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Thread: Coast to Coast 2014 - part two

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    Coast to Coast 2014 - part two

    DAY FIFTEEN Saturday 08 November

    Plan : Leave thevilla, move to Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort

    Actual : Afteranother good night's sleep, we were up at 8.00 a.m. to pack up and leave ourlovely villa today. We didn't packproperly, just threw everything into the cases, as we wouldn't be flying andwould be unpacking again later today. Weloaded up our Owner's Locker box again, had quick showers and some toast, andwere loading up the car by 10.30 a.m. Aswe left, someone from the management company was sitting outside in a van,waiting to come in and clean up ready for the next guest! We had stripped the beds and left the towelsin a heap, as instructed, and also left the garbage bagged up in thegarage. Other than that, the place wasclean and tidy, as there had only been the two of us there all week and we arequite respectful of other people's property.

    We drove onejunction down the I4, and followed the directions to Saratoga Springs, althoughthis was our second stay at this resort so we mostly knew the way, anyway! There was quite a queue for check-in, but itmoved quickly, and we were really excited to get our lovely box containing ourMagic Bands, in colours we had picked and with our names inside! I also asked if they had a package for me, asI was expecting one, and they did. (Thiswas a box containing 4 packs of ground coffee, Disney Resorts & Parks Blend,from Joffrey's Coffee. The company, whosupply Disney Resorts and parks with coffee, and whose coffee we love, do sellto individuals; however, they don't ship outside the USA, so several emails anda very friendly telephone call later, and we had had some shipped to the resortfor our collection on arrival! We got 2packs for ourselves, and 2 packs for my parents as a Christmas gift!)

    Our room was notready, but we didn't expect it to be as it was still early. We dropped off our cases at Bell Services,and then walked round to Artist's Palette for lunch. DH got a turkey club wrap, chips, M&Mcookie, and apple juice. I had a lobster& bacon sandwich, chips, chocolate milk, and a Mickey Premium Ice-CreamBar, which I said I would collect after I had eaten my sandwich. Lunch was really tasty, and yay for the freeDining Plan! I went back up and showedmy receipt to the Cast Member on the till so I could get my ice cream. I was sitting and really enjoying this icecream, when DH suddenly said to me, "how old are you?" I have no idea why, but I said,"5!" He agreed I was indeed 5years old, as I had ice cream and chocolate all over my face at that point!

    We got ourrefillable mugs, with a new design on them, and different coloured lids I gotred, he got blue, and we then filled them with coffee, before leaving to driveto Celebration. DH had never been therebefore, and I had only visited it briefly many years ago, (driving through andnot stopping), so we really wanted to have a good look round there.

    We easily foundsomewhere to park in a side street, and walked around the stores a little,before strolling round the lake. It wasso pretty there! The weather was veryhot and sunny, there were turtles (a lot of them!) sunning themselves in thelake, and we were so happy and content. We walked all the way round the big lake, then over a little bridge andfound another, smaller lake, where we sat for a little while and discussed ourfuture plans of buying property in the USA, with a view to moving thereeventually. It was so lovely to bethere. We walked back towards the car,and then found a little square with benches and trees in it DH went over theroad to the car and collected our mugs of coffee, and we sat in the square andenjoyed cold coffee.

    At around 3.30p.m., we got back in the car and drove back to Saratoga Springs; luckily, ourroom was now ready. We had requested aroom in the Paddock area, which is where we stayed before, as we really lovedthe convenience of being able to walk to Downtown, but our room this time wasin the Grandstand area, which was on the total opposite side of theresort. It didn't really matter, we werejust happy to be there.

    We found our room,dragged all of our luggage in, and made some coffee which we sat on our balconyto drink. We did some unpacking, andrelaxed for a while. Around 7.00 p.m. weheaded out again, and drove to Fort Wilderness Campground for our first diningreservation this year at Trail's End at 8.00 p.m. We were seated on time, after a short wait,and thoroughly enjoyed our fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans,and mac & cheese. I also had a BBQpork rib that was sweet and smoky, and DH added potato salad, slice of pizza,coleslaw, green salad, tomato, and dressings. We followed that with red velvet cake and banana pudding, (me), andapple cobbler and pumpkin cheesecake, (DH). We also got Sprite and pomegranate lemonade, (which I am still notoverly keen on, and always forget this!). We were well and truly stuffed after all this!

    After dinner, wewent for a slow stroll round, and it was cooler and sprinkling with a littlerain by now. Fortunately, I had broughtmy pink Disneyland jacket with me. Wehad a look round the small store near Trail's End, and two Cast Membersseparately asked me if my jacket was a genuine Disneyland one, as I supposethey expected to see Walt Disney World on the back of it! We told them we were just there two weeksago, and they seemed quite impressed.

    We didn't buyanything, and then walked down to the beach. It was still sprinkling with rain, so we dragged a couple of chairsunder the canopy of a nearby building so we could watch the events. Several other folk saw this and did thesame. (Normally, we sit on the beach towatch stuff!) The Electrical Parade camepast after a while, and then a few minutes later, the fireworks began toexplode over the Magic Kingdom. Theplayback on the soundtrack nearby was a bit quiet though, and people weretalking a lot, so it was a bit hard to hear the music and narration. It was still a lovely show though, and weloved it.

    When this was over,we walked back to the bus stop, caught a bus back to the Outpost Depot,collected the car, and drove back to Saratoga Spring, where we watched a littleTV before bed.

    DAY SIXTEEN Sunday 09 November

    Plan : Epcot, Food& Wine Festival

    Actual : Stupidalarm clock! I have never been able towork the alarm clocks at Disney resorts, I have no idea how to set the timecorrectly or how to set an alarm. Ithought I had set the alarm for 7.30 a.m., and it went off at 5.00 a.m.! I turned it off and went back to sleep,vowing to get the little travel alarm that we had brought with us out of thecase and set up later today.

    We managed to wakeup at around 7.30 a.m., and got ourselves ready for the day. As we drove to Epcot, managing to keep theSwolphin game well and truly alive, I saw a quite big deer at the edge of theundergrowth on the grass verge! Ichristening him Bambi, and we sincerely hoped the gators wouldn't get him ..(We had visions of driving past here again tomorrow, and seeing just bits ofbloody stump lying in the grass ..)

    We arrived at ourfavourite Disney theme park, and parked up quite easily. We held hands and entered Epcot! (I tried not to cry this time, unlike lastyear!) Bag check was quick, and thelines at the gates were reasonable, although we did our usual thing of headingas far left or right as possible, as most folk just head for the middle gates.

    We walked round tothe Land pavilion, and Soarin' was already showing as a 60 min standby wait, sowe ignored that and rode Living with the Land, one of our favouriteattractions, with a mere 5 min wait. Theplants in the greenhouses change every year that we visit, so it is always niceto see what is new in there. There wasstill a 9 pound lemon tree, though I would love to get my hands on one of thosebabies!

    Breakfast atSunshine Seasons was next. DH got aslice of pumpkin cheesecake, and I had a strawberry shortcake, got with snackcredits. I paid for coffee out ofpocket. We reckoned that pumpkin andstrawberries = fruit & veg for breakfast!

    After breakfast, were-rode Living with the Land, though it was up to a 15 min wait now, soafterwards we headed back across the park to Test Track and went through thesingle rider queue, with a 10 min wait. We noticed that we got to design a basic car this time, when before thesingle rider just gets allocated a car, with no design input odd.

    It was now time forour first FP+, on Spaceship Earth. Thequeue there was up to 15 mins standby, but we whisked up the side of that andwere on in a matter of minutes. Lovely! We really are pullingsome very strange faces in our ride photo .

    It was by nowapproaching 11.00 a.m., so we walked across the bridge into World Showcase forthe Food & Wine Festival. We hadpreviously decided that if the items were more than $4 each, we would use snackcredits; otherwise, we would pay out of pocket, apart from coffee or glasses ofwine, which we always paid out of pocket for anyway.

    We had decided togo round anti-clockwise, for a change, as we normally start with Mexico. The first booth we visited was Scotland,where DH had salmon and a potato pancake, and I got a scallop and cheesyspinach with bacon. I hate salmon, butDH said this was delicious; I loved my dish though, I had never had scallopbefore and really liked it, but the outstanding hit for me was the cheesyspinach with bacon it was yummy! Therewere no tables available, so we balanced our food plates on top of atrash-can. Not ideal, but it was allthere was.

    Canada was next,for Cheddar Cheese Soup, (DH), and Mushroom Filet (me). I am not a fan of this soup, and realisedthat so far, DH has got to sample both my dishes, and I haven't had any of hisyet! I think this was a ploy, so he gotto eat all of his and some of mine!

    We passed the UnitedKingdom, as we can get fish & chips any time we like, and walked over thebridge to France, where DH picked up a Pasta Gratin, and I got the Short BeefRib with mashed potatoes. Both of thesewere very good indeed, and our favourites so far.

    We were a bit fullby now, and our next FP+ time was approaching, so we took a slow walk back theway we had just come, and went to Test Track with our FP+s. Now, when you FastPass Test Track, you usedto get to design the basic car, but we were given the whole shebang this time,complete design freedom this has clearly changed since last year. This is what we worked it out to be :-

    2013 2014
    Single Rider nodesign, allocated car from stock SingleRider design basic car
    Fast Pass designbasic car FastPass full design
    Standby fulldesign Standby full design.

    We think this isbecause now the FastPass line integrates with the standby line, resulting inmuch longer waits for both standby and FastPass queues, and they have done awaywith the 'no design at all' option. Anyway, we noticed that the FastPass queues were much, much longer forall the FP+ rides now than they used to be this is particularly noticeable onrides such as this one and Soarin', where the FP+ line can extend right out tobeside Sunshine Seasons!

    We opted to designa car with minimal power but maximum efficiency, and made it pink andcute. We do love doing this, and usuallyalternate between designs so we get a different experience each time. Fun! And still DH's favourite ride of all time, anywhere. (Although Radiator Springs Racers was now aclose second to this!)

    Next was MissionSpace (Green) with FP+, which is always great fun, as once again I convincemyself we really are flying to Mars, and am severely disappointed when weemerge back on Earth again.

    We walked to theFestival Centre after this, and picked up a Food & Wine Festival t-shirtfor DH, but couldn't find a pin. We gotour free samples from Ghirardelli's, (mini caramel again), and looked at allthe lovely chocolate sculptures. We alsobought a couple of bottles of wine, like last year a bottle of Key Limen forme, and Mango for him, and had them sent to the front of the park forcollection later tonight. (I alwayspanic that we are going to forget to pick them up before we leave!) As people who don't really drink much, weabsolutely LOVE this wine, and the bottle of Key Limen I had last year lastedme for ages at home, as I kept it in the fridge, sealed with a gorgeous batstanchion (from the Haunted Mansion) wine bottle stopper; DH only had sachetslast year, so was upgraded to a whole bottle this year!

    We walked backround to the Joffrey's Coffee stand near Test Track, got 2 cups of coffee, andsat on a nearby bench to rest and enjoy our drinks.

    It was now nearlytime to meet up with our online friends. About 10 or 11 years ago, I used to avidly read lots of differentpeople's online trip reports although, actually, I still do this! But I began reading ones by a woman, (Robin),that I really enjoyed. Her style ofwriting was funny, interesting, informative, and so detailed that I always feltthat I was on the trip with her. She wasvery good at picking out the tiny details of Disney that I loved, and we seemedto have very similar personalities she loved the exact same things at DisneyWorld that I did. Robin lived in Texas,and as my brother lives there too, I felt we had some kind of tentativeconnection! Anyway, we begancorresponding by email, and continued this for many years. We also used to send each other messages onone of the Disney fan websites, which is where we had originally met. Around the same time, I was also reading tripreports written by a guy, (Larry), and also enjoyed his funny and irreverentsense of humour, and his way of looking at Disney parks, which was quitedifferent to anyone else's.

    The upshot was thatthose two got together, got married at Disney World, and moved around the worlda bit. I kept in touch with both ofthem, and then lo and behold, Facebook was born! Cue more messaging, 'friending', andgenerally getting to know each other a bit better. I also became aware of Robin's lovely andvery funny sister, Paula, thanks to Facebook.

    Robin and Larrywere due to go to Walt Disney World in September 2014, but then Robin had a bitof a medical hiccup and ended up having to postpone their trip a little. When they rebooked the trip, both Robin and Irealised that we would be in the World at the same time as each other! We had to meet up, after all these years ofonline friendships, it would be silly not to.

    We added each otherto our My Disney Experience accounts as 'friends', which meant we could vieweach other's plans, and realised that for the first 4 days of our overlappingtrip, we had planned to visit the same parks as each other! Unfortunately, by this point, I still hadn'tmanaged to get to get any credit for my USA phone, but we did exchange variousmessages on Facebook, and finally, a few days before they arrived in Florida,we arranged a meeting time and place.

    So this was now thetime, 4.00 p.m. on Sunday 09 November, and the place was near the BritishRevolution performance stage in the UK pavilion in Epcot. We walked round to the designated meetingplace, and I began to panic I wouldn't recognise Robin I only knew her fromphotos, what if I didn't recognise her at all? I needed have worried, however. As we rounded the corner and approached some benches, a very glamorousblonde began waving frantically at me it was Robin! She was on the phone, but waving like a madwoman! As we got to her, she ended herphone call and we gave each other the biggest hug it was brilliant to finallymeet up with her. She explained that Larryhad just gone for a quick ride on Test Track, and would be back soon, so we satdown on a bench with her and it was like we had known each other forever Icouldn't believe how well we got on.

    Larry came back,and we greeted him with enthusiasm, although he seemed a bit reserved atfirst. Robin told us that he had saidthat morning that if they decided they didn't like us, they never had to see usagain, which was why he didn't mind meeting up that day! He was horrified that she told us that, butwe just laughed at him. Robin's sisterPaula turned up, along with her very tired hubby Wes, who was almost asleep onhis feet. They had all only arrived at2.00 a.m. that morning, thanks to a very delayed flight, and had still got upearly to come to Epcot.

    We sat and chattedfor over 2 hours, the British Revolution played for a bit but we mostly ignoredthem, being too busy talking and getting to know each other to pay them muchattention! I think the guys listened tothem a bit, and poor Wes curled up in a ball on the floor, and fellasleep! We poked him occasionally tomake sure he was still alive, but then left him to it, despite the fact thathis head was in a small puddle. Heseemed comfy enough.

    Larry and DH gottalking about photography, a subject they are both very interested in, whileRobin and I, with a little help from Paula, just talked and talked. Larry suggested taking a ride on SpaceshipEarth together to inject a little more Britishness in the form of Dame JudyDench into the proceedings, but no-one took him seriously and we just laughedat him. Eventually, we parted company togo off and do different things, but before we did, we made tentativearrangements to meet up again tomorrow at the Magic Kingdom. We were a bit vague about the plans, as weboth had FP+ to work around, and we also had the dining plan in theresomewhere, (they were only on the Basic Dining Plan, so didn't havetable-service reservations to deal with!), and I also still couldn't becontacted by phone, so we arranged to meet around 3.15-3.30 p.m. behind the 7 Dwarf'sMine Train ride.

    We hugged goodbye,and headed off round World Showcase via France. At the Hops & Barley Food & Wine Festival stand, DH got anArtisan Cheese Plate, which he loved. Iwaited till we got to Italy, where we both got a serving of cheeseravioli. This was really good, and agenerous portion it may have been my favourite item so far!

    China was next,where we got duck in a steamed bun with hoisin sauce. I loved the duck and sauce, but REALLY hatedthe bun - it was too soft and soggy for me. DH liked all of it, so had my bun too! We moved onto Florida Local, where I bought us a glass each of the KeyLimen wine that I adore, and DH also got a serving of peppered potato hash,which he really liked. I had a taste andthought it was okay, but very peppery.

