Three Cheers for Minnie Ears: A March 2019 Trip Report *Updated 7/15*

Ooof! What a crowd! :eek: It reminds me of the crowd my sister and I encountered back in 2015 when we arrived at MK right after the fireworks (we were on a boat from FW). The monorail was down so the hoardes of people were EVERYWHERE and confused on where to go without the monorail. It was also a lot of shuffling and slow-moving... and in the dark! I agree - it is not fun at all.

Other than that, it sounds like you enjoyed your low-key afternoon at MK! Liberty Tree Tavern is a favorite of mine - it's always so tasty. Their burgers are excellent!

Big crowds are one thing, but big crowds that aren't moving are an entirely different beast. It sucked!! But other than that it really was such a fun afternoon. So chill compared to our usual go-go-go mentality. LTT far exceeded my expectations, I think it'll be a must-do for us from now on!

Sounds like a nice time at MK! But ugh those crowds don't look fun, especially waiting that long for your BTMRR FP! Love all the PP pics though!

Thanks! These were probably the worst crowds we encountered on the whole trip, aside from our Flower & Garden day. But it could always be worse I suppose :)

Agreed. The crowds at MK were really rough this day.

I think all the ride downtimes really hurt. So many lines got backed up. I'm glad we had it planned as a chill day, because trying to get anything done would've been like pulling teeth.



We had a PPO at BoG and that was chilly! You picked a smart day to let things warm up before you headed into the park.

Oh wow, yeah I guess we were lucky! Otherwise it might've been a repeat of our chilly AK day, lol. The weather for the second half of the week was so nice.



We were at the hub dancingfor that exact parade :-)

It was so fun! I think it would've been more fun if I had little kids with me, or more outgoing people. I'm not much of a "dancing with reckless abandon" type. But it's fun to live vicariously through people that are :)



I feel like my photos here always have one crappy and one good. Maybe it's a sun angle thing, only one will ever be well lit at a time?

I love your photopass pics. What a great way to pass the time.

I think it's a sun angle thing too. We usually ride in the morning and those pictures both turn out ok. So maybe it's where the sun is at different points in the day. Seems like an oversight on Disney's part though, especially for such a big attraction. Although our mine train photo wasn't nearly as bad as the one we got on slinky dog at HS after hours.... But I'm getting ahead of myself....


It's weird, we rode space at about 1:15 and 2:30 on this day. Maybe it was going up and down?

Totally weird! It must've been. I was checking the app and never saw it come back up, but the app is never really the most accurate anyway. I paid for a Touringplans subscription with the intent of using the Lines app but barely ever remembered to... Maybe if I had I would've had more accurate info.
 
Day 4, Part 2: Revenge of the Fastpass Return Lines
Perhaps we should've learned from our long fastpass wait at Big Thunder, but marching over to Space Mountain right after it came back online wasn't exactly the smartest decision in hindsight. We were greeted by another long, long, LONG line.

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Note that by the time I took this picture, we'd already been in line for a while. When we got in line, we were backed up all the way to the bathrooms. The line ended up reaching back to the carousel of progress!

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The dreaded expanded queue ropes- a sure sign of a busy park. It took us about 25 minutes to get inside, and then maybe another 10ish to actually get on the ride. Not exactly great, but not as terrible as the line looked.
We enjoyed our thrilling, high-speed, turbulent roller coaster-type ride in the dark. In the ride photo, we decided to ponder just how come so many rides went down that day.


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Curiouser and curiouser.
I grabbed us a FP to ride Winnie the Pooh, because why not. With some time to kill before the window started, we decided to get in line to meet Pooh and Tigger, because again, why not. The line took a little while, but soon enough I spotted our friends from the hundred acre wood:

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Bear approaching!

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Yay! These two were so fun, and these pics make up for the pics I took with Tigger at our Crystal Palace lunch earlier in the week, which must've disappeared into the great unknown because my sister and I both can't find them, even to this day....
After we took our pics, we hopped on to use our FP on the Winnie the Pooh ride next door. Even with our FP it ended up being around a 25-minute wait. Not sure why things were going so slow, because the line wasn't even that long.... But, I shouldn't have expected anything different, given all the long lines of the day.

