March 6 – 13, 2021 – Kathy birthday trip – day 8

Saturday 3/13/21

The alarm woke me out of a dead sleep again! Man, I have been sleeping good this trip! Showered, had the last of our donuts, finished up the last minute packing, and spun 10 from the room. My first and only higher than a 5 the whole trip! Haha! But at least I remembered to spin every day unlike November! We dropped off our bags at bell services to hold and went to the MK bus stop. We weren’t in quite as big of a hurry this morning but still were no more that 5th or 6th in line. While there, a little girl happened to get separated from her family, started to panic, and several of us took off to try to rescue her, but fortunately her family rushed up right then. Guests at Disney are so cool!

We got to MK at 8:00 for a scheduled 9:00 opening and the temp checks opened just shortly after we disembarked. Contrary to Studios we were right near the front. We got in and went to Big Thunder since we hadn’t been able to ride that yet. We got first train of the day! We were up by the engine, which is where Kathy likes. Behind us was a 4 year old-ish child who squealed with delight the whole ride! Not ear piercing screams but sheer delight! Oh what fun! Splash wasn’t up yet and they already had a HUGE line so we went on over to Peter Pan where it was about a 5 or 10 minute wait. That is absolutely perfect for seeing the queue! We got to pause long enough to see Tink causing mischief in the nursery! From there we headed over to Pooh so Kathy could get a full ride experience. That also was just only about a 5 minute wait. The effects were working so much better than earlier in the week! So glad Kathy got a good ride on that! We took a nice relaxing ride on the Teacups with no wait whatsoever, and then got one more ride on Under the Sea for me with no wait. We were thinking of what to round it out with and of course Kathy thought of Haunted Mansion, no problem! That had just about a 5 minute wait and was a great way to end the rides of the trip! We decided to look for a spot to camp out for cavalcades so we strolled Frontierland. No luck on finding a bench but the Country Bears were out on top. No one was really around so I decided to play hide and seek by running under the porch area and then back out! Oh my gosh! They, we, really enjoyed that! Such great interaction! After that we decided to head to our usual spot for cavalcades at the benches at the head of Liberty Square. I got us a Mickey pretzel because our bellies were not going to make it to lunch time and we just enjoyed being….being there, being with each other, being Home, just being. We saw the Dapper Dans at the hub so I checked that out and we saw several cavalcades roll through. We FINALLY got good pictures of the Mickey cavalcade!

Finally it was time for our lunch at Crystal Palace. We were seated at a table right at the windows on the Adventureland side with a great view of the foliage and river. Perfect lunch spot! The “keep your masks on until food arrives or actively eating or whatever it is” is not enforced! We sat down, had our masks on and our server came over and said, “take those things off! I’m well protected!” Oh my goodness, what an incredible meal! From the biscuits to start, to the amazing huge prime rib to the desserts, wow! Everything was so good! After eating until we were beyond stuffed we waddled down Main Street, said our goodbyes to Cinderella Castle, this park is always the toughest to say goodbye to, and walked out to When You Wish Upon a Star. We were back to Pop in short order, on the BB-8 bus! We collected out luggage and got a mug refill and didn’t have too long to wait for Tragical Express. The drive to the airport was smooth and easy. There was a luggage scanner break down while going through security though, just before we got up to it! So they had to merge two lines into one, ugh. TSA did a fine job of it though and kept things orderly. We took off a few minutes early and must have had one heck of a tail wind because we landed in Detroit so early that they didn’t have a gate for us! We had to wait on the tarmac for one to open up! Thanks to not having checked luggage and our kids picking us up, once we did de-plane we were in the car and home in really good time. It was a great trip! We had an awesome time!

Steps: 15,368
Miles: 6.92
Calories burned: 3006
Spin: 10

Final thoughts:

This was a fun trip, as they all are, but many times for different reasons. It was our first couple trip in quite a while and we do love spending time with each other. It was kind of funny, with the extra cool mornings the masks actually helped keep our faces warm sometimes! We knew with fewer experiences including no meet and greets that we had to find ways to make our own magic and I think we did that. We made sure to make it a special point to see more of the cavalcades since we missed some of them last time with just being back after almost two years. We spent more time on actual park experiences in November and so we wanted to see more of them this time. We accomplished that very well I think and really enjoyed those. We did like the meet and greets, even as socially distanced. It was nice to have actual conversations with the characters, didn’t really have that in November and I think they need more of these. With it being somewhat busier than November, people are traveling a bit more now, we treated our touring like the days of old before FP, and it worked quite well for us. We hit the major headliners before or right at park open and then was able to take it easy and do the mid and lesser headliners. Did we ride 7DMT three times like trips of the past with FP? No, but we truly rode every single thing we planned to, at least once and many more than that. The midday breaks with longer park hours worked great, both for Kathy’s foot and stamina. It really made for some nice, longer evenings at the parks. We really learned how to judge the socially distanced lines in November, which paid off really well this trip. A line we might not have gotten in previously, we knew wasn’t as bad as it looked because of seeing them in November. We were even able to reasonably estimate just how long of a wait they were, sometimes better than posted! Hopping is so nice to have back! Oh how we missed it! We aren’t thrilled with it only after 2:00 pm, it would be nice to go to a different park for lunch if you’ve been in one since 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning, but half a loaf is better than no bread at all. It was so nice to go to a different park in the evening after a break, a luxury we didn’t have in November. All in all a really nice trip! Next up, September with the kids! First time in four years! Can’t wait to have them with us again!