What a long, strange trip it's been About This Page:

[PhilaDisney]

What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been

Who: Pam (30, 3rd time to Disney)
Charlie (34, husband, 1st time to Disney)

When: September 15 – 22

Where:All Star Movies, 101 Dalmatians

September 11 – Do We Stay Or Do We Go?

After the events of 9/11/01 we were asking ourselves the same question I’m sure a lot of people were asking “Should we stay or should we go?” The industry I work in has a lot of people working in Manhattan and I wasn’t sure who was ok and who was hurt, missing, etc. My best friend works two miles from the Pentagon and I was relieved to find out she was ok. After much consideration we decided to still go on our trip. We both needed a vacation very badly.

September 12 – What’s Going On With The Airports?

Next question, “Do we fly or do we drive?” With the airports still down we weren’t sure what to do. We decided to wait until Friday to see what the situation was with the airports.

September 13 – The Last Minute Run Around And Do Everything Marathon

After watching news reports nonstop we decided we would probably never get a flight out Saturday morning as planned. The decision was made to make the long drive to Orlando (1,060 miles). I checked US Air’s cancellation policy as well as Disney’s cancellation policy and figured I could get refunds for the airline tickets as well as the Mears transfers. I went home early to call Walt Disney World Travel and spoke to a very helpful CM who cancelled my air travel and Mears without any questions or problems. I will be getting a full refund for both.

Thursday night was full of doing last minute laundry, checking the road atlas and packing. It was quite a hectic night since this was a last minute change. I called my parents to let them know what our plans were and promised them a safe arrival call when we got there.

September 14 – Gas Up The Car, Let’s Go

We made arrangements to leave work at 11:00 so we could hit the road by early afternoon. I didn’t want to be stuck in the DC area in rush hour. I went to WaWa to get sandwiches for lunch. I got home five minutes after Charlie. We gobbled down our sandwiches, packed up the car and we were off by 12:15 p.m.

We were making great time, not running into much traffic. There were a few back ups getting into Delaware. Why is I-95 always backed up getting out of PA into DE? The tollbooths in DE were also backed up, but that is to be expected. The most notable thing about driving through MD is that I-95 is usually filled with police looking for speeders. We did not run into one single cop car on the highway until we were at the very southern end of VA. They must have all been busy with other things rather than giving people speeding tickets. During our drive we passed many signs for airports, but the only planes we saw on the drive down were military planes from Andrews Air Force Base in MD. This is a very odd and eerie feeling not seeing any planes taking off or landing as you’re driving by airports.

By the time we made it to South Carolina it was about 10 p.m. We had been seeing many billboards for South Of The Border. Now, when I say many billboards I mean there was a billboard every couple hundred feet. We were very anxious to see what all the hype was about. WOW! If you’ve ever seen South Of The Border at night when it’s all light up it will definitely capture your attention. Charlie and I agreed that it reminded us of a mini Las Vegas. We were very tired at that point and decided not to stop and check it out a little closer. We stopped for the night in Florence, SC at a Roadway Inn. $40 for the night. It was clean, quiet and roomy. We were pleased.

September 15 – Whatever You Do, Don’t light A Match

We were up at 5 a.m. There was a very cheesy continental breakfast available, but it satisfied us enough. We went across the street to get gas and got the first surprise of the day. Someone had left the lock thingy on the gas pump and I was too tired to notice. When I hit the button to select the grade of gas I wanted I didn’t have the nozzle in the gas tank yet and I got a soaking gasoline shower. After quite a bit of cursing I went inside to ask if they had a rest room I could clean up in. The woman was very apologetic and sent me next door to the travel place and had them give me a shower key. I never knew these places even existed. Basically it has everything the weary traveler needs: showers, laundry services, restaurant, grocery supplies. I went in and showered and changed my clothes. I tied my gasoline soaked clothes into the garbage bag I had brought for dirty laundry, but my sneakers still smelled like gas and they were the only shoes I had. We went back to the gas station to use the car wash. We thought it would be a good idea to wash the car before someone threw a cigarette out the window and our car blew up. (Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating there just a bit). The car wash was broken so I just used the squeegee thing that is supposed to be for your windshield to wash the part of the car that was soaked in gas.

Finally on the road and on our way at 7 am. One hour behind schedule, but that’s ok. We were driving into the last of tropical storm Gabrielle and had wind and rain for the remainder of the drive. We didn’t stop for lunch and just snacked on cheese and crackers we had brought with us (thank you to all the supermarkets to their back to school sales on snack items).

We arrived at Disney World property around 2:15. I must tell you all that Charlie is the worst when it comes to giving directions and reading road signs. I was counting on him to read the Disney road signs while I watched traffic. Well, to make a long story short, we first had the great debate of “does next right mean this right or the next right?” Apparently next right means this right. We ended up at the Magic Kingdom gates sheepishly asking for directions to the All Stars Resorts. The CM either gave us wrong directions or Charlie misread the signs again. We had another argument about what the CM said and what exit to take. We ended up at the MGM Studios gate, once again admitting what idiots we are, and asking for directions. The CM gave us great directions this time and we made it to the All Star Resorts by 2:30. Charlie and I agreed never to speak of the Disney World turnaround tour ever again.

There was only one car ahead of us at the security gate and off we went to All Star Movies. There was a short wait at check in (about 2-3 minutes). We both had to listen carefully to the CM due to the noise level in the lobby and the CM’s accent. We were put in the 101 Dalmatians #1 building with a “garden” view, room 1725. This is a great location. It’s very quiet and it’s a short walk to the main building if you take the short cut around the parking lot side. It’s not that long of a walk if you go through the walkways and past the main pool, but we found taking the parking lot walkway to be much quieter and a little quicker and less crowded. I went to get the car to move it from check in parking to the lot next to 101 Dalmatians. As I turned the corner I almost had a head on collision with someone driving on the wrong side of the road. I thought “Ok, buddy, in the good old USA we drive on the right.” This statement would have more meaning as the week went by as I noticed there were quite a few British people staying at the hotel. I’m not complaining about anything or mocking anyone, this is just an observation made as I heard many British accents. We unpacked and headed off to the bus stop for the Magic Kingdom.

On the bus we all sang happy Birthday to a little boy who was turning 5 that day. This got big grins from the birthday boy and his parents.

Security has definitely been increased. There are security guards at the gates checking all bags before they will let you in the parks. Security checked my boring fanny pack with all of a wallet and room safe key inside and I was in the Magic Kingdom at last. We decided on an early dinner at the Columbia Harbor House. We had skipped lunch so we were both pretty hungry. Charlie had the chicken strips and fish combo and I had the New England clam chowder in a bread bowl. Both were excellent. After dinner we went for a ride on the Liberty Belle River Boat. I had never been on this, so this was a treat for me as well as Charlie who is absolutely in love with paddle wheel boats for some reason. We went around the river and waved to other guests in the park. It felt like you were right there with Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. This was very relaxing after a day of driving. Charlie wanted to snap a few pictures of the boat (about an entire roll of film) so I went in search of a rest room. I must have been gone for a long time because Charlie thought I had been abducted. He always thinks this when I’m gone for more than one minute. After Charlie finally decided he got every possible picture of the riverboat we headed over to the haunted mansion. I didn’t try the fast pass because I thought it was late in the day and they might be gone by now. It turns out we didn’t really need it because the line was only about 10 minutes. In the stretch room I told Charlie to look up when the lights went out. He didn’t seem too impressed. He was however, impressed with the entire ride and thought it was great. We went over to Peter Pan’s Flight and waited in line for about 10 minutes. This is when I got to see fast pass in action as pass holders went in line in front of us by what seemed like the dozens. I thought to myself “I need to use this fast pass system instead of waiting in line”. Oh well I was here for an entire week and had plenty of time to see everything. Peter Pan is still a neat ride as it feels like you are actually flying over London, but I think some things could use a little make over as they are looking very aged. We went to the Legend Of The Lion King. I have not seen this before and was looking forward to it. We had about a 5-minute wait before the next show. In the first room I had a great view until a tall gentleman stood in front of me. Now I am 5’3’’ and quite a few people are taller than me and they all seem to be drawn to stand in front of me in a crowd. This happens everywhere we go. To solve the problem, I stood behind Charlie who is 5’11’’ and wrapped my arms around his stomach, stood on my tiptoes and rested my chin on his shoulder. Kind of cozy, but at least I could see Rafiki again. I was kind of disappointed in this show, mainly because I could see the pole thingy they use to move the puppets around and it kind of ruined it for me. When I’m in fairy tale land I don’t need to see what makes the puppets move. We left Lion King singing to ourselves and headed for It’s A Small World. I would have skipped this altogether but since it was Charlie’s first time at Disney we had to go in. Charlie loved It’s A Small World (I still can’t figure him out sometimes). I think it had to do with some of the dancing girls and the one that winks at you. Charlie found it necessary to flirt with the plastic figure and wink back. We made our way back to main street for shopping. Charlie was on a hunt for a pair of Mickey ears that met his picky shopping criteria. He decided on a pair of Mickey ears on a headband that are furry instead of the plastic ones you can get with your name embroidered on them. We had some fun in the hat shop trying on different hats and just goofing around. My favorite silly hat of the whole trip was the one with the Grumpy face and the beard that went under your chin. The Mickey ear purchase worked up our appetites so we headed to the Main Street Bakery for an oatmeal raisin cookie for me (why do I think of Tikibird when I write this?) and some kind of chocolate cake thing for Charlie. Charlie also decided he need a frozen mocha coffee drink with his cake of which he only drank half of. He kindly offered me the rest and I declined. I personally think coffee should be hot and not in a frozen, iced or any kind of ice cream form.

