TR - Lee Family MouseFest 2015

losfp

Mouseketeer
Joined
May 25, 2014
Following on from -> http://disboards.com/threads/ptr-2015s-usa-trip-the-disneyest-holiday-ever.3301479/

The time has come!

To start this anyway. This is mostly just copy and pasted from the daily entries I did in my travel blog on Facebook. We did a 38-day trip to the US, taking in Qalt Disney World, Universal, a Disney Cruise, Disneyland and Aulani in Hawaii.

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LFMF15 Day 1: Orlando, Florida - It was a long time coming, but finally the day came to grab all our bags and head to the airport for Lee Family MouseFest 2015!

It was a smooth trip to the airport, so we were super early for check in and gave us plenty of time to get through customs and security. We headed up to the Qantas Business Lounge to relax before the flight and made ourselves comfortable in the kids’ room they have there. The kids could make as much noise and chaos as they wanted and we wouldn’t be death-stared by the folks travelling for work.

Before long, we were getting comfortable in our seats on the plane. Qantas flies an A380 from Sydney to Dallas, and I don’t mind it. Relatively quiet, with modern fittings and a fair amount of space in cattle class.

The kids settled in nicely with headphones and whatnot, Bethany even dozing off for a quick afternoon nap. Sadly that was to be the end of the tranquility as to get them to sleep, the 2 kids between them took up 3 of our four seats (actually more like 3 1/4 seats, thanks to Bethany’s kicking legs). This meant that one of us didn’t have a seat at all through a 10-11 hour period. I spent quite a bit of time loitering around the snack bar at the back of the plane and just hanging around looking suspicious.

Clearing customs at Dallas/Fort Worth proved to be a much nicer experience than dealing with LAX, and it was very easy to hand over our luggage for our connecting flight to Orlando.

The plan at DFW was to relax in the Admirals Club lounge, grab a shower and casually amble back to our gate for boarding, but it turned out a little more frantic than I’d like - maybe the 4 hour layover between flights wasn’t such a bad idea after all!

For a start, the AC at DFW Terminal A was all the way down at gate 23, with our flight departing form gate 14. Not super far, but a trial with a sore ankle and two overtired kids.

Wifey took Phoebe for a shower while I tended to Miss Cranky Pants in the kids’ lounge (a somewhat more formal and austere setting than the equivalent brightly coloured room at Sydney). They wandered back about 30 minutes later, gushing about the great shower facilities. They’d left me about 15 minutes before we all had to sprint back to the gate, so I grabbed Bethany and set off in search of one of these mythical wonder showers.

It turns out that you actually have to book a shower room, and wifey and Phoebe had just wandered into a vacant room and hogged it for half an hour. The AC front desk person must have taken pity on me due to having an apoplectic toddler under my arm so she said I could have the next one.

The shower facilities were, in fact, quite good, but due to time pressure I only had the opportunity to slightly moisten myself and the by-now-screaming two year old and then run out of there.

The power walk back to the gate was invigorating and we got onto the plane no worries. Then the damn thing sat at the gate for an additional 20 minutes while they worked on an electrical problem. The check in lady in Sydney had given me boarding passes that appeared to be two seats together in two consecutive rows. No problem right? Well someone stuffed up because each seat was a single seat on a aisle. Technically all four were adjacent to each other, but still. A nice family from Adelaide (who were also on the SYD-DFW flight earlier) helped us out by switching around so that we could have three seats together, and one just across the aisle.

The plane eventually left and true to form, the girls fell asleep in their own seats about five minutes after takeoff, even though they seemed incapable of doing that on the 16 hour flight previously. Brats.

Picking up all the luggage in Orlando was easy as well, and we were picked up by my cousin Jeannie, who I hadn’t seen since 1989 - so a lot of catching up to do! With some expert level tetris, we were able to fit all of our bags into the back of her SUV and get a move on to her apartment in Orlando.

LFMF15 Day 2: Orlando FL - A bit of a restless night, what with all the jetlag and weird timezone differences. Today was all about packing and repacking bags at Jeannie’s place. I’d ordered a fair amount (ok, lots) of online purchases that were delivered to poor Jeannie’s apartment in Orlando, awaiting our arrival. Though now that I’ve visited, I may take her place off my list of Preferred Shopping Delivery addresses - that 3rd floor apartment was an interesting one to get our luggage to!!

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We picked up our rental car, a Nissan Pathfinder. Nice spacious car, with tons of boot space… which we will need to fit all our damn luggage! With not much else planned for the rest of the day, we headed down to the Premium Outlets just outside of Walt Disney World. Had lots of fun browsing, and picked up a bit of stuff, mostly from the Disney clearance store, Skechers and Gymbaroo. Even with the exchange rate being awful, we’re still able to pick up lots of bargains.

Later that evening, we went to Disney Springs (the newly renovated and still WIP former Downtown Disney). The place looks like a lot of fun and I wish we had more time to explore it further. Perhaps later in the trip if time allows. We had a great dinner at Planet Hollywood, with the kids literally falling asleep at the table! Jetlag blows when it hits, that’s for sure!

LFMF15 Day 3, Fri 16 Oct: Disney’s Art of Animation Resort - The smaller child was still in all sorts of bother overnight with the jetlag so no one got much sleep. Hopefully it improves!

Today was our first official day in The World! That is if you don’t count last night’s quick trip to Disney Springs for dinner. We headed over to the Art of Animation Resort to check in. The AoA is one of Disney World’s newer value resorts. In terms of comfort, it’s pretty much a standard motel room, but quite alright. The theming is excellent, from The Little Mermaid rooms that we were staying in, to family suites themed to The Lion King, Finding Nemo or Cars.

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Chef Mickey’s is a character dining restaurant in Disney’s Contemporary Resort - in character dining, Disney characters wander from table to table for photos and autographs while you eat. Phoebe had experienced it before in 2012 when we went to Disneyland, so she kind of knew what to expect, but it was wonderful to see Bethany’s excitement at meeting Goofy, Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Pluto. The food was typical buffet stuff, decent enough but nothing special. The main attraction is obviously the character interactions.

After lunch, we went back to our room - the decorations and furnishings are all Little Mermaid and very cool. We took the opportunity to check out the various wings of AoA and hopped into the big blue pool at the main building to splash about. After that, we grabbed a quick dinner at the resort food court. It was ok but quite chaotic. Early-ish bedtime for everyone because we had a big day planned for the Saturday.
 
