After a night with less sleep than I had hoped, I was awake before my alarm. Definitely not what I was hoping for, given my scheduled flight arrival in Manchester of midnight. Emphasis on the word SCHEDULED.
As I started getting ready for the day, I realized that I had already left the feeling of slightly ready for the end of vacation far behind. I was 100% NOT ready for the end of vacation.
Eventually the last of the getting ready was done, and the saddest of the eviction notices had been collected. NOT READY!!
I made my way to the main building, wishing I could check my luggage over at Music (they’re sister resorts!), since it was so much closer. I had no wait for both luggage check and luggage storage, so pretty soon I was filling my mug with Powerade (guess which park I’m headed for!), and getting on a bus so cold I could see my breath.
Thankfully the ride to Animal Kingdom was short! During the ride, I had realized that it was a morning EMH day (oops), but hoped that the crowds wouldn’t be too horrific. I still (unintentionally) arrived at the park before 9, and had to have my band scanned right after I entered the park.
When I got off the bus, I decided I was going to focus on soaking it all in today. Although the bug was put in my ear by Nick to consider one weekend trip before my AP expires, this is definitely the last trip on this pass, and it’s not being renewed. We’ve got a plan to try to get back to Disney for a weekend next year, but it’ll be awhile before I have the opportunity to do another full blown trip to Disney again, I think. So...I’ll let my pictures do the talking from entering the park.
My wandering ended at Safaris, where I, once again, basically walked onto the ride. The longest wait was waiting for management to finish cleaning gum off the seat of the truck (my seat, of course), before the truck arrived at the load zone. We all got to watch the process, because they stopped just before the load zone.
It was another good safari, with better elephant sightings today. However, I was only using a cell phone camera today. I know...Animal Kingdom fail!
After safaris, I checked out the Gorilla Falls trail. I saw an...Okapi.
Actually, I saw a gorilla too, but only one, and his butt was pressed up against the glass observation area. It was my most boring exploration of this trail to date.
From here, it was time to head for another continent. Once I got to Asia, I got to ride Everest 3 times in less than half an hour, thanks to the single rider line!
Speaking of the single rider line: if you have children under the age of teenager, don’t go through the single rider line with them. It may just result in you not being able to ride, because your kid 10 rows back has a meltdown at showtime, because he wants to ride with his parents. Not that I witnessed this with a kid that wasn’t more than 10 or anything…
After 3 expeditions on Everest, it was time to be moving back to Harambe. I wanted to see Lion King one more time.
When I got to the Lion King, I found line confusion. They hadn’t opened the fastpass queue yet, so those people extended out quite a ways in line, in the direct sunlight. Meanwhile, the standby queue, in the shade, was open. Phew!
Waiting for Lion King definitely made it clear that the park was busier than yesterday. And the people in the park were a lot less patient. This queue is kinda funky, and has lots of different lines, funneling into different doors, so that people end up seated in different sections. The woman behind me was b*&#!ing to anyone that would listen about how we got here first, and those people were going to make us lose our spot. Being the obnoxious person that I am, when she tried venting to me, I reminded her that at least we were waiting in the shade; they were in the sun. She chuckled, and shut up.
Eventually, they sent my line up the side ramp, and a few minutes later, they started seating everyone. Giraffe section for me again.
Today’s show had better singers in the big 4 than the previous day. Once again, I noticed lots of things I hadn’t noticed before, and the show passed far too quickly.
When Lion King ended, I slowly made my way over to Pandora, via the direct path from Lion King to Pandora. It was a nice quiet path. And the weather was nice today too. So much less humid, and not as hot as the day before.
Since I had time to kill, I did some picture taking, and also had some Photopass pictures taken. Figure I’ll use that free downloads perk as much as I can, before it rides off into the sunset with my AP.
Picture taking and standing in line done, I headed for Flight of Passage, to use my final fastpass of the trip. I walked through an empty fastpass queue (in the middle of the day!), and was directed straight into a loading room. Yay!
After my final banshee flight of the trip, I headed for the bus stop. Time to get some lunch, and I’m still not excited about the Animal Kingdom offerings. As I walked, I plotted my best options for food and my best route to take to said food. I was really hungry! And while it was a nice day, it was still midday in Florida in August...
In the end, I hopped on a loading bus to the Epcot resorts. It was a relatively quick trip to the Crescent Lake area, where I exited at the Boardwalk and walked over to International Gateway from there.
Once I’d made it through bag check, I headed straight for the bakery in France. It’s cheap, and tasty! I had the same food as earlier in the trip: a ham and cheese croissant and a fruit parfait. And yes, Nick did wonder when I tortured him with pictures why I haven’t suggested eating here on any of our trips. Oops?
While eating lunch, I discovered I must have been seeing things the other day with my portable phone charger; it barely had any juice left in it, and my phone was LOW. UH-OH!
Lunch devoured and phone slightly charged, I made my way to the American Adventure. It was a really pleasant day, by August in FL standards, so, since I had a bit of time to kill before the next Voices of Liberty set, I found a spot in the shade outside the store. Unlike all my recent festival visits, there were actually empty benches!
I sat and people watched, and listened to the music from the Guardians of Galaxy concert for awhile. While observing the action, I had to wonder why they need to offer reserved seats for the concert. The seating area appeared less than half full. I will say that the music was surprisingly good, but the antics between musical numbers were weird. But I also know nothing about Guardians of the Galaxy.
Shortly after the concert wrapped up, I headed inside for the Voices of Liberty set. It was fantastic, as always, and this one had a real focus on Disney music, something I haven’t heard as much of when I’ve watched these sets. I also discovered, during a non-Disney song, that one of the singers is from NH. It’s a small state, so that’s pretty cool.