    We were more orless done now, but made the mistake of being a bit over-ambitious and stoppingat the Fife & Drum stand to get ice-cream sundaes with Ghirardellisauce. These were listed as a special onthe Food & Wine Festival menu, but were not available as snack credits, soI just paid for them. With hindsight, weshould have either shared one of these as they were HUGE, or just skipped themaltogether, as we were quite full anyway. They were absolutely gorgeous, but they left DH feeling really over-fulland eventually quite nauseous. We slowlycontinued our way round World Showcase, stopping in Morocco for me to take arestroom break and DH to sit and groan on a low wall for a few minutes.

    I gave him ananti-nausea tablet as I usually have these on me, and he began to feel betterquite quickly, so we continued our walk round until we reached SpaceshipEarth. We decided to collect the bottlesof wine from package pickup, and take them back to the car as it wasn't thatfar away, and we could also drop off DH's rucksack and camera bag to give him arest from carrying all that. There werealready a couple of people in the package pickup area, but it didn't take uslong to get our bottles of wine, and we duly took everything back to the car.

    Back into Epcot wethen went, and as Spaceship Earth was a straight walk-on, we did. The face-pulling for the camera is beginningto get a little extreme!

    As the night drewon, the weather had changed a little, with some cloud moving in and a few spotsof rain, but nothing too dramatic, and we weren't cold, so we began ananti-clockwise stroll around the lagoon to find a space to view Illuminations,which wasn't on until 10.00 p.m. Thepark wasn't as full as we were expecting for a weekend night, especially thisclose to the end of the Food & Wine Festival, and we managed to findourselves a nice bit of fence to lean on just before Germany, to watch theshow. I don't think I will ever be ableto watch this wonderful show without welling up! The lasers seemed particularly bright to us,more so than previously, and in fact new equipment was being used at thatpoint, but we didn't know this at the time. There also seemed to be a lot of pink fireworks being used, something wehad noticed last night as we watched Wishes from the beach at Fort Wildernesscampground. Last year there had been anabundance of orange fireworks, and now this year, it was a lovely pale pinkthat we saw a lot of!

    After the show hadfinished, we decided against our usual tradition of walking in the oppositedirection to the crowds and having one last walk around the lagoon, becausealthough DH was feeling lots better, we were very tired by now, so we exitedwith the hordes and headed back to Saratoga Springs for a little TV and thenbed!

    DAY SEVENTEEN Monday 10 November

    Plan : MagicKingdom

    Actual : We were upbright and early this morning, and after showers and coffee, drove to theTicket & Transportation Centre, where we parked the car and caught MonorailPeach to the Magic Kingdom.

    We began our daywith the traditional family breakfast when at the Magic Kingdom, and went intoGoofy's Candy Company for rice krispie treats. Ooh, they have new ones with peanut butter chips! Yum! We got these with snack credits, and sat on a bench around the corner,by the Caricature Artist, to eat them. Some kind of dance parade went past us while we were there, these thingsseem to haunt us every year one year it was High School Musical that we saw athousand times, another year it was Minnie's something or other involvingdancing parcels. Anyway, it wasn'tunpleasant, and I think we saw Mickey Mouse at the end of it.

    So Pirates of theCaribbean was first on our list, and we whisked in there with our FP+, and notmuch wait at all really. We werepleasantly surprised to see that mist on the water had been added to the scenewith Blackbeard and the big boats, just like in Disneyland! It really adds to the atmosphere, we thoughtit was great. I nearly got shot in thatscene though, I felt something whizz past my ear and then there was a splashnext to me!

    As we came out, webrowsed the gift shop and I bought a small skull on a key-ring, to hangjauntily from my handbag. I told the CMthat I should have stolen it really, this being a pirate shop and all, and hejust stared at me, sighed theatrically, and produced a bright red, toy pistolfrom under the counter, which he pointed at me!! I promptly handed over my $6, and welaughingly exited. I love it when CM'sjoin in with a joke or play along with you!

    We walked round tothe Haunted Mansion, joined the 15 min standby queue, and thoroughly enjoyedour Doom Buggy journey. After this, weexcitedly went into the new store there, Memento Mori we had been reallylooking forward to seeing what they had in here, after we had seen a fewHaunted Mansion items for sale in World of Disney last year. There were too many good things in here wewanted to get! We were inspired enoughby the various items to seriously reconsider the forthcoming redecoration ofour front room at home, and decided that it would be really lovely to decoratethe room in shades of purple and black, then get some cushions, candlesticks, throws,etc to dress the room up with.

    Still discussingthis prospect, we left, knowing we would be back later in the week to actuallybuy stuff, and headed round to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad as we were in ourFP+ window now. The ride was great fun,as always, and we loved the fact that this was the third incarnation of thisride that we had experienced this year!

    We were very hot bynow, and the park was quite crowded, so I suggested we visit an area that wehave never been to before Tom Sawyer Island. There was no queue for the next raft, so we started one! We had a fantastic time on the Island weexplored the mine, the fort, the trails around the island, and we wound upsitting in rocking chairs on a covered porch, waving at folk on the LibertyBelle riverboat, and just relaxing for a little while. There was a short rain shower while we satthere!

    Eventually, wedecided we ought to get some lunch, so we caught a raft back to the mainland,and went to the Columbia Harbour House. There was quite a long queue, but it was going down quite quickly. DH had a lobster roll, fries and coffee, andI had an Anchors Aweigh sandwich (tuna), fries and chocolate milk. We both got peach cobbler for dessert. It was all really good, this is one of ourfavourite counter service restaurants at Disney World.

    After lunch, it wastime for our next FP+ - the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train! This was to be our first ride, and we werereally excited about this. We strolledacross to Fantasyland, and entered the FP+ queue, which moved really quicklyand deposited us at the front of the standby queue area. WOW! We LOVED this ride! It was fasterand more thrilling than I was expecting, (some of the drops made me squeal abit!), and we loved the way it slows right down to take you through the diamondmine, as I thought we would be through there too quickly to see anything. We had great fun while going up one incline,pointing each other out to the hungry vultures at the top of the hill! The little cottage at the end with Snow Whitedancing with the Dwarf's is also really cute. The track is incredibly smooth, and the gentle swaying of the carriages addsto the smoothness. The whole thing wasfantastic!

    The only minordownside is the seating the seats themselves, although a little snug, aren'ttoo bad really. But the bar that goesover your upper thighs is very narrow, and it dug into DH's legs quitebadly. He wasn't very happy about it,and we both thought it was odd that as folk are generally getting bigger,Disney would spend a lot of money developing and building a ride that would noteasily accommodate anyone who was more Pooh-sized, or tall (DH is6'2"). Anyway, it wasn't enough tostop him from wanting to experience the ride again, or from loving the themingand speed of the ride.

    We walked round tothe back of the ride to see if we could spot Robin, as we were supposed to bemeeting them there today, but the times were a bit hazy in my head. I couldn't remember what time their FP+ wasfor the Mine Train, (I had written all ours down in a little notepad, as I wasn'tusing my UK phone in the parks), and my USA phone still had no credit, so Icouldn't call or text her. We walkedback and forth for about 20 mins, but in the end we had to leave and we missedthem. (I found out the next day thatRobin was arriving as we left, and we just missed each other!).

    We headed round toFantasyland Train Station, and just like in Disneyland, battled our way throughthe strollers to get to the queue. Atrain arrived shortly afterwards, and we watched a family trying to get the CMto let them use the handicapped space on the train so they didn't have to waketheir little Princess up, get her out of the stroller, fold up the stroller asinstructed previously, and sit in the bench seats like the rest of us. Quite rightly, the CM refused them thisrequest. We boarded, and rode the trainall the way round the park.

    We got off back atthe same station, and looked around the Storybook Circus area, which we bothlove the theming of. This bit of thepark was extremely crowded though, so we bypassed Dumbo and went into the big,circus-tent store. I was thinking Iwould have loved to get something with one of the Storybook Circus posters onit, the one I love has The Great Goofini juggling with tigers, (look at thetigers' faces Goofy is so going to get shredded!), and my second favourite isthe one with Lambert the Sheepish Lion, but I couldn't find anything witheither of these on it. DH had decidedthat his great pin collection this year would be a Mickey ears-shaped flag ofeach nation represented at Epcot's World Showcase, so every store we went intobecame a flag hunt, and in this one he managed to find 8 of the 11 he wouldneed! He was happy, and went off to payfor these, while I made a list of what he was buying and what we then stillneeded to get.

    We next walked toTomorrowland, and the TTA, another of our favourites. There was quite a queue for this,surprisingly! We enjoyed our trip, andwhen we got off, we walked round the edge and straight back on again, as thequeue had gone down a lot.

    Carousel of Progresswas next, with no wait as they were loading up straight away. Unfortunately, not only was the sound awfullylow in here, (DH, who is a theatre technician, was muttering something aboutdigitising the sound to improve the quality), but there was a screaming baby inthere too! The poor mother stood up totry and take him out, but then got yelled at to sit down by a CM, so she justhad to sit at the back and try to pacify him. I felt really sorry for the mother.

    We do love thisattraction, but agree that it needs a little updating now.

    Buzz Lightyear'sSpace Ranger Spin was showing as a 15 min standby, so we did that, although itwas a constantly moving queue and only took about 5 mins. DH won by a HUGE margin, again I used to bereally good at this ride, I have no idea what is going on now!

    We walked slowlyround Tomorrowland a bit to take some photos, then stood on the bridge andlistened to the Frozen stage show the view was blocked by lots of otherpeople, and some big trees! We reallyonly wanted to see the Castle Lighting Ceremony anyway, which was now beingdone by Elsa, and was so lovely all sparkly and frosty, just gorgeous!

    The Magic Kingdomwas closing early for a Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party tonight, and MainStreet was now really packed with folk leaving the park or arriving for theParty, so we struggled down Main Street and into the Emporium. We checked for the 3 pins that DH now needed,but no joy. We did, however, pick upsome Little Mermaid charms for him the zip fastener handles had broken offhis rucksack some time ago, and it was really difficult to do up and undowithout them, so I had the bright idea of clipping some tiny charms on therefor him!

    We left the parkafter this, catching the ferry boat back to the T&TC and our car. We drove back to Saratoga Springs, picked upmy phone from our room, and then went to the Turf Club for our dinnerreservation. We were seated quickly,which was good as we were starving by then! Our seats were outside, in a lovely area with a really nice view acrossto Downtown, and by a patio heater. (Wenoticed a lot of these particularly shaped patio heaters all over the place atDisney World this year, we reckon they got a job lot from somewhere!)

    DH ordered a crispychicken breast, served with 3-cheese macaroni & cheese, and green beans,followed by a chocolate espresso torte, and Sprite. I had the prime rib, followed by seasonalfruit crisp (apple & cranberry), and a vanilla milkshake. It was all really, really good. I don't normally have prime rib, I wouldusually go for the grilled New York strip, but I found that sometimes a spicyrub is added to that, plus I had really enjoyed the short beef rib that I had asmall portion of yesterday in France, so I thought I would try the prime rib,and it was gorgeous! Definitely theright choice for me. DH really enjoyedhis too, although I thought his dessert was really rich, and I was glad Ihadn't had that, (I nearly did!). Ididn't finish all my dessert, it was really delicious but I was just too full,which was a shame.

    We 'paid' with thedining plan, left a tip, and went back to the car. We drove to the Super Wal-Mart that we reallylike, down the 192, to get a little shopping. The main priority was to get some credit for the blessed phone, but theydidn't have anything at all for it! Wedid get some pumpkin spice Ghirardelli squares for DH, he loves these and wasworried he wouldn't be able to get them in the Ghirardelli store in DowntownDisney, as it was past Halloween now. (Hewas right to be worried, they didn't have them on our trip there in a fewdays!) We also got some sugar-freedrinks flavour powders, as we were running low (we had had some in our Owner'sLocker box, left over from last year), and I picked up a couple of small tubsof pumpkin spice too. Last year, I hadbought a tiny sachet of this spice mix from Disney's kitchen store at Downtown,and used it at home when I made a fruit loaf. It was really delicious, but very expensive to buy that way, so I hadwondered if I could get it from a supermarket in the spices section. It turned out that I could indeed get a muchlarger amount of exactly the same mix of spices, for less money, so I boughttwo from here, (the last 2 on the shelf!).

    We then drove toSuper Target, where I was able to get $25 worth of phone credit yay! (Although I had only been looking for about$15 worth, but I was desperate at this point!) We also got another couple of tubs of pumpkin spice.

    Back to SaratogaSprings we went, I put the phone on charge and happily entered the pin code toadd the credit. A message appeared onthe phone to say the SIM card had expired. Aargh!

    I gave up for thenight, we watched a little TV, and went to bed.

    DAY EIGHTEEN Tuesday 11 November

    Plan : AnimalKingdom

    Actual : Afteranother good night's sleep, we got up and did our usual shower/coffeeroutine. (See, I say this, but whatactually happened was that I tended to get up first, quietly put the coffeemachine on to brew, and then have a shower, get dried and applied variousmoisturising lotions etc., did my hair, poured the coffee, and then DH wouldfinally stir, crawl out of bed, and be showered and ready within about 10minutes. Why can men do this when wecan't? Not fair). Anyway, we needed to do some online stuffthis morning, send emails etc, so we quickly got this done and then drove toAnimal Kingdom.

    We had an earlylunch booked at Tusker House, which we were looking forward to, as we hadn'teaten here before. As it was Veteran'sDay, the park was absolutely packed, and it was very hot indeed, so we justmeandered slowly round for a bit, not really doing anything, until it was timefor our dining reservation.

    We checked in forour 11.15 a.m. reservation, and were seated quickly, in a side room off themain dining hall. We hadn't realisedthis was a character meal! We werevisited by Daisy Duck, which was lovely as you don't normally get to meet her,followed by Goofy, then Mickey himself. Donald Duck came towards our room, and I was just about to draw DH'sattention to this as he was sat with his back to the doorway, when Donald madeshushing movements at me. He then snuckup behind DH, and stood there quietly with two fingers up behind DH's head likebunny ears! I grabbed his camera andtook a quick shot before DH had any idea what was going on, and then Donald andI had a good laugh about this! It wasreally funny, and great fun to interact with a character in this way.

    The food was reallynice, we had roasted ham, green beans, basmati rice with lemon, corndognuggets, and a biscuit. DH got quiche,salad, garlic mashed potatoes, and some other stuff that I couldn'tidentify. What was nice was that becauseit was a buffet, we could try bite-sized portions of food that we wouldn'tnormally have chosen a full-size portion of, not being sure whether we wouldlike it or not. He had Sprite, and I gota glass of chocolate milk, which amused our server somewhat I don't think hewas used to adults ordering chocolate milk, but I do only drink this when I amat a Disney park, honestly! The dessertswere lovely cherry & apple cobbler, tiny lemon tarts, brownies, pecanslices, chocolate volcano cake, coconut macaroons, all were really good. We were so glad we tried this restaurant!

    After lunch, wewalked the Pangani trail, although most of it was closed off forrefurbishment. We spent ages watchingthe gorilla family, and they were fed while we were there too, which wasinteresting to watch. I got chatting toa CM there who knew a lot about this family, and she taught me so much aboutgorillas. There were two tiny babies inthere, one was 3 months old and one was 4 months old, and you could tell whichwas which by the way their mothers held them the younger one is heldhorizontally, in the palm of her hand, whilst the one that is a month older isable to cling to her mother, so she was held vertically. There was also a 4 year old female in therewho was playing up hugely she had been the baby of the group until her newbrother arrived, and she didn't like it, throwing tantrums, stealing all thefood, and generally behaving very badly!

    As we were leavingthere, we were just commenting to each other how cramped the park felt, becausethere were a huge number of construction walls everywhere, meaning thatwalkways were very narrowed and there were fewer animal enclosures on view,when we bumped into Larry! We hugged himhello, and he directed us to Robin, who was seated near the entrance to thetrail. (He did seem much more open andfriendly today, I think he was just a bit reserved when we first met him as heis shy and didn't know us very well.) Anyway, he was in a very good mood as he had just found out he had beenoffered a job he had been interviewed for a few days ago, which was great news.

