August 2022: A Summer Girls Trip to Disney: Day 6: The End

Day 6: Monday August 22, 2022

Time to wrap this trip up. I woke up, got ready for the day, and started packing; I couldn’t prolong the inevitable any longer. At 7 I paused to buy Lightning Lane for Guardians of the Galaxy. I got one for shortly after park opening. I had a lunch reservation and a 4:05 pm bus pickup, so I did Lightning Lane rather than virtual queue to not risk a return time that wouldn’t work for me.

Eventually the packing was done. I did one last look around the room to make sure nothing was forgotten and grabbed all of my stuff to head for the lobby. It didn’t take long to store my luggage with bell services, and then I headed for the bus stop. A bus came along pretty quickly and I was at Epcot shortly after regular park opening. Later than I’d been the whole trip, but well timed for today.

And my timing really was just about perfect. I got to Epcot just about the time my Lightning Lane window opened up, so I made Cosmic Rewind my first stop. I walked right through the queue into the pre-show. Third ride and this attraction was still mind-blowing. I can’t wait for Nick to experience it someday. This time I got Conga for the song, and I have to say, it made the ride even more fun!

After saving the galaxy for the last time this trip, I did some picture taking outside.

Then I took a look at wait times. All of the wait times were still VERY low, so I headed across the park and rode Soarin. I really do love this ride.

After Soarin, I did some more picture taking of Spaceship Earth from a different angle. This was a better photo op during Flower and Garden, but still pretty good.

Then because I had a lot of time to kill, I took a nap…err…did the Nemo attraction. Seriously, how did they make this one so boring?!

Next up? Spaceship Earth. I had a nice view of the palm trees and the golf ball while waiting. The line moved fairly quickly, and while I don’t remember the exact wait time, it was less than posted.

 
After returning to Earth, I headed for Test Track, because wait times were still crazy low and I still had a lot of time to kill before lunch. I don’t love the whole late Labor Day causing a late start to the school year thing when it comes down to the date of the last day of school, but I sure was loving it for wait times now! I’m usually back at work by this point in August, but with Labor Day so late, that wasn’t the case this year!

Single rider for Test Track was basically a walk-on. I still think this version of Test Track is crap.

After Test Track I wandered through the Creations store for a bit for some air conditioning and time killing. Then I caught the Jammitors.

 
Then it was finally time to head toward lunch. Space 220 oddly wasn’t allowing online check-in, so I went and got in line outside. In case anyone was wondering, the line here is in BRIGHT sunshine. Also, lots of people were getting walkup reservations by arriving a bit before the restaurant opened.

I had to wait a bit, because my 11:30 reservation was at the time the restaurant opened, and they started checking people in promptly at 11:30, but once they started check-ins, the line moved quickly.

So…Space 220. Cool experience. Fantastic atmosphere. Wonderful service. I had the planetary punch and endless water (wonderful service) to drink. The planetary punch was delicious, but a very unique experience since it has dry ice or something in it to make it bubbly. They serve it without a straw, so your nose feels it when you drink. For food, I had the cauliflower appetizer and the burger. The food was cooked the way it should be, and decent quality. It’s unusual for a burger with bacon to not cause issues for me after the fact, and I was fine, so the quality was definitely there. However, the food was pretty bland. So…overall…cool experience, and I’d go once more so Nick could experience it, but not a place I’ll need to return to every trip.

 
While eating, I saw that Southwest was showing my flight out of Orlando as being a bit delayed, so that created a bit of stress. I didn’t have the flexibility to change to an earlier flight this year like I had last year to avoid missing a connection, since I was using Sunshine Flyer (last year I had a rental car), and also, flights are a lot more limited now. But I did do some searching and find available hotel rooms in both Orlando and Baltimore, so at least I knew there MIGHT be options if I got stranded somewhere, to ease the stress a little. Of course this meant that I spent more of lunch staring at my phone than I would have liked. Oops.

After lunch, I wandered a bit, debating whether or not I wanted anything else from the festival. I did, but just couldn’t stomach anymore food. So I decided to do a loop on the Epcot monorail, to take a look at the Future World construction from above. While walking to the monorail station, I received confirmation that all the people that had had hacking coughs in our vicinity during this trip had indeed had Covid, so I let Nick know I’d be sleeping on the couch if I made it home that night, since 1 am is not the hour stick a q-tip up one’s nose, and donned my kn-95 that I’d been mostly ignoring. And then I boarded as empty a monorail car as I could find. At the TTC, I stayed on the monorail for the trip back to Epcot, a little bummed that I was on the monorail with a wrap, so my view wasn’t clear enough for pictures, but grateful to be sitting in some semblance of air conditioning.

