I don’t have time for a Doctor, Dec 18/Jan 19 TR updated 6/7

[amazingact21]

Your CP breakfast looked good. That restaurant has always been a winner in my book, but it's been years since I've gone. Glad to hear the food is still holding up.

The Pascals can be really hard to spot. Took me a long time of actively looking to find two of them. But that was 2 years ago so they might've been taken away.

I had to go back and look at that one photo once you mentioned nobody was smiling. How interesting. It was early in the morning, you would think some of the guests would have been happier!

 

[petals]

Your CP breakfast looked good. That restaurant has always been a winner in my book, but it's been years since I've gone. Glad to hear the food is still holding up.

CP was good. We had lunch there 7 years ago and Momma liked it then plus breakfast was cheaper than lunch so that made it better!

The Pascals can be really hard to spot. Took me a long time of actively looking to find two of them. But that was 2 years ago so they might've been taken away.

I think they might be gone. I looked up their locations when I was in the park and there used to be a sign telling people to search for them or something and that was gone as well... either that or I just didn't even see that

I had to go back and look at that one photo once you mentioned nobody was smiling. How interesting. It was early in the morning, you would think some of the guests would have been happier!

That was taken about 12.30ish. In fairness it was hot that day so maybe the heat was getting to everyone

 

[petals]

Day 2, part 2:

So after taking selfies with the Country Bears our next fastpass was for Pirates of the Caribbean. I had brought a change of mouse ears just in case Jack Sparrow was hanging around outside but he wasn’t there



After our trip around the Caribbean we headed back to the Castle hub to get a place for the Once upon a Christmas time parade:



Her face is a teeny tiny bit creepy :


Turns out Santa likes to hang around Disney after Christmas as well but hey who doesn’t want to hang out in Disney World after Christmas :

It was HOT while watching the parade so afterwards we needed a quick snack to help us cool off so we went to a nearby snack cart and got one of these:

Next we went to watch Mickey’s Royal Friendship Faire in front on the Castle Stage. I loved this show and loved how they had different characters like Louis from Princess and the Frog that you wouldn’t see often:


What happened to Daisy’s face though?!

Couldn’t have a show without Elsa showing up :

After that I had a fastpass to go meet Mickey Mouse, it was very funny. I had a red autograph book from Disneyland Paris and Mickey thought it was an old one from Disney World and showed how I was making him feel old by pretending he had a walking stick:

I assured him it wasn’t an old Disney World book but from Paris in January 2018 and showed him the Paris Castle on the front:

Then the CM and Photopass photographer wanted to know all about Paris and how long it would take to do those parks compared to Walt Disney World. Mickey and I hugged and made up for him feeling old when I first went in. After that I headed back to the castle to watch the castle light show. Momma went to sit on a wall she had been sitting on when we were watching the parade earlier in the day. Elsa lit up the castle :


It’s so pretty all lit up! When I went to find Momma she was not where she said she was going to be. It was super crowded so I went around to where we had sat eating our ice-creams in case she had moved in there, nope. I had no phone credit and when I topped up the phone wouldn’t work to ring her because so I text and finally then found her sitting outside Casey’s Corner which was nowhere near where she was for the parade so we kind of had an argument about that because she has the worse sense of direction so if she got lost I wouldn’t have been able to find her in those crowds! Once we both calmed down we went to Casey’s for food. Momma got a plain hot dog and I got the Macaroni Cheese hot dog because that’s obviously the first thing you think of putting on a hot dog :

Picture is kind of blurry and the Macaroni Cheese one doesn’t look to appealing but it was actually quite nice and they came with fries. Once we finished eating we headed back to the Castle to watch Mickey’s Most Merriest Celebration:



Next we headed to Tomorrowland. We browsed through some of the shops, noting some things we might buy later in the trip then went to watch a Totally Tomorrowland Christmas. I love this show because Stitch is in it :
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[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Checking in!

Your travel day(s) drama is really out there! Broken luggage, scary smoking hotel girl, weirdo plane lady! Yikes!

