Mama, Where's the Tiki Room? Part 7 (Sept 8)

Kairi_7378 · #1 10-18-2011, 09:11 PM

The Plan: Check out, drop off carry on’s at the Luggage Room, Epcot before lunch, Magic Kingdom in the afternoon, ME pickup at 4:45
Food Plans: Dole Whips and other snacks
Pedometer Reading: 7 miles

What Actually Happened:
We had planned to go to Epcot in the morning so we could do Mission Space, but the more Ben thought about it, the more he wanted to keep our last day simple. Since I had expressed a wish to end our trip at the Magic Kingdom, he very nicely said that we should just go there for the day. We planned to do rides until 12 or so, eat lunch, buy whatever souvenirs we wanted from 1:30 until 3, and then head back to CSR.

We were pretty much packed by 7:30 in the morning so Ben told me to call Bell Services. They said that they’d be there in 5 to 10 minutes, and Ben didn’t believe them and started to dawdle instead of getting dressed… and he was very embarrassed when they came to pick us up within 5 minutes of my call and had to jump into the bathroom. The bell hop loaded all of our suitcases, the car seat, and all of us into the golf cart and off we went to the luggage room for our airline check in. We checked our carry on’s into the luggage room, and headed over to the bus stop to grab a Magic Kingdom bus. We got there around 8:45 while morning EMH’s were going on.

We got through security with no incident and got our picture taken on Main Street and in front of the castle with our Mickey ears on. I snapped some pictures of the castle, only to see someone proposing! Our friends just got engaged at the castle last month, so it was nice to see someone else so happy. We headed over to Space Mountain one more time, while David and I met Stitch (who played with David’s ears) and Chip and Dale in their space suits (?) and then went for a ride on Buzz. All you could see of David in the car was his little ears sticking up! The CM at the end of the ride wished him a happy birthday and he replied, “Did you know that Zurg is EVIL and doesn’t buy TICKETS?!” She let him play with some space blasters for a little while and he posed with Zurg in the gift shop. Then we went for a spin on the Carousel of Progress before strolling to Fantasyland. I grabbed a raspberry lemonade slush at the Enchanted Grove which we all shared before riding the Tea Cups and Pooh. The new interactive cue at Pooh is nice but I saw lots of kids refusing to leave the play area and getting passed in line. We went on Snow White for a last time. I wish they were not going to remove this ride from the park… but I think I am one of the few people who will miss it. We went on a final flight with Peter Pan and a cruise on Small World and then went to re-do Philharmagic from the beginning this time. Then it was back to the Haunted Mansion. We got our picture taken with the hearse and they added the ghost to the background.

We had a last lunch at the CHH. For some reason, this took FOREVER! I like the fact that they give you a menu that explains what you can get with the DDP and where you can decide what you want while you’re waiting in line. However, it seems that there were a lot of new CMs at this location and they were pretty overwhelmed. This was 11:15 in the morning. Thankfully the food was good once we got it.

Finally, it was off to Pirates and another ride on the Jungle Cruise (with another great skipper!) We got some Dole Whips and headed back to Main Street, with David snoring in the stroller. We took a lot of time looking in the shops, and were stopped by a CM in the Emporium who wanted to sing to Ben for his birthday and who wanted me to hum along. I was not processing the CMs instructions and he made me feel rather stupid… to the point where I was in tears and he asked Ben, “Where did you pick her up?” (He wanted me to hum AFTER every line in the song, not while he was singing. Like “Happy birthday to you (HUM).”)

After making our purchases we waved goodbye to the castle, and to the Magic Kingdom, and the monorail, and headed back to the bus. Upon returning to our resort we rearranged what was in each of the carryon bags and removed all of the potential problem items (emptied water bottles, tossed large cans of sun block, etc.) The Pepper Markey was between seatings so we got some gelato at Café Rix and enjoyed it by the lake. After some last minute browsing in Panchito’s (what a wonderful gift store!) we headed back to the luggage room. We left our stroller to be picked up by Give Kids the World. The ME bus was prompt. Once we were on the road, the driver shouted out all sorts of trivia before the Disney video started to play.

When we got to the airport, we learned that our flight was delayed by over 2 hours due to Tropical Storm Lee. So we grabbed some dinner before going through security. David was not a happy camper on the flight. Neither were Ben and I since it was incredibly turbulent! He did not sleep at all. When we got off the plane, I noticed the same family that we had flown to Orlando with. We chatted about our vacations. Even though we did completely different things, both families had a great time!

We did not get home until 1:00 in the morning but we couldn’t sleep when we got in. So we had a drink, looked at our Photopass pictures, and started to talk about when our next visit to the World would be!

Next Up: Final Thoughts