    We spotted Robin,who was sitting on a bench but turned away from us and talking to Wes. I crept up beside her and sat next to her,very close. She instinctively moved up alittle, thinking that I needed more room, so I shuffled against her again. She turned round to see who this weird personwas who was snuggled up next to her, and burst out laughing as I laid my headon her shoulder! We chatted for a littlewhile, I apologised that we had missed them yesterday, and we discussed the Swolphingame, which had been something she used to play with her family and we hadadopted a few years ago. (In case youdon't know, it goes like this : the first person each day to spot either theSwan or Dolphin resort hotels shouts out, "SWOLPHIN!" and therebybecomes the winner. There is no prize,and a celebratory arm-punch is optional, depending on whether either of you isdriving and you have a death-wish or not). Simple, yet satisfying!

    Anyway, we arrangedto meet up the next day at the Hollywood Studios for dinner at the BacklotExpress, before watching Fantasmic, possibly together, and parted company fortoday. I was so happy to have met upwith them again though!

    Our FP+ window forthe Safari was open, so we headed over there. The FastPass queue was huge, it looked longer than the standby line,which was showing as 30 mins! There wereextra CMs at the head of the queue with portable scanners, to try and geteveryone's FastPasses scanned quickly. We got chatting to a lovely couple from Canada as we queued, they werearound our age and really friendly.

    The safari was fun,although we couldn't see any lions at all, but lots of other animals werearound. We were sat in the front row,which is always more interesting as you get chance to interact with the drivera bit more.

    Next up was ourFestival of the Lion King show FP+ timeslot, and our first time in the new LionKing Theatre. We loved the theming ofthis new theatre, it is much more immersive that the old one, which alwaysseemed to have a temporary look about it. It is amazing that this is a brand new theatre, it has only been openfor a couple of months, and yet it is built to look old and tumbledown! The show was absolutely wonderful, as usual,and never fails to make me feel all emotional. We were fierce lions!

    We were in need ofa coffee break now, as it was still very hot and humid, so we decided to skipour FP+ for the Nemo show, which would have meant a quick and sweaty walkacross to the other side of the park. Wepicked up a couple of cups of coffee and a cup of iced water from Kusafari, andsat on the small wall behind there to rest and enjoy our break.

    We emerged into astill very hot and crowded Africa, and made our way over to Asia to walk theMaharaja Jungle Trek. The replacementKomodo Dragon was happily sunning himself on a rock, (their previous Dragon haddied about 6 months ago, sadly), and most of the bats were missing in action sowe only saw 2 of them. Even the tigershad mostly disappeared, there was one hiding in some undergrowth, you couldonly see her nose and tail! We stillenjoyed our walk though, we both really love this trail, it has some of myfavourite animals in it and we just adore the theming of the flags, tumbledownbuildings, etc.

    By the time we leftthe trail, it was approaching 4.00 p.m., and we knew that the place we wantedto get dinner from would be closing soon, as it closes an hour before the parkdoes. We therefore quickly made our wayto the Yak & Yeti Local Caf, and were amongst the last couple of people tobe served. We picked up two servings ofhoney chicken with jasmine rice, and then chocolate mousse and Sprite, (DH),and banana pudding and lemonade, (me). We'paid' with two counter-service credits, sat round the corner at the tables,and despite several bratty children trying to chase them off, were inundatedwith hopeful ducks, rabbits and squirrels, trying to share our feast! Despite knowing we shouldn't do this, we didend up hand-feeding a duck and a squirrel with some bits of vegetables andsweet biscuits from our meal, as it was cute to see them taking the food out ofour fingers. Our dinner was delicious,we really enjoyed it, as we do love the food from here.

    By the time we hadfinished eating, it was nearly time for the park to close, so we took a slowstroll out, stopping in a couple of shops along the way. DH managed to pick up the last 3 WorldShowcase flag pins that he needed, which was nice.

    We left the AnimalKingdom, and drove to the Super Wal-Mart on the 192. Or at least, we tried to! We managed to get quite lost, and ended upnear the villa we were staying in last week, so we went to the Publix nearthere to try and get a SIM card for the phone, but had no luck. The staff in there were actually quite rude they had a display card for the SIMs, but when I asked about buying one, theysaid they were out of stock. I queriedwhy the display card was still out if they didn't have any, and they said,quite rudely, that the card was out because they sold things!

    We gave up, anddrove back to Super Target.

    So Super Target hadloads of SIM cards for the AT&T Go phone, but none of them would scanthrough the cash register. A lovelyyoung man called Alex actually RAN the length of the store to get more from outof the stockroom, but they wouldn't scan either. He got his manager involved, who took us tothe Customer Services counter, and about 3 assistants all tried to scan theircomplete stock of cards to see if one of them would register, but had noluck. DH had given up by then and wassitting on a bench off to one side he said it sounded like an episode ofCasualty, (the TV show about an Accident & Emergency department), with allthe beeping he could hear! The managerrang AT&T to see what was going on, and was told that they possibly hadbeen given a complete batch of duff SIM cards. The manager was extremely apologetic, and gave us a $3 store voucher forour inconvenience - we felt guilty thatthey had spent so much time trying to sell something with a value of just $10. (We ended up not using the store voucher, andleft it for Mousekeeping in the end).

    We then tried thePublix on the corner before our turning, but had no luck there either, so justgave up for the night and drove back to Saratoga Springs. We parked at reception, and DH went to pick upsome coffee in our refillable mugs, while I went to the Concierge desk to checkif our Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party tickets had been linked to our MagicBands, as I had attempted to do this earlier on today via the My DisneyExperience app on my iPad. It hadworked, and our tickets were indeed on our Bands yay! Go me!

    We were supposed tobe going swimming this evening, as we expected to be back from the AnimalKingdom by early evening, but our side trips and getting lost meant we weren'tback until after 9.30 p.m., by which time we were too tired to hit the pool, sowe ended up just watching some TV, before turning in for a good night's sleep.

    DAY NINETEEN Wednesday 12 November

    Plan : Hollywood Studios

    Actual : After theusual coffee/shower thing, I had some emails to send, and we also wanted to setup a time for a Skype call to my family for tomorrow, so we did all this beforesetting off for the Studios.

    The park was reallybusy, and we had a little trouble finding somewhere to park, although bag checkwas relatively quick and the turnstiles were easy to negotiate. (We had got into the habit of pretending tobe communists, and walking all the way over to the LEFT hand side! This not only made us laugh each day, butalso tended to get us past all the big queues in the centre of each entrance!)

    Our first port ofcall was the Great Movie Ride, which had a 30 min standby posted, but thislooked like a much longer queue to us as it snaked round the front quite a bit,so we walked round to Star Tours instead. This was showing as 20 mins, so we joined the fast-moving queue. We saw Larry, Robin and Paula in the queuejust ahead of us, and in actual fact, Larry took a photo of the queue areawithout realising until afterwards that we were in his picture! They spotted us at about the same time as wesaw them, so they came back in the queue to join us, which we thought was alovely thing to do! Wes was still at thehotel sleeping, as he wasn't feeling too well, but was joining them later.

    As we approachedthe load area, we picked up our 3D glasses. Then we were moved down to another loading area, further down, and I sawRobin put her glasses back and pick up another pair. I asked her why she had done that, and Larrysaid it was because the glasses only work with the simulator you are loadedinto. Before my brain could properlycatch up with what he had said, (and he had kept a completely straight face aswell), I had agreed with this and changed my glasses too. About 15 seconds later, I realised I had beenhad . They didn't stop laughing forquite a while about this - some may call it 'gullible', I call it 'trusting'! Robin had apparently just seen a Cast Memberbring a freshly cleaned load of glasses, and had changed hers for a clean pair.

    We got the pod race(again!), and the battle in the skies (again), but because we were having sucha laugh with the guys, we didn't mind too much, and it was still a funride. We exited through the ubiquitousgift shop, and stood outside for a little while, just chatting and enjoyingeach other's company. Wes arrived,having texted to say he was on his way, and we thought he still looked a bitpoorly, but he was being a brave little soldier! They eventually left us for their Tower ofTerror FP+ ride, and we headed for the Muppets 3D show.

    We walked straightinto the pre-show, which was just starting, and noticed a new segment in thefilm there was slightly less faffing about at one point, and Constantine frogfrom the film, "Muppets Most Wanted", appeared and made a smallspeech about taking over the show. Itwas an interesting segment, but ultimately proved totally pointless, as wenever saw him again and he hadn't been inserted into the show at all.

    As we walked out ofthere, it was time for our lunch reservation at Mama Melrose's Ristorante,which was directly opposite us! Wechecked in, and were seated very quickly. It was really crowded, and we saw several folk enquiring about walk-ups,but were told it was fully booked.

    I have issues withonions and garlic, not really an allergy but more of an intolerance, so I askedthem what they would recommend off the menu, bearing this in mind. Our server kindly said she would get the chefto come and have a word with me, then she took our drinks order of Sprite andlemonade.

    The chef came outto see me, and we chatted about my intolerances. I said I fancied spaghetti, with some kind ofa creamy sauce and chicken, so he offered to make me a sauce specifically forme, without onions or garlic. I thoughtthis was so good of him, he is already catering for a fully booked restaurantwith lots of other people, but he was offering to make one dish just for me how kind. We therefore ordered the restof our meal, and he mentioned that there is onion and garlic powder in thebatter they use on their calamari, which was my appetiser choice. However, I told him I was only going to eat asmall amount of this, (I can never manage to eat a full 3-course meal), and thatI had had it before and had been fine with it. We thanked him for his help, too.

    While we werewaiting for our lunch, we discussed the fact that we had just been told thereis onion and garlic powder in the batter mix. I began to wonder if this is what has been causing me intermittentproblems at home if we dine out on fish & chips, most times I am finewith it, but just occasionally, (in a couple of specific restaurants), I havehad a very bad reaction to the battered fish. I had been wondering if I had a problem with fish, but now I wasbeginning to think it may be the batter that is the issue. I had suffered a nasty reaction to a meal Ihad eaten last year at the ABC Commissary here, when I had enjoyed a seafoodplatter with battered shrimps and fish maybe it was the batter that was theproblem?

    Anyway, my calamariwas excellent, and I had to stop myself from scoffing the lot! DH had a fresh mozzarella and vine-ripenedtomato starter, and said it was very good. He then had Chicken Campanelle to follow, which he said wasdelicious. However, my main course wasjust incredible tiny bite-sized pieces of very tender chicken, in a cheesy,creamy sauce, over spaghetti. It wasgorgeous! Full of flavour, very cheesy,I ate the whole thing! Definitely thebest meal I had had so far at Disney. Our dessert was a sharing plate of a delightful trio of desserts amango panacotte, (which I ate as DH isn't keen on the texture), an Amoretticheesecake, (DH had this I hate Amoretti!), and a chocolate & cherrymousse/cake thing, which we shared. Aswe were leaving, we saw our chef talking to another family, and as he turned togo back to the kitchen, we thanked him again, shaking his hand and being veryenthusiastic about the taste of the meal he made for me! He said it was just cream, parmesan cheese,and chicken, and I was astounded I thought I hated parmesan cheese, and had Iknown that in advance, I probably wouldn't have even tried the sauce! Amazing.

    We waddled out ofthere after lunch, and round to the Great Movie Ride. This was showing as a 15 min standby, but wasalmost a straight walk-on. As we wereweaving our way round the barriers, half watching the film trailers and halfwatching where we were going, DH said to me to just accept whatever version wewere offered, and not to make specific requests, as we had been asking for theWestern version for the last couple of years. Ironically, we then got the Westernversion! This was still a fun ride, welove this, although we do think the film at the very end could do withchanging, as we have seen the same movie clips for many years now.

    It was now time forour Toy Story Midway Mania FP+, so we headed there, and were on the rideshortly afterwards. I barely won this,and as we were exiting, I was rubbing my right arm vigorously. A passing Cast Member said I had "ToyStory Arm", apparently a known affliction after riding this ride!

    We wandered throughOne Man's Dream, watching the lovely video at the end, (for which DH managed tostay awake this year!), then the Little Mermaid show with a 10 min wait. (I tried not to spit at Ariel at the end ofthe show. It's probably not her faultthat most men find her very attractive).

    It was now time forour Star Tours FP+, and although the standby was showing as 20 mins, this was avery fast walk-on. We got the WookieWorld and a Death Star battle, so it was great to finally see some differentscenes.

    We walked round theback of the now-closed Backlot Tour, to have a look at Wandering Oaken's Outpostand the snow playground. We thought thiswas wow! There was real snow, Christmastrees, gorgeous blue lights everywhere, we loved it! I walked gingerly onto the snow in my Crocflip-flops so DH could take my photo in the snow. The store was lovely, Frozen stuff aboundedand it was full of hopeful little girls! I hugged a Sven and DH kindly offered to buy him for me, but I declined I have a lot of stuffed animals, and don't really need another one.

    As we exited, wesaw a bunch of CMs just hanging around outside, in what used to be theunloading area for the Backlot Tour. Weasked them where the theatre was for the Frozen Singalong show, as we had FP+for that next week. They pointed it outto us, and then one CM began to show us his collection of old park maps, whichwas fascinating! He had one from theearly 1990s, and the park looked so different then, but I remembered a lot ofit things like the area to meet the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the DickTracy area. There was also the workingfilm studio, which had a massive walk-through area where you would watch a shortfilm starring Bette Midler, see loads of film props, and we had once watchedSidney Poitier doing some filming for a television show. The CM was so interesting to talk to!

    Time for ourIndiana Jones show FP+ now, we hadn't seen the show for a couple of years andwanted to catch it just in case the rumours are correct and it goes soon. It was fun, we had forgotten how much weenjoyed it, but it was MUCH longer than we remembered, and we were nearly 20mins late meeting Robin & Larry (and Wes and Paula) afterwards, at theBacklot Express food court. We caught upwith them and apologised profusely, they were fine and it was so good to seethem again. They had decided to eat, andthen see the 8.00 p.m. Fantasmic show, (which had been added in as an extrashow for tonight). We chatted for about20 mins, but then had to leave as we had FP+ for Fantasmic as part of ourdining package at Mama Melrose earlier. We dashed across to the theatre, and just made it in time, being seatedin the Scar section we got there in 4 mins flat!

    The show waswonderful, as usual. We really love thebig dragon, he is so towering and intimidating! We did notice that the Little Mermaid boat didn't come out with theothers when the 'romance' segment is on, but she did make an appearance on thebig showboat at the end.

    Afterwards, wewalked back to the Streets of America to see the Osborne Family Lights. This was VERY crowded, but the lights wereamazing. We explored the side roads,watched the lights dancing, and hunted for the purple cat, but couldn't findit. As we walked back onto the mainstreet, we bumped into Larry again, and he directed us to where Robin wassitting on a bench at the end of the street, while he went off to take somephotos. We went over and sat with Robinfor a while, and we all watched the lights dancing and the snow falling. We were amazed to learn that they had neverseen this before, despite many visits to Walt Disney World over the years, butit turned out that they had never been to the Studios at this time of the yearbefore! They loved the lights,especially Paula, who is like a big kid where Christmas is concerned,apparently! Robin told us about the timethey were at Disneyland one Christmas time, when she and Paula were in floodsof tears, claiming that "it is the most wonderful time of the year, in thehappiest place on earth!".

    The guys haddecided to skip Fantasmic as it was so crowded, and see the lightsinstead. We were so glad they did, as itmeant we were able to watch them together! Paula told us where the purple cat was located, (although the next timewe visited the lights a few days later, we couldn't find him and think he hadbeen moved we never did see him this year, which is unusual for us!). We watched Larry singing into his cameratripod and dancing to Felice Navidad, a song we weren't familiar with beforenow, but which has come to haunt us ever since It is definitely an ear-worm, once it islodged in your head, you can't get rid of it!

    We wanted a phototaken with all of us, so Larry set up the timer on his camera, balanced it onthe tripod, and tried to get into the shot, but it all kept going horriblywrong, so in the end a very nice passing man offered to take the picture forus. Larry handed him the camera, and weall posed. And held that pose for, ooh,about 15 seconds, while the poor man tried desperately to get the camera towork. Larry suddenly realised he stillhad the timer switched on, and in a classic comedy moment, the minute hereached for the camera with both hands, the thing went off and took a photo! We finally got our picture, and it is lovely,as we are all laughing our heads off at the timer fiasco!