LFMF15 Day 4, Sat 17 Oct: Disney’s Art of Animation Resort - Crazy and frantic start to the day as this was our first park day and of course nothing had been organised yet. We didn’t quite leave as early as I’d like but we still managed to park the car about an hour before gates opened. Now here’s the interesting thing about The Magic Kingdom at Walt disney World. there’s a massive car park, sure. But the massive car park is a considerable distance from the main gates of the theme park, with a great big bloody lake in the way.

So what you do is park the car, and if you’re late enough to be parking near the back end of the car park, you may need to take a tram to the front of the car park. We were in the 5th row, so we just walked. At the front of the car park is the Ticketing and Transportation Center, or TTC. This is where you buy tickets and then have a bewildering array of transportation options to the Magic Kingdom (and other parks and resorts - the TTC serves as a sort of transportation hub for Walt Disney World). So, at the TTC, we hopped onto a monorail that eventually deposited us at the front gates of MK. We were just in time to see the Welcome Show, which is a thing they do at the front train station a few minutes before official opening time. When the ropes dropped, we strolled into our first WDW theme park!

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I was keen to see what comparisions I could make with Disneyland over in California. First impressions were…. the same but different. MK is a bit larger than Disneyland, but with fewer attractions, so it feels a little less cramped. We got off to a great start, riding Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, The Little Mermaid, Dumbo, Barnstormer and a few other classics. We met Alice and The Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland and got some great pics. Phoebe was just a little short to ride most rides on our last trip, but she is making up for it on this go-round, even riding and loving Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and lots of others.

We had a break for lunch at the Crystal Palace, which is a quaint little restaurant with a Winnie The Pooh themed character dining experience. Bethany in particular was very excited about meeting Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet. We only suffered long waits towards the middle of the day that got tedious with the hot Florida sun baking down on us - I can’t imagine ever going in Summer here. So we just took it easy and went on some rides that the whole family could go on, like Haunted Mansion and It’s a Small World.

After a cruisy afternoon, we had a light dinner at the Plaza Restaurant and then staked out a spot for the nighttime electrical parade and fireworks. The parade was great, and a nice preview of the similar Light The Night parade that has just started over in Disneyland that we’ll get to see when we head over there. That was followed by Celebrate the Magic, a wonderful show where they project onto the massive Cinderella castle, with music and the whole works. Just a few minutes after that was Wishes, the fireworks show.

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We headed off about 3/4 of the way through the fireworks to beat the rush, and I think we were wise to do so. We were able to get on the first ferry that arrived and we got back to the TTC in good time. Drove back to the hotel and dumped the kids in bed near midnight. Phew! All in all a thoroughly successful first park day, and hopefully they are not as tiring and long as that one!


LFMF Day 5, Sun 18 Oct: Disney’s Art of Animation Resort - Due to the hectic nature of the previous day, the Lee family slept in today! Everyone was conked out until about 11am and I think we all appreciated the break. After finally waking up, we scoffed down a quick breakfast in the room and headed out to kill a bit of time before our dinner reservation later that night.

We decided to head to one of the mini-golf courses in Walt Disney World, Fantasia Gardens. It actually has two courses, one of which (the Fairway Course) is a hard course that’s very much like a mini gold course, literally. It has sand bunkers and crazy slopes and absolutely no theming whatsoever. We lasted 2 holes before giving up, but the staff at FG were good enough to let us go on the easier Gardens course instead.

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The Gardens course is on the other hand wonderfully themed, with statues, strange obstacles and whimsical touches all over. We had a blast on this course and finished up having a great time.

On the way to Fort Wilderness for dinner, I took a wrong turn and ended up pulling into the carpark for the Wilderness Lodge. We stopped and had a look around the lobby anyway, as this was one of my shortlisted resorts to stay at, and probably would have opted for it if I hadn’t been able to find DVC points to rent for the Grand Floridian. Very nice, and I’ll certainly have to look into staying there next time if/when we return to Orlando.

That made us a bit late for our reservation though, so we had to get a move on. The Hoop Dee Doo Musical Revue is at Disney’s Fort Wilderness resort - the resort itself is a massive sprawling property with tons of cabins, camping grounds etc. To get to the venue for the dinner, you have to catch a shuttle bus from the main resort car park.

We finally got there just in time to take our seats before the show started. The Hoop Dee Doo is a dinner show, the food is rustic country style (fried chicken, smoked ribs, salad, beans, corn etc) and the entertainment of a broadly amusing hee-haw fashion. Honestly, it was a lot of fun, and the piano player and banjo player really set the scene for the six entertainers who regaled us with various country sing-a-long songs and awful puns.

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Their last bit was a sketch where they got some members of the audience up to play a small part and I was lucky enough to be chosen to participate. I may have overdone the ham a little bit, judging by the comments and congratulations I received afterwards as to how entertaining I was. A great time was had by all and I wish I could have eaten all the delicious food that was served up at our table, but seeing as I’m eating for 2.5 on this trip (the kids are really not pulling their weight at the buffets), I had to make a conscious choice between exploding and not.

Quietish night in after that, with the kids going for a swim and me doing a couple loads of laundry.



LFMF Day 6, Mon 19 Oct: Disney’s Art of Animation Resort - Time to hit our second park! Disney’s Hollywood Studios, just off to the side of Epcot. Walking in, I was struck by just how similar it was to parts of Disney California Adventure in Anaheim. Well, maybe not so surprising as DCA was in part based on DHS in the first place. Very cool place, with a nice feel modelled on old-time Hollywood. I found it maybe a bit harder to navigate than Magic Kingdom’s classic Hub & Spoke layout. Honestly it’s like driving in the Sydney CBD, but with slightly less terror.


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We hit all the main attractions - Star Tours, Tower of Terror, Toy Story Mania etc, and even got in a few character photo ops while we were at it. Lunch was another character dining meal at Hollywood and vine, featuring a ton of Disney Junior characters. They seemed in higher rotation than other character dining meals we’ve had, and the likes of Doc McStuffins (“There is no quiet any more. There is only Doc McStuffins”), Sofia the First, and Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates seemed to buzz around demanding attention every ten minutes.

The afternoon consisted of mostly watching shows, from the Frozen Sing-a-long Celebration, to The Little Mermaid and Disney Junior Live. It at least guaranteed 15+ minutes of sitting still and not being in the Florida heat, so I wasn’t complaining. We grabbed a light dinner at the Sci Fi Dine-In theatre, a bizarre restaurant where the tables are cars in a 1950s drive-in.