Your first park day sounds lovely aside from not being able to find your mom! I would have been upset as well.

 

[petals]

Checking in!

Welcome

Your travel day(s) drama is really out there! Broken luggage, scary smoking hotel girl, weirdo plane lady! Yikes!

It was a bit dramatic The case panicked me though and I was praying it wasn't a sign that bad stuff was going to happen this trip It wasn't to bad though.

Your first park day sounds lovely aside from not being able to find your mom! I would have been upset as well.

It was a nice day. We took it kind of easy because of the time adjustment and what not. I'd heard stories about the parks being crazy crowded and while it was busy we still got what we wanted done. Maybe if it was quieter we might have got a ride or two in Tomorrowland done before the Christmas show there but we weren't to bothered we didn't get more rides done that day

 

[petals]

Day 2, part 3:

After the Totally Tomorrowland Christmas show it was nearly time for the Holiday Wishes Fireworks show but there was no getting near the Castle hub because it was packed so we stayed on the bridge from Tomorrowland and watched them from there:


After the fireworks we headed back down Main Street with me taking a million pictures of the castle and all the Christmas things on Main Street just in case all the Christmas stuff was gone the next day we were in Magic Kingdom. I didn’t actually notice until I was editing the pictures that the Mickey head snowflakes were still being projected on the castle:


It was snoaping (the snow is soap so we called it snoap) on Main Street:

Goodnight pretty castle, see ya real soon:



After that we headed over to the Contemporary resort to order a taxi back to our hotel but first I wandered around to find the Gingerbread house:

I wandered into one of the shops and found some of the Kingdom Keepers books so I got two (this was the only place I saw them the entire trip.) After that we ordered a Lyft, much to Momma’s dislike. She did not like the idea of having to put a credit card number in to a phone app to order a taxi. We got back to the hotel around midnight and fell in to bed after 16737 steps, I was watching the step count on an app on the phone out of pure curiosity. As we were going to bed Momma commented that the place they had moved Small World to was a much better location than where it used to be, I was like eh explain? So she said well it used to be over to the right near Tomorrowland and you had to go up that big ramp to get to it. Then I copped on what she was talking about so told her she was thinking of Paris because that’s where it is in Paris not Florida. I don’t think they’ve moved Small World since we were last in Florida ​

 

[amazingact21]

All the Christmas decorations looked lovely; I think the way they light up the castle is really festive and fun.

Oh boy, sorry to hear your mom wasn't where you expected her to be and that it caused a little bit of stress.

I had to laugh at your mom thinking they moved Small World. But I guess it is on the opposite side of the back of the castle in Disneyland Paris. I never thought of that before.

 

[petals]

All the Christmas decorations looked lovely; I think the way they light up the castle is really festive and fun.

I love the Castle lit up for Christmas. I don't think i could go any other time of year once I've seen it that way

Oh boy, sorry to hear your mom wasn't where you expected her to be and that it caused a little bit of stress.

It was a panick moment because she didn't know the name of the hotel we were staying at and didn't even know the Contemporary where we had been dropped off was a Disney hotel so if she'd got lost god knows where she'd have ended up!

I had to laugh at your mom thinking they moved Small World. But I guess it is on the opposite side of the back of the castle in Disneyland Paris. I never thought of that before.

Yeah, she was only delighted that she didn't have to walk up the big ramp to get to it.

 

[petals]

Day 3:

The plan for this morning was to get up early and head to Epcot until lunchtime and then go back to the Vineland outlets for a few hours but Momma had a cold and I woke up late and not feeling the best so decided to leave her sleeping for a while which would have worked except the cleaners knocked the door at 9am! While she was sleeping I was rearranging our Epcot fastpasses for another day. I also booked a taxi to get us home from Seaworld the next day Momma didn’t want to go with Lyft or Uber so we booked Mears because that’s who we had used all the time 7 years ago when we were there. Once she woke up we got ready and headed to the outlets. We had a very healthy breakfast of McDonald’s Happy meals once we got to the outlets:

