I woke up at 4am again today and almost drifted back to sleep when what appeared to be a warthog decided to stand in the hotel corridor grunting loudly for 10 minutes!! At that point I called it a day and did a bit of reading until everyone else emerged from their slumber. We had a steady get-ready, Steve got himself a snack credit latte and the girls had a play with their Anna and Elsa dolls (from which followed an interesting conversation between the two of them where Winnie said that Anna’s skirt looked like a cupcake wrapper and Polly replied with ‘well you’d better not lift it up or you might see her cupcake!!’ I’m definitely using the term ‘cupcake’ from now on 🤣
Today we were booked in to do the Family Magic Tour at 10am at Magic Kingdom (a lovely Christmas presents from my ma & pa), so for the first time in all our trips we didn’t get to MK in time for rope drop!! Amazingly the world didn’t implode, and we got through security and into the park without major incident (and were still there before EMH ended!) The girls and I did Peter Pan and Steve went for coffee. Whilst waiting for him (as the queue at Starbucks is bigger than that for Seven Dwarves Mine Train) the girls spotted Santa by the Christmas tree. I’m not talking Disney Santa here, I’m talking actual Santa on his holidays after a busy Christmas. The girls always look out for him since seeing him at Hollywood Studios last Christmas and Animal Kingdom in summer, and when they saw him they were so excited. They begged me to take a photo, so I went all James Bond and pretended to be snapping them whilst secretly photographing the Big Man in Red. I didn’t do the best job and am pretty sure that MI5 won’t be contacting ne with my 00 number any time soon, but it made the small people happy and passed time until Steve arrived to check in for the tour.
We’ve always fancied doing it but walking around the park for 2+ hours in the August heat just didn’t appeal, so this trip provided the perfect opportunity.
SPOILER ALERT!!
The tour is a kind of clue trail/ treasure hunt around the park for adults and children (aged 4 upwards) with a guide leading the way. There are also breaks to meet a few characters/ go on a ride, so if you fancy the tour but don’t want to know the details you may want to stop reading.
We went straight to the check in point for the tour which is at Main Street Theatre where we were all given name tags. At 10am our tour guide Stephanie called us over. There were 16 in our group which was made up of 8 adults and 8 children. She told us that we had to help find some special items for Alice, and so began the treasure hunt. We had to solve clues (some involved games, some just simple riddles) as we moved around the park.
It was great to notice small details you don’t often get time to look at, and the girls really enjoyed the puzzles and activities (I absolutely hate attention so participating in a game of ‘Follow the Leader’ through Magic Kingdom was not something I’d particularly ever choose!) We got to take a break at the halfway point (around an hour in) for a snack and toilet break.
We also skipped the line for Voyage of the Little Mermaid, but other than that the tour was non-stop, and action filled. After the break we followed a clue to find Peter Pan waiting to meet us. The girls love all things Peter Pan, so really enjoyed this (and he had loads of personality which was a vast improvement on yesterday’s Frozen meets!!)
We played a few more games to solve some more clues before finally ending up in Main Street confectionary where we had to find a Mickey Duffy bear. Once all the clues were found we were instructed to take them to the boss. Everyone realised this was Mickey, so in we went to meet the big Mouse himself!
The tour around 2 hours in total and was a really fun way to spend the morning. There is a fair amount of walking and it helps if the children can read the clues but isn’t essential. We decided to leave after the tour as the park was busy, so if you’re wanting to go and get lots of rides done with minimal queues this tour probably isn’t for you because the timing of it means you’re missing out on the quieter part of the park day. However, at $39 each it is one of the less expensive extras and we really enjoyed it (apart from Follow the Leader!!)
We love staying at Yacht Club for a number of reasons including the fact that you can get the bus either directly to the hotel or jump on the Swan/ Dolphin or Boardwalk buses and stroll to the hotel. The Boardwalk bus came first so we opted for that and decided to grab a QS lunch on the walk back to the hotel. We’ve never eaten QS on the Boardwalk before so opted for a pizza from the window. We got a large for 2 QS credits and had 4 sides included (we had 2 packs of crisps and 2 beers). The pizza took a while but was really good and more than enough for all of us for lunch (I would have taken pictures, but I was too busy protecting Winnie from the killer (tiny) birds! We then walked to Ample Hills for the girls’ ice-cream fix. There are so many flavours that I feared it could be a lengthy trip with the indecisive small one, but she was dead set on cotton candy, so we were in like Flynn!
We did have a Storybook Dining reservation booked but the weather was beautiful and so we amended it to next week and decided to have a few hours chilling by the pool. It is so busy here at the minute. This time last year was definitely much quieter. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that Galaxy’s Edge is fully open, or that new year fell closer to the weekend, but whatever the case it’s definitely not quiet!!!
None of us were particularly hungry at tea time and as we have a late night at the Jingle Bell Jingle Jam dessert party tomorrow followed by a full day at Universal (we managed to get a refund on our after-hours tickets as after the messing around/ unplanned late nights/ need to be around the hotel to see rooms etc we had to reshuffle things and couldn’t make it work) we decided on a movie night and tea in the room courtesy of Daddy’s room service (also known as quick service food collected by Steve before knocking on the door and declaring it is room service! Well, I’m not paying actual room service prices!!) which he picked up on his way back from a run around the Boardwalk. Seeing as he’s doing a half marathon in a week he thought he’d better actually do some training 💪
Oh, and for those worrying about the child/ adult quick service meal split, if you’ve booked directly with Disney (possibly others too but I’ve no experience of them) and have the free dining you should be able to phone and upgrade the child ticket to an adult ticket for the price difference (only around £20) and this will then give them an adult dining plan (we are doing this for Polly next time as child sized meals will not cut the mustard next trip!)
Doodle & Peg Do Disney 