We noticed people lining up for the Spectro Magic parade about an hour and a half before it started. I think this is a complete waste of time, especially since there were two parades that night. We went to Space Mountain but decided the wait was too long (about an hour) and decided we would come back to it another day. We went instead to Alien Encounter. This is where Charlie started with his 20 questions. “What happens?, What is this?, What is that?” etc. etc. I tried to tell him as little as possible about Alien Encounter without giving anything away. I didn’t want to ruin the experience for him. I had forgotten parts of this and got a little freaked out myself during it. After it was over Charlie said to me “I got wet and there was something breathing on my neck.” “Well, that happened to everyone” was my response.

We did a little shopping in Tomorrowland. Charlie bought one of those Mickey antenna toppers for his truck. The CM behind the counter looked at him with all seriousness and said “That will be $40.” Well, I must have been half asleep because it took me a few seconds to figure out that she was joking and I quickly reassured Charlie of this. We all had a good laugh about it. Charlie isn’t one to joke around with about the price of things. He is one of these people who will watch the register very closely to make sure the correct price shows up. Fortunately he was being a good sport about the joke and he didn’t say any more about it the rest of the night.

Charlie then wanted to stake out a good place for the fireworks so he could make an attempt at getting some pictures of them. He had tried getting pictures of fireworks on the fourth of July but they didn’t turn out so well. We wasted about an hour just standing around so no one would take our spot. This resulted in an argument about wasting precious park time just standing around. After the fireworks we rushed over to Buzz Lightyear. This is a great time to go on Buzz Lightyear. There was no wait at all. We are both really terrible at this. I am more terrible than Charlie with a pathetic score of 2,700 with Charlie at 7,000 points. I blame my terrible score on the fact that I don’t think my laser gun was working properly because I couldn’t see my laser aiming at anything. So I just blindly shot off my gun at anything and everything. Charlie had a terrible score just because his aim is bad.

Off we went to the Tomorrowland Transit Authority for a nice relaxing ride. Charlie got to see a little of what Space Mountain would be like and to my surprise he didn’t freak out. Charlie is not a big fan of roller coasters and it took a lot of convincing on my part to get him to agree to go on it. This would turn out to be the only roller coaster he went on the whole trip.

Next, we decided to stake out a place for the later Spectro Magic parade. We plopped ourselves down right in front of Cinderella’s castle on the sidewalk. While waiting for the parade to start I went for popcorn and bottled water. We had brought water bottles with us but didn’t bring them to the park that day because it was still cloudy and cool from Gabrielle and we didn’t think we would need them. This turned out to be a great location and we got some great pictures of the parade.

After the parade we made our way to the front of the park with the rest of the cattle herd. We stopped in the Emporium to pick up more nighttime film. We got the very last seat on the bus all the way in the back. Apparently this is where the engine is. These seats became very warm on the ride back and our buns were nicely toasted by the time we got off.

We did a little more shopping in Donald’s Double Feature and then headed back to the room to crash into bed at midnight.

[bfth]

Great report thus far. And I promise not to tell anyone about the direction mix up! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Las17]

Love your trip report so far! I especially liked the part about your nicely toasted buns! I've ridden in those back seats and you're right! Looking forward to the next installment.
Laura

[tikibird]

Philadisney,

Great trip report so far (and I'm not just saying that because I feel honored to have been mentioned in it! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] )!

Sounds like Charlie got right into the magic - I giggled about his flirting with the Small World doll! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Keep 'em coming, and BTW - EXCELLENT choice on that cookie! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[PhilaDisney]

What A Long Strange Trip It's Been - Day 2
Who: Pam (30, 3rd trip to Disney)
Charlie (husband, 34, 1st trip to Disney)
Where: All Star Movies, 101 Dalmations

Sunday, September 16 – Did you bring a baby and not tell me?

Did I say this room was quiet? You can forget that. The infant crying next door to us awakened us at 2:30 a.m. We had a room with an adjoining door, so I don’t know if that had something to do with the fact that we could hear everything that was going on next door. Picture if you will, two very tired childless adults sound asleep cozy in their bed. When all of sudden, “Waaaaaaaahhh” “Huh? What was that?” “I think there’s a baby next door.” “What time is it?” “2:30” “You have to be kidding me.” We both groaned and rolled over and attempted to go back to sleep. 3:00 came “Waaaaahhhh” We weren’t finding this situation very amusing. We both like kids, but we don’t need to be woken up in the middle of the night by someone else’s baby crying. I was already awake by 6 a.m. Because of the disruptions in the middle of the night I never did get back completely to sleep. The baby started crying again around 6, but since I was already up it didn’t bother me quite as much.

Charlie got up around 7 thanks to a call from Mickey and we headed to the food court for breakfast. What’s this I see? Ya hoo! There is an express checkout slip on the door of the screaming infant. I thought about offering to help them pack and be on their way. So long, farewell, goodbye, don’t forget to take the baby with you.

We walked by the baggage handler who was making balloon animals. She said this is what they do when they’re not busy. There was one there that was supposed to be some kind of animal (I forget what exactly), but to us it looked like a cootie. Those of you a certain age might remember cooties from your childhood. They were the toys where you put together pieces of a bug to make it as big or as little as you wanted and gave it eyes and ears and a tongue and before you know it you had your very own cootie.

Breakfast was a breakfast platter for both of us which included eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes and a biscuit. The eggs and potatoes were cold and the biscuit could have been used for a hockey puck. The sausage and bacon were hot and delicious. Charlie decided to grab a couple of donuts and forced me to eat one. We also bought our refillable mugs, which would get a good deal of use throughout the week. Our mothers would be appalled that we were drinking soda for breakfast, but hey, I don’t see our mothers here and after all you can do what you want when you’re an adult and don’t have kids to set a good example for, right? We did try the coffee once and decided it was terrible.

There was a little mishap with the paperwork we got when we checked in. I had grabbed some and Charlie and taken some. Well, Charlie never gave me the paperwork he took and just shoved it into one of our bags. I found this out when we went to the gift shop to get our free pins that came with our package. The CM behind the counter asked me for the cards. I asked him what he was talking about. This is when I found out about the paperwork Charlie never gave me. I went back to the room to search out the cards and while searching I also found our parking pass. I guess it’s a good thing I had to look through everything. We got our pins, Donald Duck flying an airplane.

We then went to guest services to pick up our Hoop Dee Doo tickets for that night and to make our Fantasmic dinner priority seating. The CM was in training and I think I totally confused her when I wanted to charge the Hoop Dee Doo to the room. Everything was straightened out in a short amount of time and everyone was very pleasant.

Off to the Magic Kingdom we go. What a difference from Saturday to today. Where did all the people go? Saturday the Magic Kingdom was packed and today we walked on everything and practically had the walkways to ourselves. I could get used to this.

We got to Tomorrowland right before rope drop. I wanted to get Charlie on Space Mountain before he had a chance to chicken out. Charlie isn’t one for roller coasters and he only agreed to go on Space Mountain because he said it sounded neat being in the dark and flying through space. We only waited a few minutes at Space Mountain for them to get the ride ready and we were in. I asked Charlie if he wanted the front row seat and he said no (chicken). When it was all done he admitted it was a great ride.

I had a plan to hit the other popular rides before the park got crowded. Little did I know that the park would never get crowded that day. We headed over to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. We were halfway through the line cue when Charlie changes his mind and turns around to head out. So I go it alone. I raced through the rest of the cue and got to the loading area right before a train was about to leave. When they realized it was just me the CMs held the train for me and let me board. That was awfully nice of them. I always tend to duck a few times on this ride even though I know I will never hit my head on anything. Big Thunder always gets my adrenaline going. I got off and informed Charlie of what a wonderful time he missed.

Charlie assured me that he would go on Splash Mountain so we headed over there next. I decided to test the humor of the CMs on this ride and asked if we would get wet. The CM just rolled his eyes at me and said “Uh, no.” Up at the loading point there was a boat about to depart with the back seat empty and the CM told us to wait for the next one. Now, I didn’t just fall of the turnip truck and I knew perfectly well that if we got in the next boat in the front seat with just the two of us in the boat we would spend the rest of the day wringing out our clothes. I just gave the CM a big smile and told her we didn’t mind sitting in the back of the other boat. She told us it was ok and that they would get us wet one way or another. We had a great time singing along and looking at what I think are some of the best animatronics at Disney. We do realize that this is a log flume ride and you will get wet. However, if we can avoid being soaked we will. We walked away with just a few drips here and there. Mostly our hair was wet. It would soon dry.

We headed into the Country Bear Jamboree to cool off from the heat. It was only mid-morning and it was already extremely hot outside. I enjoy the Country Bears no matter how corny they may seem to be to others. I think I enjoy it so much because it reminds me of the music my parents and grandparents listened to while I was growing up.

After the bears were done strumming their banjos we headed over to the Jungle Cruise. Our boat driver was very funny. He was very into his roll and kept the jokes coming. Granted, they were lame jokes, but he seemed to know this, which made them humorous.

We got back from the jungle safe and sound and decided to try our luck with some pirates. Pirates of the Caribbean was another walk on. Charlie loves pirates as much as paddle boats so he was having a grand time. There I was minding my own business when all of a sudden, boom! We were in the middle dueling cannons. Oooh! They got me (wet that is). I don’t remember getting wet here before and it didn’t seem like anyone else around me got wet. Oh well. I had to drag Charlie out of the gift shop after the ride, but not before he emptied his wallet. Captain Hook was walking around and Mr. Smee was running around tickling people.

Aladdin’s Carpets were calling to us so we headed over there. This is a nice relaxing ride and you get a cool breeze in the process. We made the mistake of both sitting in the front, so we could only make the carpet go up and down. I tried reaching behind me for the control to make the carpet go sideways, but I was not successful in doing so. I once again got wet on this ride as a camel spit water at me. How this managed to hit me and not Charlie I’m not sure. Charlie was the one sitting on the right hand side of the carpet. The theme of the day is to get Pam wet no matter what you have to do (spit at her, blow cannon balls in her direction, try to get her to sit in the front of Splash Mountain). Actually, it was so hot I didn’t mind a little spritz here and there.