    Eventually, andstill not yet hungry enough to grab any proper food, we decided to leave around8.15 p.m. in order to try and beat the Fantasmic crowds out, so we said ourgoodbyes and left, although DH dithered about taking photos on the way out andwe very nearly got caught up in the crowds. We drove back to Saratoga Springs, stopped at Artist's Palette on theway to pick up coffee and hot chocolate, plus a cookie and rice krispie treat thatwe thought we could have for breakfast in the morning. Sadly, we have the collective willpower of adead gnat, and we ate them as soon as we got back to the room.

    Back to our room,TV, bed.

    DAY TWENTY Thursday 13 November

    Plan : BlizzardBeach, shopping day

    Actual : DH had avery bad attack of acid reflux during the night, (he takes regular medicationto combat this, but has been taking it last thing at night and we think thismay be too late in the evening from today we are going to try changing thisso that he takes it an hour before eating dinner), so he was feeling tired anda bit delicate. We therefore decided toleave Blizzard Beach till one day next week, and to have a swim in our resortpool today.

    We showered anddressed, then called my family via Skype, chatting to them for about 25 minutesin all. It was fun being able to gentlywave my iPad around, showing them the resort room, and the view from ourbalcony! All was well, apart from mysister having pulled a muscle in her shoulder whilst walking the dog, (he is abig, strong Border Collie!), and the fact that it has been cold and rainy therefor the last 2 weeks we took no pleasure in showing them our tans and thegorgeous blue sky outside, honestly!

    After we finishedtalking to them, we gathered up our laundry and a Purex washing sheet, andwalked over to the nearby pool. We putthe washing into a machine, then I realised we had forgotten to bring severalitems with us, so DH went into the water while I volunteered to go back to theroom for sunscreen, Carmex, refillable mugs, and DH's swimming goggles. To be fair, we hadn't realised there was aplace to get soda from in our mugs until we got to the pool! The food outlet there was closed when wefirst arrived, but there was a soda dispenser to the side of it. It was a very hot and sunny day, and Ithought we had best put some sunscreen on our faces and DH's shoulders,although he was also wearing a sunscreen t-shirt.

    I fetched themissing items, which was no big deal as our room was about a 3 minute walk fromthe pool, and then joined DH in the water. We swam, floated, chatted and generally relaxed for a good couple ofhours, during which time I got the laundry out of the washing machine, put theunderwear in the tumble drier, and draped the t-shirts, shorts, etc on sparesun loungers to dry in the sun. Therewere a couple of other folk at the pool, but not many, so we weren't taking uplounger space with our drying laundry that could be used by anyone else.

    At midday, the tinyfood outlet opened, and we decided to have lunch there, using counter-servicecredits. DH had a ham & cheesesandwich, while I ordered a tuna sandwich. Both were very fresh and really nice. I then had a cheesecake, which was light and delicious, and DH asked fora Mickey Premium bar, to be collected after he had eaten his sandwich. We got bottled water as they didn't do coffee.

    I went back tocollect his ice-cream bar, but when he saw it, he said he had meant a cookieice-cream sandwich. I offered to changeit, and took it back to the food outlet. The lovely CM was quite happy to change it, but said to keep theoriginal bar too I assume as it had been out of the freezer for a fewminutes, they don't like to put it back again. I took DH's ice-cream sandwich back to him, and gave the Premium bar toa small boy sitting near us, with his mum's permission. They were British, very friendly, and seemeddelighted with a free ice-cream for their (very polite!) little boy! (We watched them leave about 10 minuteslater, his little face was COVERED in ice-cream and chocolate and he was happilyfinishing off his treat!).

    After lunch, weswam for about another hour, and also went into the hot tub for 20 minutes orso. It was very hot in there! We finally dried off, collected the washing,and walked back to our room, having had a thoroughly good time.

    Back in the room, Itook a shower while DH fell asleep. WhenI was dried and dressed, I pottered on my iPad for a while before fallingasleep on the sofa for an hour. Finally,we woke up and DH had his shower. I fedhim his anti-acid reflux medication, too.

    About 5.00 p.m., wedrove to the boat dock, parked, and then waited about 10 minutes for a boat toDowntown Disney. We had a reservation atSplitsville, this would have been our night to dine at House of Blues, but thiswas when we saw the notice that said it was closed for a private party.

    We loved theconvenience of taking the boat across, it was so easy. Last time we had stayed at Saratoga Springs,our room had been at the opposite end to this time, and we had been able towalk to Downtown across a bridge. We hadenjoyed this, but we were just a bit too far to walk there this time.

    We were a bithorrified at the amount of construction walls at Downtown. We had never seen it like this before! All the walkways are narrowed down to justvery constricted corridors, with extremely high hoardings everywhere, so youbasically have no views of anywhere else. This made the whole thing very disorientating, as you couldn't see landmarksor anything to give you a sense of where you were at any given point. Disney had clearly tried to address thesituation by placing pockets of entertainers dotted around the walkways, therewas one man and his guitar, small bands, etc, to try and put some atmosphereback into the area. This was fine, butit also then made for pockets of crowded spaces, which were difficult tonegotiate! There was absolutely nothingto look at anywhere, and everyone seemed to be ploughing on to get somewhere,so you couldn't just relax and meander along, enjoying the views across thelake, or take a break and sit down somewhere there wasn't anywhere tosit! We found Downtown to be nowherenear as fun or exciting a place as we are used to it being. I'm sure it will be lovely when it becomesDisney Springs, but this really was a disappointing struggle this time around,and we felt sorry for anyone whose only visit to Downtown Disney was this year at least we will be back next year, when this area should be a lot nicer tovisit!

    We had finallybattled our way to Splitsville, and were seated quite close to our 6.05 p.m.reservation time. We both ordered baconcheeseburgers, which came with some really delicious crinkle-cut, chunkyfries. The burgers were very good, too. We then shared a warm brownie with ice-creamand cream, which was also delicious! Wehad Sprite to drink. The place wasreally lovely, although very noisy! After dinner, we watched some people bowling for a few minutes, andagreed that maybe we should have booked a lane to have a go ourselves. Maybe next time.

    We walked round toWorld of Disney, where we had intended to do some major shopping, but it washot and crowded in there, and we were tired and lethargic, so we left withoutbuying anything and went round to Basin as I wanted to get some soap forourselves and for gifts. (We had a bookof money-off vouchers, which included 10% off in Basin). We also went to Little Miss Matched to getsome socks for my daughter, who HATES socks that don't match, so I always gether some from here as it is funny to see her face when she opens them atChristmas! Bad mother.

    Ghirardelli's wasnext, for some assorted bars of chocolate and a bag of peppermint bark squares,although they had no pumpkin squares, (thank heavens we picked some up in Wal-Mart!),or milk chocolate drops, which we have had a problem getting for the lastcouple of years. I enquired at the cashregister whether they had stopped making these, and was told that they wereindeed still in production, and they may have some more stock arriving tomorrow. They said to call them and check. We still managed to spend nearly $100 inthere though! I got 10% off everythingwith a voucher, and then the staff member pointed out that on my till receiptwas another voucher for 10% discount, which didn't expire, which I popped in myhandbag for future use.

    We walked backtowards the boat dock after this, stopping at the Candy Cauldron to pick upsome Dr Pepper flavoured Jelly Belly Beans for my son for Christmas, (eurgh, IHATE Dr Pepper!), and got the next boat back to Saratoga Springs, laden downwith goodies!

    We loaded the carup with our shopping, drove to Artist's Point for coffee and hot chocolate inour refillable mugs, and then drove back to our room, where TV and bed called!

    DAY TWENTY-ONE Friday 14 November

    Plan : Epcot

    Actual : After a greatnight's sleep, with DH feeling lots better and not suffering from acid refluxat all last night, we got up early and got ready for our day at Epcot.

    It was a day ofcloud and light drizzle first thing, but we didn't let that stop us and got toEpcot at rope drop. The park was a lotquieter today, for the first time in our trip. We had been really surprised at the crowd levels up to now, we are usedto much lower crowds at this time of the year.

    We walked in andwent straight onto Spaceship Earth, pulling ever-more inventive faces for thephoto, and choosing "work" and "the city" as what was mostimportant and where we wanted to live, which is the complete opposite of how wereally feel! We love this ride, but dosometimes need to vary it up a bit.

    We went to the Landpavilion for breakfast coffee, pumpkin cheesecake for him, and a red velvetWhoopie Pie for me. Bearing in mind thatthe food would be snack credits, and the coffee paid for out of pocket, DH offeredto get the food if I got the coffee how I laughed! It made the CM serving us laugh too, when Iexplained why I was chortling in her queue! The food was excellent, I had never had a Whoopie Pie before but hadwanted to try it, and I love red velvet cake.

    Living with theLand was a straight walk-on, so we did that to give our breakfast time tosettle a bit, then it was time for our first FP+ of the day, so we rodeSoarin', noticing for the first time just how badly Patrick is edited to removethe words, "over California" when he says "Welcome toSoarin'". We hadn't noticed it verymuch before we saw the Anaheim version!

    Living with theLand was now showing as a 15 min wait, but we love it, so we queued for thatwhilst trying to think up alternative names for it. Larry once called it "Living with theLettuce", (and also, "It's a Small Lettuce), so we now tried to thinkof others Cruising with the Cucumber was one of mine, DH came up with"Riding with the Radish", which I thought was quite funny.

    We walked backround to Spaceship Earth for our second FP+ for today, and decided to chooseJapanese as our language, to see what Dame Judy Dench sounded like dubbed intoJapanese! Sadly, it wasn't her, it wassome bloke, but it was still quite funny.

    We then took a slowstroll round to France, taking our time and enjoying the sights, stopping verybriefly at the Lumberjack Show that has replaced Off Kilter. Not that we were really into Off Kilter, butthat was very popular and we dont think the Lumberjack Show has much of afuture, from what we saw of it. Anyway,10 mins later we checked in for our lunchtime reservation at Le Chef du France.

    It wasn't open whenwe first arrived, but after 5 mins or so we were taken through to be seated,along with several other folk. Ourserver was sweet, a very young and very French lad, who took the time toexplain everything to us in English, as we hadn't dined here before.

    We were blown awayby the quality of the food in here, it was amazing. DH had chicken, potatoes, and broccoli, andremembering the gorgeous short braised rib I had sampled at the Food & WineFestival earlier in the week, I ordered the same rib, with cheesy polenta, andcarrots. I wasn't sure about thepolenta, the taste was lovely but the texture was a bit weird, so I didn't finishall of that, but the meat was outstanding, and the carrots were perfect. The bread we were served was a short, warmbaguette in a paper bag, and was delicious. For dessert, DH had a chocolate mousse and I had profiteroles, againthis was so lovely. All the food herewas such good quality and flavour, we were delighted by this new diningexperience!

    When we finallyleft the restaurant, we decided to try something else new to us, and caught theFriendship boat across the lagoon to the Port of Entry. This was a lovely thing to do, so relaxing,and gave us a new perspective on the World Showcase, seeing the lands from thelagoon.

    We browsed bothPort of Entry stores, but didn't see anything we needed to buy. As we exited, we saw that Duffy was in his littlegazebo, wearing a Santa outfit, so we joined the short queue to meet him. He is one of the few characters that webother queueing for, and it was so worth it, he was very cute and interactive!

    The weather hadimproved a lot by now, the clouds had gone and the sun was out and hot. We walked round to the Imagination pavilion,and checked out Captain EO but a show had just started and the next one wasn'tfor another 18 mins, so we rode Journey into your Imagination with nowait. When we came out of there, theywere calling for last seats for Captain EO (with 30 seconds to go!), so weclearly timed that nicely, going into the theatre to watch the film, which wereally love.

    We walked outsinging away afterwards, and had a look round the Imagination store, where wepicked up a really cute, purple tie-died Figment t-shirt for myself and a brainexercise book for DH, (as he needs all the help he can get .).

    Test Track wasnext, where we joined the single rider queue and were allowed to design thebasic car for the first time in this queue, which was fun as we are quitecompetitive and enjoyed playing off our designs against each other. Even as single riders, it still took us 20mins to actually get into a vehicle.

    We just had time tovisit Ellen's Energy Adventure, (still fun!), before our FP+ time opened forMission Space (Green). Disappointed onceagain that we didn't actually exit onto Mars, we went back to Test Track foranother spin round through the single rider queue, (20 mins again).

    We then shopped ourway through Mousegear, seeing several things I wanted to pick up once we hadour free Disney Gift Card. (As part ofour booking package, we had received a voucher for a $200 gift card, but we hadto take the voucher and collect the card from World of Disney at Downtown, andI forgot to take the voucher with me when we were there last night! This is the third year in a row that we willhave had a gift card with our booking, and we usually spend it on nice thingsfor our home. I think the majority of itthis year is going to be spent in Memento Mori!) We picked up a couple of t-shirts and someother bits and pieces, and then DH took all the shopping back to the car whileI got us some coffee to share from the Electric Umbrella.

    When he returned,we sat on a wall, drank our coffee, and watched the dancing fountain for alittle while. It was nearly time for ourdinner reservation at Akershus, so we made our way round to Norway and bookedin. We had to queue outside for quite awhile, so we passed the time by discussing the demise of Maelstrom and how wefelt about Frozen being added. Whilst wereally like the film, (me more than him, I have a sister!), neither of us isvery happy about the addition of another animated film to one of the Countriesrepresented in World Showcase. In ouropinion, this is not what World Showcase was supposed to be about, and we thinkit will open the floodgates to sticking vaguely related films and merchandiseinto all of the pavilions. We'llsee. I have no doubt it will beextremely well done, as Disney never do things by halves, but we'll see.

    Anyway, rantingover, we were taken inside about 10 mins after checking in, which was good aswe were STARVING by this point. We hadour photo taken with Belle, which was cute, and then we were seated andunleashed on the buffet! We had a smallselection of cold meats, cheeses, bread rolls, and salad, before our maincourses arrived. DH had ordered avenison stew, (which I then ribbed him about mercilessly *Sven*coff*Bambi*coff*),and he said it was delicious, if very rich. I had a pork chop served with macaroni & cheese, which was reallygood. We then shared a dessert plate ofchocolate mousse, rice cream with strawberry sauce, (lovely, but very heavy anddense!), and apple cake. We had Spriteto drink, and the food was all very good indeed.

    During our meal, wewere visited by Aurora, Snow White, Ariel, Cinderella, and a squirrel! He suddenly shot into the restaurant, andthen there ensued the funniest 15 minutes! He was clearly frightened, and kept dashing under tables, making ladiesscream! He visited the restroom, whichemptied quite quickly screaming females running out and waving their arms, itwas like a comedy movie! At one pointthere was a chef running after him with a big white bucket, into which they hadplaced some bread to tempt him out. People were asking where Snow White was when you needed her! Poor little thing. In the end, they managed to chase him backout again through a back door (we think!).

    After dinner, wetook a slow walk round World Showcase, stopping just after Morocco in order towatch Illuminations Reflections of Earth, with no-one in front of us and onlya few folk behind us. I very nearly manageda whole show without tears!

    Afterwards, theweather had turned a little cooler, and as we had been in the park for justover 12 hours, we decided to leave, even though the park was offering ExtraMagic Hours that night. We had one lastride on Spaceship Earth, choosing German as our language and hoping for, butnot getting, a German Dame Judy, before driving back to Saratoga Springs forhot drinks and bed.

    DAY TWENTY-TWO Saturday 15 November

    Plan : MagicKingdom

    Actual : We were upnice and early this morning, and after our usual showers and coffee, headed outto the Magic Kingdom.

    The ferry queue washuge, as was the queue for the parks monorail, so we bypassed all of these andcaught the resort monorail instead (we are clever and know that the second stopthe train makes is at the Magic Kingdom!).

    We stopped inGoofy's Candy Company for a rice krispie treat for DH and a cashew chocolatepuddle for myself, but had to stand round the corner in our usual spot to eatthem as all the benches were taken.