While in line, we threw together a mobile order for dinner at Pinocchio Village Haus. I had been scanning the app for same-day ADRs, and was pretty surprised at what we found. There was even a late one for BOG dinner, which I almost took, because we loved it there so much on our last trip. But, in the end, I could sense that we were both about ready to call it an early night, and most of the ADRs were considerably later than we wanted to stay in the park. I just wanted to mention this, because not many people talk about same day ADR availability. if your times are flexible and you have a small party, hop on the app and see what happpens!

Anyway, I didn't take any pictures of our dinner. I wanted the tables that overlook small world, where you hold up the fun signs, but sadly those were taken. It was super busy and we were lucky to find a table at all. We had to pull the "you get the food, I get the table" thing, which I gather is controversial given the giant thread about it on the Dining board a while back, but y'know what? I don't see anything wrong with it. :confused3 when everything's so busy and space is limited, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I had the pepperoni flatbread, which I didn't really like. I vaguely recall reading positive reviews of the flatbreads here, but I could barely finish it. Maybe I just got the wrong one. My sister had the chicken fingers, which are always good, because they're chicken fingers.

Once we finished eating, it was about 7:30, and we were ready to call it a night. So, we made our way towards the exit, stopping to take some night time castle pics of course:

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Happily Ever After started up right as we were leaving, and we had fireworks accompany our journey to the bus:

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As tired as we were, we still couldn't resist the urge for some late dessert at Everything Pop:

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The worms in dirt was exactly what you'd expect, and I actually ended up not finishing it and taking it back to the room for a sweet treat stash. But the cherry pastry thing was SO good. It was a staple of our Everything Pop meals for the rest of the trip.

And with that, our "rest" day concluded. Even with the long lines, ride downtimes, and crazy crowds, this was one of my favorite days of our trip. On paper, it might not be the most impressive, but it was such a nice change of pace to stop and look around and enjoy the park without feeling like we had to be somewhere and doing something at all times. Some of my favorite memories from the trip are us wandering around, taking photopass pictures and people watching. Plus, the weather was so great, it made everything feel that much better. If it had been 80+ degrees and extremely humid, maybe I wouldn't have been so okay with waiting 30 minutes in a fastpass line.... But thankfully, it wasn't. :)

We got to bed at a decent time, which was good because we had an early morning and a lonnnggg day coming up. We planned to start bright and early with Epcot extra magic hour, and then spend the morning/early afternoon exploring Flower and Garden. Then, the plan was to rest up before After Hours at Magic Kingdom.

I'll pick up with all that next time. Thanks for reading :)
 
I'm so torn on the DAK AHs! I just feel like its so spread out but I'm glad you enjoyed it! If you can afford to do all three then why not!!
 


Ugh, sorry your FP lines kept being long all day. I wonder if space came back up right when buzz went down. We had the joy of waiting in that FP line for 40+ minutes while they tried to repair it before we asked for anytimes and to leave. We got our passes about 5 minutes before they officially closed the ride and gave everyone anytime fps. I bet they all went straight over to space.
 
Yikes, such a long FP line for Space & Winnie the Pooh! But as long as you had a great night thats all that matters!
 


Scary long line at Space! Glad you had a good MK day!

It was crazy! Probably the longest line of the whole trip, now that I think about it. But it was still such a great day!

I'm so torn on the DAK AHs! I just feel like its so spread out but I'm glad you enjoyed it! If you can afford to do all three then why not!!

It is pretty spread out, but I think that makes it feel much less crowded, you really get the feeling of a pretty empty park as you walk around. It was a lot of fun :)

Ugh, sorry your FP lines kept being long all day. I wonder if space came back up right when buzz went down. We had the joy of waiting in that FP line for 40+ minutes while they tried to repair it before we asked for anytimes and to leave. We got our passes about 5 minutes before they officially closed the ride and gave everyone anytime fps. I bet they all went straight over to space.

Hmmm that would make sense, I remember seeing that Buzz was down that day too. What a wild day for ride down times.

