In a perfect world, the weather would have cooperated and Friday would have been spent hopping to our favorite attractions in each park. Matter of fact, we scheduled our fast passes for the afternoon at the Magic Kingdom assuming we’d park hop in the morning, finish up rides at Magic Kingdom, and then take the monorail to ‘Ohana for dinner.
Reality was, it was hotter than the surface of the sun and we knew we didn’t have the stamina for an entire day in the heat. I rearranged our fast passes the night before (as best we could) and planned to go in the morning instead.
Sister and her family knew they had a few things Zoe wanted to do at Magic Kingdom that we had either done on Tuesday afternoon when they were resting or things we didn’t care about (hello, It’s a Small World). They started early with another pre-park breakfast at Be Our Guest and got some more great Main St shots.
We parked at the Polynesian and took the monorail over to Magic Kingdom. This was far more successful than the dadgum buses!
After stopping for coffee at Starbucks, we met sister and her family at Splash Mountain for our first fast pass.
We weren’t sure how Zoe would react – esp on the big drop at the end – but the kid LOVED it and requested to ride it again.
Jason thinks he’s so clever.
We hopped next door to ride Big Thunder so Sister and James took Zoe on it again. Both rides were nearly walk-ons (as standby) so we finished around the same time.
Check out her face!
Pirates had been running at a higher wait all week so I had switched our Space Mountain fast pass to that (esp since Jason said he never wanted to ride Space Mountain again!) and I’m so glad! It was at almost an hour wait while other rides were complete walk-ons.
It only recently reopened from a lengthy rehab and I thought it looks great! The clothing, paint, etc all looked practically brand new.
We all sorta were going our own way for the rest of the day so we stopped on Main St for the group castle shot mom wanted:
We hit Monsters Inc, which is super fun if you don’t get called out, and then headed out of the park on our own.
By the way, on Tuesday it was fall and on Friday it was Christmas! Love going that time of year!
Since we parked at the Poly, we had lunch at Captain Cooks (still one of my favorite counter service spots!) and then rented a SeaRaycer!
It was hot outside but breezy on the water!
When you rent at a Magic Kingdom resort (Wilderness Lodge, Poly, Contemporary, Grand Floridian), you can access both Bay Lake and Seven Seas Lagoon.
Contemporary:
New bungalows at the Poly:
Wilderness Lodge:
Grand Floridian – they were setting up for a wedding on the dock as we went by:
Magic Kingdom:
You can go nearly anywhere but you do have to dodge ferryboats, which is why you can’t get any closer to the Magic Kingdom – too many boats docked there.
In Disney dollars, renting one is quite inexpensive. I think it was around $40 for a 45 minute rental.
Most of us ended up back at the resort by mid-afternoon to rest.
That night we had dinner at ‘Ohana, a family favorite.
We really wanted ‘Ohana as our first night dinner but I could never snatch up a reservation – it is very popular! We did luck into one on our last night and it worked out well. I will say, that restaurant was not packed. There were empty tables around us almost the entire evening. And, we were seated almost immediately!
We found that a lot during the week. Restaurants showed no availability but if you walked in, you were seated immediately and the restaurant was not full. In particular, Olivia’s at breakfast and Fulton’s for dinner were both like this.
Timing was great to see Wishes from our table, too!
The food here is served family style and is a pared down Brazilian steakhouse format. For meat lovers, this place is perfect. I’ll share more about that meal on my food blog soon.
We did one last souvenir shopping trip at the Grand Floridian before heading home to pack 😦
The next morning, sister and her family had an early flight so the rest of us went for a late breakfast at Boma at Animal Kingdom Lodge. I’ve always wanted to dine there and hadn’t so breakfast was the perfect opportunity. I didn’t really take any pics but I’ll just say that the food was delicious but the check in system was a big hot mess. Such a mess that if we could have, we probably would have just canceled to get our reservation deposit back and gone to IHOP.
(part of their issue is that they were taking walk-ups but not organizing them well so people with reservations couldn’t even get to the check in counter)
On the way out of town, Jason and I dropped mom at her new resort as she was staying a few more days to spend time with Bobby. We hit the road for Hilton Head, which I’ll share about in our last post of the trip!
