Tales from A December to Remember--Day11--Sunday, December 11, 2011

I woke up Sunday morning feeling a bit run down from the late night and the cough. I didn’t press myself to get up and out for park opening as I knew it was going to be a late night, as I was planning on going to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. 
 

I arrived at the Magic Kingdom and stopped at the Main Street Bakery to get a cinnamon roll for breakfast. I always have to get at least one cinnamon roll at the bakery on my trips--they are so delicious. Skippy met me in the bakery.

After I finished my cinnamon roll, we made our way over to the Haunted Mansion. We also went for rides on it’s a small world, Peter Pan, Thunder Mountain, and Splash Mountain. By this point, I was feeling pretty run down, and could barely speak. Even though I was riding some of my favorite attractions, I wasn’t really having fun, so I decided it was time to head out of the park. I said goodbye to Skippy, and took the train to Main Street. I made a quick stop at the Emporium, and headed out of the park.

I had a book that I needed to drop off to someone in Epcot at about 1:00. I was going to run back to the Boardwalk and rest for a while first, but I realized it made more sense to go to Epcot first. I took the monorail to the Ticket and Transportation Center, and then transferred to the Epcot monorail. I rode on the monorail with an adorable two-year-old named Leo and his family. Leo was getting a little antsy, so I showed him the Magic Kingdom park map. He was so adorable with it. He was tracing the pathways with his fingers like he knew what he was doing. We were all getting a big laugh out of it.

Once through the gates of Epcot, I went to the Lotus Blossom Café in China to grab some lunch. I ordered the Orange Chicken, which was served with white rice. The chicken was excellent. It was large chunks of white meat chicken in a delicious slightly spicy sauce.

After lunch, I walked over to the old Odyssey restaurant to drop of the book, and then went to meet Kate and Diane for a quick ride on Soarin’ using a be our guest pass that I had that was good for three people.

After saying goodbye to Kate and Diane, I started to walk out to the International Gateway. I kept on running into people I know. I saw some friends watching Off Kilter, so I decided to wait until the end of the show so I could say goodbye to them. While I was watching, Krista and Todd came over to me. After the show, I said goodbye to my friends Debbie and her mom, and Nancy (NancyIL).

I finally made my way back to the Boardwalk and had a couple of hours to rest and pack before heading out again to meet some of my friends for dinner at Chef Mickey’s. The short rest definitely perked me up quite a bit. I took a bus to the Magic Kingdom, and then walked to the Contemporary, where I met Krista, Todd, John, Kathy, Masayo, Lori, and Meghan. Skippy was running a bit late, but I checked in for our reservation and we were seated within a few minutes, just as Skippy was getting off the monorail.

The character interaction at Chef Mickey’s was fantastic, as most of the tables around us were empty in the hour we were at the restaurant. Each character stopped by our table at least once, most of them twice. We got a lot of pictures, including a couple of group shots.

The food at Chef Mickey’s was your typical buffet fare--edible but not outstanding. I started off with a salad and some tasty chicken soup. On my second trip to the buffet, I got a mish mash of stuff, including carved prime rib, Mickey raviolis, and potatoes. For dessert, I tried the Mickey domes, bread pudding, and ice cream. Overall, the meal was good, but it was the company and the characters made the meal fantastic.

At one point during dinner, I went to the ladies room in what was one of the most unmagical places I’ve ever visited on Disney property. You had to walk down a flight of industrial style stairs to a very unimpressive ladies room.

After dinner, Kathy, Skippy, and I said goodbye to the others and took the monorail to the Magic Kingdom for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. John had given Kathy a couple of nips of rum from Sue (a gift in remembrance of the day that Kathy brought a nip of alcohol into the Magic Kingdom a few years back). Kathy had me smuggle the rum into the Magic Kingdom in my cargo capris!

It was starting to rain while we were on our way, so we headed t a few of the indoor attractions, starting with Pirates of the Caribbean. We followed that with trips to the Haunted Mansion (so Kathy could see the new ride queue), Mickey’s Philharmagic, and Snow White (which Skippy had never ridden).

We then made our way to the front of the castle to see the Magic, the Memories, and You show, which Kathy and Skippy had never seen before. I found us a decent spot on the lower side of the hub right behind a couple of scooters (I always look for scooters, wheelchairs, or strollers to stand behind for this show and the fireworks. They both really seemed to enjoy the show. 

We stayed put for the Holiday Wishes show. With the cloud cover that night, the smoke never really dissipated, so it looked like there was smoke pouring out of the castle.

After the fireworks, we went for a ride on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. We then headed to Fronteirland to find a spot to watch the Christmas parade from. We originally chose a spot on the porch at the Diamond Horseshoe (a spot we have watched the parade from many times before), but they had a dance party going on inside, and the doors were open so all’s we could hear was loud music. We wound up moving up the street a bit and finding a spot behind a bunch of people who were sitting on the ground. While we were watching the parade, some of the Country Bears came out and were dancing with the guests.

After the parade, we decided to start heading out. Kathy and I stopped to get some cookies and cocoa at the Crystal Palace, and wound up sitting an gabbing for a bit. Skippy was pretty beat, so he wound up leaving

Kathy and I then did some shopping on our way towards the front gate. We asked a nice guy to take a picture of us with the castle in the background, and he insisted on taking one of us with the tree behind us as well.

After saying goodbye to Kathy, I made my way to the Boardwalk bus stop. I was the last passenger to get on the very crowded bus, and we were soon on our way to the Boardwalk--or so I thought. The driver was having some trouble with the bus, and we wound up riding through the ticket and transportation center and stopping so he could adjust something. We then made our way towards the Boardwalk, and he called into the dispatcher about the issue with the bus. The dispatcher told him to continue heading to the Boardwalk.

When we got to the Epcot resort area, the bus driver decided to change the order of the stops on the bus, claiming that everyone would get to their resorts quicker that way. The order normally goes Boardwalk, Swan, Dolphin, but this time, he decided to go Swan, Dolphin, Boardwalk. Which was great if you were heading to the Swan, but not so good for the majority of the people who were heading to the Boardwalk. It took an extra ten minutes for him to get to the Boardwalk! None of us Boardwalk people were happy with him for that.

I made my way up to my room and fell into bed, exhausted from my very busy day and my cough.