2018-01-06: Heading Home from Magic Kingdom

We woke up at 7:30am this morning. Today is the day we return home. We got dressed, finished our last minute packing, and ate some leftover junk we had in the hotel room for breakfast. It was a healthy breakfast of Mickey cupcakes, turtle brownies, and cookies. We left the hotel room around 8:30am and dropped our luggage off at the Bell Services desk in the lobby. We weren’t scheduled to be on the bus to the airport until 1:30pm.

We started walking to the Magic Kingdom. A couple of minutes later, Darrell remembered that we forgot to check out of the hotel after dropping off our bags. Whoops! Darrell headed back to the hotel while Amanda and the kids continued on to the Magic Kingdom. Darrell checked out of the hotel and then met up with the rest of the family at the park. We had a Fastpass for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger spin at 9:25am so we made our way to Tomorrowland. What a difference this morning! We could actually walk without running into people. The number of people in the park was a lot lower than earlier in the week.

We stopped at Stitch’s Great Escape which is a ride Patrick wanted to do earlier in the week, but we didn’t have a chance. We found out that the ride didn’t start running until 10:00am, so we continued on to Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger spin. There was no one in line and we walked right onto the ride. It was a fun ride. It was similar to Toy Story Mania at Hollywood Studios, but instead of shooting virtual balls from the gun, it was an actual laser gun. You shot at targets on the walls. It was centered around Buzz Lightyear and his battle with Zurg.

After we got off the ride, we decided to give the People Move a try. Again, we walked right on. It took us on a tour of Tomorrowland including a brief run through Space Mountain. It explained the different areas as we went by them. After the People Mover, the kids wanted to do the Astro Orbiter again which we did earlier in the week. We waited in line for quite some time the first time, but we walked right on this time. It is a short and pretty basic ride, but lets you experience some G-force which the kids like. It was now almost 10:00am so we headed to Stitch’s Great Escape again.

Stitch’s Great Escape is not what I was expecting. The premise is that you are a prison guard recruit reporting for your first day of training. This is the day that Stitch is transported to the prison and of course, he gets loose. It’s an animatronic ride where you walk from room to room. In the room where Stitch appears, you sit in chairs and have a shoulder bar drop over you. The lights go out and you hear Stitch jumping around the room. When he’s near you, the bars push on your shoulders to simulate him jumping around you. At certain points, he spits too fool the security canons that are locked onto his DNA. This causes you to be sprayed by water (at least, I hope it was water). Yuck!. There is also a point where he burps and you feel the air brush you and then the smell. Yuck again! Stitch ends up escaping and then we are released.

We walked across the path to the Monster Inc. Laugh Floor. This is a type of stand up comedy show with the Monster’s Inc. characters. It is a truly interactive show. It uses animations on a screen at the front of the room, but they interact with the audience. They have cameras that focus on audience members and a person runs to them with a microphone. The animations will ask some questions and respond according to the answers and how the people are behaving. They must have the animations linked to a person behind the stage somewhere who is doing the talking. Before the show started, the camera was panning through the audience and stopping on certain people with a caption regarding their appearance or behaviour. The camera stopped on Patrick and Michael wearing their Stitch hats and the caption was “????????????” which made us chuckle a bit.

After the show, we headed across the court to Space Mountain. The park was starting to get busier and there was a one hour line for the ride. We had a FastPass so bypassed the line. Within a few minutes, we were boarding the rocket. It is still one of Darrell’s favourite rides. It’s a roller coaster through space and the stars. You can’t see the track because it’s so dark so you can’t see where the next turn is.

After Space Mountain, it was time to head to our last ride of the day. We had one more Fastpass for the Seven Dwarf’s Mine Train. it is a rollercoaster that is similar to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, but with a Snow White theme. You board a mine cart and race through the mine the Dwarfs work in.

Sadly, it was time for us to start heading back to the hotel to catch our shuttle to the airport. We made a stop for lunch at the Starlight Cafe and made some last minute purchases at the Disney stores before boarding the monorail back to the Contemporary Resort. We still had ten snacks left on our dining plan so we stopped at the market in the hotel and picked up a few snacks to bring home. Darrell remembered that we hadn’t printed off our boarding passes for the plane yet so he headed to the Business Center to get them printed while Amanda and the kids headed to the Bell Services desk to pick up our luggage.

We met up in time to board the bus to the airport. It was one of the cruise line busses for some reason so the kids were able to watch some Disney shows on the TVs along the way to the airport. It was about a 45 minute drive to the airport. Once they dropped us off, we printed off our luggage tags and then waited in a rather lengthy line to check in our bags. We got the bags dropped off and headed through security. We were through security and at the gate with a couple of hours to wait at the gate. The kids played on their tablets while Darrell and Amanda worked on getting caught up on this blog. Darrell had emailed Jim and Linda to let them know we had made it to the airport alright. Jim and Linda gave us a call after they received the email. They were at Half Moon Cay but were hanging out onboard their ship (Westerdam). It was only 15 celsius with a cool wind and the water was still chilly. The Eurodam was also in port. They don’t dock at Half Moon Cay so they have to take tenders to the beach. They’ve been there several times before and since it was too cool to lay on the beach or go swimming, they decided to hang out on the ship and enjoy the ship’s amenities. Their next two days are sea days as they make their way to Cartagena, Columbia.

It was finally time to board the plane. The flight home was uneventful. We all watched a couple of movies and ate some food. We had a new flight attendant who did a good job but made a few mistakes. Bob Cummings who is WestJet’s Executive Vice President of Strategy was also on board. He introduced himself to everyone and thanked us all for choosing WestJet before we took off. There was a couple who are training a service dog sitting across the aisle from Amanda and Michael. The dog was very well behaved.

We arrived in Calgary around 9:30pm. We breezed through customs with our Nexus cards and waited for our luggage. I think Patrick’s suitcase was one of the last ones to come off the plane. There were only a few people still waiting at the carousel when his showed up. Once we had our luggage, we called Amanda’s stepfather Allan who was waiting at the cell phone lot to pick us up. We loaded into his van and headed home. We had a bit of a chat with Amanda’s mom Maureen and Allan for a bit. Maureen stayed at our house while we were gone and looked after our dogs as well as Jim and Linda’s dogs. It was close to 11:00pm before they headed home and we called it a night.

It was a fantastic trip, but we are glad to be home. Jim and Linda will be home in a couple of weeks. Time to start planning the next trip!