The service was super slow in McDonalds and one lady gave out to them because her food was sat on a shelf for a good 10-15 minutes and nobody bothered to serve it to her! Anyway after that we headed to the shops. On the iride we had picked up a voucher where we could get a booklet with discounts for various stores. We got that and you could get like 10-20% off in some stores or a certain amount off if you spent over a certain amount etc. We got clothes and shoes in a few shops and got some good discounts and then of course we had to pay a visit to the Disney store:

The Disney outlet had a few good bargains. I got this Hocus Pocus T-shirt for 4.99:

Also got a Princess autograph book where you can put photos in one side for 3.99:

We went to a place called Villa in the food court while we were there and had a Pizza slice each. We thought it was nice and it filled a hole for us to continue our shopping a while longer:

We left the outlets at 8.25 and got the iride back to the hotel. I took this picture of their Christmas lights on the way to drop off our purchases. I thought the lights on the trees were pretty:

We popped over to Millers Ale House which was across the road from the hotel for some dinner. There was a 30 minute wait but we’d heard a lot about this place so we decided to wait it out. The food was nice but it was freezing in there. Food wise Momma had Asian Grilled Chicken Breast Salad:

I had the Cajun Chicken Pasta:

We both enjoyed the food but agreed the portions were huge so we could have just got one meal and shared it between the two of us. After that we headed to Walgreens to pick up some cereal and to walk off some of the food we just had. I spotted this t-shirt I thought was cool but they only had kids sizes:

When we crossed back over to our hotel we got a little bit of an unwanted shower because we didn’t notice there was sprinklers on across the road:

I thought it was fun running through them but Momma didn’t agree. We headed to bed with a total step count of 12,796 for the day!

​

 

[amazingact21]

The Hocus Pocus shirt you found is awesome, and 4.99 is a great deal. Sounds like it was a nice day shopping, despite the McDonald's wait and the sprinkler shower. And I'm sure your mom appreciated you booking the taxi through Mears.

9 a.m. for the cleaners to arrive, though! Ouch. Even if you were checking out that morning, that's still really early to knock on a door.

 

[petals]

The Hocus Pocus shirt you found is awesome, and 4.99 is a great deal. Sounds like it was a nice day shopping, despite the McDonald's wait and the sprinkler shower.

It was a good day, we got loads of bargains. We like to stock up in the outlets because the clothes are like a third of the price that they are over here.

And I'm sure your mom appreciated you booking the taxi through Mears.

Wait for it there's a story coming about that

9 a.m. for the cleaners to arrive, though! Ouch. Even if you were checking out that morning, that's still really early to knock on a door.

They day we were leaving was worse but yeah I was like where are they going at 9am what about people who actually want to have a lie in on holidays!

 

[petals]

Day 4, part 1:

It was New Year’s Eve so this day when we got up we headed got the iride to Seaworld. We arrived at 9.30 and got our photokey, dining plan and tours tickets sorted. (I had booked two tours for Momma as part of her Christmas present.) We got some pictures beside the Christmas tree:

Then we headed to the first tour which was the Behind the scenes tour where you got to touch a penguin and a shark. There was about 11 or so people on the tour. First they took us “backstage" to see the sharks. There was three small sharks in a tank in the hallway of some building basically. The guide talked about them and then invited everyone one by one to touch them. Two of the sharks were having none of it and swam to the side of the tank that was covered over but one stayed in the corner of the tank:

I don’t remember much of what she said about the sharks but I know she said that when a shark attacks a human it’s because the shadow the human is making on the water looks like food to the shark and it’s like a case of mistaken identity. There was pictures on the wall to demonstrate this point (the middle one is the human )

