Friday October 26th
[08:24+1]
Today was our big day in that we had lots planned. We had tickets for a day at Disney World and we'd also bought tickets for the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party which would take place at 7pm after the part closed to regular visitors.
As we've been there before a few times, we were not in any hurry to get over to the park. It was a nice morning, but the forecast was for intermittent showers - due to Hurricane Sandy throwing cloud in our direction.
Instead, we headed for the breakfast bar for some food.
Now you have to realise that the meal we'd had the previous night was excellent. However, I can only describe their breakfast set-up as a shambles. Basically, they had five different areas serving food - bakery, omelette station, cold, that sort of thing. Each and every item was chargeable. This gave the unusual situation where I asked for a bowl of cereal - which cost me $3.45 (about £2.50) but then I had to go to another area to buy milk - which cost $1.50 (£1.00). Yes, they sold me dry flakes!
All in all, a breakfast of cereal for me (with milk!), 2 x coffee, 2 x OJ, two slices of toast, 2 x omelette and a strawberry parfait came to just over $40 (£30). I know there are all-in way of buying breakfast which for a single day we'd not bothered with, but it was a shock to the system when we'd been getting almost the same breakfast for around $25 when we'd been going off site.
So we headed out to the Disney bus stop and took a round about way over to the Magic Kingdom, arriving just before 12 noon.
The place looked very busy as we were joining the bag check lines, but actually when we saw wait times later it wasn't as bad as we've experienced at other times - perhaps the weather warnings has kept some away.
I did a couple of runs through Space Mountain during which time Linda said it rained a little - I think that was in the end the only time we was rain that day which was fortunate.
I grabbed a fast path for Thunder Mountain but whilst we were waiting for that we did the Haunted Mansion and watched the 3pm parade.
Back to Thunder Mountain, then we were greeted with the unusual sight of five men in waders, moving about inside the Splash Mountain ride which had broken down.
Instead, we jumped on the Liberty Belle steamer and went for a loop around the island. It was on here that I had my biggest wow moment of the day so far. Someone was using a Panasonic Omniview video recorder. Now, for those born after 1990, this thing was an on-the-shoulder video recorder that used full size VHS video tapes.
Can you still buy VHS video tapes?? Still the woman was using it to record her boat trip so it must have been in working order, fair play to a device brought out in 1988! How did she find batteries for it??
Finally, it started to get dark and we had to go and get our wristbands that show we're allowed to stay after 7pm.
We did the Pirates and wandered back into Fantasyland. Here we spotted the Pooh Bear group doing a photo group shot. Over we dashed, but it was already closed :( They said to come back after the parade as all four were in the parade too. So we got a spot and waited out the parade (which was actually quite good - a big plus to see a different parade for a change) then went back to get in line. However, on returning to the photo area, it was again just shutting as it was soon to be fireworks time and the whole area around the photo area was to be closed off for safety (it's very close to where the fireworks are let off). So we'd missed it again!
Back to the castle and we set up for the fireworks show. Not knowing where it's coming from is a bit of a lottery as to where you stand, but we were lucky to get a reasonable view (the trees obscured some stuff).
It was a good display too. The second parade was was pretty much right on top of the fireworks, so we knew Eeyore and co wouldn't be back just yet. So we found a spot and waited for the last parade. We were both starting to flag now, as it was gone 10pm.
After the parade, we were straight back to the photo place and FINALLY we were rewarded with all four characters returning from the last parade. I got dragged in too!
Finally we could leave the park happy. We caught a bus back to the resort and collapsed into bed at 12:15am. It's certainly not as easy as it used to be!!