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Afterwards, we watched Fantasmic, which is a great water/fire/projection/explosions show that shouldn’t be missed. It had a few things different to the Disneyland version from memory, but I will get a chance to compare them again when I go to DLR in a few weeks. Headed back to the hotel after that. DHS is probably just a one-day-park if you get moving super early and get through everything. I’m not quite sure yet whether we want to go back to DHS this trip, but if we came back, it’d only be a half day at most.

Moving hotels tomorrow, but stayed up super late to do more laundry and get up to date with my entries here. So tired.
 
LFMF Day 7, Tues 20 Oct: The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - Utter chaos this morning as we tried to pack up all our gear to make a move to our second Walt Disney World resort. After stuffing everything into various suitcases and bags (how on earth are we going to fit everything into a maximum of eight suitcases to come home with?) we hit the road and headed to the Grand Floridian resort. The Grand Floridian is a deluxe resort right on the monorail loop that connects with the Magic Kingdom, along with the Polynesian Resort and the Contemporary Resort. This means we won’t have to deal with that bloody Magic Kingdom carpark again for the rest of the trip! We were lucky enough to secure a booking at The Villas, which is the DVC property at the Grand Floridian. This would definitely be a step up from the colourful, cheap and cheerful Art of Animation Resort that we were checking out of.

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Upon arrival, we ambled to the main Grand Floridian building and into our next Character Dining meal at 1900 Park Fare. It was an eclectic assortment of characters (Mary Poppins, Alice, The Mad Hatter, Tigger and Pooh. Bizarre combination.) but fun was had by all. Our room was still not ready so we took a ride on the monorail. Disney runs a couple of different monorail loops. The Magic Kingdom Resort loop goes around the big artificial lake that Disney built between Magic Kingdom and the Magic Kingdom carpark because why the hell not. We got off at the TTC to see if we could find Phoebe’s lost hat (got it back!! hoorah!) and then onto the Polynesian Resort for a looksee. Our room was ready soon after, so we popped back onto the monorail to get back one further stop to the Grand Floridian.

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The Art of Animation resort was comfortable enough, and wonderfully themed. But it couldn’t touch the Grand Floridian for quality. Beautifully appointed studio room, and just amazing lobby and facilities.

After unpacking, we popped back onto the monorail to the Magic Kingdom to go to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party at the Magic Kingdom. We’d been to the equivalent event at Disneyland back in 2012 so thought we’d give the WDW version a go. Wifey and I had intentions of dressing up this year, but just plain ran out of time. We bought the girls costumes though, and they looked a treat - photos to come at some point. The extra halloweeny touches were a lot of fun, as were the special Halloween shows, parades and fireworks. We cut and run around 10, and decided to bolt just after the fireworks had started. On the way back to the Grand Flo, we hopped on a boat, and we were right out on the water when the fireworks show had its big finale - the sky above the castle was well illuminated and it was a great perspective from the boat.

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LFMF Day 8, Wed 21 Oct: The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - The is a quote attributed to 19th century German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke which translates roughly as “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy”. Much the same can be said for all your best laid plans to get 2 small children out of bed, fed, dressed and into the car to make your planned start time at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. We finally got there just on 9am, or about the time the normal people who aren’t staying at a Disney resort get to enter the park.

Animal Kingdom is a weird but cool park. It’s sort of a zoo. And sort of also a regular theme park. We did some character meet and greets with Mickey and co in crazy cute safari outfits, and also Russell and Dug from Up. Phoebe got a Wilderness Explorer book that had activities and stuff to do at various points around the park so she could collect stickers. Really cool idea for the kids.

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The park doesn’t have a huge number of rides, but they’re pretty good. Dinosaur is a dark, bumpy ride and Expedition Everest is a simply outstanding roller-coaster ride. Phoebe loved it so much that she went on it 5 times during the day. We also went on Kilimanjaro Safaris and a couple more. There’s also a few good shows in Animal Kingdom, It’s tough To Be A Bug is outstanding, but way intense for kids - same thing happened here as when we first saw it in Disneyland in 2012, a stack of kids started crying as soon as things started flying at you from the 3D screen (“helped” by blasts of air, or things in the bench seating that poke you in the back or spit water at you. Good times.

I think our favourite was Finding Nemo : The Musical. Wonderful sets, props, performers. The songs are great too - I later looked it up and the songs were written by Bobby Lopez, one of my current favourite Broadway composers. I totally believe that they could turn it into a full length musical down the track. Just loved it.

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We gave up around 5pm and headed back to the Grand Floridian. A quick dinner was had, and then we stopped by the fire pit for the kids to toast marshmallows. Not a bad way to spend a day.


LFMF Day 9, Thurs 22 Oct: The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - Everyone was wrecked so we had a little sleep in and had breakfast and lunch in the hotel room. The kids were going a bit stir crazy though so we dragged them out of the room to go to the Magic Kingdom around mid-afternoon.

We got a chance to wander around, have some photos taken, look in some shops etc that we hadn’t had time to do properly as we were just so busy running around trying to see and do as much as possible. So it was nice to take the pace back just a step and take a moment to look around.

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Phoebe loved Space Mountain so we took the chance to ride it again, and also rode Jungle Cruise, Flying Carpets of Aladdin, the Carousel and took in Enchanted Tales with Belle, which is a very well done interactive meet and greet with Belle from Beauty and the Beast, whereupon various kids get to play a role in a short play with Belle.

Today was a Halloween party night so we grabbed a quick bite to eat before we were kicked out of the park. Into bed and hopefully a restful night as we had another full day tomorrow, our first visiting Epcot.
 


LFMF15 Day 10, Fri 23 Oct: The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - Another day, another early start at a theme park. Today’s treat is Epcot. A weird sort of a theme park. Half of it is Future World, with rides and sciency/environmental stuff. The other half is the World Showcase, which is like a permanent world’s fair arranged around a lake.

We spent the morning doing a few rides, like Mission: Space, Soarin’ and Ellen’s Energy Adventure. Then we had to hightail it to Norway in the world showcase, for our lunch at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall, hosted by Belle and featuring various other Disney Princesses like Snow White, Aurora and Cinderella. Just what the French Belle is doing in a Norwegian castle in Florida is somewhat of a mystery, but we’ll run with it. The food was great - salmon for me and ravioli for her (and whatever the kids would eat), and the princesses friendly and accommodating as per usual.