Yikes, such a long FP line for Space & Winnie the Pooh! But as long as you had a great night thats all that matters!

Yup, the lines didn't get to us too much. I think knowing that we had 2 more trips to MK planned that week helped us feel like we didn't need to rush!

All caught up. Enjoying your trip. You and your sister are adorable too :)

Yay, and thank you! :) glad to have you along.
 
Hi, me again! It's been a little while but I'm BACK and ready to get back to this report :) So, back to the show!

Day 5, Part 1: Flowers and Characters (and a Head Cold) at Epcot

I woke up before my alarm with a very unwelcome feeling- a sudden sickness had descended in the night. My nose was runny and clogged at the same time, my throat was sore like nobody’s business, and my head was pounding. And then the coughing started. It was a bit disorienting and I laid there for a few minutes in the dark trying to make sense of things. I felt like garbage, but I wasn’t going to let that ruin our day. I knew that, since I’m somewhat immuno-compromised because of my medication, I would be lucky to escape The Germiest Place on Earth without picking something up. But, I’m also well-versed in the art of Disney while sick. Ever ridden California Screamin’ while your head is pounding from a sinus infection? Or managed a rope drop to close park day with strep throat? Because I have. Unless I'm on deaths door, I'm going to find a way to persevere when it comes to Disney.

Luckily, I woke up early enough that I could try and get ahead of things by hydrating and drinking an emergen-c (that I thankfully had the foresight to pack) before I had to get up and get ready. With a long day ahead, I needed all the help I could get.

Once we got ready, we made a quick stop over to the giftshop before catching the bus over to Epcot. I was crossing my fingers that they’d have some sort of decongestant, otherwise my day in the park was going to be less than pleasant. And, thankfully, they had Mucinex! We quickly bought some and I took one while we waited for the bus.

We were both really excited to spend the first half of the day checking out Flower and Garden. We got to the park early for Extra Magic Hour.

We were in line at bag check by 7:30. There was a cast member attempting to separate the crowds based on regular rope drop and EMH people. But, she had a thick accent and it was hard to understand what she was saying. Some people were getting frustrated with her, which i didn't think was necessary. We thought we were in the right place, and I took this pic:

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.... But, after standing there for a minute, we realized we were in the regular rope drop line. So, we had to move to the other turnstile for extra magic hour people. No matter though, we still ended up towards the front of the crowd.

The cast members at the rope were funny. They made us promise that we wouldn't run before they set us free. Which.... Of course, some people didn't follow.

I have the hardest time navigating Epcot for some reason. So I made sure and asked a CM which way Test Track was. Even with that, we almost got turned around in the direction of soarin instead.

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By the time we got there, a bit of a line had formed. But it went quickly. This pic was taken at 8:05. By 8:20, we were done creating our car.

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We went with the "fun sized" model. Then, it was time to ride:

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As I said before, I don't really like the camera on this ride. It could be just because I don't know where it is, but it's hard to pose for and the angle isn't the best!

We took a few minutes to walk around and take some topiary pics, before heading to Soarin.

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It was all so pretty!

We went and rode Soarin with a pretty short wait. Have to say, I'm not a big fan of this ride. We always end up being sat on the edge, and the warping takes me out of it completely. Sure, you can request the seat in the middle, but an attraction that only provides a prime experience from one spot isn't all that great, in my opinion. So we were one and done with Soarin on this trip.

It was a little after 9 at this point, and we had time until our first FP on Frozen. So we decided to go and meet some characters.

First up, we met Ralph and Vanellope!

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Vanellope loved our flower ears. This is her pretending to smell them.

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They were fun- and reminded me that I still haven't seen the second Wreck it Ralph movie.

Then, we took a detour to go visit the butterfly garden!

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This was very fun, but also very nerve racking, because I felt paranoid about potentially swatting or stepping on the butterflies as I walked around.

Next up, we took a trip to San Fransokyo and met Baymax!

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He's so squishy, I love him.​

Since they're right across the way, we got in line for Joy and Sadness next. Their line is always deceptively long. Even if there are only a few parties in front of you, you end up waiting a while because they spent so much time with each party. Which isn't a bad thing, of course.