After that brief encounter with sharks we were brought over to meet some penguins and we saw the filtration area for Shamu stadium. The penguin encounter was a lot better. We learnt a lot more about the penguins than we did about the sharks, like there’s 18 species of penguin and only two live on Antarctica. We also learnt in Seaworld the girls are tagged on the left and the boys on the right because boys think they’re always right. They also told us that Penguins will only care for one child so at one point they thought one of the penguins had three eggs so they removed two and when they hatched the two that were removed turned out to be Seagulls so now there’s two Seagulls living with the Penguins. They then brought out Miss Newman the Penguin so we could all pet her and we got to go up one by one to pet her and take pictures:

Miss Newman reminded me of my dog back at home. He loves belly rubs so will follow you around and if you stop walking just lie in front of your feet until you give him a belly rub. Miss Newman just lay there delighted with herself getting all these pets from people and when we stopped she started shaking her head because she didn’t want the petting to stop. When they put Miss Newman back this other Penguin came out of the pool and started flapping about and the guide said that he was having a tantrum and was probably jealous that Miss Newman had got the pets that time it was very funny :

They talked a bit more about the penguins and let us take pictures of the ones in and around the pool:

Then as we were leaving they gave us general Seaworld facts and told stories about some of the work Seaworld does to help the animals and how they get no funding so rely on people doing the tours or simply going to the park to raise funds to help the animals. It was a great tour and both enjoyed it. After that we headed for some food in Mango Joes. When we booked our tickets we had got the dining plan added on as an offer for something like 30 dollars so this was one of the places we could eat on the plan. On the dining plan we could have one entrée, a dessert or a side and a drink. We both got a Chicken Parmesan Sandwich which came with waffle fries. I got cookies and a coke but then also bought a kids cup extra because it was cute and looked like an Orca therefore I needed it :

Momma got Carrot Cake as her dessert:

The Sandwich doesn’t look to appealing but it was actually quite tasty. There was a few more of the desserts on offer there as well:



I loved the way even the side of the drink cups had sea creatures on them as well:

After that we had a little bit of time left so we headed to Wild Arctic which was beside us. I have no idea what the Walrus was at there. He kept swimming towards the glass but upside down, would turn around at the glass, swim towards the back, turn upside down again and swim back at the glass and he just kept doing that over and over :

There was seals there this time that weren’t there last time we were in Seaworld:

And the Beluga’s were being a little bit better behaved than the last time we saw them (last time we saw them there was a frisky male chasing the lady Beluga’s around! )

We spotted Santa sitting on his own on our way out so stopped to get some pictures with him. He wasn’t very talkative though:

After that we legged it to our next tour, taking the odd picture along the way:

We got a bit lost because the tour was not meeting where we were told it was going to meet and we also didn’t realise how far away from Wild Arctic it was so we were a teeny tiny bit late but when we joined the queue they were calling to see if there was any more people for the time we’d booked so we put our hands up and got to skip the queue! This tour was the dolphin encounter. They divided up all the groups so with us there was a family of 7. The trainer divided the family and us up as well as there was a photographer across from the encounter area that was going to take photos. The encounter was only 15 minutes but omg the trainer we got packed in as many tricks as she possibly could. Our dolphin was called Archie and we each got to feed him a fish, we danced with him, got splashed and he did loads more tricks.

We also got a family group posed for photo each as well. For 15 minute the amount she fit in I thought was great and we both loved that tour. Momma actually liked this one better than the penguins and sharks. The photos they got were great as well. There was photos of the whole group dancing with the dolphin, feeding him and petting him and then there was separate ones of us petting him without the other group in them and then our posed for photos and we were able to get them all added to the photokey card which was great! After that we watched the stingrays for a while. I spotted this Christmas tree nearby I thought was cool, it was made out of plastic bottles:

I spotted a shop with a 70% sale on as well so browsed in there for a bit but there wasn’t much there although they did have fidget spinners so I got one. I had read online that if you put a fidget spinner up to the glass where the Dolphins were they would come over to the glass. We had spotted the dolphin nursery on the way to our tour so I figured we could head back that way and see if it actually worked. On the way back we spotted a giant penguin out doing meet and greets so stopped for photos:

We also spotted this little dude sitting in the middle of the path eating crumbs people had dropped:

Then OMG the dolphins. When I bought the fidget spinner I didn’t really think they’d react to it or care about it but OMG they LOVED it. I sat on the ground and put it up to the glass and spun it and they came right over and just sat there for ages staring at it. Everyone around me got a little over excited and some people started saying oh my gawd look what that girl is doing and shoving their kids in beside me to get a picture with the dolphins in the background but it was awesome. I could have spent hours there if we didn’t have shows and stuff to get to:



A million pictures and video clips later I pried myself away from the dolphins and we headed to the Sealion Stadium. We got there a little early for the show so I wandered into the new Antarctica area, that was not there the last time we were there. There was a ride there but the wait time was something like 190 minutes so there was no way we were going on that. Momma was tired walking so sat for a while and I wandered over to the Sealion feeding area. The birds kept trying to steal the fish people were throwing at the Sealions:

This dude was clever he got in behind some rocks and hid from all the other Sealions and birds so got loads of fish all to himself:

This dude was the funniest though. He got up on the rock and kept sticking that flipper up like he was going me humans, me now, feed me, then if someone held up a fish he’d start nodding his head like yes, yes that’s what I want throw it over here, it was so funny watching him:


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[amazingact21]

The penguin encounter sounds really interesting! I knew Seaworld was offering the experience, but I actually didn't know much about it. Who knew the animals loved being petted like the family dog? And get attitude when it's not their turn.

And fidget spinners and dolphins...interesting!

 

[petals]

The penguin encounter sounds really interesting! I knew Seaworld was offering the experience, but I actually didn't know much about it. Who knew the animals loved being petted like the family dog? And get attitude when it's not their turn.

Yeah the penguin part of the tour was alot better than the shark half. The guides did say that for every tour they use a different penguin for the petting but some were better than others with accepting it but she said she'd use the one having the tantrum later in the day

And fidget spinners and dolphins...interesting!

That was just awesome. I literally would have sat there for hours except because of our tour times we literally only had one time for each show so we wouldn't miss them

 

[sheri18]

Joining in

 

[petals]

Joining in

Welcome

 

[petals]

Day 4, part 2:

So after watching the Sealions feeding for a while it was time for Clyde and Seamore’s show so we headed there. It was quite funny especially the bits where the Sealions were not feeling it and went off doing their own things instead of what they were supposed to do:

Next we raced to the Dolphin show. This had changed since we were there last and was more a this is how we interact with them show than a showy show like the last time we were there if that makes any sense:

After that we ran to Shamu Stadium for the next show:

Momma was exhausted after all the running from show to show so after that we took it easy for a while. We sat near the lake and while we were sitting the trees on the lake started to light up so we watched that for a while:

Once Momma caught her breath we headed back to the Sealion Stadium again for Clyde and Seamore’s Countdown to Christmas show. There was a mime out amusing the crowd while you were waiting for the show. Very funny. Every time someone came in on the phone looking for their family he’d get everyone in the crowd to put their hands up to confuse the poor people :

The show was even funnier than the first one as well because the Sealions were in even less of a humour to do what they were told. At one point the Sealion was meant to be in a beauty shop about to get lotion on and it just plain jumped into the water and started swimming around like nope you put the lotion on now! They had to stop to get him to come back to do the lotion bit! It was brilliant! The walrus spat in one of the girls mouths as well:

After that we headed in to the Antarctica area and just browsed the shops. There was a really cool rock wall near the shop with penguins carved in to it:

In the shop they had some cute t-shirts and 2019 merchandise:


We headed to the nearby Expedition Café for food next. Momma got pasta and chicken and a fruit cup:


I got a cheese pizza, fries and more cookies:

I ended up not eating much of it though I wasn’t feeling well and the pizza had onions on it which I don’t like. After getting food we headed back to Shamu Stadium for Shamu’s Christmas Miracles show:

