And so it all comes to an end.
The plane was delayed for about an hour so we left closer to 9pm last night local time. Apparently we made up some time en route, so this morning we were all set to land at around 9.10am, about half an hour later than scheduled. But then Gatwick decided to shroud itself in fog so that caused a queue of aircraft and we had to stack and circle for a bit longer.
Eventually we landed at around 9.30am. Passport queues were non-existent - we were off the plane and straight through without a hassle. Then to the baggage carousels. After about 10 minutes the screens announced that our luggage would appear on carousels 1 and 2. About 10 minutes later, some bags appeared. 10 minutes after that, my case appeared. Then the bags stopped coming out, and Tom still didn't have his. Judging by the number of people from our flight still waiting, nor did a lot of others.
The BA rep put out an announcement to say that they were trying to check with the baggage handlers where the rest of the bags had got to. Then they put another out to say that they'd located the bags and they'd be with us in "just a few minutes". About twenty "just a few minutes" later, there was another announcement to say that they'd actually left the bags at the plane stand, and so it would be "just a few more minutes". Tom eventually picked up his bags at nearly 11am, an hour and a half after we'd landed!
Customs was a similarly uneventful affair, we had a carriage to ourselves on the inter-terminal shuttle, then made our way to the station where we found we'd just missed a Thameslink train. I had to pick up my ticket from the machines, behind a queue of utterly bewildered foreign tourists who hadn't the foggiest idea which of the 27 combinations of tickets they needed.
Down on the platforms, someone was playing silly buggers with the allocations. Every few minutes a "platform alteration" message would play, and lots of people would have to change platform with all their luggage. Our turn came as our train was announced on platform 2, then platform 1, then back to platform 2 again. Thankfully it was quite empty at the front, so we had plenty of room for us and our luggage.
Due to engineering works we crawled up to East Croydon behind a stopper, then crawled up to London Bridge, then crawled up to Blackfriars. It's worrying when the tube home from Blackfriars is the speedy section!
So anyway, home at last - now I'm going to have a nice long hot bath and catch up with Bake Off!
Sunday 12 October 2014
Saturday 11 October 2014
Florida day 15: Magic Kingdom and Orlando Airport
The final day, and we decided to end as we'd begun, with the Magic Kingdom. Having packed the night before we had an early start, leaving our bags at Bell Services at our resort we boarded a bus to the Magic Kingdom.
It was already getting busy as we arrived, with full ferryboats and monorails depositing hoardes of people into the park entrance area. I wasn't looking forward to the bag check - in my rucksack today was all my hand luggage, plus a change of clothes for the afternoon! But we got through quickly with no hassle at all.
Spotting that it had a minimal queue time and was unlikely to improve, we began with the first ride we did two weeks ago - Splash Mountain. The 15-20 minute queue had grown to around 45 by the time we left the ride, so that was a good move!
Our second ride was Peter Pan's Flight - one of the few attractions we hadn't previously done, as it's always had a queue. This time, however, we had a FastPass booked, so skipped the 50 minute queue for a nicely-done but visibly aging flight over a model London from yesteryear. Nice, but I wouldn't have queued for it.
Straight across the park to my favourite ride in the place - Space Mountain. FastPass let us skip a moderate standby queue, and for a change we got the Alpha circuit (the past few visits we'd always ended up on Omega). In my opinion Alpha gives a slightly smoother ride - it certainly felt less jerky. It's still a brilliant ride by anyone's standards, all the more so given it's got no inversions and no modern gimmicks, just a clever design and visual effects.
Back across the park again, we thought we'd check on the Pirates of the Caribbean queue but it was a bit much to make it worth our while. Instead we popped into the Enchanted Tiki Room - another attraction we'd not previously experienced. While I can't say the show blew me away it had a lot of old-school charm and reminded me very much of old Disney animations from the early days, like Snow White and Bambi. Plus it was air conditioned and had comfy seating...
From there to our final FastPass, the Haunted Mansion, another of our favourites. I still love the queue line - every time we do it I find a gravestone I haven't read or a visual gag I haven't noticed. There was a new shop in a similar theme opened opposite, but as it had a queue to enter, I decided not to bother. What we did do, however, was visit the Harbour House quick-service restaurant for lunch, where Tom had a large lobster sandwich while I had a very acceptable grilled salmon. It was difficult to find a table, so a helpful member of staff ushered us into the cordoned-off disabled section where there was space.
The sun was now beating down, we'd used all our FastPasses and ride queues were getting busy, so we decied to call it a day and got a bus back to the resort. We passed the couple of hours before our coach sitting by the pool (in the shade) reading and making the most of our refillable drinks mugs. We then used the showers by the pool and changed into fresh clothes ready for the flight.
I'm now writing this at the airport - it was slightly confusing at check-in as the lady on the desk told us we'd been upgraded but as far as we can tell from the boarding passes we've actually just been moved seats. Not that it really matters. She also let me get away with a slightly overweight suitcase (it had somehow grown to 28kg - I blame all the presents I've brought back for people!) Our flight is showing just under an hour's delay, so no rush at all. Hence this blog :)
Next time I write it'll be back in the UK, where I doubt the weather will be as good. I'm in shorts & t-shirt - how cold will Gatwick be tomorrow morning?
It was already getting busy as we arrived, with full ferryboats and monorails depositing hoardes of people into the park entrance area. I wasn't looking forward to the bag check - in my rucksack today was all my hand luggage, plus a change of clothes for the afternoon! But we got through quickly with no hassle at all.
Spotting that it had a minimal queue time and was unlikely to improve, we began with the first ride we did two weeks ago - Splash Mountain. The 15-20 minute queue had grown to around 45 by the time we left the ride, so that was a good move!
Our second ride was Peter Pan's Flight - one of the few attractions we hadn't previously done, as it's always had a queue. This time, however, we had a FastPass booked, so skipped the 50 minute queue for a nicely-done but visibly aging flight over a model London from yesteryear. Nice, but I wouldn't have queued for it.
Straight across the park to my favourite ride in the place - Space Mountain. FastPass let us skip a moderate standby queue, and for a change we got the Alpha circuit (the past few visits we'd always ended up on Omega). In my opinion Alpha gives a slightly smoother ride - it certainly felt less jerky. It's still a brilliant ride by anyone's standards, all the more so given it's got no inversions and no modern gimmicks, just a clever design and visual effects.
Back across the park again, we thought we'd check on the Pirates of the Caribbean queue but it was a bit much to make it worth our while. Instead we popped into the Enchanted Tiki Room - another attraction we'd not previously experienced. While I can't say the show blew me away it had a lot of old-school charm and reminded me very much of old Disney animations from the early days, like Snow White and Bambi. Plus it was air conditioned and had comfy seating...
From there to our final FastPass, the Haunted Mansion, another of our favourites. I still love the queue line - every time we do it I find a gravestone I haven't read or a visual gag I haven't noticed. There was a new shop in a similar theme opened opposite, but as it had a queue to enter, I decided not to bother. What we did do, however, was visit the Harbour House quick-service restaurant for lunch, where Tom had a large lobster sandwich while I had a very acceptable grilled salmon. It was difficult to find a table, so a helpful member of staff ushered us into the cordoned-off disabled section where there was space.
