crazyj4488
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2005
- Messages
- 632
WDW Trip Report April 24-30, 2005
Day 6 Friday, April 29, 2005
Link Backs to Previous Reports:
Day 1 http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=811849
Day 2 http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=812682
Day 3 http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=814464
Day 4 http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=815780
Day 5 http://disboards.com/showthread.php?p=8624602#post8624602
Part 1 Lights, Camera, Action!
Part2 Downtown Clowns and Artistic Acrobatics
Cast:
Me Jeff - 29 yr old male 9th time to WDW
My GF Sally 27 yr old Female 1st time to WDW
Today was our last full day at the resort so we woke with haste and got cleaned up for a day at The Disney Studios. Sally had clearly voiced her sadness over this being our last full day and I could tell it was really bothering her. To me, this was just a good sign that my hard work with planning this trip had been a success. I had allowed her to escape the stressors of he everyday life and she wasnt looking forward to returning home. All I could do was to reassure her that we could always come back and I reminded her of how much we had seen and done during the course of this trip.
At MGM, we saw our fourth grand opening ceremony since we remained diligent with getting up early and arrived before each park opened for the day. An honorary family of folks were picked to be the stars for the movie that was about to begin filming on this morning. It was the first opening ceremony we had seen that did not consist of Disney characters. It was also the first ceremony that happened as the crowd stood behind the turnstiles. This led me to believe that we wouldnt be corralled at the main entryway of the park to wait for a rope drop. I was wrong. We were only allowed to walk to the end of Hollywood Boulevard before finding the all too familiar rope barrier.
It was a relief when the rope was dropped and everyone made a beeline for the Sunset Boulevard section of the park (staying behind the cast members that walked with us to prevent people from running) as this is where both the Tower of Terror and the Rock n Roller Coaster were located. These two attractions are, easily, the most visited in the park and, I believe, bad park design had put them next to each other. Typically, the most popular attractions are on opposite ends of the park so the crowds are dispersed rather than bottlenecked into one area.
At first, I did not grab Fastpasses for the tower or Rock N Roller coaster. As each minute went by, more and more people filled the queue area so we simply made our way into the Hollywood Tower Hotel. After about 5 minutes, we were viewing the pre-show in the library; we boarded our service elevators through the spooky boiler room in the basement about 3 minutes after that. This, in my opinion, was one of Disneys crowning achievements as a whole. The theming, scope, and thrill of this attraction were all spot on. They had spared no expense with this one and it showed.
I dont think I had ever heard Sally scream as loud as she did while we bounced around in the elevator shaft. I have always enjoyed the ride into the other dimension before the elevator goes a bit nutty and I was happy to see that they had integrated some of these ghostly show elements into the middle part of the drop sequence. This was new to me and truly added to my own experience.
We enthusiastically made our way to the exit and headed next door to the Rock n Roller Coaster as Sally proclaimed her love for The Tower of Terror. I grabbed some Fastpasses for RNR before entering its queue area so we could secure a second ride, without waiting, later on in the day. The wait for this one was a bit longer than 10 minutes which annoyed me slightly but the ride itself was a good one. Two thrill rides in a row this early in the morning really got our hearts going.
The standby wait for The Tower of Terror still hadnt gotten out of hand by the time we exited Rock n Roller Coaster so we headed back into the building for another ride. The second time around was just as exciting as the first but we now had to move on in order to stay one step ahead of the crowds. I grabbed another set of Fastpasses for the tower on our way back down Sunset Boulevard. We snapped a couple of pictures in front of Manns Chinese Theater and, in less than 5 minutes, entered the loading area for The Great Movie Ride.
Sally had no idea what to expect on this one as I had trouble describing it to her. Thankfully, she was pleasantly surprised with the entire experience. The sets, audio animatronics, and mix of live action make The Great Movie Ride a highlight for everyone visiting the studios. I have always enjoyed it. My favorite part was, The Wizard of Oz scene. All the audio animatronic munchkins singing, Follow the Yellow Brick Road just made me laugh.
