Caitiesus's & Teachdrama's TR!

Here's the next day's report. Sorry it took so long!

Got up for Boma breakfast and had a heck of a time GETTING there.
Since you can't get from resort to resort directly, we figured we'd hop
on the first bus from the Contemporary to a park, and then get on the
AKL bus. Well, we got on the AK bus, as it happened, and then stupidly
got off at Blizzard Beach, thinking it would be faster. Little did we
know that at that time no bus actually WENT to AKL from Blizzard
Beach. So, after about 20 minutes
of waiting, we finally got on a bus heading for AK, with the intent of
switching to AKL from the park. Fortunately, we said something to the
driver, and he had the route switched for us so that his next stop was
the lodge. We ended up getting to breakfast about 20 minutes late, but
they sat us with no problem.

Breakfast was pretty good there - nothing really stood out. Jason liked
it better than I did, of course (he loved the curried sausage), since
he loves Boma. Still their "house juice" was FANTASTIC -- it was made
with guava, pineapple and orange - anyone remember the name? I wish
they sold that elsewhere!

We then went back to the hotel because we needed to do laundry to help us survive the next leg of our trip. We had to find the laundry room
at the Contemporary (an adventure in itself). We laid out by the pool
while the laundry was going, which was nice, but when we came back to
the dryer afterwards, we found that it had popped open and didn't run!
We sat there for another 45 minutes with Donald Duck cartoons on the TV
(I think we both fell asleep) while the dryer ran.

Finally we got to a park. We went to Epcot. I wanted to buy Jason some
art as my gift to him and we had seen some stuff at the Art of Disney
in Downtown Disney
we liked, so I looked in the shop in Epcot. They didn't have the art
on demand there, and I saw more horrible Disney service.

I bought him one of those huge statues they have of Belle and the Beast. I am sure have seen them...Beast is about 18 inches tall! I asked a woman about shipping and she had to ask a manager about it...really? You didn't know you could ship things home from there? It didn't help that both front workers did not have the best grasp on the English language.

The worse service was to a man who was in the shop. His daughter saw a poster she loved in the posters you could flip through and it wasn't in the bin, so he asked the women (the same on I asked) if they had any in the back and she told him no and that he just couldn't get it. I remembered seeing it in both the Downtown Disney store and the one at DHS, so just as the family was leaving (with the girl looking disappointed) I went over to them and said I saw it at the other two stores so they could check there. I couldn't believe the person working there didn't either a. Inform them of the other stores or B. call the other stores and ask them to either hold it or send it the Epcot store!

Jason got another
sweatshirt in Mousegears (he's obsessed). We then rode Test Track (single rider line - it was about half the wait as regular would have been, and we ended up in the same car anyway).

We had reservations in Chefs de France - it was WAY better than I ever expected it to be! Jason had lobster bisque,
short ribs (SO good) and creme brule, I had onion soup, mac and cheese
(way better than I thought it could be) and creme brulee. It was a
rich meal, but it was VERY good. We also got to chat with Remy as he
was wheeled around the restaurant - what a cute idea! Afterwards, we
went to the parfumerie store in the back of the pavilion and Jason
sampled the new cologne Play. It was the first day it was on sale in the US and (at that point) exclusively at Disney. I LOVED the smell on him, and I
made him buy a bottle

We then went to American Adventure and I'm pretty sure we both fell
asleep for part of it. Jason said, "One of these days I will see the
whole thing!"

We had bought tickets to a Tikifest meetup - dessert party and special
place to watch Illuminations. Because of weather, the dessert party
was moved from the area in front of Italy to an upstairs event room in Norway
(if you look at the windows above the entrance to Maelstrom, there are
offices and event rooms up there - who knew?). The desserts included
some pina coladas and strawberry daquiris (yum) as well as eclairs and
brownies etc. We then, in a group, made our way over to Italy and
watched Illuminations.

We then rode Maelstrom on the way out of World Showcase, and again went on Spaceship Earth.
At the section with the Phoenician boat the ride got stuck. A recorded
voice came on telling us to stay in our vehicles, our travels through
time will continue shortly -- interrupted by real time announcements
saying the exact same thing. It was quite annoying!

We went back to our hotel and passed out!

I know I know...I will TRY to get to it tomorrow.

Ok! Finally day 6!

We woke up and got breakfast at the counter service in the Contemporary...it was pretty good for what it was. They had cool machines to order the food, which made things easier! Then we called and made the reservation for National to pick us up the next day so we could pick up our rental car to take to Miami.

We went to DHS and Toy Story was way too full (over 140 minutes) so we skipped it and saw Muppets 3D. It was still funny and everything, but the 3D isn't very good compared to the other shows. We were happy to see that it is being updated.

We then headed to the first show of American Idol and we LOVED it. The three girls were pretty good, one was 19, one was 15 (and from England, we wondered if she won it all what would happen), and the other was 24. The last girl was by far the best and it was a lot of fun to be in teh audience. The judges were good other than the "Simon" he was a jerk just to be a jerk. He made a snide comment to the woman who was great and won...which was annoying. This is a must see attraction for us now!

We bought the piece of art we wanted, but won't get it framed until I have a job. The woman there was really nice and tol us not to have them frame it since it was so expensive.

We went over to Tower of Terror, which was a walk-on. That is the best ride! We both love it! We then went back to the hotel for lunch and a nap!

We headed to Epcot and saw Oh Canada. We both really like the new movie, and how they made it amusing and informative. It made us want to go to Canada. We also met a couple from Princeton, which is about 15 minutes away from us. We walked around and looked at shops for a while then...

We then headed to dinner at Le Cellier. We both got the cheese soup (YUM), and the Ny strip steak (YUM again!) and Jason got the chocolate cake, while I got the Smores. We had a fantastic waitress and really enjoyed our meal.

We walked back through the Boardwalk area because we didn't remember what it was like and we would love to stay there sometime. I know it is the #1 place my mom would like to stay, so maybe in a few years we will do a trip with them.

We went back to the hotel to enjoy the champagne, cheese, and crackers I had gotten Jason. We each drank two (or three) glasses, but it was a huge bottle, so we spent about 20 minutes trying to find someone to give it to. After having two separate groups said no, we saw a man go into his room, knocked on the door and gave it to him. Who knew that giving away free alcohol would be so hard?

We headed to the Magic Kingdom and watched Wishes...it was a magical experience watching it. We went over to look at Toon Town. It is so well-themed!

We then went to go see Phillarmagic and had an "only at Disney" moment. There was a little girl in line behind us with a Birthday button on so we told her Happy Birthday and asked how old she was. She just turned six and Jason asked if it was her first trip. She gave him a priceless look and went "Nooo!" and the parents laughed and told us they were from Tampa and brought her too much! She had been dressed up as Ariel for most of the day and told us all about meeting the princesses and showed us her autographs. They weer a cute photograph and it was a fun moment!

We went and had Dole Whip (we should have had it more than just the one time) and it was delicious as always!. We rode Peter Pan because it wouldn't feel like a Disney trip without it and then checked out Hall of Presidents. The Obama animatronic is amazing!

We hopped on the monorail back to the resort exhausted.

And that is where the Disney trip ended. We woke up early the next day, grabbed breakfast, and took the van to the National. We got our car and drove to Miami for our cruise!