Post-Trip Report: Anna’s Scotland to WDW Holiday (April 2026)

[00:00:11] Welcome to Where I Long To Be, a Magical Trip Report Podcast. My name is Virginia and I am your host. It's Monday and it's one day closer to your next magical vacation. If you aren't getting to any of the parks this summer yourself, I hope that you will be able to have fun living vicariously through the show and that you will find other magical fun to be had, whether it's seeing Toy Story 5 or discovering something new in your town. Summer is the time for good times, so get out there and enjoy yourself.

[00:00:41] Okay, let us get into today's Post-Trip Report episode. Anna was traveling from Scotland to Walt Disney World April 13th through 25th with her husband Nick and daughters Imogen, 14, and Zoe, 11. This was in honor of Anna and Nick's 20th wedding anniversary. They planned to stay at Port Orleans Riverside and they were using the quick service dining plan. They were basically going to try to hit everything that Walt Disney World did.

[00:01:12] And I think they might have just done it. That should have you caught up. Please welcome back Anna. Welcome back Anna. Hi, Virginia. Thanks for having me again. I'm so happy to have you back. We were just talking about some other non Disney related things, but I just absolutely love talking to you. You have such a good spirit about you. Thank you. That's so kind. How was your trip? Absolutely amazing. Missing it so much already.

[00:01:39] Yeah, you were saying that you have a hoodie on because it's chilly where you are and I had to turn my air conditioner off so that we could talk here because suddenly it's spring in New York. But what was the weather like for your trip? Was it hot? No, it was perfection. It was absolute perfection. And my husband, who is not as big a Disney person as the rest of us, at the end was like, I get it now when I can go when I can go when it's like this. And I said to him earlier today, I think I need to know what my next trip is just so I can feel better.

[00:02:09] And he said, can it be in April? April because the weather was perfection, not a drop of rain for the 10 days that we were there. You know, you got up in the morning and it was warm enough to be just in a T-shirt, but not hot. The highs, we did get up into the low 30s on some of the days, but it never felt unbearable. And then in the evening, we occasionally wore a jumper or a hoodie or something. But then, well, not my husband, but the rest of us, it was just absolute perfection.

[00:02:36] So April, I think, is just the time to go. Now, what were the crowds like? Because some parts of April are spring break for our U.S. kids. And when we were there, the springtime surprise marathon was in the middle of our trip. But also there was like some sort of cheer dance competition because half the plane for us traveling out was cheerleaders from.

[00:03:01] So we flew out of Manchester and so half the plane was cheerleaders from Manchester and Liverpool, which is another city nearby. Loads of them going to this competition that was being held in Orlando, I think, and possibly at Disney. So it definitely got busier that weekend in the middle where I think that there was maybe the competition. There was certainly the race busier then. The first few days we thought were actually quite reasonable, particularly the first couple of days. And then later, maybe a bit quieter again.

[00:03:30] But that weekend in the middle, definitely a bit busier. Mm-hmm. That's funny because, you know, I was there for a few days at the beginning of May and there was a cheer competition going on then too. So I'm like, is it weeks and weeks of cheer competitions? What's happening? I don't know. I mean, we didn't actually see cheerleaders in the parks at all that we were aware of. We did see a lot of runners in our resort, but I just knew the cheer competitions were on.

[00:03:55] But definitely on the plane on the way back, there was quite a lot of cheerleaders and dancers with their families who'd clearly, you know, traveled over with them and then were coming back. So it must have increased the numbers a bit. We certainly found it busier than July, but you can tolerate waiting so much more when it's not 40 degrees. So we didn't mind the extra crowds. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get into all of this because you have a nice long trip considering how far you were traveling to get there.

[00:04:24] So you were leaving Manchester, driving, excuse me, driving to Manchester on Monday, April the 13th, five-hour drive. Everything go okay with that? Yeah, absolutely fine. It was really straightforward. The actual drive is probably less than that, but with a stop. It's about five hours. No problems, you know, stayed in a hotel near the airport, went out for a nice dinner, had a lovely chill evening. So we were all good to go for getting up the next morning and our flight wasn't super early.

[00:04:52] So we didn't have to get up super early in the morning. How was the flight? Everything on time? And I think you were flying Virgin. So was that a good experience? Late in leaving. But they made up most of that time. I think we were maybe 10 minutes late when we arrived. So we got into Orlando at 4.30. We were aware that this might be the last time we are coming into Terminal B because most of the international ones go to the new Terminal C.

[00:05:21] Just Virgin, who announced that they were going to be moving to Terminal C at the end of April. I don't think they have yet. But we were just sort of enjoying our last, possibly last time of coming into Terminal B. We had an amazing experience coming into the airport, though. I've never had it go so quick. We landed and we had been fairly near the front of economy. So we were off the plane quite quickly. And also we can, you know, with two, you know, with a teen and a tween, we can move quite quickly. There was nobody. When we got to security, there was nobody.

[00:05:51] We got through and our bags were, I think they were almost there already. We were up and into the main bit of the, I think you go kind of from A to B. We were over to Mears. I've done Mears once before and had quite a long wait, but we went into the Caribbean, not Caribbean. We weren't going there. The Port Orleans Riverside line. And there was nobody in front of us. And we thought, oh, I wonder if we've just missed one. And we could see outside. There was a big bus and there was one of their, you know, their little ones that you can book. Well, there's one of those there.

[00:06:20] And someone came up and said, oh, we're just going to pop you on that. It was just about to go. There was two couples on it already, both going to deluxe resorts near Magic Kingdom. And they just popped the four of us into that. And so we got this tiny little one that went straight to our resort first. And honestly, it was so quick. So we landed about 4.30. And gosh, we must have been, it was maybe about an hour and 15 minutes later.

[00:06:44] We arrived at Port Orleans from getting off the, you know, from the plane landing to us arriving at our resort. I don't think it's ever happened so quickly for us. What did you think about your resort? We loved it. We have visited it before and we've stayed at French Quarter, but we absolutely loved it. I would say particularly my husband and I, we, it's such a lovely themed resort. So relaxing. You feel like you're miles from the theme parks, but it's very themed as well. So, yeah, we really enjoyed it.

[00:07:11] And we had asked for a room in the mansions and we did get that. Oh, fantastic. We had, we thought we had a good spot where we were as well. You know, we weren't too far to anything. So, yeah, fantastic resort. We'd definitely stay there again. Although I might be more inclined to stay there. Maybe talk about this more later. We had some bus issues at various times. So I might be more inclined to stay there as a sort of peer post cruise few days, like we did at French Quarter last time, where you're not needing to get to the parks too much because,

[00:07:41] obviously because you've only got the buses. If they're not in your favor, which some days they really weren't in our favor, then you can be waiting quite a while. What did you think about the other offerings at the resort? So the pool, the food, did you take advantage of all those things during your time there? Yeah, well, we had the food a lot because we got the free quick service dining plan. We were often getting food, probably much more than we normally would do. So we did enjoy all the food we had there.

[00:08:06] We had a few goes in the main pool and in the smaller pool that was very close to our room. You know, the kind of little area pools. Like a quiet pool. Yeah. So, and we really liked both of those. And we actually, this is, you know, another day, a wee bit further into the trip. But one day my daughter and I were coming back from getting hot drinks in the morning and we could see people standing on the little bridge over to the Middle Island. And we wondered what they were looking at. I just assumed it was a gator. And so we said to them, you know, what are you looking at?

[00:08:36] And they said, it's the family of otters playing in the water. Now, my youngest daughter, her favorite animal in the world is an otter. And she's only ever seen them in zoos. And right under the bridge where we were standing was a whole family playing in the water. And we got to watch them for ages. So it just felt so sort of rural and rustic. And yeah, really lovely place to stay. Oh, that's sweet. I love otters too. They're so cute. They are. All right.

[00:09:03] So based on the time that you got in on Tuesday the 14th, you were just planning on sort of relaxing. Is that exactly what happened? Yeah, we got some pizza and our refillable mugs, which we got free as part of the dining plan as well. And just, you know, ate that and then went and got ourselves sorted in the room. Because although it was maybe, you know, just before six o'clock in the evening when we arrived to us, that was just before 11 o'clock at night.

[00:09:28] So by the time we got our stuff to the room, got food and drink, you know, our bodies thought it was the next day. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. So let's get into all of the park fun. Wednesday, April the 15th, you were planning to head to Epcot, which is Imogen's favorite park. Did you rope drop test track like you planned to? We did. Yes, we did manage to do that. We actually, we got to the bus stop. I think we left. So the park opened for early entry at 8.30 that day.

[00:09:57] We left our room at half seven. And we got to the stop and the Epcot bus was right there. But they said, no, no, you can't get on. It's broken down. Oh, no. But luckily a bus pulled in behind and they just decided to, I don't even remember where it was meant to be going. But they made it. They said, well, just make this bus an Epcot bus. And so we got on it straight away.

[00:10:18] And so I think I'd said to you, we were doing a few family bounding things where we were also, all of us were in our classic character theme bounds that day. And it was a Pluto bus. My youngest likes Pluto the best. So we felt like this is a really good omen for the start of the holiday. Yeah. So, yeah, we got to Epcot about eight maybe. And we were in line for test track, probably about ten past eight. And they started getting the queue going just before half past. And we probably got on about quarter to nine.

[00:10:48] We absolutely loved test track. None of us had done it before. And we all really enjoyed it. But it broke down at the end. So as you're coming into the bit where you're going to get off, it must be maybe about five or six cars in front. We could see where people would get off. And we were just into the inside. Well, a few cars into the inside bit. And we were stopped and we were stopped probably for about, I don't know, 10 to 15 minutes. And they said they were going to be getting people off.

[00:11:15] And they started evacuating from the back car that stopped forward. So we probably, I don't know, maybe lost about 20, 25 minutes. But we felt like we'd done the whole ride. But as we left the building, they gave us an anytime fast pass that we said we could use. Or fast pass lightning lane. Anytime lightning lane that they said we could use for anything other than guardians. So. Oh, wow. We'd got to do the whole ride and we got this extra lightning lane. So we didn't mind. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. So we didn't mind at all.

[00:11:45] And actually we were over to, we went straight over to Soarin'. So even though we'd got onto that at 8.45, we were over in the queue for Soarin' at 20 past nine. So that was pretty much a walk on. So it didn't hold us up too much. Making good time in spite of two vehicle breakdowns already in this day. I know. I know. I know. Each time I thought it's going to be against us and actually it worked out fine. So yeah, just staying positive. So yeah, we did Soarin' because that's my favourite ride.

[00:12:13] So I'd wanted to make sure we got that in quite quickly. Mm-hmm. And then we had some snacks at the Sunshine Seasons. I think again, you know, it was quite freeing thinking we had this free dining plan. And that if we just fancied a bit of a snack whenever we wanted, we could just go and get those. Bizarrely, we then had a longer wait for living with the land. Really? Because while we were sitting having these snacks, it said five minutes for living with the land. So we were like, oh great, we jumped in line. While we were in line, it jumped to 15 minutes.

[00:12:43] And we did wait about 15 minutes. But we'd walked on to Soarin', you know, not that long before that. Oh, that's funny. That was really bizarre. I don't know what that was about. Yeah. And then I think what did we do after that? Figment. Actually, this must have been a bit of a busy day because figment was a 15 minute wait. It's probably about kind of quarter past 20 past 10. And I think often figment doesn't get long until like the middle of the day. I think that's the longest we've ever waited for figment.