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It was an emotional affair.​

With the World Showcase opening at 11, we had about half an hour to kill (and a Frozen fastpass to use) before our Flower and Garden booth sampling could begin. So, we decided to take a look at the merchandise. We purchased our flower ears earlier in the trip after spotting them in a gift shop, but decided we wanted more mementos of our first Epcot festival. We ended up getting the cute Minnie teapot for our mom. Since I didn’t want to be liable for carrying it around all day, we had it sent over to the resort.

Now, the cast member specifically asked, “do you want this sent to the room, or to the front desk?” and I thought to myself, “oh that’s great, they can deliver to the room now” because anytime I’d done this in the past we’d pick up the merch either at the front of the park or at the hotel. Well, turns out the cast member mislead me, as I found out days later when I anxiously called the front desk to ask why the stuff we bought at Epcot wasn’t in our room yet and was quickly told that I had the wrong idea, and I had to pick the merchandise up from the gift shop. Which made me feel dumb.

But anyway, along with the teapot we decided to buy something to mark the occasion that we could both enjoy immediately. And this was….

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Flower and Garden spirit jerseys! After we bought them we hopped right over to the nearest photopass photographer. I’ve gotta say, I was very surprised at how light these are. I never really wanted one since they looked so thick and I really dislike wearing things with high necklines, because it makes me feel like I’m being suffocated. I’m also not a fan of oversized tops in general. But, I thought these were super cute and perfect for the day. They’re much more breathable than they look.
Freshly adorned in our Flower and Garden finery, we made our way over to Norway. I think Frozen is a really cute ride. I was fine with it being our Tier 1 since we had extra magic hour to hit Test Track + Soarin’. Although I still think it would behoove Epcot to have at least one more good Tier 2 option, because the options now are rather bleak. I wonder how the tiers will change once Ratatouille and Guardians come around.

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I remembered where the camera was, and we posed accordingly.​
 
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The night before, my sister and I downloaded an Epcot festival app, the name of which escapes me. But it had a map of all the booths and the menus for each one. With that, and by stalking the Flower and Garden hashtag on Instagram, we put together a rough plan of what we wanted to try. First up was to try and get an orange bird sipper, because they looked SO cute. I heard horror stories of hours long lines and low stock, but we figured we might as well give it a shot. But, we stopped to take the Mickey and Minnie topiary pics we had passed by before heading to Frozen:

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This one is one of my favorites from the whole trip! I have it framed on my wall.

With that, we got in line at The Citrus Blossom. While there was a bit of a queue, it only took about 20 minutes. Definitely not nearly as bad as I expected, considering we were visiting on the second day of the festival.

They were limiting you to as many sippers as there were people in your party. Which seemed like a much better system than “buy as many as you want”, which caused so much chaos the first day. You could buy the actual slushy, or you could buy an empty cup, but the price was the same. I’m not a fan of orange flavors, so I opted to get mine empty. After taking a sip of my sister’s, I knew I made the right choice. The slushy was GROSS… Like a melted orange creamsicle that was slightly warm and sickeningly sweet.

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My sipper! We popped over to Canada and bought a reusable bag to store them in. I’m usually anti carrying a bag in the park, but our plans for the afternoon were more “looking and eating” than riding rides. The only rides we had planned were Spaceship Earth and Living with the Land, and not until much later, as I moved the FPs back to give us more time to enjoy the festival.

After my sister finished that gross slushy, we decided to take a picture with our birds:

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These pictures took FOREVER to show up in MDE! We ended up circling back to retake them before we left for the day, just in case. I don’t think they showed up until the next day!

Next on our list of things to try was the violet lemonade from Pineapple Promenade.

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This was very yummy. It was sweet, and definitely tasted “purple”, but I enjoyed it. The edible flower however… Just tasted like dirt.

With bellies full of liquid, we decided to get some solid food. I really wanted to try the cronuts- I mean, croissant doughnuts, from Taste Track, so we headed over there.