After the set, I headed back outside to soak up some of that brilliant sunshine, and discovered some guests were keeping it classy and soaking something else. Seriously? GROSS!
I continued counter clockwise around World Showcase, since I hadn’t cruised through that half of the world on this trip, and made my way to the exit, pausing occasionally to document the gorgeous weather.
It was time to face reality, though, and head back to the hotel. I needed to find a corner somewhere to chill and charge my phone. My wall charger, of course, was in my bag that I had stored for the day with luggage services, since I thought my portable charger had plenty of juice.
I made my way to the bus stop, and, eventually, a bus to all of the All Stars came along. It was a very full bus. I got off the bus at Music, to accomplish my final goal of the trip: taking pictures throughout Movies. The last time I stayed here, both of my camera batteries bit it, and I was only there one night, so my picture taking ability was quite limited.
Once I’d sufficiently photographed the resort with my phone, and drenched myself in sweat in the process, I made my way to the luggage services desk to pick up my carry on backpack. That process took no time at all, and pretty soon I had found a table towards the back of the food court, next to a wall outlet.
I parked myself for awhile (a couple of hours) to charge my phone, unpack my park bag, rearrange my carry on bag, and watch the monsoon. Appropriate Disney departure weather!
Eventually it was pretty close to sad bus time, so I changed into a long sleeve shirt from my tank top, and made my way outside to wait.
Shortly before my bus was due to arrive, a DME bus headed for MCO made an appearance, and people materialized. Since it was early for my 5:45 scheduled bus time (but not very early), I asked the driver if it was the 5:45. “Nope, the 5:15, but I can take you if you want”. Uhh no thanks! I’m going to have enough time at the airport with my regularly scheduled bus.
Just a few minutes later, my actual bus showed up (early, of course). Only a few of us boarded, and Movies was the last stop, so it was a pretty short ride to the airport. And between the short bus ride, and a non-existent wait for TSA Precheck (once the people flying internationally realized that was not the ID checker for them), I was in line for food, gateside, less than 50 minutes after boarding the bus. Yup. 2 ½ hours before my flight… I will say though, that the non precheck line was posting a 30 minute wait. That STILL would have left me with a lot of time to kill.
So...I got a sub at Jersey Mike’s, and settled in at my gate to eat and read, and watch the people running to gates, as a result of delayed connections. My flight, however, was still showing as on time.
About 8:15, my plane arrived, early. The gate agent made it clear we would not be boarding for awhile, because we were still waiting for a flight attendant, and we “should remain comfortably seated”. There’s always that one, though, that, not only looks totally out of place for the destination, but also can’t follow directions.
Shortly after 8:30, we boarded our nonstop flight to Manchester. Or so we thought. The flight was fully boarded before 9, and the flight attendants were beginning their pre-door closure spiel about snack service. I had been noticing some beeping that sounded like back up beepers, but there were a lot of trucks zooming around trying to deal with all of the delayed flights so I didn’t think much of it.
And then the gate agent made an appearance. “Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you hung onto your boarding passes. This plane is down, and we’re going to transfer you to a different one. Not sure which one yet, so come on back into the gate area, and we will figure everything out.”
With a collective groan, the entire plane returned to the gate area. Within about 10 minutes, the gate agent let us know that there was a plane in range, and we’d all be moving about 3 gates down. As soon as they got that plane cleared, they’d board us and send us to Manchester.
So, we moved as a mass to the restrooms, and then to the new gate, followed by our flight and gate crews. About 10 minutes later, a plane appeared at the gate, and, after a few status update texts, we boarded the plane about 10. All of Southwest’s employees were great, apologizing, and doing all they could to move things along. Well...the baggage crews were a little slow, and at one point, I think all of us were thinking we might arrive in Manchester with NO luggage in the cargo hold, but I think that was a result of all the delayed flights around us.
Eventually the luggage got loaded on the plane, and we were cleared for departure, and not a moment too soon. I could see lightning, and was hoping that that wouldn’t delay us more. It didn’t.
The flight was uneventful. The flight crew tried to make up for the delay with a lead foot pilot and double snack service. I managed to sleep for about 45 minutes. The woman on the aisle somehow slept through landing.
We made it into Manchester about 12:40, about an hour behind schedule. Not horrible, all things considered. Deplaning was quick, and once the luggage made it to baggage claim, my suitcase appeared pretty quickly. I booked it to the parking garage to get ahead of the elevator lines and get out of the cold (62*, UGH!), and found my mom’s description of where my car was to be surprisingly accurate. It was an easy drive back to my house, despite running on pure adrenaline, and I was being greeted by the dogs at the door about 2 am.
Final thoughts:
I want to go back!!!
Despite being grossly understaffed (or so it appeared) Disney’s CMs have really gotten themselves back to Disney standards over the last year or so.
I really love Disney. I really didn’t love the widespread cutbacks leading to long lines. There is NO reason for Big Thunder Mountain to be a half hour wait AT park opening. Two trains should have been running. And so on. And with how Disney tracks everything now (fastpass +...), I can’t believe they didn’t know what the crowd numbers would be like. I’m sure this is being done to pay for Star Wars land and the absurdly priced acquisition of Fox, but it’s not cool.
There’s not a doubt in my mind that while housekeeping’s workload has increased astronomically, their numbers have not increased. There’s no other reason I can think of for them consistently not arriving at my room until late afternoon. So...Disney’s room search program is still broken.
I really did have an awesome trip! And I’m scheming how to get back soon (but not nearly soon enough). Although I think the scales have tipped to the Disney Cruise Line for me...
Believe it or not, this last day was actually written a month ago, but I’m finally getting around to posting it now.
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