[00:13:12] So maybe that was an indication that it was a bit busier. And I think I'd expected this to be one of the quieter days, but maybe it's one of the quieter days for April. And because we've gone in July the last couple of times, which seems a pretty quiet time to go comparatively. Maybe it was just a quieter day for April. But it was still not too bad. We headed over to the Moana walkthrough next. Perfect temperature again to go through there. I think when we'd last done that, we were so hot that we actually just wanted to dive into the water.

[00:13:44] And I think also Moana had only just opened last time we were there. And so every bit where you could do things had, you know, queues of kids mainly waiting to do it. Whereas this time it wasn't too busy. So we got to try all the different interactive bits, which is really fun. And my husband hadn't seen that at all. So he really liked that too. And I think at this point as well, we were all talking about how beautiful Epcot is for the Flower and Garden Festival. Yes. It's just so beautiful.

[00:14:13] And I think we just kept stopping and talking. I mean, I like the look of Epcot normally, but in the Flower and Garden Festival, it really is just such a beautiful park. It's the best time of the year with the topiaries. And there's just something special about that festival. I love it. Yes, definitely. It's lovely. Did you take advantage of a lot of the festival booths? Because I know that was something that you had wanted to try. Yeah, we did do some.

[00:14:38] Actually, one of the things we did next, we popped over and did the three caballeros because bizarrely, we all love that. That's not bizarre. Is it not? I know. I love it. I love it. I think it's great. We really love it. I don't think it's a hot take to like that, right? Okay, because our favorite thing is if it's really quiet and your boat comes back around and they sort of do that twirly thing where they're asking if you want to go again and you get to just go around. It wasn't, they didn't do that that day. It's a bit more of a line, but we like it when you get to ride it twice in a row.

[00:15:08] But my daughter did then get Tang Hulu, which is that thing they had that had the little fruits on the... I had that when I was there. Oh, did you? I'm curious to know what she thought of it. She really liked it. I thought it was quite a lot of money for what you got, but obviously we just used a snack credit for it. Right. She liked it. I didn't love it, I have to be honest. It was fine.

[00:15:32] I mean, it's fruit covered in sugar, but I think it was a combination of the fact that it, I don't know, it just wasn't as good as I expected it to be. And I got a cocktail with it and the cocktail tasted very medicinal. So it was just kind of like, meh, no. No, thank you. That doesn't sound very nice. I mean, I guess maybe an 11-year-old palate. Sugary fruits may be quite a nice thing to have. It's maybe less of an adult treat. I think as well she's quite into Asian foods.

[00:15:57] And so she'd seen people having this online before, so was quite keen to try it. So she really liked it. We then decided we were all going to get different meals. So we all wanted to go to different places. This is our first day using these quick service credits for our meals. And my husband and I really wanted to try the Mexican place that's by the water. Oh, we loved our food. And actually it's incredible value because they're not cheap meals there.

[00:16:25] I think ours would have, mine vegetarian, and it still would have been like $15 or something. It was so delicious. And then I got my cocktail with it, obviously, on the dining plan. But actually our kids had decided they weren't going to eat there, but they did both try my meal. I think I had the empanadas, you know, the sort of cheesy empanadas with the rice and the beans. They both loved it. And actually later in the trip asked if they could go there for their meal and have that. But that day they wanted to try different things. So we had ours there.

[00:16:55] Then we went to Regal Eagle so that my eldest could have something from there. And then while she was eating that, my husband waited with her while I took my youngest to Katsura Grill because she wanted to get something different from the Japanese pavilion. We then brought it back and we all sat in Regal Eagle. So we were sort of bopping around a little bit. But, you know, everybody did get to try different things that they wanted to have. So it's quite nice to have that flexibility. And we sort of decided that day we would do a few rides at the front of the park,

[00:17:24] but then just try to enjoy the World Showcase a little bit and enjoy the food from the different countries. So I felt we did get to do that. You had some other priorities, which I know Imogen wanted to do Spaceship Earth and see the Voices of Liberty. Did you get to do those things? We didn't do the Voices of Liberty that day. We did do Spaceship Earth just before we left. But just, yeah, just before leaving the park, didn't do. We did. I can't remember. I'll probably come to it later in the trip.

[00:17:52] We definitely did it later in the trip, but we didn't have it. It just didn't time wise fit in when we were at the move. I guess that's the thing about the Voices of Liberty. You know, there's maybe it's like five showings or something through the day. So it does. They're not on for very long either. So it just time wise, you have to just be in the right place at the right time. We didn't quite manage it that day. But we did manage to go to the, you know, the meeting greet with Mickey and friends. Which again, because we were bounding as our different characters, which they picked up on.

[00:18:22] And like the people taking photos were like, oh, you're, I think my husband was Donald. I was Mickey. My youngest was Pluto. And my eldest was Daisy. And they did all spot it straight away, which was really nice. And comment on it. And then we had, we were able to interact with them. So that was really nice. Yeah. And then, yeah. So we actually, we did then manage to do Spaceship Earth. And then as we were leaving the park, Pluto was meeting over at the side. And I think I said earlier, he's my youngest's favourite.

[00:18:50] So I sort of jumped in line with her so she could meet Pluto. We've got some nice photos of her having some little cuddles with him. The other thing we did before we headed back to the resort is, I don't know if you know, you know that Ariana Grande, is that how you say her name? Ariana Grande's name is on, you know, those plaques of the people that people bought years ago. And I think they used to be, did they used to be on pillars just as you came into the park? And then when they redid the park. They moved them when they redid it. They moved it. Yes. Yeah. So my eldest really likes Ariana Grande.

[00:19:20] And I'd heard that her, there's a little plaque with her and her brother's pictures and the names of their family. We were searching online for them and a guy who worked there helped us find them. So we were able to take a photo of that for her as well, which she really liked. And then we just headed back. I think we sort of stayed till about mid-afternoon, but we were all kind of flagging with jet lag again. The first day, we were never able to do that much. I think we probably did more than I thought we would do.

[00:19:49] But we just headed back and did the pool and had dinner at the resort that evening. Well, it sounds like a successful first day, even if you were tired. Yeah, it was brilliant. The next day was Thursday, April 16th, and you were heading over to Magic Kingdom, again with a plan to rope drop, which I think, you know, when you're on that time difference, it makes sense. Take advantage of the fact that you're awake much earlier than the rest of us. So how did this morning pan out?

[00:20:17] Yeah, well, it turned out that I seemed to be most affected by jet lag because the first few days, I was awake really early and would have to wake the others up. So I think I woke at 5.45, but we'd agreed I would wake everybody at quarter past six and they all needed woken up because we were going to leave the room at 20 past seven with the hope of getting a bus by half past. So I did need to wake everyone up. I think when they were little, it would have been an earlier start, but then they probably woke earlier when they were little.

[00:20:46] So maybe that's why we used to be up really early, whereas it's just me who seems to wake up early now. And I think that's just my age. I mean, it's 1230 here right now. And Master Alex has not heard any sound from his door. So I don't think he's awake yet. I don't think he's much older than my eldest. She'll be 15 later this year. And she... Yeah, Alex is 15 right now. Yeah. She could sleep till however long you left her. Yeah.

[00:21:15] And doesn't seem to massively suffer from jet lag on holiday. I think I had to wake her every day for the holiday to be able to get up. And she did say it was fine, though. She says she doesn't mind being woken up early for Disney, just not at any other time. And so, yeah, we managed to get a bus quite quickly because, you know, obviously we were trying to go over there to rope drop. So we probably got to the part before 8th. And we were like, brilliant, we're here. We're going to get in line for seven dwarves. And we're all standing in line for seven dwarves.

[00:21:44] And there's no movement of the carriages, none at all. And we start talking about it. We're like, do we stay here? Do we go and do something else? Four of us must have been driving. There's these two women in front of us, actually one British and one American. But we must have been driving them insane because they eventually turned around and said, why don't you just go and ask them at the front? They might be able to tell you. It is really, they said, they did, they said it in a lovely way. They were being very polite, but equally I could just. You could tell, yeah. Yeah, that I was just going round in circles. Should we do this?

[00:22:14] Or should we do this? Should we do this? So I went to the front and asked and they were like, yeah, no, we're not opening at half eight. So I was really glad that those ladies had said to us. So we went back and told them as well. And so all of us got out of line because there was no point standing there if it wasn't going to open. So we went to poo instead. And so I think by this point it was just about half eight and yet it hadn't opened. So we did poo. We managed to kind of walk onto that.

[00:22:42] Barnstormer, we got to do the thing where they do this. Do you want to go around again? Yes. That was good. So we just did Barnstormer twice. Especially given how short that ride is. It is short. But if you're doing it two times in a row with barely a stop, then it feels a bit better. Yeah. Dumbo, Ariel, all of those we just walked onto. We grabbed a couple of cinnamon buns at Gaston's Tavern. We really loved those normally.

[00:23:08] I thought they were a tiny bit drier than they used to be, but I don't know if that's just me kind of imagining they were even better before. But we had a couple of those with a plan that would kind of keep us going until we were having food later on. We did Tomorrowland Speedway. That was a five minute walk. Five minute walk. Five minute wait. Then we got on the line for Buzz. I thought Buzz would have a massive wait because it had only just opened. And this was maybe about quarter to ten by this point. But it was ten minutes to get on it. And we much preferred it since the update.

[00:23:38] I don't know if you, did you do Buzz when you were there for your trip? I did try it when we were there. And I had also done it out in Disneyland about a year ago. And they had a similar setup where you could see what you had hit based on the way that the light was reacting or whatever. I can see how it's nice because you can tell what you've hit, right? Yeah. And I think this is just me being like, I used to get such good scores, but I did not do very well on it.

[00:24:07] So I was just like, guess I got to like study up on exactly what I should be doing this time. I think I was just lucky that my husband was, so I was riding pretty much all the rides. My girls wanted to ride together. And so I rode with my husband. So we were doing that. And he's quite good at these shooting type things. And he was ahead of me all the way through till one of the final rooms where I must have accidentally hit on a really high target and suddenly leapfrogged like 50,000 points ahead of him. So I really enjoyed that because it's not often I get to be in the lead.

[00:24:36] So I definitely much preferred it. But in Disneyland Paris, the guns have always been loose. You've just been able to pick them up and move them around. But I don't think they turned different colors. I don't recall knowing whether I'd hit anything there, but I've not ridden that in years in Disneyland Paris. I really I did definitely prefer it this time. Yeah. To how we've done it before. I think I knew I knew kind of like the same targets that used to be high point value are still generally high point value in this.

[00:25:05] But there's extra added elements that I have not memorized yet, which is I believe that the shape makes a difference. So there's certain shapes. If the target is that shape, it's more points. And then there's also certain colors like there's some that where the light is rainbow or something. And that's a higher value. I need to really study this up so that when we go in July, I can beat Alex because he usually beats me and I'd really love to come out swinging.

[00:25:33] Yeah, there will be plenty of videos about that, I guess, where you can study up. Mine was just pure luck that I happened to hit something that was quite high. So we did enjoy that and not too long to wait for it either. We did people mover after that. Then we headed to Crystal Palace because we had a reservation there. And I think that was about half 10 that reservation was. And we'd made that one because it's where you're paying for breakfast, but you get the lunch foods as well. Oh, yes. And that worked out perfectly.

