I might have over planned our last full day and might not have done a very good job of planning transportation home at the end of the night.
We got up pretty early considering we got in a little late last night and almost made it to RD at HS. Roc n Roller coaster was delayed in opening so we used our FPP for ToT. I’m not a big fan of that ride bc I hate drops but these were relatively short compared to my memory of the last time. RnR had a 25 minute wait by then but DS was very excited to go one last time so we waited and the time was right on (23 minutes actually). Finally we got some breakfast at starring rolls. We had some counter service credits to burn through so we all ate breakfast and lunch and dinner. Perhaps that’s why I have a stomach ache as I type this at 1am. Hmmmmmm. TSMM followed by animation academy (Donald) where both DS and GM were pleasantly surprised that they could actually draw a character. I really like that attraction. I’ll post our pictures in an edit at some point when I get home. Star tours with a FPP was next and we got a pretty good story. The rebel spy, of course, with a pod race and a Death Star sequence. Fun! Lunch at pizza planet was pretty good but it’s no Lou Malnati’s.
Next was the big moment- DS and I upgraded to annual passes! Yippee! And we booked a trip for February with GM staying at Pop as of now. DS and I worked on pin trading for a bit. There are some good locations for pin trading I. The shops in the front of HS and also check out the gas station and the package pickup. Guest services has a huge book of pins to work with. We found all five of the monorail pins and then promptly lost one while running to the boat. Oh well. If we found them that fast, they can’t be that rare! Incidentally, DS is now working on Duffy pins. That should keep us busy for a while. I think there are a couple sets of duffies (FYI- that autocorrected to suffixes the first time around. Ha!).
Back at the ranch…or beach club… We spent the afternoon at storm along bay. We were briefly interrupted by an actual storm but it passed quickly. we evacuated to a covered area for a brief time and it took me a while to realize that it would have been smarter to evacuate to the covered area by the bar instead of by beaches & cream. This is my advice: if a Florida afternoon tropical shower comes up, take shelter in a bar. Brilliant if I do say so myself. We had a fabulous time in the pool again. It was hard to drag ourselves away but, alas, we needed to clean up for dinner at Captain’s Grill. It was pretty good! I’m glad we went there. At the last minute I changed us from cape may to captains grill because we were all getting tired and the thought of having to get up to get my food at another buffet was irking me. Not to mention the fact that crab legs are a lot of work to eat. At this point in my vacation, I need an actual vacation. GM did get the crab legs and believe me, she was struggling to crack them about half way through.
We finished up quickly so we could make it to the contemporary for the pirates and pals fireworks cruise. It was terrific! The patches were awesome. One little girl was dressed up like a pirate and had a toy sword so she fought hook in the party room. It was truly adorable. In the end, hook gave up (he was only fighting with his hook after all) and the whole room cheered! You could see the kids visibly gain confidence from one little girl beating hook. Disney magic. I love it. The cruise itself was way more than it sounds like it’s going to be. The leaders (we had patch #2 on the smee boat) was very entertaining with celebrations, singing, and trivia in addition to the fireworks. This wasn’t the “sit down and watch quietly, kids” type of cruise. I would do it again in a minute. Totally worth it. And, in case you didn’t know, the electrical water pageant was one of the first attractions at WDW and started in October 1971 when the park opened. That was our first trivia and the answer earned DS a pirate sword. All the kids got “treasure” in the end. My only issue was the placement of the boat was a little tiny bit off and my view of the fireworks could have been spectacular instead of awesome if the captain had moved the boat forward about six feet. If you can, arrange to sit in the back of the boat so you don’t have to look through the scaffolding/supports at the front of the boat.
Now here’s where I kind of messed up. We should have just walked back to MK and taken a bus but GM wanted to take the monorail and everyone looked tired so I went with it. But the report monorail goes the wrong direction making it a lot of stops to get to MK and we couldn’t even get on the first monorail bc it was so full. Once we were on, everyone was so tired that we (and I am really embarrassed to say this as a liner) missed our stop and ended up back at the contemporary. So we did what we should have done in the beginning and arrived back at the hotel at midnight instead of 11:15. Big mistake since we were hoping to get to MK early tomorrow on our last day for the welcome show.
I packed us up and set the alarm optimistically but I think DS will say he doesn’t care how many FPP we have for SDMT and go back to sleep. We shall see.
Oh, and my SO is doing better with some antibiotics and rest. His proclamation this afternoon that he overdid it this morning by going to the grocery store solidified his good judgement in staying home to rest. And now I get to go back for christmas! Yay!