After the movie ride, we had just missed the show time for Who Wants to be a Millionaire? I decided to grab a set of Fastpasses for The Voyage of the Little Mermaid stage show before taking a tour of One Mans Dream which was a retrospective of Walt Disneys career.
Walts little museum was a pleasant experience but it had caused us to miss another show time for the millionaire show. We knew we would be able to squeeze it in eventually so we turned in our Fastpasses for the mermaid show and enjoyed that, well enough. After my third viewing of this show to date, I found it to be a rushed script and there are only so many times you can watch puppets dancing around on stage to the same song. Sally wasnt overly enthusiastic about the attraction but didnt seem to mind it. I think they should retire the show and put in some sort of dark ride based on the movie as I still enjoy the story and characters quite a bit.
While we exited the theater into the blinding Florida sun, I noticed that my sunglasses had fallen apart on me due to a loose screw. This led to us taking a small shopping break on Hollywood Boulevard. Sally walked around poking, prodding, and trying on things as she usually did while shopping around and I picked out a fitting pair of shades to protect my eyes.
After our diversion, we swiftly headed over to take the back lot tour. I was happy to see that they changed a few things to look at along the way and the tens of thousands of gallons of water that comes rushing towards you, while riding through catastrophe canyon, is always a thrill.
We were still thinking about getting to play millionaire quite a bit so we exited the tour quickly and, finally, were able to get a seat for the popular trivia show. Since Sally is full of useless knowledge, I knew she would do pretty well answering the questions. Sure enough, by the end of the show, her seat number was displayed as one of the top scores. She was satisfied with her performance and we both thought the entire production of the show was about as close as you could get to being on the real show. We would have, probably, taken another shot at it but we had to keep moving; we needed to get to Downtown Disney by dinner time in order to eat, shop for some souvenirs, and get to our seats for Cirque Du Soleils production of La Nouba.
We made our way around the rear of the park by walking through the New York City street scenes and ended up at the Muppet Vision 3D attraction. The Muppets have always been one of my childhood favorites and I never regret visiting their little home within the Disney Studios. Sally took some time to enjoy the whimsical Muppet fountain situated in the courtyard outside the theater while I took a restroom break.
The only thing that was slightly upsetting about our Muppet visit, this time around, was missing the great pre-show. Walking right into just about every attraction was par for the course during our vacation due to some good planning so I couldnt complain too much. We did, however, have our fill of 3D movies during this trip.
It was just after 1:15 PM and we decided that we would ride, both, the Rock N Roller Coaster and The Tower of Terror once more before exiting the park for the day. All of my touring plans had allowed for repeated rides on the best of the best. But before getting back to the big boys, we stopped off at the overly aged Star Tours attraction. Star Wars has been such a large pop cultural institution throughout my life, and I thought its related attraction at Disney World really deserved an update. This simulator driven space journey was always entertaining but lacked the scope and repeatability that most top-billed Disney attractions enjoyed. I found out later that this attraction, was indeed, slated for a change in the near future so my opinion was, obviously, shared by others.
Riding the two best rides at the Studios before leaving was a fond farewell to a successful day. We had thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of this park and boarded the tram that would take us to our car with smiles on our face.
Part 2
After showering and napping, we headed over to Disneys Marketplace. I had originally planned to take the water launch which leaves regularly from the Port Orleans Marina; doing this wouldnt provide us with enough time to eat dinner and do some shopping before our 9:00 PM Cirque Du Soleil seating. This is, exactly, where our rental car came into play. Throughout our entire trip, it had allowed us to experience more by saving us time. I calculated that, over the course of our vacation, the rental car had provided us with, at least, 6 hours of extra time. Without it, we would have spent those 6 hours sitting or waiting for Disneys public transportation. That was not my idea of efficiently making use of our time at Disney World. After all, each and every hour you spend at the resort costs you a pretty penny. You might as well be having fun during that time.
