Day 22
Today was our last day to enjoy all that WDW had to offer. Can you believe that we hadn’t done it all in the 3 weeks that we’d been there. Since we didn’t get to bed until 3 PM the previous night the plan was to let everyone sleep as late as they cared too. Everyone except dh and I that is. We had booked the new Fort Wilderness Segway tour and it started at 8:30 AM. We were up by 7:15 AM to catch a bus to the Settlement for the tour. We arrived early and sat on the porch of Pioneer Hall for a bit enjoying the rocking chairs and scenery. We then headed to the entrance of the Backyard BBQ area which is where the tour met. There were already several other people there. Robert and Ron were our tour guides. They got us all signed in and had us sign waivers in case we were to injure ourselves. Then we all received our lovely bicycle helmets and our complimentary bottle of water. We watched a brief video on how to operate a segway safely then we were shown to our X2 Segways. They are the off road version complete with larger knobby tires. They gave us an orientation to the machines and helped up mount and dismount them. I must say it was a bit rocky for the first couple of minutes, but they were actually very easy to maneuver. We ended up with 7 people in our group plus the 2 instructors. It was supposed to be a larger group, but some people no showed. 6 out of 7 of us were easily able to handle the machines and easily navigated the training course. One lady had a bit more difficulty. It seemed to be a balance issue, but she managed to complete the tour with few mishaps. Once the training course was mastered we were taken out on the trails in and around Fort Wilderness. Ron had done all of the mechanical training and now Robert took over as tour guide. He was very funny and you couldn’t/shouldn’t believe half of what he told you. Overall I enjoyed the tour. I thought that riding the Segways was a blast however the tour itself was kind of boring. There wasn’t a lot of trivia or sites to see so he spent a lot of time pointing our different types of vegetation. I’m really not a plant person so it was boring for me though the stuff he made up about the plants was quite funny. The different types of terrain that we encountered spiced things up a bit. We experienced concrete, dirt, sand, rough terrain with tree roots and such and grassy areas. We even road over to the Wilderness Lodge. I guess that all totaled we covered about 4 miles in the 2 ½ hours. Robert threw in some trivia questions along the way, but no one even came close to answering them correctly. When the tour finished we were each given a trading pin. It was not specific to the tour, but they said that Disney is working on designing one.
After the tour we headed to the Trails End to pick up a couple of to go breakfasts to take back. Two To Go breakfasts was enough to feed all 6 of us and we had leftovers. That has got to be the best dining value on Disney property. We were getting very close to our 24 hours out check in window for Southwest so we needed to get to FW concierge before heading out for the day. As luck would have it the concierge window was at Pioneer Hall and we needed to walk right by there to get to the boat dock. We dressed everyone (except DM who didn’t want a matching T-shirt) in our Pirate’s T-shirts and grabbed the kids eye patches and our light up pirate necklaces that I had bought at Big Lots for $ .50 each and headed out. We stopped and checked in for our flight. We got group A. Now we were really off. We just missed the boat to the MK so we sat in the shade on the beach and called DD to make sure that he was all set to pick us up at the airport tomorrow. We had a nice chat and the boat arrived. We took the boat to MK then caught the monorail to the TTC then the monorail to Epcot. DS 11 was insistent that we see the candy lady one last time. She had been on vacation the last week and my DM hadn’t seen her. We had been told earlier in the week that she would be back on the 11th so we made it a priority to be there. As we entered the park we went into innovations to have our Disney Visa photo taken. While the family waited in line I headed to Guest Relations to check on the times for the Candy Lady’s show. Turns out she was not back so son was very disappointed. This began our string of bad luck and misinformation. While at Guest Relations I also inquired as to which character’s would be out around WS. Marie was supposed to be out in France at 2:20. It was nearly 2 PM at that point so we had the photo taken and ran to get to France. We showed up at 2:23 PM and no Marie. I went into the first shop and she had just checked with the Character hotline and Marie would not be coming after all. Now how the character hotline had her appearing just 20 minutes earlier was a bit irritating, but what could we do. Obviously we were character hunting since it was our last day. We went to Japan next and my DM bought the boys a few souvenirs there. They love Pokemon cards and stuffies so they were in heaven. As we