Saturday 5th August - Work and my family fly home
My family flew home so I said my goodbyes to them before they dropped me off back at housing and spent some time by myself in the morning. Their flight wasn't until the evening and they actually spent their time before their flight at Animal Kingdom Lodge looking at the animals but I wanted some time to get back to normality after doing so much with them over the past 2 weeks. I watched some Youtube in the afternoon and then went to work and was on greeter. It was quite hard saying goodbye to my family but it made me feel better knowing that they were flying home and I was still in Disney World definitely made it more bearable!
Sunday 6th August - 4 Parks 1 Day
Me and Cat both had the day off so we decided to give the 4 parks 1 day challenge a go! We decided that we would try and do one ride, one character and one snack in each park, as well as a photo in front of each park's icon. We started in Hollywood Studios and managed to get a fastpass for Midway Mania on the bus over so we did that before meeting Hollywood Minnie and Sorcerer Mickey. We then got a slushy as our snack before heading over to get the boat to Epcot.
As we walked in through International Gateway (next to the UK pavilion) we saw that Alice was about to come out so we got in line to meet her and then went over to Imagination with Figment because it only had a five minute queue. Unfortunately we completely forgot to get a snack because we wanted to make sure we got to Magic Kingdom with enough time to see the parade.
We got the monorail over to Magic Kingdom where we met Mickey in Town Square Theatre and Cinderella and Elena in the Princess Fairytale Hall. We then went to watch Festival of Fantasy and one of Cat's friends was working PAC so we were able to get into the reserved viewing area! After the parade we got some corn dog nuggets and apples slices to share from Casey's Corner and ate them on our way over to our third ride; Haunted Mansion. We then went on to our final park and went to get the bus to Animal Kingdom but for some reason there was a coach instead meaning we also ended up doing 4 different modes of transport.
When we got to DAK we did the safari and Dinosaur and we met King Louie and Baloo as our final characters. For our snack/dinner we had some veg and hummus and then some chicken fried rice from Yak and Yeti. We then watched Rivers of Light which neither of us had seen yet and it was a lot better than other people had said it was! We got an Uber home as we were absolutely shattered after such a busy day and we didn't want to have to spend over an hour on the bus home and then we just completely crashed on the sofa when we got home. We didn't start our day until 11am so we weren't sure if we would get everything done but we ended up doing way more than we thought we would - it was such a fun day and I would totally recommend giving it a go if you can!
Monday 7th August - Epcot and Garden Grill
I had another day off and I was supposed to go to one of the water parks with my flatmates but I was still so tired from the day before so I ended up just having a lie in and having a chilled out morning. After lunch I got the bus over to Epcot where I met Esme and Cat and we did Universe of Energy for the first time as we had found out it was closing. I love Ellen Degeneres and actually really enjoyed it (although it was very long) but Esme ended up falling asleep half way through. We went over to the Norway pavilion and met Anna and Elsa and then went over to the seas to do Turtle Talk with Crush. Whilst we were waiting for it to start we made a last minute dinner reservation for Garden Grill because we got a really good cast discount there and we really wanted to make the most of it whilst we could. Garden Grill is a character buffet and we met Chip, Dale, Pluto and Mickey in the cutest farmer outfit! The restaurant itself is on a kind of turntable so it spins really slowly whilst your eating and you get to see some of Living With The Land at some points. The food was really nice although I think there are a lot better character dining meals that may be more worth the money at full price. After dinner we had a fastpass for Test Track and were then supposed to meet up with Jenna to watch IllumiNations but the queue was a lot longer than we thought it would be so we ended up missing most of them.
Tuesday 8th August - Friday 11th August - Work, work and more work
After an insanely busy 2 weeks with my family and then 2 full on days off I was absolutely shattered and didn't do much for the next few days other than go to Walmart, do some washing and go to work. When you're on a Disney program you feel so guilty if you're not spending every second of your free time in one of the parks but it's so important to listen to your body and take some time to refuel before you burn yourself out. Even without spending days in the parks, a job at Disney is very tiring and draining and you really do need to rest as well as have some fun.
Thanks for reading!
Love Amy xxx
