The day started with the “contintental” breakfast at our motel. This had to be the best continental breakfast I had ever had. They had a belgian waffle maker! We really filled up on that, and headed into Walt's world.
Picking up flyers on the way in, we noticed extended park hours. How fortunate! We were going to try to do all four parks, and go to the main stuff so Paul could get the most complete Disney experience packed into one day But wait a minute…. why the extended hours? Memorial day (expletive) weekend.
I have never seen Disney so crowded. If it weren't for fast pass, we would have never made it through. A big help was later in the day when we were finishing up at Hollywood Studios (used to be MGM) and planning on heading to Epcot to end our romantic date under the fireworks. We had fast passed Rock'n rollercoaster and waited in line at the Tower of Terror.
A pleasingly short wait at tower of Terror, a terrifying trip up and down in an abandoned elevator, and then we were off to Rock'n rollercoaster.
Our fast pass time was hours away and the wait was about 90 minutes in line. It was a must see, so we were dedicated to it. When we got to the front of the line, what to our wondering eyes should appear but two people who had fast pass tickets for now They just so happened to choose us going into the standby line, and we were able to get right on with the fastpass.
After an amazing ride, we left the park, and in the vein of paying it forward, gave our fast pass tickets to a couple people entering the park in the hopes that they could use them later.
We ended up eating at Mexico (restaurant in Epcot) and watching the fireworks before heading back to our motel. All in all we did pretty well, and saw almost all the major attractions in each park.
On the way back, we were in the tram with a high school group that was from Buffalo, NY on a senior trip. We got to talking to the chaperone's and it turned out one knew Paul's aunt. This of course prompted me to singing “it's a small world after all…”, to which the entire group of 48 high school students chimed in It was cool to see people from New England. We had a good time talking with the students about hockey and stuff, but we had to get going after a couple ambitious high school girls starting hitting on us (mostly me, not so much Paul of course).
We then waited for our bus, which ended up being an hour late and headed in the wrong direction. We eventually got back, exhausted on our day of rest, but committed to doing big mileage the following day. It would likely be another late start however, but at least the breakfast would be good.
Life was good.