Are You Ever Coming Home?...No! I am playing with Wizards,Farkles & Sparkling Friends

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My favorite room is always the Munchkinland room.

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It’s sad that it is now gone, but honestly this was never a favorite ride of mine. I am glad we did get to see it one last time and it was a nice way to stay a little cooler too.

Claire needed a snack, so pretzel time it was!

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After we finished that up we heard the Storm Trooper music again and went to watch them come.

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We laughed at how close they got to the people.

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They then marched off again. It was neat to see. Not something we need to see every time and honestly, I don’t know if every little show they do is the same or not, but I am glad we took time to watch it.

I think we stopped and got some beverages to cool down and then headed off to Rock n roller coaster. Claire has never rode it before.

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It started to rain a little bit while we were in line outside, but it was pretty light.

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We noticed this door and we touched it and were surprised it was made of marbles. Of course after we discovered this several other people now had to come and touch it too. LOL.

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I think this was actually the first time I ever went through the whole line. In the past I have always done the single rider line.

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Here comes our limo!

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I told Claire to be prepared to have her stomach in her throat. I just find this take off the most intense thing and I get so nervous. She loved it.

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As you can see….I shut my eyes till we have reached our speed.

That was a lot of fun. We decided to skip Tower of Terror as the wait time had gotten longer since we walked by it before. We then walked back towards the hub and found some Streetmosphere going on.

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We didn’t have a set agenda and just kind of walked around. We found some Storm Troopers out harassing people.

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We then walked in to see what characters were meeting in the Launch Bay.

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The Jawas were out.

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I kind of tricked Claire into seeing BB8. I just didn’t even really tell her she would be seeing him. I just made our way towards his line and got in it. LOL

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After our meet we looked around a bit then headed out.

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We looked in One Man’s Dream for a bit, but Claire complained the whole time we were in there, so it was short.

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Then it was time for our Toy Story Fastpass.

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We love this ride. The standby line was much shorter than normal now that the 3rd track was open, but it was still longer than we wanted to wait for a second ride.

We then wandered a bit more.

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Toy Soldier!!!!

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It was then time for our late lunch reservation….a new place for us…50’s Prime Time.

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I have wanted to eat here for YEARS! I have had reservations several times and always ended up changing or cancelling. When Claire was younger I had told her about the place and she was scared to death to go here. She was sure they would yell at her and I figured it wasn’t worth the hassle to have her be afraid the whole time. One time Patty….yes the Patty I just cruised with…..Patty and I had a reservation here when we were here for training and we ended up cancelling it last minute as we decided to go to the Magic Kingdom. It just never seemed to work for us…or when it would, I couldn’t find an open reservation. Finally…years later….we were going to try it.

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We headed inside and got checked in.

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We were told to go wait and we grabbed a menu to look over as well.

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We didn’t wait long and we were called back to be seated. Lil John was our server and he was so much fun. He played with us and the tables by us for a bit. He introduced all of us to each other and we just kept laughing.

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He was such a ham and I thought I was videoing his super funny antics and then I realized I was NOT actually recording. UGH!! He had totally been playing up to my camera too. I tried again, but this time it was not as funny.

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See this curtain behind Claire? Lil John would peek through every so often.It was hilarious!

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We got milkshakes….which were really good and super filling!

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Claire is super picky with food, but they had soup and she was happy.

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And onion rings…another thing she likes.

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Peek a boo!

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Our entrée’s came out then. Claire went with nuggets and fries. I’ll just say we got way too much food and could not eat it all.

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I got the combo meal with a taste of several things….I found it delicious.

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Our section started clearing out as we ate. Lil John did mention to a few tables that we were the last of his tables for the day. He never once rushed us and he was super attentive. As much as we wanted to try dessert here, we were just totally stuffed. The shake did us in. I guess we’ll have to come back another time and eat less so we have room for dessert. We finished up and paid our bill and headed out. We will be back. It’s a new favorite for us.

Our next fastpass was for Star Tours, so we headed that way.

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We got a different scene that we have not seen before and it was fun.

We had a little time before our next fastpass and Claire wanted frozen lemonade, so we got that and sat down for a bit. I think I may have called home during that time while she worked on her lemonade.

We then headed to the Frozen sing along…a new attraction for us. As soon as we entered I recognized the waiting area….it was where Doug Live was many many years ago. I had never seen the Drew Carey thing that was here before (though Skip had) and I had always wondered where Doug Live had been as I couldn’t remember. Doug used to be a show on Nickelodeon and then it went to Disney. My older 2 kids LOVED that show and when I had taken them to Disney…about 18-20 years ago, this was a must do. Paige had been so excited about this show the whole time it was going on. I quickly took a picture and texted it to her.

In the waiting area of the place that used to be where Doug Live was at.

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She responded with an “OMG….I loved that show”. LOL

When we entered we sat towards the middle and I recognized the theatre as well. We had sat in the front row when we watched Doug.