The sun was now beating down, we'd used all our FastPasses and ride queues were getting busy, so we decied to call it a day and got a bus back to the resort. We passed the couple of hours before our coach sitting by the pool (in the shade) reading and making the most of our refillable drinks mugs. We then used the showers by the pool and changed into fresh clothes ready for the flight.
I'm now writing this at the airport - it was slightly confusing at check-in as the lady on the desk told us we'd been upgraded but as far as we can tell from the boarding passes we've actually just been moved seats. Not that it really matters. She also let me get away with a slightly overweight suitcase (it had somehow grown to 28kg - I blame all the presents I've brought back for people!) Our flight is showing just under an hour's delay, so no rush at all. Hence this blog :)
Next time I write it'll be back in the UK, where I doubt the weather will be as good. I'm in shorts & t-shirt - how cold will Gatwick be tomorrow morning?
Friday 10 October 2014
Florida day 14: Hollywood Studios and Epcot
Last full day of the holidays. As such we were mopping up a few of the attractions we hadn't yet done. Today's FastPasses were for Toy Story Midway Mania (which persistently has insane queues), the Lights Motors Action stunt show, and another go on Tower of Terror, just for the hell of it.
But first, Star Tours had a short standby queue, so we did that again - the randomised storyline makes it a lot more re-rideable. Due to them having managed to synchronise 3 of their simulators, it meant there were three lots of people exiting the ride at the same time. Since each holds about 40 people, that's a lot to descend a relatively narrow ramp into a relatively small and already busy gift shop!
We still had time to kill before our first FastPass and Voyage of the Little Mermaid was about to start so we caught that - it was a strange amalgamation of 4D show, laser show, and live-action. Lasers drew shapes on the walls, it sometimes rained on us for no apparent reason, and puppeteers in black costumes moved brightly coloured sea creatures under UV lights that made them glow. It was nicely done but seemed a little dated.
In the following scene, Ariel comes on, though her mic was very low so we couldn't hear much of what she was saying, until she kicks into Part of Your World. Cue a large glowing-eyed animatronic Ursula, giving the full Wicked Witch act. Then for some reason we cut right through the rest of the story and almost immediately end up with her falling in love, losing the flippers and heading off into the sunset. It was like someone had thought "oh no, this is only meant to be 15 minutes long, and I've spent 10 of them on 2 songs!" and panicked.
Toy Story Midway Mania had a very nicely-themed queue, with lots of fun interactive elements and characters like Etch. This would be necessary if you were in the standby queue, which was showing 70 minutes during our visit. Thankfully the FastPass line was fast indeed, and we breezed past everybody. At the confirmation scan we were sent to the side through a gate that bumped us right to the front - apparently being a party of 2 helps you get to the front very quickly on that ride!
The ride itself was unusual - you have blasters stuck on the front of your car, like in the Buzz Lightyear ride at the Magic Kingdom. This time, depending on the game, when you fire it you shoot darts, balls or even custard pies out of it, on 3D screens depicting various target-based games. Apparently this is based on a Wii game that you can actually buy, though not having a Wii console meant I didn't really care. Tom beat me (somehow) though the people in the vehicle in front somehow managed to get double our scores!
Around the corner was the Magic of Animation area. There were queues for the various attractions inside (draw your own animation, character meet-and-greets) but they didn't really appeal anyway, so we popped into the theatre next door where a half live action, half animated show talked about character development, with the specific example of the dragon from Mulan. Now I haven't seen that film, but it was still interesting to see how the character design evolves during pre-production.
Our second FastPass was for the Lights Motors Action stunt show at the back of the park. This took place in a large arena, and we managed to get pretty good seats about 4 rows back from the front (though the family behind had a small child who kept kicking me in the back at random intervals by accident). The show itself was in a similar vein to the Indiana Jones stunt show we saw last week in the same park. The framing device is that a movie is being filmed, and so the "assistant director" talks us through what they do to get the shots they need - in this case for car chases and stunts involving vehicles. We saw some stunt formation driving (though it mostly appeared to be them doing doughnuts) and a high speed chase where the hero drives in reverse; they then revealed that they used a second car where the driver sits facing backwards to allow them to see what they're doing!
The finale of the show was big and bold, with a car and motorbike chase, a man on fire, vehicles jumping through buildings and a random jet ski for some reason. I suppose rule of cool applies here!
We did lunch at the Backlot Express counter-service. Tom was served almost immediately with a burger he seemed to enjoy. For some reason I'd picked chicken nuggets, which took quite a long time to appear, and the portion size wasn't exactly massive. Still, dessert was a lot better than the banana stuff I had last time we were eating here - the strawberry parfait had actual custard and actual strawberries!
From there we did our final FastPass, skipping a 50 minute standby queue to get straight onto Tower of Terror, still my favourite ride in the park. In fact, I liked it so much I bought a t-shirt in the gift shop.
Back at the resort we were planning to go to the pool, but I didn't feel like it so Tom went on his own while I rested. Our dinner reservation was at the Beach Club resort, so to get there we could either go back to Hollywood Studios and get the boat, or to Epcot and use the International Gateway exit. We opted for the latter. Epcot was busy as we passed through, with the locals out in force for the food & wine festival. Thankfully the International Gateway exit was pretty quiet, and we walked along the river and up to the Beach Club.
The restaurant for this evening was the Cape May Cafe, which is a seafood buffet. A very friendly lady took us to our table, and our waiter took a drinks order, at which point we attacked the buffet. I decided my first course should be seafood-based, so filled a plate with mussels, crab legs (which were enormous) and some potatoes. Back at the table I made an enormous mess trying to crack open the crab legs with the supplied nutcracker-type implements. It turns out that they can be bloody impossible to open. By the time I'd got some meat out, I had got food all over the table and myself. I managed about half the crab legs before I gave up and went to clean myself up in the toilets!
For second course I decided to go more conventional, so filled a plate with some rather delicious mashed potatoes, a chicken wing and a slice of freshly-carved beef rib. Now that was more like it! Leaving enough room for dessert meant I took two runs at the pudding counter. Boston Cream somethings were ok but the Lemon Chiffon cakes were better. What looked like a small bowl of fruit turned out to have a nice flan base below it, though I wasn't so keen on the flourless chocolate cake. I also raided the kids' buffet for cookies, though they weren't as good as the ones from the other night in the German biergarten. Finally, as a sort of palate cleanser, we both had a bowl of melon from the salad bar.
Suitably stuffed we waddled back to Epcot. There were no FastPasses available for anything we particularly wanted to do, so we decided to take a nice relaxed walk to The Sea pavilion, where Finding Nemo was a walk-on. We spent a nice few minutes looking around at the fish, followed by a quick bit of present shopping in Mouse Gear, then headed up to the World Showcase to find a spot for IllumiNations.
It was already pretty busy up there but we found a spot right at the front near the Norway pavilion. The show was brilliant as ever, only slightly spoiled by the woman next to me videoing it on her iPhone with the light on throughout, which seemed pretty pointless.
Now back at the hotel for the last night... probably ought to be packing. Our flight for tomorrow's been showing a delay and they've been moving our seats around, which is a bit annoying, but we'll see.
