wasn’t…it basically tasted like midori liqueur with a ton of sugar – it was tooth-achingly sweet and, well, repulsive. Good work, Reggie. According to the barman, this is their most popular drink so I can only think that Reggie’s revenge is to get everyone to go to the dentist.

After I had drunk my beer (can’t remember what it was, sorry) and Andy had had another, we settled up and decided what to have for dinner. It was about 5pm by now and we hadn’t eaten since our breakfast burrito eight hours previously. I did toy with the idea of doing a food report you know, but I figured it probably wouldn’t have been worth it as, same with every Disney trip, we are terrible at having regular meals and ate far less than we probably should have done for the calories we were burning up by walking around. On a positive, it meant that we needed fewer beers to hit the spot as we were usually always hungry.

I wasn’t fussed about where we ate – both Blaze Pizza and D-Luxe Burgers were on my list to try at some point over the holiday so I didn’t mind which one we went to, and we saw there wasn’t much of a wait for Blaze so in we went.

The whole concept of Blaze, as I am sure you’ve read many times previously, is that you choose your pizza base and then can add as many toppings as you want all within the same price point. Happy days!

Andy decided this was all a bit too bewildering though and just went for one of the vegetarian pizzas on the menu, after carefully checking that it wasn’t a white pizza. We have a bit of an ongoing joke that whenever I go out for a pizza, I always inadvertently end up ordering the white pizza (and hating it). It’s not even funny any more, it must have happened to me at least ten times now. Gah.

I had a classic base with classic red sauce, and added jalapenos, ham, cherry tomatoes and extra garlic to mine, and we each had a bottle of water. There was a bit of a bottleneck waiting for the pizzas to come out but it was speedy enough and we found a seat inside with no problem. I’d read rave reviews of Blaze and do you know what? Every single one is spot on. I don’t know whether we were just ravenous (well, yes, we were) or what but this was one of the best pizzas either of us had ever eaten. The base was delicious and I couldn’t fault it at all. Had we not been worried about running out of quick service credits (haaa haaaaaa) we probably could easily have shared another one between us – and now, looking back on the photos and being pretty hungry as I am typing this, I really wish we had!

Andy enjoyed it so much that he confirmed to me then and there that he really wants a pizza oven for Christmas. He’d been threatening to get one for ages and he decided that he would prefer that to an Apple watch or anything else. Which is why, as I type this (on 7th December) I am currently surrounded by a series of massive boxes, all very obviously labelled “pizza oven” and “firelighters” etc so even if I had tried to maintain some kind of mystery about whether he was on the nice list, which of course he is, the surprise would have been blown anyway as I can’t move the bloody things, they are just too heavy. So feel free to follow me on Instagram to see if we manage to recreate that perfect Blaze pizza over Christmas. I wonder if pigs-in-blankets pizza is a thing? It could be…

It was now just coming up to 6pm and we were in that awkward stage of not knowing whether or not we should stay out and go and look for some other fun, or head back to the hotel. We were off to Universal tomorrow so we knew we didn’t want to get stuck into drinking somewhere and regret it when we came to ride all the simulators the next day, plus we were pretty tired so we decided, probably rather shamefully, to call it a night.

We headed off to the bus stop where we were met by a queue of weary and frustrated folk. I got talking to a man in the line who told me they had been there for about half an hour already and no bus had turned up so I was quite glad that we hadn’t got to the bus stop any earlier. He was worried as he and his wife had a 6.30pm reservation at Sanaa that there was no way they were going to make on time - their plan had been to get changed in their room first but now they had no time to do so. He was pretty irate, especially as he said the day before, they had been stranded at Magic Kingdom for an hour in the middle of the day waiting for a bus to take them back to AKL. Ordinarily I would have assumed he was exaggerating but I wasn’t so sure now given some of the hefty waits we had already had on this trip.

About fifteen minutes later, a bus finally arrived which was a relief as we were starting to flag. Lunchtime beers and a load of carbs - and a load of makeup – were weighing us down and we couldn’t wait to put our feet up. We eventually made it back to the resort by 7pm. I do hope that couple didn’t miss their dinner reservation.

I have no other notes from this evening other than that there were STILL no decorations up at AKL.

I painted my nails, admired my new makeup and that Andy was sound asleep by 8pm! We are so rock and roll. I think we needed it though. We were both utterly exhausted going into this holiday and weren’t sleeping well before we went away so it was a bit tough to not be sleeping well when on holiday and then also attempting to walk miles every day when we were tired to start with. Fret not though, things pick up and this was the only evening that we cried off and crashed out.

Please join us tomorrow where we visit Universal….and are thrown a bit of a curve ball...
...which can now be found here

Essential stats:
Parks: 1
Attractions: 6
15,017 steps
6.51 miles

[mitch-fishguard]

Great read again. We were in Epcot that day after going to the MK at 7 as that was opening early. At our bus stop there were so many people queuing for MGM that no way were they getting on one bus. At 7 in the morning !

[margyloveswdw]

Another fun day after a non too promising start!

We've only relied on resort buses on two holidays for a few days each time and we didn't have good experiences at all. Not something I would do through choice again

When DH and I go on TSM I usually do well for the first 2 or 3 screens and then he just gets a 2nd wind and beats me hands down... I blame it on my arms getting tired

Looking forward to reading more, the curve ball is intriguing!

[emmabanana]

Another great day, we must try blaze on our next trip, it looks amazing 😄

[HelenJNT]

Originally Posted by mitch-fishguard

Great read again. We were in Epcot that day after going to the MK at 7 as that was opening early. At our bus stop there were so many people queuing for MGM that no way were they getting on one bus. At 7 in the morning !

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It was utterly mad. To get to the bus stop at 7 and not get into the park til gone 8 was just infuriating. Hope you managed to have a better day than we did.

[HelenJNT]

Originally Posted by margyloveswdw

Another fun day after a non too promising start!

We've only relied on resort buses on two holidays for a few days each time and we didn't have good experiences at all. Not something I would do through choice again

When DH and I go on TSM I usually do well for the first 2 or 3 screens and then he just gets a 2nd wind and beats me hands down... I blame it on my arms getting tired

Looking forward to reading more, the curve ball is intriguing!

See more...

We usually rate the buses - this was the first time in all our trips that we had a bad time with them. Things got better bus-wise as it got busier with Thanksgiving though.

Yes, that familiar arm burn! Always makes me think I really should get to the gym.

[HelenJNT]

Originally Posted by emmabanana

Another great day, we must try blaze on our next trip, it looks amazing 😄

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You really must! We loved it. We’re at Saratoga Springs next year and there’s a real risk that we’ll just eat there every night!

[Unexpectedpenny]

A great day after a not so wonderful start.
Love the top you wore today (I have the same one )
Good to hear you enjoyed Tower of Terror and Blaze. What a brilliant present for Andy! I think pigs in blankets pizza sounds amazing!

[Lizzim]

This is why we don’t like the buses We would much rather hire a car and be able to plan our departure times... I know this doesn’t work out for people that don’t drive

Glad you finally rode Tower of Terror!