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After lunch we hung around and did The Seas with Nemo and Friends, a really cool aquariumy area.. mostly for kids, but interesting enough as well for adults. Enjoyed ourselves and killed a bit of time meeting characters until my cousin Jeannie and her daughter arrived to spend the evening with us. We rode Test Track (very similar to Disneyland’s Radiator Springs Racers, uses the same cars) and grabbed dinner in the United Kingdom before wandering out. It got very crowded towards the end as the Epcot Food and Wine Festival is currently on.

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The plan for Epcot Day 2 on Monday is to eat our way through as much of the world as possible in the world showcase.


LFMF15 Day 11, Sat 24 Oct: The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - Something a bit different today, we left the precious Disney Bubble for the first time in over a week and headed to Discovery Cove. DC is a Sea World theme park, but a bit different from most. It’s pricy, but they cap the daily attendance so it never felt crowded. All food, drink and snacks are included and it’s like a water park, marine wildlife park and beach all in one. You can do a Dolphin encounter as well.

Basically you rock up and register (DC requires reservations, I don’t think you can just rock up and get in), then you get to eat breakfast if you feel like it. After that, you throw on a stylish Discovery Cove vest or wetsuit and get stuck into it. Our Dolphin encounter times were 11:15 for me, and 1:05 for Janelle and Phoebe so we started off by paddling around the sandy beach pool, and took a lap around the lazy river (heated to a beautiful 30 degrees).

Our Dolphin encounters were brilliant. We were lead into the water in small groups (about 10) and introduced to a dolphin, we got to give the dolphin a kiss on the nose, learn a bit about their behaviours and capabilities, and got to be towed a short distance by hanging onto its fins. Of course they sting you for the photo and video package… but what are you going to do?

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After we finished up our dolphin encounters, we did a bit of snorkelling in the grand reef with hundreds of fish and stingrays. It was a bit cold for Phoebe so after a while we went and did a couple more laps of the lazy river. a nice relaxing way to spend a day.

We gave up around 4:30 and went back to Jeannie’s place to do one final bit of repacking - she will drop off 3 bags to the airport when we leave Florida after the cruise.


LFMF15 Day 12, Sun 25 Oct: The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - For our last visit to the Magic Kingdom for this trip, I booked us in to have breakfast at Cinderella’s Royal Table in Cinderella Castle. Pricy, but a must-do. This bad boy had to be booked 6 months out and reservations are hard to get if you don’t book immediately when reservations open up. The food was quite good and the setting/atmosphere terrific, though the princesses zipped by awfully quickly - perhaps they were terrified of being attacked by little sticky fingers.. each kid had a Mickey waffle and a pot of maple syrup.

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We had to do Seven Dwarfs Mine Train one last time, even though there was a considerable wait. After that, we did a couple of character meets, including Mickey at Town Square Theater near the front of the park (and and such always seem to miss). They’ve done something clever and he can now move his mouth and talk to visitors. I’m not quite sure how they do it, but it’s great. The fur characters (wearing a mask, as opposed to Face Characters, whose face you can see) usually cannot talk, so it’s kind of weird when you meet one who can.

On our way back to Fantasyland, we rode Peter Pan’s Flight and saw Mickey’s Philharmagic (3D musical film), both were great fun. Our lunch was at Be Our Guest, the new Beauty and the Beast themed restaurant at the back of Fantasyland - the theming and atmosphere was amazing and the food quite tolerable. You can actually preorder your meal at BOG for lunch (for dinner it reverts to a more traditional table service configuration) and it’s quite a handy time-saver. You rock up, skip the massive line of people waiting to select their food, pay for your order and then go sit down anywhere. You get given a magic rose thing which lets them know where you’re sitting and your whole order turns up in a little cart.

Our last stop in the Magic Kingdom was to visit Anna and Elsa, and we took the opportunity to dress Bethany up in an Olaf costume that we bought for Halloween. Anna and Elsa get a lot of visits from little Annas and little Elsas, but apparently very very few Olafs. The interactions were hilarious and I think we got a bunch of great photos.

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Back in the hotel for a rest as we were all exhausted, ready for one final day at Walt Disney World tomorrow.
 
I'm enjoying your trip updates so far. Thanks for sharing!

Your family is adorable. Your two DD are just so preciously cute!
Looks like Disney was good to you. As I'm reading your days, I was wondering if it was super busy at the park days? You managed to get a few rides in and whilst I expect some of that was because of FP+ picks, you still managed to get a few more in as well. Good for you!

Yes, there's a world of difference between a value resort cf a deluxe, isn't there?
 
Looks like Disney was good to you. As I'm reading your days, I was wondering if it was super busy at the park days? You managed to get a few rides in and whilst I expect some of that was because of FP+ picks, you still managed to get a few more in as well. Good for you!

Most days were ok. There were some really busy days here and there but then we just amended our touring tactics on the fly. Mostly we got there at RD or not long after, so we usually did alright in the first 1-2 hours of the day. If it got busy after that, we just went and got lunch or shopped or whatever.

Yes, there's a world of difference between a value resort cf a deluxe, isn't there?

There sure is! There's nothing WRONG with the value resorts, especially one as nice and new as Art of Animation, but the Deluxe ones, wow.
 


Your little girls are both gorgeous - love the little Olaf! She's just beaming in every photo (except for the Shark one lol)! Great trip report, nice mix of activity and rest! Very handy having a cousin there too.
 
Love the TR so far and pics. Very cute DDs - I love the Olaf outfit! Sounds like you had the parks strategy right hitting the parks actually early often, considering you have two littlies to organise, and having restful afternoons. Sounds like across the board from all the TR parks have been busier since Oct right through til Xmas this year.
 
LFMF15 Day 13, Mon 26 Oct: The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - Last day in Walt Disney World! We loaded up the kids for one last hoorah in the Disney Bubble and headed to Epcot. Getting there just before gates opened, we rode Spaceship Earth, which is a ride that is actually inside the giant geodesic dome that is the Epcot icon just as you enter the gates. After pottering around in Future world for a while, we set off in our attempt to eat our way around the Epcot Food and Wine festival. Around this time every year, they hold the festival in Epcot’s World showcase and there’s heaps and heaps of little stalls with food from around the world. We didn’t quite get to each stall but I think our tally was pretty impressive anyway.