I insisted on going in the Enchanted Tiki Room because I had never seen it. What a wonderful show. It was very lively and I love the way the room makes you feel like you’re in a tropical paradise. I felt a little sad when the birds told us to stand up and leave. I probably could have spent all afternoon in there.

We decided to have lunch in the Diamond Horseshoe Saloon. We got there just as the cowboy was beginning his gig. We both had the roast beef sandwich, which came with a pickle slice and chips. We found a table by the far wall and had a good view of everything. The cowboy decided to taunt a couple that had sat down with their food shortly after we did. He played the Twighlight Zone on his guitar and stared at them saying “Don’t turn around, keep chewing.” They soon realized everyone was staring at them and everyone had a good laugh. Next a magician came out and did some card tricks. This doesn’t sound very exciting, but I can’t explain his act without giving secrets away. He was very funny and highly entertaining. Then the moment Charlie was waiting for, the dancing girls. These were old time can-can girls who sang and danced and flirted with the men in the audience. At the end everyone came back out and the performers and everyone in the saloon joined in singing God Bless America. I was just starting to put the events of last week in the back of my mind for the vacation when this brought tears to my eyes again.

After lunch we left the Magic Kingdom to go to the Downtown Disney Marketplace for shopping. I have to say, I absolutely HATE shopping. My idea of shopping is knowing what you want ahead of time, going to the store, getting it and get out of there as fast as possible. Charlie loves shopping. You can imagine the dilemma I’m in here. I’m silently praying that he will not want to spend too much time here. I’m in luck. All Charlie was interested in was the World Of Disney and the Art of Disney. Woo Hoo! Let’s high tail it out of here before he changes his mind. We headed back to the hotel for a much needed nap.

We woke up nicely refreshed and ready to party at the Hoop Dee Doo Revue. We hopped a bus to the Magic Kingdom and waited just a few short minutes for the Fort Wilderness ferry. This gave us the opportunity to see the Wilderness Lodge, at least the back side of it near the dock. From what I saw I wasn’t at all impressed. I made a mental note to try and see the rest of the lodge because of all the great reviews.

We checked in and had our picture taken behind the wagon wheel. It turned out good so we bought it. We didn’t feel it was necessary to buy two magnets, so we opted for just the picture.

We were seated at what we nicknamed “the romantic corner table for two”. This was the only table we saw with only two people at it and even though it was in the corner next to the kitchen door, we had a great view of the stage and got some great pictures.

The most wonderful thing happened that night. We got carded! I know that might not seem too exciting to some of you. I know I am getting old when getting carded is a compliment. It’s when getting carded graduates from an insult to a compliment that you thank your lucky stars for your youthful looks. Our waiter asked both of us for ID and I grinned at him, thanked him for the wonderful compliment and showed him my driver’s license.

The food here is barbequey good (barbequey is my made up word for the day). We feasted on fried chicken, ribs, baked beans, corn and some of the most wonderful bread we ever tasted (or maybe it was the butter). For desert, they served delicious strawberry shortcake. Unfortunately when they served it they said I had to share it with Charlie.

The entertainment is cornball comedy, which is quite all right because we are a couple of cornballs ourselves. That being said, we laughed ourselves silly through the entire show. At the end they handed out washboards for people to play and somehow Charlie ended up with one. Will someone please give this gentleman a lesson on how a washboard should be played? Instead of running his spoon up and down it, he insisted on banging on it like a drum. I was getting a bit of a headache and was wishing it would end soon.

We made our way out of Pioneer Hall without any trouble and waddled to the bus stop. For those of you attending the HDD and not staying anywhere nearby and the MK is closed, be prepared for a long ride back to your hotel. First, we got on a bus in Fort Wilderness headed for the TTC. This had a quick stop at the Wilderness Lodge. I tried desperately to see what the front of the lodge looked like, but it was so dark all I saw was the wonderful view of the sidewalk. Second, we got off at the TTC and had to get on a bus to Downtown Disney. By this time we noticed a group of about 20 of us all had the same destination. Thus was born the “Hoop Dee Doo All Star Bus Hopping Parade”. At last we boarded a bus at Downtown Disney to go to the All Star Resorts.

Finally got back to the room and went to sleep after watching the news.

[PS - I LUV WDW]

PhilaDisney -- love your reports!! You made me laugh more than once. When you started to describe the baby in the next room at ASMo, I really chuckled. My DH and I were there for one night last September. At 1 A.M. the little ones next door were running up and down the room (it sounded like a whole football team practicing). When I convinced myself that they would at least sleep late, it all started at 7 A.M. again. Needless to say we quickly went to Corando Springs and were able to get the rest of our trip switched to there [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] I also had to laugh at your reason to go to the Tiki birds, my exact same reason for wanting to go in November. I think perhaps the reason I relate so well is because of our name [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Pam

[PhilaDisney]

What A Long Strange Trip It's Been - Day 3
Who: Pam (30, 3rd trip to Disney)
Charlie (husband, 34, 1st trip to Disney)
Where: All Star Movies, 101 Dalmations

Monday, September 17 – “They don’t bite. They just make love.”

We woke up this morning around 7, quickly showered and headed to the food court for breakfast. This morning I had a very exciting breakfast of Raisin Bran and skim milk while Charlie opted to try his luck with the breakfast platter again. He said it was much better than yesterday. There must have been a different chef in the kitchen or our timing was just right and we got there as a fresh batch of food was being put out.

We headed to the Animal Kingdom after waiting only a few seconds for a bus. There was some sort of talking palm tree greeting people outside the park. I only caught a bit of the conversation, but the tree was telling a group of people he has the most important information – where the bathrooms are. I think this is a wonderful marketing idea and all theme parks should have guests greeted with objects telling them where the nearest bathrooms are. It sure would save a lot of park map reading time.

We allowed one of the photographers to take our picture with the Animal Kingdom sign in the background. She told Charlie to stand behind me and put his arm around me. Well, his arm didn’t exactly land on my shoulder like she expected. After I adjusted his position she laughed and told Charlie to behave himself because this was a family park. She took two pictures and the one of us standing side by side turned out a lot better and we ended up buying it.

We headed for the safari first. The driver was a little difficult to understand due to his heavy accent. There were quite a few animals out, but not very active due to the heat. Does anyone know if those Ostrich eggs are real? The best picture we took on the safari was one of a lion standing under the tree yawning. The sun was hitting this area just right so the lion looks like a silhouette. I can’t wait to see how this turns out. Words can’t describe how beautiful this was.

We headed to the Pangani Forest Exploration trail next. Again the animals were not very active due to the heat. The tigers were just laying around what we guessed was the spot were they were fed from. They just kept staring at this spot in the wall, like ok, we’re ready for lunch now.

I dragged Charlie to the character greeting trails. We had our picture taken with Pooh and Piglet, Tigger, Goofy and Pluto, Mickey and Minnie. Baloo was out in the walkways but he was constantly surrounded, so we left him alone. Instead we just walked by him singing the “Bear Necessities” which I’m sure had to hurt someone’s ears.

Charlie was being sort of a party pooper and didn’t want to see any of the shows. We skipped Lion King and Tarzan Rocks. This just gives me a reason to go back. I will have to leave him at the hotel or something next time. I did happen to catch a brief glimpse of the bird show as Charlie was buying sunglasses and they left the curtain open for late comers.

We went to the Maharaja (sp?) Jungle Trek. A lot of the animals were not visible this day, so there is nothing much to say here. The gorillas were out, but either hid from everyone or just sat there.

We found our way to Dinosaur and again walked on without a wait. There was a little boy in line crying his eyes out pleading with his mother that he didn’t want to go on this ride. His mother kept telling him that everything was just make believe and there was nothing to be afraid of. I wanted to find this woman later because this ride scared the crap out of me and I knew it was all fake. After we left the Dino building I was sitting on a bench outside and another mother was having a very strict conversation with her daughter about how if she kept up the same crap she pulled yesterday that her father would be very angry and they would cancel the princess breakfast the next day. I was glad to see a parent putting their foot down when it came to their kids whining. I also saw quite a few young ones behaving very well. I don’t want anyone to think that we lumped all children into a category of screaming brats. That wasn’t the case, but we saw a fair share of both well behaved and some that just weren’t too happy about something or other.

We had lunch at the Tusker house which wasn’t too busy. There was the regular lunch crowd, but nothing too extreme. Charlie had the chicken salad which he said was good. He wanted some kind of dressing with it, but I couldn’t find any. Maybe you had to ask when you ordered? I had the village special which was peanut chicken with rice and green beans. This was the most delicious meal I’ve had in a long time. It was spicy without being overpowering. I would highly recommend eating here for a meal with a little bit of a different flavor. Definitely not your basic burger or hot dog. The Tusker House is also very clean. There was a CM there who’s job it was to stand in the middle of the room with a towel and cleaner and clean the table as soon as people vacated it. He was doing a superb job.

We went on Kali River Rapids as the last thing we did in the Animal Kingdom. We jammed our stuff into the middle compartment. I think the family in the raft with us had enough gear to go backpacking for a month. We were having a nice ride when a big wave came over me and the woman sitting next to me, leaving the rest of the raft relatively dry. This ride is fun, but a bit on the short side. We got to the end and I had to look around twice to convince my brain that yes, it’s over, get out. Some smart aleck up on the bridge got me right in the head with one of the squirting elephants. I didn’t mind since I was already soaked.

