The Grand Bro Trip (Orlando, Florida) - Day 7

This summer holidays, my Bro and I went on the trip of a lifetime! 2 weeks of amazing was on the Grand Bro Trip in Orlando, Florida.

Day 7, 1/8 (Monday)

Day 1 of Disney!

We were up pretty early this morning ready to hit Disney! We had Magic Kingdom passes for this day so we woke up at 7 to get our first Lightning Lane reservations. We had the LL for every day of our trip and it was really helpful in minimising our wait time in lines! We got a reservation for our first choice nice and early, got ready to hit the park (lots of sunscreen!) and checked our bags so that we could switch to a room with twin beds later in the day. We jumped on the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom, and honestly, it was pretty magical walking down Main Street towards the castle. We detoured into the Starbucks on Main St for breakfast, where David got one of the 50th anniversary cinnamon roll, which is of course shaped like Mickey ears! I stole some and it was delish.

Our Lightning Lane and first ride of all, was what turned out to be one of our favourites - Pirates of the Caribbean! It makes sense we like this ride a lot because we love the film and the music which is in the ride as well. I do wonder if they completely redesigned the ride after the film came out (I imagine so). I really liked the ride, the fact it was a water ride. And I didn't know about the drop the first time and it took me by surprise - I screamed! I did go WOO the other times though.

After that we wandered around for a bit while we waited for the next LL reservation and I made my first in park purchase - a cute mint green Thumper tee. I picked it up from the shop near Mickey's PhilharMagic, I had seen it at Disney Springs and I couldn't get it out of my head. Then ride number 2 was the Haunted Mansion! I had forgotten a lot of the movie but the ride was really fun, plus nice and cool and we obviously shared a doom buggy so were able to chat about it a little without feeling too guilty for disturbing others.

After that we decided to head over to Tomorrowland for a walk, but decided to stop in the next show of the Monster's Inc Laugh Floor. It was about to start and was a fun show which had the characters from the franchise telling jokes, some of which were sent in by audience members, and some of which made fun of audience members. The premise was that you have to laugh enough to open the doors enough to get out at the end! When we came out we could hear music so we walked over to Main St again just in time to see the (first of quiet a few) Festival of Fantasy parade! There are lots of characters in the parade and it was fun to wave to them and see who would wave back!

We had a lunch at Casey's Corner on Main St, which serves great hot dogs and fries before going back through every Main St store in a nice methodical manner. We were still making lists of the things which we were planning on purchasing, as they aren't currently sending things back to your hotel room and that means you have to carry everything yourself! List acquired, we headed around to a few different shops for some pin trading. Pin trading is a very cool thing in Disney - they make a lot of different pins, which you can obviously purchase, but you can also go to specific stores where they have boards with pins and you can trade. The rules is that they have to be real Disney pins, and that you can only trade 2 pins per board per day. There are also Cast Members in some places with pins on their lanyards you can trade. David and I had bought some on Ebay which we split, purely for trading purchases, and it was a really nice thing to do during the days and encouraged us to visit all the shops!

We then headed over to our next Lightning Lane, which was Peter Pan's Flight. It was short but I did enjoy it a lot, particularly when we were flying over London. Never seen that before...! Then we decided to head back to the Poly for a rest before coming back in the evening. We went back to those spots we had bookmarked on Main St as we were headed out, and I made my most exciting purchases. I got a pair of ears, blue gingham and white eyelet. Not super 'Disney', but very me! I had also promised myself I would buy 2 of the gorgeous Loungefly mini backpacks at the parks (one was for at Universal, I was hoping there would be a HP one). The bag I chose was themed for the Mat Tea Party ride, is bright purple and green, and has the ears of course! I adore it and I've used it loads since I brought it home. On our way back to the monorail we saw Winnie the Pooh and all his friends above the entrance dancing and waving, and we waved back to Pooh and Tigger before jumping onto the monorail.

After our rest, David decided that he was too tired to go back into the park, but we had a LL reservation for later and I didn't want to spend the evening in a hotel room watching TV on my phone (I can do that anywhere!), so we grabbed a quick dinner at Capt Cook's, once of the food places in the Poly resort proper, and David headed back to bed while I headed back alone to Magic Kingdom. As the light started to fade it was really lovely.

I started with the Peoplemover over in Tomorrowland, which was a lovely tour of that part of the park. I meant to go back again with David again but we didn't have time. My favourite part was definitely going through the part where you could hear people screaming on Space Mountain! Then, using the app to monitor ride lines, I realised that Pirates had a 10 minutes wait, so I did it - twice more in a row!!! I learned that you tend to get wetter in the back row than the front, and that you get on quicker when you are travelling solo also. It was a grand time (and that's 3 times on that one ride in one day already!)

Then it was time for our last LL of the day - 'The Rock's Tiny Tugboat' (Jungle Cruise). The weather had clouded over and just when I was right near the front of the line, it stopped moving. Boats were arriving, people were disembarking and nobody was getting on. They then made an announcement that there was a storm warning and that all outside rides were now closed. I asked about how this works, they said that just rain is fine (the boats are covered and it apparently does go in the rain), but once there's lightning with 10 miles, they have to pause all outside rides until it is far enough away again. I waited in the line a log time because I was hoping it would pass, and after about 45 minutes in line I gave up. I figured we could get another LL for it later in the week and it was getting close to 9pm. I asked at the ride and they said that the fireworks (at 9:30pm) would be at least delayed tonight, if not cancelled, because of the nearby storm. So I decided to cut my losses and go back to the Poly. I left the line of Jungle Cruise, quickly dodged the crowds as I overtook them down Main St. I popped into the confectioners to get a Mickey ears rice krispie treat (with M&Ms) to take back to the room, and hot-fotted it over to the monorail to grab it back before the storm hit. Unfortunately, my timing wasn't so good... I got on the first monorail to be held at the station! They do not run in lightning either and it started raining as soon as I got into the station! So I sat on the monorail for about an hour, eating my dessert, while it bucketed sideways cats and dogs, and lightning flashed and loud thunder rumbled. I messaged David to say I was dry and safe but stuck waiting (he slept through the massive storm which I was surprised by). After the full hour of waiting, I went to ask about other transport. The boats were still running, but that didn't seem like a wise idea to me, so instead I ran through the pouring rain and joined a rather long line for the bus instead.

In the end it took me 90 minutes to get from the exit of Magic Kingdom to the Polynesian Resort... I could have walked much much faster than that if I hadn't minded drowning. But I made it back only partly wet in the end and tucked myself into bed sometime just after 11pm. I knew we needed to be up for 7 again the next day as we were going to Hollywood Studios for Galaxy's Edge!