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Australia - Lamb Chop with mint pesto - very tasty meat, but too heavy on the mint pesto.
Mexico - Shrimp taco with onions and chipotle mayonnaise - Outstanding and very flavourful. I could eat a whole plateful of these.
China - Beijing Roasted Duck in a steamed bun with hoisin sauce - Too heavy on the sauce again, but the meat was lovely.
South Korea - Roast pork lettuce wrap w/ kimchi slaw - The kimchi slaw was really nice and added a nice tang.
Africa - Berbere style beef tenderloin with jalapenos and pap - Not bad, but quite peppery. Wifey not a fan, too spicy for her.
Germany - Apple Strudel with vanilla sauce - Nice!
Poland - Kielbasa and potato pierogi - I liked it, wifey didn’t love it.
Italy - Chocolate cannoli - Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
America - Funnel Cake - Not strictly speaking part of the F&W but loved it anyway. The kids would eat it, which was a bonus.
Japan - Shave Ice - again, not part of F&W but I needed a refreshing dessert.
Morocco - Baklava - Very very sweet, but nice.
Belgium - Belgian Waffle with chocolate Ganache, Leffe Blonde. The waffle was outstanding, and blonde was required to help me get through the rest of the day with the kids hot and starting to get really annoying. Seriously kid, it’s ok for me to stand in a 45 minute queue so you can meet princesses but you throw a tantrum if I take 10 minutes to get baklava at the Morocco pavilion?
Brazil - Crispy pork belly with black beans and tomatoes - pork really tasty, went well with the beans.
France - Escargot croissant with garlic and parsley - Escargot cooked inside a croissant? How much more French can you get? Really nice, just a vague hint of chewy snaily goodness and lots of garlic.
Canada - Wild mushroom beef filet mignon with truffle butter sauce - Superb. A tad overcooked, but I forgot to ask for medium rare.

With our bellies full and the rented double stroller full of whining children, we departed Epcot and waved goodbye to Walt Disney World parks, at least for this trip.
 
LFMF15 Day 14, Tues 27 Oct: Cabana Bay Beach Resort - Waking up ridiculously early, we drove out of the Disney Bubble for good (at least for the next few years) and headed to Universal Studios Orlando. Checked into our hotel, the Cabana Bay Beach Resort so that we could get early entry into Diagon Alley. Miraculously, our room was ready, but we immediately hopped onto the shuttle bus over to Universal so that we could get SOME use out of our early entry.

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We didn’t spend a lot of time in the two parks (Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure), but we did a fair bit of poking around the two Harry Potter sections, Diagon Alley in Universal and Hogsmeade in Islands of Adventure. Just wow, these are two of the nicest themed areas in any theme park I’ve seen. The theming and detail are second to none. I tried Butterbeer, and I can already promise you that I’m going to drink litres of the stuff in the next two days - it’s AMAZING. Due to our early start, we got to ride both of the flagship Harry Potter rides, Forbidden Journey and Escape from Gringotts, and we loved both. Among the very best rides we’ve experienced this trip, easily.

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I guess the only problem with the Harry Potter areas is that the attention to detail means very narrow passageways and shops, leading to a lot of crowding. Also, it makes the rest of Universal look a bit… meh. I will try and get to some of the non HP rides and attractions in the next two days though, some of them actually look like a lot of fun.

We grabbed a quick dinner at the quick service restaurant at the hotel and then put the kids to bed in anticipation of another early start and further exploration of Universal.



LFMF15 Day 15, Wed 28 Oct: Cabana Bay Beach Resort - Another early morning, and this time we made it over the Universal Studios before the end of early entry time, which meant we got to enjoy Diagon Alley with a relatively small number of people. Started the day off nicely with a cup of butterbeer and did a bit of shopping as well. Got in another ride of Escape from Gringotts (so good!!) and caught 1.5 of the shows they have there until rain stopped play.

We had an early lunch to escape the weather and then left Diagon Alley to see what else Universal had to offer. Phoebe and I rode the MIB ride (it’s a twisty turny shooty game like Buzz Lightyear in Disney) but then it started really bucketing down. The girls decided to flee to the hotel while I stayed on a couple more hours to ride some of the rides.

I ended up riding Minion Mayhem, Shrek 4D, Twister, Revenge of the Mummy, Transformers and The Simpsons. Minion being the best of the bunch, along with the mummy. A lot of the rides are variations on a theme though, with cars/seats that move about while you look at a large 3D screen.

Back to the hotel and a nice relaxing afternoon in the pool with the kids.

After dinner, I went up to the guest laundry to do a couple loads of laundry. A peculiar quirk of our housework division is that while I tend to loathe doing laundry at home unless I’m flying solo and literally run out of clothes, while on holidays I take on 95% of the laundry duties. Something about seeking out the hotel laundry and working out the machines gives me a nice relaxing routine that I find soothing. We were spoilt with the Grand Floridian laundry being free to guests (apart from detergent) as we were staying in a DVC property, so I knew we were back to business as usual with a regular resort in a Cabana Bay.

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My first problem was with the laundry change machine not working. That was going to be a problem. Back downstairs to salvage whatever quarters I’d collected (quarters and pennies were being used at an alarming rate as Phoebe is collecting pressed pennies from the theme parks). It wasn’t much though, so I started to get creative ideas I could use instead of walking all the way to the lobby desk to ask for change. First up, I though, ok we are using a lot of snacks in the middle of the day to placate the feral children, so I’ll buy a $1.75 packet of cookies from the snack machine with a $5 note and it’ll give me back a bunch of quarters.

Maybe some people had already tried that though, as it proceeded to give me my entire change in nickels. For those playing along, that means I picked up 65 5c coins. Er. Next idea, I fed nickels into the coke machine right next to the snack machine and then hit the coin return - it gave me quarters. Hoorah!!!

A few minutes later, I had all the quarters I needed to run a couple of loads of washing so I went triumphantly back into the laundry where I’d left the clothes. At that point, I noticed the small box on the wall where you could use a credit card to start machines.
 
LFMF15 Day 16, Thurs 29 Oct: Cabana Bay Beach Resort - Our last day at Universal. It was a pretty fun one, once again we started with early entry into Diagon Alley and a Butterbeer. We took the first Hogwarts Express train over to Islands of Adventure so that we could do that park too. The train trip is amazing, with some great special effects on both the window and doors of your train carriage to show the trip to and from Hogwarts. We’d already done the Diagon Alley to Hogsmeade journey on our first Universal day, but did it again so we could get over to IoA to finish a quick lap of that park. We skipped a lot of attractions but did get to ride some cool ones, like Jurassic Park, Dudley Do right (during which we all got completed soaked) and one last go at Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.