Now, here’s where my Flower and Garden retelling falls apart, because I failed to take pictures of nearly everything else we tried. So you'll need to use your imagination. :)

We both opted for the plain croissant doughnut because the violet blueberry one looked a bit too sweet. I think we made the right choice, because the plain one was plenty sweet on its own.

After hovering around the edges of the world showcase, our next step was to make the complete loop, eating and taking photopass pictures the whole way.

The first stop was Mexico, where we caught the mariachi band and dancers performing. Then, it was on to the Jardin de Fiestas. My sister wanted to try the beef torta, but I opted to skip this booth since none of the menu items really spoke to me. She wasn’t a big fan of it, and thought the bread was stale.

We didn’t spend too much time in Norway, since we were already there earlier to ride Frozen. Next up, we took some time to explore the zodiac garden in the China pavilion.

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It took us an embarrassingly long time to find the animal of this year, the pig. Which is also the animal for my birth year.

We moved on to Germany and took some pictures to mark the occasion:

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Our first (but certainly not last) flower related magic shot.

We opted to share a warm cheese strudel with mixed berries- and I actually took a picture of it!

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This was okay. The berries seemed super sweet for some reason. Also, it was warming up a little and eating a warm pastry wasn’t exactly the most appealing.

Having heard nothing but horror stories about the quality of Italy’s festival booths, we skipped trying anything there. We also weren’t drawn to anything on the menu in the America pavilion, and the line was longer than we cared to wait in. But, when we reached Japan we knew a trip to Mitsukoshi was in order!

I always find such fun souvenirs there- I picked up a few skincare products and a super fun Beagle calendar!

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We wanted to try frushi, but the line was long, and we were impatient. On the way out, we stopped for a pic:

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The line wasn’t too bad at Taste of Marrakesh, and I felt like I needed a little protein, so we tried the chicken kebab, which was pretty good.

We got a couple of fun pictures while we were in Morocco:

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Another flower-specific magic shot! The photographer told us to look surprised. Not sure who the little bee guy is, though!

From there, we completed our tour of the world with stops in France:

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Another frame picture for good measure (have I mentioned how much I love photos with props?):

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We even got a cameo from the man of the hour, the orange bird!

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While we were waiting, we overheard the photopass photographer telling the party in front of us about the orange bird. Prior to arriving at Flower & Garden, I had never even heard of him or understood why he was such a symbol. For those who don’t know, the orange bird was created by Disney for the Florida Citrus Commission. I guess he’s in the Tiki Room too? I’ve never done that attraction before (I know…). But yeah, he’s not just some bird they made to put on a sipper cup lol.

In our last stop, the UK, we didn’t take any pictures other than a few of our favorite topiaries :)

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With the world showcase complete, it was time to go back to Future World for rides on Spaceship Earth and Living with the Land. We didn’t get a chance to ride Living with the Land on our last trip, and it was a lot more interesting and fun than I expected! It’s so cool how they grow everything and all the science behind it. It was also nice to get off our feet and enjoy a nice boat ride.

My parents opened Disney visa accounts for themselves and my sister before our trip (I've aged out of family accounts, it seems), so we decided to use our visa character meet and greet privileges. The location was somewhat difficult to find. I had it in my head that it was near the other Epcot character meet and greets, but It’s back by journey into imagination. Had I known, we could’ve done it back when we met Ralph and Vanellope in the morning. But, no matter. There wasn’t really any line, and soon we were meeting the characters!

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We knew it was a crapshoot between seeing Goofy, Minnie, Mickey, or Pluto, but I was glad we got Mickey and Goofy! I had booked a FP for us to meet Minnie and Mickey at MK later that night, so we got a double mouse meet and greet.

It was almost 3 by this point, and about time for our obligatory midday break. On the way out, we stopped for a few more photo ops.

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And with that, our Flower & Garden adventure was complete! This was such a fun experience. The atmosphere is gorgeous, and the booths were good too. It was a nice day that wasn’t so ride focused (as if Epcot ever really is). I’m not a big Epcot fan but I think festivals add SO MUCH to the equation and makes the park worth it for me. I would love to come back for another Flower & Garden in the future!

