February Vacation 2022: A Non-Solo Disney World Trip: Day 8, The End

Day 8: Saturday May 5, 2022

I woke up after sunrise today and definitely dragged my feet getting going. I don’t wanna go home!

Eventually I got up and got dressed and started organizing quietly. Nick woke up pretty quickly and then packing began in earnest. It got done faster than I think either one of us expected, so we killed a little bit of time, and then dragged our luggage to bell services.

It was evident as we walked that it was a massive check out day. Hmm, maybe we should have done a Monday-Sunday trip instead of Sunday-Saturday to get a reprieve from the crowds!

We stored our bags with the manager from bell services who was observant enough to notice either Nick’s tattoo or the collection of 603 stickers on our suitcases to know we were headed back to NH. Then it was off to the bus stop, where we were on a bus to Hollywood Studios very quickly.

At Hollywood Studios, it was a short walk to the Skyliner, where we got our own Skyliner. Nick’s beard really loved the skyliner breeze!

At Caribbean Beach we transferred, which seemed ridiculous, and pretty soon we were at the Riviera. Here we killed some time just sitting in the lobby, before we headed upstairs for breakfast (brunch) at Toppolinos, which is a very photogenic area.

We were seated just before our reservation time and had a fantastic breakfast. I actually like the current style of character breakfast better. The characters were great about posing at every table and it was less disruption. And the food here was amazing! They’ll let you order a whole bunch of stuff from the fixed price menu, plus you get a bucket of pastries (croissant, chocolate chip muffins and maple danish…with whipped butter, Nutella (sorry…hazlenut spread) and house made strawberry jam). Plus they have POG juice. Nick got the waffle meal and a side of eggs. I got the fruit plate and a side of waffles. Those waffles were outstanding! So were ALL of the pastries!

After breakfast we stepped out onto the rooftop patio for some picture taking. What a great spot!

Picture taking complete, we made our way back to the skyliner, which we took to Epcot. We had time to kill! Then we walked over to the Beach Club and caught a bus to Disney Springs. Again, we had time to kill!

Disney Springs was, obviously, a mad house. We poked around a couple of stores and then headed for the boat dock. We took the boat back to French Quarter, where we parked ourselves at a table outside the lobby and just enjoyed the perfect weather and relative peace before we had to get ready.

Eventually I went in and got the luggage and brought it back out. We did the final major luggage reorganization and then I ran in and changed into jeans. About 4, Nick went to get food from the food court, thinking we had plenty of time before our 4:45 pickup. That process took forever, and he didn’t re-emerge until after 4:30, when I’d gotten the text from the driver that he was there, but thankfully, he had said if we weren’t ready he’d see us at 4:45.

Nick scarfed his burger and we shared one more of those raspberry cheesecake things. Then we scrambled out front at 4:44, where Clarance picked us up in an SUV again to take us to the airport.

There was traffic on the way, but we made it ok. I think if I use a towncar again, I’d request a slightly earlier pickup upon departure just for my anxiety’s sake! Tiffany Towncar picks up 2 hours before your flight. We have pre-check and we’re two adults so this all worked fine, but, I would have been more comfortable getting to the airport about 2 hours before the flight, not less than 90 minutes before the flight, simply because I’ve seen how long MCO lines can get.

Clarence dropped us off curbside and we headed in. Checking our bags was easy, and pretty soon we were walking 10 miles to security. Seriously, the pre-check line couldn’t have been further from where we started! But we made it and we were through security in less than 10 minutes.

We took the tram and found our gate in the ghetto terminal. I really look forward to JetBlue moving to the new terminal! Our flight was on time so we didn’t have to wait that long. Boarding was relatively easy, and because sometime after booking, JetBlue had changed our flight to fly on an E190, we had our part of the row to ourselves. It’s a 2 seat by 2 seat plane. This is kinda nice on a relatively late flight. We were scheduled to get into Boston shortly before 10 pm and still had to drive home after that, and I fall asleep on a plane a lot easier knowing the only shoulder I might fall over on is Nick’s. We were both bummed though that this trip was ending!

