We had breakfast in Stone Harbour Lounge – one of servers, Iniz remembered us (or more specifically Heather) from last year – that’s nice and shows the quality of the employees who are working at the Beach Club.
After breakfast and a stop at the room we decided to walk to Epcot – it was a walk out the door, down a very short hall and down 1 flight of stairs and then on the path to the Epcot right by the bridge to the Boardwalk – fantastically short walk. There are maybe only 3 or 4 rooms closer to Epcot than the one we have and even still at most they would be 20-30 less steps.
On our way into Epcot, Heather and I upgraded our annual passes to premium – the plan is to get to a waterpark and Disney Quest this trip so it made sense to upgrade our passes instead of paying for those separately.
We shopped our way through Epcot and took the monorail to Magic Kingdom.
Stunningly Magic Kingdom seems deserted – very few people around.
Saw something we had never seen before on our way in – a float stuck on Main Street! Cast members had the float surrounded directing people to keep a safe distance. We had a quick chat with one of the cast members about it – looks like the floats have a failsafe where the default state of the brakes is on so they had to do some work to just be able to release the brakes to tow it off the street to work on it properly. Definitely an unusual site at Disney World.
We did some shopping along Main Street and decided to try Be Our Guest for lunch – we ended up waiting 40-45 minutes or so but we got in and it was worth the wait to give it a try. Definitely nice atmosphere and theming throughout. In the one room every 10-20 minutes or so there is a bit of a storm with lightning and thunder and the banner flashing from the Prince’s face to the Beast and back – very cool. The room also has a holographic rose in a container that you can get close to and take pictures of. The RFID food pager system is pretty cool – we placed our order and were given our RFID rose. We went and found a seat and shortly afterward a server pulled up a cart with our food in it. Obviously they are able to track the RFID of the rose and find where you were sitting – a cool little trick. The food was good too.
We then did a walk on for the new Little Mermaid ride – pretty cool. It has a fun interactive queue and the kids definitely enjoyed the ride and the music.
We hit the new Dumbo next – it would have been a walk on but we tried the new queue first (kids enjoyed the queue – it will definitely be a bit of a blessing in the hotter summer months). The ride is the same ride but the fountains on the side look cool and are lit up really nicely at night.
We were going to do Goofy’s Barnstormer next but it was closed for refurb for the day – we will have to try to get on it another day – K hasn’t been on it yet so we would like to get her a shot.
Next was the tea cups – all 4 of us got in one cup and then we had a quick ice cream stop.
They had the Club 626 Dance Party going on with a spacey versions of Goofy, Pluto, Chip and Dale there as well as Stitch that the kids could interact and dance with. T and K danced and met up with the characters.
We then did Space Ranger spin as a walk on and decided to go a second time – for the second one we were basically able to get on as fast as we could make it through the queue.
We took a quick ride on the People Mover and headed toward Adventure Land. We had to do a quick pit stop at the medical station along the way for Heather to get something for her cold – it’s nice that they were able to just give her a couple packs of extra strength Tylenol.
After that we did a walk on for the Jungle Cruise ride then the Tiki Room. A Pirates of the Caribbean walk on came next before starting to head for the exit.
Along the way we stopped for a few minutes to watch a parade and T got a high five from a stilt guy – pretty funny.
On our way out we noticed that the Storybook Princess character greeting area only showed a 5 minute wait – K was in her Aurora dress so we made a stop. I doubt the wait was actually 5 minutes and K ended up getting lots of personal time with each of Rapunzel, Aurora and Cinderella.
Then we left for the buses – there was a bus waiting for our hotel when we got to the waiting area. The bus drivers were going through a shift change but after we sat down the outgoing driver called across the intercom “Ladies and Gentlemen we are honored today to have a Disney Princess on board” – he meant K! – he then came and talked to K and gave her a little bottle of blowing bubbles. He then gave all the kids on the bus a bottle of bubbles before he left and the other driver took us to the hotel.
It was a nice and easy ride back to the hotel where we hit Beaches and Cream for supper (no wait). We had a waiter who was great with the kids – unfortunately I don’t remember his name.
After that it was too late to hit the main pool (Stormalong Bay closes at 8pm) so we went to the quiet pool we can see from our room. The hot tub right there is closed for maintenance so it seems like they have the pool heated extra warm – it was a nice warm swim and we heard fireworks from the pool.
Shortly after than we headed back to the room to get the kids to bed.