Our first ride of the day was the runaway mine train which we rode twice due to us having arrived promptly after the park opened. We had a fun-filled busy day, with a high step count which included squeezing in a show, Space Mountain (another famous ride – a rollercoaster in low light conditions with an interstellar-themed light display), a very large but equally expensive ice cream to offset the afternoon heat (29c) and a long wait in the queue for the Seven Dwarfs Gem Mine (another mine train) which had suffered technical issues and needed to be closed. As our Disney park passes allow us to enter a park every day if we choose to, we decided to return another day to ride the mine train, Pirates of the Caribbean (also closed) and Tron’s light-cycle ride – the new attraction for 2023 but only available using a virtual queue system which had sold out by this point in the day.

Before we left, we’d compiled a list of places to eat to help with the inevitable question of “what’s for tea?”. As we were so close to Disney Springs and were pretty tired from a combination of the jet lag and our high step count it seemed like a great solution. Disney Springs used to be “Downtown Disney”, but has been re-invented into a retail park (like Bicester Village), with live entertainment areas, street food shacks, restaurants and a ton of Disney retail stores selling merch from all Disney parks. It didn’t take too long for us to find Blaze Pizza, a ‘wood-fired’ artisan pizza chain. The pizzas were reasonably priced (for somewhere of this type) and the “standard” American refillable drinks were most welcome. Amongst others, our menu choices included a pesto and cheese garlic bread and a meat feast pizza.

Strolling around Disney Springs to help our digestion process, we spotted some full-size Star Wars Lego models outside the Lego store. Along with a dragon up on the roofline which I suspect might have been part of the Harry Potter universe and a giant Mickey Mouse it was a clever marketing tactic, as it drew a large crowd and judging by the sea of bright yellow Lego bags, ensured their checkouts weren’t idle.
From Disney Springs we headed home via Walmart where we got a few more essentials (loo roll and doughnuts), made evening drinks, munched a doughnut for medicinal purposes – to help replenish lost energy from all the walking and retired to bed.