I could say the flight was uneventful but that wasn’t entirely true. The guy on the other aisle was visibly sick for the first half of the flight (but had a miraculous recovery shortly before landing) and I think we had every screaming baby that could possibly be headed to New England on our plane. Lots of turbulence too. But…we made it into Boston, and eventually they got the jetbridge working and let us off the plane.

In true Boston fashion, our luggage took FOREVER. But eventually we had that in our hands, and I called the hotel. They directed me to the door to meet the shuttle, and the shuttle pulled up to the curb about 30 seconds after we walked outside. Phew!

It was a quick ride back to the hotel. I left Nick at the curb with the luggage and pulled the car over. No sense in loading luggage in a snowbank! We were both glad to see I didn’t have any flat tires after hitting a particularly nasty Boston pothole on the approach to the hotel the week before. (But my car did need an alignment when it went in for an oil change a week later. BOSTON).

The drive home was uneventful. We cheered when we reached the NH border, because Massachusetts, and walked in our house just before midnight.

Final thoughts:

I hate all things Genie and Lightning Lane. Pay to play is stupid and the lines were so much more efficient last summer when there were only standby lines. And the tech side of this is an absolute failure. Plus everyone is walking through the parks with their heads in their phone more than they were before. No thanks.

Flower and Garden Festival is such a nice taste of spring after a New England winter.

I’m so glad we got to try so many new to us restaurants, but it definitely did take away from park time. So I have mixed feelings about the whole table service every day idea. Maybe it’s because we were doing so many at resorts? That being said, we ate seriously fantastic food the whole trip, and slowing down might not have been a bad thing. See next point.

The crowds forced us to slow down a lot. In all honesty, this was exactly the pace we needed. We both realized partway through the trip that between all the family stuff, my school chaos, and recently being sick, it was the first time in months we really had the opportunity to get out together for true quality time. At home, (even when quarantined), I’m often working on reports and such, and so he’s playing video games. There hasn’t been much (any?) balance this school year. It was nice to have the opportunity to get out together, have fun and laugh together.

We’re both totally in love with Port Orleans French Quarter.

We encountered one or two cast members that were visibly tired of being policy enforcers, but overall, the cast members were outstanding this trip. Kudos to them!

Photopass quality was significantly better this trip than in August!

I loved the 50th anniversary statues. They’re such a great addition to the parks!

I wore sneakers this trip for the first time in a long time. The combination of VERY lightweight New Balance sneakers and Bombas performance running socks DID actually work. My feet didn't get hot and I only came home with 2 blisters and no swollen ankles. Guess my days of flip flops in the parks are over. Most of you have no idea how much effort went into finding the right sock and sneaker combo though🤦

Even with the crowds….I can’t wait to go back!

February Vacation 2022: A Non-Solo Disney World Trip: Day 7 Part 2

Day 7: Part 2

A little after 4 we headed out to the main entrance and requested a Lyft. Time to go to Dinner! The Lyft came along pretty quickly and we were at the Boardwalk in good time.

We sat on the Boardwalk for a little bit and got our table ready text shortly before our reservation time. We were seated right next to the kitchen, by the pizza oven which was cool to watch. That is a busy (and well oiled machine!) kitchen!. Nick immediately announced that the restaurant smelled even better at dinner than it had at breakfast and that that was saying something, and I had to agree with him.

Dinner was amazing. This is becoming my every trip restaurant. It’s just so good! And it’s so good without being excessively expensive (for Disney) or fancy. The ciabatta bread was fantastic (but I would have preferred butter rather than olive tapenade). I had the molto bello to drink which was basically a more tart (but still VERY drinkable) version of that Italian margarita I’d had from the festival, and the pizze bianca. Nick had the Tuscan Sour to drink and the lasagna. The flavors of our food were outstanding, and everything was cooked perfectly. The pizze bianca was a nice way to have a lighter but still really excellent meal, which worked out well for my evening plans!

Once we’d eaten as much as possible, we headed for the bus stop, with a detour for me to show Nick the creepiest chairs in all of Disney!

