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11 Oct 19, 06:50 PM |
#1
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VIP Dibber
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Return of the Rescuer – Day 19 – 21.7.19 – Farewell Illuminations
Return of the Rescuer – Day 19 – 21.7.19 – Farewell Illuminations
Very difficult getting up again this morning, we’d definitely over-planned our last few days I think. We had good luck again with the buses and we waited only a few minutes before the AK bus arrived. I was worried it might head to Riverside first but it must be much later on it day that they start sharing. We arrived about 9.15 and it took us about 10 minutes to get through bag check and entry. I was keeping my eye on the expected wait times as we were toying with doing Navi again but it had gone up to about 25 minutes and that’s too long for that. So we decided just to head to our Flight of Passage fast pass. We stopped on the way for a wee photo in front of the newly painted lion king gate, much to the disgust of Dh who was still keen on the Navi idea. The line for FOP was massive and they had roped off the crossing point to get people into the standby line so we had to wait a few minutes to get across the road. The fastpass line was fairly quick, maybe 10 minutes and the ride itself as excellent as ever, as Dh says though we are all sick of the sight of Jackie Ogden now! By the time we left Pandora the line was 135 minutes long. My Dh is hilarious and hates the thought of missing out on any changes Disney make to things so he insisted that we do the up bird show. There’s 20 minutes of our lives we will never get back. I actually used to really like it before they changed it, yes I could recite the lines but it was funny. The new one is not as good and the 2 actors didn’t really do a good job in getting the audience to buy into it. Ds and I have teased him no end on how it was his choice to make us watch this. The one redeeming factor was Doug and Russell though, they are super cute! Expedition Everest was next, we stopped for a quick Photopass on the way. There was very little wait to get on with a fastpass. To think this was another ride ds was very apprehensive about yet looking at his ride photo he looks utterly zen. Kevin was out wandering up and down this area, she is so cute but not easy at all to get a photo with. She was looking at the statues of Russell and Dug outside the Up Bird show which was a nice touch. Again it was roasting and Ds was super eager to have another ice cream float with pineapple fanta. While he was ordering that Dh noticed they did a McKenzies hard cherry cider ice cream float as well so fancied that. I won’t touch cherry so I can’t comment but he thought it was strange but really nice. We headed to Mr Kamals again for some food to go along with our drinks. We had the seasoned fries again which were good and tried the chicken dumplings, these were brilliant. The seating here down a few steps gives you a lovely view of the Tree of Life and it was fairly quiet down there. See, lovely view, The intention had been to get the train to the Conservation Station and I’d booked a fastpass for the Lion King art class thing but this was later on and we decided to change it so we could use up more dining credits by finishing off our eating around the world. It was our last day and we still hadn’t met Mickey or Minnie so we tried to get a fastpass for the character meet. At first there was nothing but a few refreshes and I managed to get one but it was for a fair bit later. A few attempts at modifying and we had one for 11.30. Always cute to meet Mickey and Minnie. All done at AK and we headed out to catch the bus to Epcot, the walk out of AK is always roasting as there is no shade there at all now and the Epcot stop was the furthest away spot. It didn’t really take that long. Once we were in, we mucked around taking some photos and headed to Spaceship Earth as I’d managed to snag a perfectly timed fastpass on the bus over. It was heaving as it usually is these days. Anyway back to the important matter of using up these credits, we picked up frozen slushies at Taste Track. We continued round to Mexico, somewhere else where we had never eaten before in all our visits, we ordered the cheese empanadas as I thought they would be relatively easy to share. These were really nice and were indeed great to share. I also had a frozen mango margarita which was lovely. Again another food place with a lovely view. Carried on round to China next and had the chicken fried rice and egg roll and Dh had a beer. We used to love the Lotus Blossom Café when we first started coming on holiday to Orlando 20 years ago, it was a bit of a tradition to try and beat the Tapestry of Nations parade to get a Lotus Blossom Combination before they closed and then watch Illuminations. It’s not as good now but what we ordered was all nice enough. I wanted to get a curry pocket from the Joy of Tea cart but their magic band reader was broken so I wouldn’t have been able to use a snack credit so no curry pocket for me. Ds was desperate to watch Reflections of China so we did. It’s dated but we like it. Afterwards we had a wander around the large China shop, it had loads of interesting things. We have a china topic planned this year at school so I took a fair few photographs for little bits of inspiration. We carried on round to Germany and went to Karmel Kuche, another place that we had only recently tried out at Christmas, sometimes I wonder what exactly we have been doing on all these disney holdays . I finally had a toffee apple thanks to Goldia pointing out they could be sliced. Peanut and caramel. Delicious! We also had a pat and apple cookie which was lovely And took a caramel praline slice back to the room - no photo, sorry. We had to shelter for a wee bit in Germany again due to a storm, its obviously bad luck for us. 9582 We also picked up some chip and dale mix in Mousegear to use up even more snack credits. 