12/16/16 – 12/24/16 Trip Report – Better Late Than Never!

DAY 3 – 12/18/17
True to form, DD2 was up at the crack of dawn … good thing mommy is an early riser, too. We got dressed and ready for the day and snuck out to explore the resort while the gentlemen got their beauty sleep. We did not have anything planned until our brunch reservation at 1900 Park Fare at 1:40pm, so there was no rush to get everyone up and going (not the case for the rest of our trip!). DD2 and I wandered all over the GF grounds (beautiful!) and checked out the gingerbread house and tree in the main building when there weren’t a lot of people around yet, which was nice.



When the boys were all ready to get up, we headed back over the Poly to have breakfast at Capt. Cook’s, since mommy wanted to try the Tonga toast (it didn’t disappoint). :yum: We went back to the GF to swim for a while again before brunch. We got all decked out in our Christmas party outfits (couldn’t resist the matching shirts) and headed over to 1900 PF (we would be leaving from there to head over to MK for the party).
The brunch at 1900 PF was great and really probably some of the best character interactions of our trip (the brunch is only offered in the holiday season – I think it’s usually just breakfast and dinner). The only bummer is that my kids were still in their character-meeting-shyness stage at this point (thankfully got way better as the trip went on), so some of the character awesomeness was a bit diminished by children hiding under the table (true story). The food was good, and there was all-you-can-eat peel & eat shrimp, which was DS6’s only food request for the entire trip. :joy: We met Alice, the Mad Hatter, Mary Poppins, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Tigger. Another side note: we used this as our autograph book and loved it! https://www.amazon.com/Junior-Encyclopedia-Animated-Characters-Disney/dp/1423189140/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1501766371&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=disney+animated+character+book
I had it spiral-bound and added several pages of colorful cardstock at the back for extra autographs. It was perfect!

DD2 is not entirely sure about Tigger …

Alice trying to find the child hiding under the table …

After our “brunch” (more like a late lunch but whatever), we headed over to MK for MVMCP.
So … part of the reason we wanted to go to WDW at this time of year was because the last time we went (late September – early October), it was so stinkin’ hot. Now, Iowa can get plenty hot and humid in the summer months, but Florida just takes this to a whole new level. I am amazed at those of you that vacation there in July-August. Just wow. I cannot imagine. So, we wanted to take a winter Florida trip to both escape frigid Iowa and enjoy beautiful, perfect Florida winter temperatures. And for the first couple days of our trip … it was so stinkin’ hot. Again. Thankfully, this got much better later in the week. Everyone told us it was an unseasonable heat wave. Great.
So we were hot. But who cares?! We’re going to the Magic Kingdom! I love starting at MK – walking onto Main Street and gazing at the castle just seems like the classic way to begin a Disney vacation; I think I would have a hard time starting the trip at a different park. We took the monorail from GF to MK, which was super-easy. We did not have any trouble with the monorail our entire trip (which might be a little bit of a miracle), so we were able to fully enjoy the ease of travel that staying at a monorail resort gives you.
Another side note: as mentioned at the beginning, we took DS6, DS4, and DD2. And we definitely wanted a stroller. Our kids are pretty awesome travelers, but the stroller is a must for tired legs at the end of the day and a mid-day nap for DD2. We love having a stroller both for tired kids and so we are not having to carry all the snacks, ponchos, water bottles, and miscellaneous paraphernalia that comes with traveling with kids. I think we will be very sad when the kids have outgrown the stroller. Both times we have gone with the kids, we have rented a double stroller from http://www.orlandostrollerrentals.com; the strollers from there are good quality, clean (which is amazing considering what they look like when we return them at the end of the week), and delivered and picked up right at the resort (or vacation rental, as was the case when we went last year). Another thing we liked about that particular stroller rental company was that we could add a roller board on to the stroller for DS6. For most kids, you probably wouldn’t need this, but DS6 is definitely our straggler and slow walker, and we discovered that giving him a way to ride from time to time definitely speeds things up for us. We have never had difficulty finding our stroller (at least, no significant difficulty :wink:), and we have left pretty much everything on the strollers while going on attractions and have never had anything stolen. Later in the trip, we actually left the stroller at MK and returned for a few hours to the GF in the afternoon, and it was right where we left it when we returned (probably not supposed to do that, but oh well – worked nicely for us that day). :relaxed:
We entered MK right around 4pm with our party tickets. I had scheduled fastpasses for the hours leading up to official party time, which was great – I heard they are not letting people do this anymore, which is too bad! We had a FP for 7DMT (3:30-4:30), ETWB (4:30-5:30), and SM (5:30-6:30). We headed to 7DMT right away once we got into the park. And this was mommy’s first big mistake of the trip. You see, DS6 and DS4 had both gone on 7DMT last year and loved it … or at least didn’t hate it. This time, they hated it. Suddenly, overnight, my children had turned into complete wimps. I’m still a little baffled. This would be a theme for the rest of the trip – the first question on entering any queue would be “Is there a hill? Is it fast?” Sigh. So I traumatized them with our first ride at WDW. DD2, strangely enough, didn’t seem to mind it. Kids. Needless to say, after this I scrapped the 5:30 SM fastpass and switched it out for Dumbo. Haha!


