That was one expensive holiday!: Day 9 – KTTK Tour and Fantasmic

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We were booked on the 9:00 Keys to the Kingdom tour this morning and had to check in at 8:30 so we were up at 6:45 and left the room about an hour later.

We parked up in Minnie 36 and arrived at the Magic Kingdom turnstiles at 8:15 and walked through the one that was open for dining reservations with nobody checking that we were actually entitled to be entering the park before it opened. We checked in for the tour and were given our name tags and a menu to choose our included lunch at the Columbia Harbour House. I chose the Anchors Aweigh (tuna sandwich) and Dad had the Starboard Deck (ham sandwich). While we were waiting for the tour to start I took some pictures of a (relatively) empty Main Street U.S.A. and the Roy & Minnie statue.





At 9:00 our tour guide, Jamie from Canada, handed out ear pieces so that we could hear him easily without having to crowd around him and the tour began. We learnt a lot about the small details in the park that we might otherwise miss and also a few secrets, like the reason for the drop in Pirates of the Caribbean, which I won’t reveal here.

I won’t say anything more about the tour as I think it is better experienced than read about but I would highly recommend it if you would like to know more about the story behind the parks.

The tour finished at around 2:00 whereupon we left the park and returned to the car. Next stop was the Hess gas station on the way out of the parking lot where we put $30 worth of petrol in the car which filled it to about ¾ full as I had let the petrol run very low.

From there we went back to the hotel for a short break before going out for dinner at Hollywood Studios and Fantasmic later this evening.

We were back out at 4:45 and after parking in Film 23 we were in Hollywood Studios by 5:20 where we went straight round to Hollywood & Vine to check in for our 5:30 reservation. We were seated within a few minutes and met our server, Maria, who took our drinks order and signed our ticket for priority seats at Fantasmic. Dad and I both started off with a plate of salad and then made another trip to the buffet for a main course of various goodies before finishing off with an ice cream each.

After stuffing our faces we waddled round to Muppetvision 3D where we had a short wait to get in for the pre-show and then enjoyed the main film, as we always do. After Muppets we made our way round to Oscar’s and after showing our tickets were allowed in to the amphitheatre for Fantasmic, taking our seats at around 7:30.

We enjoyed the show and once it was over we had little trouble getting out of the park so we were back in the room by 9:40 after noticing that the signs back to Animal Kingdom Lodge had brought us back a different way to the way we had come.

We were in bed by 10:00 with a change of plan meaning that we will be making a return trip to Magic Kingdom tomorrow rather than later in the week.

Tomorrow: Day 10 - Magic Kingdom