Tag: flights of passage

A Passage To Whingier

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

So how’s your week been?

I can summarise mine like this….

So mainly I have been fighting the rising resentment of not being able to get a FastPass for anything built after 2010. Talk about first world problems right?

Of course, but it still ticks me off. It must be some sort of unwanted special achievement to book FastPasses for a full two week trip and not get a single one of the FastPasses you really wanted at any park? I don’t count Epcot in that as there is currently no “must have” ride and you can pretty much choose whatever you like, but wherever there is a tricky to get FastPass, I have failed miserably to get even one.

So having a daily sulk on this topic hasn’t detracted too much from seeing our countdown reduce to touching distance. Well, it has, but not enough to matter. With this huge chip on my shoulder, I doubt I’d be able to fit onto Flights Of Passage anyway so it’s maybe for the best.

Maybe this isn’t something worthy of my persecution complex? It could just be that the place is going to be very busy, with Galaxy’s Edge, Food and Wine and summer all happening at the same time. You see, I might believe that if I weren’t getting messages from kindly folks through the week telling me how they all got FastPasses for every ride they ever wanted, and in fact Disney hand delivered them to their UK address asking what time would suit them best. I’m not bitter…..

The new FastPass teiring system at DHS isn’t ideal either. Every ride you want to do is in the same tier so the choice is very limited. With Slinky always unavailable if your surname is Williams, after choosing one “headliner” the second and third choices are all for things that you’d rarely need a FastPass for, like Muppets, Indiana Jones or Frozen Ever After. Hopefully they will readjust that once the Galaxy’s Edge thing has opened and clamed down a bit.

Perhaps this is just Disney’s strategy to encourage folks to stay on site. It seems I have proven that it is impossible to secure first choice FastPasses at 30 days out (please don’t tell me that you got all yours at 30 days, I want to wallow in my own self pity). The thought of staying on site for at least part of next year’s trip has crossed my mind already so maybe it works. I get it. They spend a fortune on new attractions and if you wanna ride it, fork out for an on site stay fat boy or just suck it up on Journey Into Imagination and Carousel of Progress with the rest of the muggles.

In better news, on our commute home on Wednesday I was fighting the urge to run the car into the central reservation as we battled another shitty overly long journey home, when Emily emerged from her cataonic state in the passenger seat to share some exciting news she had just discovered on some social media thing. Reservations were open for some Galaxy’s Edge stuff.

Neither of us knew anything about what might be available but that didn’t stop Emily immediately going onto the My Disney Experience app to see what was going on. The initial signs were not good as there was a message saying that dining reservations were not available via the app due to high demand and they had to be booked on the main website.

Emily followed those instructions, managed to remember the relavant password and started frantically searching for the relevant dates. As we expected to get nowhere near Galaxy’s Edge this year we have done zero research and had no idea what was what, so we had no clue what we might be booking. There were several minutes of tension and stress as we lost 4G for a while mid-booking and the site died a bit but Emily valiantly succeeded in her quest.

As a side note, how far have we come in recent years? There we were doing 70mph on the M60….well probably more like 25mph, but the potential is there, booking stuff via a handheld device for a trip we wont take for a few more weeks. It was only ten minutes ago that I had to speed march to the FastPass ticket machines around the parks elbowing small chldren out of the way to do so. I miss that, it was fun!

So on our first day at DHS we now have a “lunch” reservation at Oga’s Cantina. I say lunch, but the menu looks to be mainly alcohol with some token nibbles but I’m not that bothered. It’s just a way to get us into the general area, in case they start restricting access, so we can have a look around.

In a world where our account has clearly been blacklisted and blocked from getting access to any recently built attraction, I’m calling this a small victory. I have zero expectations of being able to do anything other than that reservation and look round some shops, but we’ll take in the theming and do what we can.

In other trip related news, Rebecca and Tom, but mostly Tom, have been busy creating Freddie’s MNSSHP costume. He has played a blinder and the cuteness is, as the kids say, off the scale.

Up is currently one of Freddie’s favourite films to watch so it is apt too. Just wait till he discovers you get unlimted free sweets on the night too.

