13 Dec 2016
[10:25 EST+1]
A very late finish last night, we got back to the apartment at 2am this morning.
We had bought tickets for the Mickey's Christmas Party at Disney World. This is a ticket-only event which starts at 7pm after the park closes early. It's supposed to finish at midnight, so to avoid a really long day, we didn't want to get to Disney World too early. Instead, we decided to go over to the pool for a half hour. It had a few people in the water but most were either reading of sunbathing around the side.
Once back in the apartment, as it was nearing lunchtime, I drove off to a nearby Pizza place to get something to eat. Knowing how busy it can get in the parks and as Disney is not the easiest of places to eat at, we wanted to have our bigger meal early.
Very nice it was too.
Then is was off to the park, we arrived at just before 4pm, so there was still 3 hours of normal park activities to run.
Actually, by the time we'd got from the parking area (SCAR 411) to the main entrance, picked up our wristband so we could be identified as ticket holders and waited for a broken down monorail to reboot and take us to the main entrance, it was over 40 minutes later, so nearer to 4:30. There were plenty of people near the main entrance.
As expected, the park was very well decorated, especially when the sun went down and all the lights came on.
Our first ride was at the Haunted Mansion (20 minute wait). Then we wandered over to the Pirates ride (my favourite). Shock horror! It was broken. So we moved on to Splash mountain (25 minute wait). I went on just as it was getting dark. Linda, as ever, waited outside for me. After the ride, I come out and look around - it's dark now and everywhere is very low lighting, so I can't see very well and looking about, she's nowhere to be seen. So I sit there for about 10 minutes (Linda had taken my phone just in case it got wet on the ride). But Linda still doesn't appear.
Eventually, I decide to look a bit further and suddenly see her waiting at the exit... to a different ride (Thunder mountain). Linda was patiently sitting there wondering why I'd not appeared yet!
We returned to Pirates and this time it was running (20 minute wait).
We then walked further into the park, doing the Small World (5 minute wait) and Pooh Bear (20 minutes).
By now it was getting close to the times for the shows to start (the first parade was already starting). So we walked into Tomorrowland to see their Christmas show and a very good acapella group called Voiceplay who did a 10 minute session.
Immediately after this we jumped on the Buzz Lightyear ride which initially said 5 minute wait, but by the time we'd exited it said 20 minutes. I guess a lot of others had the same idea as us.
Walking out of Tomorrowland we grabbed a nearby spot on the bridge to sit and wait the 15 minutes to the firework show (10pm).
The fireworks were very good and included the LED-wrapped Tinkerbell on the zip-line thing that they do, she flew almost overhead!
There's many more firework shots in the album below.
So into the last couple of hours now, so we caught the last bit of the Voiceplay set again - this time with new songs it seemed. Then walked back through Main Street to find ourselves somewhere to watch the 11pm parade.
It was 'snowing' in Main street with their soap-sud effects that they use.
We ended up watching the parade from the corner of the roundabout in Main Street and we had a pretty good view.
The parade was delayed by maybe 15 minutes due to 'technical issues'. This also impacted the few shows that were following on afterwards. We, on the other hand, looped back to Pirates for one last ride...
Then it was the slow walk back to the main gate - it was gone midnight as we walked back so most of the place was empty which gave me a chance to photograph some of the places without people.
Finally we got back to the main entrance and took a couple of photos there too.
Another elongated trip back to the parking area (with a long wait for monorail and a curious delay inside the Contemporary hotel) so it wasn't until 1:30am that we reached our car.
Tired but happy.
FULL PHOTO ALBUM : https://goo.gl/photos/q3xkCMJkreFr1Znx5