We headed back to the front of the park, purchased our picture and headed back to hotel to change into dry clothes. I refused to walk around the rest of the day with wet underwear. We had done everything we wanted to in the Animal Kingdom and were done by 1:00. By this time it was also extremely hot and the park seemed more crowded. Spending the morning in Animal Kingdom then hopping to another park is a good idea. All morning it didn’t seemed crowded at all, but after lunch the population seemed to triple.

After changing into some dry clothes, we headed to the Magic Kingdom to catch the Magical Moments parade that we had missed Saturday and Sunday. We staked out a spot at the end of the parade route on Main Street. While waiting for the parade Charlie had his first Mickey bar and I had my very first and very last frozen banana. Frozen bananas always looked interesting to me and I decided this was a good day to try one. In my opinion some fruit should not be frozen and bananas are one of them – yuck. Charlie enjoyed his Mickey bar and devoured it within seconds.

The parade started and we had a great time singing along with all the songs. I think it was when Aladdin came that a lady camel came up to Charlie and held out her hand for him to kiss. Well, you know what they say about the romance being gone after marriage? Charlie took the camel’s hand and shook it like he was meeting a new friend. Oh brother. The camel looked at me and held her hand out again to Charlie. He just gave me this helpless look and I had to tell him that she wanted him to kiss her hand.

After the parade we cooled off with a couple of cokes at Casey’s. We had been baking in the direct sun for over an hour and I think we both sweated off about 10 pounds today (although we could spare 20 pounds). We were having a great time watching the old cartoons on Casey’s television in the air conditioning. You just have to love those Goofy sports.

We got cooled off and headed over to the Swiss Family Robinson Tree house. I want to live here. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen and I think it would be great if it were possible to actually live in a house like this.

Charlie decided he needed more loot from the Pirates of the Caribbean shop so we headed over there next. A CM dressed like a pirate made me jump out of my skin when he suddenly turned to me and went “aargh”. I totally wasn’t expecting that. I thought he was just walking by me. I laughed when he did the same thing to another woman who had the same reaction I did.

We headed back to the hotel for a swim to cool off. We went to the Mighty Ducks pool since it was next to the laundry services and I needed to do laundry. I don’t normally do laundry on vacation, but with some of my clothes smelling like gasoline and others being wet and smelling like the water from Kali River Rapids, I decided to do it.

We took some pictures around the hotel. They were mostly pictures of us being silly – coming out of the pool with Mickey ears on, inside the tv set in 101 Dalmations with Lucky watching us. We had to go over to the Love Bug to see if it was real or a fake one. It’s real, with the windows blacked out and eyes in the headlights.

We ordered pizza for dinner delivered to our room. In the value resorts this is as close to room service as you’re going to get. It came within 20 minutes which surprised me because they said to expect to wait 30. We opted for the 16” supreme which came with onions, olives, mushrooms and sausage. First I had to convince the pizza guy on the phone that we didn’t need salads or drinks. Why would we pay extra for coke when we have our refillable mugs? It isn’t that far of a walk to the food court. I know that seems kind of strange to have pizza delivered and go to the food court anyway to get drinks, but we both decided we wanted to eat in the quiet of our own room instead of the noisy court.

Later we walked over to the gift shop to collect our flex feature gifts. We decided Charlie would get the Animal Kingdom timepiece and I would get the picture frame. This is some very nice merchandise for a flex feature. We were very pleased with our decision and I now have two more things to dust in the house.

On the way back to the room we ran into a CM from NJ who commented on my Crayola t-shirt. I thought it was odd someone would actually know where Easton, PA was. It turned out his family was from the Reading area. We chit chatted a little about how we felt ripped off when you go to the crayola factory all they give you is one crayon and a magic marker. We were hoping for one of those boxes with all the colors you can imagine with a sharpener in the back. Oh well. We said good night to our new friend and headed off to bed.

Quote of the day in the Magic Kingdom came from someone from a camera crew filming the parade. Said to a woman running away from a love bug: “Don’t worry. They don’t bite. They just make love.”
I thought this was extremely funny at the time. It must have been the heat.

[img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[CU Tigger]

More, more, we want more of your trip report! Charlie seems perfect [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] . He flirts with plastic toy dolls and isn't really sure what to do when presented with a hand. LOL I'm with you, I'd rather not shop, though somehow Disney seems to make shopping seem like an attraction rather than an inconvenience.

I'm looking forward to the rest of your trip report!

[PhilaDisney]

Day 4

Tuesday, September 18 - Please hum the Muppets tune during this part of the trip report.

The leftover pizza from last night made a wonderful breakfast. Actually I could only eat about half a slice before I decided that it was much better when it was fresh.

Charlie had some weird obsession with getting his face painted at the Animal Kingdom, so we headed there first. We found the face painting guys standing around just waiting for our business. Charlie got his face painted like a native warrior and we shot some pictures before leaving for the bus stop again. The total time spent in Animal Kingdom was about an hour. It was another scorcher today and Charlie immediately started sweating. Needless to say paint doesn’t stay on your face well when you’re sweating buckets. I was glad to have my handy pack of travel tissues. I continuously had to wipe dripping paint from his nose, eyelids, etc. At the bus stop I told him I wasn’t going to keep doing this all day and it was starting to look pretty bad anyway. We agreed that when we got to MGM he would wash it off.

The bus for MGM arrived and we were the only ones on it. The bus driver apologized for the “crowded” bus and then asked me if I was embarrassed to let Charlie out in public without washing his face. I told him that Charlie smelled ok, so he wasn’t too embarrassing.

We got to MGM and stopped to have pictures taken with King Louie and Jessie. Charlie went to the men’s room to wash off his war paint. He took his good old time about it too. Whoever said women take forever in the bathroom obviously never met my husband.

Charlie was on a mission to find some of the old MGM movies that are out of print. He thought he might get lucky here. We searched high and low, around every corner. A CM told us that we probably wouldn’t find any in the park. He was right. Finally after looking in every gift shop, we gave up.

We started out for the Muppets stopping along the way to check out the busts and statues of different celebrities. Whoever did these did an excellent job. Everyone looks just like they should, or did. We got to the Muppets in the middle of the pre-show. I think Charlie and I were the only ones to find this amusing. I couldn’t hear or see anyone else laughing. Maybe we just have a sick sense of humor. Or maybe we just haven’t grown up yet. We laughed just as hard during the entire show.

Buzz Lightyear was outside Al’s Toy Barn, but as soon as we got in line he decided to go on break. The line was a little on the long side, with the Muppets just getting out and all so we decided to come back later.

We decided on a early lunch at Toy Story Pizza Planet. I really didn’t want pizza again after having it for dinner the night before and then again for breakfast, but Charlie really wanted to go in here. The pizza was good as far as fast food pizza is concerned. I think this is partly due to it being early, around 11:00 and everything was fresh. We sat upstairs and looked over the arcade as we ate. There was this machine where you could play a pretend drum set and hear yourself. I really wanted to try this out, but some guy and his daughter didn’t look like they were willing to give it up anytime soon. Being here when the park is so empty didn’t bother me, but I can see how it would get really loud and annoying during the busier seasons.

We headed off in the direction of Indiana Jones. We needed to just sit for a while and let our lunch settle. A show had just started ten minutes ago and I wanted to see the whole thing, so we went into Drew Carey Sounds Dangerous. I really think that along with the warnings of it being completely in the dark, they should also warn you that due to the darkness you could also fall asleep! I almost did fall asleep. What do you expect with a full belly, total darkness and a lame show? In our opinion there is nothing that sounds dangerous in here and we both agreed that the whole thing was kind of dorky.

I asked Charlie if his lunch was digested enough for Star Tours. He said yes, so in we go. I would have liked to take more time getting in so we could look at all the cool stuff in the line area, but the people behind us kept us moving. Off we go. I can hear Charlie having a great time next to me. After he said it was great, but felt a little dizzy.

We still had a bit of time before Indy began so we found our way to the Great Movie Ride. I say found our way, because we had to navigate our way around the construction of the hat. We made our way in and we were off to view the wonders of tinsel town. The gangster took over our tram, but got his just deserts in the end when he got a little greedy.
The Wizard Of Oz is one of our favorite movies and we could probably go through it line by line for those of you who can put up with our bad munchkin immitation. We sang along quietly so as not to annoy anyone and followed the yellow brick road to the wonderful movie montage at the end.

It was now time for Indiana Jones. The CM as the gate was telling people to hurry up because there was only about 1,300 seats left. I love Indiana Jones (or maybe it’s just Harrison Ford I’m in love with). Anyway, we got a seat down front, off to the right with no one in front of us. A perfect view of everything, until a man with a video camera sat right in front of me halfway through (here’s the short thing again that I mention earlier). There are plenty of empty seats in the theatre, so I still don’t know why he decided right in front of me was the best seat in the house. It was kind of late to get up and move and we were surrounded by people on both sides of us. I didn’t make a big deal of it since I had seen this show a dozen times or more.

Charlie has now told me he is chickening out of Rock ‘N Roller Coaster, so I have to go solo. We headed over there and I had a short wait of about 10 minutes before Aerosmith invited me to “Walk This Way”. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like a big loser standing in line by themselves? I did notice a couple of others had come in all by there lonesome, so it made me feel better. This is a great adrenaline rush. I couldn’t help letting out a hair raising roller coaster scream as we were being rocketed onto the LA freeway. I hated to see the ride come to an end, but Charlie was waiting for me and I knew he would be mad if I sneaked in for another ride. I met him outside to find out he thought being alone was a good opportunity to drink all my water. Oh well, off to the water fountain to fill up, then on to the animation tour.

The animation tour is something I always enjoy. I like seeing the animators working on new projects. How do they work with such little light? We took our good old time lolly gagging behind the rest of the group looking at everything. I tried desperately to think of a question for the woman showing us how to draw Milo from Atlantis. My mind was coming up blank. We admired the items in the gift shop knowing that we would never be able to afford anything in here. So what’s a person to do? Head over to who wants to be a millionaire?, that’s what.