Our arrival at the Downtown Disney area on a Friday night was a hectic one. The crowds were unbelievable. I hardly thought we would find counter service food for dinner in under an hour but, we were able to navigate our way through the mess of other tourists and arrived at the Wolfgang Puck Express restaurant. Our food there was served relatively quickly and we both enjoyed the barbeque chicken salads we had ordered.
The next thing on our to-do list for Downtown Disney that evening was to get some shopping in. Before we left for Florida, we had agreed to do all our shopping at one time towards the end of the trip. Doing this would keep us moving efficiently through the crowded parks and ahead of the pack. The Disney Marketplace was home to the largest Disney Store on Earth. It was also the home to some of the craziest crowds we had seen on our trip. People everywhere fought hard to weave their way around the racks of clothing and shelves of trinkets. The store, itself, was beautifully themed and felt more like a small high-end shopping mall. We grabbed a basket and dug in for some really nice things. I finally got my hands on the Illuminations CD I had my eye on since I visited the Animal Kingdom. I treated Sally to an array of keepsakes; one of which was a set of Winnie the Pooh and Friends stationery set complete with stamps of all the Hundred Acre Wood characters. We spent an hour picking out some things to help us remember our special time together but we didnt spend a lot of money considering where we were. The entire shopping experience ended with Sally and I walking quite a distance from our car in order to pickup a stuffed Pooh Bear. I knew this move would put us in a major rush trying to get to the Cirque Du Soleil Theater by 8:30 PM since it was located on the exact opposite end of Downtown Disney.
We really hoofed it out of the marketplace and about a quarter-mile back to our car. It was not the most pleasant experience but we ended up laughing about it by the time we, finally, reached the car. The next challenge was navigating our way out of the, filled to capacity, parking lot. There were cars everywhere and I thought we would never make it out to the main road in order to travel down to the opposite end of Downtown Disney. Sally saved the day when she jumped out of the car and, illegally, moved some traffic cones out of our way. They were only meant to route us around in circles for about three days and neither of us were willing to deal with more ridiculous Disney cattle control techniques. I could have sworn they were simply trying to trap us in their souvenir buying hell until our wallets were filled with nothing but lint.
After giving the mouse the finger, we zipped right down the road to another lot which was situated near the Cirque Theater. We, surprisingly enough, made it to our seats right on time after the marketplace debacle. We had 30 minutes to catch our breath and prepare ourselves for a mesmerizing show. Before the trip, I had spent over an hour, online, flooding the Cirque Du Soleil ticketing server with bogus traffic until it crashed over and over. Each time the system reset itself, the seats it allowed me to choose got better. Building servers and networks, having an understanding of how online shopping carts worked, and a little creativity had scored us the optimal seats for the show. We were on the aisle as to not be crowded but dead center in line with the stage and only about 12 rows up. I had only been that close to a Cirque performance once before. This was my tenth Cirque show. I had seen them all around the world and La Nouba was definitely in my top 5.
Since we were so close to the stage, the pre-show clowns began causing a chaotic scene with the audience members about 3 seats from ours. One of the clowns started pointing at me over and over but, luckily, his partner in crime didnt notice his gestures and I was sparred embarrassment as they stacked about 8 boxes on top of some poor womans lap. I had never been that close to the performers and it made me appreciate their crazy costumes while their victim precariously balanced the colorful boxes while stuck in her seat.
The clown shenanigans ceased soon enough and the fanfare began as Sally, once again, took up the roll of baby tamer and helped a small girl behind us brave the show. The little girl was scared of the actors and noise in the theater so Sally gave her a large Hibiscus flower to hold on to. Sally told her that the flower would magically give the little tourist the extra powers she needed to brave the evening.
Sally was amazed with the show from start to finish. The dream world depicted on stage with colorful costumes, elaborate sets, ethereal singing, live music, and impressive feats of acrobatics opened our mind a little and created an unforgettable experience which we were happy to share. It was the perfect finale to our final full day at Walt Disney World.
