One month ago today, Mr. Karen and I stepped up our WDW touring and did our first park hopping of the trip as well as a fancy dinner at one of the hotels. We started our day at the Magic Kingdom. Soon after we walked in, we caught one of the character cavalcades that were introduced during the pandemic as an alternative to character greetings and parades (this one was some characters from Pooh on a horse drawn trolley). Like the distanced greetings I mentioned in an earlier entry, I liked the cavalcade; it reminded me of the spontaneity of characters in the parks in the old days, when you’d just come upon them unexpectedly. We rode some attractions and had a couple of the special 50th anniversary food items; the ones we chose were the Mr. Toad commemorative burger and dome cake. Odd, but fun.
Around dusk, we headed to Hollywood Studios, where we admired the Christmas decorations in their nighttime glory on our way to the Star Wars side of the park, where we rode Star Tours and Rise of the Resistance (the latter we paid for under the new Individual Lightning Lane scheme Disney has started). I think we also had some blue milk. Or maybe it was the green milk. I didn’t take a photo of that, so I don’t know.
We left the Studios and used our car as a changing room before driving over to the Riviera Resort to have a late dinner at their fancy restaurant, Topolino’s Terrace. We lucked out and got seated by a window with a view of Epcot, so when Harmonious started, we could see the fireworks from the show. It seemed like if we hadn’t been by the window, we could have strolled out onto the outdoor deck to see them, but that wasn’t entirely clear.
This day felt a bit more like Disney trips of yore, with multiple parks and a wardrobe change. Not what I want to do every day of my vacation at this point, but fun for a change.
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December 8th, 2021 at 3:09 pm
Sounds like a fun day! We haven’t been since the pandemic started. Actually we had gotten back from our last trip two weeks before the world shut down on March 13 2020! We were walking around Magic Kingdom reading news about this shut down coming saying “NAH! Never gonna happen” LOL! I am not sure about the whole Lightening Lane scheme… it’s already a small fortune for tickets and now it’s more to use the ‘fast passes.’