So There It Was, Merry Christmas................last day........................Day 4

[hildasmuriel]

Sunday 23rd December​

I was up before Goofy phoned this morning, as I knew we had to pack. You may recall that before the trip I told dtr we couldn’t do any souvenir shopping as we had only carry-on luggage. Hmmmm – that resolution didn’t last long! I ended up throwing away 1 pair of trousers of dtr’s, 2 of mine, 2 fleeces and one nighty. Now we had room for the things we’d bought. (It was all old stuff we threw away, BTW – wasn’t worth bringing back). We had breakfast at 7

and then went to get our luggage and say goodbye to the room. The luggage went into the store and we went into the Park. EMH…….yay! We did Peter Pan twice, Pinocchio, Buzz twice and Space Mountain twice and felt we could relax. Once again we made the most of the first 2 hours and queued for less than 10 minutes for all those rides. We went to queue for rope drop at Adventureland and by 5 to 10 the queue had really built up behind us. I think I mentioned elsewhere about the silly play-fighting Dad and there was also a squeezy-through couple who let their son go through and then both edged past ‘to be with him’ This was not the last of this I would see. Anyway the rope went down and we all went towards Pirates and by 5 past ten I was on my favourite ride for the last time this trip….I thought. When our boat stopped we were the front boat and nobody was waiting for the front boat so the CM asked us to stay seated and go round. Hundreds of people waiting to get in the boat behind and we get a second go.

We walked through Fantasyland which was already frantically busy and went on Casey JR and then decided to see if Indiana was worth waiting for. No – a 40 minute wait. As we walked past POTC we were very glad we had ridden early on – the queue had built up so quickly - all the people in this photo are in the queue.

We went to Central Plaza to watch Minnie’s Jolly Holiday show and thoroughly enjoyed that.

It was time to wander out of the Park and through the Village for our reservation at the Steakhouse for Sunday Brunch. We haven’t been here before but WE LIKE IT! I will do a report on the appropriate thread (one day!).

We decided we would go for one last ride in the Studios, as dtr hadn’t been on Crush this time. The posted wait time was 80 minutes – the longest queue I have ever joined. After about 15 mins a small boy (3,4?) went confidently through the crowd and people got out of his way – seemed like he was joining his family. Well 5 minutes later a frantic looking dad came barging though shouting his sons name over and over. Of course people got out of his way – poor man, lost his son. I started to think it might be a scam when they didn’t reappear. Sure enough, when the queue snaked round later I saw him, about 100 people in front of me with his son and wife, looking quite smug. I’m afraid I felt quite pleased because as I watched he bit into a satsuma and the juice squirted all over the viewfinder of his camcorder. Now he really did look frantic! The ride broke down just as we were on the bridge crossing the track. It was down for about 10 minutes and I was starting to think we would have to leave to get our bus when it started again, to huge cheers all round. Dtr rode, I exited and that was it – the last ride done for this visit and this year. We went back to SL and had time to have one last hot chocolate in the Redwood Bar before going to queue for the VEA shuttle.

It should have all been plain sailing (or flying) from there but we got to the airport (on a beautifully sunny day) to find that Heathrow was fog bound and they had cancelled all flights except one….and it wasn’t mine. We were told we were on standby. Dtr started crying – her first thought was that we would miss daddy’s birthday the next day. Second thought was that we would miss Christmas Day the day after. The nice check-in lady made a call and suddenly we were on the flight. It was delayed, but it didn’t matter – we made it home, getting into Heathrow at just after 10pm UK time. Hurray for husbands waiting at the airport in nice warm cars and hooray for sons waiting at home with the kettle boiled.

Overall thoughts: It was a fantastic time. I cannot put into words how much fun we had and how wonderful the atmosphere was. It WAS a lot of organising to have Christmas ready AND take 4 days out to go to DLRP but it was REALLY worth it. The crowds weren’t as bad as I thought and EMH meant we got to ride some of our favourite rides over and again without queueing. A brilliant place at a brilliant time of year.

 

[mulan1]

wow! what a packed day!,, i'm really cross at that naughty queue jumper, what a horrible trick, and what a bad example to set the child!
pleased you got home on time!
Thanks for sharing with us!

 

[Ware Bears]

Phew!! Thank goodness you got home.

I've really enjoyed reading your reports, now I'll look forward to the next ones!