Ryan’s 40th Birthday Extravaganza November 13th-20th, 2019: Day 2

Thursday November 14th:
6:30am alarm. Pastries we brought from home for breakfast in room. Sky Liner Station and we were loaded within 1 minute of getting in line. 4 minutes to Caribbean Beach. Quick transfer and near walk on to Hollywood Studios line. Total trip from Pop to HS was 10 minutes. Super fast and efficient! No wait to get into HS. We were in the park by 8:10am. They started the rope drop walk at 8:45am. We went to Galaxy’s Edge for Smuggler’s Run and we didn’t stop walking in line until we were inside and upstairs! We were engineers this time and our pilots were even worse than I had been in August! We were off by 9:20am! We walked the shops a bit in GE. Then over to TSMM at 8:50am for standby, posted wait was 40 min. Ryan beat me but we both scored over 200k, so we were happy. We got Totchos at Woody’s Round Up, so yum! Star Tours FP at 11:44. RnRC FP just after noon. Starbucks for caffeine. Sky Liner to Epcot at 12:58, total travel time with transfer was 20 min. Snagged a Living with the Land FP for 1:20pm. It’s Food & Wine Festival time! We enjoyed the filet and cheese coup at Canada, delicious as always. Used Land FP just before 2pm. Standby was 15 min. Got a Figment FP for immediate use, but it wasn’t needed because it was a walk on, but tapped anyway. We then took the Monorail to MK for the Christmas Party. This was our first time attending the Christmas Party! We’ve attended several Halloween Parties. We arrived at 3:30pm and they handed out bands at 3:45pm. We went straight to the queue for Jack and Sally. They start greeting guests at 4:30pm. We met them and were done by 5:10pm. It pays to get there early to not use your actual party time to meet them! We went to the start of the Cookie Trail on Main Street. Delicious Minnie Shortbread cookie, though we didn’t actually eat it until after dinner. We did a photo op for the party. Then to Columbia Harbour House for dinner. We got the trio combo. We were finished by 6pm. We got our Sorcerers of the MK party card. Then back to the start of the cookie trail to get more party photo ops and another Minnie cookie since they were so yummy! We did a few cookie/warm cider/hot chocolate stops on our way to meet Santa Goofy. We just put the extra cookies in our pack for later. We were a bit early for his greet to start, but he started promptly at 7pm. We waited about 30 min. We made a stop for the pretzel snack on the treat trail, very yum! Met Judy Hops and Nick with a 30 min wait. We watched the Christmas Parade. The huge princess float broke down right in front of us and they had to wait to get towed out! But the princesses and princes waved the entire time! We then rode Space with the new Christmas overlay Christmas lights and Rock Christmas music inside. Posted as a 25 min wait but really only about 13. We got to the hub at 9:40 for the fireworks at 10pm. It started sprinkling pretty heavily, but not full on rain. We grabbed a few more cookies at a cookie stop. We tried to watch the 10:30 stage show but they kept delaying it for the sprinkles because they couldn’t get the stage dry enough. They did a very abbreviated single song instead. We grabbed another pretzel and some cookies. We saw the 11pm parade by the Partner’s Statue. They had the Princesses on a much smaller float and were without their princes this time. We met Mary Poppins and Bert with almost no wait. Then stumbled across Tweedle Dee and Dum. They were so much fun! They kept trying to hook their scarves onto their hats! One of them succeeded and it really got stuck so I had to help. We got a lantern pic by Peter Pan. We managed to see the final stage show for the night and they were able to perform it in it’s entirety! We got Main Street Pics and Christmas Tree pics. Out of the gates around 12:30am. A double bus was waiting and we only had a dozen or so people on the bus. We are all so tired so it was nice that everyone had a seat. Back to Pop before 1am. Lights out at 1:30am.
Miles Logged 13