Understandingly enough, Sally was a bit moody over this being our last night at Disney. She was genuinely upset when I told her I wasnt feeling too good and wanted to return to the resort. I had overexerted myself a bit and was ready to relax; whereas, she wanted to explore Pleasure Island a bit. I compromised with her and told her we could take the pontoon boat ride up the Sassagoula River to our resort and then bus it back Downtown Disney to retrieve our rental car. Doing this would kill two birds with one stone, I would get to take the boat ride down the river I had originally planned on taking and Sallys vacation experience would be extended further into the night.
The trip up the Sassagoula River at night was a pleasant one. Sally hung onto me tightly as the wind was kicking up some bone chilling breezes. After about 30 minutes, we arrived back at the Port Orleans Riverside Marina. From there, we went through the lobby and waited out front for the next Downtown Disney bus. It was after midnight at this point.
We arrived back at Downtown Disney and decided to walk through the Pleasure Island section of the outdoor complex. Music was playing loudly and the atmosphere was festive. Sally found a particular Tinkerbell t-shirt she had really wanted in the Changing Attitudes shop so I, happily, picked it up for her. She deserved it after having to keep up with me all week long.
It wasnt long before we were back at our comfortable room. I had to make a quick stop, on the way back, in order to top off the gas in the rental car for its return on the next day.
Some further puppy-like whimpering came from Sally over our last evening at Disney as we poured ourselves a night cap and headed to bed. Our plan for the Saturday evening flight home was to head over to the Magic Kingdom right before our check-out time, spend the afternoon there, and then jump into our rental for the ride back to the airport.
The next day would be our first opportunity to sleep-in on this trip and would be beneficial to our busy day of traveling. Saying goodbye to Disney World by visiting the Magic Kingdom on my departure day had become somewhat of a tradition for me. We had seen everything we had come to see over the last six days and would have that one last chance to escape into Fantasyland before getting onto the airplane leading to realitys doorstep.
Day 6 Friday, April 29, 2005
Link Backs to Previous Reports:
Day 1 http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=811849
Day 2 http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=812682
Day 3 http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=814464
Day 4 http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=815780
Day 5 http://disboards.com/showthread.php?p=8624602#post8624602
Part 1 Lights, Camera, Action!
Part2 Downtown Clowns and Artistic Acrobatics
Cast:
Me Jeff - 29 yr old male 9th time to WDW
My GF Sally 27 yr old Female 1st time to WDW
Today was our last full day at the resort so we woke with haste and got cleaned up for a day at The Disney Studios. Sally had clearly voiced her sadness over this being our last full day and I could tell it was really bothering her. To me, this was just a good sign that my hard work with planning this trip had been a success. I had allowed her to escape the stressors of he everyday life and she wasnt looking forward to returning home. All I could do was to reassure her that we could always come back and I reminded her of how much we had seen and done during the course of this trip.
At MGM, we saw our fourth grand opening ceremony since we remained diligent with getting up early and arrived before each park opened for the day. An honorary family of folks were picked to be the stars for the movie that was about to begin filming on this morning. It was the first opening ceremony we had seen that did not consist of Disney characters. It was also the first ceremony that happened as the crowd stood behind the turnstiles. This led me to believe that we wouldnt be corralled at the main entryway of the park to wait for a rope drop. I was wrong. We were only allowed to walk to the end of Hollywood Boulevard before finding the all too familiar rope barrier.
It was a relief when the rope was dropped and everyone made a beeline for the Sunset Boulevard section of the park (staying behind the cast members that walked with us to prevent people from running) as this is where both the Tower of Terror and the Rock n Roller Coaster were located. These two attractions are, easily, the most visited in the park and, I believe, bad park design had put them next to each other. Typically, the most popular attractions are on opposite ends of the park so the crowds are dispersed rather than bottlenecked into one area.