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This character was pregnant. I wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be a pregnant character or if the actor herself was really pregnant. It almost looked like a fake belly, but then again it could be just how the costume lay on her. At times she would make small jokes about being pregnant and then other times she would say things that would make you think she wasn’t married and her guy partner was not her husband and they kind of flirted.

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The show is cute and it kind of takes you through the Frozen story.

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And it is a sing along, so you all sing together most of the songs from the movie.

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It was also cool in the theatre, so that gave me a nice break from the heat.

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At one point it snows, which was a huge highlight for all the kids.

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This show is a must for anyone with a Frozen obsessed child. For us, I am glad we saw it but it won’t need to be repeated. It was cooler in the theatre, but I was also super tired from our long vacation and fighting sleep as I sat there. It’s a cute show, but we are not huge Frozen fans anymore. We did like the ride in Epcot, but we don’t need to do a sing along every trip.

We then were tired and decided it was time to take a break. We figured we would come back in the evening for the fireworks. I had gotten the email that our room was ready not long after we had entered the park, so we figured a little nap and cooling off would do us some good and we headed to the bus stop.

We arrived back at Music and went to our room. I was very disappointed with our location. I booked a preferred room and when I do that at a Value I usually put in 3 requests. First floor, Pool side, and then the building I want. We all know when you put those requests in, you put them in the order of importance and that they are only requests….but Disney usually delivers for us. Not always, but usually we get most of our requests. For me, first floor at a Value is my number 1 want! I love to be on the first floor and I really like it when I am poolside. Just my personal preferences.

Well we went to our room and right away I knew the number has us on the 2nd floor. Not happy about that, but perhaps we are still poolside….oh and we are in the building I requested. Nope, not poolside either. In fact, we are on the back side of the building in the VERY last room. Sure it’s closer than the standard rooms are, but I was so unhappy with our location. I let it be though. We were only here 2 nights. If we had our whole vacation stay here though, I would have gone back and asked to be moved.

We made the trek to our room and our bags were waiting for us.

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Some quick room shots.

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And our view outside.

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It could have been worse…but I like to be in the action of things.

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A quick walk around to get some pictures.

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You can see it looks a little grey out. I had been told by some people that it had just poured here recently. We had missed the rain at Hollywood Studios, so we lucked out.

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I headed back to the room and we just relaxed. Claire had earlier seen pictures on Snapchat of Jeanne’s kids with Caleb. She was super jealous that they met up again….at Disney Springs. She assumed they had lunch together and she was feeling left out. I had been messaging with Jeanne off and on and she told me they just ran into each other and took a few pictures. Claire felt better then, but was still sad. She was missing her friends.

It felt so good to just relax and we made the decision not to go back to Hollywood Studios. We wanted to see the fireworks, but we knew it would be better to just lay low and go to sleep early since our plans were to head to Animal Kingdom first thing tomorrow morning.

After while I went out again for a walk.

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I decided to get some ice-cream and I texted Claire and sent her a picture of the flavors to ask her what she wanted.

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It was so hot out that by the time I got back to the room I had ice-cream dripping down my arms.

We ate those and then I went out again and got a few night time shots.

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My pictures are not very good, but in person it all looked really pretty.

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It was time to call it a night then. I told Claire to put her phone away so that we could get some sleep. We had one more full day left and tomorrow we would be going non-stop all day long!

July 9, 2017, Day14

We had a goal today…to get to Animal Kingdom BEFORE opening. Claire actually got right up and got moving too. I think she knew this would be her only chance at riding Flight of Passage again for a long time and she really liked the ride.

We headed out to the bus stop. I really prefer the bus stops at Values than I do at any of the other resorts. I like that it is one stop (usually, with All Stars sometimes making more than one) and they just seem to work out better when it comes to getting on the bus as well.

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The line wasn’t too long, so we figured we had just missed a bus and it did take a while for one to finally arrive. We got on the bus and soon were at Animal Kingdom….with several thousand of our new best friends. We had to wait to get in since we were here an hour early.

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They did let us through the gates early and then we hightailed it towards Pandora where we were stopped again.

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And then about 10 minutes later we go to move a little further in.

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About 10 till 9 they did allow us into Pandora.

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It was a madhouse but if you are aggressive (but not overly aggressive) you can get yourself into line.

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Once in line, it moved really fast and it wasn’t long before we were in the building.

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We had a shortened queue route and missed all the stuff we had kind of hoped to see today, but that was OK. We would rather have a short wait.

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Soon we were at the front and inside the first room.

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When it scanned us, it said something was wrong and to hold still while they scanned again….just like it did before. Another person told us that means that they are not ready for us to move to the next room. If all runs smoothly it doesn’t say that.

It wasn’t long before we were through all the rooms and onto the ride. We basically had the same seats we had the first time we rode it, only this time on a different floor. I did take a look up and down this time to see how it was set up. The ride was amazing once again and I am so glad we got to get on it again.

We still had some time before we HAD to leave for the Magic Kingdom so we decided to head over to Everest one last time. As we walked out of Pandora there were musicians playing to the people in line. The line went all the way to Africa and BACK! Holy cow!

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