The trip is now playing on my mind constantly, mainly as I grumble inwardly about not getting certain FastPasses, but I am mentally remembering and reminding myself of all the things I need to do, sort out and remember to take. You’d think this was all second nature after so many years of practice but no, I still manage to find a way to worry about this stuff.

There are two weeks left at work and my only hope is that the two weeks of our trip last as long as these next two will.

Till the next time…….

FastPases, Frustration and Fiduciary Failings

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Let me start by saying that yesterday was a significant day in the Mkingdon household. Yes, it was FastPass day for Animal Kingdom. It goes without saying that despite pouncing all over the My Disney Experience like the lithe and taught cat I am, I had more chance of a fringe than getting a FastPass for Flights Of Passage. I think it is the case now that if you are staying off site, you don’t get a FastPass for that thing.

If you are staying off site and got a FastPass, please don’t tell me. It is this one slither of comfort that is stopping me penning a strongly worded email to senior Disney officials or posting it on one of those Disney Facebook groups for the sole purpose of getting some attention and maybe getting some compensation.

Oh, it was also our 23rd wedding anniversary. We celebrated with a Chinese and an early night. Not that kind of early night. We were both a little under the weather so Louise had to retire to bed with a migraine and I played some PS4. Who said you can’t keep the magic alive?

So I’ve been booking FastPasses since Tuesday. The first day was a deja vu moment from last year, with the stroke of 12 (that’s the title of a pay per view movie I once say advertised in a hotel) seeing me wrestle with the web site and the app as they both crashed like some toddler after a bag of M&Ms. It took about twenty minutes for them both to start behaving. Of course by this time my only priority, Mine Train, had gone. Still, Big Thunder, Haunted Mansion and Peter Pan is a decent return for our first day.

This midday crashing of their site still happening suggests to me that they don’t want to fix that. As far as peaks of trafiic go, that time on the FastPass booking site is probably one of the most predictable on the planet so there are things they could do I’m sure. There must be a reason they don’t want to. Inflicting frustration on paying guests doesn’t seem to be a good strategy but hey, I keep going back and handing over my cash so take from that what you will.

I didn’t need to book anything on Wednesday as we will be at Typhoon Lagoon but Thursday saw a little bit of pressure as I was booking for what will be my birthday trip to Epcot. I am pleased to report that this was the one day on which I got my main priority, Soarin’. With Mission Space and Spaceship Earth that’s a solid day’s activity before we move up to World Showcase for our meal and fireworks stuff.

The next day was just about making some “maybe we will use them” FastPasses for the evening as it will be a day of eating at Hash House a Go Go and Trail’s End, with either an evening in Magic Kingdom or, I have a tentative idea of going to the Poly to watch the fireworks from their beach. Our energy levels will dictate what we do. Don’t worry, I will of course cancel those FastPasses should we not intend to use them. I am not a monster.

That brings us to yesterday and Animal Kingdom. It does irk me a little that the best ride on WDW property is clearly beyond us but it is outside of my control and I will not pointlessly whinge about it on the internet like some spoilt entitled oversized baby….oh, bugger. I did manage to get a solid trio (which was also what I got after last night’s Chinese, but I’m feeling better now) of Everest, Safari and Na’vi River Journey.

Today at 12 I will be being dissapointed with things again as I attempt to book FastPasses for our first visit of the trip to Hollywood Studios. They are changing or have changed already, I can’t remember, the tiering for their FastPasses so I think you can only book restroom visits and access to the car park at the same time or something. We’ll see. I’m not convinced we’ll even get in the park so it may not matter.

Anyway, FastPass dissapointments aside, we’re at 23 days and at the stage where I almost don’t mind Mondays rolling round again as it is just another step to departure.

The other event in a planning filled week was the purchase of some dollars. Really, I should draw a veil over this as if I start ranting I may never stop…..

Suffice to say, for my many, many English pounds I got enough dollars to maybe buy a drink from one of the vending machines at the airport after we land.

Sigh, only I could be a mere 23 days away from a WDW trip and spend my time moaning about stuff. It comes from a good place of wanting to make the best trip I can or everyone…so if you could all log on and cancel your Flights of Passage FastPasses and somehow double the dollar rate, that’d be great.

Till the next time…..

