Tuesday, August 13

Normally departure days depress the hell out of me. This one….not as much. I think between the heat and the MyMagic+ test stresses, this vacation was a bit more taxing than we would have liked. We missed the cat, we missed cooler, drier weather, and we knew we’d have a trip coming up in a few months. The pain was tempered.

Since our flight home wasn’t until 7:30, we didn’t rush ourselves out of the Poly. In fact, we got up late, did some packing, and moseyed over to Cap’n Cooks for some breakfast. When in Rome, you eat this:

A la carte Tonga Toast.

Back to the room to pack up. I noticed we hadn’t had a hotel receipt left on our door, so I called the front desk and found out we hadn’t actually been checked out, in spite of being signed up for express check-out. I spent a few hundred minutes on hold. In the meantime, bell services arrived, and once I was off the phone we took a golf cart ride with our bags to the Great Ceremonial House. Talk about a service worth a generous tip – you couldn’t pay me to drag luggage in the August heat across the Poly grounds.

Our bags safely checked in for our flight home, we stored our carry-ons with bell services and headed to the monorail. For the billionth time this trip, we were off to the Magic Kingdom. We didn’t arrive until almost 11:30, and we had a Plaza lunch reservation at 12:20, so we really only had time for a train ride to Frontierland to use our FP+ for on Big Thunder.

It looks nice, but the heat could’ve burned your eyebrows off.

I know – you’re jealous of my skills.

Any good feelings of sleeping in were erased by bad feelings of dying in the midday Florida sun. Good lord it was hot and humid. We walked at a snail’s pace back to Main Street, where we checked in at 12:15pm for our 12:20pm reservation at the Plaza. And then proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait some more. Such that one of the Plaza hostesses – not generally among the friendliest of people – was even apologetic about it. We watched several groups of four or more get seated, all of whom checked in after we did. It appeared there were just no two-top tables available. There was no shade to wait in. I was seriously feeling nauseated and a little lightheaded. It was bad. I was cranky. It was not good. It was bad.

Getting the picture, yes?

Finally – I think it was around 12:50? – we were seated for lunch. For the next hour – and to the alarm of our server – CP and I proceeded to double fist glasses of water and Diet Coke. Running a marathon might be nothing compared to waiting for a lunch reservation at the Magic Kingdom.

Our lunch took approximately six hours, mostly because our server was so monopolized by the most high-maintenance family I have ever encountered in a restaurant. Everyone needed three different drinks. Every entree had a different modification. Someone had a food allergy. Silverware dropped on the floor multiple times. The check had to be divided three ways. And on and on. If I wasn’t so happy to be sitting in an ice-cold restaurant, I would have been really annoyed: we were positively neglected by comparison.

As usual, though, lunch was quite tasty, and of course concluded with this:

Once we felt no longer in danger of collapsing, we departed the Plaza with a small dilemma on our hands: we had no intention of hanging around the MK until 4:30 in order to use our remaining three FP+s, but we didn’t know what else to do given midday crowds.

Celebrating something: dreams? Magic? Wishes?

We backtracked over to Haunted Mansion thinking it would be a safe bet, but the line was 35 minutes, and I’d have to be stupid to wait in that.  So we kept walking around kind of like vagabonds, with no hotel room to call our own and no set plans for our afternoon. Eventually we ended up at Big Top Souvenirs, which looked like something of a homeless shelter, what with people splayed on the floor soaking in the air conditioning.

All we need are hot showers and some hearty meals.

We took the back way into Tomorrowland, and found much the same thing. People everywhere, laying on benches, the ground, the giant water-covered ball near the DVC kiosk. We thought about jumping on the TTA, but even that had a crazy line. No way. We were done. As much as we love the Magic Kingdom, we get to it enough that there was just no good reason to subject ourselves to continued heat and crowds. So, what next?

We figured we’d kill a little time resort hopping, so we headed to the monorail and stayed on until the Grand Floridian. Although I have bucket list dreams of staying at all the Deluxes, the Grand Floridian doesn’t do it for me. I do, however, quite like the looks of the GF DVC units, so maybe someday we’ll find a way to stay there. For now, though, we were content to wander around in the air conditioning.

A pleasant reprieve.

Snore.

Saw these at the GF. They are still haunting my dreams.

Naturally, our next completely illogical stop was Starbucks on Main Street. Why we didn’t get that before leaving, I don’t know, but hey…I’ve made no secrets about how we are terrible park tourers. Valencia Refreshers in hand, we walked next to the Contemporary, another incredibly stupid decision considering how hot and humid it was. That may explain why we found ourselves sprawled out on a Contemporary sofa for 45 minutes. It was that hot.

Just imagine gazing at this for 45 minutes and you’ll know exactly how much fun we had at the Contemporary.

And that was that. We still had a little time to kill before heading to the airport, but no really good idea of what to do with it. So off we went to MCO, feeling a little sad as we left Disney property. But we knew we’d be back.

Much as our trip began, it ended with some travel drama. MCO is always a nightmare, and even though we had tickets on jetBlue that afforded us access to the expedited security line, it was still a slow process to get through the screening area. It would help if jackasses would actually empty their pockets and/or not mouth off to the TSA, but that’s just what happened to slow down the line significantly. Nice.

But the real trouble came when we arrived at the gate. Although jetBlue has an entire wing of the terminal to itself, it also has a couple random gates in other places. Our flight left from the latter, in a wing of the terminal reserved for mostly international arrivals and departures. So, of course, the flight next to us was going to Brazil. Cue chanting and clapping. The bigger problem, however, was that our flight was delayed, since our plane had just involved in a bird strike and mechanics were assessing the safety of the engines. GREAT. That is *just* what a nervous flier wants to hear before getting on a plane.

Obviously since I’m sitting at home writing this a month later, things were fine. And given how the rest of our trip went, ending it with some travel drama was fitting. It didn’t stop there, however: after being home for a couple days, I realized our rental car company overcharged us by TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS. And that Disney had put some random credits on my debit card, even though I didn’t recall ever giving Disney my debit card number. In all, it was a bizarre trip, top to bottom.

Well. In writing this, I realize this last day was very boring, even for me – and I was there! Congratulations on making it through.

Up next: Nothing for now. In a few months, our third annual Christmas trip to WDW, and our first stay at Disney’s Vero Beach Resort.