Our last day at DisneyWorld... :( sniff. sniff.
But, we had felt at this point that we had done most everything we really really wanted to do and see. This last day we were just going to spend doing things at Magic Kingdom that we really liked or a few things we missed. We also determined, we were going to leave the park early. Well, early for us, anyway...being like 4-5pm. And then try to spend some time at DownTown Disney too. (not to mention there was a significant rain chance later afternoon/evening) We had yet to shop!!! :-D
So we headed out early again and rode the ferryboat over this time again. We stopped in front of the castle for another PhotoPass picture as soon as we got there (we liked to do those early before we get all hot and sweaty ;P)...
We then headed over to spend some time in Tomorrowland. So far we had only been there once to do the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin and Space Mountain (for Brooke and Brad anyway). I forgot to mention in my previous post about Magic Kingdom...I think it was our first day there, that we did the Monsters Inc show. The girls have never seen that movie and LOVED the show. They thought it was hilarious and are still quoting the monsters' jokes. They even used Brad in the show (they pick out different people to use for a story) so the girls were even more tickled with that. Definitely should do the Monsters Inc show if you go!
Here's what Brenna says at least 5 times a day...(its from the boss lady on the Monsters Inc show..she even tries to imitate her voice!)....
Sorry for the quality, that video was taken with my cell phone.
Anyway, as soon as we got to Tomorrowland, we ran into Dale, from Chip and Dale. And yes, it was definitely Dale. I now know how to tell them apart. Jealous aren't you???
From there, we rode the People Mover which just kinda takes you on a tour of TomorrowLand from the inside.
I'll tell you here, that anytime we rode any of these type things (the train, monorail, this...etc) there would be these little signs on the sides of the seats telling you to stay seated...
Brenna took the picture quite literally and insisted nearly every time that we all had to hold hands, as shown in the picture. ;)
Brad liked to mess with her...
After the People Mover, we saw Stitch again and Brooke HAD to go and see him. :)
Then next up and we went and saw (or rode??) the Carousel of Progress. Its kinda cool. But kinda silly too. Basically you sit in this auditorium kinda place and there's a stage showing a typical family from the 1900's or so. Then, they tell you about how they were living and such. Then they spin the carousel around to the next stage, where you see a family living in the 50's or 60's. And so on till present day. It was kinda interesting I guess. Apparently this 'ride' was one of Walt Disney's actual idea's.
From there, we did the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin again, because it is so fun..the girls love it.
Then the girls and Brad did the Astro Orbiter...something they missed before and were begging to do. (they have one at Disneyland we did too) Its basically these little rocket ships that are SUPER high up (like, the make you ride an elevator up) and they spin you around, etc...
Brenna liked it ok, except she was too "squished". LOL
Also, a quick side note - if you go on any of these rides, be sure to take your photo pass card with you! There's a lot of them that have Photo Pass photographers on or near the ride that will swipe your card and take your pic up there too! (the above picture is a Photo Pass picture actually)
And before leaving Tomorrowland, the girls had to get their hands on the cool water spinning globe. :)
We headed towards Main Street to eat at a sit down restaraunt this time, just before noon. The plan was to come out just in time for the Celebrate Street Party. So we decided to eat at the Plaza restaurant. Nice home-cooking kind of food...lots of good sandwiches and salads.
And while we were there, the mayor of Main Street USA came in for a visit...
Leaving Main Street we opted for another Photo Pass picture...
And sure enough, just as we were headed to the center courtyard in front of the castle, the Celebrate It, Street Party was about to start, so we were able to catch that. This is a little different from a parade, in that the characters come down off the floats to dance with the kids in the street (hence the name, "street party"). Because, I guess, they do them so often, these aren't nearly as crowded as other parades. Brenna thought she wanted to dance, buy shy'ed away at the last minute. She loved the characters, but got to where the crowds of people bumping into her and such bothered her. Brooke however, loved dancing with everyone! (did they switch kids on me there??? strange....)
Here's a short video of some of the dancing...
Oh, and this is also the 'parade' that the song attached, my girls LOVE and have asked me to download since being home. So we have not stopped listening to Pumpin Up the Party Now. Even Brad likes it....I think because it is attached to the memory of Disney (we also heard it at DisneyLand during the same street party). :)
When that was over, the girls wanted to ride the carousel again. Always fun. I think we rode about 3 cycles through. As long as there is no wait (and there wasn't), they don't make you get off in between.
Both the girls had wanted to check out the Bippity Boppity Boutique. So we walked around and all. They had zero interest in getting all dressed up and hair done and such (thankfully! that is expensive!!!). Of course, they loved trying on stuff and picking out things there. :)
As we were leaving there, we saw Peter Pan playing hopscotch. We tried to catch him, but we just missed him as he had a show to go to I think. Instead, the girls tried their own hand at the hopscotch that was drawn on the ground (near the castle)...