Freddie’s First Florida Fiesta – Day Eight 5th September 2018

by mkingdon, posted in Freddie's First Florida Fiesta

Enough of this meandering out of the house at any time we like. I had put my foot down. Today, we needed to be out and out early. I had spoken. We *had* to be out by 8.30, no excuses, no delays, if necessary, no sleep.

We left at 9.20.

Usually I would have been mad, but this was mainly caused by Freddie having a lie in. He is forgiven by default. This meant that time was tight, as our first FastPass slot ended at 10.05. Luckily, via Sherberth Road we were a longish stone’s throw from Animal Kingdom, which was our destination this morning.

We were at the gates by 9.30 and via a broken speed limit or two once in the car park, we were in Dino 39 and on to a tram a few moments later.

The theme park Gods were smiling, as the security line was short and we were actually stood on the correct side of the entrance at 9.50. I started the walk to Everest at a brisk pace but shortly afterwards we were halted. Emily had arranged to meet up with Ceara, who is currently on the CRP in the UK pavilion as it was her day off.

Out of the kindness of her heart Ceara had agreed to come along and use her cast member magic to get us a “return time” for Flights of Passage. To facilitate this we had to visit some secret cast members tucked away on a secluded path. Much tapping of tablet devices and scanning of bands happened. I had no idea what was going on, but we were eventually sorted and once again on our way to Everest.

We chatted to Ceara on the way, and still managed to arrive at the ride entrance at 10.03. Impressive if not a little stressful.

We saw the relevant cast member to sort out the baby swap stuff. Her name was Beth and she was lovely. She allowed five of us to ride initially and then a further four to ride the second time with the baby swappers. The ride was pretty quiet so nobody suffered any extra waiting due to us.

Once everyone had ridden, we all met up outside the gift shop. Ceara revealed her real motive for joining us today. She wanted a photo with Ryan!

It seemed like a fair exchange for all the help she would end up giving us today.

In all the rush and kerfuffle of getting everyone where we needed to be on time, I had not yet consulted the app to check our plans for the rest of the day. So, my natural instincts kicked in and we set off for the safari. It would turn out that I had at this point totally forgotten that we had a FastPass for the safari later, but that’s not important right now.

There was a five-minute wait and we were soon all aboard.

Regular readers will know that at this point you are about to get bombarded with a large selection of blurred photos of animals. Enjoy!

It was a good trip and enjoyed by all.

Now it was time to head to Pandora. I had managed to secure a FastPass for Navi River Ride and that was next on the list. We tried our best to take in the theming as we wandered into another first this trip.

It’s been a while since this came up in a trip report, but that might benefit from a drop of Vagisil.

Ceara watched Freddie so that we could all ride together, which was lovely of her.

It’s a gentle ride, but excellently themed and one you’d need to ride a lot to take it all in.

We returned to Ceara to rescue her from the incredible heat. We were now headed for Flights of Passage. Ceara had used her CM special pass to get a return time (before she met us earlier) and as all our bands were linked to hers as her guests, we could ride with her. Having tried and failed to get a FastPass this was a lovely thing for her to do and very much appreciated.

Tom and Rebecca sat out first to feed and change Freddie and the rest of us entered.

I know there will be a good few of you that haven’t ridden this yet so I won’t describe it, but….

WOW.

This is just incredible and from a technology point of view this is THE best ride in WDW.

We exited all agog and watched Freddie so Tom and Rebecca could ride. Whilst they did we want to Santuli Canteen to get us all some food. There was no queue. In this instance this was a bad thing, as there as no time to study the menu before ordering so it turned into a panic driven random selection, just making sure that we had enough meals for everyone.

Don’t even ask me what this stuff was…

They were all just variations of the “protein” option. Whatever they were, they were very tasty indeed. With those demolished I mobile ordered a few desserts…

These were also excellent.

Being a gloriously flexible planner and all round good guy, whilst eating I used the app to swap the Safari FastPass I forgot we had booked for a Lion King one and as  that show was imminent we wandered there next.

We were Warthogs.

I have run out of superlatives over the years with which I can heap praise on this show. It’s good.

