Day 6: I never would have guessed!
After so many days of busy touring and a late night, my body was finally ready to let me sleep nice and late: 6:30am! I snuck out of the room and downstairs for everyone’s favorite vacation activity: laundry. There were signs with QRs in the room to check the laundry status, so I thought perhaps Disney had corrected that system, which had not been functional when we visited prior.
Nope! Totally useless laundry tracking website.
I set my phone timer and grabbed a seat in the Bellevue lounge to wait it out. I was a regular at that point, having snuck down every morning to kill time on my laptop without waking up the kids. This was the longest I hung, though, because we had no morning plans. I switched the clothes to the dryer, browsed some more, and finally the kids were waking up as I brought up our clean basket.
Tink brought the girls Disney Codenames, which was fun until the girls started to compete against each other. Then, the tiredness didn’t pair well with losing and we quickly packed it up.
We relaxed at the pool until noon, grabbed showers, and started towards the bus to Magic Kingdom, as we had a 2:00pm ADR for Steakhouse 71. In the lobby, one of the girls realized she didn’t have her magic band, so I sent everyone ahead, sprinted to get it, and was running down to the bus stop waving my arms, just in time to see the MK bus drive away at 1:!7. Apparently, the trees were blocking Hubby’s view, so he didn’t know how long I’d be and didn’t hold the bus for me. It took forever for a bus time to post and, when it did, it wasn’t going to arrive at Boardwalk until 1:56pm. Rather than being late to our ADR, we opted to call a Lyft straight to the Contemporary. He was available right away and we were glad to be out of the heat and on our way to late lunch.
Steakhouse 71 lunch was delicious! The girls all got the kid’s filet and were practically licking their plates clean. Hubby and I split a salad and the burger, which were also delicious. I know the dinner menu is pretty pricey, but we found the lunch to be excellent and reasonably priced by Disney standards. It was one of our favorite meals of the trip and we’d definitely do it again if we were having lunch on the monorail loop or on the way out of MK.
We were done eating at 2:45 and had some time to kill, so we opted to take the monorail loop around to see Epcot from above.
We relaxed, checked out the view of the endless construction, and stayed on to loop back to the TTC. Rather than hopping another monorail, we opted for the boat ride across to MK at 3:45pm.
At 3:55, it was a madhouse in front of MK with folks waiting to enter for the party. We tried the trick of walking further down from where the transportation first drops you off, but all of the lines were at least a dozen families deep. Then, when everyone else started moving, our line was at a standstill. It turns out someone passed out right in the tapstiles! Thankfully, she was sitting up in a wheelchair when we did finally get through, but it’s maybe not the best plan on Disney’s part to have hundreds of people all baking in the direct sun at 4pm in August waiting to get into the park.
At 4:15pm, we were in the park and headed through the bypass to pick up our bags and our first treat of the night. We had decided to use this time to meet Merida but I was worried her line might already be cut off since we got in later than expected. Instead, we found a totally manageable number of families waiting, so we hopped in line. As this was another direct sunlight line, I sent the girls into Cosmic Ray’s for fresh ice water while I held our spot. At 4:35pm we met the lady of the hour.
This was such an incredible meet. Merida immediately saw that the girls were triplets and asked if they were troublemakers like her brothers. Then, she decided that each of the girls should marry one of her brothers and they started planning the wedding. She was so fun and animated about it, the kids were having a ball. I hope they find a space for her when they retheme that meet area to Encanto. Don’t get me wrong, Mirabel deserves a great spot and I’m glad Disney is getting on that faster than they did with Moana. But, I’d hate for it to come at the expense of meeting Merida. With the triplet connection, she has always been a stellar meet for our family and I don't want to see her go.