But first, Star Tours had a short standby queue, so we did that again - the randomised storyline makes it a lot more re-rideable. Due to them having managed to synchronise 3 of their simulators, it meant there were three lots of people exiting the ride at the same time. Since each holds about 40 people, that's a lot to descend a relatively narrow ramp into a relatively small and already busy gift shop!
We still had time to kill before our first FastPass and Voyage of the Little Mermaid was about to start so we caught that - it was a strange amalgamation of 4D show, laser show, and live-action. Lasers drew shapes on the walls, it sometimes rained on us for no apparent reason, and puppeteers in black costumes moved brightly coloured sea creatures under UV lights that made them glow. It was nicely done but seemed a little dated.
In the following scene, Ariel comes on, though her mic was very low so we couldn't hear much of what she was saying, until she kicks into Part of Your World. Cue a large glowing-eyed animatronic Ursula, giving the full Wicked Witch act. Then for some reason we cut right through the rest of the story and almost immediately end up with her falling in love, losing the flippers and heading off into the sunset. It was like someone had thought "oh no, this is only meant to be 15 minutes long, and I've spent 10 of them on 2 songs!" and panicked.
Toy Story Midway Mania had a very nicely-themed queue, with lots of fun interactive elements and characters like Etch. This would be necessary if you were in the standby queue, which was showing 70 minutes during our visit. Thankfully the FastPass line was fast indeed, and we breezed past everybody. At the confirmation scan we were sent to the side through a gate that bumped us right to the front - apparently being a party of 2 helps you get to the front very quickly on that ride!
The ride itself was unusual - you have blasters stuck on the front of your car, like in the Buzz Lightyear ride at the Magic Kingdom. This time, depending on the game, when you fire it you shoot darts, balls or even custard pies out of it, on 3D screens depicting various target-based games. Apparently this is based on a Wii game that you can actually buy, though not having a Wii console meant I didn't really care. Tom beat me (somehow) though the people in the vehicle in front somehow managed to get double our scores!
Around the corner was the Magic of Animation area. There were queues for the various attractions inside (draw your own animation, character meet-and-greets) but they didn't really appeal anyway, so we popped into the theatre next door where a half live action, half animated show talked about character development, with the specific example of the dragon from Mulan. Now I haven't seen that film, but it was still interesting to see how the character design evolves during pre-production.
Our second FastPass was for the Lights Motors Action stunt show at the back of the park. This took place in a large arena, and we managed to get pretty good seats about 4 rows back from the front (though the family behind had a small child who kept kicking me in the back at random intervals by accident). The show itself was in a similar vein to the Indiana Jones stunt show we saw last week in the same park. The framing device is that a movie is being filmed, and so the "assistant director" talks us through what they do to get the shots they need - in this case for car chases and stunts involving vehicles. We saw some stunt formation driving (though it mostly appeared to be them doing doughnuts) and a high speed chase where the hero drives in reverse; they then revealed that they used a second car where the driver sits facing backwards to allow them to see what they're doing!
The finale of the show was big and bold, with a car and motorbike chase, a man on fire, vehicles jumping through buildings and a random jet ski for some reason. I suppose rule of cool applies here!
We did lunch at the Backlot Express counter-service. Tom was served almost immediately with a burger he seemed to enjoy. For some reason I'd picked chicken nuggets, which took quite a long time to appear, and the portion size wasn't exactly massive. Still, dessert was a lot better than the banana stuff I had last time we were eating here - the strawberry parfait had actual custard and actual strawberries!
From there we did our final FastPass, skipping a 50 minute standby queue to get straight onto Tower of Terror, still my favourite ride in the park. In fact, I liked it so much I bought a t-shirt in the gift shop.
Back at the resort we were planning to go to the pool, but I didn't feel like it so Tom went on his own while I rested. Our dinner reservation was at the Beach Club resort, so to get there we could either go back to Hollywood Studios and get the boat, or to Epcot and use the International Gateway exit. We opted for the latter. Epcot was busy as we passed through, with the locals out in force for the food & wine festival. Thankfully the International Gateway exit was pretty quiet, and we walked along the river and up to the Beach Club.
The restaurant for this evening was the Cape May Cafe, which is a seafood buffet. A very friendly lady took us to our table, and our waiter took a drinks order, at which point we attacked the buffet. I decided my first course should be seafood-based, so filled a plate with mussels, crab legs (which were enormous) and some potatoes. Back at the table I made an enormous mess trying to crack open the crab legs with the supplied nutcracker-type implements. It turns out that they can be bloody impossible to open. By the time I'd got some meat out, I had got food all over the table and myself. I managed about half the crab legs before I gave up and went to clean myself up in the toilets!
For second course I decided to go more conventional, so filled a plate with some rather delicious mashed potatoes, a chicken wing and a slice of freshly-carved beef rib. Now that was more like it! Leaving enough room for dessert meant I took two runs at the pudding counter. Boston Cream somethings were ok but the Lemon Chiffon cakes were better. What looked like a small bowl of fruit turned out to have a nice flan base below it, though I wasn't so keen on the flourless chocolate cake. I also raided the kids' buffet for cookies, though they weren't as good as the ones from the other night in the German biergarten. Finally, as a sort of palate cleanser, we both had a bowl of melon from the salad bar.
Suitably stuffed we waddled back to Epcot. There were no FastPasses available for anything we particularly wanted to do, so we decided to take a nice relaxed walk to The Sea pavilion, where Finding Nemo was a walk-on. We spent a nice few minutes looking around at the fish, followed by a quick bit of present shopping in Mouse Gear, then headed up to the World Showcase to find a spot for IllumiNations.
It was already pretty busy up there but we found a spot right at the front near the Norway pavilion. The show was brilliant as ever, only slightly spoiled by the woman next to me videoing it on her iPhone with the light on throughout, which seemed pretty pointless.
Now back at the hotel for the last night... probably ought to be packing. Our flight for tomorrow's been showing a delay and they've been moving our seats around, which is a bit annoying, but we'll see.
Thursday 9 October 2014
Florida day 13: Typhoon Lagoon and Hollywood Studios
A fairly late start this morning - I didn't wake up til 9.45 and it wasn't until around 11am we caught a bus to Typhoon Lagoon, where this time it wasn't chucking down with rain!
We found a comfy shaded spot on some slightly scruffy-looking sun loungers and dumped our stuff, then went our separate ways - Tom to do the water slides, me to relax in the lazy river. I did a couple of circuits of the park, then headed back to the loungers where I'd brought a secret weapon - my Kindle. Smothering myself liberally in sun lotion, I lay there slowly crisping (to mangle a Victoria Wood line, I felt like I should prick my arms with a fork). After about 15 minutes it became too hot to lie there, so I went back for another circuit of the lazy river. Repeat the sunbathing, and then decide I'm too lazy to walk to the lazy river. Instead, a nearby ice cream stand provides me with a large waffle cone full of chocolate and vanilla ice cream. That helps.
Back to sunbathing, and I hit on a brilliant idea. There's a shallow kiddy pool behind the area we're sat in, and it's mostly empty. The water's only about 2ft deep. I take my Kindle and sit down in the water, with my back and head in the shade, and my legs out in the water. Lovely and cool, though there's a lot of sand at the bottom and I'm pretty sure that when I stand up my swimming trunks will be full of it!