After some last minute shopping and after we’d done a complete lap of IoA, we took the Hogwarts Express BACK to Universal so we could see the other train trip (there’s different video that plays for each direction). It was time to get out of Universal and back to the hotel so we could prepare for the next two days leading up to the cruise.

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Of course drama had to strike in the form of one of our suitcases developing a bit of a structural integrity issue. It was our large lightweight suitcase. It sounds great in theory, a lighter bag means you can fit more weight onboard right? Well, no. The seams had started ripping and the wheels were no longer supporting the suitcase. This is the second of these bags that’s summarily shat itself while on an overseas trip. The last one tore half open on the first leg between Sydney and LA in 2012 and it was a miracle that nothing got lost out of that bag.

We hightailed it to the nearby Orlando Premium Outlets to seek out new bags. That is, after I took the wrong turn out of Cabana Bay, meaning a 10 mile trip on Orlando’s beautiful highways instead of the 1.5 mile trip it should have been. We ended up selecting a Star Wars suitcase with R2D2 on it, which is pretty damn awesome if I should say so myself. We also got a large duffel bag, which now means we’ve hit our limit of 8 checked bags. I don’t know how we will go fitting in all the shopping, but we’ll just have to see. We’ve been dragging along some items that might be sacrificed so that we can bring back all the shopping and gifts.

After more frantic packing, we loaded the car for the morning.



LFMF15 Day 17, Fri 30 Oct: Residence Inn, Cape Canaveral - Our longest drive of the trip this morning, 50 miles or about an hour. This is in stark contrast to 2012 when we did about 5 hours driving on the first day to get to Las Vegas, which wasn’t even our longest drive that trip. We did a lot of awesome national parks in that trip, and this one involved more theme park madness, meaning much less driving.

This particular drive was to get us all the way east and to Cape Canaveral for our cruise on the Saturday. While in Cape Canaveral, what better way to spend the day than to visit Kennedy Space Centre? Not so exciting for the kids, but very cool for a longtime space nerd like myself. The exhibits were both interesting and awe-inspiring. The highlight of the visit for me was the Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit. It was a thrill to see a real-life space shuttle, and the very one that flew the very last space shuttle mission a few years ago. Wonderfully set out exhibit with great use of special effects, lighting and interactive technology.

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There’s also a bus tour that takes you away from the main visitor centre and out to the Apollo/Saturn exhibit. Very informative and eye-opening, with a full sized model of a Saturn rocket and Apollo space craft. The scale of the thing just blows you away.

The only disappointing part of the day was that the rocket launch scheduled for that day had been pushed back a day due to a leak they found on the launcher. Better safe than sorry, as they say, and we would have to hope that we would be able to see it from the ship tomorrow. With the hot afternoon causing all sorts of kid meltdowns, we headed off to our Cape Canaveral hotel to rest for the night.
 
LFMF15 Day 18, Sat 31 Oct: Disney Fantasy (Departing Port Canaveral) - Very exciting day, it was time to board the Disney Fantasy for our cruise! The Fantasy is the newest ship in Disney Cruise Line’s fleet of 4 cruise ships. The Fantasy and Dream mostly cruise out of Port Canaveral in Florida and the Magic and Wonder spend some time in Florida as well as various other parts of the world (but not Asia or Australia as yet unfortunately). I dropped the girls off at the cruise terminal and returned the rental car - no more driving on this holiday! Hooray!!!

The next few hours were mostly queueing… Queueing to get into the cruise terminal building, queueing to get through security, queueing to check in, queueing to take a photo with Minnie, queueing to register Phoebe into Kids’ Club, queueing to get onto the ship, queueing to grab food from the buffet, queueing to get tickets to character meet and greets, queueing to make dining reservations… On and on.

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But when we were kicking back with the Fantasy finally underway later that afternoon, it sure was a good feeling. The Fantasy is a beautiful ship, nice and modern but still with a classic feel in its design. Lots of facilities and plenty of activities for all ages. We were still finding our bearings all of day one, and getting used to which way was aft or forward. We also had a stickybeak at the kids club and nursery facilities as we were going to send both kids away at various points on the cruise to get a bit of quiet time with just us. Lovely kids’ clubs, it’d sure be nice ot be a kid on this ship!

We also met our stateroom attendant and dinner servers who will be serving us on this whole trip. The Fantasy has 3 main restaurants, and you rotate through them, while retaining the same servers each night. The first night’s meal was brilliant, and I suspect you won’t get hungry easily on this cruise (or indeed on any cruise!).

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We opted out of the first night’s show in the theatre in favour of getting the kids into bed after a tiring day.


LFMF15 Day 19, Sun 1 Nov: Disney Fantasy (At Sea) - Our first full day on the Disney Fantasy was spent wandering about and figuring out where everything was. I guess I’ll finally have everything figured out around day 6 of this 7 night cruise. Today we started off with a character breakfast, Disney Jr themed. Super fun, and it gave us a preview of Animator’s Palate, one of the 3 main dining rooms on the Fantasy, and my personal favourite.

We finally figured out the kids activities area though and checked in both girls; Phoebe into the Oceaneers Club (for 3-12 year olds) and Bethany into It’s a Small World Nursery (for the littlies). The Kids’ Club is included for kids 3-17, but the nursery is extra, about $9 USD an hour. Cheap if you ask me, for the peace and quiet it buys.

We needed to offload the girls because I’d made a reservation at Remy, The Fantasy’s fancy schmancy French Restaurant, named and themed after the main character, a rat from Ratatouille. It’s a beautiful restaurant, with little Remy motifs and pictures everywhere. It was fun trying to spot him, and the staff were only too happy to point him out. We got dressed up (it has a dress code and everything!) and shuffled in with a bunch of mostly middle aged women for the brunch. The head chef introduced and explained the menu and then we were off to our respective tables.

The brunch at Remy is a banquet style fixed menu, compared to ordering off a menu for dinner. I think there were something like 6 courses, ranging from an interesting tomato salad starter to a lobster and mango salad, an amazing grilled halibut in potato foam and a wonderful chicken main, finished up with a stupendous dessert which was some sort of sweet pastry with hazelnut cream and praline ice cream. Neither of us are really “fine food” people, but we both loved the offering at Remy. Well worth the extra cover charge (most meals on Disney Cruise Line are included in the fare, except for alcohol and some specialty drinks, and the two “adult” restaurants, Remy and Palo. We have a reservation at Palo later in the week, and I am looking forward to it; if it is anything as good as Remy, it will be quite something.

