Friday December 8th 2023

Today was a cloudy day, but the temperature was about normal for the area at this time of year. The temperature peaked in the mid seventies. This evening a few light rain drops fell. It was just enough to make you worry about impending downpours that didn’t happen.

My goal for the day was checking out the Christmas decorations at some of the Disney World resorts. I drove to the Magic Kingdom parking lot in the early afternoon and made my way via monorail to the Magic Kingdom. I made a brief visit to the very busy park. The afternoon parade was just reaching town square as I arrived. It was a great parade as usual complete with fire breathing dragon.

I only stayed at the Magic Kingdom long enough to ride the People Mover and walk through most of the park. All of the wait times for rides were very long. From the Magic Kingdom I took the launch to the Wilderness Lodge. They always have a very tall and beautiful tree. It lived up to my memories. While I was at the Wilderness lodge I grabbed an early supper at Roaring Forks the quick service restaurant.

The next stop was Disney’s Contemporary hotel. The hotel is the next resort north of the Wilderness Lodge on Bay Lake. There are two boat route around the lake. One goes clockwise and the other Counter Clockwise. The counter clockwise boat arrived first taking me the long way around the lake. The first stop was Fort Wilderness and the second was my stop at the Contemporary. I didn’t get off at Fort Wilderness. I plan to make a separate visit to the Fort next Friday to check out all the campers decorations.

At the Contemporary Resort I found my first Gingerbread house of the circuit. It is more of a picture of Cinderella’s castle made out of gingerbread than a house. It is in the same style as much of the art created by Mary Blair that decorates the hotel. The Contemporary doesn’t have a big inside Christmas Tree. It’s main tree is outside on the lawn. The lobby has several well decorated smaller trees in the lobby.

My monorail crawl began at the Contemporary. It really was a crawl. They were apparently short one monorail causing a lot of lines to form waiting for the monorail. After a few minutes wait I boarded the monorail for the Polynesian resort. It has a nice tree in the lobby and a few decorations outside along the main entrance, but overall the Polynesian theme dominates any holiday add on.

The big Christmas themed resort on the monorail loop is the Grand Floridian. The tree inside is huge and the Gingerbread house in the lobby seems to get bigger every year. The Gingerbread house is a shop that sells all things gingerbread. It had a line around half of the lobby to make purchases. The green areas outside of the Grand Floridian resort have also been heavily decorated with wire frame animals like reindeer and snowmen. I think the Grand Floridian is the decorating leader of the Disney World resorts.

From the Grand Floridian I completed my monorail loop back to the Ticket and Transportation Center for my walk out into the parking lot and my car. Traffic returning to my RV home was heavy. I made it back home shortly after 8PM.