Leaving Disney...

Well, we've been back home for over two weeks now(!), but that's no real excuse for me to not finish up sharing how our vacation wrapped up. Let's see...I left you at Wednesday night and us both falling asleep rather early....

Sylvain was quite upset by not making it to the late night Magic Hours. To make up for it, we decided to pack-up as quickly as we could since it was our last day at Disney. We had a large number of meals left on our account, so I was determined for us to take full advantage of the remaining credits and tickets by doing a whirlwind tour of the rides we absolutely wanted to ride a second time.
After an okay breakfast at the omlette bar in the Riverside cafeteria, we hopped on the bus to Hollywood Studios. While on the way to the park, I remarked that Sylvain must've been cooking in the sweatshirt he was wearing, since the temps were climbing quickly thru the 70s already for morning. To which he replied, "oh, it's not too bad because I don't have a shirt on under it..." And of course, by the we passed thru the park's gates, he wasn't looking too good, so we picked up a souvenir t-shirt for him.

Anyways, though the park was pretty busy, we waited in line to ride both the Rock-n-Roller Coaster and Midway Mania. We chose not to Fast Pass either since the Passes being dispensed had return times late in the afternoon. Believe it or not, but after those two rides, it was lunchtime, so we had small flat bread pizzas and gelato at Mama Melrose's Italian Restaurant. Afterwards, we attended the Muppet 3D show again. I'm still a little sad that these wonderful characters are lost to younger generations!

After those three attractions, we decided that we were done with Hollywood Studios and rode a boat over to Epcot. While there, we wasted waaaaay too much time waiting in line at Test Track before deciding to head for the single rider line (say, an hour and a half).
The wait in the single rider line was so much shorter that it was ridiculous. We were on it for about 20 minutes. I was also struck by how the concept what being a single rider means is poorly understood. While in line, I watch two different ladies became agitated when their small children were placed in separate cars from them. Listen, folks, if you had wanted to ride with your kids, you needed to get into the 2 hour line with all of the other schlubs.

As you can imagine, by the time we exited the ride, Sylvain and I both regretted wasting so much time in line. We were sick of crowds, lines, and getting tired, and the most logical thing for us to do was to board a bus....and head to Magic Kingdom (!). Which is what we did, but realized that the line for Space Mountain was just as bad as that for Test Track. With plans for that ride deflated, we wandered around Tomorrowland and decided to visit the "Stitch's Great Escape" attraction. At this "ride", everyone are recruits tasked with helping to capture dangerous aliens. The main part of the show has everyone seated in a large circular room with an alien transport device in the center. Stitch is transported into the room and he escapes from that. I'm sure that for small children, this show is very terrifying. Once everyone is seated, shoulder harnesses above the seats tighten down and press you into the seat. The ride doesn't move, so this is more to keep little kids in one spot so they don't flee the theater. I'm still wondering how it was pulled off because Stitch seemed to parade around on top of the capsule, spit at people (and some folks were doused with water!), and leap into the audience. I really didn't like this ride, and would only recommend it to fans of Lilo and Stitch.

Afterwards, it was time to eat again, so we made our way to Liberty Square for dinner at the Liberty Tree Tavern. Dinner was all you can eat family style of salad, bread, turkey, roast beef, mashed potatoes, stuffing, mac n cheese, cranberry sauce, and apple cobbler ala mode. It was a sickening amount of food, and definitely right for more than two people.

After dinner, we walked around Fantasyland a bit. Too tired to stand in more lines, but not quite ready to leave. The parade route was being prepared for an evening show and Cinderella's Castle was being bathed in pink, purple, and blue lights. We eventually made our way to the exit and our last bus ride back to the resort. We still had 8 snacks and 2 counter service credits left on our account. At the Riverside caferteria, we blew out all of the snack credits by picking up juices, teas, and coffee drinks for the car ride.

We left at a good time because most of the evening crowds were still in the parks for the firework shows, so escaping from Orlando was a cinch. We were heading for North Carolina, and I had reserved us a room at a Holiday Inn in Palm Coast, about an hour and a half drive north-east of Orlando. We made it there by 10:30, a pretty decent time of night, and decided to sleep-in the following morning.

That's all that I have time to write now, and will follow-up with the end of our adventure in the next post....