[00:26:02] Again, we did get both lots of food. I'd done that when I went with my girls on just me and them in 2024. And we'd loved it and thought my husband would like it. So we went back and did that with him. And he did love it. He thought that the selection of food was good. This time you had to queue for poo as you were leaving, whereas he'd come round when we'd done it before. But it was fine. He didn't have a long queue. But it was a little bit stressful because when we arrived, our server told us on the table

[00:26:28] next to us who were seated about the same time, don't go anywhere because a couple of the characters, I think it was like Eeyore and Piglet are just about to come to your table. So just wait there. Don't go anywhere. We were sitting. We were sitting. And I quickly dashed over and grabbed some food for us all to be nibbling on. Sitting. And after 20 minutes, we're like, I don't think that they're because we now can't see them anymore. They've gone away. They never came to our tables. And I think she'd maybe just got the order wrong of where they were going, but they weren't just about to come to us.

[00:26:58] And so we'd all sat there and the people next to us were like, we're starving. And they had a toddler who really wanted some food as well. So that wasn't ideal, but it was fine. And again, like with having older kids, they don't care and they had something to snack on. We got good photos with all the characters. We all enjoyed the food. So it worked out really well. Right. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, it was a nice experience. We definitely go there again. Then we did Jungle Cruise. So this is about midday and Jungle Cruise was only 30 minutes. So we did get on and do that. And it was only a 20 minute wait.

[00:27:28] And actually, I think that was maybe an indication that this wasn't too busy a day. So that's nothing that's really had too long a line so far. And I think Jungle Cruise being 20 minutes at midday really isn't bad. I guess some people were probably off eating. Right. We did Pirates after that. That took 25. So it was longer for Pirates than it was for Jungle Cruise, which is very odd. Yeah, not what I expected. It said 25 and we were like, oh, it won't be 25.

[00:27:57] No, it was exactly 25. We then did the Tiki Room, which I think is just fun. And I think the other thing we talked about for the pre-trip was about my husband's leg and how that would hold up after his injury. Yes. And actually, he was doing pretty well so far at this point. He didn't end up taking crutches. He didn't take a brace. He didn't, you know, he just even, I think, in the week between me speaking to you and us going, he had made progress with it.

[00:28:25] But as the holiday went on and the more walking he did, the more he did tire. So we did have to just take opportunities peppered throughout the day for him to do some sitting down. So we did quite a lot of sprinkling little shows through the day. So he'd always have a chance to sit down. So we did Tiki Room and then we went and did The Country Bears, which none of us have ever done before. Oh, this is the first time. Okay. Yeah. And it's just one of those things we just had never got right to.

[00:28:53] But we ended up doing it twice in the holiday because everybody really enjoyed it. I didn't know what my girls would make of this. They both thought it was really funny and enjoyed it. So we did go back again. We'd sort of thought about sneaking in small world at that point. But it said on the app it was 20 minutes and you could see the queue. We're like, I'm not waiting. I love small world, but I'm not waiting 20 minutes for it. And so we did hop in line for PhilharMagic and got pretty much straight into that.

[00:29:21] Again, by this point, we were just sort of sticking to shows or things that were longer so he could sit down. Yes. Did he ever consider renting a wheelchair? Oh, no, no, no. That was a hard no. I mean, even a couple of weeks before that, when he wasn't as mobile, he was still a hard no to it. He just wasn't going to entertain it. He just pushed through and took a lot of painkillers. And obviously with our dining plan, he was getting a couple of beers a day and he was like, oh, just a beer and some painkillers and I'll be fine.

[00:29:50] And he was, he was. And I would say after the holiday, he was probably quite sore for a week or so. But he went back to playing football, which is where he'd hurt it in the first place. Oh, my goodness. Within days of us coming back from holiday, he was back playing football again. I think he's just not somebody who knows how to sit still and rest it. Doesn't sound like that. No. Luckily, he has not yet hurt it again. So we're doing OK so far. So, yeah, we did PhilharMagic.

[00:30:19] We popped over to Carousel of Progress. That's another kind of surprise hit in our family. One of my neighbours, really, they love going to Disney too. They're going in the summer. We were out running yesterday and she was saying, oh, and, you know, do you guys ever go? For some reason, we were talking about the trips and she said, have you ever gone to Carousel of Progress? Everyone of my family loves that for a sleep. And I was like, no, no, no. My children love that full stop. Like, they really love it. Like, we rarely go a holiday where we don't do Carousel of Progress two or three times.

[00:30:48] I love it for both, I will say. Like, I love the experience itself. I love how historic it is. I also, you know, being here in New York, it originated right down the road from where I'm sitting right now. And I just think it's so cool. That being said, it's a very comfortable place to rest your eyes if you need to. I've never done it there. I have napped in the old Muppets show.

[00:31:12] We had a holiday where we did Muppets three times just because of various people, a bigger group, and not all of us being there at the same time. By the time I was seeing it for the third time, I was like, this just feels like a really comfy seat to have a sleep in. But, yeah, no, we were okay at that point. So, yeah, we just grabbed some snacks and headed back to the resort. We had a bit of a relax. And then we got the bus to Disney Springs. We sort of, you know, every time we went to Disney Springs, we'd hum and ha about whether we should get the bus or whether we should get the boat.

[00:31:41] And I think that the bus just can take ages. By the time you wait for it and it winds its way around Riverside, that can take quite a while. But if you just miss a boat, then that's obviously a bit of a pain as well. We decided on bus that day and we managed to get in because we really wanted to try Polite Pig. We'd never been there before. Oh, okay. So we had about a 20-minute wait to get in, but obviously you can browse the menu.

[00:32:07] And one of the good things about there that we'd heard was that although they don't have any vegetarian means that I could have, that I could pick three of the sides to be my quick service meal. And so many of the sides are vegetarian. And look amazing. So we managed to all get really nice meals there. And then again, because it's April and not July, we were able to sit outside comfortably and eat our food. So just so lovely eating this delicious food, sitting outside on an evening. What would that have been?

[00:32:35] A Thursday evening in Disney Springs, just watching the crowds go by. It was a really nice end to that day. That sounds amazing. Now, this is the second barbecue place you all have visited on this journey. Yes, but barbecue is a bit of a theme as we go through the holiday. So we've never had so much barbecue in our lives, I don't think. Well, I'm glad you were able as a vegetarian to find things there that you're interested in too. And I always think that the sides are the best part of a meal anyway. Yes. But there were so many interesting sides. We actually talked about going back and never quite got around to it.

[00:33:04] The only downside this night is like, right, we were going to get the boat back because there was such a long bus drive. Let's go and get the boat back. We had to wait nearly 40 minutes for a boat. You know that point where you think, at what point do I give up? And walk all the way to the other side. Yes. You've already invested this time. It's like, how do you give up? And you're tired. So actually, we didn't get back to the resort until maybe like 10 at night. And the kids were desperate to go to the arcade.

[00:33:29] So even though we were getting up to do Animal Kingdom the next day, they still went to the arcade until it closed at like 11. And then came back over. We just went over to relax. They went to the arcade. We didn't go with them. But they quite like a Disney arcade. Yeah. Yep. I get it. Something about doing anything in Disney that's more exciting than doing it wherever else you are in the world. All right. Friday, April 17th was an Animal Kingdom day. And that is the park that opens the earliest.

[00:33:59] So I noted that you wanted to try to rope drop if you weren't too jet lagged. Yeah, no, we didn't rope drop. That was optimistic, I think, to think that we might rope drop. I think that if Animal Kingdom is our first, it was fine, again, when our kids were little. But now that they're a bit older and my husband's not one for leaping up and getting going super early in the morning either. I think it's just unrealistic.

[00:34:26] Unless we're super jet lagged, we're never going to be at Animal Kingdom at seven o'clock in the morning on holiday. It's just not going to happen. I did manage to. We had a compromise and they agreed that they would be woken at half six. And so we were at the bus stop about half seven. But the next bus we got. So we got to the bus. So we basically I think we walked over to the main building and then so waited at the main building bus stop, which is the last one in the Riverside loop. But the next bus was not till eight.

[00:34:54] So we arrived at the bus stop at half seven. The next bus to Animal Kingdom wasn't till eight. We saw three buses for Epcot, three buses for Hollywood Studios and three buses for Magic Kingdom go past in the time we were waiting there. And indeed it was eight o'clock when the bus for Animal Kingdom came. Just unlucky. I think if we'd been going to any of the others would have been fine. But I suppose with it opening earlier and us missing that, that wasn't the bus that there was a lot of at that time. Right.

[00:35:21] So because we were there a little bit later, we decided to rope drop the Zootropolis show or Zootopia, I think you guys call it. Yes. Yes. In the UK it gets called Zootropolis. Oh, really? Yes. Yeah. I have no idea why. None whatsoever, but it's Zootropolis over here. So we saw that. Actually, we'd never done the previous show, the Bugs Life show, because I knew that my kids would not want a show that felt like they had bugs crawling around them. Even when they were older, I just knew that that wasn't going to be a goer.

[00:35:51] And even with this theme of a film they like, my youngest hated it. She hated the puffs of air coming in your face and the sprays of water and the wriggles in your seat. So even with a different theme, she still didn't like it. The rest of us really enjoyed it, but she didn't like it at all. So yeah, then we went to the safari and it was only five past nine and it was already a half hour wait.

[00:36:15] And I'm sure we've gone to the safari sort of within the first hour or two of the day before and got on pretty quickly. But it really was about half an hour to get on. We then managed to get, so we did the safari and then we went over to where the others had their lightning lane for flight of passage. So I'd wanted to get that because I wasn't sure if we would manage to rope drop. Good thing because we didn't manage to rope drop.

[00:36:43] So they went over and I went and treated myself to a gigantic coffee from Starbucks. So, you know, with your snack credit, you can get any size of coffee from Starbucks. So I got like one of those giant frappuccinos that are this size. Oh my goodness. And just found a lovely spot to just chill while they were all doing flight of passage. So, yeah, they got the ride that they enjoyed and I got to sit and have some peace and quiet and have my giant coffee. So that worked out well.

[00:37:11] Well, that's part of the Disney fun as well. Sitting, enjoying the people, enjoying the atmosphere and just soaking it all in. Yeah. And I think we often forget to do that. I think both the girls are quite ride focused and quite kind of we need to go and do this. We need to go and do this. And I think we don't do as much of the chilling as when they were little and they couldn't do as many rides. I think we did more of the sitting and soaking up the atmosphere. And I think I'd like to make sure to build more of that into a future trip.

[00:37:40] But we did the Lion King show next, which we all enjoyed as usual. And then we went for lunch at Flame Tree Barbecue. Oh, and a barbecue fest. A barbecue food. Yeah. Do you know, we weren't over in... I thought about us going to Satouli Canteen, but we weren't over in Pandora. And we decided that was just easiest to go there. Although we were sitting at the table with our food and my husband had gone to get something else. I can't remember what. And a bird leapt onto the table and took Zoe's food.