I know they don’t give out money, but it’s all in good fun right? Charlie decided he didn’t want to do this, so I have to fly solo again. There was a short wait before they started letting people in. They had tvs showing some WWTBAM questions. Good grief! If they ask questions like this inside, I’ll never make it to the hot seat. I forget what the questions were by the way. I think most of them had to do with old Millionaire shows and ABC shows.

We were finally let in. Can these seats be any closer together? I’m glad everyone around me, including myself, showered today. The girl sitting next to me was there by herself so we got to talking a little bit. Ok. Everything is finally set up and here comes “Regis”. I was a little too slow on the fastest finger question, although I got it right. Taking a few seconds to think about it will really cost you. The question was about books and what one came out first and I did stop to think for a second or two. By pure luck I got it correct.

We had ourselves our first player who was there with his wife and two kids. I’ll tell you up front that the audience got a good laugh out of this guy and it wasn’t because he was funny or telling jokes or anything like that. Question one: In what Asian country does Mulan take place? (or something like that). The only Asian country listed was China, so even if you’ve never seen Mulan, if you have the slightest bit of geographical intelligence you should know the answer. Right? Mr. Hot Seat needed to ask the audience. The audience roared with laughter at this poor guy. “Regis’s” facial expressions are priceless. He can’t really say anything, but you know he’s thinking “is this guy really that stupid?”. Question two: Finish the nursery rhyme “hey diddle diddle, the cat and the ______”. I’d like to use the 50/50 please. More roaring laughter from the audience. This was probably funnier because the guy did have two kids. With the 50/50 he was able to get it right. Now my stomach hurt from laughing too much. Question three: Which of the following is not a weapon in the board game Clue? The answer was a frying pan. He didn’t know this either and had to phone a stranger. The “stranger” turned out to be Charlie. He said hello and I thought “I know that voice.” Then I was just hoping he would get the answer right and not embarrass himself, and me. We’ve played Clue many times and he told Mr. Hot Seat the right answer. By now the audience knew this guy wasn’t going to last much longer. He had used all his life lines on the easiest questions. The next question was about a fish. He actually knew the answer, but I did not. My ignorance about fish cost me dearly and I never reached the top ten. After his fish question he got the next one wrong and out he went. The person who was in first place declined to go to the hot seat, as well as the person in second place. Why did these people come in here if they didn’t want to play? The person in third place took the seat of honor and we started to play again. This guy was much smarter than the other one. I think he made it to the 60,000 (or whatever it is) point question. I got two of the questions wrong along the way, which again, cost me to give up any hope of getting in the top ten. We made it through round two and time was up. Charlie ended up with a button for his phone a stranger help and I walked away with squat.

We walked around New York street a little bit taking some pictures. The umbrella wasn’t doing anything except hanging there. It looks a little ridiculous to have an umbrella hanging on a lamppost like that if it’s not going to rain.

It was time for a snack, so we went over to Min and Bill’s Dockside Diner for cookies and a Coke. Belle was outside so Charlie went over to flirt with her and have his picture taken. I stayed at the table and drank his coke. I needed revenge for his drinking my water earlier.

We went back to visit Buzz Lightyear and this time Woody was outside with him. The line was also a lot shorter. That Woody is one tall cowboy!

We rested for a while in the shade. The heat was starting to get to both of us and Charlie wasn’t feeling so great. Some very, um, interesting people walked by. People watching is very under rated. This could be the best form of entertainment if you watch and listen carefully enough.

The time drew near for our priority seating at Mama Melrose. We couldn’t wait to be in the air conditioning so we headed over. We were seated without any wait and our waiter took our drink order right away. We both gulped down a few glasses of iced tea. For dinner Charlie had the pork tenderloin and I had the salmon. Both were excellent. In fact, I had to restrain Charlie from licking his plate clean. I’ve heard a lot of negative comments about this restaurant saying it’s not “real” Italian food. I must say the food here is delicious and we had nothing to complain about. I had a cannoli for desert which we both agreed tasted like an orange milano cookie.

I convinced Charlie to go into Muppets 3-D again. This time we missed the entire pre-show. My timing couldn’t be worse. I really want to see the entire pre-show. This was just as funny as the first time.

After the Muppets we looked in the gift shops until it was time for Fantasmic. I stopped to use the rest room. On the way out, I was walking back to Charlie and I got an unexpected escort. A little girl, who couldn’t have been older than 5, had walked ahead of her family and had caught up to me. We were walking at the same pace side by side and all of a sudden she took my hand thinking I was her mother. I looked down at her, smiled and said hello. I didn’t want to do anything to scare her. We stopped, she looked at me like “oh, you’re not my mother”, let go of my hand and went running back to her family. I turned and watched her and couldn’t help but giggle a little. People, please hold on to your children. We really don’t want to take them home with us.

I can only describe the “back” entrance to Fantasmic as the journey into no man’s land. Where the heck were they sending us? I am way too full from dinner to trudge up this hill. There was a group of women ahead of us with one in a wheelchair. A gentleman offered to push the wheelchair up the hill for them. It’s nice to see that chivalry is not dead.

We got into the theatre and I told Charlie not to sit too far down in front because those people get a little wet. We sat about seven rows from the front and got a little misted there at times. We watched the crowds come in from the other entrance and I was glad we did the dinner package. I am beyond words to describe this show. Wow! That about sums it up. This is the best show I’ve seen Disney put on in a long time. If you have the opportunity to see it, you should. I don’t think there was one person who was disappointed in this.

We waited a little bit for the crowds to thin out and we made our way up the steps and out of the theatre. We got a little turned around when we exited the park and headed for the bus stop where the Animal Kingdom bus dropped us off instead of where the All Star bus was. We eventually found our bus and headed back with a bus load of very tired people.

When getting off the bus at the All Star Resorts, some guy got up and whacked his kid’s head on the above handrail. This kid must have been totally zoned out because he didn’t even blink. Ouch! My head hurts just thinking about this again.
[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[PhilaDisney]

Day 5
Wednesday, September 19

We decided to sleep in today. We were exhausted after all the late night running around we were doing. I finally got out of bed around 8. Yes, 8 is sleeping in for those of us that are usually up at 5 to go to work. At 8:45 I whispered to Charlie that I was going to the food court for drinks and something to eat and would bring it back to the room.

Holy cow! The food court was packed. Before today we had always went to the food court before 8 and it was pretty empty. Now, being there after 8 I realized this was a bad time of the morning to get here. The lines were long and I was glad I was bringing food back to the room because I didn’t see anywhere to sit down. Tip for eating breakfast in the food court: get there early in the morning.

I purchased two danishes for Charlie and one for myself, refilled our mugs and headed back to the room. I got quite a few strange looks as I was carrying a tray with three danishes on it. Did people really think this was all for me?

We finally got going around 9:30. My picture taking happy husband wouldn’t be satisfied until he got pictures of the train in the Magic Kingdom, so we headed over there first to get this out of the way. We ended up riding the train all the way around the park and decided we needed to head over to EPCOT if we were to make our priority seating at the Coral Reef.

We headed over to the monorail to take us to EPCOT and it was closed. CLOSED?? Now this is totally screwing up my well planned park hopping. We ended up getting on the resort monorail, getting off at the TTC and then getting on an EPCOT monorail. We found out that we weren’t the only ones who were taking this detour.

We got a nice pre-view of future world as the monorail took us around. We got off and hoofed it over to the Coral Reef. We were about 10 minutes late for our priority seating, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. You could have walked right in here if you wanted to. While we were checking in there was a woman there who was requesting a table right next to the tank when they came back for dinner that evening. The lady said she could request it, but nothing is guaranteed. After we were seated (right next to the tank) I looked around and couldn’t figure out why anyone needs to request a seat right next to the tank. You can see the fish tank very well from any table in this restaurant. We saw a lot of fish as we ate lunch including a couple of sharks. A scuba diver graced us with his presence later on.

Our lunch was delicious and our waiter was very attentive. He even apologized for talking too fast. We both started with the cream of lobster soup. Yummy! I asked the waiter if he would mind just bringing out the whole pot and we would just help ourselves. I decided on the fish and crab cake which came with some kind of potato string thing. This reminded me of potato sticks that come in a can. Charlie went all out and had the lobster tail which came with it’s own form of potato and vegetables. Thanks to the lobster tail, lunch was a just a wee bit more expensive than we would have paid for a fancy dinner somewhere.

Now that we had spent an hour in the Coral Reef watching the fish, Charlie wanted to go into the Living Seas. We skipped the movie as did many other people. We didn’t see much in the Living Seas that we didn’t already see while eating lunch. In fact, we both agreed that we got a better view of everything in the restaurant.

The plan for the day was to visit the different countries in the World Showcase and just take it easy for the day. We saw Mary Poppins was hanging out in the UK so we headed over there. Charlie is totally in love with Mary Poppins and has confessed to having fantasies about her when he was younger. He promised to behave himself as I took his picture with her. I’ve never seen him smile so much. I learned later that he mistakenly said to her “It’s a jolly holiday with you Bert.” Mary quickly corrected him and told him that it’s a jolly holiday with Mary, not Bert. I can’t take this man anywhere with me.

We looked around the shops for a bit. A little girl was crying in her stroller and a CM came over and gave her a pooh bear to get her to stop. Is that all it takes to get free stuff in Disney? Maybe I’ll have to try standing there crying and see what happens. The same thing happened in the Magic Kingdom the other day when a little boy was crying on Main Street and a CM from a popcorn cart came over and told him Mickey wanted him to have a cup with Mickey’s picture on it. I’ll definitely have to try the crying routine. I don’t know if it will have the same affect with an adult though.

