Day 4, Tuesday, October 15: Continued and finished...
So, we left off with us riding Pirates of the Caribbean and deciding to eat an early dinner so that we'd be all set when the party started at 6pm...
We decided to "Buzz by Hungry Bear to enjoy some vittles". None of us had ever tried their food before, but we had heard good things about it. So why not?
I guess the staff wasn't at full capacity for the dinner crowd yet, because it took quite a while. No problem, it gave us plenty of time to goof around.
Eventually, the food was ready and we headed over to find a table overlooking the Rivers of America
OK. Here come the obligatory food shots...
First up, we have Stephanie's watermelon/chicken salad. She really enjoyed it. She had really wanted to try the fried green tomato sandwich, but decided that she needed a break from the less than healthy food that we've been eating all week.
I, on the other hand, wasn't ready to care yet! So I went with the Fish sandwich, which apparently was a seasonal special. It was one of the best fried fish sandwiches that I've ever had. (Keep in mind that we live in Missouri, not exactly the seafood capital of the world.) The seasonings in the breading were great. I think I took it too far with the onion rings though. They were good, but I was on a fried food overload and couldn't finish them.
The slaw on the sandwich was awesome too.
Pickle decided to go for the "kids power pack" (or whatever it was called.) This turned out to be a great choice for her, as she ate nearly all of it and had a good doing so.
Finally, Ninja and Buddy both had burgers. Standard Disney burgers, but they enjoyed them.
Once we finished eating it was about 6pm and the kids were ready to do some trick or treating. Unfortunately, I didn't take very many photos the rest of the evening. My foot was sore from all the walking (I usually opted to park the
scooter outside the trick or treat lines) and it was hard to manage a camera, bag of candy, and a scooter. LOL. Anyway, we trick or treated around the Splash Mtn./Hungry bear area for a while and then headed over to Fantasyland. We hit some of the trick or treat trails in Frontierland on the way over.
We got some more candy around the Dumbo ride and then noticed there was no line for Casey Jr. This was my first time riding it and I was pleasantly surprised. It was a blast, especially at night, in a crowded park, with a party atmosphere. People were hollering and having a great time. (This is something that I really like about DLR vs. WDW. WDW seems to be more laid back, lots of families on vacation. DLR has a lot of locals and kids in their teens/twenties... who tend to be more outgoing and energetic.) We were in one of the "caged box cars", and the ride operator didn't miss a beat by calling us a "bunch of wild monkeys" as she unlocked our gate/door and let us out.
Since the lines were relatively short, we went ahead and rode Peter Pan again, immediately went to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (one of my favorites, since it was removed from WDW many years ago.) Next up was the Matterhorn again. We all LOVE this one!
And then, over to Star Tours.
All ready to board our StarSpeeder!
(I'm a Star Wars nerd, so this is always a blast!)
Love the theming in the gift shop as you exit the ride.
Bad picture, but being video game geeks, we had to stop for a couple rounds of Pac-Man
Stephanie had read that this was one of the areas that you could purchase Halloween Party merchandise (pins, shirts, hats, whatever) so we decided to look around. They didn't really have any good pins left, so they sent us to the shop across the street. The guy in there was awesome! He was one of those extra special cast members that you find only a couple times on a trip. He chatted with us about pins in general for quite a while and showed us a bunch of cool Halloween (and non-Halloween) stuff.
Anyway, we have a tradition of getting pins each time we go to a special event at WDW, so we had to continue the tradition here.
We each picked out something different. And we had to get the Passholder exclusive for Buddy. And speaking of pins, we always each get one from the hotel that we stayed at. (The top middle one in the photo is from the DLH.)
And still speaking of pins, each of our kids were afraid to ride Splash Mountain when they were first tall enough for it. We bribed Ninja with a Splash Mtn. pin in order to get her to give it a try when she was about Pickle's age. 3 years later, we did the same with Buddy. So of course, Pickle had to get one on this trip too. And sure enough, she loved it!
At that point, it was time to do some more Trick or Treating!!! They had a very long trick or treat trail going into Innoventions. This one was a gold mine as it moved quickly and had a lot of treat stations. About half way through, we stopped to visit Perry.
Next, up we saw another trick or treat trail, heading up onto Monorail platform. The last one turned out to be great, let's try this one too. BAD CALL. This trail took about an hour to get through and it only had a couple stations. And, once your are about a quarter of the way into the line, you can't exit without disturbing everyone behind you. Trapped!!! Oh well, who cares. We're at Disney. Let's eat some candy and goof off with all the teenagers around us.
After we finally got through that, we were getting tired. The fireworks were about to start in 20 minutes, and we just didn't have it in us to walk over to the hub and try and grab a spot. So we just parked in front of Innoventions for a while. No music, but you still had a great view of the fireworks.
I had hoped to get some nice fireworks shots using my tripod and an ND filter. But, dealing with that scooter and stuff, I decided to skip the opportunity. Oh well, there'll be plenty of chances to get some cool fireworks shots in the future. I tried my best to hold the camera steady on the scooter in order to get a couple shots, but never had much luck.
Buddy really wanted to ride Autopia, but the others didn't. So they stayed to relax for a while, and I took him over to ride it by ourselves.
Time for a bathroom break, so we header over to the bathrooms over by Alice in Wonderland. As we were ready to leave, the second showing of the parade was passing by, so we just stayed put for a while to watch it. It was cool, but it wasn't nearly as cool as the WDW counterpart.
Then we headed over to meet some princesses at the Fantasy Fair. The line was long, so I took Buddy to get more candy while the girls waited.
After the princesses, it was just about 11pm. We decided to make our way over to Adventureland and ride Indiana Jones. Hey, why are all the trick or treat lines closing early? Uh, I guess that's because they were closing at 11pm and not 12am as we thought. When we got to Indy, it was closed too. Oh well, it's late and we're all tired anyway. Let's go back to the room and look at our candy!!!
We pulled in quite a haul. This was just from my personal bag alone. The photo makes it look flat, but the pile was deeper than it looks. I've been eating a couple pieces each day since, and I doubt that I've even eaten half of it yet. We each had a pile about the same size and had fun making trades.
All in all, we had a super time at the party. Lot's of good energy. Lots of cool costumes. Lot's of candy. And unfortunately, lots of other park visitors. It was really crowded. We've been to the WDW Halloween party twice and both times were much less crowded. I'm not complaining too much though. I'd do it again in a heartbeat!
OK. Next post will start our "day off" where we rented a car and drove around LA for a day of sight seeing.