Disney World. Day 4. The Happiest Place on Earth.
Magic Kingdom day! We got up and out and to the park by 9:30ish. We picked up avocado toast from Lickety Split in the hotel lobby and ate them on the monorail. We rented a scooter again and headed to Fantasy Land!
But first, coffee.
We had a fastpass for Peter Pan (which always has at least a 45 minute wait) and managed to do Winnie the Pooh, Small World, the Carousel, and the Little Mermaid ride pretty quickly.
At the end of Small World we went through the tunnel with all of the Goodbyes in different languages. One sign said Shalom, and Ofek asked why it said Shalom. “Shalom means hello.”
We said, “but doesn’t ‘shalom’ also mean goodbye"?”
“No. Goodbye is lehitraot..”
Who knew. Apparently no one says shalom for goodbye. That’s what we always learned in school.
Hallie kept her special bun in and wore the Elsa dress again, so we continued to get some use out of that.
By 11:30 it was snack time so we got some popcorn, carrots and apples. Tzvi and my mom went to Splash Mountain (and got pretty wet) and Hallie and I went to meet Rapunzel, Tiana, Elena, and Cinderella. I still don’t know who Elena is.
if anyone knows who this is, please let me know
My father joined us in the park, and Hallie fell asleep in the stroller, so we left her with my parents while Tzvi, Ofek and I did Haunted Mansion. In Disneyland they totally dress up Haunted Mansion for Halloween but here there was nothing. Weird. Then my parents and Ofek went to Big Thunder while Tzvi and I ate lunch. We both had tuna sandwiches and potato chips at the Columbia Harbor House. When I got to the food pickup area the woman serving the food started asking me how I was in Spanish. I answered in Spanish and we proceded to have a short conversation... in Spanish. She was so happy I was talking to her in Spanish that she offered me a free soda! Thanks Spanish lady.
From there we walked toward Tomorrowland and Hallie woke up just as we got to Starlight Café, where we got Hallie kosher chicken nuggets. Probably the healthiest meal of the trip. From there we went to Dumbo and got to ride twice because there was no one on line. I’ve never seen that before - they just said, “If you want to ride again, stay in your elephant.”
We met my parents again and headed back to Tomorrowland, where we first rode the Buzz Lightyear ride and then met Buzz Lightyear. Next we rode the People Mover, where we waited like 15 minutes on line, which is nuts for the People Mover (which is barely even a ride). I think that thing gets more popular every year; Tzvi read online that half of all visitors to Magic Kingdom go on the People Mover.
From there we headed back to Fantasyland. Hallie wanted to do the teacups, so we did that. I had to get a Dole Whip, so we went into Adventure land. Hallie almost had a tantrum over who got to hold the Dole Whip, but Tzvi diffused that. Then we caught the end of a dance party and did some shopping on Main Street. The only thing I really wanted to do but didn’t was Pirates, otherwise I think we did pretty well. The park closed at 6 because there was a Halloween party, and we had to get back to the hotel before Shabbat anyway.
The monorail lines were crazy, so we just go on the shortest line and rode to the first stop, where we got off at the Contemporary hotel and got an Uber back to our hotel. We made it back to the Four Seasons around 6 and started Shabbat at 6:23.
views of the resort from the roof (where we would later watch fireworks)
We all changed and got ready for dinner, made Kiddush and had some yeasty rolls from the lobby bar for motzi, and then went to dinner at Ravello in the hotel at 7:15. We had originally planned on going to dinner at the nicer restaurant on the roof of the hotel, but when we realized that was Tapas my father made a face and said he couldn’t handle more tapas and “I just want one margarita pizza on this trip.” So we switched to Ravello (the same place we had the character breakfast) for Italian food. Dinner was pretty good except that they didn’t serve bread, which I thought was odd for an Italian restaurant. When we asked they said we could order the mozzarella bread, but we didn’t need that. We started by sharing a margarita pizza, a Caesar salad and a burata. For mains Tzvi had snapper and I had spaghetti with broccoli and asparagus. For dessert we had a straciatella cake and an angel food cake with strawberry compote that was kind of like a strawberry shortcake but with angel food instead.
After dinner Hallie went to bed and Tzvi and I and my parents went to the rooftop restaurant, which have a view of Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and EPCOT, to watch the fireworks. Tzvi got a cocktail with Japanese whiskey and I had something fruity.We were able to see the whole EPCOT fireworks and recognized stuff we had seen when we were there.The Hollywood Studios fireworks are part of a show, so there wasn’t much to see.Then we saw the Magic Kingdom fireworks which were amazing.We sat for a while talking and eventually went back to the room and went to sleep.