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We had to run to get the girls, to bring them to a Frozen meet-and-greet. They’d already met the ladies from Frozen at Magic Kingdom a couple of weeks ago, but you wouldn’t have guessed it judging by the enthusiastic response. Popping the kids back into care straight after that might have been a mistake, but ah well. Janelle was booked into the spa for a massage, and a met up with a couple of new shipmates to play a couple hours of card games. Got to get my fix in somehow, right?

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This night was formal night (just reused my clothes from the Remy brunch!!) and it was fun to get all nice and get some photos taken. The photo line took forever, but we finally got to dinner and then got stuck again in another line to meet Mickey. The photo lines on DCL appear to be super slow compared to Disneyland or Walt Disney World, but they appear to take extra time to get your pose right, do multiple combinations etc. We finally met the Big Cheese and sprinted to the theatre for the show, which was Aladdin. We were so late that the cruise director was already up on stage introducing the show and we got a couple of single seats squeezed right in the front corner. The show appeared to be roughly the same as the one that is showing in Disney’s California Adventure park in Anaheim that we saw in 2012. Good fun. Bethany fell sleep before the end of the first song though, I guess she doesn’t much care for the theatre!

We finally got the kids back and in bed. What a huge first day at sea!


LFMF15 Day 20, Mon 2 Nov: Disney Fantasy (Cozumel, Mexico) - Our first port of call was Cozumel, which is a teeny tiny little island off the east coast of Mexico. It takes about 15-20 min to drive from one side to the other and it’s stunning. The heat was equally stunning and I was glad to get into the airconditioned bus for our shore tour. We were shown some ancient Mayan ruins, then we visited the Mayan Cacao company to view a demonstration of how to make chocolate old-style, and got to try a bit ourselves. After that we spent a bit of time next door at Playa Mia, a tourist beach day resort which seems to be super popular with the cruise ship crowd.

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Bethany and I had a bit of a splash around in the kids water play area, but Phoebe didn’t fare quite as well, developing a severe nosebleed at some point. She got great attention from the medical staff though, and recovered enough to get back on the bus back to the ship.

We got a late lunch and then relaxed a bit before dinner. Just a quiet night after that, but I got the chance to type up a couple more days of my travel blog - I’d been running a day or two behind for most of the trip, and a bit worse on the cruise.
 
LFMF15 Day 21, Tues 3 Nov: Disney Fantasy (Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands) - Next stop would be the Cayman Islands, another amazingly beautiful place. Clear blue seas, palm trees and a surprise off our port bow - the Disney Fantasy’s sister ship, the Disney Magic. We got some nice shots of both ships moored out in the harbour. We got a bit of a sleep-in as our shore tour wasn’t until about 1pm, which was nice. But of course, it was super hard to get everyone out of bed!!

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After physically dragging everyone out, we grabbed a late breakfast. I did mention that it was pretty much impossible to go hungry on this ship right? Yep. At Grand Cayman (the largest of the Cayman Islands, or so I’m led to believe), the ships anchor in the harbour and tenders transport passengers from the ship to shore and vice versa. Nice easy process with calm seas, even with a small child. Even with a small child intent on destroying or climbing everything in sight.

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We picked the short city tour because one of its stops was Hell. Had to go to Hell, right? Super quick stop, a few photos and we were back on the bus to the next stop, the turtle farm. Interesting place, and the girls got to hold turtles. We glossed over exactly why there was a turtle farm in the first place for the kids (the tour guide gave us a clue - the Cayman Islands’ national dish is sea turtle).

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Back on the ship for another great dinner and then another show, Wishes, which is specially produced for DCL. It has a short runtime of about 50 minutes, just enough to fill in the time between dessert and bedtime. Basically a (very) loose plot linking a series of Disney “Greatest Hits” songs and characters. Charming enough, and a good way to fill in a bit of time while the smaller child falls asleep on me (again). At least she lasted 3-4 songs this time.


LFMF15 Day 22, Wed 4 Nov: Disney Fantasy (Falmouth, Jamaica) - JAMAICA, MON. We didn’t actually have anything in particular planned for Jamaica. As well as having heard various stories about Falmouth and safety, a lot of the cooler-sounding shore tours involved adventure sports or things that would be difficult to drag the small child to. The Falmouth port has a stack of tourist trap shops you can wander through without having to actually get into Falmouth proper, so we took a lap around them just to say we’ve been to Jamaica.

Back on the ship in time for lunch this time, and then we chucked the smaller child into bed for her first daytime nap in.. I don’t know… since we left Sydney? At least the first one that wasn’t passing out in the stroller between Splash Mountain and It’s a Small World.

Dinner was pirate-themed, but we just took the kids for a quick dinner before depositing them into the nursery and Kids’ Club and fleeing to our own Grown Ups’ Dinner. For us, that was at Palo, the Italian restaurant just next to Remy. Amazing food and we left stuffed to the gills. There’s really nothing wrong with the main dining rooms on this ship, they all have excellent food, but the two specialty restaurants are something special. You have to pay a bit extra to eat at them but it’s well worth it.

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We fetched the kids from their various places of incarceration and headed up to the top deck for the pirate party. Well, long enough to see Captain Jack Sparrow save the day and then watch the fireworks being fired off the ship’s starboard side. In my opinion, once you’ve seen one set of fireworks, you’ve pretty much seen them all. This one was nice and short and the kids loved it, so it was all good.


LFMF15 Day 23, Thurs 5 Nov: Disney Fantasy (At Sea) - A day at sea, which was blessed relief after 3 straight days of ports. We spent the morning chasing down characters for autographs and photos before dumping Bethany into the nursery for the day. It allowed Phoebe to catch up on some sleep, and for us to do a bit of packing ahead of the madcap day of coaches, airports and planes when we get off the ship on Saturday.

Being semi-formal night (not sure what the difference officially is between semi-formal night and formal night) we endured more ridiculous lines for photos. Seriously, some people are just completely lacking in consideration for others - we saw more than one family take forever with their photos, requesting endless combinations of kids and family members while there were heaps of people in line who also wanted their family portraits done. We got a few done though, which was nice. Wifey thinks the last time we got a family photo was when Bethany was just born. I can’t imagine that’s right, but damned if I can remember any that we’ve had done since either.

