Day 10 – Orlando Trip Report, September 2018

Here was our basic itinerary for the day:

• Morning: Bon Voyage Breakfast at Trattoria Al Forno & a water park
• Afternoon: Disney Springs
• Evening Park: Hollywood Studios
• Fastpasses: Rock’n’Roller Coaster (17:30-18:30), Slinky Dog Dash (19:00-20:00) & Tower Of Terror (20:00-20:30)

Day 10 – Thursday 13th September 2018

Our initial plans didn’t involve dining at Trattoria Al Forno however one day I was scrolling through the dining reservations and happened to come across an 8:05am reservation for the Bon Voyage Breakfast. Since we had leftover table service credits and Tangled is my second favourite Disney film of all time we decided why not and booked it. We drove to the Boardwalk where the security officer checked our magic bands for the reservation and then parked up at the Boardwalk hotel parking lot. It was a 5 minute walk or so to the restaurant and when we checked in it didn’t seem to be too busy. We waited around 10 minutes before being greeted by our lovely server and shown to our table. Along with our menus she brought out our frying pan of pastries (dreams coming true right there). The Bon Voyage breakfast is themed around Tangled and The Little Mermaid and so some of the food offerings are a little different, however Disney are quite accommodating – I opted for the waffles which are actually on the Kids Menu but like I said accommodating. After our orders were taken we were brought out our fruit salad, I’m always keen on any restaurant that serves fruit as an option because it’s a nice break from all of the food you eat on a Disney holiday. The portion sizes for our “main course” were rather large but all in all quite yummy. My favourite part of the breakfast was getting to meet Punzie, Flynn, Ariel & Eric – Rapunzel and Flynn even sat down at our spare seat to have a little chat and Rapunzel insisted on taking a photo with my mum. If you have any Tangled or Little Mermaid fans in your party I would highly recommend the Bon Voyage Breakfast because the interactions were definitely some of the best we had all holiday (and they were quite lengthy too). 

After breakfast we headed back to the hotel with the plan of chilling for a while and then heading to Typhoon Lagoon when it opened at 10am. However after two late nights in a row we all got back to the room after breakfast and ended up napping for a bit whilst waiting on our washing to finish. We decided instead of heading to the water park we would spend a little bit more time at Disney Springs, so at midday we got the boat from our hotel to Springs which takes around 10/15 minutes. After a few hours shopping and wandering around Springs we were feeling a little peckish so we headed back to Blaze for a pizza around 3:30pm before heading back to the hotel to change and head off to Hollywood Studios. 

We made it to Hollywood Studios around 6pm and headed straight for our fastpass at Rock’n’Roller coaster and then onto Star Tours. After Star Tours we headed over to Toy Story land for our first ride on Slinky Dog Dash. We booked our fastpass in the evening because we wanted to ride it with all of the lights on throughout Toy Story Land – however the closer it got to our fastpass time the more it looked like it was going to storm. As we hadn’t ridden it yet we didn’t want to take the chance of missing it and so we got in the fastpass queue around 7:15pm, the lights were on but it was not overly dark yet. I had heard mixed, although mostly positive things about Slinky Dog Dash so I tried not to have too high expectations for it. However, it has turned into one of my favourite rides in Walt Disney World and my second favourite in Hollywood Studios behind Tower of Terror. After Slinky we noticed the Alien Swirling Saucers was only a 20 minute wait so we decided to queue for it before heading to do TOT in the dark (another personal favourite). After TOT we went to get our spot for the Star Wars fireworks, we opted for a space slightly further back in between the two larger pillars. We watched the Star Wars fireworks on our last trip in 2016, however this year I found them to be a little lacklustre. I’m not entirely sure what was different but they just didn’t feel as vibrant and immersive. 

After the Star Wars fireworks we headed back to the car and back to the hotel. We stopped to refill our mugs and grab a quick snack before heading back to the room to get some sleep in preparation for extra magic hours at Magic Kingdom in the morning. Do you have a favourite night time show in WDW? Let me know which in the comments below, until next time…