When I made a dining reservation for before 8:30 in the
morning for this date, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I have learned
now—I won’t do that again.
We headed over to Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the Disney
Junior play and eat, where Lily was going to meet Special Agent Oso. Somewhere
in the past few months, he’s not been on the top of her list for coolness the
way he used to be, but we still had a fun time at breakfast. There was some
singing, some dancing, and a breakfast buffet with different items to what was
on ship. We were all very clearly worn out, though.
As it was Star Wars weekends, when we left breakfast we did
a bit of looking around at all the interestingness going on. If you are a Star
Wars fan, this would be worth your time. If you’re not, you might not even know
something was going on, aside from the Storm Troopers above the entrance gate
doing silly comments every now and then.
Lily looked pretty tired, so we decided to go back to the
room for a morning nap. This is when we found, much to our embarrassment, that
yes, Mousekeeping had come in and seen our very undignified pile of dirty
laundry covering most of the living room. Ah well, what can you do?
We tried to talk Lily into a nap, but no luck, so we jumped
in the car to head to the Magic Kingdom. At that point she completely sacked
out. We decided to do a bit of out of the bubble exploring, so we drove to the
Reunion/Championsgate area. Very underdeveloped at present, but a rather nice
area. Reunion is mostly vacation properties, although with the economic
downturn, I think that some of them are getting permanent residents now.
Championsgate is very much a place under construction—but we liked it.
 |
| Take Buena Vista Drive to I-4...uh...I-4 East....no I-4 West! |
During our driving around, we discussed our plan to buy a
home down there in a handful of years. After being on board ship, a house just
seems really big. We started tossing around the idea of a condo. Easier to
maintain, potentially lower cost, and a better use of our resources. Something
to think about long-term.
When Lily started waking up, we headed over to the
Polynesian resort to get some lunch, do some shopping, and head to the Magic
Kingdom for a little while. (And before anyone gets too twitchy, because I’m a
firm believer you shouldn’t park at the resort unless you are staying there or
for the length of time you are eating/shopping there, we opted to valet park to
make sure we weren’t taking a space away from a resort guest.) We grabbed lunch
at Capt. Cook’s and then headed over to the Magic Kingdom for a quick trip. It
was pretty mobbed, but we went and showed Lily the Barnstormer. She’s tall
enough that she could ride that roller coaster, and when we asked, she said she
did want to ride it, but I think she needs a little more age under her belt
before we try that. We’ll see how she’s doing in December.
The real reason we wanted to go there was to ride it’s a
small world, so that’s what we did. Lily was absolutely in awe…it is her
favorite book, song, app, and so on. She loved seeing it all come to life and
actually stayed awake through it. The crowds were pretty thick and we all were
still pretty tired, so we decided to head on out. We stopped at Casey’s for a
few minutes to listen to the ragtime piano player, but then headed out. As
Erwin pointed out, this is what it is like to live as a local…we didn’t feel gipped
that we only rode one ride and then called it a day because we knew we’d be
back soon.
We stopped at the Grand Floridian so I could get some soaps
from Basin White, and then walked over to the Polynesian for a quick snack. By
then the skies looked threatening, so we got our car and headed back to the
resort.
The afternoon involved doing some more laundry and getting back
to packing. Still no word from Amtrak about our travel plans being delayed, so
we figured we’d be leaving out in the morning. By this point, Erwin had
developed the “cruise crud” that I was kind enough to share with him. We figured we'd go to Downtown Disney and grab some food to eat in the room. When we got there, the place was insanely packed, so finding parking wasn't a good option. When we finally found a space and got out of the car, the skies looked very threatening. Because we would have been walking for about 10 minutes each way to get dinner, we figured we'd jump back in the car and drive over to Crossroads (off property) and just grab a pizza. When we saw that the line to get into the shopping center was out into the road, we figured we'd jus head back to the resort, grab takeout, and eat in our room.
After dinner and a little more packing, Erwin mentioned he wanted some decaf
coffee. I volunteered to walk up to the main shop at Old Key West (and if the
walk was too far, I would hop on the internal bus) to get him some, as well as getting
me some tea. The walk was an incredibly beautiful one with the river on one
side and the golf course on the other. The weather was perfectly comfortable,
and there was even a rainbow for the first bit of my journey. I got the
supplies and walked back. When I got back, it was discovered how much of a
not-a-coffee drinker I am. I had picked up a really nice set of ground coffees,
but it never occurred to me that you need a coffee filter. D’oh. Thankfully
there was regular in the room, and Erwin drank some of that and was still able
to fall asleep. Not knowing what the next day would bring travel-wise was a bit
of stress for us both, but thankfully the bed was comfy and we got a good night’s
sleep.
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