The final day and we were both awake stupidly early (having gone to bed stupidly early). Got showered and packed up everything, then headed to Starbucks for breakfast and to drop off our bags at the luggage storage.
Decided to start off the day at Studios again, got there just after 8am to find a tiny queue compared to that of two days previous. One thought was that Hyperspace Mountain was open for the first time in a few days and people might be aiming for that as a first ride of the day.
Not us though! – We were the first people in line for Tower of Terror.
The rest of the day consisted of final rides on the big hitters, as well as taking on Hyperspace Mountain for the first time this trip, and Orbitron for the first time ever.
We also went to see Mickey’s PhilharMagic – a show I’ve only seen once before in Florida. Supposed to be a 4D experience, the show was in 2D and there was very little of the 4th D going on either. In the Florida version (and seemingly, from a quick google every other version), the show ends with Donald being chucked from the screen to the back of the theatre, ending up stuck in the wall. This doesn’t happen in Paris.
We ate at Colonel Hathi’s Pizza Outpost – which was average at best.
After that, headed back to Studios to round out the ‘one last time’ rides and finished the day with some more macaroni at Stark Factory… Which, this time, left us both feeling ill. Not an ideal end to the day in the parks, but hey-ho.
After grabbing our bags from the hotel, we went to the station and attempted to buy the tickets for the TGV to the airport. The only issue? – The tickets didn’t print. It gave a reference code, which I tried to redeem on another machine – which didn’t work either. In the end, I had to go to the desk and get someone to print them out in person.
From there, we ended up in the wrong queue to get down to the wrong platform, before being directed to the correct one.
After that, everything with the return journey to Scotland went fine. A long wait in the airport, some high winds and rain, but fine.
Connor started off the drive home, making it as far as Dalwhinnie before we switched. The roads up until that point had been alright, despite the snow falling. The SatNav (which we’d had going since the airport to help with the motorway bit of the journey) wanted us to turn in after Aviemore and go home that way. I had turned in just before Aviemore and gone through the town.
There was a lot of surface water on the roads and even just straight up flooding in places. Up until that point, the A9 had been clear and so I figured it’d be a safer bet to re-join the A9, where there was other traffic and gritters.
That was probably a mistake.
Just after Aviemore, the A9 got… Worse. Speeds slowed down to like 30mph at best almost all the way to Inverness. There was a big accident after Inverness, near the ‘cloud factory’, with multiple fire engines, ambulances and police in attendance and not a single one of the crew in place attempting to direct the traffic, despite the fact that there was no way to see what was coming toward us beyond the emergency vehicles.
After waiting for a while to be told when to go, I started creeping forward and a guy in a fire engine motioned that it was safe to go.
Thankfully, there were no further incidents on the way home and having left Edinburgh airport just after 9pm, I arrived home at around 1:20am.
Until next time, Disney.