At first, I did not grab Fastpasses for the tower or Rock N Roller coaster. As each minute went by, more and more people filled the queue area so we simply made our way into the Hollywood Tower Hotel. After about 5 minutes, we were viewing the pre-show in the library; we boarded our service elevators through the spooky boiler room in the basement about 3 minutes after that. This, in my opinion, was one of Disneys crowning achievements as a whole. The theming, scope, and thrill of this attraction were all spot on. They had spared no expense with this one and it showed.
I dont think I had ever heard Sally scream as loud as she did while we bounced around in the elevator shaft. I have always enjoyed the ride into the other dimension before the elevator goes a bit nutty and I was happy to see that they had integrated some of these ghostly show elements into the middle part of the drop sequence. This was new to me and truly added to my own experience.
We enthusiastically made our way to the exit and headed next door to the Rock n Roller Coaster as Sally proclaimed her love for The Tower of Terror. I grabbed some Fastpasses for RNR before entering its queue area so we could secure a second ride, without waiting, later on in the day. The wait for this one was a bit longer than 10 minutes which annoyed me slightly but the ride itself was a good one. Two thrill rides in a row this early in the morning really got our hearts going.
The standby wait for The Tower of Terror still hadnt gotten out of hand by the time we exited Rock n Roller Coaster so we headed back into the building for another ride. The second time around was just as exciting as the first but we now had to move on in order to stay one step ahead of the crowds. I grabbed another set of Fastpasses for the tower on our way back down Sunset Boulevard. We snapped a couple of pictures in front of Manns Chinese Theater and, in less than 5 minutes, entered the loading area for The Great Movie Ride.
Sally had no idea what to expect on this one as I had trouble describing it to her. Thankfully, she was pleasantly surprised with the entire experience. The sets, audio animatronics, and mix of live action make The Great Movie Ride a highlight for everyone visiting the studios. I have always enjoyed it. My favorite part was, The Wizard of Oz scene. All the audio animatronic munchkins singing, Follow the Yellow Brick Road just made me laugh.
After the movie ride, we had just missed the show time for Who Wants to be a Millionaire? I decided to grab a set of Fastpasses for The Voyage of the Little Mermaid stage show before taking a tour of One Mans Dream which was a retrospective of Walt Disneys career.
Walts little museum was a pleasant experience but it had caused us to miss another show time for the millionaire show. We knew we would be able to squeeze it in eventually so we turned in our Fastpasses for the mermaid show and enjoyed that, well enough. After my third viewing of this show to date, I found it to be a rushed script and there are only so many times you can watch puppets dancing around on stage to the same song. Sally wasnt overly enthusiastic about the attraction but didnt seem to mind it. I think they should retire the show and put in some sort of dark ride based on the movie as I still enjoy the story and characters quite a bit.
While we exited the theater into the blinding Florida sun, I noticed that my sunglasses had fallen apart on me due to a loose screw. This led to us taking a small shopping break on Hollywood Boulevard. Sally walked around poking, prodding, and trying on things as she usually did while shopping around and I picked out a fitting pair of shades to protect my eyes.
After our diversion, we swiftly headed over to take the back lot tour. I was happy to see that they changed a few things to look at along the way and the tens of thousands of gallons of water that comes rushing towards you, while riding through catastrophe canyon, is always a thrill.
We were still thinking about getting to play millionaire quite a bit so we exited the tour quickly and, finally, were able to get a seat for the popular trivia show. Since Sally is full of useless knowledge, I knew she would do pretty well answering the questions. Sure enough, by the end of the show, her seat number was displayed as one of the top scores. She was satisfied with her performance and we both thought the entire production of the show was about as close as you could get to being on the real show. We would have, probably, taken another shot at it but we had to keep moving; we needed to get to Downtown Disney by dinner time in order to eat, shop for some souvenirs, and get to our seats for Cirque Du Soleils production of La Nouba.
