We started the day with some breakfast at the villa. We were all a little tired this morning. But, hey, it was hub's 41st birthday and we had a few little present to hand out. We also were looking forward to the birthday fastpasses today.
On arrival at our destination for the day, Magic Kingdom, we hopped onto the ferryboat, much nicer than sitting on a monrail we all agreed. it was beautiful morning, clear blue skies and we were all looking forward to MK.
Birthday boy in a good mood:
What a shame this was down for a refurb, I really wanted to ride it again, the last time I did I was 12!
Splash Mountain was our first port of call.
Gulp. Big Drop. I hate big drops, but I do get used to them somewhat... it's just the waiting in line that does me! See, I do actually smile in the end :-)
We stopped to grab more fastpasses for this ride as we'd joined the standby queue at this time of the morning (yes, you could have fastpasses and birthday fastpasses at the same time! So we had two more rides on Splash to look forward to).
Next stop, my fave ride, yeeha!
Feeling a little daring, I had my camera firmly gripped in one hand to get some ride shots...not to be advised...although I didn't drop it on any of the bumps I did get a whack in the mouth from the screen cap, which I wasn't holding onto :-)
I was impressed with my camera again, for the way it handled the bumps and produced nice, clear piccies!
Next we waited for the train to take us round to Tomorrowland. It was nice to get out of the sun, this was another exceedingly hot day!
Waiting for the train (and looking for it in the wrong direction!)
And here she comes (trains are female right?)
Choo-choo...fasten your seat belts, we're off! Oh wait, this is no thrill ride, sit back, no need to grip anything, just relax and enjoy the view....and whoa! We saw a deer, no, not these deer...
but a real deer! Only I wasn't quick enough to get any photographic evidence!
We glimpsed Pluto on our way through Toontown and gave him a quick wave then disembarked at Tomorrowland feeling somewhat peckish. "I know a place called Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe that's supposed to be okay," the knowledgable one says (that's me, the bookworm, owner of more WDW books than is really necessary!)
The kids decide what to have, and it seems it's burgers or nuggets all round. As hub was paying one of the servers must have spotted his birthday badge and with a one-two-three all the servers broke out into a loud and fast birthday tune (so fast you couldn't catch the words!!). It was a great moment, totally unexpected, and I managed to catch some of it as a movie on my camera which was, luckily, round my neck and ready for action!
We gobbled down our grub (nothing special, but it filled the gap)
and while DH popped off to the toilet I got talking to one of the staff. He was a friendly chap and seemed to want to make conversation. He told me all about his job and why he works at WDW 2 days a week (Disney Cruise benefits for his family apparently). I didn't think to get a photo of him, but boy did he look old! I bravely, and politely, asked how old he was....83!!! He did look old admittedly, but he was clearly young at heart, and we carried on the conversation as hub came back from the bathroom. Another lovely moment.
After wishing him well we wandered over to Stitch's Great Escape. Suffice to say, we just didn't get it! The best we could work out was that it was supposed to be Stitch jumping on our chairs. Katie was even unlucky enough to get 'spat' on, apparently!
To think that we'd almost 'wasted' one of our birthday fastpasses on this attraction! Luckily we didn't, due to one special cast member who advised us not to, and waved us through without using the FPs! Now that's Disney magic, what a nice bloke!
Now this was more like it! Monster Inc Laugh Floor. I loved this! Almost as good as Turtle Talk with Crush, but not quite. Laugh we did! We were fortunate not to get 'picked on'!
Now for my surprise treat for Dear Hub's birthday. I'd made an ADR (advanced dining reservation) at the Plaza for some pudding! We headed off towards the castle and took a few shots....in exactly the same place DH and I stood on our honeymoon in '92 for some shots together.
And my babies..
We only had a short wait before our buzzer went off and we were seated inside the Plaza, the relief from the heat was wonderful!
There was a rather entertaining and delightful 'suffragette' inside who started up a Happy Birthday song to those celebrating
and then came around to chat and pose for a photo with my birthday boy, to his embarrassment! Say 'cheese', you know you're loving this *chuckle*
To this day hub couldn't decide if the suffragette was a woman or a man :-)
Here are the yummies...which were more than we could manage:
Sam had to 'dump' all the cream from his sundae onto a saucer! There's strangely no photo of my rootbeer float...presumably because I gobbled it too quickly to get a photo of it, so yummy it was!
Back into Tomorrowland for Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, woop woop! I love this kind of ride..no nervous tummy, just good old plain fun!
Whiled away the line taking some photos...
why does Buzz look so eerie in my photos! His face was clearly visible while we were in the line. Scary!!
Makes me want to grab a pen and add some features!
Must be the lighting in there, I look pretty ghostly too:
Hub?..competitive?...never! Ha!
We went for a stroll afterwards, passing the beautiful castle and into Frontierland and Adventureland.
Never noticed the figures in the background until I looked at this photo much later, it's a lovely photo of Katie too, will have to have a play in Photoshop and see if I can magic them away.
