Day 4 in the parks. Holy crap! Time is flying!
So as some of you have pointed out, one of the things we loved about this trip is how a laid back approach can still yield a ton of stuff getting done. This is my primary resistance to FastPass+ at WDW and why we have not been back to those parks since it's inception. How we've approached this trip is how we approached our previous big trips to WDW. I do a bunch of research to understand what our options are. I keep the family in the loop on (most of) my ideas. We have a general idea on which parks we may hit each day, but that's subject to change. About the only thing that ties us down to being in a place at a specific time is a dining reservation.
I understand from some folks that the approach in WDW with FP+ is just different and if you embrace it, it's no so bad. I just can't wrap my head around planning what day I'm going to be in what park, 6 months in advance. This day in the parks is a case and point. While I totally understand this is a pretty extenuating circumstance, my wife was looking to find a job closer to home during this vacation. We ended leaving town a little late to accommodate a last minute interview and she ended up scheduling two phone interviews on our Day 4 in the parks, Thursday morning. She was stressing out about losing interview opportunities and I told her not to stress, schedule the interviews and we'll work around it. As I understand FP+, depending on what we had planned, we could have been screwed had this trip been to WDW. At DLR, we went with the flow and still had a great day.
Moving on... So my wife had two interviews to start our day. One at 7am, California time and one at 10am, California time. With that in mind, our plan for the morning was to have breakfast together, then leave my wife to prep and do her first interview. We didn't want her to miss out on the fun stuff, so the rest of us made our way to Disneyland where we had plans to do some shopping. Some of the "shopping" included the boys doing the build your own light sabers. Yes, we're star wars geeks and yes, we had fun.
My wife met us just as we were finishing up our toy building/shopping. We continued on down to Main Street for more shopping and browsing. Then moved over to California Adventure. We wanted to catch another session at the Animation Academy and see what the list of characters they were doing would look, but we were still early, so we killed time looking at some of the art in the California Adventure shops.
Did I mention my wife loves Cinderella?
We also enjoy the various Walt and Mickey art.
And Lion King, of course.
My wife also loves Precious Moments figurines. Disney has no shortage of ways to separate you and your money.
After our art exhibition,
it was time to go to the Animation Academy. Here's a picture of the schedule they have.
And here was my attempt at the mouse in charge!
Again, I give total credit to the artists and the way they do their instruction. He ain't perfect, but I'm pretty happy with my non-artist's rendering.
After doing our drawings, my wife headed back to the hotel for her next interview and the kids and I went to Downtown Disney for some more shopping. We successfully completed most of our souvenir hunt in the World of Disney and met my wife just in time to go get in line for lunch at the Cove Bar. My wife and I got in line for a table and we were guessing (based on what I'd read) that we'd be in for a 30 minute wait for a table. With that in mind, the kids went for margaritas, so we wouldn't dehydrate in line. We had to laugh because the line went so fast and the margaritas took so long that we had our table before the kids returned. I got brain freeze a couple times trying to finish my frozen drink, so I could move on to the secret menu items.
Here are a couple of pictures from our wait in line.
Hidden Mickeys in the seats.
And here we all are in our seats.
And here's the food.
We had the sliders, the fajita quesadilla rolls and of course the lobster nachos. I have to admit, I wasn't as worked up about the nachos as I thought I would be. I'm sure I just worked them up in my head based on all the raving people do about them. Don't get me wrong, they were good, but me and my daughter's boyfriend enjoyed the sliders and quesadilla rolls a little more.
I believe this is the Magical Star Cocktail, that my wife got and liked very much.
I got the Earthquake off the secret menu. It was delicious and lived up to it's name.
I'm gonna blame the rum on why I can't remember what the kids got. I think they got the Fun Wheel off the secret menu and maybe another Earthquake? But I wouldn't bet any money I had to keep that I'm correct on that. They seem to be enjoying them either way.