8 snacks used 2 quick service used. Again, we had had a fastpass for Test Track and again it had been suspended due to the weather! We were later than we had planned leaving Epcot and were on the bus at 4.20pm so it was a short turnaround to do a little more packing and get ready to head back out. King of the bus though. The weather was still a bit off and to be honest we were all knackered so rather than leaving early to catch a bus we decided it was worth the small cost to get an Uber to the Beach Club. Dinner was at Chefs de France. This was one of our top meals at Christmas so we were eager to go again. For once we were seated straight away. Our server was lovely. And we had a good table for people watching. I had the French martini which was delicious. Ds had a Diet Coke and Dh had a beer. The French bread was great but I’m sure they are getting smaller. The server brought us 2. Ds ordered the seafood - seared monkfish, shrimp, cod fish, rice pilaf with saffron peas, tomato beurre blanc. I ended up with this as well as I had wanted the trout but they didn’t have any. It was really nice. Dh had the fillet. Grilled tenderloin of beef with green peppercorn sauce potato au gratin and green beans. He liked it well enough. For dessert ds had the swan cream puff filled with chocolate mousse, chocolate sauce and chocolate ice cream. He loved this. Dh and I had the meringue basket with fresh berries, vanilla cream, raspberry sauce and strawberry sorbet. This was really good and way more filling than it first appeared. This was a really nice meal, we were in and out reasonably quickly which I didn’t mind as I didn’t feel rushed at all. We were done and dusted by 7.40pm. Look how happy we looked, it didn’t last as this is where DH and my vision of how this evening would go differed, I wanted to wander round the big shop in Japan, get a grey goose slushy and find the perfect spot for my last ever Illuminations, you know the way I was all hearts, flowers and emotions. DH, however, wanted to ride Test Track with the anytime fastpass we had. Ds had the deciding vote and I lost so we power walked over. All was will till we were inside the room where you are put on the spots, at this point it was clear after about 10 minutes that something was not quite right. I wanted to leave, no the other 2 said it will be fine. It was 20 past 8 before we even got in to design the cars and there was a long line still when we came out, I still wanted to leave but tbh there was nowhere you could really go at this point. It was 8.35 by the time we stepped on the ride, by which point I was seething at the other 2 and had visions of missing Illuminations altogether! We did an extremely fast walk back round to France, grabbed a grey goose slushy and were on the bridge for it starting, by this point I wasn’t even speaking to DH so any notion of a romantic farewell to the first Disney fireworks we’d watched together back on our first ever holiday together was well and truly out the window. Was our spot that bad, not really but just not what I had envisioned. I still shed a tear and had forgiven DH by the time it was half way through. It didn’t take too long to get back to POFQ tonight, I finished off the packing while ds and dh got out my way by going for quick swim. Day 20
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Rescuers Reports Lots of food and trip reports Edited at 05:25 PM. |
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11 Oct 19, 08:35 PM |
#2
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VIP Dibber
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Phew, I was worried you weren't going to get to watch illuminations. I'm glad it worked out in the end. That martini in chefs de france was lovely.
Also pleased you tried the caramel apple they are tasty sliced aren't they? The snacking around the world really was fab this trip for you guys. Such a shame the report is coming to an end.
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Abby New pre trip report - Summer 2024 Link to all my completed trip reports 2017: NYC and Orlando. Salzburg. Boston. 2018: Orlando. Berlin. 2019: DLP. Orlando. Washington DC. 2020: DLP. 2021: Jamaica. Rome. 2022: Orlando. 2023: Orlando. Niagara and Toronto. |
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11 Oct 19, 09:34 PM |
#3
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Thread Starter
VIP Dibber
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I’d never have tried the caramel apple if it hadn’t been for you.
Yes 1 more day on the trip report to go but as of about an hour ago I have a new countdown 😀😀😀😉
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Rescuers Reports Lots of food and trip reports |
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11 Oct 19, 10:11 PM |
#4
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VIP Dibber
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Oh my goodness me. Look at that countdown. Does that take you away for February half term?
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Abby New pre trip report - Summer 2024 Link to all my completed trip reports 2017: NYC and Orlando. Salzburg. Boston. 2018: Orlando. Berlin. 2019: DLP. Orlando. Washington DC. 2020: DLP. 2021: Jamaica. Rome. 2022: Orlando. 2023: Orlando. Niagara and Toronto. |
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11 Oct 19, 10:24 PM |
#5
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Thread Starter
VIP Dibber
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It does. Might be a bit mad doing a full week when we only have a week off Looking forward to Mardi Gras at Universal.
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Rescuers Reports Lots of food and trip reports |
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13 Oct 19, 04:48 PM |
#6
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VIP Dibber
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ooh, more snacking around the world - lovely. I'm so glad you managed both Test Track and IllumiNations in the end. It must have been so stressful at the time, trying to make sure your got back in place for the fireworks.
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All of my trip reports are in this INDEX My most recent reports are below: *Complete* A Tale of Two Cities - Washington D.C. & Boston - March 2023 We Love Food! An Offsite Dining Report - May 2022 |
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23 Oct 19, 10:57 PM |
#7
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Thread Starter
VIP Dibber
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Snacking round the world is one of my new favourite things. It's as close to food and wine as we will get.
Hardly first world problems with the Illuminations / Test Track fiasco, maybe my expectations were just too high and romanticised. A week to go for you, your trip seems to have come round so fast. Are you all set?
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Rescuers Reports Lots of food and trip reports |
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24 Oct 19, 03:53 PM |
#8
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VIP Dibber
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I really want a French Martini now! Another good snacking day. I’m pleased you got to see Illuminations.
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28 Oct 19, 12:32 AM |
#9
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Thread Starter
VIP Dibber
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It was good as was the grey goose slushie.
I’m not sure when we will be back at Epcot but it will be very weird to see a firework show that’s not illuminations, so many years worth of excellent memories tied to that.
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Rescuers Reports Lots of food and trip reports |
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