Disney World Diary | Day 6

After another late night the evening before, we started the morning off by taking a dip in one of the quiet pools just by our room. We never actually ventured over to the main pool during our holiday but we didn't mind all that much because we preferred the quietness.

Magic Kingdom was our park of choice (again) today because of the extra evening hours. We set off about 11:30 and headed straight over to Pinocchio's Village Haus Restaurant for some food. A recurring pattern, we got more food than we'd bargained for with two flatbreads, two frozen yoghurts and two frozen drinks, but we were really impressed!

We hung around Fantasyland after that, enjoying a few rides and a showing of Philharmagic before making our way back to Main Street for the Festival of Fantasy Parade. I can honestly say that waiting for (and during) this showing of the parade I have never been so uncomfortably hot in my life. Even the $17 misting fan didn't cool me down. To make matters worse, a little girl spilled her bottle of water behind me and I was left sitting in 34 degree heat with a wet backside. 

Although the parks were busy at this time of year, they never got to the point of being overly so and we still managed to do pretty much everything without a wait. One thing that Lewis wanted to try this trip was a turkey leg, so we made our way over to Liberty Square where he indulged.

Later that evening we had a dinner reservation at Be Our Guest. The experience was totally different to our FastPass+ lunch a few days prior. The room we were seated in was so much quieter and made for a really pleasant meal, and the decorative pieces were unbelievable. I had my first steak ever here, and it was fantastic. Lewis says the braised pork also deserves a notable mention. We were far too full for a dessert, so we passed on that and overall the meal came to about $100 including the tip. Really expensive, but worth it.

After watching another showing of Wishes, it was time for extra magic hours. I honestly could not believe how dead Magic Kingdom gets after closing. We never waited for a single ride during the extra couple of hours and everything looks beautiful lit up. I think we'll be indulging in more extra hours next time as we really didn't use them as much as we should have!

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Disney World Diary | Day 5

Today we had a reservation at the Sci Fi Diner in Hollywood Studios, so it seemed only fitting to spend the day there. I've heard a lot of people mention that they really don't like this park, but we both really enjoyed it. It was coming up to lunchtime when we arrived, so we decided to take a seat at Starring Rolls for a bite to eat. Honestly, the size of the sandwiches is colossal. In fact, I wasn't even sure how I was going to attempt to eat it (but I managed). The highlight though was definitely the Butterfinger cupcake. There are no words. Lewis had to help me eat it, but it was delicious. These were classed as a quick service credit on our dining plan, but it should have come to around $38.

The pace at Hollywood Studios is far more relaxed than the likes of Magic Kingdom, so we just took it at a nice speed, making sure to use our FastPasses along the way. Toy Story Mania is such a good ride, and definitely one you need a FastPass for. There's a reason why it's so popular though, it's so much fun!

One of my favourite things about Hollywood Studios was the Magic of Disney Animation class, where you're seated with a Disney artist and they show you how to draw a character. Our first attempt was Flynn Rider, and I just couldn't get his nose right (in fact I went and gave him two!). Lewis did a way better job at him than I did, but I was really impressed with my Winnie the Pooh.

If you're looking for a Disney restaurant with an atmosphere, I can totally recommend the Sci Fi Diner. You're sat in a little car for your meal, and it's themed like a drive in theater with short films playing on a big screen. We both had burgers for our mains, Oreo milkshakes (again, no words) and shared the cinnamon apple doughnuts with ice cream and caramel sauce for pud. It came to around $60 including the tip.

After the meal we headed to the stadium to get seated for Fantasmic! I do wish we'd booked a FastPass for this as we didn't have the greatest seat in the world, but it was either that or Toy Story Mania. It's such a good show though, with a combination of fireworks, fire, water and characters, and it's so entertaining!

Tomorrow's post will have photos from our full day in Magic Kingdom. We stayed until 1AM!

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Disney World Diary | Day 4

Today we had plans for a late night at Epcot to see Illuminations, so we decided to get the bus over to Downtown Disney for some breakfast at Wolfgang Puck Express. Me and my ridiculous sweet tooth went for the chocolate chip waffles (that I couldn't even finish) whereas Lewis went for the classic breakfast. I thought Wolfgang Puck was one of the best uses of quick service credits, and we actually ended up eating here 3 times during the holiday.