The British Invasion was scheduled to play shortly so we hung around the park in UK for awhile. A CM named Gareth came over and asked the gentleman next to us if he wanted to introduce the band. He declined and I quickly volunteered Charlie for the job. I knew he wouldn’t mind since he’s such a Beatle maniac. After a few minutes Charlie started to get nervous about his few seconds of fame. I assured him there was nothing to get nervous about since at that moment there were only about five people in the area and we will never see any of these people again. That seemed to calm him down. The big moment arrived and the band started playing after their intro. Charlie did a fine job of reading the words given to him, but I don’t think he’ll be making a career out of this anytime soon. We jammed along with some of our favorite Beatles tunes. Charlie had asked Gareth if the band would play “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl”. He went back to ask and reported back that they hadn’t played that song in years and would need to rehearse it. If they were going to play it at all it would be in another set. This was a good ploy to get us to come back and listen to their next set. We came back and still no song. Oh well, we have other countries to visit.

We went over to Canada to listen to Off Kilter for a few moments. Don’t you just love a man in a kilt? They warned everyone that they ruined the song Danny Boy and they were right. I like my Danny Boy to be the sappy, heart tugging ballad that it was meant to be. I do not need someone turning it into a head banger rock and roll number.

Next, we decided to head over to Mexico to get out of the heat. That sounds strange doesn’t it. Anyway, I’ve never been inside Mexico before and my first reaction was “could someone please turn on a light?”. It sure is dark in here. The Rio Del Tiempo was a nice relaxing ride. I was glad to have the opportunity to rest my feet and enjoy some nice air conditioning. We listened to the mariachi band outside and then headed to Norway.

I had never been on Maelstrom before either, so I was quite curious to see what all the talk was about. Charlie kept asking me if it was scary and I told him that it wasn’t, but if he didn’t stop asking me I would scare him myself. We had to wait for what seemed like forever for the doors to open to the movie area. I felt bad for the Norwegians because about 90% of the people walked right through the movie area and right out the door, including us. We checked out the bakery and decided to come back later if we were hungry.

We stopped to watch the acrobats in China. After watching these little kids do their act, I feel incredibly clumsy. Ok, so I was clumsy before. Exactly how many plates is she going to put on her head? I wonder if anyone has ever gotten stuck in one of those tubes? I guess all my questions will go unanswered. We browsed the shops a little and moved on.

We found ourselves in Germany. I think the beer was calling Charlie. He decided to get the gallon size and we sat down to people watch. I told Charlie that since we had just spent $10 on one beer, we weren’t leaving until he finished the whole thing. Charlie is a bit of a lightweight and a regular size beer has an affect on him. This is also due to the medication he takes. He really shouldn’t be drinking with his medicine, but every once in a while we through caution to the wind.

I must take a moment to rant and rave. While sitting in Germany, there was another couple sitting there enjoying their beer. The gentleman decided he had enough and dumped the rest of it into the plants. Now, I’m no expert on plant live or anything, but I don’t think beer is good for the plants. They also left their empty cups on the ledge of the fountain when there was a perfectly useful trashcan just a few feet away. I hate to think people are that lazy.

Ok I’m done. Back to the happy times.

We made a few purchases in Germany and sat on a bench to let the eighth dwarf, lushy, regain his composure.

It was time for our priority seating in Norway at Akershus. When we made our choices on where to dine we decided to try different cuisine that we would probably never get anywhere else.

We were seated right away and ordered our drinks. I had a wonderful cocktail, of which was so wonderful I forget it’s name, but it was delicious, and strong. Charlie had a frozen coffee drink and made a good decision to stay away from alcohol after his huge beer. Our waitress asked if we had ever had Norwegian food before and we told he we hadn’t. She brought us up to the buffet. There is a hot section, a cold section and a salad section. She told us about the different food items and proceeded to give us some suggestions of what Norwegians think is a very tasty meal. Please keep in mind that Norwegians think what she suggested is tasty. We decided to take her word for it and began at the cold buffet and filled our plates with some kind of flat bread, cold scrambled eggs and cold, raw salmon. We were appartently feeling very adventurous tonight. We brought our food back to the table and took a big bite of what we thought would be something wonderful. The look on both our faces said it all – Yuck! We were both brought up not to be wasteful so we choked down the rest of our cold dinner choices. I frequently washed mine down with big gulps of my cocktail. Charlie finished before I did and had returned from the hot buffet with a variety of food (none of which I remember right now). He assured me it was much better than the cold buffet so I made my way over there. My timing must have been bad because the hot buffet was in need of replenishing. I did walk away with some meatballs, some sort of pasta with cheese and delicious mashed potatoes. When I got up to go to the hot buffet I found out just how strong my drink was. Maybe I shouldn’t have guzzled it down because my legs were a little wobbly. I asked for ice water to finish my meal. We didn’t listen to our waitress and didn’t leave any room for desert. I really wanted to try some desert too, but I didn’t want to be ill later. My comments on Akershus are unless you are used to cold Norwegian food I would just take a little bit to try it out. If you decide you like it, go nuts. I can’t say the cold buffet was bad because not having Norwegian food before, I had nothing to compare it to. All I can say is, the cold food wasn’t our cup of tea. The hot buffet however was fabulous and I highly recommend this for anyone wanting to try something different. From what I remember there was a venison stew, cooked salmon, some kind of roast beef, meatballs, mashed potatoes and a potato/garlic soup. There were other things available, but I can’t remember what.

After dinner we were on a search for a good spot to view Illuminations. We ended up changing our location three times and finally decided on a spot in front of Germany. We thought this was a good location until we discovered that we sat right in front of one of the canons that shot off the fireworks. This thing is LOUD! We both thought we might lose our sense of hearing by the time it was through. The first time this went off we both were knocked backwards from the blast and shock of not knowing it was there. It was dark when we decided on this spot and didn’t see the canon thing hiding in the bushes. Illuminations was wonderful. When it was all done we headed out of the park. I could tell it was empty in the park because walking out of EPCOT that night was not as bad as it usually is after Illuminations is done. Trying to get out of MGM after Fantasmic was a lot worse.

[PhilaDisney]

Day 6
Thursday, September 20 – The Best Way To Sink A Pirate Ship Is To Run Right Into It.

Today we were having breakfast with Mary Poppins (Charlie’s secret love) and friends. It was early entry day in the Magic Kingdom so we had no trouble getting a bus early. It seemed strange as everyone else is headed for the Magic Kingdom and we break away from the crowd to head for the resort monorail. Actually we noticed a few families did this that were headed to the Contemporary to Chef Mickey’s for breakfast.

We asked if we could sit in the front of the monorail. The driver asked us where we were going, which I thought was odd, and said we could. Sitting in the front is really cool. You can get a great view of everything from up front. At the Contemporary a family of four asked if they could sit up front and the driver said she could only take two of them, so the mother and son hopped in. It was at this time the driver told us that this was the Polynesian monorail (or something like that) and if someone wanted to sit up front when we stopped at the Polynesian we would have to get out. This wasn’t a problem for us since we were getting off at the Grand Floridian which was the stop after the Polynesian. I offered to move over and let the little boy sit right next to the front window, but he didn’t seem too interested in the monorail at all. We stopped at the Polynesian and were given the boot. ¾ of the way in the front was good enough for us. At least we got the experience.

We arrived at the Grand Floridian and were awe struck. We were early for our priority seating so we wondered around the hotel for a little bit. We found 1900 Park Fare and were still early for breakfast so we sat in the very comfortable seats in the lobby. These seats were so comfortable I could have taken a quick cat nap there. As we sat there admiring the hotel, I told Charlie to take a good look around because we would never be able to afford to stay here.

Our priority seating time rolled around and we headed into 1900 Park Fare. The Mad Hatter and Alice were sitting in the lobby coloring. I don’t know how he does it, but the Mad Hatter sounds exactly like he does in the movie. I wonder how he manages to keep that hat on his head?

Breakfast was a buffet of the usual breakfast items and an omelet bar. I thought about the omelet, but I didn’t feel like waiting in line for one. The food was wonderful and our server kept our orange juice glasses overflowing until we had to ask her to please stop because we had enough. Pinocchio and Gheppeto (sp?) were walking around and stopped by our table. We asked where Mary Poppins was and we were told that she stays out in the lobby. She must have been on break when we got there. The characters took turns coming into the restaurant and going out to the lobby. Mary Poppins finally arrived in the lobby, but she looked old. I mean she looked like she had aged about 20 years from when we saw her yesterday in EPCOT. Yes, I know it’s two different people.

After we were done stuffing ourselves we found our way to the buses. The Grand Floridian has a much nicer bus stop than the All Stars. I guess that is to be expected with the difference between a deluxe resort and a value one. We waited about 15 minutes for an Animal Kingdom bus. Charlie wanted to go on the safari again. I didn’t realize how close the All Stars resorts were to the Animal Kingdom until we headed there from the Grand Floridian. I just kept thinking, are we there yet?

We finally arrived, told the guy out front that we had bought a picture here the other day and headed for the safari. No wait again today. We got to sit in the front row seat today. Let me tell you, this makes a world of difference. We had a great view of everything and we could hear and understand the driver better. There were a lot more animals out today and we got some great pictures.

After the safari we looked around the shops for awhile. I sat down in the shade while Charlie went into a store. He took so long I thought he got lost in there. He emerged with a huge bag and informed me that he bought a giraffe.

We then headed back to the room for a quick swim and a nap. The plan had originally been to go to one of the water parks, but Charlie decided at the last minute that we can always go to a water park at home and didn’t want to go to one here. I didn’t mind skipping the water parks, but he could have told me this before. All morning I was carrying around a bag with our swimsuits and towels. I was seriously tempted to hit him over the head with it.

