Trip Report Celebrate We Will (live-ish)

It's a Brifraz Trip Report! As if you need any other reason to celebrate than travelling to WDW with us, we've got a couple big deals around here. Our daughter just graduated from college!! She survived 4 years at an Ivy League school and has come out graduating with two degrees (engineering and music) and graduated with honors. There can't be more, can there? Yup, indeed there is. Last week was my last day as a full time high school teacher. I just retired from teaching music in public schools after 31 years!! That's got to be enough, right? Well, I hope so because that's all we've got. And we are definitely ready to celebrate (in fact, we may have started celebrating this past weekend as Father's Day and college Graduation coincided).
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A college graduation trip to WDW has long been in the plans for us. After our daughter did her summer CP last year, we weren't sure if it was going to survive - 3 months of parking cars at Epcot certainly could've soured her on the idea. But, she was brave and strong and definitely still wanted a graduation trip. Some time over the past few months, talk of adding her boyfriend into the mix started, so he will be joining us for most of the adventure. And then, in March, I finally decided to hang up the old baton (I don't actually use a baton when I conduct, but the premise is accurate) and stop spending 6 hours a day standing in front of 40+ kids at a time trying to get them to make music. So, we've got a lot to celebrate. And, celebrate we will (because life is short and sweet for certain). In fact, there are more 'splurges' in this trip than any other, because these are big things that only happen once. So, we are celebrating them with things we definitely can only afford to do once!

What do the next 10ish days have in store for you, intrepid reader? Well, here's the teaser... Epic Universe, a crazy double Early Entry morning, Amorette's Cake decorating, Atlantic Dance Hall (yes, it really is still open), Trader Sam's (assuming we can get in), a Monorail Crawl, and the biggest adventure of them all... a VIP tour.

We also will be doing quite a bit of our touring with another family that we are friends with from up here at home and the aforementioned boyfriend will be joining for 7 of our 9 days of fun. It's going to be a great time, but first we will of course have to deal with the 15 hour drive coming up this Thursday starting at about 4am. See you later, friends.
 

brifraz

Marching along...
Premium Member
Original Poster
Alrighty then! I’m here avoiding getting sick
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while they see how fast they can get a teacup to spin, so it’s catch up time!

After our break yesterday, we headed back into Epcot. @MeffysMom and I just did Imagination while then did that plus Living with the Land and meeting Mickey and friends. As they did those other experiences we caught the monorail(s) to Poly and got in the wait list for Trader Sam’s. Estimated 2 hour wait at 4:45pm. So we wandered a bit and checked out Wailulu. Nice view!
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They met us at about 5:45pm and we got called to our table around 6:15pm. As always, incredibly fun.

First round of drinks posing in front of the first timers (well at least first time drinking).
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We also got food which I’m always impressed with the quality there. Second round was fun.
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And we all shared our Uh-Oa!
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Also met some nice folks who worked at Disney and chatted a bunch with them. Done our drinks around 8pm we headed back to Epcot so they could hit Guardians and I could wander and watch Luminous again.

I tried from UK, but as you can see the wind was against that choice.
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Also nice and quiet in the UK.
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So I wandered over to Canada for the end of the show.
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Then back to the room for some snacks and then sleep!
 

brifraz

Marching along...
Premium Member
Original Poster
Magic Kingdom day! Early morning and late night.

Stage 1 was the early morning. Didn’t quite catch the ideal bus, so we arrived at about 8:25am. The ride fanatical trio went to Space Mountain and I grabbed some deliciousness.
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Actually grabbed stuff from two locations.
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Maybe not quite a well balanced breakfast, but enjoyable. As we ate, the masses arrived.
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Next up was Buzz with about a 10 minute wait and then the Peoplemover and Carousel of Progress both with zero wait at all.
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Peoplemover is always a good photo op. After Tomorrowland stuff was when they did Teacups. Lines had started to grow exponentially so we took a nice train ride around the park to Frontierland.
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Next three posts are your opportunity to smile, reminisce, and likely shed a tear or two.
 
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brifraz

Marching along...
Premium Member
Original Poster
After that sadness, we headed back to our room for some big naps in preparation for a long night. The kids had a fancy graduation dinner at Citricos, so we drove them there and then headed off site to meet some local friends for dinner.

Highly recommend El Tenampa Mexican place. It’s a hole in the wall on 192 across from Medieval Times, but really good Mexican food at actually decent prices.

Now we are back in MK for the duration with extra hours until 1am.
 

brifraz

Marching along...
Premium Member
Original Poster
Whew! Last night was a late one. Got back to the room a bit after 1sm which meant I actually slept in past 6am, which is quite rare for me.

We had a bit under 5 hours in the park and got quite a lot done so let’s get you caught up. We got to the park at about 7:45 - the younger pair had gotten there at about 7pm and already got some pictures, changed out of fancy clothes, and visited the Tiki room. We met up and headed to short lines. Little Mermaid was first, but others had the same idea and the line jumped from 10 to 25 minutes, so we opted for Philharmagic instead.
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Had about 10 minutes before our show. Then it was over to Small World which was showing 15, but only took about 5 minutes to be on our boat.
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Toward the end of our happiest cruise, the fireworks started up. Which made for a crowded and chaotic walk to Pooh.
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The wait was maybe 5 minutes, but as soon as fireworks ended it jumped up to 30 minutes.
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Mermaid was down to 5 minutes so we scooted back that way to visit our Under the Sea friends.

Sticking with our plan of not waiting for anything, we did Country Bears - my first time seeing the new version.
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Better than I expected. Cute, more relevant to kids, and still retaining some of what made the old version classic.

It was about 10:30 by this point so getting close to regular park close. We visited Agrabah for a quick spin.
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Jungle Cruise was still showing a 45 minutes wait, but we decided to check anyway and… walke straight onto a boat. That we only shared with one other party! Nice.

We got off after 11pm and wait times were dropping, so it was Pirates time. Maybe a 5 minutes wait. Haunted Mansion was showing 20 minutes, but we definitely were in the stretching room in 10 minutes at most.
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And, while @wdwmagic may have shared the new entry area cement, I just stood on it to take a picture.
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Given our line luck so far, we headed to Mine Train which was showing a 30 minute wait. Nope. Not accurate. The wait just to get checked for hotel reservations and into the queue looked about 30 minutes so we didn’t bother with that. Instead we stuck with low waits, like the zero minutes before this.
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And then the zero minutes before helping save the universe with Buzz. And we ended our night just like we started the day with Space Mountain and maybe a 5 minute wait. And this time, I joined in the fun.
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All in all, 12 attractions including some longer ones in 5 hours with maybe 25 total minutes in lines. Nice night for sure.
 

brifraz

Marching along...
Premium Member
Original Poster
Getting all kinda live (finally).

First stop is the Steakhouse 71 lounge. The Sherbet Punch is delightfully altered with some vanilla vodka.
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The French 71 is delicious, a bit cognac forward for some.
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And the Twisted Fig is absolutely delightful and would be a way to actually get my wife to drink scotch.
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