Wow, fun weather for you!
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the 17th, continued (and maybe even finished up).
For dinner we went out onto the Boardwalk. Finding food was always a tricky thing, as there were so many ideas of good food as well as good prices. We finally chose Big River Grille. We waited a bit for our names to be called, and at last we were inside.
It was...NOT what I had imagined. To me, a brewpub has dark wood, booths, it's noisy but muted. This place reminded me that to others, a brewpub is a very sterile, simple place, meant for brewing beer, not making people comfy. I went to one like that in Albany NY once, so maybe it's an east coast thing?
It's stark and LOUD and really really loud, and they put us (with 3 kids) at a high table with tall chairs, and it was super-duper loud. My cousin and I were somewhat aghast, and if either one of us had pushed for it, we would have told the family that we were going elsewhere. The interior of the place was THAT bad. To us.
There were many other people, all right behind us at the bar, who seemed to really enjoy the place. Didn't mind all the games being played at high volume on the TVs, didn't mind that everyone had to yell to be heard, which caused others to yell louder, which then made people yell even louder... They seemed to be just fine with this. So, what I'm saying is...your mileage may vary on how much you like or dislike this place.
Alas, neither of us pushed hard enough, and we stayed. Dangit.
The *food*, itself, was decent. Robert decided to go crazy and just order things he wanted, instead of things that were actually listed for sale on the menu, LOL. Which means he asked for an order of mashed potatoes, which were listed as a side dish for something else, but NOT as a side on its own. Crazy man.
He also ordered a "greenhouse salad", with blue cheese.
Eamon got the mac and cheese, which was such a surprise I nearly fell off my....oh wait no, not a surprise at all.
I got a quesadilla and a seasonal beer.
Cousin's hubby, who is blonde (this is important in a bit), was sitting across from me. I was asking the server about vegetarian things, and we worked out the very very few things that they had that could be made veggie. Shortly after that, cousin's hubby ordered nachos "for the table", and he was being kind by asking for no chicken. I reminded him that he could get it on the side, so he did. After this, the server thought that he and I were together, and that Eamon was ours (and maybe my girl cousin, as she has light hair). Which then left my cousin, who is part Irish mutt and part Mexican-Indian (Native Mexican not having the same obvious understanding as Native American...and only Canada uses the beautiful First Nation phrase), and has dark hair and darker skin and deep deep chocolate eyes, to be *obviously* paired with DH, who was sitting at the opposite end as my cousin, and their child was obviously cousin-E, who has black hair.
It didn't take her *too* long to get it straight, but it took too long. If that makes sense? She let it affect her for too long once it had been explained that no, the blonde man across from me was not ordering FOR me, nor were our orders together.
Cousin and I mentioned, once the groupings were worked out, that each of us has a Tables in Wonderland card, and the server was OK with that.
Other food was ordered. Cousin ordered the Greenhouse Salad, with ranch.
The nachos were *quite* good. My quesadilla was as well. E's mac and cheese was good, and although I didn't like the taste I had of them, Robert liked his mashed potatoes.
The PROBLEM was that they had something like 3 servers giving food to us. Ridiculous. There were only 7 of us. And it's not like they surrounded us and plunked the food down all at once, which would have been impressive and worth the peoplepower. And what it caused was that Robert got cousin's salad and she got his. Which no one noticed, because both dressings were white. And it only was really realized after both of them, independent from each other, asked the server to bring them an "extra" side of their preferred dressing. I was the one who finally caught on, because I was in the middle and sometimes have a knack at putting 2 and 2 together, LOL.
You would think they could have just swapped salads! But no, because my cousin had put some of the nacho chicken on her salad and mixed it all in. Dagnabit. While Robert liked his ranch/blue cheese mixture, my cousin wasn't so enamoured of her blue cheese/ranch mixture, and dinner was unpleasant for her.
Shouldn't have been unpleasant, especially once the server was notified of the problem...but the server NEVER, not once, offered to bring her a new, correct, salad. And it wasn't asked for because no one knew if the server would also put some chicken on it. Now...if DH had been involved in this, the server *would have* brought a new one to her, and oh you can bet your bippy they would have put nacho chicken on it! But DH was not involved, he was hangin' at the end of the table with Eamon and Cousin-E, both of whom were just snarfing down their food like no tomorrow, and he was enjoying his potatoes and dressing-mixup salad.
The cousin-kids got some sort of chocolate moussey cake, and E, on his own, ordered the fruit cup (oh I adore him). Little-cousin just devoured her cake, and when the server came by she said "excuse me, can I please have more of this cake?" like it was a soda that got refills. It was SO cute.
The bills came, cousin and I popped our TIW cards and cards into the slot, and she took them away. Mine went totally fine. But cousin's came back with server saying "we don't take the AP discount, so sorry". A ha, but they don't HAVE APs! What happened last December was...the CM didn't print her TIW card on the TIW stock, and instead printed it on AP/ticket stock. And this hasn't been a problem *at all* until September 17th. After a lousy meal (for my cousin). Aw drat. We set the server straight, and hopefully she'll remember that she needs to take the huge amount of energy to, you know, LOOK at the printed part of the card, not just the picture part of the card...
There was talk of not leaving the auto-gratuity, and around the same time I decided I needed to get out of the stuffy place. Whew, fresh air without everyone yelling about football games! Sweet relief.
Eventually everyone else came out, and it was getting late. Cousins wanted to show us their room at the Dolphin, and I was the only one interested in it, so I followed them while R&E went off to watch a movie in the room.
Ooh their room was niiiiiiiice. The Swan and the Dolphin are Starwood resorts, and have Heavenly Beds. And their room was massive. Their nearby "view" was a staff entrance with staff trucks and whatnot. But, it turned out, once it was MK's Wishes time, they could SEE it, waaaaaaay off in the distance, just *perfectly*. I didn't stay for that, and in fact made my cousin NOT walk me downstairs so that she could see it with her immediate family! I hadn't yet seen Wishes apart from Hallowishes, and I wanted to wait until our MK night with *my* immediate family.
I went on back, and it sounded like my guys were doing fine, so I stopped to get treats for the next day. Cookie and something for them, big ol' nasty cupcake, that I knew I would hate but *had to* get for me, then I got an iced latte, and I was happy. Went back to the room, E was asleep, Robert wasn't hungry, I ate the cupcake, disliked it, but ate it all anyway, it was all good.
E slept in the pullout couch and Robert and I shared our first queen-sized bed in AGES, and apart from that CPAP (actually, Variable = VPAP) facemask losing suction every few hours and making scary noises, it was otherwise very quiet in the room (no snoring!), and we all got lots of sleep. Yay.
It was a very very up and down day, that's for sure!