The nap turned out to be just a little rest and not much sleep. This could probably be traced to the soda we insisted on getting while waiting for housekeeping to finish up with the room.

We skipped lunch due to the huge breakfast we ate. Neither of us was very hungry. We decided to spend the afternoon at Disney Quest. The bus was at the stop when we got there. We were having excellent timing when it came to catching a bus. We were on it with just a few other people who were headed downtown to go shopping. The bus driver took the scenic route and we saw places like the Disney Institute and a couple of other places that escape my memory. We noticed that Downtown Disney is the place where bus drivers change shifts. A load of people got on at the marketplace with their many packages and another load got on at the Pleasure Island stop. By now the bus was full. The new driver asked if anyone was getting off at the West Side and we excitedly waved our arms in the air and jumped up and down. We were a little anxious to get off the bus now. A woman who had gotten on had started singing the theme song to the “Facts Of Life” to her toddler. Now, I’m all for singing to your kids, but couldn’t she have thought of anything else to sing? How about a nice Disney tune?

When we got to Disney Quest my pass decided to give me some trouble. After my third attempt the CM decided to give it a try. He just flipped it around and bingo! It worked. We got on the elevator and the Genie took us up to the third level. Charlie and I looked at each other and grinned. We knew we were going to have tons of fun in here.

We got in line for the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin. There was a game already in progress so this gave us an opportunity to see how it worked. Looked like fun to me. The object of the game is to drive your bumper car type space ship around and pick up rubber balls to shoot at the other cars. All the cars have a star shaped target that you have to hit. When this is hit, the car will spin out of control. This sounds a lot easier than it actually is. I was driving and Charlie was shooting. He didn’t have a problem hitting the other cars, but he totally missed the target. We apparently were easy targets for other people as our space ship kept spinning and spinning and spinning again. The only problem was there was an annoying message that kept telling us that our seatbelts weren’t fastened. We checked them and they were. I don’t think the ride would have started without them being fastened anyway.

Next we went to the River Rapids Ride. Charlie is terrible about paddling anything so I knew I had my work cut out for me. He lived up to my expectations of paddling terribly so we were chased by many dinosaurs and crashed into many ice cone type things. I eventually gave up on my end and just let us drift where we may. After it was done the CM told us that we had done a good job. A good job? Was she even paying attention to us?

It was time to battle some pirates and we walked over to the Pirates Of The Caribbean. You need a captain and a gunner for this. The captain steers the ship and the gunners work the six cannons to fight the other pirate ships for their gold. We were doing really well until the ghost pirate ship came and took most of our gold away. We were left with about 2,500 hundred pieces of gold. In our opinion, this is the best thing at Disney Quest. We came back to this later. This time I was the captain and Charlie and two others were the gunners. “Whoops, sorry” seemed to be my favorite phrase during this game. I kept steering the ship right into other pirate ships and into the island. Hey, what better way to sink a pirate ship than to ram your boat right into it. We did slightly better this time, but our ship sank to the bottom of the sea.

We found the Mighty Ducks Pinball Slam. There were only three of us playing. My only goal was to do better than Charlie. Mission accomplished. Everyone here gets their own pinball to control using these pedestal things that you move by shifting your body weight around. I came in second place. I was so focused on getting my pinball into the highest scoring point behind the goalie that I ignored the other point bumpers. I was being greedy and I ended up in second place. The woman who was playing with us won. I found this game to be exhausting. Then again I’m not in the best shape. My legs felt like rubber by the time the game ended.

We found an air hockey table and played a game. This ended in a 3-3 tie. We never played a tie breaker. I played a few other video type games like pac-man, space invaders, donkey kong and star wars. I am so out of practice and my scores proved it. It was great to play these games again and not spend a small fortune feeding the machines quarters. There was a game where you try your luck kicking a soccer ball past a goalie. I haven’t played soccer since the eighth grade, and that was some time ago, so I put the game on “easy mode”. This was a little too easy and I got the ball past the goalie every time. The only time I missed was when I got a little too carried away and I over shot the net. I never had the opportunity to come back and try a harder level.

I made my own roller coaster at Cyber Space Mountain and three out of five people would have been terrified to ride it. Sounds like a good coaster to me. I forget what the heck I named it, but Charlie refused to ride it with me. He must have been one of those three people. I boarded my roller coaster with great anticipation to experience the wonderful job I thought I did. I didn’t realize I had made this so nauseating. I was really getting quite queasy halfway through, but I refused to push the emergency stop button.

We did some more relaxing things after my roller coaster experience. We played around with our faces in the magic mirror. Charlie bought his picture with a crown on his head and a big white toothy smile. I couldn’t get my face quite right so I didn’t purchase a picture. We went to the song booths and made a couple of CDs entitled “I Need A Raise” and “Why I Love You”. I decided to let Charlie sing on the part where you can record your own voice. I didn’t need my voice on this for people to laugh at.

There are a couple of virtual reality games where you have to put on that virtual reality helmet thing. Aladdin’s Carpets and the Ride The Comix. I didn’t enjoy either one because the helmet on both was really uncomfortable. Aladdin’s Carpets you basically have to ride around, collect gems and escape from Jafar. We both ended up being trapped in the sand. Ride The Comix you have to fight evil comic book villans with a sword. I thought I was doing good until the end where they show you your individual score. This ride is done as a team, but you only see yourself as you’re slaying evil doers.

We went to Food Quest for dinner and had a nutritious meal of cheeseburgers and fries. The burgers were cooked after you ordered them, so they were fresh and hot and HUGE. After dinner we played some more video games and sat and watched people play the Mighty Ducks Pinball Slam. We could easily have spent all day at Disney Quest. At 7:30 we decided it was getting a lot louder and more crowded in Disney Quest so we headed out to check out the Virgin Mega Store.

We walked around a little bit looking in the magnet store and watching a woman at the Candy Cauldron make caramel apples. There were some chocolate covered strawberries sitting on the table that caught our attention. Pardon us as we wipe our drool off your window. We decided to skip the strawberries. I can’t remember why.

It was time to head over to La Nuba. We browsed around in the gift shop and were scolded by the guy at the register for only buying postcards. I told him we would come back after the show. We ended up not doing this.

I can’t say enough good things about this show. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. There wasn’t a moment that I wasn’t mesmerized by what was going on. We had seats about four rows from the front center. This probably isn’t the best location to view this show. I would rather have seats a little farther back so I could see everything that was going on without turning my head from side to side and up and down. Other than that this show is fantastic.

After the show we headed to the bus stop and saw our bus had just rounded the corner. I turned to Charlie and told him to run. I didn’t want to wait another 20 minutes or so for another bus to show up. We made the 200 meter dash in record time. We actually got there before the bus did.

We got back to the hotel, had a quick drink and went to bed.

[PhilaDisney]

Day 7

Friday, September 21 – Would Someone Please Turn Off The Florida Heat.

We were awakened this morning around 9 by housekeeping knocking on the door. Still half asleep, I stumbled over to the door and kindly asked her to come back. Since we were up we showered, got dressed and headed to the food court for breakfast. Nothing too fancy here. Just some muffins and drinks.

The plan was to do the other half of EPCOT today. Since it was sort of late in the morning (10:30 ish) we didn’t expect the bus to be standing room only. Live and learn I guess. A few people got off at Blizzard Beach, but not enough to empty enough seats for those of us standing.

We headed off to Spaceship Earth to start our day. There was a woman in front of us who had not waited for her traveling companion and had the nerve to grab my arm and shove me in front of her. If she had just taken a moment to politely tell me she was waiting for someone and go ahead in, then I would have. I’m not especially fond of being grabbed by strangers. It took me a couple of minutes to calm down. I decided to brush it off and enjoy myself. I wasn’t about to let one rude person ruin my day.

We wondered around Innoventions East and West for awhile. I can’t wait for the future. Some of the inventions in here look really cool. The first step towards being technology updated is to finally go out and buy a DVD player. We still have tons of records lying around our house, so who am I kidding about being techno updated? We sent an email postcard home to Mom and Dad and copied ourselves at my workplace so we could see how this turned out. Not the best picture we ever took together. I guess the week of running around is finally catching up to us. I was all settled into the home theatre hoping to see a Disney flick or two and maybe have someone bring me popcorn and soda. Ok, so I was dreaming. I was quite comfortable here and thought it would be a nice replacement of our living room.

The muffins from breakfast had long since left our systems and we were ready for lunch. We went over to the Land with intentions of eating at the Sunshine Season Food Fair. The Garden Grill caught Charlie’s eye so we checked out the menu. Nothing on it interested us so we ended up at the BBQ place in the Food Fair. Charlie had a BBQ chicken sandwich and I had chicken fingers. It was good. I always liked eating here because there is something for everyone, even the most finicky of eaters.

I went into Test Track while Charlie sat outside on a bench. What a party animal he is. I went in after a little wait. Maybe the line was too short, or I just wasn’t paying attention, but I didn’t see the single riders line. I was put in the front of a car in between two gentleman whose wives decided to skip this attraction. The guy to my right and I had a little chuckle at our spouse’s expense as the car spun out of control without it’s anti lock brakes. “That’s how my husband/wife drives!” I know that’s mean of us, but that’s what they get for not being there to defend themselves. I know a lot of people like Test Track, but I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. It was kind of neat to see how they put cars through tests. On the way out I was passing a lot of families that were having people take their picture in a car. I thought this was very odd. All I could think was, “Haven’t these people even been in a car before?” Oh well. I guess some people are easily amused. I am too, but not about being photographed in a car.

We went to Wonders Of Life and headed over to Body Wars. I think it was a little too soon after lunch. I had to shut my eyes through most of it. I was glad when it was over. I never did have the stomach to handle seeing the inside of the human body. It took me forever to get up the courage to watch ER. We rode the bicycles for awhile and had a nice journey through Disney World and through someone’s house. We played around with the exhibits for a while then left.