[00:38:11] Just like one of these birds with like the giant beaks. The white ones. Leapt on, yeah. Leapt on right onto our table and grabbed a mouthful of chips. Like, oh, what? Fries you'd call them. Yes. Yeah. Oh, screaming and jumping about. And, yeah, that kind of freaked us out. Luckily, there was like a Disney employee nearby. He came over and was like, you know, are you guys okay? And he went off and got her another whole main meal because this bird had been in her food.

[00:38:38] I mean, she wasn't going to eat it because it really had had its beak right in her food. Right. But he was so lovely. He really quickly went off and just got another tree of food for her and brought it back. I had to get something somewhere else. I can't remember what I even got for food that day. I didn't like what I got. I got an awful. So the way we did it was I'd say a cocktail, I like the look of a flame tree barbecue. And my husband just wanted a beer. So I got the cocktail and his meal from flame tree barbecue and just picked that and the girl's food up.

[00:39:06] And he went off to get my food and his beer from wherever else that was from. Which is probably why I can't remember where I ate because he went and got that for me. And the cocktail was awful. It was like a children's slushie. You couldn't taste any alcohol and it was just like sweet, sickly syrup slushie. It was disgusting. So I wouldn't have that again. Yeah. And gosh, I'm trying to think after that. What did we do? Did Cali River Rapids. What else did we do? We got we all were not my husband.

[00:39:36] He decided to just get wet. Me and the girls wore ponchos because we could see how wet everybody was getting off. And we were quite glad we'd worn ponchos. We grabbed some popcorn. We went to the bird show. I can't remember what that's called. Birds in flight or something like that. The one in Asia. Yes. I will tell you, I don't do it because I'm afraid of birds. So your story about the bird eating the food was very traumatic for me. Oh, no. Well, actually, do you want my aunt to the bird phobia? Yes. My aunt has a huge bird phobia.

[00:40:06] And every time we're in that park, we're always saying, Sue could never come here. She just couldn't. Yeah. So we do. We do enjoy that show. But we don't sit in that front section where all the birds are going over you. We do sit a little bit further back. So I think we're not right in thick of it. The birds in flight show maybe like once. And ever since then, I'm like, I'll do something else. Okay. Fair enough. If it was some sort of bug show, I wouldn't be up for it either. Yeah. So we actually went, we went home about mid afternoon. Oh, we had a bit of a hoo-ha that day.

[00:40:35] So the idea is that we were going to swim in the quiet pool and do laundry. But since we have last stayed, which was April last year, the company that Disney uses to do their washing machines, you know, the app that you use, no longer accepts foreign credit cards. Really? Yep. And I thought it was just me having some problem with my card. And I was trying and I was trying. My husband went and got his card. We were trying. We were trying. It wouldn't accept the payment.

[00:41:02] And then a man came in and he was like, you're not trying to pay for the machine, are you? With your, and he was British. Yes. Oh yeah, they don't accept. So I think this change happened earlier this year. Actually, when I searched in UK Disney Facebook groups afterwards, I find loads of people talking about it. So it's been a change within the last few months. And it's not, it's not Disney that have done it, but it's the company that do the machines.

[00:41:25] So if you're from the UK and you want to wash your clothes in the machines, you have to put your stuff in a machine, call guest services. They will call the front desk who will either activate it remotely or someone comes over and does it for you. Now that the pro is that I didn't pay for laundry at all while we were there because they are, obviously they're just having to activate it and turn it on. But the con is you can't just go in and put your laundry on.

[00:41:51] You have to go and put it in a laundry machine, call, that person calls someone else. You know, someone either comes or it gets set up and maybe like 15 minutes later the machine comes on. It took up to half an hour. Wow. And that day, so that day we started trying to do this at 2.45. I don't think we finished doing laundry till half six in the evening because of this hoo-ha. Wow. So just for anybody else coming from the UK, you can't use your credit cards on those machines anymore. And I don't know.

[00:42:21] I think there'd be a sign up or something just at least saying you can't use a foreign credit card. Here's a number to call or something. To lead you in that direction. So obviously the laundry rooms all have the phones for guest services. And that day it did take a long time. I would say that was the only day it took a long time. The other days it did just seem to be quicker, but it was a pain. And I had to then tell, I told another family and they were like, but we were here only just in November. Yes, but it's changed since then. They come like two or three times a year and that change had happened since they were last there.

[00:42:51] So yeah, it was a total pain, but at least we knew what we were doing after that. Unfortunately, that made us sort of fall behind schedule. I hadn't thought that we would be still finishing off the laundry at half past six in the evening. I thought we'd be in Hollywood Studios by then because we planned to do the evening in Hollywood Studios. But obviously I was still washing laundry at half past six. So we didn't make it. I just very quickly went back to the room, got changed and we headed in. Luckily we did get a bus quite quickly that day.

[00:43:21] So we were able to get there in time to do the villains show at 10 to 8. And that was the first time we'd seen the villains show because that's new since last time. So yeah, we all enjoyed that. Who won? Cruella won. Cruella did not get the biggest clap. Nor did we think Cruella was the best, but Cruella won. And interestingly, this is a story for later, but my eldest did see it again on her own later in the trip. Cruella won. And again, she had not got the most claps. Huh.

[00:43:51] Okay. Yeah, I'm trying to figure this out. Every time I hear more and more about people going to see the villain show. And I was told that it very much was about the clapping. It's not. And that anybody could win. And so far, it has sounded to me like that's always been the case. And I've heard mostly of Maleficent winning. Next up, Cruella. And then I think I've only heard one time of Captain Hook winning. Maleficent got the most claps, definitely. She had the loudest claps and cheers. I'd say Hook probably had the second loudest.

[00:44:21] And then Cruella. Really? And it was Cruella that won. Yep. I mean, it was really like people around were like that. But she did. Yeah, she won on another day as well. Well, it was just that day. She was good, though. It was all good. So then we went to Docking Bay 7, which we'd never been to before. We had food there. That was really nice. We all enjoyed that. And then we were getting quite late in the evening because we decided we'd do the 10 o'clock Fantasmic. And I don't think everybody stays that late.

[00:44:48] So we were able to hop onto Aliens with no weight. At this point, my husband just sat down. I think he actually had some beer left from the Docking Bay 7 and he hadn't wanted to rush it or drink it really quickly. So he brought it with him and just sat down somewhere while the three of us went and rode Aliens. It's funny because the guy tried to put me and the girls in. There's hardly anyone there. There's not even enough to fill us all going on. And he'd put me and the girls to all sit in the same vehicle.

[00:45:17] And I was like, surely we won't all fit in. And he was looking at us. He's like, I think you'll be fine. I was like, no, no, no. I'll have my own one. They can go in together. Of course, I then get in. They're like, no, no. The three of us would easily have all fitted in one. And I ended up spending the whole time sliding wildly from side to side because I was on my own in a vehicle. So it was quite funny. And the girls quite like going on their own anyway. So, yeah, we did. So we did that. And actually, we then hopped in line for Slinky because I think it was posted at like maybe 40 minutes.

[00:45:46] But we didn't think like it wasn't queued out of the main queuing area. So we just got in line for that. I think we maybe waited about half an hour. Yeah, maybe maybe maybe just over that. But we were just really pleased to get on that because I think a first thing or last thing are your best shots with that. And then we went to the 10 o'clock Fantasmic, which we all really enjoyed. And when we again were able to quickly walk, we'd been sitting quite far forward.

[00:46:15] Actually, we did get a bit sprayed in it. But getting out of there, it's not a quick process, everybody getting out. But as soon as there starts to get some movement, obviously, our older children can move more quickly than a lot of the little ones or the people who are going off to get strollers. So we were at the bus stop pretty quickly. And there was a bus sitting there already. And we climbed on and the guy just shut the door and drove off with us. And so there was nobody else waiting.

[00:46:42] But I'm sure within five minutes, I'm sure within five minutes, there would have been a stroll. And so we got a private bus all the way back, which meant he just asked us which of the stops we're going to. He didn't stop at any of the other stops. We just he just drove straight to our stop within Riverside. And off we go. So that meant we got back a wee bit quicker because we weren't going around any of the other stops. So actually, even though it was the 10 o'clock Fantasmic, we were back in our room just before 11.

[00:47:08] Wow. I mean, considering all of the other bus troubles you've had, it's nice to have at least one where it was like, OK, this bus is just for you. Anything you want. I know. And he was saying, just where do you want me to drop you off? So, yeah, it did feel like it was a private bus. All right. That brings us to Saturday, April the 18th. And this was a rest day where you were planning to go to Blizzard Beach. Yeah. We did do that. Yeah. OK. I stupidly, you know, I again, it's so annoying.

[00:47:37] I kept waking up early. I was awake about six in the morning, but everybody else was later. We had a quick service breakfast at the resort, which we hadn't had time yet to sit down and have a proper quick service breakfast. And then we got the bus to Blizzard Beach. Yeah. So it was pretty busy, the bus to Animal Kingdom. But very few people then seemed to be going to Blizzard Beach after that. So, yeah, we basically, but we I think we probably got there about 11. Blizzard Beach had opened at 10.

[00:48:05] It was quite hard to find seats this time. We went in April last year and arrived about 11 on a Sunday. This was a Saturday. But it definitely was busier this time. It was quite hard to find seats. And so we found this area that had, you know, different pockets of seats that didn't have anything on them. So we gathered together a few different seats that didn't have anything on them and just put them together. We're starting to get ourselves settled, putting our suntan lotion on. And this family, like family came back. It must have only been two or three people, but they were like, those are our seats.

[00:48:35] But there was nothing on them. And they went, we've got all the seats in this area. There was stuff. There was stuff on about half of the seats. They clearly were a giant group. And they spread their stuff around as many seats as they could cover, clearly hoping that nobody would take any of the other seats in that area. And they were like, yeah, we're a really big group. There's 16 of us or 20 of us or whatever it was. We went, well, we only took two seats from this area. They didn't have anything on them. And then the other seats we've got were from a different area that were also unoccupied.

[00:49:03] I said, we're happy to move away, you know, so that you guys can all be together. We didn't give them their, we just took our seats with us and moved to a slightly different area. But it was so bizarre because we weren't too far away. We could see never at any point during the day was there lots of people there. They must have only ever taken up about five or six seats at once, but they were coming and going. And yeah, they hadn't put anything on these seats, but were quite weird about it, which wasn't the best start.

[00:49:29] I think that that can be pretty typical, unfortunately, at resorts where people will get up early, put things on seats. They're holding seats the entire day and they hardly ever use the seats. They're more often than not doing the slides. They're back at their room, et cetera, et cetera. And it's just, it's sad because most of the time, like even a family of four, I'm going to say as a family of four, you probably need two seats.

[00:49:56] Because usually there might be two people at the same time that want to sit back and be in a seat. The rest of the time, everybody's up and down and, you know, not there at the seat at the exact same time. I would say that hot Scottish people who burn are probably the ones who are more likely to all be sitting there because we did sometimes all come back and sit for a bit and try to cool off because it's a lot to be out in the sun with the water all day. Yeah. But yeah, really bizarre.

[00:50:23] They didn't even ever take up more than half of the seats that they had apparently kept. But anyway, that was fine. We had some sweet seats there. We did, it was like a big family raft ride there, Team Boat Springs. We did that. We did Toboggan Racers. My eldest won't do the one. So I think Toboggan Racers is the one where you lie on your front and you hold on to these little things and go down and you race each other. We did it this time last year. She hated it. So she just watched the rest of us do that this time. I couldn't get mine to get going. It was really embarrassing.