This is the face of a child whose parents have traumatized him by making him go on the scariest roller coaster known to man: the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train

After the Mine Train debacle, we went to ETWB, which was lovely – we didn’t do this our last trip, and it is so cute! Then on to Dumbo, and all was well with the world again. :wink: After Dumbo, we headed over to the castle to watch Elsa transform it into an ice palace … wow. This was probably one of the best moments of our trip. We got really good spots right in front of the castle, and the moment when it lights up with the icicles was goosebumps-amazing. The little show with the Frozen characters is cute (my kids love Frozen, so they had a good time with it), but the whole thing is worth it just for that moment of transformation. This is also when my kids discovered their love for the fake snow, which we were to encounter several more times that trip.


After that we hit a couple more rides (this is where my memory fails me a bit – I won’t be able to remember everything we did, sorry!). We walked past Princess Fairytale Hall on the way to something else, and I noticed that the posted wait was only 15 minutes for Tiana and Rapunzel. I knew that on party nights, the princes are with the princesses, so I jumped at the chance to meet four-in-one with little wait. Yeah … that posted wait was a big fat lie. Lesson for mommy: don’t trust the signs, trust your Lines app. :wink: We waited at least 45 minutes, which was not a lot of fun with squirrely DD2 (the boys and daddy abandoned the line after about 10 minutes when they realized it wasn’t going anywhere to get some snacks and stake out a spot for the parade). When we finally got to Tiana and Naveen, my princess-loving daughter was suddenly and inexplicably shy and hesitant (not her usual). I was about to enter into full-on mental lament about standing in that line for close to an hour and then leaving without any pictures of my princess with the princesses. But Tiana shooed Naveen away (hilarious!), got on the floor with my daughter, and proceeded to talk sweetly and quietly to her for a couple minutes, getting her to completely open up in the process. It was wonderful, and just one example of how amazing those characters can be with kids. I will always have a special place in my heart for Tiana after that. :blush:

After Tiana and Naveen, we met Rapunzel and Flynn and high-tailed it out of there to get to the parade on time. I love Disney parades and was especially looking forward to this one because I love Christmas! Unfortunately, our viewing spots were not the best (note: DO NOT watch an evening parade across from the Diamond Horseshoe – they have huge spotlights set up across the way that are blinding), but the kids (who are shorter and were not being blinded) loved it and the adults made do. After the parade we went on more rides, ate some blue snow cone stuff (we didn’t eat any of the cookies!! What is wrong with us?!), and settled down to watch the Christmas fireworks and projection show on the castle – lovely! I’m not exactly sure where our spots were, but I was looking back at our pictures/video and they were pretty awesome – maybe by Casey’s Corner but a little bit closer to the castle? Great spot!

We went on a few more rides after the fireworks, and then headed back to the GF via boat this time. This ended up being a pattern for us – take the monorail in, take the boat back – and it seemed to work nicely. The kids were pretty much all asleep by the time we got back to our room. I spent a bit of time getting everything prepped for the next day, as we would be heading to HS early to make rope-drop and sign up for Jedi training!

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That 7DMT pic is hilarious!

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Love the report, great pictures

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Love the matching shirts- so cute! I could smell the Gingerbread house behind your daughter and was cracking up with kids hiding under the table and your traumatized son on SDMT. Too funny! Those pictures are priceless.

