Florida
- Day 20
Wednesday 12th November 2025
Participants: Tam, Kev, India, Georgia and Charlie
We
set an alarm for 6.30 am today as we're determined to do early
morning entry at the Magic Kingdom. If you're staying onsite you
get to start riding the attractions 30 minutes before off site
guests.
A quick breakfast and we're out of the room at 7.45 am to walk to
the bus stop. Unfortunately the next bus to MK is at 7.50 am.
This would rather negate the benefit of arriving early, so we
call an Uber instead. I then make a stupid rookie mistake of
putting the Magic Kingdom as the destination and the taxi drops
us off at the Transportation and Ticket Centre. We should have
requested a drop off at The Contemporary and walked from there.
You'd think after all these visits I would have remembered that.
Never mind. The monorail isn't running for some reason, so we
have to take the boat across. It's a cool morning, but the sun is
out so it's a pleasant journey.
We enter the Magic Kingdom and walk straight round to Seven Dwarves Mine Train along with half the people on the planet it seems as the queue stretches right around to The Little Mermaid ride. At 8.25 am it starts moving and it really doesn't take that long from then on. The ride is fun and we are off at 9.00 am.
The plan is then to do Peter Pan, but the wait is 75 minutes, so we go to The Haunted Mansion instead, which is a walk on.
Tam seems to be pondering something serious.
... whereas I seem to be wondering what's for lunch.
We decide on Pirates next, but as we walk past Tiana's Bayou it's posted as 5 minutes, so me and India ride. It seems that once per holiday is enough for Tam.
India trying for the 'coolest pose of the day' award. The lady in front has gone for 'no publicity'.
Pirates is next with less than a 15 minute wait and we have now covered all the rides we want to do.
Who's the simple old man in the front row?
Tam is itching to try the beignets from the little stall, so she uses mobile ordering. This doesn't seem to work too well as it's a scrum around the pick up point and it's every man for himself. She eventually picks them up and we share them between the 3 of us, which is just as well as Tam also wants to eat at Pecos Bills.
A quick walk around the Swiss Family Treehouse and it's into Bills where Tam and I split a burger and pulled pork roll. It might seem a little early to be eating lunch as it's only 11.15 am, but we have a table booked at Toledo tonight as so want make sure we're hungry for that.
After the food we slowly walk down Main Street and say our farewells to the Magic Kingdom for another trip. It's been interesting to see it decked out for Christmas, but I could do without the non-stop Christmas music when we haven't even reached the middle of November. There's no gap between Halloween and Christmas, it changes from one into other overnight. Perhaps they could extend it either further and merge the two. Hallochristmas. I'm sure if they thought there was money in it the'd do it.
We
get the bus back to The Boardwalk at midday where we get our
swimming things on and go to the quiet pool. It's still only 18
degrees C but with a beautiful blue sky and no breeze it's plenty
warm enough. For once the quiet pool lives up to its name with
just a handful of people sitting around. I guess it's been so
cold that people are taking advnatage of the perfect park touring
weather.
We spend the best part of 3 hours relaxing in the warm sunshine.
The wildlife up shows up to pay its part as we watch a large
white heron fly in and walk right in front of Tam's sunbed to
catch bugs in one of the plant beds. A little later India chases
a cheeky squirrel who is stealing a plastic container full of
nuts from between sunbeds of family enjoying the pool. There are
signs on the tables saying 'Please do not feed the wildlife'.
They might as well add 'because they can feed themselves'.
Back to the room to shower and we leave at 4.15 pm and walk along the river to Disney's Hollwood Studios in the lovely sunshine. Here we hop onto a bus to Coronado Springs and walk through Gran Destino Tower, which has a very nice lobby and bar. I can't believe this place is a moderate resort.
We go the 3 Bridges Bar and sit at the bar and enjoy a beer as the sun sets behind us. I have seen Jai Alai beer on tap and try one of those. It's quite a nice lager, but Tam points out that it's 7.5%!
Now that's an unusual thing ... a selfie that actually worked reasonably well.
We all enjoyed the 3 Bridges Bar very much. It's definitely a place we'll visit again in the future.
Back to Gran Destino Tower where we go up to the Dahlia Lounge.
We sit outside on the balcony where there are great views. They have a make your own old fashioned, so India and I have those. This lounge is much more adult oriented than many others, I guess it's because it's a big convention resort.
Across to Toledo at 7.00 pm and are given a nice table by the window. India and I have the steak, which is very nice as there's not too much sauce and not blackened. Sometimes you just want a nice plain steak. Tam has the lamb - there's loads of it, but it's not as 'lamby' as we're used to at home. India offers to pay for the meal as a thank you for the stay at the Boardwalk.
I did enjoy Toledo, but I think that I prefer Topolino's Terrace at The Riviera more.
The 'unlamby' lamb.
We get an Uber back to The Boardwalk with a very chatty driver. We head to the Belle Vue Lounge and I have a Smoked Turkey, which we have enjoyed on previous trips. Tam disappears off to bed, so Ind and I have another beer, which takes a while to get as it's very busy with many conventioners. We eventually retire to bed at midnight.