[00:50:53] Everybody else was already halfway down and I still hadn't quite worked out how to propel myself forward and stuck at the top. So I decided not to do that again because I'd made such a fool of myself. But we did, yeah, we did quite a few of the different rides there. Our favourite one, and I can't remember what it's called. It's one where you just get like a tube to yourself. When you climb to the top, there's like three slides, two on one side and one on the other side. And one is enclosed and there's two that are open. And they're quite fast and they're quite long. Such good fun.

[00:51:22] We did those loads of times. We had lunch at that sort of Lotto Lodge, I think it's called. Yeah, good food. We had nice food there. And we actually, so we stayed till about quarter past four because they'd started doing those announcements. It was shutting at five that day and they started doing those announcements about shutting. And we started to get the fear about not having time to shower and things. So we showered and we were able to get out of the park around five. This was the day we decided that we would get, so we'd get the bus back to Animal Kingdom and then we were going to get a random bus.

[00:51:51] We decided that we would go to a deluxe resort for a quick service dinner. We wouldn't pick one. We would just see what bus turned up first. And we had differing opinions as to which ones we were hoping to get. But it was Wilderness Lodge, which was actually really good because I think it's the only one we've never been to. We've stayed at the Contemporary before, so we shared buses with Wilderness Lodge.

[00:52:19] So we've driven past it like the bus stop like that, but we've never got off and gone in. So I was quite excited to go there. We really liked it. We had dinner at Roaring Fork. And again, because it's April and the weather's nice, we were able to sit out the back. There was baby ducklings running around under all the seats, which was really cute as well. So that was a really nice dinner. We then, how do we get home from Wilderness Lodge? How do we get back to Port Orleans? We hadn't really thought about that, about what the best route would be.

[00:52:47] It was not the route we took, because this is Saturday night. Everywhere is quite busy. We got the bus. So we just went to the bus stop and we thought, well, we'll just get on the first bus that comes. Well, the first bus was to the Contemporary. So we're like, right, oh, that's fine. Okay, we'll get the bus to the Contemporary. Now, if we'd been sensible, we would then, at the Contemporary, just have walked to the Magic Kingdom and got the bus back to Riverside. But we're like, oh, we're at the Contemporary. We can get the monorail. So we cared for ages to get the monorail all the way around.

[00:53:15] And there was some sort of, oh, I'm trying to think, what's the word? Prom. There was some sort of prom thing going on that evening. And there was hundreds of teenagers all dressed up, going different places on the monorail and like all getting off at the Contemporary. And actually, we saw them at the different resorts as we went round as well. Just packs of really fancily dressed up teenagers, which my kids quite liked looking at how they were all done up. So I think that's why it was even more busy than usual.

[00:53:44] But we did eventually get the monorail round to Magic Kingdom and then get a bus back to our resort. But possibly wasn't the quickest way to do that. Yeah, I think actually the bus, in fact, the bus for hours wasn't even there either. So we got the bus to French Quarter thinking, well, we'll get beignets and then we'll go back. But everybody was exhausted by this point. So the guy said he was then going on to Riverside after French Quarter.

[00:54:10] So I said to them all just to get the bus back and I would go and get beignets. But the queue was enormous. And I just looked at it and thought, I'm not standing in that. So I walked back along the river myself, back to Riverside. It's not far. But no. After walking around in a water park all day, I was like, I'm not sure this is a rest day. I think I've done as many steps as I've done on a normal park day. Yeah, it does not sound like a very restful rest day. No, fun.

[00:54:37] It was a non-parks day rather than a rest day, maybe. Sure. And you're about halfway through here, your vacation. So you still had a lot to go to be able to get through all of this. Sunday the 19th, you were planning on doing Magic Kingdom and then hopping to Epcot. But this was also when the springtime surprise was happening, I think. So is this when more crowds kicked in? Yeah, this was definitely a busier day.

[00:55:05] You know, it was getting quite hard to get up and get going quite early as well. We did manage to get to the bus stop just before half seven. But the bus, it said it was going to be there like 10 minutes later. And it kept changing and it kept changing. And after 20 minutes, there hadn't been buses to any resorts come. So from sort of 25 past seven till quarter to eight, there's just no buses to any resorts. And so there was loads of people standing there waiting. We did eventually manage to make it to Magic Kingdom. Seven dwarves already had a really long line.

[00:55:35] So we felt like that was the second fail attempt. We just looked at it and we thought it was already all the way around to like the Little Mermaid. And we just thought we're not getting in that. So second attempt to rope drop, that had failed. So we went to Peter Pan. I think it probably only took us about 20 minutes to do Peter Pan. But again, like there had already been people queuing up. So we weren't in the kind of first group of people. We actually did the carousel next just because it was right there. So why not?

[00:56:01] And then we headed over to Tiana's for like the nine o'clock rope drop of that land. So we were in line, you know, the big group of people, not actually in line in line, but the big group of people standing just past, just up the steps from it waiting to go in there. It didn't open at nine. And at ten past nine, they said there would be a delayed opening. So we were like, this is not our day. So we just, we gave up. We decided, you know, they were saying, we just don't know when it's going to open. So we went around to Haunted Mansion. That was a walk on. We went to Gaston's Tavern again.

[00:56:31] We all got cinnamon bun. And then we went back to Tiana at ten because it had opened by then. And actually we only had a ten minute wait. So I wonder if maybe people don't want to do that first thing in the morning and get super wet. We did get very wet. But it was quite warm. So it was fine. The girls insisted on doing country bears again at that point. And pirates again. But again, pirates was longer wait than it said it was. There was someone in the queues pixie dusting little rings to children.

[00:57:00] And even though mine are older children, she gave them to the girls, which they thought was lovely. So I think it had said it was a ten minute wait and it took twenty. We then went and got the girls the cheeseburger spring rolls because that was something that they've been seeing online that they quite fancied trying. And they both really liked them. And then we had lightning lane for Tron. So that we went over to that just before midday. I think we probably only waited, gosh, about 15 minutes maybe till we got on.

[00:57:27] And I think the posted wait at that point was about an hour. Although it sort of fluctuated through the day. We all really enjoyed Tron. And in fact, my husband and I got the front row, which I thought just by luck, which I thought was really cool. Because it's quite nice not having anyone in front of you. And our kids didn't mind that because they quite wanted to see us in front of them the first time they were doing it. But yeah, we all really enjoyed it. We would definitely do it again and probably would pay for lightning lane again because it was just really good fun.

[00:57:57] Yeah, we got we went over to Casey's Corner for lunch after that. And then we got ourselves that fancy popcorn from the confectionery on Main Street. We sort of poked our heads in a few times before and the queue had already always been really long. But that day it had a really nice short line. So we thought it'd be a nice snack to be all eating as we were going back to the resort. We had a bit more luck with getting back than we'd had with getting in. We had time to chill out. We thought we'd go to the pool, but we were actually all too tired to even put our swimwear on and go down to the pool.

[00:58:27] So we did just chill out that afternoon. And we were back at the bus stop for quarter past five to get the bus to Epcot. Again, we watched two buses for each of the other parks go past. Two for Animal Kingdom, two for Magic Kingdom, two for Hollywood Studios, none for Epcot. It wasn't till later in the trip that we were like, oh, yeah, it says on the app when the buses are due, doesn't it? We'd totally forgotten about that.

[00:58:53] So if we had looked on the app, perhaps we'd have known that there was nothing coming for Epcot for ages. But we eventually got on a bus about 20 to 6 and it only took 15 minutes. We did Spaceship Earth. That was pretty much a walk on. We were stopped on it for a wee while, but that was OK. We did Nemo and what's around the aquarium before trying to find Dramamine for me.

[00:59:20] Because we had a Guardian's Lightning Lane later and we knew that I was likely to find that difficult. So we were desperately trying to find Dramamine at this point. We actually ended up going back past Spaceship Earth and doing that again and then went over, I think we did Club Cool, and then managed to get some Dramamine in the Creations shop. You know, just one of those single-dose ones that you're paying a ridiculous amount for. But I have real motion sickness, particularly with screen rides and anything that's backwards.

[00:59:50] Although everybody raves about Guardians, I was a bit like, oh, how is this going to be? Because screens and backwards are not great for me. So, yeah, we went over to that. I'm trying to think. I think it was a fairly late Lightning Lane we had, but I think we maybe did it at about 7.30. And it was really quick. We were in the first room in a couple of minutes. I really enjoyed it. It was like the whole time I was thinking this is fun. But as I came off, I thought I was going to vomit.

[01:00:18] And I just felt sick for the rest of the evening. And that was with having taken Dramamine. My husband was fine. He's always fine. My eldest, who used to not do any intense things at all, absolutely loved it and said it was like rocketing up there with her favourite rides. And my youngest, she loves intense rides. She felt a bit sick too. She also doesn't do so well with screens. So she and I both feel sick on Ratatouille and the other two don't.

[01:00:43] And so actually, I think it is the screens maybe that gets to both of us because she felt a bit poorly as well. We did then go and have dinner at Connections and then just went back after that because I was really feeling it with the sickness. But still, we felt like we'd managed to kind of do quite a lot in that day. I swing back and forth about what I think about park hopping. We'd obviously managed to do Magic Kingdom and Epcot and got to do quite a lot in both places. But you obviously spend quite a bit of your day travelling if you're park hopping. Right.

[01:01:14] Yeah, I don't know. I was thinking as we went through the holiday, are we better off just sticking to one park or are we better off park hopping? Because we ended up doing a bit of both. Yeah, I think it's nice to sometimes have days where you're focused on one specific park and the things that are right in that area. And I think also park hopping can be fun too. So I think if you can swing it with your budget, having the ability to park hop just so that you have that flexibility, even if you never end up using it, I think is worth it if you can.

[01:01:42] And we're really lucky that the UK tickets are all park hoppers. So it's never a question. You can't get it without park hopper. So I think always having the option open is quite nice. Yeah. All right. That brings us to Monday, April the 20th, which was a Hollywood Studios day. And looking ahead in the notes for your trip, I do say it was another barbecue day. Was it a barbecue day? Now I can't remember. What we decided, everyone was starting to feel quite tired at this point.

[01:02:09] And so we decided this would be our final rope drop that we were going to push ourselves to get up early one final time. We did just miss a bus again. And then the next one kept getting pushed back and pushed back. And again, we're like, later in the trip, we're like, why did we not have a look on the app? Again, at least two buses came for every other park. But eventually we did manage to get on. So we got there about 10 past eight. There was quite long lines just to tap in.

[01:02:37] And we did go straight to Runaway Railway, which did have quite a long line already. It started moving about 25 past eight, though. And we probably got on about quarter to nine. So we kind of got started a bit later than we thought we were going to because of these delays, which meant that by the time we went around the corner to Toy Story Mania, we got in line at five to nine and it was already posted at 30 minutes. But Slinky was closed. And so I think that probably contributed as well, because I think some people maybe had gone for Slinky,

[01:03:06] just then hopped in line for Toy Story Mania. It didn't work. Like as we were going around, our ride vehicle didn't work. There was a few screens where it just wasn't working at all. Like nothing came up on the screen. We were just sitting there and we were looking over at the people next to us and they were looking at us and we couldn't work out what was going on. And so when we got off at the other end, we mentioned it to them, as did a couple of other people. And they just got us to all stand and wait there for the next load of cars to come around and got us to get back on them.

