Disneyhanna
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2017
- Messages
- 1,968
January 9th, 2023 - Final Park Day
Phew, I am sure bad at updating my TRs! If anyone is still reading, thanks for your patience
I woke up to my alarm at 9AM, and my sleep app basically told me I got the best sleep of my entire life. Over nine glorious hours of sleep and an astounding six hours of deep sleep. On a typical weeknight I get maybe 90 minutes of deep sleep which is a healthy amount
I took another quick hot bath as my legs were obviously feeling the 48.6 miles, I cannot say enough about the hot baths. Of course I am staying in a tower studio at Riviera next year so I will not have a tub, I guess I will have to hit up the pool spas!
Since I was meeting some running group friends for a late breakfast at Topolino's, I decided to take a Lyft from AKL. It was only $10, and was definitely worth every penny to avoid more walking/standing than necessary.
I was looking pretty goofy in all my running gear, ha!
It only took my driver about five minutes to get to AKL, and I was off to the Riviera! I may not be an owner but the Riviera feels like home to me now! We checked into breakfast and did end up waiting maybe 15-20 minutes to be seated, it was quite busy. Lots of runners for sure!
I'll let the pictures speak for themself, but all of the food was so delicious. Those pastries and POG juice alone are worth the price, they are that good
We were still able to order multiple entrees at that time, I already miss those days! Thankfully you can still get bacon from what I hear.
My steak was maybe a touch overcooked, my luck with steak at WDW is not great! It looked okay in this picture but seemed to cook more while resting on my plate.
We stopped on the terrace for the beautiful view, I love it so much.
I was so tired at breakfast, I was yawning a lot and definitely felt like I needed a nap after that meal.
I walked to the Riviera bus stop and waited only five minutes for the AK bus, great timing. It was a little less than 15 minutes to get to AK and a short wait to get in. Speaking of scanning in, it bothers me to no end when couples go up to the turnstiles and wait to use the same front scanner instead of just using both scanners at the same time. You bet I'll walk right past you to use the back one if you do that!
Lines looked pretty short at AK, Dinosaur and Everest were both 25 minutes. A nice reprieve from the long New Year crowds earlier that week!
I decided to try Dinosaur first since Everest has single rider. Since it was just after 2PM at that point, I figured people were leaving AK to park hop elsewhere.
I got into the Dinosaur standby line and it was posted 20 minutes. The CM was like "you have a Dopey medal and now you're walking around the park???!!!"
There was no line inside and I walked right into the pre-show, hooray! There were a lot people talking during the show, it was so loud I couldn't even hear the video! Luckily I've seen it enough times
I was onto the ride in less than 10 minutes. As a single rider I almost always load on the left side, and usually on the right side of the car. This time I loaded on the right side and on the left side of the car, so I had a very different ride expeirience as I was closer to different dinosaurs. One of them scared me as I wasn't expecting it since I'm never on that side of the ride!
When I got off, Everest was still 25 and Dinosaur was down to 15. I hopped into the Everest single rider line and there were FOUR people ahead of me. I love that Everest has a single rider sign.
I was already off the ride and back in the single rider line again in maybe 7 minutes!
For the second ride, the line was longer. Maybe seven people ahead of me this time!
The line did get a bit longer behind me, maybe 20 more people. I was in the front of a car this time so I had a better view without seats directly in front of me.
And of course...I got in line a third time. It was definitely longer this time, maybe 25-30 people in line. So, three times was enough for me! I probably would have gone again if there wasn't a line though, I love Everest!
Dinosaur was still listed as a short wait so I figured I'd do it on my way out. Safari was only 20 minutes but I didn't feel like walking that far.
I love the backwards part of Everest so much, where it feels like you're accelerating to the point where you can't even tell if you're going forwards or backwards in the dark. Which I know is why many people can't handle it!
I walked right into Dinosaur again, standby was dropped down to 10 minutes. There were so many parents with really young kids, I would have been so traumatized by this ride as a kid. The wait after the pre-show was really short this time, the park was really emptying out!
Of course I had to do a little shopping, AK is a great place to shop since it is much less busy. I discovered a new 50th spinner ornament that I hadn't seen anywhere else. Ornaments are our favorite souvenirs.
I looked it up and it apparently went on sale the day prior, so I have a really good eye
These ears were new at the time and I love the embroidery, I hope we see that in more ears instead of just prints.
They had also just dropped all of the vintage anniversary stuff like the cake castle shirt, I had to resist from buying a lot of merch.
I had to keep to my 50lb suitcase limit after all!
I headed out of AK around 4:45 and there were a lot of people waiting for a bus which is always a good sign. Just like that, a bus pulled up about five minutes later!