After visiting Merida, our
DAS for mine train was ready to use. As I looked at what else we might want to pick up, I was shocked at how low the wait times still were. I knew that the party days at MK had been empty, but usually the combination of day and party crowds makes 4-6pm super congested. Instead even heavy hitters were under 30 minutes. Peter Pan went down to 5 minutes at one point! Unfortunately, I don’t have pics from this 7D ride. We were missing a ton of PP rides photos throughout the trip and, each morning before the kids were up, I’d go through on my laptop and put in requests with Disney’s site to find them. About a week after our trip, I got a ton of emails that most of my requests were fulfilled, but there were still a few that never surfaced, like this one. I know trips can be hectic, but I’d definitely recommend trying to carve out some time during or soon after your trip to really look through your photos and put in the requests for missing ones right then while things are still fresh. If you’re paying for Photopass, you want to get everything!
After the coaster, we poked over to see if Belle’s line was still open for her final set and she only had a couple of families waiting.
She was also great, asking the kids about their favorite books and their outfits. On the way to our next DAS, we saw a PP photographer looking bored.
Not the best, but so it goes. I’m glad we stopped a ton over the course of the trip because the junkers balance out against the gems. We tapped into Peter Pan at 5:14, although I’d guess that the standby was still nearly walk on. After that, we walked onto Small World and the girls grabbed the front row to call, “All aboard!”
We were off the ride at 5:45pm and it was time to start working our party plan. The girls had decided that, in addition to all of the Alice characters, they wanted to make Pooh and crew a priority. I had read that 5:45 was the sweet spot for getting into this line, so away we went, but it was already wrapped around the corner and down towards Chesire Café. I held our spot in line while everyone else headed to ride Little Mermaid.
A Rant About This Character Meet (feel free to skip this paragraph if you aren’t feeling the negativity):
Why oh why is one of the most popular holiday party meets set up in such a way that characters are in the heat the whole time and have to walk halfway through Fanstyland to get backstage? This set up meant they would only meet for 20 minutes before it took them 10 minutes to walk backstage and out again. Disney knows this is one of the most popular meets at the party, they know that they cancelled two of the other tops from 2019 (Moana and Seven Dwarfs) making this arguably second behind only Jack and Sally. I get that this spot is themed to Pooh, but I think we’d all have been happy to meet them in Storybook Circus or the Tiki Room where they could have greeted for longer sets in the air conditioning with shorter turnover times for breaks. Plus, then we’d have been waiting in shade or air-conditioning too! While we’re complaining, they were having issues with Eeyore this day. He showed up halfway through his second set, and then never showed up for his third set at all. Because of how much this line crawls, that means a ton of kids got to see that other people met Eeyore, but then he wasn’t there for them. And, the CMs weren’t offering any sort of remedy other than going to get into the line again and hope that he’s there when you get through in another two hours! I get that staffing was still tight in August and I sincerely hope that they’ve figured this out for the next party season. That said, I think it would have been better to just not have Eeyore at all that night if he was going to be hit or miss. Then you at least know what you’re signing up for when you sit in the heat for two hours.
Rant Over
Since the line was so long and moving so slowly, one adult held the spot while the girls came in and out of the line. The characters started meeting at 6:40pm but when they left again at 7pm, I took the girls to quickly do a our first real ToT at Cosmic Rays, then back to line. We also didn’t make it to the front of line for their next set, so there was another ToT break and we returned to waiting. Finally, at 7:45pm, it was our turn to meet the Hundred Acre gang, without Eeyore.
The girls were really upset about Eeyore because they know he’s my favorite, but we encouraged them to shake it off, know that sometimes things just don’t go our way, and to enjoy the rest of the party. We had a DAS ready to use, so at 8:05pm it was time to rocket through Space in the dark.
I know people have mixed feelings about this ride overlay, but we all loved it. I was shocked how much more intense it felt not seeing anything and we were all laughing at our reactions as we got off.
But I was wrong.
Dad is the only one exempt from the rule. We use it too.
) Meanwhile, all of the pent up emotion came pouring out of C and she cried in earnest as we exited the gift shop. To cheer her up, we called my mom to give her the exciting news that the kids had done their first upside-down coaster, then texted the ride photos to all of the grands.
We arrived at the hub at 11:58pm, just enough time to find a spot for the Sanderson sisters’ show.