    After breakfast, wewalked over to Fantasyland through the castle, and went to Mickey'sPhilharmagic, which was about to start so we had no wait at all.

    Our first FP+ todaywas for the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train, and we had decided that we would ask for 2rows, the way we always do on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, so see ifspreading out a bit would help with the lap bar situation. We were through the queue quite quickly, andwe asked for 2 separate rows. The CMstared at us blankly. We then tried toexplain that the lap bar cuts into DH's legs, and we had thought a row eachwould be a bit better for him. The CMtold us we still had to sit in one seat, but eventually loaded us into thefront of a train with a row each. Hemade us feel really uncomfortable about it! We got into our rows, and DH sat slightly sideways, with one leg eachside of the centre, and both lap bars down. This was a lot better for him, as each bar securely held him in placewithout cutting into him. However, theCM really didn't like this, and told him he had to sit properly in one seat,despite our explaining that this wasnt as secure as DH wasn't held in placeproperly. We really did feel awful aboutmaking such a fuss, and he didn't help at all he made a big deal of the wholething, making us feel as if we were causing trouble for him, and being awkward! It really took the shine off the ride, and wedidn't enjoy it as much.

    When we got off, DHasked to speak to a manager, who was very unsympathetic and told us to speak toGuest Relations about the situation. Whilst we can understand that CMs need to keep the load speed up and notallow any more empty seats than necessary, we did feel that we could have beenlistened to and dealt with a little more sympathetically the problem was nothow fat or thin someone is, it is their leg length, and DH can't help being6'2" tall with very long legs!

    We stomped off indisgust, and I took us on It's a Small World to make DH laugh, as I said it wasto cheer him up. I sang loudly at himall the way round, I am such a good wife!

    It was time forlunch now, so we decided to stay where we were and eat at Pinocchio's VillageHaus. We had chicken nuggets and fries,coffee and chocolate milk, and chocolate cake for DH with Mango Gelato forme. The gelato was extremely dense andheavy, I couldn't eat very much of it which was a waste really.

    The park was verycrowded again, and we hit the Village Haus at just the right time, as while wewere eating, we watched the queue to get in get longer and longer! There was also a mildly amusing scenefeaturing a balloon we watched a family put their balloon on a trash can, asit was a Mickey head shaped balloon and one of the ears had gone down. A lady cleaning the tables saw it a few minuteslater, and thought it had become detached from a stroller, so she draped theweight and thus the balloon over the handle of the nearest stroller. The family who owned that stroller came out,saw the balloon, undraped it and put it back on the trash can. A few minutes later, the cleaning ladyappeared again, and put the balloon back on another stroller! That family appeared soon afterwards, lookedat the balloon, shrugged, and gave it to their child, who seemed ecstatic,despite the deflated ear! Funny.

    After lunch and theunexpected entertainment, we walked back to New Fantasyland for our FP+ forUnder the Sea, which hadn't got much of a queue anyway. We had fun with Ariel again.

    When we came out ofthere, we walked across to the Beauty & the Beast store as I was lookingfor a gift for my sister, (this is her favourite Disney film). We found a gorgeous book, which is the storyof Beauty & the Beast but told from the Beast's point of view, so we gotthat for her.

    We visited therestrooms here, before going back to Frontierland and the Country BearsJamboree, which is always fun I love the inappropriateness of the songs inhere, and happily sang along to "Blood on the Saddle", and"Mama, Don't Whip Little Buford"!

    Our final FP+ ofthe day was for Big Thunder Mountain, so we went there next. We did our usual thing of asking for a roweach, which we have been doing for several years now with no issues at all, buttoday we had a shocking time! The CM,who was called Ricky, just stared at us when I asked for 2 rows, then insistedthat we ride together. I told him no, wealways have 2 rows because the lap bar curves at the sides and is uncomfortablefor Mr Long Legs here, (pointing at DH in a jovial manner, to try and keep thesituation a bit light). He tutted, wavedus to one side, and told us we would have to wait for several trains then! We gawped at him a bit, and then another CMcame over and waved us onto the next train, in 2 separate rows. The last we saw of Ricky was him stomping offwith a nasty scowl on his face, as he went off duty. Whether he was due a break anyway, or hadbeen told off for the way he dealt with us, I have no idea.

    I came out of therespitting feathers, I mean it was no big deal really, no-one died, but we havejust come to expect such high standards from Disney CMs that when somethinglike this happens TWICE in one day, it does upset me. I was all for going to City Hall to reporthim and shout at someone a bit, but DH made us go into the Enchanted Tiki Room(payback for It's a Small World, I guess), and I calmed down a bit after that,realising that shouting at someone who wasn't at fault wouldn't really haveachieved anything.

    I was still a bitgrumbly as we cut through the walkway with restrooms towards Liberty Square,where we paused to sit down and rest a bit, away from the crowds and theheat. We looked up just as Larry walkedtowards us! He sat with us for a fewminutes and let me rant at him a bit, before telling us that he had eaten toomuch waffle and fruit and had to visit the restrooms, and directed us to Robinwho was sitting in Liberty Square at a table with some handy stools. We made our way over to her, and sat andchatted for a while, before deciding to watch the parade together. We moved over to the other side of thewalkway, near the Christmas store, and stood a little way back from the 2 linesof people at the edge of the parade route, giving us a really good view.

    This was our firstexperience of the Festival of Fantasy parade, and we had really been lookingforward to it. We weren't disappointed! We thought the whole thing was amazing, fromthe brand new costumes, floats, and characters you don't normally see, (therewas one huge character, who looked like a mime, that we didn't recognise), throughto the incredible, fire-breathing dragon who we LOVED everything was sobright and vibrant! It did have theunfortunate effect of making some of the older characters, (Peter Pan, Wendyetc), look a bit drab, plain, and old-fashioned though, which is a shame. The stilt walkers were fabulous, we justloved the whole parade, and were really glad we would be seeing it again atsome point.

    As we were watchingthe parade, Larry suggested we should all go to Disneyland Tokyo together in acouple of years. He and Robin had been,and had loved it they said they would go back again in a heartbeat, althoughit was very expensive to visit. It issomewhere we would love to go, but hadn't seriously considered it justyet. We weren't sure whether he wasjoking or not when he said we should all go, and as they left us, skipping offhand in hand, to go back to their resort for a rest, we were left pondering theidea (and feeling a bit sad, as that would be the last time we would seeour lovely new friends for the foreseeable future. They were flying home very early tomorrowmorning).

    We walked toTomorrowland via a water fountain and the Tangled restrooms, (I had a case ofliquid misdistribution, which was a phrase Larry had coined I needed both adrink and a visit to the bathroom at the same time!), where we spotted a posterwith the unknown mime character in the parade on it aha, he is Ulf the PubThug in Tangled! We rode the TTA with nowait, where we spent some time discussing the possibility of a trip toDisneyland Tokyo, via a visit to Hong Kong Disneyland, as they are both on thesame side of the world. Maybe ..

    We then went to theMonsters Inc Laugh Floor show, as we haven't done that for a few years, and itwas good fun, but reinforced our feeling that we dont need to do this toooften.

    It was now time forour dinner reservation at Crystal Palace, so we wound our way round theconstruction walls, with DH stretching his arms about so he couldsurreptitiously take some photos of the building work going on to extend thewalkways at the hub, and checked in for dinner.

    We were seatedabout 5 mins later, and enjoyed couscous salad, turkey corn dog nuggets, (justme!), edamame salad, chicken nuggets, corn bread, rolls, and then beef, mashedpotatoes, peas & corn, and macaroni & cheese. We followed all this with apple &cranberry cobbler, and soft-serve ice-cream. What we love about this kind of buffet is the choice we are able tohave tiny, bite-sized portions of lots of different foods, which is reallylovely. We were also visited by Piglet(grr! I still don't like him!), Tigger,Pooh, Eeyore, and our server with lots of orange Fanta! I had 3 full glasses of Fanta, which was waymore than I normally drink with dinner, but I had a slight headache and think Imust have been a bit dehydrated. Theweather had been really hot and sunny all day, so I probably hadn't drunkenough throughout the day.

    After dinner, weexited into a still very crowded and busy park, not sure how much more wewanted to do today. Everything had longwait times, and there were people and strollers everywhere! We braved one long queue and rode Pirates ofthe Caribbean after a 30 min wait, justifying this to ourselves as time to letour dinner go down, but were beginning to flag after this. We checked both the Haunted Mansion and BigThunder Mountain Railroad, but both had 40 min wait times, and we had just hadenough of battling the crowds, so we decided to call it a day. We wove our way round people crowding theparade route waiting for the Main Street Electrical Parade, and left around8.30 p.m. There were still more folk pouringinto the Magic Kingdom at that time of night!

    We caught aferryboat back to the Transportation & Ticket Centre, drove back toSaratoga Springs, picked up coffee and hot chocolate in our refillable mugs,and headed for TV and bed, exhausted but happy.

    DAY TWENTY-THREE Sunday 16 November

    Plan : AnimalKingdom, Hollywood Studios

    Actual : It took usa while to get going this morning, over 3 weeks of vacation touring wascatching up with us! After the usualshowers/coffee, I attempted to add a FP+ for Fantasmic for tonight; however, aswe already had one for Toy Story Midway Mania, and they are both classed as a'Tier 1' attraction, we couldn't add Fantasmic without losing Toy Story, so wedecided to leave things as they were.

    We drove to theAnimal Kingdom and headed for Pizzafari for one of our favourite breakfasts atDisney World, the Bounty Platter bacon, scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes,French toast, sausage, and a yummy biscuit. Coffee and chocolate milk topped off the feast!

    After breakfast, wewalked round the park a little, stopping to watch the otters and the big, fatfish that are in the same tank. DH wentfor a restroom break while I watched the Flights of Wonder pre-show, then wewent into the theatre and found seats for the show.

    We do love thisshow, and really enjoyed it today too. ACM brought out a red-tailed hawk that was almost completely white she wasn'tquite an albino, as she still had coloured eyes and feet, and we were told shewould never have survived in the wild as she would have been attacked by otherbirds due to her colour.

    We took the trainover to Rafiki's Conservation Station, where we petted a rare Florida pythoncalled "Noodle", who was very cute! We went into the petting area, and once again happily patted sheep andgoats, whilst watching a very small goat trying (quite successfully) to eat alittle girl's long hair.

    Hands well washed,we avoided the CM trying to get a bunch of people to play a game with Chip& Dale, (we hate organised games!), and caught the train back to themainland, glad of a bit of shelter from the relentless sun today!

    We walked toHarambe, where the Kilimanjaro Safari ride was showing a 20 min standby time,so we did that. Still no lions, though!

    After this, we leftthe Animal Kingdom and drove to the Hollywood Studios, as we had a diningreservation later this afternoon, and the Animal Kingdom had been a bonus visitfor a spare morning.

    We went straight toToy Story Mania with our FP+, and DH beat me for the first time! He was ecstatic, me not so much. I'm still not sure how he is managing toimprove on these games, and my pride is severely dented. And I got Toy Story Arm again!

    As we left thebuilding, we turned immediate left and found a FP+ CM with an iPad. I asked her about the possibility of gettinga FP+ for Fantasmic that evening, and after some juggling around as the systemwas offering FP+ for the 8.00 p.m. show but we were after the 6.30 p.m. show,she successfully secured us tickets for the earlier show, plus FP+ for IndianaJones which was starting shortly. Wewent straight round to Indy, and thoroughly enjoyed the show again.

    Afterwards, it wastime for our early dinner reservation at the 50's Prime Time Diner. We checked in, but had quite a wait to beseated. However, once seated in a smallside room, we had great fun. Our 'mom' wasreally good, she told me off for inadvertently putting my elbows on the table,and made everyone say 'please' all the time, she was really good! We chatted a lot with the families on bothsides of us to our left was a mother and daughter, who were on the DeluxeDining Plan I have no idea how they were coping with that, as they were bothquite slim and the bigger dining plan is 3 courses per table service credit,twice a day! I would have exploded withall that food! They did say that theywere eating at signature restaurants a fair bit, which takes up 2 table servicecredits per booking, but that is still one heck of a lot of food in one go! The family on the other side of us werereally nice, too they had two extremely well behaved little girls, which waslovely to see.

    Anyway, we orderedour dinner and both had Aunt Liz's Golden Fried Chicken, DH having the garlicmash and me substituting fries, and both with corn too. DH got Sprite, while I opted for a vanillamilkshake, which was so thick I could hardly get it out of the glass! The chicken was gorgeous, and the portionswere huge! We struggled to pick adessert that didn't sound as if it would be too large, and DH got a Dad'sBrownie Sundae, while I had a 50's Boston Cream Parfait layers of chocolatefudge, pound cake, and vanilla cream, topped off with more cream it was sodelicious that I managed to eat most of it!

    We waddled out ofthere and slowly across the park to the Fantasmic theatre, past the hugecrowds, and managed to get really good seats in the Scar section again, usingour FP+. We spent quite a bit of timewatching the Glow with the Show ears this time, noticing that whenever watersprayed out over the audience, the Ears all flashed blue, it wasinteresting. The show was beautiful, asalways.

    We left the parkafter this, and drove over towards the Magic Kingdom to get some gas from theHess station there. We reckoned thatanother $20-worth should last us until the end of the holiday.

    We then drove backto the Saratoga Springs boat dock, parked up, and waited about 15 mins for thenext boat to Downtown, where we walked to World of Disney to pick up our $200Disney Gift Card. We also checked to seeif Ghirardelli's had the chocolate drops in yet, but they didn't. We caught another boat to take us from theMarketplace back over to the resort dock, where a boat was waiting to go backto Saratoga Springs so we boarded that and were back home quickly. Back to our room, TV, bottles of icedStarbucks Frappuccino, bed.

    DAY TWENTY-FOUR Monday 17 November

    Plan : Epcot

    Actual : When wegot up this morning, it was to find a pizza advertising leaflet pushed underour door, to my intense irritation. Thiswas the first one we had found this year, and I had been commenting to DH lastnight that I liked the fact that the security officers ask for your parkingpass and Magic Band to scan every time we enter Saratoga Springs, as it made mefeel more secure here. In previous yearswe had received loads of these leaflets, and I hate the idea that someone isskulking around the resort rooms during the night.

    Anyway, weshowered, dressed, etc., and drove to Epcot, a bit later than planned as we hadfaffed about a bit this morning. Therewas a little lizard darting about the queue at bag check, which was causingsome consternation as he was nearly run over several times by wheelchairs andstrollers! A woman was trying to catchhim with her hands, to put him safely out of the way, but of course this justmade him dart about faster! It was quiteamusing, seeing the amount of kerfuffle caused by one small lizard!

    By the time wereached the Land pavilion, it was 9.30 a.m. and Soarin' was already showing a50 min standby, so we just went onto Living with the Land (Lettuce), as it wasa straight walk-on. Breakfast was next,a couple of Breakfast Platters from Sunshine Seasons, plus coffee. Yum!

    We decided to watchthe Circle of Life film, as we hadn't done that for years, and it was reallylovely, we'd forgotten how interesting it was. We seemed to be doing a lot of rides and shows this year that we hadn'tdone in a long time, this was definitely our year for slowing down and smellingthe roses a lot, rather than rushing from ride to ride.

    It was now time forour FP+ for Test Track, but the queue still took 35 mins to get through! As we exited, we had enjoyed ourselves somuch that we went straight back on again, in the single rider queue, notbothering to redesign a new car but just using the one we had justdesigned. We were back on again in justa few minutes, which was great.

    Mission Space(Green) was showing its usual 5 min wait, so we rode that, and followed that upwith a quick trip on Spaceship Earth using our FP+, opting to stick withEnglish this time, but trying again to pull extreme faces during the photo, andchoosing options at the end that were different to previous choices, for a bitof variety!