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So was GF worth the astronomical price, in your opinion?

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My sister has a picture of my niece completely breaking down in tears when Tigger came to the table at 1900 PF- she was about 2 at the time and horrified! (Odd, she’s actually the brave one now between she and her older sister.) She did better with face characters, though. I love the pictures and your report! It reminds me of DD being there when she was that little- so many things are so unpredictable with littles at Disney. I can’t wait to resort hop this December on our trip!

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That is a difficult question to answer … I think it depends on what you want to get out of your trip and how much $ is too much. To be honest, we were not even attempting to be frugal on this trip. :grimacing: I think for me, just the beauty of the resort and all the wonderful customer service made it worth it. But, we have never stayed at a Disney resort before, so I have nothing to compare it to … hmmm. I hope I don’t regret starting with the flagship resort, haha! We are thinking we might want to try one of the Epcot resorts next time, so we’ll see how they compare!

DAY 4 – 12/19/17
I got everyone up early so we could head over to HS and be there before rope-drop. This was my strategy for dealing with being at WDW at crowd level 9-10 every day, and I cannot emphasize enough how important it was to get to the parks early every day. We could get more done in those first two hours than we could the rest of the day on a lot of those busy days. Having said that, I pushed my husband to the brink with my early mornings (wait for Day 6, lol!). So know the folks you’re working with – next time I will work in more relaxation time for my honey. :grinning:
Before I get into our day at HS, I’ll tell you briefly about our touring plans. Since I love planning everything to an extreme degree, you would think I would have touring plans detailed to the last second … and I tried this, I really did. It just hasn’t really worked for us yet. Every plan would start off pretty well, and then after the first few attractions it would sort of fall apart. Because we would have to make an unexpected bathroom break, or the kids would want to look at something or explore something not on the plan, or the husband would want to do this ride first because the wait is only five minutes … etc. Enter my secret weapon: optimize. I know that those of you who really stick to your plans abhor the optimize button, but it saves my life as my plans start crumbling around me. :relaxed: Optimize + rope drop + strategic fastpasses helped us navigate the crazy Christmas crowds without going nuts in long lines. So, if you have a hard time sticking to a touring plan like we do, take heart: it can still be done.
For our day at HS, I had the following fastpass selections lined up: TSMM at 9:45am, Star Tours at 12:30pm, and Tower of Terror at 1:55pm. Of course, Jedi Training makes your entire HS touring plan one big variable depending on what time you get, so I didn’t even work too hard on that touring plan ahead of time knowing I would just have to optimize it once we got our Jedi time.
We drove our rental car and arrived at the park pretty early … I checked the time stamp on some pictures, and we were leaving the GF ninety minutes before HS opened and arriving there 60 minutes before opening. Here’s something we were not expecting when we chose to drive a car this week: we were at the parks so early most mornings, we were there before the parking people. No people at the parking booth = free parking. We only paid for parking at the parks once our entire trip! Another advantage to being hardcore rope-droppers. :wink:
I think they must have let us into HS a little before park opening, because we were in line for Jedi Training sign-up at the time of park opening. We had to wait in that line for probably 30-40 minutes, but we got a great time – right around 10am. We were visited by some stormtroopers while in line and got anytime fastpasses for the whole family when we got our Jedi Training time, which was nice!

While the boys and I waited in line for our Jedi time, Dad and DD2 did some souvenir shopping and met Olaf. Once we got our training time, I messed around with our fastpasses a little bit and moved up TSMM to right then – so we went there next! After TSMM, it was about time for the boys to get ready for Jedi Training, so Dad took them over there while DD2 and I hung out around Star Tours and watched another training (I think the Jedi Training is cute and hilarious all at once – I could probably hang out and watch it for most of the day. If only there was some shade around that stage, sheesh! Did I mention that it was hot? Because it was, again. So hot that my phone overheated and shut down right around the time that the boys were starting their training. I was close to tears – no video of my boys in a lightsaber battle with Darth Vader! But daddy saved the day – unbeknownst to me, he had found a pretty good spot a little ways away from where we were and took some greats pics and video. Yay! The boys had a blast and were ecstatic to fight Darth Vader.

Pretty excited to help carry in the banner …

… and downright ecstatic to battle Lord Vader!