 
We got to the bus stop just as a bus to the Magic Kingdom closed its doors. Thankfully, the driver realized we were going there and reopened the doors to let us on the bus. I don’t remember if there were any detours, but we were at the Magic Kingdom fairly quickly. Nick headed for the French Quarter bus stop and I headed for the park.

Here, I got pulled for the bag check table. I strongly suspect it was the tin of mints that had been added to my backpack before dinner (that I obviously forgot to give to Nick even though they were a) his and b) his request…oops!). That was the only difference from my other park entries. The process was easy enough but it’s been so long since I’ve done a hands on bag check in Disney that I forgot I had to unzip the bag for them. Slow down. But I wasn’t really rushing to anything. So keep those tins of mints out of the park bag people!

Shortly after getting into the park I got a text from him that his bus was entirely guys and he was calling it the "f it I'm done" bus. I got a good laugh out of it!

I did some picture taking of the last of the statues and the castle at sunset.

 
Then I decided to kill some time with the Little Mermaid ride. It was posted as a 30 minute wait. More like 12.

Then it was time to take pictures of the castle on the (long) way to the Hub for Enchantment. 

I was quite disappointed that the Hub grass where I had watched the fireworks from this summer is now reserved for VIPs. Lame. Thankfully I was solo, so I found a small patch of real estate to squeeze into. There was still quite awhile before the fireworks. I killed time facebook spamming and texting.

Enchantment was good. I had only ever seen Happily Ever once, so I wasn’t attached to it at all, and I never liked Wishes. Again, I think there’s too much reliance on projections, but it was well done, and the music definitely spoke to me given where life is these days. I’d watch Enchantment again.

After Enchantment, I joined the masses leaving the park. It was a seriously crowded day. They had intense gating set up to queue people for the ferries and were loading two ferries to the parking lot simultaneously.

I didn’t have to wait very long for a bus, and, as the announcements say, I was “home soon”.

We decided not to pack until morning and I think both of us stayed up later than necessary purely out of denial that this amazing vacation was ending already.

February Vacation 2022: A Non-Solo Disney World Trip: Day 7 part 1

Day 7: Friday March 4, 2022

It’s the final park day. No!!!!

I got up early and dragged Nick out of bed earlier than he would have liked. We’ve got a Flight (of Passage) to get on! I had a breakfast bar while he got ready and offered to throw something in my park bag for him to eat later. He declined. Remember that.

We got ourselves to the bus stop at 6 am. To Nick’s surprise, we were not the first ones there. It was awhile before the bus to Animal Kingdom showed up, and for some reason 3 Epcot buses showed up while we were waiting, despite Epcot opening later than AK, but…a bus to AK showed up eventually, and we were off! And we were on the pretty 50th anniversary wrap bus! At this hour of the morning, I don’t remember there being a scenic tour through Riverside.

 
This was another one of those park hour changes that happened quietly, but this one wasn’t quite as dramatic as Epcot’s had been. Animal Kingdom was now officially opening at 8, which meant Early Entry for resort guests started at 7:30. Hence the 6 am bus stop arrival.

The ride to Animal Kingdom was uneventful and pretty soon we were walking to the gate. Like this summer, I pulled my dSLR out of my backpack for security (this was the only park I brought it to), and the security guys directed me to hold it up by my face. Tip: if you’re carrying a big camera, it will almost definitely trigger a bag check, so remove it from your bag and make it visible to the dude by the walk through scanner before you get to the checkpoint. Don’t get stuck at the bag check table!

Once we cleared security, we headed for the left side of the entrance and joined a line. We waited here for a bit and then SLOWLY made our way forward when they opened the tapstyle. Obviously, I had picked the line that didn’t split into two, so…it moved slowly. But we made it eventually. Then resort guests headed left to be scanned in. BUT…we got the dude who’s tablet wasn’t working so he was asking each group how many in the group and what resort we were staying at. Another slow down!

Eventually we truly made it into the park and it was off to Pandora, with absolutely no stopping for pictures. We were not held at the bridge at all, so we were able to go straight for the line to Flight of Passage, which was moving. We wound our way around and around Pandora and through the queue it seemed, and in the end, waited about half an hour, most of which was spent moving. Not bad, all things considered.