    We had now finishedall our FP+ passes for the day, so we went into Innoventions East to try andsecure one for Soarin', at some point today. We weren't really sure where the FP+ machines where, and the first placewe went to, (that we thought was the right place), turned out to be justcomputer links for accessing your "My Disney Experience" account, whichdoesn't yet have the ability to give you FP+ choices in-park, (the CM I sawthere told me it was 'coming soon'). Ileft DH in there taking photos, (we haven't been in either Innoventions foryears, and we were quite surprised at how much has changed in them!), andfollowed the signs for the FP+ machines, which turned out to actually beoutside, in between the two Innoventions buildings.

    I approached themachines, and a CM called Paul came over to help me. It turned out he was originally from Glasgow,so we chatted about that for a little while, (we had been to Glasgow for theCommonwealth Games earlier in the year), before he asked me what I was lookingfor. When I told him I was after acouple of FP+ for Soarin, he told he they were all gone for the day,unfortunately. He was able to give metwo paper FastPasses that didn't expire until 30 November, and were good forriding Test Track, Living with the Land, and Spaceship Earth, but didn't coverSoarin'. I thanked him and went back toDH, who was fascinatedly watching The Sum of All Thrills. We had been on this simulator a few yearsago, (when it was a standard simulator that people sat in), after havingdesigned the mildest roller coaster ride that we could. It is now an individual seat that is mountedon a long robot arm, that kind of waves about wildly in the air, while therider is half-encased in a touch-screen device thingy. We didn't want to ride it, but it was veryinteresting to watch other people experiencing it, little legs dangling in theair! Amazing technology.

    On our way out ofthe building, we noticed a show was about to start called StormStruck, aboutthe potential effects of a big storm on houses, so we joined the small queueand went in to watch. It wasinteresting, and we hadn't done this before, so we quite enjoyed it. However, it isn't something we felt we neededto do more than once. As we were waitingto enter the tiny theatre, we were fascinated by the Cast Member running theattraction, as she had clearly done this so many times that she was absent-mindedlymiming along to all of the automatic announcements!

    After the show, wewaked back round to Test Track thinking to go on the single rider versionagain, but the weather had taken a turn for the worst and it was raining alittle, so the ride had closed down. Wedecided to visit Club Cool as we hadn't done that yet this trip. I got some Vegibeta, which is my favourite asit tastes like apricots, and then we tried something new that tasted likeraspberry flavoured medicine yuck! DHdecided to drink a full cup of Beverley, just to be contradictory his facewas a picture!

    We took a quickrestroom break, then went to explore the Living Seas. This area was quite crowded, as people weresheltering from the rain! I wasn'tbothered about the clam shell ride, as this just doesn't appeal to me, but DHwanted to do it as he said it was cute, so we joined the short queue and weresoon pointlessly clamming past a handful of real fish and substantially moreprojected cartoon fish. Still, DH washappy.

    We explored thefish tanks, trying to avoid people in dripping ponchos, and watched some diversin the main fish tank for a while. Wecouldn't see the dolphins anywhere, no idea where they were, but there were acouple of cute manatees which entertained us for a bit. I love manatees, and they do reinforce mythinking that eating lettuce clearly makes you rotund ..

    We weren't fussedabout Turtle Talk with Crush, as we saw that last year, so we fought our waypast all the sheltering people in the doorway, and paddled over to theImagination pavilion, (it was raining quite heavily by now!). Captain EO was 7 mins away from the nextshow, so we went in and waited, enjoying the pre-show first. I really enjoyed the film again, but DHnapped throughout the whole thing!

    The rain wasslightly lighter when we exited, so we began a slow stroll around WorldShowcase, starting with Mexico. Wedidn't explore any of the Countries in detail, just walked slowly round,stopping in Norway for coffee. When wegot to the American Adventure, we discussed watching the show there, but as itwasn't due to start for another 15 mins, and is then 30 mins long, we realisedthat it would run into our dinner reservation time, so we just turned aroundand walked back to Germany. I wanted toget an engraved glass for my sister as a Christmas gift, so we selected areally pretty one with Belle on it, and completed the personalisation form, andthe form to have it delivered directly to our resort.

    It was nearly timefor our dinner reservation, so we checked in at Biergarten in Germany. We had to wait an age to be seated, probablyabout 15 mins past our reservation time, and for the first time in our diningexperiences here, we didn't really talk to our table-mates at all. We normally get on really well with them, andspend lots of time chatting away and learning about each other, but this timeour dining companions were a family of five, and one single male, none of whom evenattempted to talk to us at all! Thefamily only had one child with them, a girl of about 11 or 12 years old, whowas very precocious and self-confident, to the point of being irritating andattention-seeking. We did try to engagethem in conversation, but they gave us one-word answers to our questions andthen went back to talking amongst themselves, (although the family did includethe single male in with their conversations), so we gave up on them and justtalked to each other. Maybe they justdidn't feel like being sociable. Anyway,we enjoyed roast pork, salads, hot and cold potato salad, and pretzel bread,before finishing this off with Bavarian cheesecake, Black Forest Gateau, andfruit compote. It was all delicious!

    After dinner, wecontinued our walk around World Showcase, stopping when we got to France inorder to watch Illuminations. The areawas very quiet, in fact the whole park was really quiet by now, it had stoppedraining, and we were able to lean on a damp railing and enjoy the show withoutanyone else around us. I actuallymanaged not to cry this time!

    We walked slowlyback towards the park entrance, stopping at a kiosk on the bridge between WorldShowcase and Future World to pick up a really cute Tinker Bell phone charm,that is just a green, sparkly ball of foam with tiny wings on it, and a Mickey& Minnie 'Feliz Navidad' pin, to remind us of the Christmas song we hadkept hearing this visit.

    We then went intoMousegear, and picked up the things we had spotted previously a really sweetlittle Mickey Mouse fridge magnet clock, a cooking timer that was also a fridgemagnet, and was modelled on the "Standby Time" countdown timer atPeter Pan's Flight, and some tiny Mickey ears shaped post-it notes. I used the Gift Card for the fridge magnets.

    We were pretty muchdone by now, and the park was closing, so we headed back to Saratoga Springsfor some last minute TV, and bed.

    DAY TWENTY-FIVE Tuesday 18 November

    Plan : PossibleBlizzard Beach, shopping, Magic Kingdom for dinner

    Actual : We sleptin this morning, which was lovely! Whenwe finally got up, we spent our time relaxing, having showers and coffee, andgenerally getting a bit of much-needed rest. The weather was quite cool, and I know that Blizzard Beach closes whenthe temperature drops, so we decided to just leave the water park for thistrip.

    Around 11.30 a.m.we drove out to the 192, (weirdly, just before we left Disney property, Ispotted a full-size military tank reversing into some shrubbery at the side ofthe road what was that about?? MaybeDisney are cracking down on queue jumpers ..), and went to Denny's for a latebreakfast, with DH getting a Pumpkin Pancake Slam, and me having a Build YourOwn Slam. Both were very good.

    The Super Wal-Martwas next, when we went in with a big list of things to get, and got most ofit! Things like Reece's Puffs, Dovedeodorant, cinnamon toothpaste, Cheeto's and Lay's chips, peanut butterM&Ms, Cheezits, etc. We were pleasedwith our haul, a lot of what we had got was for Christmas presents for friendsand family. In addition, I managed toget a SIM card for the phone, although by now I would only have half a week touse all the credit up, as it expires after a couple of months! (After a discussion about this with Larrylast week, I have decided to give up on this phone and pick up a cheap Pay AsYou Go phone from the UK, to use for next year).

    We drove to theNike store as I was thinking of getting some new trainers, but it has reallygone downhill over the last couple of years. There was nothing in there that I liked, but in addition, everything wasreally expensive, compared to how it always used to be. I wasn't really disappointed, as I hadn'texpected to find anything I liked, but we were shocked at the prices I usedto be able to pick up trainers from there for around $20-30 a pair, now theystarted at $50+! It was all expensiveand yet rubbish quality, and cheap-looking styles. Unsurprisingly, we left without buyinganything.

    We then drove toSuper Target, as we were having problems with our Bobble refillable bottles the filters were blocked, making it very difficult to actually get any liquidout of the bottles. I bought these lastyear, and we were using them for a second year now, but I think putting thedrinks powders into the water in them had caused the filters to block up. I had checked on the internet, and Target wassupposed to be stocking the replacement filters, but unfortunately this Targetdidn't have any.

    We drove back toSaratoga Springs, where I threw away the old Bobble filters, washed out thebottles and put them into our Owner's Locker box, and ordered some new filtersfrom Amazon to be delivered to our home in the UK, and we will bring them withus next year. For the rest of thisyear's vacation, we could just reuse some ordinary water bottles we had.

    We unloaded theshopping, added the credit to the phone, then went back out again, driving tothe Magic Kingdom. At least the weatherhad dried up today, it was sunny, but the temperature had dropped quite a bit,now being in the upper 40's to lower 50's.

    It only took us 35mins to get from Saratoga Springs to actually walking into the Magic Kingdom,which wasn't bad for mid-afternoon, we thought. Our first FP+ today was for Peter Pan's Flight, and it was a good job wehad the FastPasses because the standby time was 80 mins! We do like this ride, but can never understandthe perpetual and huge queues for it it never seems to get less, no matterhow old the ride becomes. With ourFastPasses, we were on the ride really quickly, and we enjoyed our Flight.

    We next checked theHaunted Mansion, but the park was quite crowded and this was showing as a 35min wait, so we went shopping in Memento Mori instead, using our Gift Card topick up a couple of cushions, a big egg-timer with purple sand, and acandlestick. We had this all sent backto the resort, apart from a bag of purple and green popcorn (for my daughter),which we had to take with us as they wouldn't ship it for some reason.

    We walked round toFantasyland, and checked out Winnie the Pooh's Hunny Ride, but that was 35 mins. Everywhere was so crowded and busy! We gave up trying to ride anything, and justsat on a small wall by the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train for a little while, until itwas nearly time for our dinner reservation.

    At about ten to 5,we checked in at the podium for dinner at Be Our Guest. We were asked to wait on the bridge, whichwas strangely empty when we got there, and a CM there told us that due to theweather being a bit cold, we could wait in the foyer of the restaurant. We went inside and discovered that that waswhere all the crowds were! We hungaround with everyone else, and a CM came round with tiny cups of complimentaryhot chocolate for everyone, which was lovely. We had to smile at how wrapped up against the cold everyone was we thoughtit was a bit nippy out, but it didn't call for hats, big coats, gloves andscarves, which a lot of folk seemed to be wearing! I guess if you are used to hot and sunnyweather all year round, when the temperature drops below 60 degrees you aregoing to feel chilly. Being from the UK,we are used to much cooler weather than this, even in summer!

    We were calledabout 15 mins late for our reservation, but we kind of expected that, as theplace was so busy. We were seated in theWest Wing for the first time, which was exciting! The atmosphere and theming in there isamazing, we couldn't stop watching the rose drop its petals, and the portraitflashing between a picture of the young master, and the Beast. Our server was really busy, and it took her awhile to get to us, but that was okay, it wasn't her fault. DH ordered the pan-seared chicken breast,while I had the herb-crusted lamb rack, which was served with what I thoughtwas mashed parsnip, but according to the menu, was buttered celery root; eitherway, it was buttery and delicious! Thefood was gorgeous, really good quality ingredients.

    Dessert was : DH the grey stuff; me an orange chocolate clair. We had to wait quite a while for dessert tobe served, our poor server was rushed off her feet and she brought the desserttrolley to us, but then had to rush off somewhere else and just left it therefor ages. She was very apologetic whenshe did reappear, and we told her not to worry, although she was lucky wehadn't just opened the trolley and eaten its entire contents! Our desserts were yummy.

    After we hadfinished dinner, we walked round the Ballroom to have a look round, and watchedthe snow falling out of the back windows. Then we queued up to meet the Master in his greeting room, and have ourphoto taken with him. He was lovely!

    By the time weleft, the park had quietened down quite a lot, which was nice. We went to the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train with ourFP+, and got straight onto the ride. This ride is AMAZING at night! Wesuspected it would be, as Big Thunder Mountain is fantastic at night, and itmore than met our expectations. Wesquished into one row together, and DH just sucked up the leg discomfort andconcentrated on enjoying the ride.

    We walked round toIt's A Small World, which was a straight walk-on and was fun, as usual. The park really was a lot more emptynow! The Main Street Electrical Paradewas scheduled to be on twice this evening, so we took advantage of this andwhen it was on for the first time, we hit a couple of rides Haunted Mansionwas a walk-on, and then we followed this with our final FP+ for the night, BigThunder Mountain just "wow" in the dark.

    We went back to thehub to watch Wishes, and noticed that this area was quite crowded. CMs were stopping people from walking to thehub from the sides, and telling them that the viewing area was full and theirbest option would be to watch the fireworks from near the Haunted Mansion. Huh? We have seen it from there before, it is a rubbish place to watch themfrom as they don't frame the Castle! They were being very shouty, but it didn't stop a couple of people fromignoring them and just walking across the bridge from Adventureland to thehub. Eventually, so many guests werecomplaining and moaning at them, that they let us across the bridge, and wefound somewhere to stand and watch the show quite easily. I have seen this area much, much more crowdedthan this before, and was therefore surprised at how controlling the CMs wereattempting to be here. This wassomething new to us, we had never noticed them trying to control the crowds tothis extent before.

    Anyway, we reallyenjoyed the fireworks show, and when it was over, we made our way back round toAdventureland for Pirates of the Caribbean, with a mere 5 min wait. Back round to Big Thunder Mountain, which werode twice in a row with no wait (and with separate rows, with no fuss!).

    Back to the hubagain, for the Main Street Electrical Parade's second showing, and there wasalmost no-one else there! We were ableto sit on a nice bench near the Partners statue for 10 mins, and didn't get upand stand by the kerb until we heard the parade music starting. There was just one row of very spread-outpeople standing in front of us, we had an excellent view of the parade floats.

    Afterwards, wewandered slowly back down Main Street to Goofy's to pick up some fudge with oursnack credits, (peanut butter x 1 piece, and chocolate peanut butter x 1piece). It was a bit more crowded inthere, as lots of people had the idea of getting something on their wayout. There was a HUGE family in front ofme, they ALL joined the queue, and all wanted something different from thecabinet. They also didn't know how manysnack credits they had left on their plan, and took the opportunity to get theCM on the cash register to check for them, despite the MASSIVE, TIRED, andIRRITATED queue behind them!

    Fudge finally inhand, we walked to the Ferry terminal, which was empty apart from us and onelady with a pushchair (and child in it!). The ferry arrived quickly, we both got on, and it departed with just 4passengers!

    We were quite coldand tired by this point, and were glad to get back to Saratoga Springs and bed!

    DAY TWENTY-SIX Wednesday 19 November

    Plan : HollywoodStudios

    Actual : We sleptwell again, got up and did the usual coffee & shower thing, and then headedout to the Hollywood Studios for the last time this trip.

    We grabbed a cherryDanish and coffee at a very crowded Starring Rolls, and at the bottom of ourreceipt was a voucher for 20% off merchandise at a variety of stores, all overDisney World property, although it had to be used before 1.00 p.m. So after breakfast, we went into Mickey's ofHollywood, and did the shopping that we would have done anyway, but with 20%off! I picked up some Disney food airfresheners for gifts, (popcorn, Dole Whips etc), a couple of bags of HolidayPretzels for work, some fluffy, red bed socks for my daughter, etc. We had it all sent back to the resort, exceptfor the pretzels, which again they wouldn't ship back. I made DH go out of the store then while Ipicked him up a Grumpy Christmas t-shirt, and then he sent me out while he gotme a lovely Tinker Bell watch for Christmas, and a couple of Tinker Bell pins one for me, and one for a female friend. While I was waiting around near the entrance to the store at one point,a guest came up to me and asked me where the nearest mailbox was! She saw my silver Minnie ears, and apparentlyassumed I worked there! I wouldn't mind,but I didn't even have my "Guest of Honour" nametag on, as I waswearing a floaty top that I hadn't wanted to pierce with a pin today! (That nametag was still getting me lots ofattention from CMs, all of whom wanted to know where I had got it from, whichdivision of Disney I worked for, or what made me a 'guest of honour'.)