After that it was time for our ADR at Mama Melrose’s, which was good since we were all in need of a break from the heat. We were all impressed with Mama Melrose’s – the food was great and the air-conditioning heavenly. :wink: I especially enjoyed my ice-cold sangria. We booked our ADR at Mama Melrose’s as the Fantasmic! dining package, which was very easy – our server told us exactly what was included in the package and gave us our tickets before we left.

Glorious beautiful cold beverage

The rest of the afternoon included lots of Star Wars (March of the First Order, A Galaxy Far, Far Away, making customized lightsabers and lots of impromptu lightsaber battles between DS6 and DS4, Star Tours). We also went on TOT with rider swap, single rider line for the RnRC, watched the Frozen sing-along (Oh my word. Didn’t do this last time – loved it! So funny!), saw the Muppets show … I’m probably forgetting stuff. I know a lot of people don’t think HS is worth the time or effort right now, but we loved it and didn’t even get to everything we wanted to do (probably helps that we are big Star Wars fans).
I was overjoyed when they put Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular back on the schedule for our trip; this was the one show I wanted to see the most. We staked out our spots about 40-60 minutes prior to the show (I think we ended up just in front of where the dessert parties are … no dessert party that night for the Star Wars fireworks, I think there was one later for Jingle Bell, Jingle Bam!). We didn’t mind staking out spots so early since this was also our dinner break – DH camped out with the kids while I scrounged up some grub from quick service. Not a lot of amazing options at HS, but I managed to find something everyone would eat (hot dogs for the kids, a pretty decent salad for me, and maybe something BBQ for DH). I also took one of the kids with me to Sweet Spells to get some goodies for dessert, and he was given a rice krispie treat while we waited in line … this also ended up a theme for our trip. I think every time we went to one of the sweets shops at the parks, we were given free goodies. Just another example of Disney adding a little magic to our trip! In the fifteen minutes or so before the show started, all of us who were seated were asked to stand up and start moving forward as they really started packing people in the courtyard. The Galactic Spectacular definitely lived up to the hype for us - it was amazing! The lasers, projections, fireworks, and music all worked together to make one incredible show.
After the fireworks, we went to the Star Wars Launch Bay for a bit to see the collections and mingle with some Jawas … we had just a little bit of time to kill before heading to Fantasmic. We were really worried because some storms were starting to roll into the Orlando area, and we realllly wanted to see Fantasmic! – didn’t get to this on our last trip. Thankfully, the rain held off and we were able to see the show. It was so much fun, and the reserved seating we got with our dining package was great.
After Fantasmic!, we let DH do the single rider line at RnRC while the kids had some more lightsaber battles.

The force is strong with this one …

And then the floodgates opened. Now, I am always amazed at how the parks seem to clear out when it rains. We pack our ponchos and roll with the rain, and every time we have been caught in a rainstorm at WDW, it has been awesome. Lines drop to no wait whatsoever. It seems like you have the whole park to yourselves. Basically, we love it when it rains at WDW. We went on Star Tours again and the GMR and got in to see Kylo Ren, Chewbacca, and Moana with no wait.

Suddenly the park was closing down, and we were still having fun. The kids pretty much passed out once we got to the car, though. It was a quick drive back to the GF and off to bed. We had an pre-park opening ADR at Tusker House for breakfast the next morning!

And this is why we love strollers …

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Love the trip reports. But i have to say this.

As to parking at the prks. Resort guests get free parking. So you should not have had to pay for any parking.

Love the boys and their lightsabers. Glad you had such a great time.

Oh man, really? For some reason I thought we had to pay … not sure why I thought that. Glad we only paid once, then!

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DAY 5 – 12/20/16

We were up again in the early morning hours for another early entry into the parks – Animal Kingdom today! This is the second time we’ve had a pre-park opening ADR at Tusker House, and we loved it again. Animal Kingdom is such a beautiful park, and it is wonderful to wander in before the rest of the crowds.

Beautiful, peaceful Harambe in the early morning

We all loved the food at Tusker House – it is a perfect blend of traditional American breakfast and more exotic cuisine. We also loved meeting the classic Disney characters there – Mickey, Goofy, Donald, and Daisy.