The plan was to head back to the hotel and rest up (or re-medicate in my case) before After Hours at MK. That's where I'll pick up next time. Thanks for reading and i promise it won't be a month until the next update!! :)
 
Your spirit jerseys are so cute! I'm not usually one for pink and flowery but they did a nice job designing those. I hope you weren't sick for too long!
 
I felt like garbage, but I wasn’t going to let that ruin our day.

Oh no! That completely stinks. I hope it didn't longer too long.

The cast members at the rope were funny. They made us promise that we wouldn't run before they set us free. Which.... Of course, some people didn't follow.

Ok, so, which of the people who were planning on running would have been swayed by the CMs telling them not to? This just seems useless.

It sounds like you had a fun festival tour and the pictures are great!
 
Sorry to hear you were not feeling well during your trip. From the pictures, it looks like you smiled your way through the day and made the most of it anyway. Glad your illness did not keep you away from your plans for the day.

Your photos are all great! But I have to agree with you I think I like the one of the two of you turned facing each other my favorite. Though a did catch another great photo you have displayed behind the cute beagle calendar that I thought truly captured the fun time you had with your sister at WDW. It is the one of the two of you with the monorail behind you.
 
That's too bad that you got sick! I've been sick at Disney twice (once at the end of a trip and once in the middle) and it's not any fun at all! Good for you on continuing your trip as well as you could (and thank goodness for Mucinex - it's a wonder drug!).

I LOVED the Flower and Garden Festival! It looks like you had a good time enjoying the highlights. I was also concerned about hurting a butterfly in the butterfly garden, but it was so lovely to see! You also tried several good treats - I'm still mad I missed the Violet Lemonade. I love all your great Photopass pictures and magic shots!
 
Ah that stinks that you woke up sick :( I've been there too, it sucks!

Sounds like a good start to your day at Epcot. I love all the character pics and your new F&G themed outfits! And you got so many cute PP pics too!
 
Your spirit jerseys are so cute! I'm not usually one for pink and flowery but they did a nice job designing those. I hope you weren't sick for too long!
I'm usually not a big fan of pink either, but I agree they did a great job! My sickness lasted for the rest of the trip unfortunately but it never got TOO bad.


Oh no! That completely stinks. I hope it didn't longer too long.



Ok, so, which of the people who were planning on running would have been swayed by the CMs telling them not to? This just seems useless.

It sounds like you had a fun festival tour and the pictures are great!

Lol yeah I doubt the CM made much of a difference, but maybe somebody had a soul-searching moment and realized that they won't save much time by running and they'll look silly in the process :teeth:

I was sick for the rest of the trip and ended up pretty much losing my voice but it didn't ruin the trip!


Sorry to hear you were not feeling well during your trip. From the pictures, it looks like you smiled your way through the day and made the most of it anyway. Glad your illness did not keep you away from your plans for the day.

Your photos are all great! But I have to agree with you I think I like the one of the two of you turned facing each other my favorite. Though a did catch another great photo you have displayed behind the cute beagle calendar that I thought truly captured the fun time you had with your sister at WDW. It is the one of the two of you with the monorail behind you.

I love that monorail pic! It's one of my favorites. Still so happy the photographer managed to time that so well.

That's too bad that you got sick! I've been sick at Disney twice (once at the end of a trip and once in the middle) and it's not any fun at all! Good for you on continuing your trip as well as you could (and thank goodness for Mucinex - it's a wonder drug!).

I LOVED the Flower and Garden Festival! It looks like you had a good time enjoying the highlights. I was also concerned about hurting a butterfly in the butterfly garden, but it was so lovely to see! You also tried several good treats - I'm still mad I missed the Violet Lemonade. I love all your great Photopass pictures and magic shots!

Mucinex pretty much saved my life - if I didn't have that I would've been pretty down and out. Props to the Pop Century gift shop for keeping it in stock. Flower and Garden was super fun! I hope I get to visit and see it again on another trip.

Ah that stinks that you woke up sick :( I've been there too, it sucks!

Sounds like a good start to your day at Epcot. I love all the character pics and your new F&G themed outfits! And you got so many cute PP pics too!

