Christmastime Trip – 12/9/17-12/17/17 – Day 5

For you @warrsm !

Wednesday 12/13/17

After a quick four hour nap, yes, that’s right, we slept about four hours!, we were back up and at ‘em for Magic Kingdom morning. We had planned to go right this morning but Space was down so we wound up going left instead. It worked out ok as Kathy was finally able to work up the courage to ride Big Thunder for the first time ever! Lauren took her in the front car so she could see all the drops ahead of her and the speed wasn’t too bad. She did great! I was so proud of her! This set up a return visit in January with Heather and Ryan very nicely! We then rewarded her with a ride on her favorite ride, Haunted Mansion before heading over to use our Buzz FP. Got a pretty good score of over 300,000! Not the Galactic Hero that I’ve gotten in the past but I’ll take it. We could just feel the crowds today as we got closer to Christmas, and this was a non-party night for Magic Kingdom so we took a relaxing spin on the People Mover and saw Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. Then it was time for our FP for Talking Mickey. Now at this time the stand by wait was about two hours! Crazy, insane crowd levels this day! Talking Mickey was great though! He asked what we were going to do next and we told him Splash Mountain. He said he found out the hard way that the said what they meant by you *could* get wet! After our visit with Mickey it was time for our Splash FP. This was another first as it was the first time Lauren got to ride with Kathy! The previous times Kathy had ridden it we were without the kids! She enjoyed her mom and her ride so much! Ben and I of course had to do a funny photo shot! We checked out Memento Mori and then we just had to leave. It was so crowded you couldn’t move! Lauren even said at this point the magic was missing. It was okay to leave for an extended break though as it was laundry day. So we picked up a 4th FP for Soarin’ for the evening, a same day Soarin’ for four people, yes please! Then we headed back home and enjoyed a relaxing lunch at POFQ and did the laundry. Most of us got at least some nap in too, that helped a lot! I slept a little bit by the pool while waiting for one of the loads to finish in the washer, the sun was warming things up nicely now! Still jeans but actually comfortable in the afternoon in a t-shirt!
We headed to Epcot for the late afternoon and evening. What a difference in crowd levels! It was a very comfortable level there, so much better than the Magic Kingdom earlier! Sometimes you just gotta zig when they zag! We saw the Las Posadas Celebration in Mexico, this was over a 20 minute show! It was very entertaining! Then we moved on to China for the Lion Dancers. Now, the Monkey King was one of our absolute favorites, if not the favorite from our previous trip, so nothing could replace that in our hearts but this was very good and such skill! So impressive! After that, in order to catch what we wanted, we backed out of WS and around to United Kingdom for Father Christmas. Oh this is definitely one of my favorites and so much of some others had changed, I’m glad they didn’t change this one! We then worked our way around to between France and Morocco for a new act called Mostly Kosher, a Hanukkah celebration through music. Oh my gosh, these guys were incredible! This one again was over 20 minutes! It literally was a concert at Epcot on a Wednesday evening! They were so engaging with the audience, we all really enjoyed them so much! I’d say this was our favorite of the new acts! With the crowds non-existent and a much needed change of pace, we then saw the band and belly dancer in Morocco and worked our way around counter-clockwise to China where we saw the Jeweled Dragon Acrobats. They are so amazing! It was dark and now chilly so they were inside but still an incredible show! We got some Photopass shots behind Spaceship Earth and used our FP for Soarin’, riding B-3 this time instead of B-1. B-3 is so cool on the new version! You can see the turtles in the water in the South Pacific scene and so many other neat things! We then rounded out the evening by riding Living Seas with Nemo and when we walked out the park was practically empty! We got some awesome reflection shots in the very still pools of water outside the Seas and Land pavilions and headed home for hot chocolate and the night.

Steps: 31,853
Miles: 14.45