Probably my favorite part of an early-morning reservation at Tusker House, however, is jumping on Kilimanjaro Safari first thing with no lines. Both times we have done this, we have had a great experience with a relaxed ride and very active animals! On this day, I had also scheduled a Fastpass for KS later in the day … wow, what a difference! Our ride later in the day was hurried (you wouldn’t think they would go faster or slower, but it was a lot faster later in the day when the crowds were getting nuts – not at all the experience we had earlier in the morning when we were one of the first trucks to go on the safari). And the animals were definitely more active earlier – probably the best moment was when one of the rhinos jogged alongside our truck for a while. So all in all, I definitely recommend an early breakfast at TH and first-thing ride on KS. Definitely worth getting there early for this!
Our AK day is a little bit of a blur for me, to be honest … I think my crew was getting a little tired with all of our early mornings, and I know we didn’t get as much done there as we wanted to … we had FP for KS, Dinosaur, and EE. We were only able to talk DS6 onto Dinosaur after some serious bribery, and there was no way the kids were going to be talked into EE, so my husband and I switched off to go on that one (we love that coaster and weren’t going to miss it!). We went to the Finding Nemo show but didn’t make it to Lion King, which made me a little sad. We also didn’t make it to Flights of Wonder, which I have always wanted to see. Sigh. Next time! We did make it to the Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail, which was a lot of fun.

My son is trying to decide if the super-still hippo is real or not … it’s real :smile:

We love zoos and animals, and AK often seems like a really nice, well-maintained zoo – which is great with us!

Tired children with obscenely large dinosaur souvenirs …

Part of the reason we didn’t get quite as much done at AK was because we needed to be sure to leave plenty of time to get back to the GF and get ready for our date night! We stopped at the AKL before heading back to the GF so I could run in and 1) check out the AKL because I think we’d really like to stay there someday and 2) stop at the Mara and pick up a couple quick and easy things for the kiddos to have for dinner that night (the quick service at GF was undergoing refurb while we were there, so I though it would just be easier to get stuff at the Mara – plus I wanted to try the zebra domes, haha!).
We got our tired kiddos settled in at the GF; I think they were very ready for a quiet night in the hotel room with the iPad and Disney Jr. (not above using a little screen time to pacify the youngsters). Our babysitter from Kids Nite Out arrived as scheduled. We were really happy with this babysitting service – it was easy to schedule and they did a great job communicating with us prior to our night out. Our particular sitter was a grandmother several times over and retired schoolteacher who had taught for something like 40 years … needless to say, we felt like our kids were in good hands!
We kissed the kiddos goodbye and headed out the door, hardly able to contain our giddy excitement – we were going to Victoria & Albert’s!! I’m not going to pretend that my husband and I are hard-core foodies, but we had eaten at a few higher-level restaurants in the past few years and not made fools of ourselves (and had an awesome time with fantastic food!), so we really wanted to go to V&A’s.
Victoria and Albert’s was an amazing experience right from the start. First of all, everyone was so gracious and welcoming. I think anyone would feel comfortable eating there, even if you don’t indulge in fine dining very often (or ever!). The restaurant itself is lovely – big floral bouquets, beautiful table settings, live harp music. Our servers explained everything beautifully and were great at answering any questions we had. We had the seven-course menu with wine pairings, and it was perfect. You definitely want to plan on spending several hours there – it’s not the kind of experience you want to rush. We had a lovely evening there, and my husband and I agreed that it was definitely the best meal of our lives (and the most expensive, but that was expected). :wink:

Warning: gratuitous food pictures to follow:








The happy (and full!) couple

After our meal, we wandered around the GF a little bit – listened to the band playing, admired the Christmas tree, etc. Originally I had thought we might try to head over to Epcot for evening EMH hours while we had the babysitter, but we were too full and too sleepy to even consider that. Instead, we wandered down to the dock at the GF and watched Wishes from there, which was a perfect ending to the night. We went back to our room and relieved our babysitter (kids all tucked in and sleeping soundly – yes!!). We also snuggled into bed, with visions of sliced truffle and duck three ways and deconstructed Bananas Foster dancing in our heads. :wink:

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Thanks so much for sharing al of your info - what beautiful photos, too! These detailed accounts really help people like me who are going for the first time. We’re also going to have a nice dinner at GF when we go, partly because of these reports! Can’t wait!