I had no idea how it was already dinner time, I was still full from breakfast. Since I hadn't done any medal railing pictures yet, I decided to try taking pictures on my balcony. They ended up turning out quite nice!
Lots of animals were out at time as well!
According to my notes, I left my room at 6:56 to head to MK and the app said a bus was arriving at 7:00. Omg, I knew I had to book it. I somehow made it to the bus stop at 6:59 and no sign of a bus. The time updated to 7:04, I figured they were probably loading a scooter at Kidani or something. I threw myself down the stairs for nothing!
The bus to MK arrived right on time at 7:04, and then they had to unload a scooter which took a few minutes before we could load. I did end up having to stand, obviously lots of us were headed to After Hours!
We were dropped off at MK after about a 15-16 minute ride, and we thankfully just beat a ferry so lines to get in were short. It was definitely cooling off so I was glad I packed a sweatshirt for the evening.
I had a panic moment where I thought I lost my phone (maybe left on the bus), isn't that the absolute worst feeling!? I thankfully found my phone in my backpack, I must have stuff it there after security, and totally forgot. I am so reliant on my phone especially on solo trips!
I had heard about people embroidering their marathon ear hats, so I had brought mine along. There's a little shop on your immediate right when you enter MK called Curtain Call Collectibles, which I had never been in before. There was a line of maybe eight people for embroidery, which I didn't think was too bad. I could tell the CMs were very stressed, it's probably the busiest day of the year for them since they have been giving the ear hats at recent marathons.
From what I could hear, it sounds like they were having a lot of trouble finding people's hats since they're all identical. Eeek. They did finally start a separate line for pick ups.
However when it was my turn, disaster struck! The CM was an older woman and was completely frazzled. I said I was looking to get my hat embroidered, and she kind of gave me a look and was like "take a look around, do you think we're taking any more orders today? Come back another day" and kind of scoffed and walked away.
And I know her day was probably incredibly stressful and she was just sick and tired of those darn hats, but it was so unexpected that I was just totally shocked. If she was like "so sorry but we are swamped and don't have any more room today, please come back tomorrow" it would have been totally fine and I would have completely understood but the way she said it, like I was a total idiot, she really made me feel like I was the problem.
The lady behind me was picking up her hat and obviously saw it happen and I must have looked really sad because she was like "I'm so sorry sweetie, I've done this before and if you bring it back on your next trip like Princess there won't be any line." I thanked her and of course started tearing up at that point and quickly booked it out of the store, and cried out of frustration. Of course now I had to carry this stupid hat around MK all night, I think I was more upset about that than anything
Looking back, it was a silly thing to cry over, but I was obviously mentally and physically exhausted at that point. Whatever, I collected myself after a few minutes and wasn't going to let it ruin my night. Just part of the drama of solo travel sometimes, instead of venting to someone you just cry
I had no idea where to check-in for After Hours, I asked a CM and they said every land has a wrist band location and Stich's Great Escape was the closest.
Of course it was almost 8:00 and fireworks were at 8:15, so the hub was totally packed! I took the shortcut through Tomorrowland Terrace which was a very good idea. Super quick to pick up the wrist band, they had tons of CMs ready to check your magic band.
Out of nowhere I ended up getting really nauseous, my lack of dinner was catching up to me.
I mobile ordered a kids Mac and cheese at Cosmic Rays and had that on a bench by Cheshire Cafe while watching the fireworks. Even saw Tink fly by!
The mac was pretty bad but I was hungry so it did the job. I would have ordered a bigger meal but since I was doing After Hours, I wanted to save room for ice cream and popcorn!
The crowds were crazy as usual when leaving the hub, I waited a bit for them to subside. Finally around 8:45 it had cleared out enough to head to the hub to get some photos. I found a nice spot off to the side of the castle where it was quiet so I could hang my medals for a picture. I even got my hat in the photo!
I took a few photopass photos as well, always visit multiple photographers in case some don't turn out!
And think about your hand positioning...clearly I was not thinking about mine, my fingers look so weird!
I headed to the Peoplemover to get a look at Tron at night, it was just testing at that point and the cars looked amazing at night!
It was getting much colder with the sun down, I wasn't sure how much ice cream I would have!
Not to end this post on a bad note, but the Star Traders bathrooms were in the worst shape I have ever seen a WDW bathroom. The rest of the trip, all of the bathrooms were very well cleaned, but this one in particular was a disaster.
I think it just goes to show, when all those blogs post about WDW being in shambles, sometimes it is just wrong place wrong time. I'm sure this got cleaned up quickly and may have just been missed for a small window. I was there for over a week and this was the only time I saw trash overflowing!
And on that note, my next post will detail my experience at the Magic Kingdom After Hours event! Thanks for reading!
Thank you so much for the lovely comments!
