Wednesday April 19th:
3:15am alarm. We were running about 30 minutes late. We have an hour drive to our airport. We’ve taken this flight numerous times on a Wednesday morning and never have issues finding parking, this time it took us a good 15 minutes to find a spot and we were stuck so far out. we got up to the terminal and the curb side check in line was long, which is unusual. We went inside, or attempted too, and the queue was out the door! We got in line and waited nearly 30 minutes before we could check our bags in. By this time, it was just 45 minutes to our flight and the agent scolded us for underestimating the time needed at the airport. We told her we fly this flight often and have never had this long of a wait. So it flagged our luggage as late check-in. Well no worries for us since Disney gets it and takes it to our room! Security was taking a while and we barely got through before boarding started for our flight. We usually try to grab some caffeine at Starbucks and breakfast burritos but there wasn’t time. Good thing I had a cup of coffee at home and we had protein smoothies before leaving the house! Our flight left on time at 6:55am to Houston. We quickly grabbed Wendy’s breakfast and took it on our plane. My friend Deedee and her husband Henry were on our same flights and are doing the 10k and half marathon and it was their first trip to WDW! We sat near them and I gave them my free flight drink coupons since we aren’t big drinkers and she gets nervous to fly. They enjoyed their drinks. It was a little bit of a bumpy flight. We landed in Orlando at 1:45pm and we all worked our way down to the Magical Express. We pretty much got there and walked right onto our bus to Port Orleans Riverside! The stops were Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, French Quarter and then Riverside. We checked in and had Room #8216. It’s classified as a courtyard view, but it was the last possible room to be called courtyard before being parking lot view. We were in the Acadian House again and love the location of this building. Before going to our room, we stopped in the food court and grabbed lunch. I had a Gluten Free bun spicy grilled chicken sandwich with fries, so good! Ryan had pasta. We ate with Deedee and Henry. We walked them to their room on our way to ours. We had forgotten to get a parking pass for my sister to use, so we went back to concierge to get it. Then out to the bus stop. It was 4:45pm and the tv showed the next bus to MK was in 20 minutes so we must have just missed it. There was a bit of a wait at security. But we did like that the new change at security because the monorail and ferry were already screened. So it wasn’t such a backup. We barely got to our Space Mountain FP that ended at 5:35pm by 5:33pm! Then off to our Mine Train FP at 6pm. Then off to the People Mover! It stopped twice while we were on it. I even witnessed two cars bump each other and knew something wasn’t right. And sure enough, we stopped in the tunnel overlooking into Buzz Lightyear. We were there for about 30 minutes before the Cast Members were able to get to our car to walk us off. They start deeper in and walk everyone out. We were closest to the staircase. So they gave us FP’s for any attraction in MK minus Mine Train and Peter Pan good until the end of the month. So it was pretty cool creating a human walking train parade to the stairs! We exited near Tomorrowland Terrace.
We got to our Thunder FP just after 7pm. We booked our 4th FP for Pirates for 8:50pm. We grabbed dinner at Columbia Harbour House. Ryan had the shrimp mac and cheese and I had the fish, shrimp and chicken plate. Both were so good and Ryan’s was really rich and filling that he didn’t finish it! We sat upstairs and overlooked the Tangled bathroom as the sun set. We saw the photo pass CM’s setting up for the lantern photo opp. So we went down and got in line with only about 30 people ahead of us, if that. They told us they would start in about 15 minutes, but it was really less than 5 minutes. The pics turned out amazing!!!! We then got castle pics. Then off to Pirates to use our FP. We then got large Dole Whips! The CM said she technically had to put juice in them since they are classified as floats, but she put less than a half inch of juice in them and it was full tall Dole Whip!!! She was awesome! No other CM wanted to do that on the trip. We stood on the hub and ate our Dole Whips while waiting for the 9:30am start of Wishes for our last time. We figured it was better to see it at the beginning of the trip so that somehow we didn’t miss it! I got a little misty eyed when it ended, such a great show! But looking forward to the new show too! We shuffled with the mass exodus to the buses. We were tired from a long day and didn’t have the energy to stick around to try to let the crowds dissipate. Main Street was crazy crowded, but when we got to our bus stop, the line wasn’t too bad. It was around 10:25pm at this point. It looked like we would be on the second bus. But within a minute of getting there, a bus pulled up and it was the double long one so everyone at the bus stop fit!! there was such heavy traffic and with the construction, they detoured all buses to make us go through the TTC then back out onto the normal MK bus route. I think they were trying to give bus traffic a chance to clear out down the road a bit. We were back to our room just before 11pm. Our luggage was waiting for us. We went and filled up our water bottles at the water station in the food court and got a Sprite in our refillable mug we picked up at lunch. We went back to our room to fully unpack. Lights out at 12:30am
Miles Logged 8.1
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