[01:03:35] And so we got to go through it again straight away. At least, yeah, it was a bizarre experience the first time with only half of it, because the girls had come off going, this is amazing. We've beaten both of you. But actually their side, the screens they were looking at, they were working fine. It was our side and the people next to us who were looking that way as well, that it wasn't working. But, you know, they got two goes of it working fine. So that was quite good for them. What did we do next?

[01:04:02] Next, we got a Jack Jack num num cookie and headed over to Tower of Terror. So that would have been about 20 to 10 at that point. It was posted 25 minutes. And we did get into the first room at exactly 25 minutes after we got in line. So that was pretty accurate. That's one my eldest doesn't do. So she just went off to get herself a drink while the three of them, my husband and I, waited with my youngest. All enjoyed that. We quickly went across the park. So we got on that ride at 20 past 10.

[01:04:31] We were quickly across for the 1030 Frozen show, which we all enjoy. And then straight into the 1110 Little Mermaid show, which we hadn't seen. So we'd seen the original version, like, I don't know, is that like six years ago or something? And it's not been open again since. Yeah, I have not gotten the chance to ride the newer version of it myself. I just missed out on getting in. Like, the line was getting cut off and I didn't have time to stay when I was down there.

[01:05:00] I can't even remember when, but it's been a while. And I haven't made the time to go back and do it yet. And I need to. Yeah, it's good. I mean, it was busy. We were pretty much at the end as well for hopping in line for it. And we didn't get to sit together. In fact, two of us were at the end of one row and two of us were behind at the end of the next row. So we really just sneaked in right at the end. But we did all enjoy it. I can't really massively remember what it was like before. I didn't think maybe it was that different, but the kids liked it.

[01:05:28] So I probably would do it again if the line wasn't long. Nick and Imogen did Star Tours at this point. Zoe and I had decided screens are not our friend. So we weren't even going to try Star Tours. We've never tried it. I'm pretty sure if all those other screen-based rides are not good for me. I'm sure it would have given you a hard time. Yes. If Ratatouille makes me want to vomit, I'm pretty sure that Star Tours is not my friend. Nick and Imogen did that. They both enjoy that. And then Zoe and I just did a bit of shopping.

[01:05:55] And then we went to Roundup Rodeo for half twelve, where we had a really bizarre experience. So I had heard that you can wait for ages to be called. And so we were delighted when someone came and called Anna, Anna at half twelve. And so in we went and we sat down. The guy's lovely. He comes over. But he kept calling me Hannah. And I was like, no, no, my name's Anna. And he showed me the ticket. And he was like, oh, but it says Hannah here. It was like Hannah McLean or something. Some totally different name.

[01:06:24] So what happened is the person had come out shouting Hannah, which we had heard as Anna. We were expecting to be called about that time. And then you go up to them and they ask you for their surname. And we had said what our surname was, but she had just not really been paying attention and took us in. And so we are sitting at the table, sitting at the table, having registered clearly as another party. But the guy was brilliant. Our server was fantastic. We did a cast compliment for him. He was like, this is not your fault or your problem at all.

[01:06:53] You just sit there. I'll get you all drinks. Do as many as you want and I'll go and sort it out. And every time. Poor Hannah is sitting there like, why are they not calling my name? I've been sitting here forever. Well, that's the thing. Because I've heard that you do waste ages. I'd just been delighted we were called so quickly. So I've no idea what happened to Hannah or her party. But it was just really strange that he kept calling me Hannah. And eventually I said, oh, it's Hannah.

[01:07:19] And if I hadn't said that, then she probably would never have been called because they'd have thought that she had been called already. So at least that got sorted out for her. Wow. Anyway, it was quite funny. But the guy was so lovely. And every time, you know, we wanted a drink, he would just bring us two of that drink. He'd be like, I'm sure you're thirsty. I'm going to want another one. So he would just bring us two of them. And he was, you know, he was really attentive back over asking, you know, bringing us extra of everything.

[01:07:45] And then at the end, you know, with the desserts and the menu, it says pick one. He brought one of everything. And I was like, is it at all possible to have just another one of the cupcakes? Because I think actually they were both going to pick that. And they came back with like another three cupcakes and put them on the table. So he was like, that way they can have two each if they like them. I didn't know that the desserts were all you care to enjoy as well. Because it does say on the menu, pick one each. But it just felt there was an abundance of food.

[01:08:15] Lots of barbecue. I kind of think at this point. I will say, barbecue is just not really something that you eat in Scotland. I mean, there probably are barbecue places. If there are, I don't really know of them. It's not something we ever really go for. So it's a novelty for us. But I don't think any of us had expected us to eat as much barbecue as we did on this trip. But we all really liked it. We would all definitely go back again. And food was really good. I feel like this calls for the next time you make a trip to Disney, you get some of those custom shirts made.

[01:08:45] But you choose to put something on it. Like, we're here for the barbecue. Yeah. Well, we probably will be there for the barbecue if we go again. And it was something. The barbecue meals we had were some of our best meals. I mean, Polite Pig and the Toy Story. I know this is a bit divisive. I've heard some people love it. And some people think it's a complete one and done. But we absolutely would go back there again. It's cute. It's not my favorite barbecue of all these different barbecue places.

[01:09:11] I also am very picky about my barbecue because I'm originally from North Carolina, which is a big barbecue place. Yeah. So. Well, we have nothing to compare it to because I'm not sure we've ever eaten barbecue anywhere other than Disney World. Yeah. It was lovely, though. We really enjoyed it. It was lovely theming. We really liked the whole thing where you freeze. And my husband kept hamming it up as well. And we'd always freeze like in some bizarre. And this woman who was walking across the restaurant and clearly realized what was happening a bit late. And so paused.

[01:09:39] She turned and looked at my husband in his bizarre pose that he deliberately adopted. She was in hysterics, but trying to hold herself still because Andy was coming. So, yeah, I think we all had quite good fun with that. We did manage to nip down and see the Beauty and the Beast show. And then we just headed back to the resort again. It was a wee bit chillier today. This was one of our few. We had a few slightly chillier days in the middle of the holiday. This was the first of those chillier days. While we were watching Beauty and the Beast as well, we were like, oh, it's getting a little bit cooler in here.

[01:10:08] And I've only ever watched Beauty and the Beast thinking I wish the fans were a bit more powerful. But I could have had a light jumper at that point and I would have been quite comfortable. So we didn't fancy the pool when we got back. This was the evening we decided to do a random evening. We had decided that we would just go to the bus stop and get on the first bus that came for whatever park that was. We got to the bus stop at quarter to six and the first bus just before six o'clock was to Animal Kingdom, which closed at seven.

[01:10:38] Oh no! We had to follow the rules. So we got on that bus and we got to Animal Kingdom at 6.20. Oh my word. For it shutting at seven. So actually Nick and Zoe went to Everest. Expedition Everest is Zoe's favourite. And even though Imogen had decided she quite likes more intense coasters on this, she wasn't up for the Everest drop. So she and I shopped in the shop there and they did Everest twice because it was just a walk on at that point.

[01:11:06] And then we nipped over and hopped in line for Navi River Journey at five to seven. I like that ride. I would never wait a really long time for it. So that's a perfect time to get in line. It said 25 and they were looking at me at 25. And I was saying there's nobody in the line. We're going to be fine. It wasn't even five. It wasn't even five minutes. And by the time we got off, they were closing it down. So then we walked back to the bus stop and we're like, right, well, we now just have to get on the bus for whatever part comes next.

[01:11:34] And so an Epcot bus came. So it was about half seven. So we got on that. We did Spaceship Earth again because it's Imogen's favourite ride. And then we went to Connections for dinner. I wanted a redo of the pizza I'd had the other night. It was one of the ones that was for the Food and Wine Festival. That's it. Not Food and Wine. Flour and Garden Festival. Was it the white? The blanca? Yes, it was. Yeah, well, I did like it, but I hadn't particularly eaten much of it when we'd been there the other night because I'd felt sick after Guardians. So I wanted a redo of it.

[01:12:04] So we were having that. And obviously it's right next to Guardians. And Imogen had decided she really, really likes Guardians. And we're so close to Guardians. I wish we had another lightning lane. And it was like quarter to nine. And I was like, look, if you want to do Guardians, why don't you two go and do Guardians? Nick could not stand. At this point, it's like quarter to nine at night. He's been walking. This is his third park of the day. He's like, I can't. He loved it, but he couldn't stand in line. And I couldn't face the idea of being sick again.

[01:12:32] And so the girls went off together, just the two of them. It was posted 70 minutes at quarter to nine. They said it took them about 45 minutes. They kept an eye on the time. So they were on to about half nine. And Nick and I took the little drinks that we had got with our quick service meals. And we found a nice bench where we could see the fireworks and the monorail going around. And we just sat on our own and enjoyed a nice little drink while our girls got to go off and do that ride together. So it worked out perfectly. Yeah, everyone's happy.

[01:13:02] You get the vibes and they get that independence. Guardians that I'm sure that is very exciting for them to have, especially in a Disney park. Yes. And they got to ride Guardians again, which they were both delighted by. And so the first time we rode it, we got One Way or Another. And Imogen told me she'd actually been researching this in advance. And that had been the tune she'd wanted. So she was so delighted. But then the second time they got Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Oh, yeah. And we all love that song.

[01:13:32] My husband, even though we were relatively young in the 80s, he loves 80s music. It's probably really slightly the generation before us, but he's very nostalgic for 80s music. And so, you know, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. We've all heard many times through the girls' childhood. And they said as soon as it came on, they're like, oh, this is so lovely. We can't wait to tell them. So, yeah, they had a really good time watching it, riding it. But they said they preferred it with one way or the other. They thought it fitted the ride better. Okay.

[01:14:01] Yeah, I think One Way or Another makes it feel faster, for sure. But we have such sentimental feelings about Everybody Wants to Rule the World in our household. I don't know if you've heard me say it before, but I'll say it just because I think it's been a long time since I've said it. It was the very first song Alex ever heard on this earth because Charles had decided that that would be the song because it starts with the lyrics, Welcome to your life, there's no turning back. And so we got home from the hospital and he played it for him.

[01:14:29] And ever since then, that's Alex's theme song of his life. And so whenever we hear it, we're like, it's our song. Yeah. Oh, that's lovely. And I can see then why, you know, I think if you have a particular affinity for one song, I think that could really shape the way you feel about it. I think I would be interested to ride it with a different song because I think because there was so much going on and I felt so sick,

[01:14:54] the first time having a super fast paced song made the whole thing feel really intense. And I wonder whether a slower song might help. I don't know. I would still do it again. I would definitely try it again, but it was fine for them to do that themselves. And so we just had headed back after that. It was late night and then, you know, for the deluxe people that night. So the park still was quite busy, but the buses weren't because a lot of people at this point were staying on for those extra hours. Mm hmm. All right.

[01:15:20] So that brings us to Tuesday, April the 21st, which was a rest day. Did you actually rest? Yeah, we definitely did rest more this day. We did still hop about a bit, but not as much walking. I obviously was awake fairly early, but everybody else managed to sleep in a bit. We did some swimming. We did some laundry and we had some food. Although one of the things we did and actually this started on the first day and went all the way through the holidays.