We made our way around the rear of the park by walking through the New York City street scenes and ended up at the Muppet Vision 3D attraction. The Muppets have always been one of my childhood favorites and I never regret visiting their little home within the Disney Studios. Sally took some time to enjoy the whimsical Muppet fountain situated in the courtyard outside the theater while I took a restroom break.
The only thing that was slightly upsetting about our Muppet visit, this time around, was missing the great pre-show. Walking right into just about every attraction was par for the course during our vacation due to some good planning so I couldnt complain too much. We did, however, have our fill of 3D movies during this trip.
It was just after 1:15 PM and we decided that we would ride, both, the Rock N Roller Coaster and The Tower of Terror once more before exiting the park for the day. All of my touring plans had allowed for repeated rides on the best of the best. But before getting back to the big boys, we stopped off at the overly aged Star Tours attraction. Star Wars has been such a large pop cultural institution throughout my life, and I thought its related attraction at Disney World really deserved an update. This simulator driven space journey was always entertaining but lacked the scope and repeatability that most top-billed Disney attractions enjoyed. I found out later that this attraction, was indeed, slated for a change in the near future so my opinion was, obviously, shared by others.
Riding the two best rides at the Studios before leaving was a fond farewell to a successful day. We had thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of this park and boarded the tram that would take us to our car with smiles on our face.
Part 2
After showering and napping, we headed over to Disneys Marketplace. I had originally planned to take the water launch which leaves regularly from the Port Orleans Marina; doing this wouldnt provide us with enough time to eat dinner and do some shopping before our 9:00 PM Cirque Du Soleil seating. This is, exactly, where our rental car came into play. Throughout our entire trip, it had allowed us to experience more by saving us time. I calculated that, over the course of our vacation, the rental car had provided us with, at least, 6 hours of extra time. Without it, we would have spent those 6 hours sitting or waiting for Disneys public transportation. That was not my idea of efficiently making use of our time at Disney World. After all, each and every hour you spend at the resort costs you a pretty penny. You might as well be having fun during that time.
Our arrival at the Downtown Disney area on a Friday night was a hectic one. The crowds were unbelievable. I hardly thought we would find counter service food for dinner in under an hour but, we were able to navigate our way through the mess of other tourists and arrived at the Wolfgang Puck Express restaurant. Our food there was served relatively quickly and we both enjoyed the barbeque chicken salads we had ordered.
The next thing on our to-do list for Downtown Disney that evening was to get some shopping in. Before we left for Florida, we had agreed to do all our shopping at one time towards the end of the trip. Doing this would keep us moving efficiently through the crowded parks and ahead of the pack. The Disney Marketplace was home to the largest Disney Store on Earth. It was also the home to some of the craziest crowds we had seen on our trip. People everywhere fought hard to weave their way around the racks of clothing and shelves of trinkets. The store, itself, was beautifully themed and felt more like a small high-end shopping mall. We grabbed a basket and dug in for some really nice things. I finally got my hands on the Illuminations CD I had my eye on since I visited the Animal Kingdom. I treated Sally to an array of keepsakes; one of which was a set of Winnie the Pooh and Friends stationery set complete with stamps of all the Hundred Acre Wood characters. We spent an hour picking out some things to help us remember our special time together but we didnt spend a lot of money considering where we were. The entire shopping experience ended with Sally and I walking quite a distance from our car in order to pickup a stuffed Pooh Bear. I knew this move would put us in a major rush trying to get to the Cirque Du Soleil Theater by 8:30 PM since it was located on the exact opposite end of Downtown Disney.
We really hoofed it out of the marketplace and about a quarter-mile back to our car. It was not the most pleasant experience but we ended up laughing about it by the time we, finally, reached the car. The next challenge was navigating our way out of the, filled to capacity, parking lot. There were cars everywhere and I thought we would never make it out to the main road in order to travel down to the opposite end of Downtown Disney. Sally saved the day when she jumped out of the car and, illegally, moved some traffic cones out of our way. They were only meant to route us around in circles for about three days and neither of us were willing to deal with more ridiculous Disney cattle control techniques. I could have sworn they were simply trying to trap us in their souvenir buying hell until our wallets were filled with nothing but lint.
