The cheeky not so bargain trip! Part 7

Day 8

Our final move of the trip :( Today we were checking out of the Animal Kingdom Villas and moving across to THE GRAND FLORIDIAN!!!!!

This was a belated birthday treat for me and I was really looking forward to it. We pulled up at the front of the resort and were greeted by name by the cast members. Bell services took our bags and the valet looked after our car whilst we were walked to the front desk by an ipad enabled cast member :)

We were quickly checked in and an email notification was set up for when our room became available. We parked the car and then took the monorail across to the Magic Kingdom.

 

We had a FP booked for lunch at Be Our Guest between 12.15 and 12.45 so we took a little walk around beforehand, the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was experiencing some technical difficulties – we saw them trying to get people out of the carriages as the ride appeared to have stopped on the way around.

Our FP for Be Our Guest worked fine and we lined up to order our food. We successfully ordered 2 turkey baguettes, and a cupcake each. I had the Master’s cupcake and Rob the triple chocolate. Having already eaten dinner here on 2 of our previous trips we decided to sit in the Rose Gallery so that we had experienced all 3 rooms!

 

 

We took our seats – there was a short wait and then our food arrived (courtesy of the magicbands), it made a nice change to have real cutlery and proper plates.

 

 

For those of you out there (like me) who dislike onion and tomato a warning – they featured in my baguette although there was no mention of them when ordering! Luckily Rob noticed them and I was able to remove them!

Our first FP was a little later and so we went for a ride on the Liberty Square Riverboat before grabbing a drink in the Diamond Horseshoe as it was super warm today.

At 1450 we used a FP for Splash Mountain before heading back to the GF to find our room.

We stopped at bell services to ask for our bags to be dropped off and they kindly offered to give us a ride to our room on a golf cart. I picked us up a couple of drinks and then the bell man gave us a short tour of the resort as we headed across to the room.

We were on the ground floor in Sago Cay – we took a rest for a while and I popped across to refill my drink (the new drinks have limited refills like the souvenir mugs).

 

 

We had some more FP booked so we took the boat back across to the Magic Kingdom.

Our first ride was Space Mountain which was fab as always, we had arrived near the end of our timeslot and so up next shortly after was the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train! Thankfully it was back running after the earlier problems, we had a short wait and off we went. I know quite a few people have apparently been disappointed by this ride as it wasn’t ‘thrilling’ enough but I have no idea why they thought it would be...!

 

 

The ride fits perfectly in New Fantasyland – it feels fast and is super smooth – perfect for a small person coaster and as a mega Disney fan I loved all the detail that they have put into the ride and surroundings. I don’t normally wear my glasses on rides (too afraid of losing them) but I kept them on and it was worth it :)

Now I wouldn’t wait 2 hours for the ride (but then I wouldn’t wait 2 hours for any ride!) but I was still impressed by the new addition.

So, we had used our first 3 FP and now to see what else we could get on our last day. We headed to the kiosk near Mickey’s Philharmagic and I had a look at what was available.

I selected Pirates of the Caribbean and I think the return time was in around 45 minutes later, we happened to be passing it’s a small world and the wait was only 10 minutes so we got in line. We stopped on the way round and so Rob got an extra dose of the soundtrack :)

We carried on across to Pirates and the standby wait was still around 40 minutes so I was glad of the FP. We headed towards Liberty Square through the gap near Adventureland and stopped at the kiosk to try for another FP. There was a shockingly ridiculous line but mainly because there were only 3 or 4 terminals available.

Our next FP selection was Haunted Mansion again for a little while later. We were getting hungry so we popped into Pinocchio Village Haus for some food. We both decided on pepperoni flatbreads, fries and Rob decided he needed a chocolate cake as well!

Once we had eaten we went across to the Haunted Mansion for our next ride which is a favourite of mine. I love the Halloween parties because of the Haunted Mansion portion of the parade!

We visited another FP kiosk (I think it must have been the one by Philharmagic again) and managed to get a FP for Buzz Lightyear almost immediately. We decided to pop across there and ride before Wishes (we must have been somewhere between 9 and 10).

Buzz was delayed slightly whilst we were in the line and I was worried we might miss Wishes! Thankfully it got going again but unfortunately I lost to Rob yet again....!

We got out of the ride with about 5 minutes to spare before Wishes so we ended up watching from near the Rose Garden. We had a slightly obstructed view due to a tree but we would have had a perfect view of Tink. It was threatening thunder for most of the evening (although it stayed dry) and as a result Tink stayed in the castle!

Wishes was amazing as normal but I do prefer watching from Bay Lake Tower (either from the lounge or a balcony) as it just gets so crowded in the park!

The park was open until 1am this evening but Rob was feeling a little tired so we decided to leave after the fireworks. We stopped at Starbucks to grab a drink on the way down Main Street and when we got to the end the wait to meet Tinkerbell was only 10 minutes so Rob waited outside whilst I nipped in to see her.

Quick photo with Tink (who I had been trying to meet for ages but she always had a long line in her old location) and we headed out of the park.

 

We decided to take the boat as the resort monorail takes ages to get back to the Grand Floridian. Unfortunately as we had left at peak time we had to wait for 2 boats to pick up before we were able to get on the third...! In hindsight we should have stayed in the park a little longer before attempting to get across the lagoon.