After only a few minutes of shivering and regretting not bringing my sweater along, the bus to Epcot pulled up, and we got on board. The plan was Epcot to monorail to TTC to Tokelau.
Hopefully.
The bus to Epcot part of the plan went off without a hitch. But then Wingnut suggested why don't we just take the bus back to the Polynesian, rather than taking the monorail and then having to navigate our way back from the TTC?
I didn't think that there was a bus from Epcot to the Poly, but I said we'd check. If there's a bus, sure, why not. We started checking around for the Legend of the Bus Stops, walking to the farther bus stop area, when a man sweeping up the area asked if he could help us.
"We're looking for the bus stop to the Polynesian?"
"Oh, no. There's no bus to the Polynesian from here. You have to use the monorail. Except after the fireworks, they'll have bus service to there. But that's not for a few more hours."
Monorail it is.
(Did I mention that it's still cold out?)
Walking back to the entrance of the park, we realized that the monorail entrance is actually not QUITE inside the park, but past the bag check area, so I had to make a quick pause there. And then up the ramp we went.
Boy, that ramp is steep after a long day, isn't it?
The monorail pulls up, and we hop on, and glide (that seems like the best verb to use when describing a monorail, at least, to me) to the TTC.
I suggested to Wingnut that we could take the monorail to the Polynesian, and it would drop us off at the GCH, rather than walking there. When we pulled up, the resort monorail was nowhere in sight, so we decided to just walk back.
Not a problem.
Easy as pie.
(Oh, sorry, that was me describing us walking down the monorail ramp.)
We started walking around the TTC, not exactly sure where we had even ENTERED it earlier this afternoon. It was dark now. And things look different at night.
A few "I recognize that Minnie topiary!"'s and "I swear we walked past this gate"'s later, we found the sign pointing us in the right direction, "Walkway to the Polynesian".
(I swear, this entire path needs a giant brightly-colored line or something painted on it.)
We walked towards the sign, which led us toward a path surrounded by thick foliage. The path was dark, save for a few sparse tiki torches lighting the way.
It was at that moment that I was absolutely positive we would never see Tokelau ever again. Or at least, until the next morning, when things were illuminated again. We'd be found by one of the CM's on the golf carts, curled up under a palm tree 4 feet from the TTC.
Basically, if we had thought finding the TTC in the daylight was difficult earlier, well, that was just a simple stroll, my friends. Thank goodness Wingnut has the night-vision of an opossum.
(Wait. No he doesn't.)
(Darn.)
We slowly walked along the under-lit and under-marked paths, attempting to just stay somewhat parallel to the parking lot. We figured that that route would at least take us to the GCH (theoretically), and if we got there first, well, that's a start.
I'm not sure what had happened to our trusty map during the afternoon, but we were definitely without a guide that evening. At one point, I saw a building that looked like ours (brown and rectangular) and raced over to the sign, sure that we were at Tokelau.
Nope. Tahiti.
Alright. Okay. That means we're close. Right?
Right?
Oh, how I missed the 1-building layout of the Yacht Club at that moment…
We continued on, hoping to see some sort of landmark, of which there aren't too many at the Polynesian. The roof of the GCH, for one. And the volcano pool. But both of those would have meant we missed our target.
Eventually, we saw a slightly-more-lit area ahead. Was it? Could it be?
THE QUIET POOL! THE ONE OUTSIDE TOKELAU!! WE FOUND IT!
We both breathed a sigh of relief entering Tokelau. We had made it back. We figured it out! We're so amazing!
(Let's not dispute that one, okay. Let me revel in our glory on this one time.)
Our room, proof we actually made it back! (And that ME had delivered our luggage)
But after FINDING the building, well, the plan had been to turn around and leave it again. Alright. We can do this. Again.
I resisted the urge to leave a trail of uneaten pastries from earlier (mainly because I didn't have any uneaten pastries from earlier…) along the path to the TTC. We had a much easier time finding our way there, with the unique roof serving as a beacon to us confused tourists.
I knew that we had to pick up our mugs from Captain Cooks, but as to the EXACT whereabouts of the Captain? Nope.
We literally did an entire lap and a half around the lobby of the Polynesian looking for Captain Cooks before I decided to veer our course down one of the hallways. Happily, overhead, we finally noticed the sign pointing the way to the quick service location. Straight ahead? I can do that!
We walked in and grabbed our mugs. We didn't really poke around too much, 1, because it was a bit chaotic there, and 2, because we were pretty full. And tired. And tonight was just not the night for squeezing in one more cupcake.
We also got some bottles of water while we were there. I'm pretty much a hydration fiend, and seemingly risk shriveling up into a shrinky dink if I don't have water at hand at any given moment.
(
Who else remembers shrinky dinks?!?)
The cashier layout at Captain Cooks was a bit confusing, as two cashiers seemed to bounce back and forth between two lines per podium (4 lines total?), and I decided to just let Wingnut figure it out and stood unhelpfully about a foot to his side. I'm really not good at line physics when they merge or divert or whatnot.
But my smart Wingnut figured it all out and we were soon on our way back to Tokelau. We were getting slightly more familiar with the path to and from the GCH, thankfully, and I was feeling practically brazen when I suggested that we walk a bit past Tokelau when we got to the entrance, I'd love to see the view of the lake. I promised we'd just walk straight, no taking unfamiliar paths.
Oh, hey Castle!
We headed back to the room and I, of course turned on some Stacey.
And took a picture of our hard-earned mugs.
(I'm sure you guessed it already, but Wingnut's is the blue one, mine is pink.)
Relaxing in the room, I heard some booms outside. But I thought Wishes was at 9 that night, so since it was only around 8:02, that obviously couldn't be Wishes.
A few minutes later, the explosions could still be heard. (And no, we weren't at all concerned about inexplicable explosions outside our window
.) Maybe it WAS Wishes? Instead of actually looking outside, I checked my list of ADR times and fireworks/parade schedules.
8 pm Wishes. By now I could hear even more booms and explosions, which had to be the finale.
Oh well. Another day, then.
) 
How many times can you get lost in a day, that is the question?!?! 
. I think you're pretty awesome. No map? Impressive!
zebra domes!!
