Today was the last day of our trip and our last day at Disney World. I say today however I'm actually writing these about a week later. For some reason my laptop wouldn't connect to WIFI at the hotel so I couldn't do a blog as we went. I had notes for most of the days but never got around to writing anything for our last day so I'm pretty much trying to make this up based on the pictures we took. It should be fine though. 20 years from now when we're looking back at these, we won't really remember what actually happened.
This was our second day in Magic Kingdom because it has the most rides and our approach to rides for the morning was a bit different than normal. Ordinarily we go for the big rides first thing but this time we were doing Fantasyland first. It's where the kids rides like Peter Pan, Pooh Bear, the Carousel and It's a Small World are. These rides get very busy later in the day and they aren't worth waiting an hour for. Had a good nap on the It's a Small World ride. It's a very good nap train.
We also took a ride on the Carousel of Progress which is a ridiculous portrayal of 'progress' from a purely American point of view. I guess the ride was originally part of a worlds fair and they indicate that it's the most watched stage show ever. Pretty easy when the characters are robots. The audience sits in a set of seats that rotate through the 1900's up to the present in 20 to 30 year increments. The man is in charge of the household, the woman is in the kitchen, the boy plays sports and the girl chases boys and makeup. There is also a dog. This was the first and likely last time we will go on this ride.
We had a bit of time before lunch so we hopped on the paddle wheeler which does a trip around the park area and then got on a raft over to Tom Sawyers Island. The paddle wheeler doesn't really do anything but it's an opportunity to decompress and get out of the sun. The island is the same. There is a fort and some bridges and a walking path. It looks like they used to have a place to buy food but we haven't seen it open in either Disneyland or Disney World in quite a few visits. Maybe they have it open during the summers.
Around this point we realized we had to hurry back to our hotel if we wanted to have a break. We had attempted to get into the virtual queue for the Tron ride in the morning but didn't make it in the queue, but we got another chance later in the day and our return time was around 4:00pm. This was the first day the ride was going to be open and the virtual queue gives you an hour window where you need to be back in line and it shifts throughout the day. at 1:00pm it was 345 minutes but later gave us a firm time of 4:10pm to 5:10pm.
By the time we got back to the hotel, had a break, started packing and got on the bus to come back to the park it was already almost 4:00pm. I had already decided another roller coaster was not for me so the family dumped all their stuff on me so that I was the one to get stopped at security and they ran to the Tron lineup. Their description of the ride was that it was very fast at startup but seemed too short. It's the fastest roller coaster of all the Disney rides so I think it was a good call for me to avoid it.
We finished the day off with the Tiki Room, Pirates and the Country Bear Jamboree. Another animatronic stage show that is my new worst stage show on earth. Our favourite line was the girl bear that says "All the guys that turn me on, turn me down." I swear some of the bears were starting to lose their fur. One of the bears looked like our dog Oliver from the time the vet had to shave his face but left the rest of his body hair long. I suppose this is one of the few rides where they make fun of Americans. I want to say this was one of those "it's so bad it's good" things but I'm really just to traumatized to have an opinion.
Disney used to have buses that would come direct to the hotel. They even had flight check in kiosks at the hotels and you could check your luggage in at the hotel. There even used to be a special area of the Orlando for when you arrived. After covid and with the advent of ride share apps though I guess it just wasn't economical for them anymore. We had pre purchased a third party shuttle that was arriving at 6:40am. I think they size the shuttle based on the number of people who have signed up. I saw some small vans but ours was a full bus and we stopped at a couple of hotels. We got to the airport on time and had no issues with the first leg of our flight.
Our layover this time was supposed to be 3 and a half hours so we had a lot more time to catch our second plane. We got to our gate with plenty of time, our plane showed up and parked and then out came the step ladders and the repair trucks. Interestingly we only got notified there was going to be a delay by text message. It was fun to see everyone reacting to the same text. Our first delay was 2 hours followed by another hour and then one more hour. It was getting late in the day so we were worried it would be cancelled but in the end we made it on and the only real impact was that we arrived quite late. Apologies to our pick up driver who had to get us at 11:00pm.
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