[01:15:50] It's most days me and my youngest would walk across to the quick service with the refillable mugs to get coffee for my husband and I first thing. And that became like a nice little routine for the two of us that we did all the time. It was partly to give my husband a bit of a rest. So he wasn't doing as much of the walking. And so, yeah, that was something we had done that morning as well. But then we had a lovely kind of quick service breakfast by the pool. And it was nice. There was not very many people at the quiet pool and it's a lovely little pool. And the girls got to have it to themselves. So it worked out quite well.

[01:16:19] And we, the girls really wanted to go to a few different places. They had talked about, we went to Crumble Cookie for the first time last year. We don't have that in our country. So we got an Uber to the Crumble that we'd been to last year. And they really then wanted to go to Five Below, which we'd never been to before. Okay. Why? It's a thing apparently for teens and tweens who are not from your country. So they really wanted to go to Five Below. Interesting.

[01:16:48] Alex is going to be so interested to hear this. Yeah. Because when he was in middle school, all the kids were interested in going to Five Below. And we have a Five Below actually that's in our neighborhood that's walkable from our apartment. And so they would always stop there on the way home from school. And then he was in a play downtown and there was a scene about Five Below for whatever reason. And it kind of turned him on to it. He had to sing a song about it and stuff. And he was just like, oh, Five Below. They were like.

[01:17:17] Look at all the stuff you can get for this amazing practice. Really, they both bought sweets, really. Lots of candy. They also have t-shirts there and stuff. And I think they have some Disney shirts. They did. They had lots. They had lots of Disney t-shirts. We didn't actually buy one, but they got quite a lot of candy. We then Ubered to Target. We didn't realize how close it was. We realized we could have walked afterwards. But we wanted to have a look for needle squishes.

[01:17:47] I've heard of these. Which are very hard to get. Yes. Well, they weren't there. And the guy said to us, oh, they go. These people hang around in the shop waiting for them to go out. And then as soon as they're out, they're all bought up straight away. So, yeah, she did not get one of those. But we then got an Uber to Disney Springs or a Lyft. I can't remember at that point. For some browsing, some Blaze pizza. And then just headed back to the resort. Yeah.

[01:18:12] While we were about to head back to the resort on the boat, my youngest was like, I really wish I'd gone to Sephora to get this particular perfume. Can we walk back over? Like, I can't bear it. And so I said, if you're willing to go back to the resort and rest for a bit, I'll get the bus with you over later. Because the bus goes really close to Sephora. So she and I got a shorter rest back at the resort. And then we hopped on a bus. Just literally got the bus to Disney Springs. Went to Sephora. Got back on the bus.

[01:18:41] And came back again. Did take about an hour and a half, probably. Well, maybe not as much as that. Just over an hour. Just over an hour to do that, maybe. But it was important to her. And yeah, it wasn't too big a deal. But yeah. I was more willing to do that than I was to walk to the other side. You know, by that point when you're tired and your feet are sore. I didn't want to walk to the other side of Disney Springs. I thought it was probably easier just to climb on a bus later that evening.

[01:19:09] So again, quite a lot of walking for a rest day. But, you know, a non-park day. Yes. Let's call it that instead. I don't think we're particularly good at just properly resting. It doesn't sound like it. No. I mean, I just, I actually, I think probably we should have rested more than we did, maybe. But I think because we don't come over as often, you know, it's further for us to come. It's, you know, it feels like a long time we're coming for.

[01:19:39] But then if we don't come for two or three years, you really just want to make the most of the time that you've got. So I think we all find it quite difficult to not do too much when we're trying to pack it all in. Yeah, I totally understand that. All right. Wednesday, February 22nd. This was an Epcot day. And you said just a bit ago that that was going to be your last rope dropping day. In my notes, when we talked before, every day says rope drop.

[01:20:07] So what time did you actually end up getting up and going this day? We got the bus at 10 to 10. Good. Okay. Yeah. This was the day we started looking at bus times in the app. That was quite good. And so we decided we would just wake up, you know, whenever we woke up. And actually we did, we did all probably wake by about eight o'clock because I think by the time me and my youngest got up to go and get coffee, we're obviously making a bit of noise in the room. But everybody, that was the day we saw the otters as well. Everybody was able to have a bit of a slower start.

[01:20:36] So we didn't leave until nearly 10 o'clock. So Nick headed to mission space because he's the only one that wanted to do that. And we just sort of hung around and looked at different things. And then we all went over to Soarin'. But by the time we got to Soarin', it was jumping. Like as we started to walk over, it said 25 minutes. And then as we got to it, it said 35 minutes. And it was queued out of the queue, you know, into the land pavilion. And we thought, I don't even think that's 35 minutes. That looks longer.

[01:21:02] So instead we got some sort of snacks and then started to wander around getting some festival snacks and doing the little butterfly thing. Gosh, the butterflies were beautiful. The girls weren't sure what they'd think about going into an enclosed area with all these butterflies flying around. But they really liked it. And they were both into taking pretty photographs. I can handle that. I can't handle birds. They're small. The butterflies are small. Yeah, they're beautiful. I'll do that every time. Honestly, I think I forgot when I was there two weeks ago now.

[01:21:31] I forgot about the butterfly thing. We didn't even go near it. Well, it sort of tucked over a little bit, isn't it? But then Nick went and got some, like, we've got a few different festival things as we were sort of moving around. But he got a seafood thing at, what's it called? You know, there's the beach and the yacht. Beach Grub and Yacht Grub, I think. Yes. Are next to each other. I think it was maybe from Beach Grub. He really liked that. We used the app that you had told us about before going.

[01:21:59] You know, with all the stuff from the Flower and Garden app. Yes. So we used that. And so we constantly had that up. And if we were walking in a direction and we saw something that we'd been keen to get, we got that. And we were able to try quite a few things that way, which was good. We walked around to the, you know, in the UK pavilion, there's a wee maze. Uh-huh. And the girls can remember the very first time they went to Disney that they liked running around that maze. So even though they're now 14 and 11 and not 7 and 4, they still ran around the little maze. Uh-huh. Just because they remember doing that.

[01:22:29] And actually at that point we got the Skyliner over to the Riviera and had quick service lunch outside there. Yes. I really like their quick service. I think. It's amazing. It might be my favourite resort quick service. And we haven't, I don't think we've got the Skyliner yet at this point. So we just sort of hopped over there and had lunch and had a nice relax outside. And my husband was saying he really liked doing that because you sort of pull yourself out of that busyness of the park. But it's not far to go either. So. Right.

[01:22:59] Yeah, we were back at Epcot by two. So we weren't out for that long, but just a bit of a chill time. We liked the food there. Nick and I went in the single rider line for Ratatouille because they both wanted to do that, but didn't want to, didn't want to wait the 60 minutes that it was posted. They waited about 20. So not too bad. Yeah, not too bad. We were able to see the three o'clock voices of liberty, which we'd been keen to see. So we all really enjoyed that again.

[01:23:26] And then we went to Caramel Kusha, which is one of our favourite places for a snack. Mm-hmm. My husband bought two bags of caramel popcorn so he could eat one on holiday and bring one home with him. And in fact, he only finished it fairly recently. He's just had it on his desk and he's been snacking away at it. Uh-huh. It's so good. He really likes that. I think he's okay, but I'm not that bothered by it. Neither of the girls, but he really likes it.

[01:23:53] So when we went without him, his only request was that we bring him back a bag of that. So he got two bags. We went round and did three caballeros again before having dinner and drinks in Mexico. And the girls actually had the Mexico food this time. And then we got the bus back to the resort about half five. But that wasn't the end of the day. We had a short relax in the room. And by quarter past seven, we were on the bus to Magic Kingdom.

[01:24:18] So we decided we would just suck it up and get in line for Seven Dwarfs because the girls wanted to do it. We twice failed to rope drop it. So we did. We waited. It was posted 40 minutes. It took 45. It's not worth that. But we weren't doing anything else. It was fine. Nick went and did Space Mountain while we did that. And then really the purpose of us going over was to see Starlight Parade that evening. So we went, God, it's difficult to find a spot to see that.

[01:24:48] But eventually we found a spot in Frontierland and we were able to get a good view of it. And it was good. I mean, I wouldn't say any of us are massive parade people. And now we've seen it. That's probably just us seeing it. We probably don't need to see it again. But we did enjoy it. But then we did Small World and then the girls did the Speedway while we went and ordered a late dinner at Cosmic Rays. And then we sat near the window there and watched the fireworks out the window while having our food.

[01:25:13] Having a really lovely conversation with a Scottish lady who was happening to be, she couldn't work out where to sit. And so we just said, you know, come to our table and we had a massive chat with her and watched the fireworks. So that was quite nice. And then we had the worst, you know, worst kind of journey on a bus. So we got, we went about half ten. There was no buses coming to Riverside, no buses coming to Riverside. But then actually somebody was pulling up their phone and showing us that there was a massive traffic issue really near the Magic Kingdom.

[01:25:43] We got on a bus at five past eleven and we didn't get back to Riverside till quarter to midnight. There had been a really bad crash. We saw it out the window, really not far from Magic Kingdom. And because so much of the road was cordoned off, only one lane was going past at a time and they were sort of taking it in turns. And so all of the buses were being delayed and getting in and out. And it was just causing huge issues. And our bus was standing room only. And there was some little, little kids who were just distraught.

[01:26:12] And the bus is taking so long. And it wasn't a good journey back. Yeah. So we never had another experience like that, but it was just unfortunate that there had been this really bad crash. I hope everybody was OK. I know. We didn't see, like, we didn't see anything worrying. There was people standing around talking and lots of vehicles smashed up, but lots of people standing behind them speaking. And so I don't know. I don't know what happened.

[01:26:41] You know, it's interesting. When I was there for those couple of days that first week in May, when we were driving to the airport, there was some slowness in the traffic. And when we finally got to where we were passing what was going on, there were multiple cars that looked like, I mean, it looked like it was a pretty bad crash. I mean, like, lots of damage to people's cars. And I think I saw four or five cars that had, like, their bumpers off of them. And it was crazy. But that was on the highway.

[01:27:09] I feel like over by Magic Kingdom, those are not necessarily what I would consider to be highway roads. Those are, like, more local roads. Yeah, it wasn't a big, busy part. You know, it wasn't even the bits where they have multiple lanes. It was the bit where they had, and that was the issue, I suppose, is that there was only one lane in each direction. Yeah, so that was a bit of a late one. But we were lying in again the next morning. So this was Thursday, April the 23rd. And this is really your last full day. Last full day.

[01:27:38] The next day, even though you had the whole day, the next day, your flight was the next evening. So Hollywood Studios, did you still stick with that plan? Yeah, we did. It's always, I mean, again, because we decided we'd not be rope dropping anymore, we went to the pool for the whole morning, like the main pool. And we even had a quick service lunch there. We just had a really chill time there. And it wasn't actually too busy either. It's definitely a bit quieter in the morning. So we headed back and had showers. And then we didn't get the bus till about half three. We were at Hollywood Studios about four in the afternoon. Mm-hmm.

