After a hectic few days dashing around, today was much more sedate. Having been absolutely exhausted the night before, I started the day with a lie-in while Tom went to the pool for a swim and to do some laundry.
When he returned we had a leisurely walk up to the bus stop and got one to the Magic Kingdom. It was boiling hot and sunny so we picked up a Dole Whip Float (my first, but hopefully not my last, as it was delicious). We had an early FastPass reservation for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, which would otherwise have been a 50 minute queue. A nicely-done little family coaster, but I'm not convinced I'd have thought it worth the full queue time!
After that we popped across to the Haunted Mansion, which I rather enjoyed, despite it frequently stopping! It was almost refreshing to have somewhere the staff weren't beaming at you. We pondered that, in the Disneyland Paris version, you'd not be able to tell if the staff were acting the part (disdainful sneering) or just being typically French
Lunch was at Be Our Guest - it was a good thing we'd got a FastPass for it, as they were turning away walk-ups! Although we'd pre-selected our meals their system appeared to have lost them so we had to re-do it. It's a bizarre experience, as you're told to find an empty table and help yourself to drinks, and a member of staff comes over to deliver your food. We were trying to work out exactly how they pinpointed the right table for the right meals. Probably something to do with the Magical Tracking Bands!
That afternoon we'd booked FastPass for Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Railroad. Splash Mountain's main queue was busy, so we were glad to skip it, but Big Thunder was surprisingly quiet - a walk-on, in fact, so on getting off we walked round and jumped back on again. We decided to cancel our actual FastPass reservation and try to get one for Space Mountain (still my favourite Disney ride so far), which we managed.
There were a couple of hours to kill in between, so we did the Country Bears Revue (cheesy and tacky so of course I loved it), the Jungle Cruise (hilarious - particularly when the skipper started quietly singing It's A Small World through the tunnel) and then headed over to Tomorrowland. The last time we'd been up there, the Peoplemover was down, but this time it was running and had no queue, so we went for a trip before our Space Mountain time.
Space Mountain was as good as ever, there's something particularly satisfying at a nice long ride where you can't see where you're going! After that we had a nostalgia trip on the Carousel of Progress, followed by the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor. I wasn't sure what this last one was, and the pre-show videos suggested it'd be characters from Monsters Inc telling jokes. What I hadn't banked on was that the characters were being voiced live, and that the people doing it had a camera trained on the audience, with whom they could interact. Needless to say it was very funny indeed.
Finally we experienced the Stitch's Great Escape attraction, which was fairly bizarre. A pre-show sets you up as a new prison guard at an alien containment facility. You watch as they demonstrate aliens being teleported in, and are then summoned through to a high security chamber where a more dangerous creature is incoming. Yep, that's Stitch. What then follows is some very odd experience where some over the shoulder "restraints" come down, there's various flashing lights and animatronics and a bit of water spraying... and that's apparently that. I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it!
Heading back to the park entrance we caught a boat to Fort Wilderness, where we were doing the Hoop-dee-doop Revue for dinner. This was the closest I've seen Americans get to pantomime, with singing and dancing and incredibly corny jokes, plus plenty of audience participation. The food was fairly simple (fried chicken, ribs, mash, sweetcorn, cornbread, beans, and a rather tasty strawberry shortcake to finish). Cornbread was... interesting. My first thought was "why have they given us a cake and some butter?" The chicken was fine, and the mash very buttery, but the strawberry shortcake was so good (and Tom was quite full) so I ate about 2/3 of the (rather large) portion they put down between us!
After that we got the bus back to our resort, complete with wisecracking driver who alternated between corny jokes and facts about the rides and resorts we were visiting. Returning back at around 11.15pm meant we could have a comparatively early night ready for an early start tomorrow morning for Animal Kingdom.
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