Sept 8, 2012

 

 

 

 
 

It’s time to go home

 

We were up quite early, used up the last of our leftovers for breakfast, then packed up the last of our stuff, went through the villa, checked all the drawers and finally started to haul our stuff downstairs, to be crammed into the car.

Once everything was in there we took one final round through the villa before we headed to Bell Services to drop off our luggage and Owner’s Locker. Luggage out of the way we were on our way over to the Magic Kingdom, always the last park of a trip. It didn’t take long and we were walking through the turnstiles. We heard some music and the Move it, Shake it parade was making it’s way down Main Street. We stopped and watched and took some pics, then headed over to Big Thunder Mountain to pick up a Fastpass. Tom inserted his Annual Pass and the machine spit out a Fastpass. I did the same and it “ate” my pass. We flagged down a cast member and she “freed” my pass, then tried it at another machine and it still would not work.

So she handed us an exchange ticket, only good for fastpass. She gave one to Tom too, so he would not feel left out, after she had pulled two Fastpasses from the machines. Then she went to try my Annual Pass again and it worked. The cast member told us to keep all our Fastpasses and the second set of tickets as well. Our next stop was Pirates of the Caribbean, but we were pretty unlucky with it this time as it was down again. We had a bit of time to kill so we headed over to the Columbia Harbour House for some lunch. There was quite a line up to the register, but it moved pretty fast and soon we had ordered and waited to pick up our food. It took quite a while until they brought over our tray and we headed upstairs to find a seat. We were lucky and got a table by the window where we sat, enjoying the view and our food. Tom had gotten a Lobster Roll, which was served with potato chips and I got one of my favourites, the Anchors Aweigh Sandwich, white tuna with lettuce and tomato on toasted multigrain bun with potato chips. We again shared both and were very happy with our choice. Once we had cleared our plates we headed over towards the new Fantasyland to see if they were doing more dress rehearsals, but there was no activity and we felt pretty lucky to have already had the opportunity to look behind that fence. We then headed back to Big Thunder Mountain and before we got in line we picked up another Fast Pass. We now had three fast passes in hand and the line only said 10 minutes – time to check it out.

We got in line and it took less than 10 minutes to get on the ride. Tom asked for last row again and as always we were granted our wish. Off we went and had a blast. Once we got off we just walked all the way around and got on the ride again. It was a pretty short wait again and it was a real lot of fun, especially as we were seated in the last row an every one of our rides. For the next two rides we used our first two sets of Fastpasses, then used the regular line again and finally it was time to use up the last one of our Fastpasses. We were getting close to the time to leave, but we still had one more ride we wanted to ride, the Peoplemover. Thankfully it very rarely has a line and we were able to just walk on.

So there we sat, sad that our trip was very shortly coming to an end, still enjoying the sights and sounds of the Magic Kingdom, but we both had one thing to look forward to, we already knew when we would be coming back and it was only a little over 5 months until then. The Peoplemover loop came to an end and we had to get off. We slowly walked towards the exit, turned around at the end of Main Street to wave goodbye to the castle and then left the park. We walked over to the Contemporary and up to the Contempo Café, where we got a drink and the ceremonial last Mickey Bar of the trip. It was nice to just sit there, enjoy the ice-cream without it melting in a flash and reliving some of the most fun experiences of this trip.

Once we had finished our treat, we headed to the parking lot to pick up our car. We stopped at Old Key West to pick up our luggage and get changed, waved goodbye to this beautiful resort and drove over to Downtown Disney. One other tradition we just can’t let go is to have a very late lunch at Wolfgang Puck’s Express. We usually have pizza, but this time we chose something “lighter”. Or so we thought. We ordered our Diet Cokes and soon after we had sat down our food arrived. We had ordered two sandwiches to share, the Pesto Chicken Salad Sandwich, romaine, red onions and plum tomatoes and the Chicken Aioli, mozzarella, romaine, tomatoes, red onions and cilantro aioli.

Both were huge and came with herbed fries. It didn’t help much that we had just eaten an ice-cream bar, but we attacked the sandwiches as good as we could, but were highly unsuccessful in polishing them off. Once we could not take one more bite we wobbled outside to our car and off we went to the airport. We drove out of the Downtown Disney parking lot and hit the traffic jam. It took quite a while for us to make it to the highway but once we were on it, it was slow but smooth sailing. Once we had turned towards the airport the traffic became very light and in no time we turned into the rental car return. We unloaded all our stuff, Tom went to get a cart and off we went to find the Lufthansa counter.

It was really close nearby and we checked in our three pieces of luggage, paying for the one that was now extra. We had done online check in, so everything was already settled, all we needed were paper tickets and off we went again. There was still time left to stroll through the stores, pay a visit to the Earport and buy a few more things before we made our way over to security. The lines were fairly long but a lot of lines were open, so it moved at a steady pace. Once we had passed security we headed for the fake monorail and were finally sitting in the departure lounge. While waiting we used the airport’s free internet to say goodbye to our DISboard friends and a little later boarding had finally begun.

We got on board, stowed away our carry ons and settled into our seats. The plane took off on time and once we were at cruising altitude, the flight attendants came around and handed out little bags of snacks and offered drinks.

I stuck with water, while Tom got a beer and a little later we were handed hot/cold towels to refresh ourselves before dinner was served. There was a small salad and Caesar dressing, a cold, slightly stale whole grain dinner roll, some sesame crackers and some slightly overcooked Fusilli pasta with tomato sauce. For dessert we got some Tiramisu. It had been four hours since our Wolfgang Puck’s Express lunch, so we nibbled a bit before we both took some sleeping aid, waited for the trays to be removed, pushed back our seats and closed our eyes. Being tired, combined with some sleeping aid really did the trick. We drifted off to sleep and while we woke up numerous times during the flight it was a blessing to be able to go right back to sleep.

 

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