Mikey was loving it so much he volunteered for the bit at the end where the kids walk round shaking stuff. We “forgot” to tell him it was really just kids who did this, but, to his credit, he didn’t seem to care and loved every second.

A glance at the app showed that every ride time (Pandora aside) was ten minutes at most which pleased me. To celebrate we paused for Ceara to take a group photo.

Freddie had nodded off.

We headed for the rapids next, looking for a little moisture to combat the incredible heat. Louise sat out with Freddie and the ride was a welcome walk on.

I am happy to report that Ceara got the worst of it and was absolutely drenched but to be fair we all got a decent soaking.

To further aid the cooling down we stopped at the cocktail bar near Everest for some refreshment. I didn’t make a note of what everyone had but there were no complaints other than it seemed to cost me $50 for a mocktail.

With Freddie in mind we headed over to…

We’ve only done this once before and our memory of it was that we didn’t need to do it again. However, now with Freddie needing to see it, we were prepared to fall on our swords.

It was *much* better than our memories had remembered. Freddie didn’t manage to sit all the way through it. He’d been woken from his nap to go into the show and he was tired and hot so Tom took him out about half way through.

Dinoland next and on to Primeval Whirl for some rib rearranging.

Rebecca and Tom took the chance to get Freddie back to sleep by walking him around whilst the rest of us rode. Mikey and I rode together, proving that two gentlemen of our girths should find smaller partners to inflict injury on.

We sat in the sun whilst Rebecca and Tom rode and had a much needed cold drink. Then we headed over to…

Emily *hates* this ride due to the childhood trauma of the first time she rode it and she volunteered to sit out with Freddie. It turned out that Ceara wasn’t a huge fan either and screamed all the way round.

We collected Emily and Freddie and made our way back to Dinoland so that a now wakened Freddie could be taken on Triceratops Spin.

With that done, we started the walk over to Yak & Yeti for our ADR(s).

When we arrived I spoke nicely to the lady at the podium and merged our two seperate ADRs (I hadn’t been able to book for our full party on the app back home) and added Ceara.

As we stood outside waiting to be seated a young girl had just thrown up and we got to marvel at the custodial staff dealing with it using some magical powder which made it vanish.

Many cocktails were ordered…

I went crazy and had another mocktail….well, it was more an “ade” of some sort…

We ordered some Egg Rolls and Pot Stickers as appetisers and the chef came out to talk to Ceara who needed to see what she could eat with her allergies.

We had –

Ceara – Lo Mein with no veg

Me – Lo Mein Combo

Rebecca and Emily – Honey Crispy Chicken

Louise and Mikey – Sweet and Sour Chicken

Tom – Korean Beef

We all had various desserts too….

Desserts were Freddie’s favourite part of the meal….if you look closely at the photo above, you can see Freddie’s hand reaching out to get his Dad’s attention. Tom had made the mistake of sharing his cheesecake and now Freddie was on a mission.

He was a HUGE fan of cheesecake and they may have created a monster by introducing him to it.

Freddie had corn dog bites for his main meal and enjoyed those too.

It was going dark now and it was almost time or Rivers of Light. Animal Kingdom was looking very handsome.

As Everest was a walk on we rode that, Emily and Ceara did it twice. We had a FastPass for Rivers of Light so were able to wait until quite late before actually entering.

Freddie was knackered and there was little chance he would sit through this show so Rebecca and Tom wandered slowly out to the exit through the shops and we said we’d meet them at the car.

We took our seats and waited about ten minutes for it to start. It has changed quite a lot since we saw it last, starting with some of the cast wandering through the audience.

I’ve seen quite a few young girls on Instagram with less make up, but his contouring is “on point”. Am I doing this right?

The show is much improved, in my opinion and my camera excelled itself…

The water projections and lasers are far more “firework like” and it is all much more effective and interesting.

We made our way out of the show and wandered slowly to the exit, browsing a couple of shops. These delightful warm, dark Florida nights are just a treat to witness.

We dropped Ceara off at her apartment at Vista Way and then made our weary way home by around 10.30. Another tiring but very enjoyable day.

Thank you to Ceara for making the day much easier and enjoyable via the use of her special cast member magic and of course for getting us on to Flights Of Passage which everyone agreed was just mind-blowing!

Till the next time…..