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Great report and pics. Thanks for sharing the V&A pics.

You’ll have a great time! I definitely recommend exploring the GF when you go, it’s so beautiful!

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Thank you! It was difficult to choose which V&A pics to share, they were all pretty amazing. :slight_smile:

DAY 6 – 12/21/16
The night before, my husband informed me that he was physically, mentally, and spiritually unable to rope-drop the next morning. :wink: But I frankly could not contemplate wasting even a precious second of my planned rope-drop time. We decided to compromise: he and DS6 (who had been complaining mightily in the early mornings) would sleep in while DS4, DD2, and I headed to MK for rope-drop.
The three early risers snuck out (not too quietly – I think I was giving DS6 every possible chance to change his mind) and made it to MK in plenty of time to snag good spots for the welcome show, which was very cute.

The early risers eating breakfast in the stroller

We didn’t have to rush too much this morning; I didn’t have any big plans other than going on whatever rides and seeing whatever shows the kids wanted to see and do without a wait. We went on Aladdin’s magic carpets and went to the Tiki room show and the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse; we also watched the new Elena show, which my kids loved.

Best treehouse ever!

Welcoming Elena to the kingdom

We went on Haunted Mansion right after that, as the park was starting to get busier and the lines were starting to lengthen. DH texted me to let me know that he and DS6 were on their way, and we arranged to meet at Small World. We joined up and rode IASW together, and then got ready to head over to Crystal Palace for a late breakfast.
I had originally scheduled our CP breakfast as a pre-park opening ADR, but the time of park opening changed as we got closer to our trip, and suddenly our PPO ADR was after park opening. Not so good anymore. So with the help of the fabulous reservation finder, I rescheduled it for late morning instead. CP was one of our favorite meals last time, and we were all excited to go again. Our experience this time was not quite as good, unfortunately. We had one of the latest breakfast times, and they started taking away the breakfast stuff and setting out the lunch stuff while we still eating … and they had the lunch food roped off so that we could not eat any of it. :disappointed: So they basically started taking away the food before we were really done without giving us other options, which was kind of a bummer. We also did not get to meet Tigger – this is the first time that we did not get to meet one of the characters at a character meal. I think we probably could have let someone know and met him, but we would have had to wait, and we were pretty much done at that point. At other character meals a CM would always come around to make sure we met with everyone, but that did not happen this time. It really seemed like they were rushing to get the breakfast folks out and start lunch service. So … if we do CP again, it will be for an early breakfast rather than late, for sure. Please don’t let our experience at CP turn you off from it completely, though – we had a lot of fun there last year with our early ADR!

After CP, it was time for our three fastpasses of the day: POTC, SM, and BTMR. I could not talk DS6 and DS4 into going on Splash Mountain with me, which made me very sad as this is probably my favorite ride at WDW. That’s ok, I just went on it by myself (so there!). I was able to bribe DS4 onto BTMR, so I will count that as my success for the day. We went on the train, which was a nice relaxing break from the crowds (which were really starting to pick up). We then settled in for some good spots for the FOF parade, which I was really excited for since we didn’t get to see this last time we were at WDW. It was amazing! I’m really glad we took the time to get good spots (somewhere in Liberty Center – maybe by the stocks?).

After the parade, the crowds were approaching insanity-level. :scream:

We eventually made it out of the post-parade crush of humanity and made it to the Little Mermaid without much of a wait. I picked up a Christmas ornament at the Christmas store in Liberty Square while DH and the kids watched the Muppet show there (kind of sad I missed it, DH said it was pretty fun). After that it was time to make a decision: go back to the GF, stay at MK for a while, or head over to AK for evening festivities (which was the original plan). You can probably imagine what DH’s vote was, so back to the GF we went. :relaxed: We ordered pizza and had a relaxing evening in our room (we enjoyed the water pageant again from our balcony), which was a good call since we were going to Epcot tomorrow from opening to close.

Watching the water pageant from our balcony … a fun way to end the day!

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Wow, your little ones tour harder than my 7 and 11 year olds! What troopers!

