Hiya folks!
Joe and I got back Wednesday around midnight from our five night trip to the house of the mouse. Stayed at Port Orleans, and the landscaping there was a trip favorite for both of us. MAN I miss the south. The anoles, the magnolias, the lucious air. *sigh*
We cheaped out and went for a regular room, two doubles, ended up sleeping apart most nights because a double bed is just too small for both of us to be comfortable. On our anniversary night, our last night there, that just didn't cut it for me and I ended up throwing a bit of a snit fit in the middle of the night and insisted on
clambering in next to my pookie. Never again with the double beds!
Joe and I both agreed that the Port Orleans resort grounds are wonderful, but the room itself isn't much fun to hang out in. It's cement cell blockish, dark, and the motel 6 style a/c unit taking up the one window doesn't help with letting in light or ambiance. We are going to be in a studio at the Wilderness Lodge Villas over Labor Day for another just him & me trip, and I am really looking forward to being somewhere we can relax and not go to the parks much. Between the beach on Bay Lake, the pool at the WL, the walking path to Ft. Wilderness and its activities, the bbq grills out on the beach for the DVC'ers to use, the kitchenette and sofa in our studio, the view, etc., yes I think we will be able to relax at the resort a lot more that trip than we could at Port Orleans.
Still, we did enjoy the grounds immensely. I got up and out three out of five mornings for a walkabout. Being out in PO in the early morning is paradisical. Those mornings were a real highlight for me. I dawdled for half an hour my first morning, getting a piece of my hair wrapped up in cotton floss with beads hanging off the end, for a cool $45 with a tip. (Joe dug the extra ornamentation on his bride but was especially impressed by the price -- sometimes the gall of the Mouse can really make you whistle.) I took a little bottle of massage oil over to the hot tub and really dug into my legs and feet and had a bit of much needed hydrotherapy the second morning, the third I went to Boatwrights on my own for the famous banana stuffed french toast (it was gross - deep fried, and overcooked - blechh).
The crowds were high our first day, then thinned steadily until we left on Wednesday. I could gauge what the lines in the parks would be like by the lines at the food court at PO. Saturday morning, the resort food court was bedlam. Sunday same hour, it was much calmer. Monday, it was practically empty.
We pretty much stuck to one park a day. As usual, I could have done almost the whole trip at Animal Kingdom, but since Joe isn't as crazy about it as me, we had to go to Epcot and the MK, too. We never did go to the Studios, which is typical for us. Once in a while, we'll go just to ride ToT and RnRC.
We'd heard warnings that Epcot on the weekends during the Flower and Garden event would be packed with locals, and found that to be true. We started to go to Epcot on Sunday, but the bag check line was the longest I've ever seen, and the parking lot was packed with non-rental cars with FL license plates. We turned around and left and went to the Magic Kingdom for the day, instead. It, too, was packed with locals, but I find it be more enjoyable crowded than Epcot is.
We attended three EMH evenings, just because the hours work with Joe's sleeping (or not sleeping) night owl schedule. The one at the Magic Kingdom on Sunday night wasn't nearly as crowded as ones I've been to in the past. All the locals left after Wishes, and by 11 p.m. the park was practically emptied out. Maybe it's because there wasn't a Spectro that night.
Monday night's Animal Kingdom evening EMH was magic; being there for sunset, sitting and walking around nearly deserted parts of the park in the twilight, having Everest be a practical walk-on the last twenty minutes of the night, ahhhhh.
Tuesday night was Epcot EMH and it was typically packed with drinking college students in World Showcase and people trying to get on Soarin' up in the front.
Our anniversary, Tuesday, we wore our Happy Anniversary complimentary buttons we asked for at check-in, and yes, silly hats. Joe had the top hat with ears which after he jammed down hard onto his head just managed to fit, and I had the sequined headband with ears with a veil. We got "Congratulations!" a lot that day, and of course everyone had to ask if we got married at Disney World. We told them getting married in Hawaii was cheaper.
We spent a lovely day at Epcot enjoying the Flower & Garden Festival landscaping. Our favorite was an Indonesian outdoor living room and kitchen set-up on display at the back of World Showcase. We sat there for about forty minutes just relaxing and soaking in the peace and quiet. Lovely!
I've always wanted to do the Behind the Seeds tour in the Land, so Joe, who's done it before, agreed to go with me today. He ended up liking it more than the first time. It was kind of dull in parts, but it was cool to be walking around in the greenhouses, with the boats going by, and we got some nice photos. Our guide was an ag/horticulture major in her senior year, but she gave surprisingly little scientific information about anything.
Which reminds me that I have to digress here, and tell you a tale of an exchange I had to endure while having my hair wrapped, on our first morning, back at Port Orleans. So, I'm sitting on a stool with my head bent, while my wrapper furiously flings string in circles around and around a few inches from my face, and I hear the following conversation going on across the top of me, between this perfectly
coiffed, oiled and painted plump lady in expensive resort wear, and my wrapper:
(Lady's daughter flicks a love bug off her shoulder)
Wrapper: Are the love bugs bothering you, honey?
Lady: Oh, she doesn't mind them.
Wrapper: We sure have a lot of them this time of year.
Lady: We were told the most interesting thing, by a man over at
Typhoon Lagoon. He said that love bugs are a synthetic species that
were first synthesized right here nearby at the University of Central
Florida. So they have no natural predators, that's why there are so
many of them, because they are an artificial bug.
Wrapper: How do they do that, create them like that?
Lady: I don't know, they just make them synthetically.
Wrapper: That is amazing, that they can make an artificial bug like
that now.
Lady: I know.
Just proves that it's perfectly possible in America for people who paid absolutely no attention in high school to find a way to make the kind of money needed to vacation at Disney World.
For our anniversary dinner we tried out the Yachtsman Steak House. I give it a thumbs down, undercooked meat, fatty sauces, kind of loud, crowded dining area, overpriced, underwhelming service. Joe give it a big thumbs up, big piles of meat, big piles of mashed potatoes, more casual than other fine dining places (lots of men in shorts, almost all of them), thought it was no more overpriced than any other Disney restaurant. I've had much better steaks, service, and atmosphere at Ruth's Chris. We'd like to try Shula's over in the Dolphin next time, and compare.
Our last day, we took it easy and took the boat to Downtown Disney. Joe discovered he likes the kid's pizza sandwich at Earl of Sandwich, so now we have somewhere to go he'll enjoy at Downtown Disney besides McDonalds, yaay! That's a miracle for me to be able to get a really good salad somewhere Joe will eat, too. The ordering process there was kind of hard to figure out, at least for me, when I hadn't had any coffee yet that day. It didn't help that everyone was being rushed
along by psychotically perky college kids.
We didn't do much shopping at Downtown Disney, as we were already over budget (aren't we all), and I honestly couldn't find one pin I wanted. I had wanted to get Miles one of the new Star Wars pins that has Stitch as Darth or Sith or Win something or other (black cloak - Palatine??), that was supposed to be released that day, but alas, it hadn't shipped as promised. Maybe we'll get lucky and it won't be sold out when we go with Miles at the end of July.
All in all it wasn't so short of a trip that we were freaking out trying to get everywhere fast, but it was short enough that I was getting really bummed out on our last day. We always book the last flight out so we can have a last day of stuff to do, but I'd almost rather just get up and leave first thing in the morning, like ripping off that band-aid in one quick motion.
Well, I guess that's it! Can't wait to go back, can't wait to live there, though I've decided I never want to work directly for Disney.
Soo long, folks!