After that we were pretty much done with shows so we wandered over towards the market area to find a spot for the fireworks show. On the way we had spotted a kind of hook a duck game except with octopus where you could win a prize, we asked what you had to get on the octopus to win one of the bigger teddies as they had a cute yeti. The lady just said pay her 15 dollars and you could have it that the octopus were just there for the kids to play with. We thought it was a bit weird but the yeti came with us either way. As we were walking towards Baylake Stadium we got diverted back stage as they were not letting anyone walk past the ostadium as it was already full to capacity. We came out near the market area and there was loads of people already sitting waiting for fireworks. A nice man got up and offered Momma his seat and I stood beside her and we just waited there for the fireworks show. I took a million pictures of the trees on the lake while I was waiting:


I noticed that every time the trees changed colour the lights on the tower would change as well. Before midnight I checked on our step count for the day and it was 19912 That was the most steps in one day so far! Then the fireworks started. They had their normal Christmas Fireworks first and they were great. Then they stopped and did a countdown to 2019 on the trees and the fireworks started again and wowsers it was like they lit the whole box of fireworks all at once. This was a screenshot from a video on my phone and the whole sky was just full of fireworks, they were AMAZING:


I took this after the fireworks and we noticed there was fireworks going off somewhere else in the background so we stood watching those while the crowd cleared a bit:

After that we headed towards the exit we spotted a mini village with trains along the way:

I took a few pictures of the tree all lit up on our way out of the park:

I took this picture at 00:35 when we were out of the park because it was after this that the real fun started:

Momma didn’t want to wait until we had come out of the park to book a lyft or uber because she didn’t want to be giving a credit card number to strangers. I had been told that the iride stopped at 10pm so we had pre-booked a Mears Sedan for 00:45. Firstly when we came out I spotted the iride in the corner picking people up and a further 4 came along while we waited. It stopped around 1.30 or maybe after that. We spotted a man standing with a Mears sign so we went to him and told him we had a sedan booked with mears and he said to wait by him and that he’d make sure they got us. So we waited and waited and continued to wait and while we waited I checked my emails and saw they’d sent an email earlier in the day to confirm it. Then we continued to wait, then the boy with the mears sign left and our Sedan still wasn’t there. Momma in the meantime had gone up to every taxi that had arrived and asked were they the ones picking us up and every one of them said no! At 1.45 we were the last few people left in the car park so we asked the parking attendants if they could contact mears offices for us because our pre-booked mears hadn’t shown up. One very nice man who had relations in Ireland kindly spent 20 minutes trying to get through and letting us use his phone until we finally got through. Well the lady on the phone claimed they were there at 00:45 and there was no sign of us so they cancelled it at 1.20?! Eh we’d been standing beside their Mears sign from 00:37?! We were told they would not refund the money but they would send us a taxi and we could pay them more to bring us to the hotel! The car park attendant went to finish his rounds and said he’d come back to make sure we’d got a taxi after and if we didn’t he’d bring us to our hotel himself. The taxi did eventually show up and only charged 8 dollars, there had been other taxis there trying to charge us 18 dollars to do the same trip. I was fuming though, with Mears for cancelling and with Momma for not listening to me about the taxi set up in Orlando with the phone apps because if she had listened to me we wouldn’t have booked Mears at all and when we came out we would have spotted the iride and could have got that back to the hotel and been there hours before we actually got there so we ended the day on a very sour note. I sent a complaint in to Mears about the whole incident as well before we went to bed.
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[Lifelong_Dreamer]

That is awful about the Mears situation at the end of your long day. I would have been fuming.

 

[petals]

That is awful about the Mears situation at the end of your long day. I would have been fuming.

I was fuming. The worst thing was if Momma had just listened about the apps we could have got the iride the minute we came out because it was sitting there waiting. Instead we came out at 12.30 and didn't get back to the hotel until around 2.30am! I complained at Mears on social media and emailed them.

It was just a pity as well because it had been such a good day up to that point and those fireworks, they were amazing and the dolphins with the fidget spinner was actually one of the highlights of the whole trip for me

 

[amazingact21]

That Mears incident sounds horrible. Certainly not the way you wanted to end what sounded like a fun Seaworld day.