[01:28:09] So now I said Hollywood Studios. That wasn't Hollywood Studios we went to. We went to Animal Kingdom. Why did we go to Animal Kingdom first? I don't know. We did. We went to Animal Kingdom, then Hollywood Studios. Now I can't remember why we went to Animal Kingdom first. But Zoe and I raced to get the viral ice cream sandwich. While Nick and Imogen slowly, you know this ice cream brownie sandwich thing that's... Mm-hmm. The girls had seen that everywhere. So we wanted one herself. And then Imogen and I shared one. Nick wasn't bothered.

[01:28:37] So Nick and Imogen slowly walked to the Nemo show. And we went and got these snacks. And then we were able to take them in. So we did the Nemo show. We did safari. It was a walk-on. Got in line for Everest. And by this point, I'd got hold of some proper Dramamine. And I've ridden Everest before. And I was fine when I read it, rode it before. But I felt so sick this time. Nick and Zoe had already ridden it a couple of times on the trip. And so obviously they were fine. But I felt so sick. Worse than I felt even on Guardians.

[01:29:05] And I didn't understand it because I hadn't been last time. Yeah. So we did all then leave the park about half six and get the bus to Hollywood Studios. But by the time we got there, and I'd been on a bus ride as well, I really thought I was going to collapse. So I just went straight over to the bus to our resort. And the rest of them went into Hollywood Studios. So I went straight back and went to bed. And sadly was in bed for the rest of the evening. And so we have still not got to do either of the Star Wars rides. Because the plan that evening was that we were going to do them.

[01:29:35] Because we'd planned to do them on our Hollywood Studios evening at the beginning of our holiday. And then we'd had the hoo-ha with the laundry. And we were delayed by a couple of hours getting to Hollywood Studios. So we then thought we'd do them this evening. But then I had to go back to bed. So the others just sort of ditched that plan. They did Toy Story Mania and Alien Saucers. And Imogen went to watch the villains show again. She's a very, like, theatre show person. While Nick and Zoe went and got food from Woody's Lunchbox.

[01:30:03] And they all met back there. And they did those Toy Story rides. And then they just headed back as well. Because I think they didn't want to go and do... In the same way that me and the girls didn't want to do those rides when we went without Nick. They didn't want to do them without me. So that was it. Yeah. So sweet. Yeah, so the next day was our last day. We were up packing it. You know, getting everything packed. Quick service breakfast. Headed to the Magic Kingdom for about... I think what time we left? About quarter past ten. Got there about quarter to eleven.

[01:30:32] We did the little train round Fantasyland. You know, the one direction. The little shuttle it's doing just now. We did Speedway. It was posted twenty. This was when we had a really bad incident of line cutting. This seemed to be more prominent than I've noticed on holidays before. That you'd have, like, one or two people ahead of you in the line. And a group of about six would come pushing past you to join the one or two ahead of you. I mean, you get the odd time. You have one person come and join the rest of your party.

[01:31:02] But we seemed on this holiday to have quite a lot of large groups pushing through the line. And that happened, like, there'd been a couple of people in line. And the whole of the rest of their family, about eight people, came barging past everybody. But then at the top, when they split you into the two bits, they were the last to be put into the bit with a long line. And we got to go to the other side and go right down to the front. So actually, we ended up getting on the cars before them anyway. I had heard that they were trying to really crack down on that and make sure that if somebody was

[01:31:29] joining up with their party, that it was only one or two people at the most. And I think they're doing a lot more of like, okay, I know you were already in this line. You simply left to go to the restroom. And now you're coming back, as opposed to this giant group of people situation. So I think in general, they're trying to cut down on that. But it is, you know, disappointing when you're hearing about it still having experiences with that. Because it's, it goes against everything I believe in terms of park etiquette.

[01:31:56] I can handle like one or two people coming past. But you really are, I think some people think, oh, well, they're, I'm with them. I'm not cutting. But when you're in line, and you have an expectation of how long this line is going to take, based on how many people you can see, if you think like, if every single person or pair of people ahead of me all had five more people come and join them. Now I've doubled my wait time. Yep. So particularly on Tomorrowland Speedway, which doesn't move quickly, and you might have one person per vehicle anyway,

[01:32:26] then eight extra people actually makes quite a big difference. What was a bit of a shame as well is the people who were right behind us, they'd actually been in front of us, between us and this other group, but really there was only a couple of them. And they were waiting for like an adult and a child coming back from the toilet. So they were standing to the side and saying to everybody, oh, just go past us. We're waiting for a couple of people, you know. And so some of us had gone past, including these people who were doing the cutting. And they then let the whole of their party come in, literally just behind us for people who had stood to the side,

[01:32:56] because there was only an adult and a child coming to join them. So they stood. So, yeah, it seemed a bit of a shame, but they did quite often announce, like make announcements in the queue. Remember, you know, not yet or don't come into the line until you've got your whole party. Right. But it just definitely wasn't always being listened to. But anyway, we did that. We all enjoyed that again. I prefer the one at Disneyland Paris, but there's a couple of rides. I know you're going to Disneyland Paris later this year.

[01:33:24] Every time we did Pirates, we would get off and be like, I just feel really sorry for people if this is their only experience of Pirates. So when you do the one at Paris, which I really hope it's open when you're there, and it may well be like the California ones like this as well, but the one in Paris is just so much better. There's multiple drops and it's much longer. That's the way it is in California. Yeah. Well, Speedway is better too, but it's been done up. It's like a Notopia type thing. It's been done up in the last couple of years. So the cars are a lot nicer.

[01:33:53] But the girls still really enjoy it because kids like driving a car. Yes, they do. They do. I just wish they would make them all electric. The smell of the gas over there is so bad. And particularly during the summer when it is so hot, that's the last thing you want to do is stand there in a line while people are cutting you, smelling all of those fumes. It's not fun. I know, which is one of the reasons why we let the girls do it themselves one time because we don't need to do it every time.

[01:34:22] But then we did Carousel of Progress again. You've got to get your last go of Carousel of Progress in before you head home, followed by People Mover, which is another family favorite. And then we went to Fantasyland for a final lunch at Pinocchio Village House, which we'd never been to before. It was absolutely mobbed. We were round and round and round until luckily a family got up and we were able to just get in because we had our food already. So many people sitting at tables with no food, waiting for someone to come with food.

[01:34:50] And we're walking around with food, not able to sit down. Yeah. For a while at Connections, they would have a cast member stationed just at the entrance to the seating area and you were not allowed to enter until you had food on a tray. Yeah, that probably would be a good idea at the places that get really busy like that because it was so, so busy. Then we just went and saw a little bit of the castle show, did Monsters in Cloughlor, which we hadn't done yet, and then got some treats and headed out.

[01:35:18] And we were back to our resort using up our food. Mirrors were a lot prompter than we expected. My husband had gone to get in line to use up the last of our dining credits and we thought, we'll have some food and then we'll get on the bus. But actually it was quite busy, bizarrely, for the middle of the afternoon at the quick service. So it took him longer than expected. And Mirrors tells you that they'll be there. It tells you to be there like 20 minutes or 15 minutes or something before the time it goes, but they were there before that. And so we like, we were desperately trying to pull all our bags together

[01:35:46] and we had this food and we were about to get on and the bus driver was so kind and I was explaining to him what had happened and I said, are you allowed to eat on the bus? And he's like, well, you're not meant to, but I might not see if you have any food on the bus or smell it. Oh, it smells really nice. He was like, it smells really nice. But I might not know, you know, I might not know you had any on the bus. If you were to have some on the bus, you don't want to not eat your food that you've just bought. He let us have our food on the bus. So we were able to have that final meal as we headed towards.

[01:36:16] So yeah, the Mears was at 3.50 for an 8.50pm flight. So we were at the airport reasonably early, but it was fine. We just relaxed there and got ready for our long flight home. How long did it take you to get through security and all of that kind of stuff? 10 minutes, maybe. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was fine. Super fast. There was no problem, yeah. Good. Speaking of your dining plan, did you end up using up all of the credits, including all the snack credits? We did. Yeah, the snack credits weren't an issue. I didn't think they were ever going to be an issue.

[01:36:46] The issue was probably all the dining credits because we had had a couple of table service meals as well. Obviously on those days, we'd not then had two quick service meals as well as that. Right. But actually, I think that by the time we got to that final day, we had two quick service meals and one snack left to use. So that was what we grabbed in the quick service that final day. So we did manage. My husband had been determined. He was like, no credit left behind. And they really weren't.

[01:37:16] We did manage to use them all. Good. Well, this sounds like it was just an amazing trip. You got so much done. Did you come home and just collapse from it all? Did you have time to do that? Or did you have to go right back to work? So we flew on the Friday and so we didn't land till the Saturday. So we didn't have to go back to school and work till the Monday.

[01:37:39] We did have my youngest daughter's confirmation in church on the Sunday. Actually, we even found by then we were fine. So that was the Sunday evening and we had arrived in Manchester. I would say the drive home was a bit dicey. My husband and I had thought he would just drive. But actually, we had to keep swapping back and forth an hour at a time and nap while the other one drove to make it back and not be too tired. By the time we got back, we were fine.

[01:38:07] And we all slept pretty normally that night. We were tired over the next few days, but it was fine getting back to work on Monday. I think as long as you've got that one extra buffer day in between, that helps. When is going to be the next time you foresee your family taking a trip to Disney again? I don't know. It will be. It's obviously nearly two years since we were last there. I don't know that my husband will ever agree to go back in July now that he's experienced April.

[01:38:34] But the problem is now for the next six years, we're going to have one or other of our children having exams, their major exams right after the Easter holidays. So that's not a doer. I don't know about, I think he does struggle with the summer. We do get two weeks off schools in October. So that might be a possibility. But realistically, it's probably going to be two or three years. We do have two Disney cruises before then. We've got one this summer and one next summer. So a bit of Disney to keep us going.

[01:39:04] But in terms of Disney World, it probably will be two or three years. Where do those Disney cruises depart from? Are they over in the UK? So the first one is only four nights from Southampton in August. And it's actually so that my husband can hopefully try to see the solar eclipse. So he had wanted to see the solar eclipse. And we've been talking for ages, like a couple of years about how, what would be the best way to see it? And Spain and Iceland are the places. And then I saw there was this one cruise that's coming out of Bilbao at the top of Spain.

[01:39:33] As it's meant to be the eclipse. And that's right in the zone of where you should see it. So we decided to take a chance on that because we thought it'd be nice to try and see that at sea. So we've got that in August. And that's on the dream. And then next year, the wish is coming over to Europe for the first time. And so we're actually getting on in Barcelona and off in Southampton. So it'll be like a repositioning cruise. So that's six nights. And that's next year. Wow. What a dream.

[01:40:01] A dream is a wish your heart makes, right? Yes. So yeah, looking forward to those. But it's not Disney World. I'll just have to listen to the podcast in the meantime and live through other people's trips. Exactly. That's what I'm here for. Definitely. Well, it's been so much fun chatting with you. And I can't wait to see the pictures from your trip. And hopefully you'll be back again at some point in the future, whenever that is. Yeah, hope so. Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to reliving it.

[01:40:30] Thank you all for listening and for supporting the show. And a huge thanks to Anna for being part of the magic today. And I truly hope you will be on again in the future. That is all for now. I hope everyone has a magical week and that you'll keep daydreaming about where you long to be.