After an hour or so of flitting between the sun lounger and the pool, Tom's returned and I tell him I'm going to make a move back to the room. This is because if I spend any longer outdoors, not only will my summer alter-ego, Mr Tomato Head, make an appearance, but will be joined by Mr Savaloy Arms and Mr How On Earth Did You Sunburn Your Feet?
Buses back from Typhoon Lagoon are a curious affair - Tom suggests it's because of the Downtown Disney construction work. Rather than the usual direct bus to your resort, everybody gets a bus to Epcot and from there their usual resort shuttle. Slightly convoluted, but at least I was dry by the time I got in, if not a little chilly from the usual vigorous Disney bus air conditioning/on-ride freezer.
This evening's dinner reservation was at the very convenient Olivia's Cafe, which is the on-resort restaurant for Old Key West, which means it's all of a 5 minute walk from the room. Thus I spent the hour or so beforehand relaxing on the bed playing Warcraft II. Because that's obviously what everybody does on holiday, right?
The restaurant itself was bright and airy, with friendly welcoming staff who kept us well topped up with drinks and a very quick food service too. Compared with last night's "meh" Signature restaurant it was a pleasant experience.
From dinner we hopped on a Hollywood Studios bus which had handily pulled up as we left the restaurant. We had FastPass for tonight's Fantasmic show, which we saw for the first time at the weekend. In a fit of good sense, we'd also booked a speculative FastPass for the Tower of Terror. I'd enjoyed this ride immensely at the weekend so was happy about this - in my view it's one of the best-themed rides in any of the parks. There was no queue at all in the FastPass lane so we were straight into the pre-show.
After Tower of Terror, we decided we'd take a look at Rock'n'Rollercoaster as it's next-door, and see how its queue looked. The dot matrix said 30 minutes for standby, but the queue was barely poking out the door, so we decided to chance it. As it happened we were again straight into the pre-show - that's no 30 minutes, not that I'm complaining!
Fantasmic was now filling up so we headed across the road to it. Already the massive auditorium was around 2/3 full, which surprised me as the park didn't feel as busy as at the weekend; Tom then pointed out that there were two showings that night, whereas tonight this was the only one. We ended up sat on the last but one block to the left, reasonably near the front, so got a good view of all the video sections and the boats, if a little limited one of the main stage unlike last time when we were almost dead centre. Tom got himself some nachos with that vile yellow "cheese" substance they put on them, and a flat Coke Zero for me - annoyingly it was so busy that there wasn't time to go complain/have it replaced before the show started)
The pre-show for Fantasmic was something we hadn't experienced last time. Thankfully. Think overexcitable children's entertainers, trying to warm up a crowd with singing games and "my side is better than yours" type rivalry. I didn't think much of it, but then I'm not 7 years old, and I am a miserable old git at times, particularly when someone's trying to gee me up against my will.
The disadvantage to being near the front came when the show ended - it took at least 15 minutes of stop-start queuing to get anywhere near the amphitheatre exit - that place badly needs an extra way out on the side we sat! I was going to look in the shops but they were all rather busy, and mostly full of the same merchandise everywhere else sold.
Back at the resort I popped to the shop and got some Twinkies for Stephen (of all the things to ask for!) which used up two more of our snack credits. Because the meals on the dining plan are pretty good, we'd not been snacking much, and now 2 days before the flight home we'd found ourselves with lots to use! Cue me eating my own weight in giant cakes...
We found a comfy shaded spot on some slightly scruffy-looking sun loungers and dumped our stuff, then went our separate ways - Tom to do the water slides, me to relax in the lazy river. I did a couple of circuits of the park, then headed back to the loungers where I'd brought a secret weapon - my Kindle. Smothering myself liberally in sun lotion, I lay there slowly crisping (to mangle a Victoria Wood line, I felt like I should prick my arms with a fork). After about 15 minutes it became too hot to lie there, so I went back for another circuit of the lazy river. Repeat the sunbathing, and then decide I'm too lazy to walk to the lazy river. Instead, a nearby ice cream stand provides me with a large waffle cone full of chocolate and vanilla ice cream. That helps.
Back to sunbathing, and I hit on a brilliant idea. There's a shallow kiddy pool behind the area we're sat in, and it's mostly empty. The water's only about 2ft deep. I take my Kindle and sit down in the water, with my back and head in the shade, and my legs out in the water. Lovely and cool, though there's a lot of sand at the bottom and I'm pretty sure that when I stand up my swimming trunks will be full of it!
After an hour or so of flitting between the sun lounger and the pool, Tom's returned and I tell him I'm going to make a move back to the room. This is because if I spend any longer outdoors, not only will my summer alter-ego, Mr Tomato Head, make an appearance, but will be joined by Mr Savaloy Arms and Mr How On Earth Did You Sunburn Your Feet?
Buses back from Typhoon Lagoon are a curious affair - Tom suggests it's because of the Downtown Disney construction work. Rather than the usual direct bus to your resort, everybody gets a bus to Epcot and from there their usual resort shuttle. Slightly convoluted, but at least I was dry by the time I got in, if not a little chilly from the usual vigorous Disney bus air conditioning/on-ride freezer.
This evening's dinner reservation was at the very convenient Olivia's Cafe, which is the on-resort restaurant for Old Key West, which means it's all of a 5 minute walk from the room. Thus I spent the hour or so beforehand relaxing on the bed playing Warcraft II. Because that's obviously what everybody does on holiday, right?
The restaurant itself was bright and airy, with friendly welcoming staff who kept us well topped up with drinks and a very quick food service too. Compared with last night's "meh" Signature restaurant it was a pleasant experience.
From dinner we hopped on a Hollywood Studios bus which had handily pulled up as we left the restaurant. We had FastPass for tonight's Fantasmic show, which we saw for the first time at the weekend. In a fit of good sense, we'd also booked a speculative FastPass for the Tower of Terror. I'd enjoyed this ride immensely at the weekend so was happy about this - in my view it's one of the best-themed rides in any of the parks. There was no queue at all in the FastPass lane so we were straight into the pre-show.
After Tower of Terror, we decided we'd take a look at Rock'n'Rollercoaster as it's next-door, and see how its queue looked. The dot matrix said 30 minutes for standby, but the queue was barely poking out the door, so we decided to chance it. As it happened we were again straight into the pre-show - that's no 30 minutes, not that I'm complaining!
Fantasmic was now filling up so we headed across the road to it. Already the massive auditorium was around 2/3 full, which surprised me as the park didn't feel as busy as at the weekend; Tom then pointed out that there were two showings that night, whereas tonight this was the only one. We ended up sat on the last but one block to the left, reasonably near the front, so got a good view of all the video sections and the boats, if a little limited one of the main stage unlike last time when we were almost dead centre. Tom got himself some nachos with that vile yellow "cheese" substance they put on them, and a flat Coke Zero for me - annoyingly it was so busy that there wasn't time to go complain/have it replaced before the show started)
The pre-show for Fantasmic was something we hadn't experienced last time. Thankfully. Think overexcitable children's entertainers, trying to warm up a crowd with singing games and "my side is better than yours" type rivalry. I didn't think much of it, but then I'm not 7 years old, and I am a miserable old git at times, particularly when someone's trying to gee me up against my will.