    It was time for ourFP+ for Toy Story Midway Mania, so we headed round there, but there seemed tobe a suspicious lack of people queueing for it when we arrived, we discoveredwhy it had gone down. We were told wecould either wait, but they didn't know how long we would be waiting for, or wecould use our FP+ at any time throughout the day and it would be honoured. As our next FP+ was time-specific for aperformance of Frozen Singalong, we hung around for a few minutes, but then optedto come back later.

    The weather was abit weird today, it was still cool and cloudy, but there was a point at whichwe happened to glance into the sky and DH saw a very long and thin tornado! We warily watched it for a few minutes, althoughno-one else seemed to be panicking, and it finally dissipated.

    We made our wayover to what used to be the Hunchback of Notre Dame show theatre, and joinedthe huge FP+ queue for the next Frozen Singalong show. The queue began to move, and then wound its wayinto the theatre quite quickly. Wethought it was warmer in the theatre than it was outside, which was a bitironic, given the show we were about to watch!

    The theatre waspacked, but we found seats quite easily, right in the centre, (once the womanin front of us had stopped faffing about with her child and had finally pickedsome seats!). The show was incredible! It was so much better than we were expecting,I had only booked these FastPasses to see what all the fuss was about, but itreally entertained us it was very funny, the two narrators, (the ArendelleHistorians), were so good, they really made the adults laugh with some of theirmore subtle jokes, (apparently, they used to be Comedy Warehouse performers), andthe whole show was really well done and very moving. We were so surprised to enjoy this as much aswe did! (DH calls the Frozen girls, Elsie& Agnes he thinks he is funny). Thisshow was the surprise hit of the vacation.

    After the show, wewent back to Toy Story Mania, which seemed to be up and running again, andjoined the FP+ queue. It seemed to takeages to get to the front of the queue, almost as if they were still havingtrouble with the ride .. We boarded,rounded the first corner, did the practice shots, and then the ride VERYabruptly came to a complete stop. We satthere for a couple of minutes while 'stay in your vehicle' type announcementswere made, (we have been trapped by a very strong metal lap bar, how are wegoing to NOT stay in the vehicle??), and then the announcement changed and wewere told we were going to be evacuated. In all my 25 years of visiting Walt Disney World, I have never been evacuatedfrom a ride before, and whilst it was not quite my dream evacuation, (whichwould be from Spaceship Earth), it was still quite cool! I was quite excited by this, and DH was veryquickly taking lots of surreptitious photos. This was an amazing co-incidence as well, as Larry & Robin had beenevacuated from this ride a few days ago, their first one too! Larry had been told off a number of times fortaking photos as they were exiting, so this is why DH had to be sneaky aboutit. Really, there aren't many surprisesto the pictures he took though just some of the ride projectors, and thefloor around the vehicles. We were toldour FP+ would be put back on our Magic Bands for use again later.

    We were a bithungry by this point, but not sure what we wanted to eat, so we ended up goingback to Starring Rolls to get a turkey sandwich, chips, and a huge white choc chipcookie, to share. We also had coffee.

    We timed this a bitbadly though, as we had to shove the food down quickly, and then rush round tothe Lights, Motors, Action theatre a bit sharpish our FP+ booking only had avery small window for the show. We justmade it!

    It was a fabulousshow, and we really liked the new, (if a little short), segment with LightningMcQueen in it halfway through.

    We went back to ToyStory Mania AGAIN, and this time, we finally got to finish the ride, with DHwinning by a small margin. Hmm - heseems to be getting better at these games! We sat down for a couple of minutes on a bench near the Voyage of theLittle Mermaid, to have a drink and just rest for a moment. While we were there, a CM came up to me and toldme how gorgeous she thought my dress was, she said she had seen it earlier inthe day and thought it was lovely! Thatwas most kind of her, and I thanked her for her comments. (I was wearing a very flared, long blue skirtthat was darker at the bottom than the top, and scattered with silversequins. Over the top, I had a verybright white, floaty, sleeveless top, with a big, blue and silver butterfly hand-paintedon the front, and with 2 rows of silver sequins around the neck.)

    The Great MovieRide was next, as it was down to a 10 min wait, and we got the Western sideagain, without asking maybe this will turn into the only one we ever ridenow, and in the future we will have to request the Gangster side!

    We spent some timelooking at the hand and footprints outside the Movie Theatre, as this issomething we don't normally do and we were keen see who was representedthere. It was interesting, and we spentabout 20 mins doing this, as the weather had warmed up a bit and it was quitepleasant out now.

    Time for our nextdinner reservation loomed, and we walked across to the Hollywood Brown Derby tocheck in. The young lady who showed usto our seat was from the UK, and we got chatting to her. She was on the student programme, had been inFlorida for nearly 6 months, and would be heading home in the next fewweeks. She had had a wonderful time, andit was really interesting talking to her, she was lovely! She told us she really wanted to eventually workfull time for Disney, and we wished her luck with her future aspirations.

    Our serverappeared, and DH ordered the pork tenderloin, with ginger ale to drink, whilstI opted for the Filet of Beef. Both werereally good, and we had high hopes for our desserts, which have been quitespectacular here in the past. There wasa new dessert menu on offer, so we picked 3 mini desserts each, and this waswhat we had and our verdict :-

    DH : warm berry cobbler blueberry, but unfortunatelythe fruit had no flavour whatsoever
    Amaretto flan light, whippedmousse, which he loved
    Chocolate sphere with orange white chocolate mousse delicious flavour,but VERY weird, chewy texture.

    Me : banana toffee cake not much toffeeflavour, everything overwhelmed by banana
    Chocolate sphere I felt much thesame as DH about this, very odd texture
    Mini Grapefruit cake very little actual cake, and a lot of very, verysweet frosting with a tiny sliver of dried grapefruit, (which is normally myfavourite bit!).

    We thought that thebest bit of the desserts was the orange & strawberry pearls on the bananatoffee cake, which burst in your mouth and were full of flavour. The rest of it was a hugedisappointment! We have eaten here severaltimes before, and we loved the idea of being able to choose 3 tiny, different desserts, but sadly they just didn'tdeliver on their expected promise. Sucha shame.

    After dinner, wewalked round to the Streets of America to have a look at the Osborne Lights,but the area was very crowded and we were tired by now, so we only spent about30 mins watching the lights and then left, driving back to Saratoga Springs.

    When we got back,we changed our clothing for swimwear, and in my case, a dress over the top,collected all our dirty laundry, put it in the car, and then drove to CongressPark. We found the swimming pool andlaundry room we had used 2 years ago, and put the laundry on to wash, beforewalking across the new bridge to Downtown Disney. We picked up a couple of small items fromWorld of Disney, then checked Ghirardelli's for chocolate drops. They still only had the ones with the whitebits on them, (non pareils), so we took a chance that they would be okay, andbought 4 tubs of them. I was able to usemy 10% discount voucher here, and they gave me another one, which Iconsequently folded up carefully and left in our Owner's Locker box for nextyear!

    We then called intoEarl of Sandwich and got 2 counter service meals a Full Montague sandwich, anHawaiian BBQ sandwich, two brownie crme sandwiches, and coffees. Everything except the coffee would be put inthe fridge for tomorrow's lunch.

    We walked back overthe bridge to the laundry room, put our newly washed clothes in the dryer, thensat in the pool hot tub, drinking our coffee and relaxing for half an hour.

    We eventuallygathered up the dry laundry, and drove back to our room, where we showered, hungup the wet t-shirts to dry, and watched some TV before bed. Another very full and exhausting, but funday!

    DAY TWENTY-SEVEN Thursday 20 November

    Plan : Pack, MagicKingdom for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

    Actual : We sleptin a bit, then got up to do the dreaded packing this morning! We hate this job, but because we hate it, weusually leave it till the last possible minute, then are up till stupid o'clockin the morning doing it the night before we fly home. So, this time we wanted to get it out of theway as soon as we could.

    Therefore, we spentthe next 2 hours with all four cases spread out on the beds, very carefullyand cleverly packing so that everything fitted into the cases, and managed toget 90% of it finished. (DH really isThe Master of Packing, he always manages to fit "Oh my life, we bought allthat??" amounts of stuff into the cases!) The last few bits can be done on Saturday morning. We also had a break at midday and ate oursandwiches and brownies from the Earl of Sandwich.

    By 1.30 p.m. we haddone as much as we could, and we were bored of packing by then, so we headedout to the Magic Kingdom. As we weredriving there, we saw an armadillo on the grass verge, followed a couple ofmiles later by another one!

    We caught the ferryfrom the Ticket & Transportation Centre, and were pleased to note on ourarrival at the park that it was only moderately busy. We made our way down Main Street, (via theEmporium to pick up a bronze-coloured Mickey ears wine-bottle stopper), to thehub, where we found the FP+ viewing area for the Festival of Fantasyparade. We entered, it was already quitebusy in there but we walked round a little and found a good viewing spot,directly opposite the castle, and had half an hour to wait. We watched a couple of young lads try to stepover the taped barrier to get into the viewing area, and they were promptlydescended upon by 3 CMs, who smartly turfed them out again!

    The parade wasamazing, we loved it as much as we had the other day, and were so glad we hadmanaged to see it for a second time. Thedragon was still the highlight!

    We walked round toAdventureland to check Pirates, but it was showing as 30 mins and we knew itwould be less later, when the general crowds had left the park, so we had aquick restroom break and then went to sit by the entrance to Big ThunderMountain for 5 mins, to pass some time.

    The standby wasn'ttoo bad, 30 mins, but we went on with our FP+ and were quickly on board theWildest Ride in the Wilderness.

    After this, we tooka break near Columbia Harbour House, with cups of coffee. The small stools there are not the mostcomfortable, but the area does have a tendency to be quiet.

    At about 4.00 p.m.,we walked all the way back down Main Street, looking for the Christmas Partywristband distribution, but couldnt see anything promising. We picked up a party guide map, went out tothe entrance, and were told that we would have to exit the park and then comeback in again if we wanted to get our wristbands from there, which we didn'tparticularly want to do, or we could just go to Tomorrowland. Grumbling a bit, we went back down Main Streetagain and turned right just before the hub hoardings, cutting through theTomorrowland Plaza, and into Tomorrowland that way. There was a small queue which we assumed wasfor the party wristbands, so we tagged onto the end of it.

    The queue went downquite quickly as they had a number of CMs with iPads doing the wristbanding,and when our Magic Bands were scanned, our tickets showed up so we got ourlovely wristbands, did a little happy dance with the CM, and went off to do funthings!

    DH wanted to tryStitch's Great Escape, but I have never fancied this ride/show, so I held hisbackpack and camera, and he went in on his own. It was only a 5 min wait, and I found a bit of wall to sit onoutside. He came out afterwards, andsaid he was glad he had done it, but he didn't feel the need to ever botherwith it again. I gleefully said,"told you so!"

    Our final FP+ oftoday was for the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train, so we went there next, and it was greatfun again.

    The park was stillquite crowded, but people were beginning to leave, so we decided to eatnext. We walked round the back of theCastle to Pecos Bills, and went up to order our Deluxe Angus DoubleCheeseburgers, the yummy ones with BBQ sauce and onion rings on it, nom nomnom. Only to find out that just one weekearlier, they had been discontinued!! Wewere quite upset about this, but quickly realised that moaning about it wouldget us precisely nowhere, so we just got ordinary bacon cheeseburgers withfries, and chocolate cake, coffee and chocolate milk. Plus lots of fixin's, and pots of Heinz BBQsauce! The CM serving was quitesympathetic, and said it had been her favourite too, and lots of guests wereunhappy that it had been discontinued. Iguess they must have discontinued it for a reason, though.

    After dinner, wewalked to the Frontier Trading Post to get DH's Party pin. We were surprised that there was a lot lesschoice in the design this year, but we still really liked the bauble design, sohe picked a colour and character he liked. While he was browsing the store, I stood to one side out of the way ofthe crowds, next to two CMs who were chatting to each other. A guest approached them, and asked where theParty pins where, (right next to me lady, use your eyes!). Without thinking, and as one, the 2 CMs and Iall did the 'Disney point' to the display next to me! The CMs laughed, and said I could work there(give me half a chance!), particularly when they saw my nametag!

    We walked towardsMain Street with the idea of picking up our special event Sorcerer's of theMagic Kingdom cards, but it was packed with exiting guests, and guests waitingfor the first Christmas Party parade, so we backtracked and went to ride theJingle Jungle Cruise (10 mins), and then Pirates (5). The park was rapidly emptying of non-Partyguests now, which was great!

    We stopped atTortuga Tavern for cookies and hot chocolate, and then happily rode Big ThunderMountain twice in a row, with virtually no wait.

    We headed over to 7Dwarf's Mine Train, as I had wanted to check out the regular, standby queue tosee what the interactive elements were like, but I knew it would be too crowdedduring regular park hours, so reckoned a Party night would be our bestshot. I was right, it was a 30 min wait,and was well worth it as the interactive parts are really fun! There is a long trough of virtual gems thatyou have to swipe into same-shape holes to the sides, and then a bit further onthere is another bit where you play with musical spigots. When you finally enter near the boardingarea, there are barrels full of gems that you have to spin, and if you andother guests manage to get them all to spin at once, an image of Snow Whitedancing with all seven Dwarves appears on the ceiling. We really enjoyed the ride, in the darkagain.

    We tried to get agood spot to watch Holiday Wishes, although the hub area was quite crowded, andwe had to stand by Sleepy Hollow near some easels, but it was still a goodview. (CMs were a bit shouty at folk again,who were trying to get over the bridge to be near the castle!) The fireworks were wonderful, and again wenoticed a lot of pale pink fireworks in this show. The holiday additions were gorgeous, andthere were projections onto the Castle like they had used last year.

    Afterwards, wewalked round to Haunted Mansion, which had no wait, and then decided to try BigThunder one last time, but at 20 mins we decided we had probably ridden itenough for tonight. We had a look atPirates of the Caribbean, which said 5 mins but looked much, much longer to us,so we gave up for the moment and had a restroom break before finding a spot towatch the Christmas parade, where it began in Frontierland, opposite SplashMountain. The parade was really lovely,we had forgotten about the scents of peppermint candy canes, sugary sweets, andgingerbread that float out at various points. Predictably, Frozen had been shoe-horned in there, but it kinda fittedwith the snowy themes, and the rest of the floats were fabulous too. Santa waved to us, the dancing reindeer werereally cute, and we loved the toy soldiers again, they are the best bit!

    We decided that wehad been wrong to give up on Big Thunder Mountain too early, so walked overthere after the parade, and rode twice in a row with minimal waits. We were getting a bit cold by now, and it wasgetting late, so we went to Columbia Harbour House for more cocoa and cookies,then walked through Fantasyland and back to the 7 Dwarf's Mine Train which werode for the 7th time this trip, with a 35 min wait!

    Everything wasclosing as we exited the Train, as it was after midnight, so we went into theEmporium and got DH an event t-shirt, and then realised we had missed thetimeslot for collecting our Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom cards! We don't play the game, but like to collectthe cards, and I knew this year's was Frozen themed so was quite keen to getours (I think I am more of a fan of this film than I am letting on). The fire station was well and truly closed,so we went into City Hall, where a very nice CM happily fetched us two cardswith Elsa on them. We were pleased withthis!

    We had had afabulous evening, and had really enjoyed Mickey's Very Merry ChristmasParty. We caught the monorail back tothe car park, and as we were leaving the parking lot, saw a huge deer lurking atthe edge of some shrubbery there. What'swith all the deer this year?

    We went back toSaratoga Springs, but I had trouble getting off to sleep that night I wasover-tired, and my ankles were killing me from all the walking, so I couldn'trelax properly. I must have eventuallyslept, though.

    DAY TWENTY-EIGHT Friday 21 November

    Plan : AnimalKingdom

    Actual : We were quitetired from our full day yesterday, and my lack of sleep, but we still got up ata reasonable time for our coffee, showers etc. We drove to the Animal Kingdom and went to Pizzafari for BountyBreakfast Platters yum! I wasfrantically sending update texts to my parents, sister, son and daughter, inorder to try and use up all the credit on the phone I had left, as it willexpire within a month but we will be back in the UK by then! Next year, I'm definitely bringing aPay-As-You-Go phone from the UK!

