The morning following my birthday, we slept in. We'd definitely stayed out past our bedtime! After a leisurely waking and getting ready, we were off to Fantasia Gardens to play some mini golf. We've played both courses on previous trips, and this time chose the Gardens course. After a heated competition, I am pleased to report that for only the second time ever, I WON! I savored my fabulous victory all through lunch at Beaches & Cream at the Beach Club Resort. After lunch, the busy (and hot!) week-so-far caught up with us and we made our way back to the resort for some nap time before our dinner reservation that night.
After a refreshing nap and shower/change of clothes, we were off to our dinner at Chef Mickey's! I'm not a big fan of buffets, but the food was surprisingly good. We were seated in a great location and all of the characters came around fairly quickly. I was also surprised by our server bringing me a special birthday cupcake! After dinner, we grabbed the monorail from the Contemporary over to the Magic Kingdom for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party. We enjoy these specially-ticketed events, and had a fun evening of riding our favorite rides at the Magic Kingdom, people-watching for the costumes people were wearing, and checking out the special fireworks and parade.
Even with a nap, we crashed immediately following the party, since The Husband had an early morning tee time at Lake Buena Vista, and I had a mid-morning pedicure scheduled at the Saratoga Springs Spa. My pedicurist, Maria, was awesome - cheery and sweet and easy to chat with. I chose Essie's Scarlett O'Hara as my color and was very pleased with the results. After the pedi was completed, I headed back to our room to await The Husband's text so we could meet up at The Turf Club for lunch. We had a nice lunch there before heading off to Blizzard Beach for our first trip to one of WDW's water parks! We spent a few hours on the slides and lazy river before heading back to our room to pack what we could for our departures the following day. Once we completed that task, we decided on the Magic Kingdom for some casual touring and making a second attempt at the Wishes fireworks. Mission completion! We actually watched from a new-to-us vantage point behind the castle in Fantasyland this time. I should note that the weather on this day was absolutely gorgeous; cool in the morning, in the 60s, warming to the low 80s during the day. Bliss.
The weather the next morning was equally gorgeous, which made it slightly easier to bear packing up the rest of our stuff, dropping our checked luggage off to be checked through to the airline, packing everything else in the car, then heading off to Disney Hollywood Studios. Sadly, we failed at getting either a reasonable stand-by line or a reasonably-timed Fast Pass for Toy Story Mania, so we did not get to ride again. We were successful, however, in getting photos with Sorcerer Mickey and the cast of Up! We enjoyed our traditional last-day lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater, our people-watching with a frozen Coke, a final tour of the shops for any last-minute souvenirs, and then another round of mini golf over at Winter Summerland. Unfortunately, there was not another fabulous victory for me to savor, but it was fun to play the Winter course on this trip.
After a quick change in the bathroom (we knew it would be much cooler in MKE upon our return), we headed off to the airport. Or tried. Oops. But we were able to right ourselves without too much difficulty and get on the correct highway to return to the airport. The flight back was uneventful and we arrived in a chilly rain.
All in all, a fantastic trip. I'm so glad we got to do some new-to-us stuff on this trip, even though we missed some of our favorites as a result (Soarin', It's Tough to be a Bug). I am already looking forward to our next trip, whenever that may be!
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