The disadvantage to being near the front came when the show ended - it took at least 15 minutes of stop-start queuing to get anywhere near the amphitheatre exit - that place badly needs an extra way out on the side we sat! I was going to look in the shops but they were all rather busy, and mostly full of the same merchandise everywhere else sold.
Back at the resort I popped to the shop and got some Twinkies for Stephen (of all the things to ask for!) which used up two more of our snack credits. Because the meals on the dining plan are pretty good, we'd not been snacking much, and now 2 days before the flight home we'd found ourselves with lots to use! Cue me eating my own weight in giant cakes...
Wednesday 8 October 2014
Florida day 12: Animal Kingdom and Old Key West
An early start today for Animal Kingdom - we got up at around 7.30, and by 8.30 were at the bus stop for our trip to Animal Kingdom. Like our previous visit, the bus was busy and there were queues at bag check and the entry gates, though not as long as last time!
We had come to mop up the extra attractions we hadn't got round to last time. We started the day with a disappointingly doughy Danish pastry from the "bakery" in the Africa area, then popped round the corner for the first show of The Lion King. This was a live-action show featuring acrobatics, singing and dancing, and large animatronic animals. Despite the name, there wasn't actually much to do with lions in it - much of the action centred around Timon and Pumba, with their "tumble monkeys" doing acrobatic manoeuvres to music. There was also the dark evil section with a fire-eater and juggler, and the slow smoochy "Can you feel the love tonight" song with a pair of dancers. It was a great show and visually stunning - very highly recommended.
We were on our way across to Expedition Everest, our second FastPass attraction, but noticed that Flights of Wonder, their bird show, was letting in, so we joined the crowd in the arena for that. It was definitely worth it - a zippy (but sometimes over-cheesy) script and some exotic birds made it a very enjoyable experience.
From there we decided to have another go on Dinosaur, since the queue was minimal. The simulator ride was just as odd second time round - I'm still not convinced about the dark bit where you just seem to bounce around a lot. But hey, it's not It's A Small World...
Back at Expedition Everest, the FastPass queue was minimal so we were practically straight onto the ride. It's still my second favourite Disney rollercoaster (behind Space Mountain), as it actually has some decent drops and speedy sections - the main indoor section is one of very few things that makes my stomach tickle. We were towards the back of the train so got some decent speed around the track as well.
We decided our next call would be lunch. The Flame Tree Barbecue provided Tom with an enormous side plate of onion rings with his meal, and a more moderate yet tasty pulled pork sandwich for me. A rather stupid family on the table behind us were whining about there not being any napkins, but hadn't thought to try any of the multiple condiment areas where they were available, or even just asking a member of staff... *sigh*
After lunch, our final FastPass was for Finding Nemo: The Musical. In a large theatre building this was a fully-fledged musical, with characters puppeteered in Avenue Q style (performers visible on stage, holding the puppet and speaking or singing for them). I must confess I've not seen the film, but if it's anything like this stage show then I may have to. The cast were excellent and the costumes and puppets were superb. It's lovely to see something like this done properly.
Back at the resort we had a brief rest and then headed over to the pool, this time thankfully without heavy bags of laundry. I spent a pleasant few hours with my Kindle, with the occasional dip in the water to cool off. Who knows, I might even end up with some sort of tan! Stranger things have happened...
Dinner that evening was booked at the California Grill, one of the Signature restaurants in the dining plan, located on top of the Contemporary resort. Before this, however, we popped over to Downtown Disney on the boat, as I wanted to look for a specific t-shirt in their large Disney shop, and Tom wanted to try to claim the gift voucher we had included with our package. Unfortunately he couldn't find his paperwork and I couldn't find the t-shirt I wanted so both of us left empty handed! Due to the building work at Downtown Disney, the bus station is laid out in a very confusing temporary fashion, which lead to lots of people being in the wrong queue line for their bus!
Over at the Contemporary, we checked in and were given the usual pager. As we were in the lift up to the 15th floor, the pager started buzzing, so we were seated almost instantly. Our waiter was polite but not as friendly as the nice waitress we'd had at Narcoossee's two nights before. I ordered Bison, and Tom ordered the lamb. Due to bad timing our main courses arrived just before Wishes began. Mine wasn't a massive portion, and as such I'd basically finished when the fireworks started, so was able to head out onto the balcony area to watch. Poor Tom, however, was stuck in the darkened restaurant trying to pull meat he couldn't see from a bone he also couldn't see, as his food got rapidly colder. By the time the lights came back up he didn't look fantastically impressed.
For dessert I chose banana fritters with dipping sauces (chocolate, salted caramel and peanut butter... you can guess which one I left!) while Tom had a sampler plate, including a s'more, a bizarre cherry mojito and a small square of strawberry shortcake.
Despite the hype we didn't really think either the food or the service were exceptional. We'd had a much nicer meal and time at Narcoossee's a couple of nights before, and this sadly didn't compare as well. For a normal table service restaurant, it would have been fine, but I'd have been disappointed were I actually paying in cash. We tipped slightly below the norm as we didn't feel the service had been as good as it should have been. Still, at least the view was good.
We had come to mop up the extra attractions we hadn't got round to last time. We started the day with a disappointingly doughy Danish pastry from the "bakery" in the Africa area, then popped round the corner for the first show of The Lion King. This was a live-action show featuring acrobatics, singing and dancing, and large animatronic animals. Despite the name, there wasn't actually much to do with lions in it - much of the action centred around Timon and Pumba, with their "tumble monkeys" doing acrobatic manoeuvres to music. There was also the dark evil section with a fire-eater and juggler, and the slow smoochy "Can you feel the love tonight" song with a pair of dancers. It was a great show and visually stunning - very highly recommended.
We were on our way across to Expedition Everest, our second FastPass attraction, but noticed that Flights of Wonder, their bird show, was letting in, so we joined the crowd in the arena for that. It was definitely worth it - a zippy (but sometimes over-cheesy) script and some exotic birds made it a very enjoyable experience.
From there we decided to have another go on Dinosaur, since the queue was minimal. The simulator ride was just as odd second time round - I'm still not convinced about the dark bit where you just seem to bounce around a lot. But hey, it's not It's A Small World...
We decided our next call would be lunch. The Flame Tree Barbecue provided Tom with an enormous side plate of onion rings with his meal, and a more moderate yet tasty pulled pork sandwich for me. A rather stupid family on the table behind us were whining about there not being any napkins, but hadn't thought to try any of the multiple condiment areas where they were available, or even just asking a member of staff... *sigh*
After lunch, our final FastPass was for Finding Nemo: The Musical. In a large theatre building this was a fully-fledged musical, with characters puppeteered in Avenue Q style (performers visible on stage, holding the puppet and speaking or singing for them). I must confess I've not seen the film, but if it's anything like this stage show then I may have to. The cast were excellent and the costumes and puppets were superb. It's lovely to see something like this done properly.
Back at the resort we had a brief rest and then headed over to the pool, this time thankfully without heavy bags of laundry. I spent a pleasant few hours with my Kindle, with the occasional dip in the water to cool off. Who knows, I might even end up with some sort of tan! Stranger things have happened...