    Next was theKilimanjaro Safari, with our first FP+ of the day, and we finally got to seethe very tippy-tops of two lions this time. Lots of animals were out andabout, and they were nice and easy to spot in the sunshine.

    We walked round to ExpeditionEverest, and I chickened out of riding it, no idea why. DH went on and used the single rider line,which was a 20 min wait, and I used his camera to take photos of the ride andconstruction walls next to it. When DHgot off the ride, he, (being tall!), casually stretched his arms above thewalls and took some photos of the work being done, we think for the new waterprojection show being built at this park.

    It was now time forour next FP+, It's Tough to be a Bug, so we headed round there and had to waitfor the next show, but at least we were inside and out of the heat. I always forget that I only quite like thisshow, a lot of elements of it make me shudder as I'm really not a fan of bugs,but DH really likes it so I tolerate it for him.

    When we came out,we spent a little time watching a couple of lovely vultures, who were buildinga nest. We got chatting to the CM there,who told us lots of really interesting facts about the vultures, such as the factthat they are starting to breed again this year, having lost a baby last year,and then she got chatting about the mosquito fish in the water around thevulture enclosure. She told us that theyare terrible invaders, they will take over vast areas of water, and Disneynormally take steps to ensure this doesn't happen. However, with all the construction work currentlygoing on, the fish are being allowed to just roam free at the moment, as thereisn't any point in trying to keep them out of all the areas that are beingredeveloped, and Disney will deal with them after all the work isfinished. Then she began to tell usabout the huge fish that are in the otter enclosure, (fish are herspeciality!), that are called Pacu, eat fruit, are related to piranha, and haveteeth that look eerily like human teeth! She was fascinating to talk to.

    We went down thesteps to the otter enclosure to look at the Pacu, and marvelled at how muchthey look like they have human smiles! They are so weird to look at, and it was great fun watching them for awhile, while imparting our new-found knowledge onto anyone else that ventureddown there!

    We walked round toKusafari Bakery, and picked up some coffee, sitting in our usual spots on thewall behind the coffee shop. After ourrest and refreshment, it was time for our next FP+, which was the Festival ofthe Lion King again. This time, we wereelephants, and we had great fun trunk fighting!

    We took the trainover to Rafiki's Conservation Station, where we watched a lovely boa move upand down a tree for ages, and also a really interesting presentation involvinga Hyacinth Macaw, who could crack the hardest of nuts with his beak, reallyeasily. We also discovered the animalcams, which we hadn't noticed before, and spent quite some time watching thegorilla and tiger enclosures, and a rhino who was still in the animal house.

    After this, weboarded the train again and walked over to Asia to follow the MaharajaTrek. Unfortunately, it was coming tothe end of the day, all the bats had gone indoors to bed, and there was onlyone tiger out, again hiding in the undergrowth like the last time we werehere. We should have known better thanto walk this Trail late in the afternoon!

    Eventually, we madeour way to the Yak & Yeti for our dinner reservation, being seated quite quickly. Unfortunately, we think our server was comingto the end of her shift, as she seemed to be rushing us quite a bit throughoutthe meal, bringing out our desserts before we had finished our main course!

    I ordered the steak& shrimp, and DH had the chicken, both of which were really delicious. I also had the drink I love here, it is acherry/lime/Sprite mix, and is lovely. DH had just Sprite. Dessert wasMango Pie (me), and cheesecake for DH. It was all very good, as it always is here, and the only downside wasthe urgency of our server!

    When we hadfinished dinner, the park was closed, so we took a slow stroll out, and droveback to Saratoga Springs. We packed upour Owner's Locker purple box, put the last bits and pieces into the cases, andclosed up what we could.

    We made a plan fortomorrow, and I went online to do online check-in for the flights, and set usup some FP+ selections for our last trip to Epcot.

    TV and bed soonfollowed.

    DAY TWENTY-NINE Saturday 22 November

    Plan : Check out ofresort, Epcot, to Airport

    Actual : We had agood night's sleep, and got up feeling sad that our adventure was nearlyover. We showered, finished the packingand locked the cases, left a box of Cadbury's Roses chocolates and variousmoney-off vouchers we had for Mousekeeping, and left the room.

    Getting everythingback to the car was quite funny there were two of us, and a total of 4suitcases, 2 carry-on wheeled cases, one handbag, one rucksack, and one purplebox! We had to move things in clumps,from the room to the end of the corridor, then round the corner to the lifts,then into the lifts, then out of the lifts again after we had descended, andthen across to the car park!

    We finally got thecar all packed up though, and drove to reception, where we dropped the Owner'sLocker box off at Bell Services for collection, and checked out of the room.

    Then we drove roundto the boat dock, parked the car, and took the 4 suitcases, my handbag and DH'srucksack with us to catch the boat over to Downtown. This was DH's bright idea Virgin Atlantichave a check-in desk located at Downtown, where you can check-in for yourflight, pick up your boarding pass, and hand over your luggage. Virgin load the luggage into huge trucks andtake it to the airport for you, you don't have to see it again until you getoff the plane at your destination. It isa great service, and only costs $10 each to do. It is so worth it to be luggage free all day, particularly if, like us,you aren't flying until early evening. Wenormally drive there, but every year we struggle to find somewhere to park, andend up having to drag the luggage miles across the vast car parks. And last year, to add insult touncomfortableness, it was POURING with rain on the day we had to do this! So this year, DH had the bright idea oftaking the luggage across on the boat the boat dock at Downtown is literallyjust around the corner from the check-in desk.

    It was spittingwith rain a little as we sailed merrily across the seven seas to DowntownDisney, and a very nice male guest on the boat helped us with our 4 cases, bothonto the boat and then off again at the other end. We took the cases round to the check-in area,worrying as usual about the weight of them, although I have got to be a bit ofan expert guesser at suitcase weights now, and I had reckoned they all feltokay. We tentatively put them on thescales one was actually slightly underweight! Two of them were whisked on and off so quickly that I didn't see whatthey weighed, but they must have been okay because the guy checking them didn'tsay anything. We put the last case on,and it was 0.7 kg overweight he sucked in his breath and told us we had topay $60 in overweight luggage fees. Thenhe looked at our shocked faces and laughed he told us he was only kidding,and not to worry about it! I didn't knowwhether to hit him or hug him!!

    Luggage tagged upand gone, we went to the desk and collected our boarding passes, which showedus which gate to go to and when, for our flight later. Everything was easy-peasy!

    We took a quickrestroom break, then waited a few minutes for a boat back to Saratoga Springs,feeling really pleased with ourselves for this great idea. Back at the resort, we drove to the CarriageHouse to pick up coffee in our refillable mugs for the last time, and to takesome photos of the lovely Christmas tree that had suddenly appeared in thereception area. We then sat in therocking chairs opposite the main pool for 10 mins, to reflect on our wonderfuladventure.

    Time to beoff. We drove to Epcot, parked, andwalked in to ride Spaceship Earth with our first FP+ of the day. To be honest, this was a bonus day at a parkfor us, up until last year we had always spent our final day pottering aboutthe Boardwalk or Downtown, waiting for it to be time to leave for the airport,but then last year we had decided to spend our last day at Epcot, so wecontinued this for this year. We onlyget about 4 or 5 hours in the park, but it is still worth doing.

    Spaceship Earthdone with, we used the paper FastPasses we had been given a few days ago toride Test Track, although the ride kept stopping every few yards, which wasirritating. Still, at least we did theoutdoor portion in one go, and didn't stop once we were out there.

    The rain had mostlycleared away by now, it was cloudy and starting to warm up a bit. We walked to the Electric Umbrella for a spotof lunch. I fetched the food while DHdried off an outdoor table for us. Hehad a bacon cheeseburger, and I got chicken nuggets, both with fries. (Unfortunately, the burger we had both lovedlast year had disappeared off the menu the mac & cheese cheeseburger.) We got coffee, a chocolate cupcake, and astrawberry cheesecake too.

    After lunch, werealised our Mission Space FP+ had expired, but the green side was only a 5 minwait, so we rode it anyway.

    Next we walked overthe The Land pavilion, rode Soarin' with our final FP+ and a 15 min wait, andthen finished our Orlando adventure with the ride we started it with, Livingwith the Land. Lovely.

    We went toMousegear to spend our leftover snack credits on rice krispie treats and sourcherry balls, and finally left Epcot for another year. I hate this bit, I always feel so sad toleave.

    We drove to theairport, but managed to miss the car rental dropoff turning for the second yearin a row! It is so badly signposted, thesigns are there for a bit but then they disappear and we had no idea which wayto go, so found ourselves heading towards Tampa! Luckily, unlike last year when we drovearound in a huge circle to get back, we managed to find a way to come off themain road we were on and back on the opposite side quite quickly. We finally found the dropoff garage, andreturned the car. All was fine withthat.

    We then went intothe airport, through customs, (HUGE queue! And I had been randomly TSApre-approved, which was a bit weird), and made our way to our gate. We were a bit later getting there and hadrushed a bit down the long corridors, only to find the flight had been delayed! There had been a medical emergency on theflight before ours, and this had backed everything up somewhat, so we were anhour late boarding and taking off. Fortunately, we were able to take advantage of the free Wi-Fi at theairport so we just sat and browsed the internet for a while.

    We eventuallyboarded, and the flight home was smooth, if somewhat unpleasant. First of all, the evening meals offered to uswere a choice of chicken curry, (what is it with airlines and their insistenceon trying to feed everyone curry all the time, I HATE the flavour of curry!),beef in an onion gravy with garlic mashed potato, or some vegetarian pastathing in a tomato sauce. I have IBS, andmy food issues are onions, garlic, and cooked tomatoes. There is no way of communicating this to theairline in advance, you are only able to order specific meal requirements suchas vegetarian or diabetic, there is no option for food issues. In the end, I had the beef meal, scraped offthe gravy, and only ate the meat. Luckily, I wasn't very hungry anyway. Shortly after this, the lights went off and we were left on our own allnight no stewards came round with drinks or anything else, until just beforewe landed. This was such a differentflight to the one coming out here!

    In addition, therewas a child sat in front of DH, whose mother reclined her seat suddenly as soonas the lights went out. The seat slammedinto DH's knees, making him jump, and he instinctively pushed the seat back upright. The mother slammed it back down again, and DHpolitely asked her not to do this, as it was painfully digging into hisknees. She said her child needed tosleep and the seat was staying back. Hetold her it was hurting him, and rather than apologise, she called a stewardover who also didn't apologise, but told us it was our own fault as we knewwhat we were buying when we bought the airline tickets! He sympathised enthusiastically with themother, and told us it was basically tough. Everyone got a bit heated, the steward aggressively accused DH ofswearing, which he didn't do I heard what he said, and he was just repeatinga question the mother had asked. I toldthe steward this, he just grunted and again didn't apologise for accusing DH ofsomething he hadn't done! Eventually, theonly way we could resolve this was for DH and I to swap seats, as the motherwasn't reclining her seat so he could sit behind her more comfortably. This involved waking up the man sitting inthe third seat next to us, asking him to move out into the aisle, and us allhaving to squeeze past the grandmother, who was sat in their row's third seat,with her seat reclined, and no intention of helping to make things easier forus all!

    All in all it was abit of a nightmare, and made for a very uncomfortable 9 hour trip back. We were so glad to get off that plane in theend! We asked to speak to a supervisoras we disembarked, and told her of Simon the steward's attitude and actionsduring the night. She didn't look bestpleased with him, and I sincerely hope he gets retrained. I know he had a tough job to do, trying tomediate between us over a difficult situation, but a little more sympathytowards someone who is 6'2" tall and just trying to travel wouldn't havegone amiss! When you think about it, thereclining angle of airline seats is never enough to comfortably sleep in,anyway, and the child was very small I looked at her later in the flight, andshe was curled up in the seat without touching the back of her chair! Grrrr. I think if this had been handled differently in the first place, wecould have quite happily changed seats early on and avoided all the assortedlevels of stroppiness.

    Just before welanded, the stewards finally appeared again, and gave us coffee, a pot ofstrawberry yoghurt, a blueberry muffin, and a cereal bar.

    Anyway, we got ataxi back to the hotel, collected our car, and drove home without incident,arriving at about 11.00 a.m. We tried tostay awake as much as possible, and luckily my lovely sister had been round toour house with some milk and bread, so we didn't need to go out again. She also sorted out the massive amount ofpost we had received, and had bought me a pretty bunch of flowers as well!

    FINAL THOUGHTS

    We had an absolutelyamazing holiday, we loved every aspect of it, and would love to go back toCalifornia again some day.

    These are thethings we noticed and/or thought about the trip :-

    1. This seemed to be the year of the wild animal! We spotted so many animals this trip, waymore than we ever have before. Therewere bunnies everywhere!
    2. We didencounter quite a few rude folk this year we were talking to a CM at DowntownDisney at one point, trying to find where the new bridge walkway was toSaratoga Springs, and a woman physically pushed past us, and began to ask theCM about restaurants! We had to pointout that we were in the middle of a conversation with him! Also, we found we were pushed out of the wayon several occasions when people were trying to pick up coffee creamer or sugarfrom the counter at Artist's Palette.
    3. Wequite liked the changes to the design elements of the cars at Test Track,although this does increase the wait time a lot, even with FP+.
    4. We noticedloads of pale pink fireworks in the shows, as opposed to last year's surfeit oforange coloured ones.
    5. AnimalKingdom had a vastly reduced number of animal enclosures due to all theconstruction going on there, and the huge amount of construction hoardingsmeant a loss of atmosphere as well. Itwas also much more difficult to negotiate your way round the park becauseeverywhere was so crowded, due to the smaller walkways. However, we LOVED the new Lion King theatre!
    6. Don'teven get me started on the lack of atmosphere and reduced walkways at Downtown.. We spent much less time here that on previous visits, because it was such anightmare to negotiate. Even the pocketsof musicians everywhere didn't really help!
    7. Withthe exception of our week in Disneyland, we found that we were getting upnearly every day when we awoke naturally, rather than when we had set analarm. We took more time to get readyand leave the resort each day, and walked more slowly round the parks, appreciatingthem more rather than rushing everywhere. I think this is a combination of having visited the parks many timesnow, and also the fact that we are getting a bit older, and need more rest! But we found we really, really enjoyed thetime we had in the parks; we were often still spending 11 or 12 hour days inthem, but there was less personal pressure to dash between rides this time,which was lovely.

    So, that was it forour big Coast to Coast vacation. We willbe back in Florida in 2015, this time with my sister and my son in tow, for thefirst time in many years. Next year who knows? Possibly Disneylands in Tokyoand Hong Kong?

    Thanks for reading!
    Silvercat

    (Enjoy reading trip reports? Why not try my books, "Tiggerific Travels" - all 4 books available now as e-books)

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  3. #2

    Thank you SO much for this wonderful Mega Trip Report. I only have access at work so I can't read it here (for some reason they expect me to get some work done) so I have downloaded it to my Kindle. I can't wait to start it!!

    Ellen


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    Your report was awesome. I can't wait to go this summer but I really hope some of the construction at downtown Disney is finished by then. My great niece and nephew are 5 and 7 and it will be their first trip so I want them to see all of downtown Disney. Glad you had a great time.


  5. #4

    It's definitely a goal of mine to be able to list "Day 29" in one of my trip reports!

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    Robin

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    (although I am still slightly irritated by the way the report has run lots of words into one another, which is definitely not the way I wrote it!)
    Silvercat

    (Enjoy reading trip reports? Why not try my books, "Tiggerific Travels" - all 4 books available now as e-books)

  7. #6

    Last time I posted a trip report, it dropped out ALL of my punctuation! Even apostrophes. Just console yourself with the thought that WE know you're not hopeless at typing.

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    Robin

  8. #7

    Thanks for writing your epic report! It was a lot of trouble I'm sure, but, know that it is appreciated. The run on words were off-putting at first but eventually I got the hang of it!! I would love to someday be able to also do a 'coast to coast' trip. How awesome!


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