While in the link chamber, systems went down, but thankfully it was only a temporary delay. Flight of passage was awesome, as always! I, ever distracted, did notice that this time I could actually see riders to my right. The system looked a bit like Soarin honestly. It was interesting.

When we got off Flight of Passage, we made a stop at Pongu Pongu, because guess who needed food… Good news is, Pongu Pongu has handheld breakfast foods that seem to be pre-made. Nick had his sausage egg and cheese sandwich in hand very quickly, and ate it as we walked over to Navi River Journey.

I think Navi was posted as a 20 minute wait and we were on in under 15. Phew! Even bigger phew…while waiting, we received an email from the district that, while they hadn’t met with the bus company yet, they’d had enough offers of help from other districts around the state already (that bus barn explosion was BIG news in NH) that it was very likely we would be all set to go to school on Monday.

Navi is excellent, but we both wondered why they made the load zone so small. I mean seriously…they can only load like 4 groups at a time. That’s ridiculous! That’s why the waits get so long!

Navi complete, we booked it to Africa, where the posted wait time for Safaris was only 25 minutes. The queue didn’t seem to be extending out the front or anything that would suggest otherwise, so we joined it. 25 minutes was plenty reasonable for making our breakfast reservation.

That wait time was a lie. And not of the deflated wait time nature either. As soon as we realized the line was being sent through the woods essentially (is this new?), I knew we were there for awhile. It was a VERY stressful wait, knowing we had that reservation, and also knowing that the wait time would only build.

While waiting we figured out dinner plans and made reservations to eat that night at Trattoria Al Forno. Yeah, breakfast was that good that it was time to try dinner!

In the end the wait was 50 minutes…the time that got posted shortly after we joined the line. It was an excellent safaris, which got a little stressful (time crunch here) when the baby rhino held up traffic playing in the road, but at least he was cute.

Safaris complete, we booked it out of the park to the ride share area and requested a Lyft when we got there. Thankfully that arrived about 4 minutes later and we walked into Jambo House just in time to get the alert to check in for breakfast at Boma. Phew! We made it!

Breakfast was excellent! The food was great (no pics, because buffet), and our server quickly realized we are POG juice fans and left the pitcher at our table. Winning!

After eating our fill of tater tots, bread pudding and other horrifying things, we headed for the bus stop, where we discovered we were not crazy. The parks WERE crowded this week!

A bus came along to Animal Kingdom quickly, and pretty soon we were back. It was time for a few pictures around the Tree of Life, and of course, of the statues!

Picture taking done, we headed for Asia, catching glimpses of Kite Tails on our way. Nick immediately understood why I wanted to see the next showing of it. He was definitely in!

Our first stop was Maharajah Jungle Trek to see the tigers. Only one was out, and not in the most photogenic spot, but we saw her. We saw other animals too, but let’s be real…the tigers are why we do this one!

After stopping for water, we headed toward the water. We got to see a floatilla or two go by in pretty quick succession and Nick agreed with me that this was something good to come from the pandemic.

Then we headed for the stadium, extremely sad to see that they were running empty trains on Everest. It’s closed for refurb right now and that was such a tease!

We grabbed seats and enjoyed watching the jet ski dudes prep for the show. They were having a ton of fun! We also got to see some floatillas leave and return while sitting there. Kite Tails runs hourly and it’s not a show that you have to show up in advance for. We were early, but like 10-15 minutes before showtime. And that was earlier than necessary.

We both really enjoyed Kite Tails. It’s just pure Disney. And because it’s relatively short (15 minutes), it’s a nice way to take a quick sitting break. They have two different shows (Lion King and Jungle Book) and I think they alternate which one they’re showing.

 
After Kite Tails, we both were pretty well done, so we headed for the exit by way of the stores. A bus came along about the time we got to the bus stop, and we were back at the hotel fairly quickly.

Back at the hotel, I think we both napped for a change. It had been an early morning after a late night!