Dinner that evening was booked at the California Grill, one of the Signature restaurants in the dining plan, located on top of the Contemporary resort. Before this, however, we popped over to Downtown Disney on the boat, as I wanted to look for a specific t-shirt in their large Disney shop, and Tom wanted to try to claim the gift voucher we had included with our package. Unfortunately he couldn't find his paperwork and I couldn't find the t-shirt I wanted so both of us left empty handed! Due to the building work at Downtown Disney, the bus station is laid out in a very confusing temporary fashion, which lead to lots of people being in the wrong queue line for their bus!
Over at the Contemporary, we checked in and were given the usual pager. As we were in the lift up to the 15th floor, the pager started buzzing, so we were seated almost instantly. Our waiter was polite but not as friendly as the nice waitress we'd had at Narcoossee's two nights before. I ordered Bison, and Tom ordered the lamb. Due to bad timing our main courses arrived just before Wishes began. Mine wasn't a massive portion, and as such I'd basically finished when the fireworks started, so was able to head out onto the balcony area to watch. Poor Tom, however, was stuck in the darkened restaurant trying to pull meat he couldn't see from a bone he also couldn't see, as his food got rapidly colder. By the time the lights came back up he didn't look fantastically impressed.
For dessert I chose banana fritters with dipping sauces (chocolate, salted caramel and peanut butter... you can guess which one I left!) while Tom had a sampler plate, including a s'more, a bizarre cherry mojito and a small square of strawberry shortcake.
Despite the hype we didn't really think either the food or the service were exceptional. We'd had a much nicer meal and time at Narcoossee's a couple of nights before, and this sadly didn't compare as well. For a normal table service restaurant, it would have been fine, but I'd have been disappointed were I actually paying in cash. We tipped slightly below the norm as we didn't feel the service had been as good as it should have been. Still, at least the view was good.
Tuesday 7 October 2014
Florida day 11: Old Key West and Epcot
Despite having stayed here since the beginning, today was the first day I properly spent some time in the resort leisure areas. Tom's been a couple of times but I'd usually been having a lie-in or putting my feet up. This morning, however, we decided to shift the day's FastPass reservations to later, and give ourselves time to chill.
The other reason we needed to do this was that we both needed to do laundry - I was down to only 3 clean t-shirts, which is an emergency situation in my book! Thankfully Disney provide laundry facilities next to the pool, and we'd previously had our housekeeping leave us some detergent to use in them. Thus the morning saw us lugging bags of clothes over to the main complex, and fighting with the bizarre commercial top-loading machines.
Having set them running, we then spent an enjoyable couple of hours by the pool, occasionally checking in on the washing (transferring it to the drier when done, then folding and bagging it ready to take back). Tom's was done earlier than mine, so he was ready to head back before I was. Before that, however, one of the lifeguards walked by and said hi to him by name. I was impressed that they offered such a personal touch, until it transpired they'd chatted on Grindr. Gays, eh?
Back at the room we prepared to go to Epcot, where we'd arranged afternoon FastPass reservations for Soarin' and Spaceship Earth. We'd done both of them before, but a) I rather liked Soarin', and the main queue line is always horrific, and b) due to the bizarre restrictions on FastPass tickets at Epcot, you have to pick from "tiered" attractions, so you can't just have the bigger rides.
Going in, however, our first priority was lunch. It was fairly late on (around 2.30-3.00pm) but the food places weren't that quiet. It was a lot easier to move around compared to our weekend visit, however! I stopped off in the "France" area where I had a very nice jambon-fromage baguette and a tarte aux fraises, while Tom went to the adjacent "Morocco" area for his north-African themed lunch.
Full and satisfied, we headed back towards The Earth pavilion (I'd decanted the rest of my lunch drink into my resort mug - as part of the dining plan you automatically get a large soft drink, I never finish mine, and the resort mugs are insulated). Once inside we joined the FastPass queue for Soarin', went through the usual convoluted boarding process and were allocated seats almost dead centre in the ride, which was ideal. As before, I enjoyed it very much - it's very much a feelgood attraction.
Across the way at Spaceship Earth we only had a small queue to skip. Mindful of how the interactive element of this ride works, we pulled some ridiculous faces for the camera, so that at the end when they're used to build up the animation, it looked absolutely bonkers.
From there, we'd decided that we'd tick off the remaining attractions we were yet to do in the world showcase. We watched the Circle-vision video in China (which carefully glossed over any less-than-savoury aspects of the country), then the USA's rather pompous and taking-itself-far-too-seriously animatronics show, then back across to France for an eighties video showing the same set of cliffs multiple times, followed by some anonymous Provencal towns, Mont St Michel, and finally a very 80s view of Paris. Apparently it's the original 1982 video - it shows!
Dinner was at the Teppan Edo Japanese restaurant in the Japan pavilion. No, for those of you who know me and my eating preferences, that's not a misprint. Yes, I did end up in a Japanese restaurant. And I cleared my plate (except for a few mushrooms, but they don't count). It was a Hibachi style restaurant where the chefs prepare the food at your table on a large hotplate. Tom ordered Scallops and I had Swordfish. First, however, the chef made an elaborate show of chopping onions, courgettes and noodles on the hotplate and cooking them together. This was served to us along with some rice and a selection of dipping sauces: one ginger (which I liked, and went with everything I'd ordered), one brown-coloured one that was quite meaty but didn't go with anything on my plate, and one white-coloured one which was all right but didn't taste of much. I had second helpings of the ginger sauce as not only did it go very well with the noodle/vegetable mix, but it also worked with the swordfish, which was in large tender chunks. For dessert I had a "chocolate ginger cake" which was layers of white sponge, sandwiched with some sort of ginger paste, with a chocolate fondant topping. It was very light and very nice indeed. Tom had a green tea cheesecake, which was actually green, and apparently didn't really taste of much, unfortunately.
We left the restaurant just in time for IllumiNations. This would be the third time I'd seen them, but again from a different location (first time was "France", second was "Italy", tonight "Japan"). I think it's my favourite of the Disney parks fireworks displays - Wishes is nice but a bit kiddie and always packed, and Fantasmic was good but not as spectacular. IllumiNations has gorgeous music, great fireworks and visual effects and I love the lighting up of the buildings around the lake and the lightshow.
For once we're back at the room at a reasonable hour, which is handy as we've now rejigged tomorrow's FastPass reservations in Animal Kingdom so that they're all morning-based, giving us an afternoon at the resort pool before our dinner at the California Grill.
(I didn't take any pics on this day!)
The other reason we needed to do this was that we both needed to do laundry - I was down to only 3 clean t-shirts, which is an emergency situation in my book! Thankfully Disney provide laundry facilities next to the pool, and we'd previously had our housekeeping leave us some detergent to use in them. Thus the morning saw us lugging bags of clothes over to the main complex, and fighting with the bizarre commercial top-loading machines.
Having set them running, we then spent an enjoyable couple of hours by the pool, occasionally checking in on the washing (transferring it to the drier when done, then folding and bagging it ready to take back). Tom's was done earlier than mine, so he was ready to head back before I was. Before that, however, one of the lifeguards walked by and said hi to him by name. I was impressed that they offered such a personal touch, until it transpired they'd chatted on Grindr. Gays, eh?
Back at the room we prepared to go to Epcot, where we'd arranged afternoon FastPass reservations for Soarin' and Spaceship Earth. We'd done both of them before, but a) I rather liked Soarin', and the main queue line is always horrific, and b) due to the bizarre restrictions on FastPass tickets at Epcot, you have to pick from "tiered" attractions, so you can't just have the bigger rides.