It was a great day, illness aside. Some of my favorite memories of the trip are us wandering around taking all our Flower and Garden pictures.
 
Hi Dis-friends! I'm back with another update, one week post Disneyland! It was a super fun trip- we lucked out in terms of crowds and weather, which is great because I assumed we would draw the short end of the stick with both. It was great to be back in Disneyland, and so cool to see Galaxy's Edge, but between you and me, I was missing WDW a lot. I'll probably do a mini TR about that trip, nothing too in depth because I need to commit to finishing this one first. :)

Anyway, on with the show!

Day 5, Part 2: Magic Kingdom After Dark

With our Flower & Garden festivities complete, it was time for a midday break before hitting MK for After Hours. When we arrived at our room, we were greeted by a little bit of mousekeeping fun:

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It was a cute surprise! And very relevant to the title of this trip report!

Our break was much needed, especially since it was time for me to re-dose with muxinex and motrin before the night’s activities. We spent the rest period watching some Disney TV:

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These new Mickey cartoons are pretty funny. I still don’t like the art style though. It’s too…. Weird. And kinda ugly.

We arrived at MK after a quick dinner at Everything Pop- the place was dead as usual. Maybe we just got lucky, but I never encountered any of the long waits I hear about in reviews. I did see they’re introducing mobile ordering there though, which seems like it’ll save even more time!

The first thing on our agenda was using our late fastpass to meet Mickey and Minnie at the Town Square. There was a bit of a wait here, but soon enough we were among mice:

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This was one of my favorite character meets of the trip! Their celebration outfits are so cute. I showed them that Mickey was on my shirt, and they were so excited. And as usual they loved our Minnie ears! It was so fun. I felt like they spent more time with us than usual too.

Rather than push through the masses, we decided to post up and watch Happily Ever After from the hub. I snuck off to the bathroom right before the show started and stopped for a selfie:

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After Hours, yay!​

Right as I was taking this picture I could hear the show starting. For as far back as we were, I thought our view was pretty good! It was a nice change of pace from our dessert party view from earlier in the week.

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I have a cool video of the finale, but I don't think that'll post here, so just take my word for it that it was really cool.

Then, we watched in awe as the massive crowds turned back towards us to leave the park. It took a while before we even felt like swimming upstream to the rest of the park. Since After Hours didn’t technically start until 9, and I didn’t want to get caught up in the weird limbo “you can’t ride anything yet” period like at AK, I was content to stay put and people watch.

And oh, people watch we did. A woman sent her mother to go talk to a cast member and ask about how to get a Minnie Van. The mother returned, and told her daughter that they had to use the Lyft app. Before she could finish, the woman interjected with “NO, that’s a REGULAR LYFT, we need the Minnie Van! How do we get the Minnie Van??” in a very angry tone. I wanted to tell her that her poor mother was right, and that they did need to use the Lyft App… But it wasn’t my place. Hopefully they figured it out. And apologized to that poor lady. Lol.

Once the crowds thinned enough for us bob and weave our way over to Tomorrowland, we did so with haste. Our first stop was… Drumroll please… Space Mountain!

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The queue was pretty empty. This was one of the three times the whole trip that we ever were in the standby line. It felt weird. We waited about ~15 minutes, before posing for our ride photos:

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Posin’.​

Rather than riding again right away, we decided to hit some other Tomorrowland attractions and return when (hopefully) the line would be even shorter. I think we also took our first of many snack breaks at this time as well, because taking full advantage of the "free" popcorn and ice cream is what After Hours is all about.

First, we did Buzz:

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And, just as the ride was ending, we suddenly stopped! Thankfully it was only for a few minutes. I was a bit peeved about losing valuable After Hours time on a broken attraction.

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Even Buzz looked concerned at the prospect of us losing After Hours time waiting for the ride to start again.

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A cast member had to come by and make the vehicles go again. You can’t really tell, but that’s what’s happening in that picture.

Then, we went for a soaring journey on the Astro Orbiter. I love that ride…. You get great views and it’s actually kinda intense when you get lowered in the end!