Took a couple of snaps of the castle from closer, this one's not bad..
Having sneaked a peek at this one on Youtube we decided to try this:
Me likey! Hard to describe, you've got to see it in 3D but you get the idea here:
Off to Jungle Cruise next for a ride on Ganges Gertie. The lovely thing about some rides is that the kids just didn't know what to expect, whether they would meet dangerous beasts, and the anticipation on their faces was cute:
Swiss Family Robinsn's Treehouse, from where did I took this shot
Time for a little more light refreshment, we'd been in the park quite some time now...
a welcome sign (I knew from spending too much time online that this place had something pineapple-y and yummy worth trying!)
Hub and I went for the pineapple float, not the well-known dole whip (although I'll try a dole whip next year). Dear daughter, not a big fan of icecream, went for a chunk of pineapple, Sam opted for some ice cream. We grabbed a bench just opposite Aloha Isle to rest our tired feet and enjoy our yummies. The more observant of you will note that hub put his wallet on his lap. This has major significance later in the day's report....
We decided to finish off our day with a last ride on Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, our fave MK rides. We'd grabbed a FP for SM earlier and still had the birthday fastpasses for these rides so we had 2 SM rides to look forward to and one BTMR yippee!
Katie and I popped off to the ladies leaving the boys on the bench. The boys then found us outside the ladies and we took off, back to our last three rides.
I loved these guys....would have happily yee-haawed with them but I didn't have my bonnet, petticoats and boots with me , took a bit of movie film of them..two attempts, tourists walked into my movie on both occasions, I'll show you the better of the two:
We did BTMR first, then SM by which time we were well and truely pooped and ready to head home. It didn't take a second to pay back some of the magic that we'd been the recipients of on our first day here (Epcot), and I found a lady with two kiddies and gave them our fast passes for SM.
Of course, being a woman, I do like a lickle look in the shops so we stopped in one shop on Main Street and bought some souvenirs and katie bought herself a cuddly. Up at the till hub reached into his pocket....yep, you guessed it....NO wallet!!! First things first, I pay using my card while DH stood grumbling words best not repeated and obviously trying to figure out where it could be.
The kind lady at the till suggested we try at City Hall for Lost and Found so off hub marched, muttering away, with us marching behind silently hoping for a good outcome!
We had an agonising but short wait at City Hall before being called forward to the desk. Hub explained to the guy and he asked us what the wallet looked like, where we think we might have lost it (we clearly couldn't think straight because we couldn't answer that one!) and what cards and how much money was in it. Armed with this info he gave me a wink and said he'd go look out the back. The wink confused me - first thought was: was he just trying to console me? I verbalized the second thought to hub, "I blo**dy hope he isn't winding me up and putting hope into me... and there really isn't anything back there.... but he has to go look anyway!". Ramble, ramble, breathe.
He wasn't gone long, and came back with a little plastic bag....in which was......hub's wallet!!! Hub checked inside and everything seemed to be there (we knew roughly how many dollar bills there were anyway, and were happy to see there were still lots there!) The guy said that he had picked it up himself from the ground by a bench near Aloha Isle...whether it was true or not we don't know, but being trusting folk we believed him at that moment and hub tried to offer him $30, so relieved were we not to have to go through the palava of trying to get in touch with multiple visa card companies, having no cash and checking our travel insurance policy...we were tired, we just wanted to go back and collapse on the sofas! To his credit, the guy refused to accept anything saying that he wasn't allowed, even when hub offered to meet him outside and hand over the notes. There...Disney Magic again. How lucky were we?!
On the ferry back to the transportation Centre hub reflected on the lost wallet. He initially thought he'd given it to me to put in my bag (as he usually would) when he sat down to eat his yummy, but he got distracted and forgot. He remembers that he and Sam also went off to the men's room while Katie and I went to the ladies, and then met us afterwards. He decided that he must have forgotten that his wallet was on his lap when he got up!
With great sighs of relief we caught sight of the tail end of a parade coming down Main Street towards City Hall and stopped to watch it for a couple of minutes and take some family shots with Main Street and the Castle behind us...
Onto the ferry with shopping and homeward bound
couple more piccies while we reflected on hub's birthday:
Katie with her new cuddly, which still sits in her bed to this day unlike many other cuddlies! One can never be too old to fall in love with a new cuddly (I'm buying one next year!)
What a day, what a park. Some fab memories worth every penny.
After showering and resting up for a while at the villa we got dressed up to hit a restaurant for hub's brithday meal.
This is the restaurant that had been recommended to us by friends back home:
Boy, was it busy and somewhat unorganised, but the food was fine. The birthday boy chose a nice lump of steak and it was yummy, except that it seemed to be sitting on a huge bed of crunchy salt! The kids went for ribs and I had some rice and shrimp concoction which was very scrummy.
tasted more yummy than it looks.
I don't remember what we did after eating but I bet my bottom dollar that we went back to the villa and were in bed pretty promptly!
Next up is Day 9 - Shopping and Typhoon Lagoon.
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