Finally--the conclusion of my TR.
Day 7
Last day in the parks
The Plan: MK in the AM and Epcot that night with my brother and his family. ADR at La Hacienda de SA for 8:30
Actual:
Let me apologize up front for the lack of pictures on this day—for some reason, I just didn’t take many. I even tried to hijack some unused ones from another day, but nothing was appropriate…and I knew you guys would catch it
Well first off you can see that my ADR would not work with our new plans with my brother, so I cancelled that first thing in the morning. We decided to eat earlier and at a place we never ate before—Le Chefs de France it was!
We did our usual early rise and rope drop at the MK. But for some reason we didn’t go directly to SM like usual—we headed towards Fantasyland and did a few things, the headed over to Adventureland for PotC before venturing towards the JC. We were walking down that short flight of steps when we heard a commotion…some lady was screaming at the top of her lungs at her husband (I assumed), “WELL NEXT TIME YOU CAN TAKE HER.” She repeated that a few times and had some other odd things to say before following us down the steps. As we were about to get into the queue, she headed right for us, still shouting mind you, so my wife grabbed my arm and let us away from there towards the SFTH.
Ahhh, the treehouse. My wife never had the pleasure and it had been since 1986 for me! We wandered around and she was not saying much—I couldn’t get a read on her. Normally I can tell pretty quickly if she approves or disapproves (much like her reaction in CoP
) After we were finished, she said, “not bad.” I guess that’s a great way to put it. Not great, not awful—not a must-do… I didn’t really miss much since my 1st trip to WDW in 1986---it was exactly like I remembered it.
After that she said, “Don’t you want one of your pineapple things?” Just like that. Hmmph—I DID want a pineapple thing thank you very much. As we sat there enjoying pineapple goodness (sans rum
) we decided we had seen enough of the MK and headed over to Epcot to eat lunch with my son at the Electric Umbrella. He loves that place and considers it a family tradition—of all the things huh?
For some reason I think that my wife and I split something—something about her eating too much all week. Good thing she didn’t keep track of my beers that week! A super nice CM was ‘directing traffic’ at the EU and was chatting us up because I wore a Steelers shirt that day.
If you notice, I haven’t really said much about my son or about “the three of us” all week… that’s because we let him do his own thing and he took us up on it a lot of the time. Sometimes we would start out together and then he would wander about…or in the case of Captain EO, once we declared that we were doing that, he said, “See ya!” I wonder why?
We hit the POR after lunch and cleaned up and packed and such. I didn’t want to go crazy in the morning doing all that. Then something struck me…we never received our DME pickup time and packet on our door, so as my wife cleaned up, I made my way to the front desk. The CM working the concierge desk looked me up and said I was not in the system—uh-oh. Then he scared me by saying that even if he entered me, it takes a day to process it, so I wouldn’t have my info or ticket. !!??!! He made some calls and did some Google searches and 20 mins later (!) he printed my ticket out. Whew! I thanked him profusely and headed back to the room. He was so helpful that I mentioned him by name in the email survey I received upon our return home. I even felt the need to calm my nerves with an Abita Amber from the poolbar
It was time for our ADR in France so we left on the WDW bus system for probably the last time this trip… My son took a pass on the French meal and decided to eat in Germany on his own. I told him to use his DDP QS meal and get the pretzel as “dessert”-they usually let you do that. While looking at the receipts I had, it said we had one too many sit-down meals left…hmmmmmm
I figured out what happened: the Liberty Tree Tavern billed our room for the meal and not the DDP. Ugh! What now? I asked the girl at the French Podium and she looked bewildered. I don’t think it was clicking—it was probably me because I was so freaked out I was probably talking fast. So we walked allll the way up front to guest services. The attentive young man asked me if I had the receipt by chance and I did!!! He entered some numbers and punched a key and voila! He moved my son’s meal to the DDP. Another Whew! Never a fuss—never an eye-roll—just a smile and he took care of my problem. I love Disney! Only later did I find out that I didn’t need to walk all the way up front…there is a guest services by the international gateway. Oh well…
Here’s me shaking hands with a Terra Cotta Army Soldier:
We dined at Le Chefs---I don’t even recall what I had, I just know that it took FOREVER to get our food and it was LOUD in there. But it did have that romantic charm you’d expect from a French Restaurant in the evening. I had a glass of wine—it was a dry white and it was yummy! I enjoyed a nice evening meal with my wife and wondered when we would be back.
We were almost done and my brother texted me that they had arrived. They were parked between Mexico and The Odyssey if you know where I mean… Kind of over by that disgrace of a bear’s hangout.
They brought his M-I-L and she couldn’t walk another foot, so they sat right there. It was a good spot, so we just met them there, but Illuminations was still about an hour away. I pushed his kids around in their stroller and got me a beer at that Mexican fast food place---the name escapes me.
Illuminations was great like always. And it sunk in that our trip to WDW was over…
Henry (me) in his happy place---This is how I choose to rememeber our trip I dont even know what day this was taken…:
Like always, the rest of the trip in inconsequential isn’t it?
I will conclude by saying this…I got a bad, bad case of Disney Post-Trip Depression this time around. I couldn’t even listen to SSR for a few weeks. Maybe because I was truly unsure when we would be back. Maybe it was such a great trip that I didn’t want it to end.
Regardless, the cobwebs are starting to clear now and the rainclouds have parted. It was great to meet all of you—it really was and I hope to meet even more of you next time! I don’t know when next time will be, but I am sure that somehow, someway I will get back.
Thanks for reading!!!
That's the only reason why I mentioned it... 