From there, we did walk around Frontierland and Adventureland some more. We got one of the pineapple floats they sell there that I had been eyeing. Soooo good. But we preferred the swirl with orange (if you go). ;) We drank it down so fast, this was the best picture I got of it. But they were yummy! And something I hadn't seen anywhere else!
We also tried to get Brenna a painted umbrella (with her name)...mainly because Brooke has one from when she was a toddler (before Brenna) and its hard to find Brenna's name on stuff. However, when we came back to pick it up, we had to ask for a refund...the painting on it was not good and you could barely make out her name. They could've done another one for us, but it would've been another hour wait (what?!?! :O), so we just got our money back since we were about to head out. I was shocked at this customer service of this particular booth. You would think if someone (who had prepaid) wasn't happy with the product, they would immediately re-do it. Not make you wait another hour?! Anyway.... sigh. Not this time. :(
People were starting to line up for the 3pm parade and we were actually so glad to not be a part of that again since we had already seen it. And I will stop here and mention.... I'm not sure if DisneyWorld ALWAYS has these people there or if there was something special going on. Something in town or whatever. But it seemed like EVERYWHERE were these Brazilian (or the like) soccer teams. Huge amounts of people all wearing the same shirts, all speaking another language, etc. They showed off their flags while they walked. They liked to chant too. As in, chanting and cheers. All. The. Time. It got rather annoying. I would like to forget about them, however, Brad wanted me to take a picture to burn it into my memory. Ugh. So here is just a small sampling of these soccer players getting ready for the parade...as we were leaving the park. Blech. So tired of them still. (and this is not, by any means, all of their group...probably only half of this particular group saving seats for the other half. And there were these big groups everywhere!)
We did stop to take our final ever Photo Pass pictures at DisneyWorld before we got out....
First in front of the castle...
And this might be my favorite Photo Pass picture of our whole trip...
Then in front of the entrance again...
We then realized we needed to hurry back. We rode the monorail back rather quickly.
Because, did you notice anything in the background of the above picture? As we were riding the monorail, these clouds were coming in...(and no, not photoshopped at all. It was THAT scary looking!)...
Yea. We timed that just perfect, right???
Or so we thought. We did pretty good, but the stupid shuttle dropped us off too far away from our car (we should've just walked I guess) so we ended up having to walk back towards the gates and when we were only 8-10 cars away, the downpour started. I mean, DOWNPOUR! Brenna started screaming b/c the stroller was soaked.. everything. We high tailed it as fast we could, protecting the camera of course, and got in our car to go back to the hotel.
It was shocking to me, as we were getting ON the monorail leaving, people were also getting OFF going into the park...with these clouds looming overhead. I dunno. That might've made me steer clear of the park for a little while, at least till it passed.
However, we did essentially really luck out. Because, it then rained from when we left (which was probably 3:00-3:30) all the way till 6pm. And the whole time was solid downpour. I don't know how the people that were still there at the park managed. I was prepared for a little rain shower (we brought ponchos just in case), but this was a monsoon for 3 solid hours! With bad lightening too. So we did really luck out on that one. Not to mention, while everyone always says it rains in Florida at least once in the afternoon nearly every day, this was the first day of whole entire trip, that we had even seen a drop! We went back to the hotel, changed the girls out of their wet clothes and let them nap in a bed this time! :)
When they woke up, it was still wet and icky, but not so bad and had stopped raining for the most part, so we headed to DownTown Disney for dinner and shopping.
We ate at Planet Hollywood. They originally told us a 40 minute wait, which I wasn't happy about. But called our name within 15 minutes. So it wasn't bad.
The food was good. Brenna loved how they did the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with 3 pieces of bread, instead of two...
I had fajitas (had started to crave some Mexican food by this point), which I thought was hilarious that they served with a bottle of tabasco sauce on the side. Haha!
And Brad had this gigantic hamburger...
From there, we headed to the World of Disney store, but I snapped this picture of the girls walking and I love it (almost as much as my all time favorite Disney picture)...
When we entered the Disney store, the girls were asked if they would like to be sprinkled with pixie dust. Ha. Do you even have to ASK?!
We picked out several souvenirs, spent too much money, and called it a night. We said 'goodbye' to DisneyWorld and headed to our hotel for the night as the rain started again.
Our vacation wasn't quite over, yet, though. We just happened to be scheduled to leave Florida when the last Atlantis shuttle was taking off, so we had now planned to detour that way to catch that!
And because this will be my last "Disney" related post, here's a picture of our completed picture frame souvenir mattes - with the signatures of all the characters. I think it turned out nicely. Much better than an autograph book in my opinion. :)
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