Yeah, they’re pretty awesome … not that we were completely free from whining and meltdowns, but they did pretty well overall. :slight_smile:

DAY 7 – 12/22/16
Our Epcot day was great and was probably the crowning achievement of all my planning efforts. We saw everything with no or minimal wait and had great eats. And the weather was GORGEOUS. The first two days at WDW were painfully hot, and the next two were cooler but with gloomy, overcast skies. Our Epcot day had beautiful temperatures and blue, sunny skies all day. It was just wonderful. And I now know why people live in Florida (in the winter, at least!) ;).
Since I let everyone have a pretty easy day yesterday, there was minimal complaining about rope-drop today. We were heading out of the GF as the sun was still rising, and it was a lovely sunrise.

There were EMH at Epcot that morning, and I wanted to take full advantage of it. We were at the front of the crowd at rope-drop, and we headed right to Test Track (always a gamble at park-opening, but it paid off for us today!). DS6 LOVES Test Track, it is his number one ride in all of WDW. So we were definitely TT or bust that morning. :wink: I had decided early on in the planning that FEA was going to be our FP priority for Epcot, and that strategy totally worked well for us. After TT (we got a rider swap so we could come back later, which was awesome for DS6) we headed over to Soarin, which was still a walk-on at that point (we did rider-swap and came back later in the day with our rider swap passes, so the boys got to go on it twice). We went on Living with the Land next, which is a family favorite (Because we’re nerds? Because we live in an agricultural state? Who knows, we just love it). After that we met Joy and Sadness, which was probably our longest line for the day – maybe 20 minutes or so. They were great! Sadness was so funny, and it was amazing how Joy managed to be Joy with no words – how do they do that? It was a really awesome character meet.
After meeting Joy and Sadness, we headed over to Mission: Space for our first fastpass.

My husband getting fancy with his pictures :wink:

We had fun with that (I’m always nervous it’s going to make me sick, but that hasn’t happened yet, even with doing the orange one – yay!), and then it was time for our early lunch ADR at Coral Reef. I read a lot of mixed reviews about Coral Reef while getting ready for our trip, but we gave it an unequivocal two thumbs up. It was great! We were seated in the first row close to the tank, and the food was realllly good. It was a lot of fun with excellent food and excellent service – we will definitely go there again.

Coral Reef was astonishingly good!

After lunch, we headed over to the Royal Sommerhus to meet Anna and Elsa before our FEA FP. This was another one of our favorite character interactions – one of my favorite videos of our trip is DS6 sneaking back for an extra hug from Elsa. :slight_smile: FEA was also a lot of fun – we have pretty big Frozen fans in our crowd, so they were pretty excited about the ride.

After FEA, we hung out in the World Showcase for a while before heading back to the other side for another go on TT and the Seas (we got a FP for Turtle Talk with Crush at Coral Reef, which was nice) and use our FP for Spaceship Earth. Pretty soon it was time for our dinner ADR at Biergarten – I had scheduled an early dinner with the Candlelight Processional package. This ended up being good and bad … we were just starting to get hungry again after our early lunch at Coral Reef, but probably not enough to do the buffet at Biergarten justice. :wink: Biergarten was another fun dining experience – the kids loved going down in front of the band and dancing. After dinner, we explored the World Showcase again for a while and went back to the sees to look at the aquarium in a little more depth and play at the dancing fountains. We went back to the other side to pick up some snacks before the CP (I hit up Karamell-Kuche in a big way – that caramel corn was sooooo yummy during the show). The Candlelight Processional was beautiful and such a good moment for us as a family to remember what Christmas is really about in the midst of all the Disney glitz. The kids did really well during the CP – I’ve heard some people with concerns that it might be too long or boring for kids, but our kiddos did great with it (with some snacks, of course).

After the Candlelight Processional, we staked out a spot to watch Illuminations (I think we were somewhere in front of Japan). Illuminations was great – maybe not as spectacular as Wishes or the Star Wars fireworks initially, but then there was the special Christmas “Peace on Earth” tag at the end. OH. MY. WORD. My husband and I still talk about that as the pinnacle moment of any fireworks show we have ever seen. Seriously. It was amazing. I was watching our little video of it again and literally got tears in my eyes and goosebumps. I hope I’m not over-selling it, but it really was amazing. :relaxed: After that it was time to head out – it was a very long but extremely satisfying day at Epcot.

The big finale!

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Beautiful sunrise pic!

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