Day 6: Part 3
After Illuminations, I asked Matt what he wanted to do, and he took my hand and said, "let's get to the monorails and go use our pass!" I asked him if he wanted anything else at WS, since he had been talking about getting one more drink or some ice cream, and he said, "honestly, I can't handle it right now. Let's just plan to get a treat at the Magic Kingdom." So off we went! As with every other WDW Transportation experience of the trip, we didn't have to wait long at all, maybe five minutes, before the monorail pulled around and made its circle past Epcot. We had similar luck when we got to the TTC, and before we knew it, we were pulling through the Contemporary. As we got close to the resort, Matt commented on how we should have timed our monorail ride a little better so we could have watched Wishes from in the sky lol. When we pulled out of the Contemporary, we got stalled for a minute because the driver had to let another monorail leave the station. I looked up, and there were Fireworks going on! Not in the MK, but I'm guessing they were the HS fireworks for SWW, or maybe Fantasmic. Since it was about 9:45.
That, my friends, was my first clue that we had been slipped an extra dose of pixie dust.
We got off the monorail, left Matt's mom's horse with the gift shop at the lockers (they charge the same as a locker fee if you want to leave something with them that won't fit in a locker), and found ourselves weaving through the gridlock that is guests watching Wishes. Since we had seen it the night before, we backed out of Main Street and into Tomorrowland, where the congestion was non-existant. We took the side street just over the bridge to get back into FL, and made it to 7DMT in no time at all, considering where we were.
By 10:15, we were showing our pass to the CM's at the queue entry, and they were waiving us on through.
By 10:20, we were at the loading station, and I found myself asking the CM if we could request to sit in the back, since I had heard that was where you could really feel the swinging. She smiled, said, "of course! Just wait right over here for a minute" and kept the line moving.
By 10:25, we were getting on the ride. Matt was so funny. His comments were, "okay, baby; you've heard about the mine train. You've read about the mine train. You've watched videos about the mine train. You've made me watch videos about the mine train. And now, you're about to ride... the mine train! What are you going to do now?!?"
My response: "I'm going to Disney World... oh wait!"
So we got on the ride, and I felt a pang of nervousness as I watched Matt pull the u-bar down on his legs; I was remembering the thread where another poster had said that the ride was not for bigger people, and Matt, while not obese anymore, is far from small. I didn't ask him anything, though, because I didn't want to taint his views of the ride any more than I already had... and all he said as he pulled it down was "hmm... kinda snug." But he was clearly not in pain or anything, so away we went!
From the back seat, it felt every bit as intense as BTMRR. The swinging effect was really cool! I do wish it had been longer, maybe one more drop, but the show scene was mesmerizing. I especially loved Dopey with the gems in his eyes and Sleepy napping on a pile of gems. Too funny!
I did get one picture:
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The cottage was so pretty at night
When we got off out of the exit, I asked Matt if he wanted to do anything else. He said the only things he cared about were BTMRR, Splash, and Space. I checked the MDE app, and guess what? Splash had a 15 minute wait, BTMRR had a 20 minute wait, and Space was still at 45 minutes, but it was just now 10:45, and I remembered reading somewhere on here that Space is pretty much walk on in the last 30 minutes of park hours most days. With that, we picked up one more LeFew's Brew and made our way to Frontierland.
Splash was first, since it had the lowest posted wait time.
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Yep. Matt did his thumbs up.
Time to dry off, and what better way to do that than whipping around BTMRR? The posted time was still 20 minutes, but it was really more like 10 or 15. We got the very front seat again, and this made me happy. Like I said, there's just something about being in that front row on that particular ride that really makes the whole thing different somehow. Even if the dips aren't as intense that way, the ride feels more immersive somehow when it looks like it's just your and the front of the train.
We got off BTMRR at 11:15, and Matt decided he wanted one last Dole Whip, but orange this time, since we had already tried and loved the pineapple. We maneuvered back past the lake around Tom Sawyer's Island (the parade was going on), up through FL, and back down to Sleepy Hollow just in time to catch the end of the parade and cross the street into Adventureland... luckily Matt had remembered that Aloha Isle was at that very entrance to Adventureland! We got out orange Dole Whip (decided we liked the pineapple better, but that's fine... both were good, and now we know!) and made our way over to Space Mountain.
We got to Space Mountain at 11:45, and the posted time was ten minutes. Am I good or what?
We rode Space, got back outside at 11:58, and noticed the queue was still open. I grabbed Matt's hand and stared running towards the entrance, telling him we should ride again.
Sure enough, we made it at 11:59.
Probably one of my favorite memories of that night was when we got on the ride and were waiting for the CM to clear us after making sure our t-bars were secure. Matt looked at him and said, "yeah man, we're going to Space!" He smiled and said, "well, kind of, lol" and I said, "twice! In ten minutes!" His eyes got really big at that point, and he busted out laughing and said, "wow, that's some kind of impressive record!" I then told him this was our last night in the parks, and he grinned even bigger then and said that he was glad he could be a part of our last ride of the trip lol. How awesome is that?
Last ride picture of the trip:
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Okay. We both did the thumbs up on this one lol.
We got one last picture in front of the castle before we left. I love the castle at night!
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So, yes, in our last three hours of park time, we:
-Watched Illuminations
-Rode the monorail
-Rode 7dmt
-Enjoyed a LeFew's Brew
-Rode Splash
-Rode BTMRR
-Had a Dole Whip
-Rode Space twice!!!
Not bad, huh?
But, there was still more magic to come!
When we got out to the bus area (after picking up the horse, of course), a CM gave us the wrong number for our spot to go to. It had been number 30 the other night, but this guy said 6. Matt and I looked at each other and shrugged, but we went to number 6 as instructed. There was one other family there, and they were staying at AoA. I figured maybe we were sharing a bus since it was so late, or worse case scenario we could walk across the bridge. No big deal. At least we were headed in the right direction.
When the bus pulled up, I asked the driver if this was the right bus for the Pop. He said no, that this was the bus for Animal Kingdom, but that he would take us to the Pop if we didn't mind riding over to AK first. So we got on the bus (better than walking back over to the other bus stop!), and rode around WDW.
So, not only did we ge to do 8 important things in 3 hours, but we pretty much had our own private ride back to the hotel lol.
We made it back to the hotel by one, crashed in bed, and slept like rocks.
Bonus material from DTD (stopped there on our way out the next day) to come