continued around the WS we saw Abu with Aladdin in Morocco. We tried to meet him, but the line was closed. He would be out later, but we would not be around. Disappointed again. We knew that 2 of the 3 Cabrellaros would be out in Mexico at 3:30 PM so that was the plan. Of course since this information came from the hot line we wondered how true it would be. We arrived early so we rode the boat ride then watched the glass artisan. We saw some cute little glass mickeys with little heart birthstones and my middle son had been looking for something with his birthstone the entire trip, but everything had been too girly. This was perfect. We went to buy one and sure enough they were out of the October ones. Anyone see the theme of our day? So disappointed again we headed out to wait for the characters. 3:30 PM came and went. A photo pass photographer did show up and she had them arriving at 3:40 PM. We continued to wait though we were getting nervous as we had dinner reservations at Liberty Tree Tavern at 4:30 PM. Finally Donald and Jose came out and since we were first in line we got the autographs and photos and headed off. I headed to pick up our Disney Visa photos and my family went for drinks. We met up at the photo shop and hurried to catch the monorail. The travel went fairly smoothly though the kids had hoped to get to ride in the front. We rode 4 monorails that day and never had the opportunity. Anyway…we got to the Magic Kingdom and entered the park using our P & P tickets. We got our wrist bands and loot bags and headed off as fast as we could to Liberty Tree Tavern. We arrived and were only 5 minutes late. We waited a couple of minutes then were shown to our table. The character’s made their way around twice while we were there. I would say that the restaurant was only about ½ full at that time. The food was good. DH, DM, DS 9 and myself ate like champs. DS 11 and DS 4 didn’t really care for the choices too much but we all ate enough to be full.
After dinner DS 4 decided that we must do Splash Mountain. So off we went. The lines were not horrible. We did Splash then Pirate’s of the Caribbean. The kids though we should ride it since we were attending the Pirate’s and Princess Party. It was nearly 7 PM when we got off the ride. We decided to cue up for the Jack Sparrow meet and greet. The line was out to the door. There were 3 officials standing out front in there white dress shirts with the Pirate and Princess Party coordinator emblems on them. They told us that it would be 30 minutes from this point. They lied!!! We ended up waiting 1 ½ hours to see him. I would not have even considered waiting 1 ½ hours to see any character. By the time we had 45 minutes vested in the wait we didn’t want to get out of line empty handed. Needless to say that we were very disappointed to have wasted so much time and we missed the first parade. We ended up heading toward frontier land and came across some Booty spots and the first character spot. It was for Aladdin and his guards. We asked about Abu and were told that he was not appearing. Since I had been told in Morocco earlier that he would be out at the party. So we continued into Adventureland collecting our candy and beads as we went. Who do we bump into? Genie and Abu. We were excited to see them, but disappointed in having received more bad info. We jumped into line and were told that Abu would be out for 20 more minutes. The CM said that we would make it. So we waited. The line moved very slowly and we realized about 15 minutes in that we would not meet Abu. There was a couple of people that we had befriended in the Jack Sparrow line that were about 10 people ahead of us. The were off duty CMs and had spent a lot of time playing with DS 4 in the last line. We asked them if they minded getting Abu’s autograph for us and they did!!! I snapped a few photos of him between kids and he left before we got to the front of the line. We got out of line since we had met Jasmine before. We headed into frontier land and collected all our booty. Onto Liberty square then into fantasyland. We had missed the first parade and were determined not to miss the second one. We also wanted to see the fireworks. We walked in front of the castle about 15 minutes before the fireworks were scheduled to start. There was a recording playing stating the you could see the fireworks from anywhere in the park. Now I should have know better, but we had already wasted so much time that we wanted to keep moving. We went into tomorrow land. DS 4 wanted to ride the TTA so we decided it would get us off our feet for a few minutes and give us a chance to see where the activities were set up. Well the fireworks started while we were on the ride. Between being in and out of buildings and the roof to the ride we could hardly see any of the fireworks. We got off and tried to find a good location, but there are so many trees in that area that there really was no unobstructed view and you could not hear any of the music or storyline. Yet another disappointment. We continued by Space