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Dinner was back in Animator’s Palate, and we got the famed animation show which is awesome. Before your dinner, you’re given a placemat/sheet where you can draw a cartoon character in specially marked areas. They take them away and then partway through the dinner they show a cool movie clip that incorporates everyone’s drawings animated to the music. So so cool.

The show tonight was Disney’s Believe. Kind of like Wishes. Just with different characters and songs. The small child actually stayed awake through the whole thing and seemed to enjoy it. But of course tomorrow she will be a banshee.

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Finished the night by sitting in the atrium and typing up the travel blog while the girls sleep. I’d been doing it over the last few nights while having a coffee (with some patience I was able to semi-train one of the baristas in the deck 4 cafe to make me a double-shot latte with no foam and only half a cup of steamed milk. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s an improvement). It also gave me a chance to listen to a talented singer/songwriter/pianist named Clara who I discovered by accident on night 2 or 3. She plays in some of the 18+ clubs on the Fantasy but also plays a short set in the main atrium late at night, and it’s been a soothing backdrop to my travel blogging.
 
Wow so much to catch up on! To start have to say I am impressed with your coin collecting strategies for laundry - you are definitely an out of the box thinker! Good to hear how much you enjoyed Universal. Enjoying hearing all about the cruise, the first port sounds the most interesting to me. The ship sounds amazing. One day everyone's trip reports might even get me on a short cruise (we both easily get sea sick so not been on the bucket list).
 
Bahaha - love the washing machine story. Something that you can look back on and laugh about now?!
 
Catching up! You had full days on this vacay. Love the washing machine quarters!!! Bwa ha ha ha ha.

So.....did you bring back quarters with you???
 
Yeah... the washing machine debacle was a good one. I had a good chuckle, and thereafter always made sure I checked all walls of the laundry before working out how much change I needed!!
 
LFMF15 Day 24: Disney Fantasy (Castaway Cay) - One final day on the Fantasy and what better place to spend it than Disney's private island in the Bahamas, Castaway Cay. The main benefit of having your own island is that there's so few visitors. Maybe 3-4 shiploads a week, depending on which ships are doing Caribbean or Bahamian itineraries.

I'm not a beach person at all, but even I could tolerate spending all day on the island. We weren't up to doing all the activities offered but it was nice to hang out on the beach, in the perfect clear water. Phoebe and I had a go of the water slide and it was great but not worth the long wait. Phoebe also got her first taste of copping a nose full of salt water when plunging into the water at the end of the slide. I don't think she was a fan.

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Lunch was BBQ and course all included (another benefit of being on the Disney island is that you can charge everything back to your stateroom and don't have to bother with bringing cash).

After a big lunch we headed back to the family beach. Phoebe went for a snorkel and I kept the smaller child entertained on the beach for a while. Soon enough it was time to head back to the ship.

LFMF15 day 25, Sat 7 Nov: Disney's Grand Californian Hotel - A long and pointless day. It was of course sad to get off the Disney Fantasy, and make our way to Orlando International Airport for our flight out of Florida.

The flight from Orlando to Dallas went mostly without incident as Bethany slept most of the way through it, if you don't count the medical emergency just in front of us.

The next flight was all kinds of awful though, so I guess it catches up with you eventually.

We finally got checked into our hotel and wandered into Disneyland so that I could say I was in there on my birthday!!

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LFMF15 Day 26, sun 8 Nov: Disney's Grand Californian Hotel - We didn't really stay very long the previous night as we were all exhausted from our cross-country trip from Florida so Sunday was our real first day in Disneyland.

We woke up nice and early to meet up with Jason, an ex colleague of Janelle's who was on his own USA trip and would be spending the next few days at Disneyland with us. We had a couple of ticket dramas at the gate, but we eventually made it through and were walking down Main Street USA! But weirdly enough, a completely different Main Street USA compared to the one we walked down in the Magic Kingdom park a few weeks ago. It was three years since our last visit but since it was only three weeks since we did Walt Disney world over in Florida, it was fresh enough in my mind to make a comparison. I'll expand further on it after our trip is over, but it's very much the same, except different.

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We went on a few classic rides like star tours, Indiana jones (which was being refurbished the last time we were there so I'd never been on it before) and splash mountain. Grabbed another giant turkey leg for lunch before heading back to the room for a quick rest.

A few more rides upon our return, then dinner at Big Thunder Ranch BBQ. With lots of bbq meats and hilarious hee-haw music. We took in the new Paint the night parade, simply superb with wonderful effects and floats. That would be it for us for the day.

LFMF15 Day 27, Mon 9 Nov: Disney's Grand Californian Hotel - another day, another early start. I had in fact gotten the start time completely wrong so we were just a bit more than an hour early for early entry into Disney's California Adventure Park. Still, that meant we were first in line at the Grand Californian entrance into DCA.

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We had super short lines for Toy Story Midway Mania and California Screaming, so rode those a few times. We grabbed fast passes for Radiator Springs Racers and enjoyed more rides before lunchtime. Then we bugged out mid afternoon as Jason and I had tickets to the ice hockey that night.

Last time we were in town, we had tickets to the ice hockey but there was a players strike that meant the game was cancelled. This time I finally got to go and loved it. Fast, exciting sport to watch live and I'm glad I got to go. The home team lost in overtime though, which is typical for me.

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LFMF15 Day 28, Tues 10 Nov: Disney's Grand Californian Hotel - the small child was being horrid early in the morning so I took her for a wander in Disneyland. Mostly small rides and character meetings because of course she wasn't able to go on any of the cool rides.

At lunchtime we went to DCA as I had booked us a dining package which gave us access to a reserved area for viewing World of Color. Lunch was pretty nice at Wine Country Trattoria, mostly Italian cuisine.

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After that we had quite a bit of time to fill until WOC so we decided to get the girls' portraits painted at Paradise Pier. We got Phoebe's done in 2012 so thought it might be nice to get an updated one as well. The artist was great but has to be the grumpiest Disney employee ever. Really weird compared to the normal over enthusiastic mouse staffer.

After dinner we filed into the reserved area and were lucky to grab front row spots on the fence! World of Color is a great show but in 2012 I had to hold Phoebe up and could barely see the top half of the show. It's all coloured fountains and water jets, and projections onto mist but the viewing area in general is a bit of a mess. It made a real difference to have good viewing positions right up front, the show is much more immersive and spectacular that way. Loved it!
 

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