Good morning, Florida!

Against the advice of all pundits we slept in this morning – after all, we had endured a lengthy travel day and a late check-in. We’d survive.

First on the agenda this morning was a trip to the lobby to get the park tickets we’d purchased through Undercover Tourist added to our room keys.  Then it was off to the Mara, the Animal Kingdom Lodge’s quick-service food location.  We purchased refillable mugs, made a concoction of coffee and hot chocolate (about the only way to suffer through the Nescafe that Disney sadly insists upon selling throughout WDW), and grabbed a couple muffins to eat while we got dressed.  By 9:30, it was off to the bus stop.

Hello, soul-crushing bus line!

This is the point at which we want to cue the sound of a record scratch. All feelings of first-day giddiness came to a screeching halt upon seeing the bus line. Isn’t this supposed to be the low season, I thought?  We joined the masses and felt a surge of hope when the Magic Kingdom bus pulled up, but those good feelings were quickly dashed by the line-cutters and those who legitimately had waited longer than us who then piled on and quickly filled the bus. Eventually we squeezed onto the second Magic Kingdom bus – does know one know what “move back” means? It’s really easy to tell that most people don’t use buses regularly outside of their Disney vacations – commuter etiquette was not in play this October morning.

In any case, we finally got moving and were let off outside the Magic Kingdom by 10:45 a.m. So, our first Disney morning wasn’t off to the quickest of starts, but hey, we were finally there, right?

A picture-perfect fall morning at the Magic Kingdom

After taking some pictures of the Halloween decorations on Main Street, our first stop was Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.  Even at this late hour of the morning the line was only 10 minutes, so we were on the wildest ride in the wilderness in no time. We then grabbed Fast Passes for Splash Mountain, and caught the train for a leisurely ride to Mickey’s ToonTown, an area we had totally missed on our last trip to WDW.  After a quick tour of Mickey’s house, we took the secluded path to Tomorrowland and decided to brave the 30 minute line for Space Mountain.

Wildest (?) ride in the wilderness...

This was our first time on Space Mountain since the refurbishment, and although we didn’t notice many changes, we were still pretty pleased. The darkness plus the new techno music made the ride feel like hurdling through a rave at top speed. Giggling like children, we exited and headed to the Plaza for lunch.  Two vegetarian sandwiches and a visit from the Mayor later, we headed out into the heat of the afternoon.  We browsed some stores on Main Street, taking in the bakery, the confectionary, the Emporium, and eventually the fire house, where we were asked to participate in my favorite activity – taking surveys!  This time it was a quick survey on dining experiences.

Soon after, we decided to forego our Splash Mountain Fast Passes, and we took the path to the Contemporary Resort to cool off and participate in one of our other favorite activities: browsing resort gift shops. We also took some great photos of the Grand

Walking to the Contemporary Resort

Canyon concourse (we are both huge Mary Blair fans). We wandered up to the monorail platform and took the monorail to the Polynesian, where we shopped, walked the grounds, and walked to the Transportation and Ticket Center to catch a monorail to Epcot, solely for the purpose of catching an AKL bus there. Once back at the hotel, we napped, watching some Oprah, had a snack, and got ready for….

OUR DESSERT PARTY!

I have to admit; when I called Disney to pay the $90+ bucks for us to attend the 3D “Disney’s Dessert Discovery” party as part of the Food and Wine Festival, I was a little dubious that we were going to get our money’s worth.  Sure, they offered dessert + drinks + reserved IllumiNations viewing, but I felt it was best to keep our expectations in check.

The event started at 7pm, so a little after 5pm we hopped a bus to Epcot thinking we’d get some dinner and maybe hit a couple rides before the party.  Test Track had a posted Single Rider line of 5minutes, which according to Disney Math(tm) meant that our lined turned out to be more like 25 minutes. I sat with a very nervous kid who ended up loving the ride, which was good, since I feared his family would make serious fun of him if he ended up not liking it. Afterward, CP and I joined up again and headed toward Mexico, where we were inundated with the Friday-night-at-Epcot F&W lines.  Like salmon headed upstream we finally made it to the South Africa booth, where we had decided to grab a couple samplers for dinner. Key mistake, though – we somehow thought each F&W booth had a separate line for drinks and food, so we haughtily skipped what we thought was the very long and slow drinks line to get in line and order our food. I’m sure you can see where this is going – us voluntarily getting out of the correct line, thus not being able to order and thus having no food. By this point, I’d kind of had it with my first 45 minutes of Food and Wine, so we said screw dinner! and headed straight for the dessert party.

Once checked in and adorned with our neon wristbands, we headed into the World Showplace and found ourselves at the Taj Mahal of desserts.  The very large room was set up with several dessert and beverage stations, each with a different theme – some featured chocolate, others featured fruit desserts, and others pastries and truffles and cookies.

3D dessert party...all the mediocre desserts and great alcohol you can stand!

In addition to the coffee, tea, lemonade, and water, there was stand after stand of adult beverages, each doling out as many full pours of wine, liqueurs, and cocktails as you could hope to drink in a night.

So yeah, let’s just say this was one Disney event I left with a full-on buzz.  The big winner for me that night was the Jim Bean Red Stag black cherry bourbon, which was delicious in both lemonade and hot cider, and made an excellent flambe liqueur on top of a donut+vanilla ice cream+hot fudge sundae.  The other desserts that night were good if not stellar – the hand-rolled truffles featuring cayenne and other spices were pretty spectacular- but really it was the alcohol that stole the show at this event.

After about an hour and a half stuffing ourselves silly with dessert, we followed the attendants outside to our reserved IllumiNations seating, between the two gift shops at the base of the World Showcase Lagoon.

Talk about a nice view!

Somehow we had gotten ahead of the crowd and ended up with front row seats, my giddiness dampened only slightly by having to sit cross-legged on the ground in a way I hadn’t sat since elementary school.  The view was fantastic, and when it was over I truly felt relaxed and ready for the next eight days of vacation.  We wandered out by way of Guest Relations to write a compliment card for the cast member staffing the IllumiNations seating, did some people watching, and eventually headed to the bus. The line was long but the buses tonight were plentiful, and we were soon on the 4th AKL bus and headed back to sleep.

Up next:  morning at the Animal Kingdom, a new lunch destination wins rave reviews – but can’t beat that night’s dinner – and a late night at the Magic Kingdom