Finally, a little Disney/DIS magic... I got a tap on my shoulder asking if I was Khokhonutt from the Dis Boards. 3TinksAndAnEeyore had recognized us from our posts in the June 2017 discussion thread and came over to say hi. It was fun to chat and meet her husband. My daughter kept calling me a celebrity after that. Not quite, but it was super fun to meet someone I'd been in discussions with many times on the boards.
Here we are. Live DIS people in the parks!!!
After the Cove bar, the next photo evidence I have is from a visit to the restroom (imagine that).
P.S. My wife took this, not me.
Then the kids wanted some lovey dovey pictures of their shirts that my daughter's boyfriend had made.
If you missed it in the earlier pictures, they say Beauty and Beast on the front of the shirts.
My wife wanted to draw Tigger, so we did the Animation Academy one more time. Here's a group shot we got right outside the Academy and in front of the Guardians ride.
We also got to hold Baby Groot.
We then walked down the street and more or less walked into the Frozen show. Here we are in line. I didn't get the message that we were being gangster. That's fine, I do goofy better than gangster anyway.
We walked into the cattle processing area, picked a section and were inside sitting down with what I thought were decent floor seats in less than 15 minutes. I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'd rather be lucky than good any day.
After the show we took advantage of an available PhotoPass photographer.
It's hard to see with the lighting, but here we're holding the roadsters we rode on the Luigi ride earlier this week.
Here's a close up that shows the cars better.
Hmmm, note to self, clean your nails before more hand close ups.
We got another FP for RCR. Check out the kids neckin' in the back seat.
Here is a picture of our tired feet in the middle of the courtyard between the parks.
I guess we made it back to the room one more day. Because I have photo evidence to suggest it. I'm sure we rode more rides and did more stuff than is mentioned here. I suppose if I'd carried the video camera all day, I'd have better recollection, but I'm still happy with our spur of the moment approach even if it lacks some video. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we went back to the room after we rode Grizzly River Run. I have always been the one to get soaked on the Animal Kingdom version of that ride. This time it was my wife and the lady next to her. We went back to the room after that to swap out for dry shoes (and clothes) as needed.
On the way, the kids did some more neckin'. (And I dip, you dip, we dip.)
We got FastPasses for the late WOC color show and did another ride on Soarin'. It turns out we were way over prepared for the late viewing of WOC, at least for the night we were there. We showed up an hour early and a CM said, go have fun. You can show up about 5 minutes before and you'll be fine. She was right. We wandered around a bit, showed up about 5 minutes early. It looked like there would be a crazy line, but there was not. We literally walked to an empty spot. I intentionally stayed a little higher up, in a spot pointed out in HydroGuy's WOC superthread. I just tried to look that info up and I see he may be caught up in the PhotoBucket paid hosting thing. Either way, it's called the hydrant spot in the Blue area (although I couldn't actually find the hydrant). We were right up against the rail and it was a perfect spot to see the entire show, due to the small crowd we had no issue seeing the entire show and we were far enough back that we hardly had anyone around us.
This showing was what I referred to earlier in this report, when we did the dessert party. I think the dessert party viewing is very good. But if I'm being honest, there's a bit of the bottom projections and lake that you miss from that location. It could be the increased crowd, it could be the location, I'm not sure. But note in this picture how we can see the individual fountains at the water level in this picture.
World of Color was spectacular again. I can't say enough how much we all enjoyed this show.
So ends another fantastic day in the parks. I don't have as much ride information, but I'm sure there's other stuff we did. I'm pretty sure by this day we had also discovered the Bakery Tour. At one point my daughter's boyfriend and I looped through the tour for the free bread a couple of times, just to see if they noticed or cared. After that we started stopping through every time we were in that area for a little warm sour dough snack. I feel like there's so much I've missed, but I'll try to wrack my brain before our next installment. I can no more believe we're almost to the end of our trip again than I could on this evening as we headed back to the hotel. It's been good, though and again the beds were a welcome sight.
Join us again next time as we tackle the LAST DAY IN THE PARKS... (Booo...)