Going in, however, our first priority was lunch. It was fairly late on (around 2.30-3.00pm) but the food places weren't that quiet. It was a lot easier to move around compared to our weekend visit, however! I stopped off in the "France" area where I had a very nice jambon-fromage baguette and a tarte aux fraises, while Tom went to the adjacent "Morocco" area for his north-African themed lunch.
Full and satisfied, we headed back towards The Earth pavilion (I'd decanted the rest of my lunch drink into my resort mug - as part of the dining plan you automatically get a large soft drink, I never finish mine, and the resort mugs are insulated). Once inside we joined the FastPass queue for Soarin', went through the usual convoluted boarding process and were allocated seats almost dead centre in the ride, which was ideal. As before, I enjoyed it very much - it's very much a feelgood attraction.
Across the way at Spaceship Earth we only had a small queue to skip. Mindful of how the interactive element of this ride works, we pulled some ridiculous faces for the camera, so that at the end when they're used to build up the animation, it looked absolutely bonkers.
From there, we'd decided that we'd tick off the remaining attractions we were yet to do in the world showcase. We watched the Circle-vision video in China (which carefully glossed over any less-than-savoury aspects of the country), then the USA's rather pompous and taking-itself-far-too-seriously animatronics show, then back across to France for an eighties video showing the same set of cliffs multiple times, followed by some anonymous Provencal towns, Mont St Michel, and finally a very 80s view of Paris. Apparently it's the original 1982 video - it shows!
Dinner was at the Teppan Edo Japanese restaurant in the Japan pavilion. No, for those of you who know me and my eating preferences, that's not a misprint. Yes, I did end up in a Japanese restaurant. And I cleared my plate (except for a few mushrooms, but they don't count). It was a Hibachi style restaurant where the chefs prepare the food at your table on a large hotplate. Tom ordered Scallops and I had Swordfish. First, however, the chef made an elaborate show of chopping onions, courgettes and noodles on the hotplate and cooking them together. This was served to us along with some rice and a selection of dipping sauces: one ginger (which I liked, and went with everything I'd ordered), one brown-coloured one that was quite meaty but didn't go with anything on my plate, and one white-coloured one which was all right but didn't taste of much. I had second helpings of the ginger sauce as not only did it go very well with the noodle/vegetable mix, but it also worked with the swordfish, which was in large tender chunks. For dessert I had a "chocolate ginger cake" which was layers of white sponge, sandwiched with some sort of ginger paste, with a chocolate fondant topping. It was very light and very nice indeed. Tom had a green tea cheesecake, which was actually green, and apparently didn't really taste of much, unfortunately.
We left the restaurant just in time for IllumiNations. This would be the third time I'd seen them, but again from a different location (first time was "France", second was "Italy", tonight "Japan"). I think it's my favourite of the Disney parks fireworks displays - Wishes is nice but a bit kiddie and always packed, and Fantasmic was good but not as spectacular. IllumiNations has gorgeous music, great fireworks and visual effects and I love the lighting up of the buildings around the lake and the lightshow.
For once we're back at the room at a reasonable hour, which is handy as we've now rejigged tomorrow's FastPass reservations in Animal Kingdom so that they're all morning-based, giving us an afternoon at the resort pool before our dinner at the California Grill.
(I didn't take any pics on this day!)
Monday 6 October 2014
Florida day 10: Blizzard Beach and Magic Kingdom
With an early alarm this morning, I did the usual and rolled over back to snooze. But once we were both up and ready we headed out to catch the bus to Blizzard Beach. Like anyone in the know does, we borrowed some towels from our resort pool rather than paying a fortune to rent them!
Before going into the park we tried out the adjacent Winter Summerland crazy golf course, which was rather nicely done. The idea being that Santa goes there on holiday so it's Christmas themed despite being in the summer - cue lots of awful puns and bad rhymes on the hole descriptions.
Into the park, we had a fairly early dinner reservation this evening so decided to have a correspondingly early lunch - nothing special, bacon burger and fries with a fruit salad for dessert (trying to not be a complete pig, plus the normal dessert options weren't really tempting me)
I wasn't really in the mood to do water slides today, so found a couple of rings and floated around the lazy river for a couple of circles, topping up the sun tan (ha!) and squashing small children as appropriate (squashing small children is *always* appropriate).
After that I went to the "beach" pool, where the bottom was made of what felt like coarse sandpaper and gravel, so grabbed another ring and floated on the waves for some time - the constant bobbing up and down made me feel like I was on a much smaller, wetter version of Tower of Terror!
Bus back to the resort, shower and change, blah blah blah. Then it was onto a bus to the Magic Kingdom, but not to enter the park. Instead we switched to the ferry launch across the lake to the Grand Floridian resort, where we had dinner booked at Narcoossee's, one of their Signature restaurants (that's 2 table service credits on the food plan, fact fans!)
This proved to be a very good move. Not only was the restaurant situated next to the dock, overlooking the lake and the Magic Kingdom, but the waitress was delightful and the food was absolutely delicious. We had Surf & Turf - a 7oz Filet Mignon with a lobster tail poached in butter. I couldn't fault it. While Tom ordered a more grown-up cocktail with bourbon, I went for the sparkly sweet one with a glowing ice cube in the middle. I liked it so much I had another one with dessert, which for me meant a lemon curd and blueberry tart with an orange sorbet. This was just as good as the main course, and didn't last long at all!
After the meal we took a brief stroll through the grounds of the Grand Floridian (very posh) and up to the adjoining monorail station, where we took a one stop trip to the main gates of the Magic Kingdom. We had a FastPass reservation for Space Mountain but this was currently down, so instead we did a couple of short/no-queue attractions like the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse and the Jungle Cruise. Our skipper for the latter wasn't quite as deadpan as the previous one we'd had, which I didn't find as good, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt as to be fair we'd heard many of the jokes last time round.
We considered trying some other rides but it was getting towards time for Wishes, and the park was very busy around the castle area. We stopped on a bridge to watch the Electrical Parade go by, then grabbed a Dole Whip Float each and started working our way through the crowd to the viewing area. In a fit of good decision making, Tom had booked us FastPass for Wishes, which gave us access to a cordoned off area of grass next to the castle where there was plenty of space and a good view of all the fireworks. I don't even need to say that the show was excellent, as Disney's fireworks displays have that reputation anyway, but it was.
After the display we noted that Space Mountain had reopened, and made our way through the crowds to Tomorrowland, where we found that not only had it reopened, but the queue had grown to over an hour, and the FastPass gate queue was stretching across the plaza. We quickly decided that this was a very bad idea for the moment, and headed back towards the rest of the park.
The Haunted Mansion had a very short queue time (marked as 13 minutes in the app, in fact it was walk-on) so we had a jaunt around that, thankfully without stopping repeatedly this time. It's the sort of ride you can go on time and again as there are always new things to notice, particularly around the queue line and the graveyard scene.
Working our way back up, Winnie The Pooh's ride was showing a 10 minute queue time. It was more like 15, which wouldn't have been so bad, but along the queue line they had put various playthings to entertain the children. Noisy playthings, like drums... Hmm. Slightly deafened we eventually made it onto the ride which was a quite original dark ride with plenty of charm.