After giving the mouse the finger, we zipped right down the road to another lot which was situated near the Cirque Theater. We, surprisingly enough, made it to our seats right on time after the marketplace debacle. We had 30 minutes to catch our breath and prepare ourselves for a mesmerizing show. Before the trip, I had spent over an hour, online, flooding the Cirque Du Soleil ticketing server with bogus traffic until it crashed over and over. Each time the system reset itself, the seats it allowed me to choose got better. Building servers and networks, having an understanding of how online shopping carts worked, and a little creativity had scored us the optimal seats for the show. We were on the aisle as to not be crowded but dead center in line with the stage and only about 12 rows up. I had only been that close to a Cirque performance once before. This was my tenth Cirque show. I had seen them all around the world and La Nouba was definitely in my top 5.
Since we were so close to the stage, the pre-show clowns began causing a chaotic scene with the audience members about 3 seats from ours. One of the clowns started pointing at me over and over but, luckily, his partner in crime didnt notice his gestures and I was sparred embarrassment as they stacked about 8 boxes on top of some poor womans lap. I had never been that close to the performers and it made me appreciate their crazy costumes while their victim precariously balanced the colorful boxes while stuck in her seat.
The clown shenanigans ceased soon enough and the fanfare began as Sally, once again, took up the roll of baby tamer and helped a small girl behind us brave the show. The little girl was scared of the actors and noise in the theater so Sally gave her a large Hibiscus flower to hold on to. Sally told her that the flower would magically give the little tourist the extra powers she needed to brave the evening.
Sally was amazed with the show from start to finish. The dream world depicted on stage with colorful costumes, elaborate sets, ethereal singing, live music, and impressive feats of acrobatics opened our mind a little and created an unforgettable experience which we were happy to share. It was the perfect finale to our final full day at Walt Disney World.
Understandingly enough, Sally was a bit moody over this being our last night at Disney. She was genuinely upset when I told her I wasnt feeling too good and wanted to return to the resort. I had overexerted myself a bit and was ready to relax; whereas, she wanted to explore Pleasure Island a bit. I compromised with her and told her we could take the pontoon boat ride up the Sassagoula River to our resort and then bus it back Downtown Disney to retrieve our rental car. Doing this would kill two birds with one stone, I would get to take the boat ride down the river I had originally planned on taking and Sallys vacation experience would be extended further into the night.
The trip up the Sassagoula River at night was a pleasant one. Sally hung onto me tightly as the wind was kicking up some bone chilling breezes. After about 30 minutes, we arrived back at the Port Orleans Riverside Marina. From there, we went through the lobby and waited out front for the next Downtown Disney bus. It was after midnight at this point.
We arrived back at Downtown Disney and decided to walk through the Pleasure Island section of the outdoor complex. Music was playing loudly and the atmosphere was festive. Sally found a particular Tinkerbell t-shirt she had really wanted in the Changing Attitudes shop so I, happily, picked it up for her. She deserved it after having to keep up with me all week long.
It wasnt long before we were back at our comfortable room. I had to make a quick stop, on the way back, in order to top off the gas in the rental car for its return on the next day.
Some further puppy-like whimpering came from Sally over our last evening at Disney as we poured ourselves a night cap and headed to bed. Our plan for the Saturday evening flight home was to head over to the Magic Kingdom right before our check-out time, spend the afternoon there, and then jump into our rental for the ride back to the airport.
The next day would be our first opportunity to sleep-in on this trip and would be beneficial to our busy day of traveling. Saying goodbye to Disney World by visiting the Magic Kingdom on my departure day had become somewhat of a tradition for me. We had seen everything we had come to see over the last six days and would have that one last chance to escape into Fantasyland before getting onto the airplane leading to realitys doorstep.
Makes me wonder when I have so much trouble getting a priority seating, etc for my trips.