When I got back to Epcot, I headed for the buses and made my way back to French Quarter. I hung out at the tables just outside the lobby for awhile before retrieving my luggage and consolidating my park bag into my luggage. Then I headed back out front to wait for the no-fun bus, watching fun park buses and start of vacation buses roll in.

My bus was just a couple minutes behind schedule. There were just a handful of us boarding, so that process was quick, with the driver checking us off his roster by name, and then it was off to the airport on board the Flamingo. French Quarter had been the final stop before the airport. The bus was full of masked, coughing people.

 
I’d absolutely use Sunshine Flyer again. The buses were clean and new. The employees I encountered were all pleasant, and their processes are efficient. I don’t love the fact that you have to check in and wait outside at MCO, but that’s not a dealbreaker for me. It’s a covered area, so it wasn’t miserable.

The ride back to the airport was uneventful, and all too soon, I was dragging my luggage to the Southwest check-in. Check in was surprisingly quick, with minimal waiting. Then it was off to security, where pre-check allowed me to walk right through. Standby was posted as a 23-27 minute wait. I was on my final Florida based ride of the trip within minutes.

 
Once gateside, I snagged a sub from Jersey Mike’s for dinner and then found an empty gate to unmask and eat at, before making my way to my gate.

My flight ended up only being delayed by a few minutes, which honestly was kind of amazing. There were some intense storms visible from the airport, but I guess they were far enough away.

It was an uneventful, but kinda smelly flight. The people next to me brought Chinese takeout on board, and then promptly slept the entire flight without eating their food. It was…not the most pleasant flight experience, but hey, I’m passing this Covid test with flying colors being able to smell that takeout! Thankfully, despite the slight delay leaving MCO, the flight arrived early in Baltimore.

In Baltimore I made the trek from one of the highly used terminals all the way to the far end of terminal C, so that helped me kill some time.

Eventually the gate agent, who was absolutely fantastic, let everyone know that it was NOT a remotely close to full flight and that while the flight would be fully staffed, they were currently working their way through the airport, thanks to the weather up and down the east coast, so boarding would be a bit delayed. No worries though, because with such an empty flight, boarding wouldn’t take long.

And boarding did not take long, even with the poor listening comprehension demonstrated by my fellow passengers as the flight attendants tried to spread everyone out to balance the weight on this not full biggest plane that Southwest flies. We then sat for awhile as several (like close to 20) passengers that were running from delayed flights trickled onboard. I’ve been there done that in this very airport, so I’m never really bothered by them holding this last flight of the night to try to limit the amount of people sleeping in the airport. One passenger, however, absolutely laid into the flight attendant for allowing this to happen, since she was on this flight because her own connection hadn’t been held this morning when her inbound flight had been delayed more than 2 hours by ATC. UGH. NOT THE SAME. And the flight attendant doesn’t make these decisions!

Eventually the front door was closed and the kamikaze and it was full speed ahead to the runway. It was a bumpy but VERY short flight to Manchester, where it took minimal time to collect my luggage and return to my car, which, thankfully, was exactly where I’d left it in the garage a few days earlier. The drive home was uneventful and I walked in the door about 1 am. Gizmo was glad to see me and clearly torn as to whether to sleep on the bed or join me on the couch. In the end, I had a couch buddy for my few hours of sleep. The next day I tested negative for Covid twice, and continued to test negative for the rest of the week. Apparently I’ve still got immunity from last January. Unfortunately this probably means I’ll get it this school year when I’m up to my eyeballs in evaluations. Teacher week would have been more convenient!

Final thoughts:

It was a fantastic trip!

The Food and Wine Festival is definitely more fun when you can split food. You can try so much more.

I think if I try to do MNSSHP again, I will wait until October. Still a risk of storms, but maybe not a daily risk like August? Disney really needs to improve their communication of delays and such. But I’m glad I finally got to experience MNSSHP.

I’m pretty sure wearing a hat vs not was the difference for me in getting carded vs not.

I still hate the park hopping time limitations.

I still need more time in Epcot to try some of the non-festival foods and beverages.

August is REALLY hot for the Food and Wine Festival, but it’s doable with effort and planning.

Jessie and I had comparable experiences with Mears Connect and Sunshine Flyer. Biggest difference honestly is that I didn't board a bus at the airport until they were ready to fully board the bus and roll it out. Jessie did her waiting to leave the airport ON a bus.  

I do not know how people are powering through Disney with Covid. I’m not talking about the minimal symptom folks, I’m talking about the hacking cough, tissue constantly in their hands folks. I had minimal symptoms when I had it in January and NO WAY could I have tackled Disney then, or for close to a month after. And yet…

This is the longest it's ever taken me to write a complete trip report. This school year has been nuts so far, and isn't likely to get less crazy.