August 16, 2014

Chapter 11
Bloggers and Brits—Oh My!

We started our Saturday morning by sleeping in for a bit because we were coming off a week of late nights and early mornings. Still, we knew that we had to get up in time so that we could book it over to White Water Snacks and pick up an important breakfast item—Mickey Waffles!

I knew I’d probably get smacked or bitten if I tried to get close to Tracy’s beloved Mickey Waffles, so we actually got two of this entree so that we wouldn’t have to share. They were, of course, delicious.

Next, we had to head back over to the Fairfield to check out because we were moving to the Camelot Inn and Suites for our last night (we had to be budget conscious now that we weren’t on the CoolTech dime anymore). The whole move ended up being a bit of a pain because our room at the next hotel wasn’t going to be ready until that afternoon, so we ended up parking at the Camelot and leaving all our stuff in the rental car. Honestly, we decided, it would probably be worth it in the future to just pay a little more and stay at one hotel, even once we were picking up the tab.

After the move was semi-complete, we headed right back toward the parks. It was already lunchtime—that’s how long the process had taken—so we walked back to Cars Land to get our favorite Chicken Verde Cone.

We ate it in Flo’s (because it was starting to get really hot outside), and I took a few pictures of some of the decor inside the restaurant. Unfortunately, I’m sure they aren’t clear enough at this size/resolution to actually read any of these fun signs, but I’m posting them anyway so that you’ll be inspired to go check them out the next time you’re there.

Ornament Valley just always looks so beautiful no matter what the weather or time of day.

We rode Mickey’s Fun Wheel as our first attraction of the day (non-swinging, of course), and we enjoyed how much cooler it felt way up in the air than it did on the ground. After getting a DAS time for Soarin’, we rode The Little Mermaid—almost always a walk-on.

We were on our way to Starbucks when we heard from prolific DISBoards trip reporter Jess (@PrincessJess508)—who, you might remember, was one of the people whose trip reports inspired me to start sharing our shenanigans online a few years ago—on Twitter. We’d messaged her the previous night to see if she’d want to meet up when we saw that she was going to be in the parks this weekend to mark the beginning of her Disneyland College Program. She let us know that she and some of her friends were at Pacific Wharf if we wanted to come over.

After we grabbed our drink, we headed across the park and found her group as they were just finishing up lunch. Since I hadn’t put two and two together, I hadn’t realized that the friends she was visiting with were folks from the U.K. that I also already followed on social media—Leanna (@LeannaParsons), Frankie (@disney_frankie), and Hollie (@hollietids). They also had several guys in their party, but everyone introduced themselves so quickly that I didn’t catch any of their names, and I don’t think any of them were in the Disney Twitterverse.

Everyone was really nice, and we enjoyed chatting a little bit about how our trips were going. I had let them know about my “friendship” with the Disneyland Cats, and they told us how anxious they were to hopefully see at least one kitty during their visit. Tracy and I both privately geeked out over all the British accents going around during the conversation since we are huge anglophiles.

Before too long, their group had to get going to use their Radiator Springs Racers FastPasses, so we parted ways. We were really glad we’d gotten to meet the whole crew after getting to “know” them so well just by following them on the Internet.

Going back to our day, we started to make our way toward Soarin’ to use our DAS time. Even Francisco didn’t want to brave the heat today, so we didn’t see him as we walked past Grizzly River Run. Instead, we happened to stop into the gift shop across from Soarin’ and found this awesome pin that we just had to buy.

After riding, we decided it was time to hop over to Disneyland, so we started walking toward the exit. En route, we stopped into Elias and Co. and discovered this brand new display of character tails that they had just gotten in.