After a bit of a wander around the shops in Downtown Disney, we headed over to Epcot to have a look around the World Showcase. We visited during the Flower & Garden Festival, and the character topiaries are unbelievable. Who knew so much detail could go into something that's essentially a hedge?! 

When we visited the Japan pavilion we just had to get ourselves a cocktail. We went for the Tokyo Sunset, a mixture of coconut rum, creme de banana, peach schnapps and pineapple juice. It was so good! We had some time to kill before our 4:30 reservation at Via Napoli, so we went over to Future World to squeeze in some rides.

I don't have any food photos from Via Napoli but all I can say is wow. The pizza was unbelievable! We went for a half and half four cheese & Italian spicy sausage along with a few alcoholic drinks and I would wholeheartedly recommend going here if you love pizza. Our server here was fab too, we didn't go for a pud as we were planning on grabbing something from the caramel shop in Germany, but he brought us out a mini dessert to say congratulations on our engagement.

We spent the rest of our evening indulging in more sweet treats, more cocktails and riding a few more rides before finishing up with Illuminations in the FastPass+ area. On to Hollywood Studios tomorrow!

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Disney World Diary | Day 3

Today we had another early morning in order to make a quick visit to Walmart before heading over to Animal Kingdom for the day. We took a walk over to Custom House to get a taxi, and had a lovely stroll around our resort. As it turns out, this and the quiet pool next to our room was as much as we saw of the entire of Caribbean Beach Resort - it's huge, and we were actually having so much fun in the parks we never really took a rest day. 

We arrived at Animal Kingdom about 1PM, and it was really starting to get hot at this point. After a small look round at some of the animals, we made our way to It's Tough to Be a Bug and then on to Kali River Rapids, which we had FastPasses for. In all honesty, I was a bit disappointed with Kali River Rapids. It was very short and I didn't really find it that rapid-y - it focused more on the drop than anything. We did get very wet though.

Afterwards, we made our way to a little kiosk called Harambe Popcorn after reading about frozen "Jungle Juice," which is typically served at Tusker House or Boma. It's a refreshing concoction of passion fruit, guava and orange juices and it's seriously good. Just what you need when you feel like you're melting.

Noticing that the Kilimanjaro Safari only had a 10 minute wait, we decided to jump into the queue and hop on. I was actually really impressed with this, the animals they keep at Animal Kingdom have an amazing amount of space compared to a lot of zoos, and they seem really cared for. With the coming expansion of the park they're going to introduce a nighttime version of the safari, which would be brilliant to see!

Before heading to Flame Tree BBQ for some lunch we decided to indulge in a "Triple Yeti Blast," a concoction of strawberry, lime and mango margaritas. You could definitely taste the alcohol and there was a lot of it to get through, but it was tasty!

I'm not the biggest fan of eating meat off the bone so this wasn't my ideal meal, but the food at Flame Tree BBQ was nice and was a good use of a quick service credit. After this we rode Dinosaur and continued on to watch Finding Nemo The Musical before setting off to the hotel to get changed ready for an evening at Magic Kingdom.

I love how there are lizards everywhere! 

When we arrived at Magic Kingdom, we grabbed some snacks from the Main Street Bakery before settling down for the Main Street Electrical Parade. We waited for about an hour for it to begin, but it was cancelled the minute it was supposed to start. Slightly begrudged at this, we headed for Tomorrowland before Celebrate the Magic and Wishes were due to begin, but on the way there Lewis decided he'd stop by the FastPass+ area to ask if they had any space. At this point I was really annoyed, I really didn't want him to ask as we didn't have FastPasses booked until the Sunday, so I walked off and left him to it.

Imagine my surprise when he beckons me over and says they were letting us in. I was convinced he'd slipped them some money for it! I felt really bad when they put us at the front of the queue and kept asking him why they'd let us in. As it turns out however, he was planning on asking me to marry him and he pulled out a beautiful ring during Wishes. I cried. It was so lovely. The icing on the cake was the cast members after we were leaving, who provided us with Mickey & Minnie wedding ears and "Just Engaged" badges. 

We decided to jump on the Winnie the Pooh ride which was empty before watching the second, non cancelled showing of the Electrical Parade at 11PM. We were so, so tired after this so decided to call it a night. Up next, Epcot (and a few alcoholic drinks)!

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