We decided to go into Journey Into Your Imagination. I think the CMs working this were desperate for people to come in here. They were very excited to see us and the two people who came in after us. The exhibits after the ride kept our attention more than the ride did.

After Journey Into Your Imagination we decided to go back to the World Showcase. I wanted to go back to the UK and pick up a couple things I had seen the day before. This also gave Charlie the opportunity to go into the pub and get a beer. We walked around a bit more doing some window shopping and looking at the different buildings. Charlie got a cheese plate in France. This is when we noticed the high school field trip that had taken over the World Showcase. More walking, more window shopping. I convinced Charlie to go see the movie in China so we could get out of the heat.

There were two ladies playing some sort of instruments. When they asked for a volunteer no one wanted to. I tried to raise Charlie’s hand for him, but he is a bit stronger than I am and I was unsuccessful. They let us into the movie and we both enjoyed it. We went outside and watched the acrobats again. The poor girl kept dropping her bowls and I wondered if she would get yelled at afterwards.

It was time for our priority seating at the Biergarten in Germany. After our experience in Norway, I was a little apprehensive about this buffet. I talked Charlie into getting only a ½ liter of beer instead of a liter. We were seated at a table with another family of four people. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Biergarten, they seat you at long tables and you may be seated with complete strangers. The family we were seated with was a tad on the unfriendly side and had no interest in talking to us. Oh well. Not everyone can be as friendly and outgoing as the Passporter group.

I learned my lesson about trying foreign food and only took a few small samples of things from the buffet. There was plenty to choose from: a couple of different types of sausage, a couple of different types of chicken, roast beef, potatoes, green beans and lots more. My fears about the food were quickly put at ease. Everything was delicious. I tried a little bit of everything, including desert, and went back for more. I practically had to be rolled out of there.

During dinner a German band (forget the name) came out and played various German songs. They encouraged clapping and singing along. This was hard to do and eat at the same time. How can I possibly sing with my mouth full?

When we finally decided we had enough we made our way to the front door and wondered why it had suddenly gotten so crowded in the front of the restaurant. A quick look out the door and we got our answer. It was pouring. This was the first drop of rain we had seen all week. We were quite surprised since it had been sunny all day long. And where do you think our ponchos were? That’s right. Back in the hotel room. We decided to wait out the shower in the crystal shop. We should’ve stayed in the Biergarten and stuffed ourselves for another hour.

The rain slowed up, but now it was thundering and lightning and we walked quickly to the buses. This is quite a long walk when you’re all the way back in Germany. About 200 other people had the same idea to leave the park and head for the All Stars bus stop. While standing there I happened to notice that most of the other bus stops hardly had anyone waiting. This was the one time we had to wait a long time for a bus to come. A bus finally arrived and then we had to wait for them to load two wheelchairs.

We got back to the All Stars right behind another bus that had arrived at EPCOT two seconds behind the other one. Since the other one went to Sports first we headed for Music. One of the wheelchairs needed to get off at Music and since it took the driver forever to load it, we decided not to wait for her to unload it. We got off the bus and took the short cut over to Movies via the Mighty Ducks buildings. I try to be patient about such things, but I hate just sitting there.

I ran to the food court through the thunder and lightning (no rain) and got my cup refilled. It was kind of weird seeing the pools completely empty. The last couple of days we were there they were doing construction by the main pool. Anyone know what they were doing?

Tomorrow would be our last day and would turn out to be the day we would make the biggest mistake of our trip.

[PhilaDisney]

Day 8

Saturday, September 22 – Our last day

Sadly, our last day had arrived. Even though we had a long drive ahead of us, we weren’t about to let our last day of our length of stay passes go to waste. The plan was to hit the Magic Kingdom one last time.

We got up around 8 and express checkout was on our door. I didn’t realize until after we got home that Disney never charged us for the one phone call we made back home.

I headed to the food court for drinks and breakfast and left Charlie to pack his things. I took the shortcut around the parking lot area. When I walked in the door of the main building my jaw hit the floor. There must have been at least thirty or more people waiting to check in. This was a big difference from a week ago when we waited to check in behind only one other family. I thanked my lucky stars that we didn’t have to wait in a line like that.

I came back with the food only to find that Charlie had unpacked everything I had packed the night before so he could have more cushioning for the breakable stuff he bought. We finally got the car loaded and moved it over to the check in parking lot.

We hopped on a bus for the Magic Kingdom and all Charlie could think about was that he didn’t like how he packed the car. Couldn’t he have noticed this when he first did it? Being the good wife that I am I asked him if he just wanted to take the bus back to the All Stars and “fix” the car. Actually, I knew if we didn’t do this it would bother him all day and I would have to listen to it.

This would be the start of the biggest mistake we made during our trip. We got back to the resort, fixed the luggage in the trunk, got a drink and went to the bus stop for the second time that morning. There was a long line of people waiting for a bus. And we waited and waited and waited until I got impatient and decided we would get on the Animal Kingdom bus that just arrived and transfer from there. Now, if I had been paying a little bit more attention earlier in the week, I would have noticed that the bus from Animal Kingdom only takes you to the TTC. Ooops! I guess I deserve that for being impatient, eh?

We get to the TTC and it is PACKED. Where did all these people come from? We decide to take the ferry and enjoy a cool breeze. Part two of big mistake – going to the Magic Kingdom on a Saturday. Boy oh boy was it crowded. We only had a few things to do that we missed during the week, so the crowds didn’t bother us too badly.

We hopped on the train to avoid Main Street and got off in Frontierland. Charlie decided he needed to go to the shop at Pirates Of The Caribbean again for more booty. (We’ve been home for a good two weeks and I have no idea where he put any of this.) Once that little chore was accomplished we went back to the train to take it to Mickey’s Toon Town. We bypassed Toon Town and went to Fantasyland to see what we missed. First stop was the tea cups. Two relatively strong adults both spinning the cup can get it going pretty good. We got it spinning so good I had to tell Charlie to stop and let it slow down before I lost my breakfast.

We noticed that the line for Pooh was over an hour. This was the one and only time we needed fast passes all week. The fast pass time was a couple of hours away so we continued on our journey and ended up at Snow White’s Adventures. The wicked queen in Snow White still creeps me out.

Dumbo had too long of a wait so we decided to try and come back to it. This didn’t happen thanks in part to a large downpour. Anyone for a wet elephant?

We headed for Tomorrowland and went into the Carousel of Progress. I had never been in here before and found it quite entertaining. The rest of the day I drove Charlie crazy singing A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow. We heard the thunder when we were inside and I was a little hesitant to go outside. Couldn’t we just sit here and ride around? It was pouring outside and once again our ponchos were packed away.

The CM at Carousel Of Progress came over and told everyone in our area that we couldn’t stand there due to fire safety reasons. So we darted here and there trying to stay as dry as possible. We ended up under some sort of awning thing across from Alien Encounter. After we watched the rain for a few minutes we decided to go to Casey’s for a bite to eat. The ice cream we had for lunch just wasn’t going to satisfy us until dinner.

Over to Casey’s with what seemed the rest of the park. While standing in line I was wondering where we were going to eat since all the tables and chairs were wet. There is limited seating inside and I was sure it was all occupied. I found a dry area on the sidewalk next to the piano player and plunked myself down. There was someone attempting to dry off the chairs with a squeegee. How does someone get a job like that?

We did the Jungle Cruise and Pirates of Caribbean again with little wait. We came off the Jungle Cruise and I remembered that they were showing the new parade today. I remembered a little too late because all we saw was the very last of the parade. Rats!

We did some window shopping until our 4:20 priority seating at the Crystal Palace. We were seated within 10 minutes and were told by our server the route the characters take around the restaurant to visit tables. She assured us that Tigger was just a few tables away and would be to us in a couple of minutes. We sat there for a good fifteen minutes and decided that Tigger would come around again if we missed him and proceeded to the buffet. This was a timing mistake on our part. We got in the never ending line for the buffet and both filled two plates thinking we didn’t want to get in line again. We sat down to eat and the buffet line was gone. Poof! Vanished into thin air.

The food was excellent. All the characters came to the table but we didn’t have any film left. This was no big deal because we had our pictures taken with all but Eeyore at Animal Kingdom. That Eeyore can really get a crowd rowdy. Charlie missed Pooh because he decided to use the restroom and Pooh never came around again. When Pooh approached me I had been eating peel and eat shrimp and I just kind of gave him this look that said “I’m sorry Pooh. I can’t play with you now because my fingers are messy from shrimp.”

Our server asked us if there was anything else she could do. I told her that she could drive us home and that would be a big help. Just as I thought, she didn’t take me up on that offer.

We headed out of the park and back to the resort. We bought some snacks and headed for home. By the time we got on the road it was about 6:30 and we only made it about 20 miles south of Savannah before we needed to stop for the night. We stopped at a Motel 6 and the woman at the front desk shot me a nasty look and asked me how old Charlie was. I was a little surprised by this and all I could manage to say was “uh, 34”. She apologized and said that he just looked a lot younger. I don’t know what kind of person she thought I was, but I’m really not the type to be bringing minors to hotels at 11:00 at night.

The next day was uneventful as we drove and drove and drove. It didn’t seem like we were ever going to get home. Why, oh why didn’t I take Monday off from work? We finally made it home and have already started talking about going back. Woo Hoo!

Some Thoughts On The Trip:

This was our first experience driving that far. With a little more planning I wouldn’t mind doing it again, but as a last minute decision it put a little stress on us.

Going in the off season is definitely the way to go. Next time I think we’ll try January when it won’t be quite so hot. And it was very hot this week with a brief rain shower on Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

In general I am glad we went. It took a big load off our minds and the relaxing did us a world of good.