We'd already done the Little Mermaid on our first night but there was no queue (except a family in front who kept stopping for no apparent reason) so we did it again. I promptly had "Under the Sea" stuck in my head for the next 20 minutes.
The park was quieting down now, so we headed back to Tomorrowland where Space Mountain was showing a much more sensible 25 minute standby queue time. Our FastPass for earlier had been extended due to the shutdown so we went through on that, and skipped a smallish queue. By some quirk of the FastPass system, once it had extended our original booking we were then somehow allowed to book the same ride again, which it usually doesn't let you do! Thus we had two extended FastPass reservations for Space Mountain, so decided we may as well go round again! By this point the main queue had shrunk massively, so if we'd wanted another go we could have just gone round that without major delay.
However we were both tired and achy-footed, and the park was closing in 20 minutes, so decided to go catch the bus home to bed!
Sunday 5 October 2014
Florida day 9: Hollywood Studios
The only park we hadn't done, Hollywood Studios, was our destination today. After yesterday's lie-in I set an alarm for 8am to ensure I was awake early. Of course, it went off, I snoozed it and fell back asleep waking up again around 9 for breakfast.
Arriving at the park there was an enormous queue of vehicles waiting to get in, including park shuttle buses. This appeared to be because the entrance our bus came in by only had 2 tollbooths for the guest parking lot. When we got to the front there were fairly short queues for bag check and ticket checks, compared to the ridiculously long queues at Animal Kingdom on Friday!
Our first port of call was the Indiana Jones stunt show. This was held in a massive arena, which was surprisingly full. A host pulled volunteers from the audience to be "extras", while stuntmen/women demonstrated various scenes, including falling from buildings onto crash mats, and choreographed fight scenes. It was rather entertaining and reminded me of the similar show I saw at Universal in LA a few years back.
From there we popped across the park to Beauty and the Beast, which was a live action show featuring songs from the film. This was all well and good but we fancied something a bit more high-octane, and our first FastPass of the day was for Rock'n'Rollercoaster. The main queue was around an hour, so we were glad to be able to skip that!
Unfortunately the row we were seated in was rather wet on the floor, as a previous guest appeared to have spilled their drink. We didn't realise how wet til halfway round when we suddenly got a slightly damp shoe each! As we disembarked, I thought it would be a good idea to let the ride attendant know so that they could prevent anyone else from having the same issue. Unexpectedly, he put us through something I'd only read about - the reride hallway, which took us back to the station for an immediate go again. Not only that, but we were bumped to front row as well! Excellent customer service from Disney there!
After our two shots at that, we went round the corner to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Now here was a ride where the design team really went to town. The theming was absolutely flawless - from the exterior, the lobby and through to the basement area where you're loaded into the lift cars. The ride itself was pleasingly unpredictable, shooting you up and down with randomly opening doorways, and gave a nice amount of airtime as you bounced around in the shaft. If it hadn't have had such a long queue I'd happily have ridden that one again.
It was now time for lunch (and I was getting peckish), and we had reservations at the 50s Primetime Diner. This was a very interesting concept - the idea was as if you were eating at home in the 50s, with the waiters acting like family members. It was even better if you had kids (I was watching groups around us) as the waiters would dump a load of cutlery on the table and tell the kids they had to do their chores and lay the table! Everyone stayed in character throughout, while old 50s American TV show clips played on TVs around the room. We both had the "sampler" platter, which comprised of fried chicken, meatloaf and pot roast with mash. For dessert we went for a Boston Chocolate Cream Parfait, which was some odd concoction of chocolate fondant, vanilla cream and bits of sponge cake. Very enjoyable.
To walk off dinner, and because we had a few hours before our next FastPass, we had a very pleasant walk along the river. The weather has turned very agreeable over the last couple of days - the cloying humidity of the first week has completely vanished and it's been warm and summery, but not too hot. We were still glad to get to the Boardwalk resort and fill our refillable resort mugs up with a nice cold drink, before continuing to our destination - the Fantasia mini golf course we'd been to the previous week. Unlike the previous week, it now wasn't pouring with rain, so we were able to enjoy it without having to hit balls through puddles! As it was fairly busy we were constantly catching up with the people in front, while the lady behind us frantically tried to stop her young kids excitedly getting mixed up in our game!
Back to the Boardwalk for another refill, and then onto a boat back to the Hollywood Studios park again. As it had got later, the park was a little quieter, though still had reasonably long queues for the bigger rides. We had a FastPass for Star Tours, a Star Wars themed 3D simulator ride, which was a lot of fun. Apparently it doesn't always give you the same experience each ride, which we confirmed later on with our second go having a different storyline in the middle.
Down from there, we found the Muppets area. Now anyone who knows me knows I've a very soft spot for anything Muppets-related, so the MuppetVision 3D show was right up my street, complete with animatronic Statler and Waldorf heckling from their customary box, and a live-actor Sweetums running around the auditorium. I was preparing to spend a bit of cash in the store on some Muppets t-shirts but they didn't really have anything I wanted, except a few character hats (Beaker was tempting me!) so I didn't buy anything at all.
Rides were still busy, so we visited the Walt Disney: One Man's Dream exhibition, which had a number of exhibits charting the timeline of Walt's life, right up to the conception of Disneyworld. It concluded with an interesting short film showing some of his early work.
We'd picked up a FastPass to the late Fantasmic show, so while the early one took place we had a leisurely dinner at the food court next to Tower of Terror. My pizza tasted exactly like Domino's, but the banana dessert had clearly never even seen a picture of a banana, so the yellowy goo had the taste of those foam bananas you get in penny sweet mixes. Not my favourite pudding by any stretch of the imagination.
We crossed the road to enter Fantasmic about 20 minutes before the start. There was already a sizeable FastPass queue building, and hordes of people pouring into the normal queue area. We were funnelled up the hill, through a surprisingly wide row of wristband scanners (the normal pair you get on most rides would never have cut it!) and into the top of the amphitheatre. I use the word advisedly, as it was a huge semicircle of seats (we later read that it had a capacity of 6,900, which is a good off-peak day for Alton Towers!) Tom went and grabbed a box of popcorn each, as the smell had been driving us nuts since the start of the trip. It was buttery but incredibly salty - the smell had led me to believe that it'd be sweet!
The show itself was very good indeed, involving character actors, stunts, light effects, water fountains, boats and fireworks. A host of Disney villains played off against various heroes and heroines in what's meant to be Mickey Mouse's imagination. Definitely worth watching, but get there early enough!
As the crowds poured out, the ride queues were still sizeable, despite it now being Extra Magic Hours. The Movie Ride, which had been busy earlier, had now quietened, so we managed to go on that. The ride system itself was reminiscent of Ellen's Energy Adventure at Epcot which we rode yesterday. The large slow-moving trams were this time piloted by a guide (I say piloted, he didn't do much except press Stop and Go buttons!) Some staged fight scenes worked nicely and there were some decent animatronics and clips from various films. Good for a walk-on, not sure I'd queue for it though.
By this point we were tired and there didn't seem a lot of point in hanging around, so we got the shuttle bus back to the resort. Tomorrow: Blizzard Beach waterpark and Magic Kingdom for "Wishes"
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