Mountain using the back path to Mickey’s Toontown Fair. We entered the Hall of Fame and noticed that Perla and Suzy were appearing. We had seen all of the other character’s that were appearing. Because of the wheelchair we had been directed to the exit several times during our trip. We headed in through the exit and waited for 10 minutes or so. A CM asked us who we wanted to see then disappeared. Another CM came out and told us that the GAC that we have had our entire trip does not include P & P party activites. She wanted us to go to guest relations to get a special “entertainment” pass. I explained that Guest Relations was completely on the other side of the park and that no one had informed us of this. She was very adamant and not nice at all. We left. We continued into Fantasyland and saw Lady Tremaine and the Stepsister’s. Of course the line was closed…They would be back at 11 PM. We went into Liberty Square and found a place to wait for the parade. We had seen Pocohantas and John Smith earlier, but the line was closed. They were to be back out at 10 PM it was now 10:15 PM. I headed back there. Guess what. The line was again closed. I begged the CM to just get his autograph for me. After the last person went he asked John Smith to sign. He was happy to do so and loved his own personal autograph page. I snapped a few photos while he signed. He did offer to pose, but I declined as it wasn’t really my turn. I returned to my family to watch the parade. This is when I noticed that the low battery warning was flashing. I frantically searched for my extra batteries, they were not in our stroller bags. I began to carefully take parade photos, limiting myself to only one photo of each float. I was sure that the battery would die any second. Thankfully we made it through the parade and I got photos of most of it. Next we headed back to the Lady Tremaine/Stepsisters area. There was no line formed, but several people were lingering, waiting. They came out on time and we formed a line. Lady Tremaine was thrilled with her autograph page and loved that someone actually knew who they were. The stepsisters were a bit put off that I had put them both on one page. They signed, but carried on the whole time. We got there photos and decided that we had had enough. We headed toward the front. We did a little last minute shopping then went to have some photo pass cards combined. This was not to be as the line must have been 100 people deep. I decided to do it from home later. I ran into the Candy Store to buy a few sodas to take back with us knowing that the trading post was closed. The CM at the register asked what I thought of the Party and I told him my concerns. He suggested that I go to guest relations just to let them know my impressions. I decided that I would, not so much to complain, but more to give them feedback in hopes that they would improve the party.
These were the off duty CMs that Colby befriended in the line to meet Captian Jack Sparrow. He also got their autographs as he thought they were really pirates.
Captain Jack Sparrow
You will also notice in the above photo that I am fully prepared for any situation that Disney could throw at me with my utility belt. DH decided that I had more gadgets around my waist than Batman. lol. I was able to manage my camera, cell phone, park tickets and DS9's GAC card as well as my wallet, room keys, chap stick and a few trading pins. Everything was at the ready. You'll notice that it's not too pretty, but it worked really well.
Abu
roving camel
John Smith and Pocohontas
Pirate Parade
Tinkerbell
These were my thoughts on the party that I told to Guest Relations. Of the 3 parties that we have attended (
MNSSHP,
MVMCP and P&P Party) this was by far our least favorite. We had been told numerous times that we would get to meet many of the Princesses with their Prince’s, other than Aladdin who is always out and John Smith there were no Princes to be found. The lines for the meet and greets were very long and they only appeared for short periods of time. It was nearly impossible to see anyone. We were very disappointed with being told 30 minutes to meet Captain Jack only to actually wait 1 ½ hours. We also mentioned our GAC experience in Toon Town. Turns out that the CM was wrong. There are no special GAC cards for the parties. They used to do that years ago, but no longer do. They actually brought a manager out to get information from us so that they could make sure they correct the people at that area before anyone else has a negative experience. They wanted to give us complimentary tickets to Wednesday’s party, but we would not be in Orlando as our vacation was over. I wasn’t looking for anything anyway, but I really hoped that they could make some positive changes since we had so enjoyed the other parties that they hold.
We had to have our photo taken on June's Bench beforfe we left
We went back to our cabin and crashed, knowing that our fun filled adventure was over. Tomorrow we would get up and head to the airport.
Here's a few photos from our photopass
