[Joy J]

Today dawned bright, sunny, hot and beautiful, a truly fitting day for our last full day at WDW. Even though this was a Saturday, we still planned to visit the Magic Kingdom with park hopping probably in our future if the MK got as crowded as we expected it might given the building crowds we’d noticed the day before.
Our first stop was a flight on Peter Pan since it had been closed on our last day at MK and we wanted to hit it before the thundering hordes descended. It was a walk-on and we were soon flying over Neverland not suspecting what was awaiting us at the end of the ride. As we disembarked and exited the ride, members of the Dream Squad appeared, this time giving us Dream Fastpasses for the Magic Kingdom for the day. What a perfect day to receive these - we were literally overjoyed. Instantly our plans started to reform as we realized that with these little beauties in our hands we could spend a lot more time here than we’d originally intended.
Since these passes were good for the whole day, we decided to use our early time at the Magic Kingdom to ride those attractions which didn’t have Fastpasses. We started with Snow White and then moved on to It’s a Small World, Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. By this time our tummies were starting to rumble so we stopped for an early lunch at El Pirata Y El Perico. On all my visits to WDW, I’d never before seen this place actually open so we decided to take advantage of it. We had beef tacos with Haagen Daz ice cream bars for dessert. The ice cream was of course delicious but the tacos weren’t very good. As far as I’m concerned in the future I don’t care whether this place is open or not as the food here was on the yucky side.
As we were finishing up lunch, we noticed that they were starting the Captain Jack Pirate Tutorial. Neither of us had ever seen this show before so we decided to give it a gander. We hadn’t expected much but we were delightfully surprised. What an enchanting, entertaining show and not just for the kiddies either. Captain Jack in particular was fantastic and he couldn’t have looked, acted or sounded more like Johnny Depp in that role if they had cloned him.
When we finally managed to stop laughing after Captain Jack’s little show, we headed down the dangerous rivers of adventure on the Jungle Boat cruise. I’ve ridden this attraction dozens and dozens of times and have journeyed with many exceptionally entertaining boat captains but today’s took the cake. He was not only hysterically funny but he was so full of energy that he literally did gymnastic moves at times from his perch at the front of the boat. He also used quite a few jokes that I had never heard before. All in all it was a rare treat.
By now the temperature was really soaring and the crowds were starting to get very thick so we decided it was time to cool down a bit by riding Splash Mountain. We were seated in the front and we definitely got very wet on this occasion so we managed to accomplish our goal of cooling down. Now feeling refreshed , we braved an extremely crowded Fantasyland to ride Peter Pan, watch Mickey’s PhilharMagic and ride Winnie the Pooh. Thank goodness for those Dream Fastpasses as the lineups were now humongous. When we made our way over to Tomorrowland, the crowd situation wasn’t much better. However, a show was just going in for the Laugh Floor Comedy Club so in we went for a nice air-conditioned break. We followed that up with the Stitch attraction, Buzz Lightyear, Carousel of Progress and then a repeat ride on Buzz using Fastpasses we’d picked up earlier in the day. By this time we were starting to feel rather tired from enduring the combination of both the heat and the crowds so we took a quick spin on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority before returning to our resort for our midday break. We were tired but very happy with our full part day. It was not quite three o’clock and we’d managed to ride 16 attractions mostly thanks to the help of those fabulous Dream Fastpasses.
After a short break it was time for our dinner reservation at Wolfgang Puck’s. What a wonderful dinner we enjoyed here. We both had the Macadamia Nut Crusted Breast of Chicken which was magnificent. For dessert, Kirk had the Key Lime Pie (I think he has become addicted to this dessert) and I opted for the white chocolate truffle cheese since I’m addicted to every type of cheesecake on the planet. Thoroughly stuffed and exceptionally satisfied, we waddled out of the restaurant and spent the rest of our evening shopping at Downtown Disney.
When we got back to our resort, we packed up most of our belongings so that we wouldn’t feel rushed in the morning and then both fell exhaustedly into bed.

Joy