We took a hop, skip, and jump back over to Space and were greeted by a welcome sight:

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A wait time of only 5 minutes- now that’s more like it!

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In the spirit of After Hours, we took a little nap.​

We took another snack break, and then ventured to Fantasyland to ride Winnie the Pooh. The waits for Peter Pan and Mine Train were still higher than I cared to wait. I think they were both around 20 minutes or more. As I captured in this blurry picture, the line was still out the door:

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Peter Pan is very high on my list of rides that I won't do without a fastpass or without a nearly-zero wait. In fact, when we were at Disneyland last week we skipped it altogether because, despite the low crowds, the line never went below 30 minutes. It's a cute ride, but no thanks!

We really wanted to do the Tangled lantern photo-opp next. When we walked by, the line was still a bit long, so we veered off course and went to walk on to the Haunted Mansion. When we circled back, the line was much shorter, and we only waited about 10 minutes!

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This was just alright- I don’t know if I’d wait to do it again. And I certainly don’t think it deserves a 20+ minute line! The pictures were pretty dark and I had to put on my amateur-photo editor hat and edit them.

Next, we made another snack stop and walked on to Haunted Mansion again. All in all the night was going smoothly, but we encountered a bit of a snafu at Big Thunder Mountain. They were only running one train, and we ended up waiting almost 30 minutes. That’s about 15 minutes more than I feel like I should have to wait at a ticketed event, especially considering we walked on to Space Mountain only an hour earlier. I was pretty annoyed by this. It was the low point of the night.

Trying to shake off my annoyance, we headed over to Pirates of the Caribbean. This was a complete walk on. Seriously, the ride was dead. We didn't see a single person until it was time to get on the boat.

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We’re in the back, so this pic is essentially useless. We rode again, but that rode photo never made it to MDE. Some say it's still floating aimlessly in the cyber sea to this day.....

It was almost midnight, so we started making our way out of the park, lest we turn into pumpkins at the stoke of 12. A commemorative nighttime photopass pic capped off our After Hours experience.

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All in all, I enjoyed this experience. I saw a lot of negative reviews about this night talking about crowds, and like I said for AK After Hours, nothing about this experience even approaches my definition of “crowded”. Did we see other people? Yes. But seeing other people doesn’t mean crowded. I don’t know, I knew I was going into a sold-out event, and still managed to do everything we wanted to do. I think it was absolutely worth the money and I’d definitely do it again. Side note, I’m intrigued by what I've seen of the Villains After Hours event. I 100% would’ve bought tickets for that!

In sum, we rode:

Space Mountain x2
Buzz Lightyear
Astro Orbiter
Winnie the Pooh
Haunted Mansion x2
Big Thunder Mountain
Pirates x2

And we ate a shameful amount of ice cream and popcorn.

The one thing I will say that, in comparison to the AK event, this one went by SO MUCH faster. It basically flew by. Probably because there's just so much to do and see at MK. But I enjoyed the slower pace of the AK event a little more, looking back.

With day 5/7 in the books, we were looking ahead to something I’d been psyched about all week- finally getting to experience Toy Story Land and Slinky Dog Dash! The plan was to spend the morning in Hollywood Studios and then go from there, most likely heading to MK again in the evening. Because what’s a day at Disney without a trip to MK? As always, thanks for reading and I'll see you next time. :)
 
I had to smile at all your ride photos. You two certainly knew where the cameras were and most have enjoyed coming up with new poses. I thought it was cool that you were able to pull off the sleeping on Space Mountain pose.

These new Mickey cartoons are pretty funny. I still don’t like the art style though. It’s too…. Weird. And kinda ugly.

And I thought I must be the only one that does not like the new style of Mickey cartoons. It just really lacks a lot. I figured it was because I am older and so my tastes must be different than the younger generation.
 
Ugh sorry to hear you woke up sick in Disney! That’s the worst.

You guys did so much in Epcot that day! The flower and garden spirit jerseys are super cute.

People watching in Disney is always entertaining. It’s funny to hear the little things people are blowing up about!

Sounds like a great AH! We did the Villains one a few weeks ago and the time definitely goes too fast.
 

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