The Amazing Adventures of the Shoemaker Family!

[shawn68]

Ok, so amazing might be a bit of an overstatement at the moment. As we sit in the Best Western Hotel on Lake Buena Vista Drive, just 1 mile from Downtown Disney, I decided to start our trip report.
So, a bit of a back story on the 2 of us. I'm Shawn. A 45 year old guy with a lot of pep in my step for 2 knee surgeries. I am a pro photographer and I work for a newspaper in Texas.
My wife Kristy, is a CPS officer and .... well, she's in her 30's but I guess it's not nice to talk about a woman's age. I mean it's not like she's 80, 35 isn't a bad age.....ooops.

Ok, so now that I'm in trouble, it's best to move on, nothing more to see here.
We left our Texas home on Thursday at 12:30pm. Now we would have left earlier but someone who is not me had to work until then, but I'm not naming names.
Now the day before we left, when I was paying for a new tire, I was alerted that my drivers license was expired......NO!!!!!!!, but yes, it was.
SO, my wife gets the pleasure of driving the whole way, both ways. Now she doesn't mind because we're going on vacation, but I mind. You see I am a control freak, super freak actually, and 13 hours of not being in control of the vehicle would drive me to drink.
No drinks consumed. On Thursday, we rolled into the KOA in Tallahassee at just about midnight.
Why a campground you ask? Well, we like camping when we were kids, so what would be different now? Well, we inflated our mattress, placed it in the back of our Jeep Liberty and went off to dreamland, only to wake seven hours later feeling like I went 10 rounds with Mike Tyson before the face tattoo and taste for human ears. We both decided we will be hotel bound on our trip home. We will leave camping to the young ones.

After waking up sore, and grabbing some coffee and juice from the office, we were back on our way to the Best Western at Lake Buena Vista Drive.
We arrived about 1:30pm and as we checked in were told to step to guest services for our welcome gift. A welcome gift! Woo Hoo! How cool is that? Not cool actually. Our welcome gift was a sales pitch to go see a hotel.
We declined politely, and headed to our room for some relaxation. I mean snoring actually, lots of it from my wife. I might have done some, but not as much as Kristy.
After we awoke, we decided to hit Downtown Disney and check out some of the resorts Christmas decorations.
We began by walking around the various shops and making a mental note of what we might want to buy before we left. I had heard of a great idea by purchasing the Mr. Potato Head with a bunch off accessories so there is always a bit of disney around. I being a nerd, was excited to do this until I saw that the accessories were not that impressive as I remembered a few years back. No Star Wars hats to put on the tater, made me re-think the spud idea.

So after walking and shopping, we decided to start our trip with a dinner at Earl of Sandwich. We try to eat here at least once a trip, so we were both excited to sit down and get our food.
I got the Earls Club, a Coke and some BBQ chips while Kristy got the Original, a Sprite, and the Mediterranean Pasta Salad.
My Earls Club

My Earls Club Pic 2

Kristys Original and her pasta salad

Kristy loved her sandwich as well as the pasta salad, while I ate my sandwich like a starving dog, growling at anyone who came close. I guess I was a bit hungry, but nonetheless, it was a very good sandwich.
We got a hotel discount so only 17.69 spent on a good dinner, and that makes me and my stomach very pleased.
After our meal we decided to ride the Disney Magical Express (DME from now on) bus to Animal Kingdom Lodge to see if any decorations had been put up........No.....None.....Zip....But I did get a few photos of the place, and that was fun.

Next we hopped aboard another DME bus and headed to the Magic Kingdom so we could take the monorail to the Contemporary Resort and see their gingerbread tree. Whew!

Last but not least, we took the monorail to the Polynesian Resort ( Poly from now on) to just look in the shop and get a few area photos.

We then decided to call it a night. We were headed to NASA in the morning, So we headed to DTD on DME, then got in our Jeep and headed back to Best Western for some more snoring.....Just remember, a lot more snoring from my wife than me.
Hope you enjoyed the first installment, and hope you come back. Have a magical day.

 

[shawn68]

Day 2
We woke up after a good nights rest, much better than being crammed into the back of my Jeep Liberty trying to be young people.
Today was NASA day. That's right, headed to NASA to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis. I am a space geek, and my wife,........could care less about it. . She did let me drag her down to Kennedy Space Center to see the last launch of the Endeavor. To this day, that is the highlight of my life, and she admitted to me today, it's hers too. Maybe there's hope for her after all.
Today however, I will be entering alone, as she had some work she needed to finish, so being a great wife that she is, she drove me to NASA. Remember, I have an expired license, so no driving for me. We left our hotel and put in the address for Kennedy Space Center and we were off. Well,.....let's just say we ended up at the wrong entrance. The entrance that has guards, the entrance that you need a badge to get into...I have no badge, so we turned around and after another 20 minutes, my wife dropped me off at the doors to Kennedy Space Center.
If you have never been, you should go. If you care about the history of space flight even a little, it's worth the $50 bucks. Yes, I shed a small tear when I saw the Endeavor lift off on her last mission, but there is something about space that still allows dreamers to dream.
So after paying my 53 bucks I headed straight to the gift shop...... NO! I made a bee line, or a bee swerve, couple turns, and a straight away to the Atlantis building. It's a LONG walk with about 30 pounds of photo gear on your back, and I was a bit winded.
I sat down in the auditorium as they played a back story video which was pretty cool, but all I kept thinking was, "When can I see Atlantis?" The lights came up and the doors opened. YES!!!!! Oh, another theatre.... Yeah...
This one was different though. The screen was all around you and it looked like you were hiding in the everglades spying on a launch. After a very cool 5-7 minute movie, the screen lifted to put you nose to nose with Atlantis.
It was beautiful, great job NASA with the presentation, and everything else.

So after spending 3 hours in the building with that beautiful bird, I checked out the rest of the complex which was really great, but just could not hold a candle to the Atlantis exhibit for me.
When my wife picked me up we went back to the hotel, and wow, 9 bucks to drive on a road in Texas that would be free seemed a bit much, but hey, it is part of the Disney experience.
After processing some photos, and my wife working we decided to hit a few resorts and have dinner at Splitsville.
I am just now starting to process the photos, so we will take a break for now, and when we come back, we will have a dining review and more photos!
Thanks for reading! Have a magical night.

 

[dreamerjlee]

I hope you have a fabulous trip!

I love your NASA pictures they remind me of Space Camp when I was younger and when I too went to watch the launch of Endeavour, and the scrubbed launch! And the toll way, well I used to work on the toll way and pay those tolls twice a (I worked just out side of coco) day I feel the pain! But, yes very Disney!

There will be more Christmas decorations every day until they are all up so keep looking!

 

[shawn68]

Thanks! We are having a blast.

 

[shawn68]

When we left you, we had just left to go visit some resorts. Tonight we decided to hit up the Grand Floridian and see the Gingerbread house, and buy the 15th anniversary pin, and yes, a shingle. The gingerbread house was pretty cool as far as large houses built out of gingerbread goes. I really thought the workers selling things out of the house was a great added touch.

Kristy buying our shingle and pin.

So after that fun, we took the monorail to the Magic Kingdom so we could take DME to The Boardwalk, so we could take DME to Downtown Disney so we could eat dinner at Splitsville. Did you follow that? Not sure I did.

Finally we made it to Splitsville.

We were seated upstairs by the bar, and the bartender acted as our server, but I did not catch his name, which is probably for the better.
He greeted us promptly, but that was the last time we really were important to him, well then and when he brought the check.
We decided to start off with their cheese fries. Crinkle cut fries, nacho cheese, bacon, ranch and chives. These were plentiful, and well seasoned. We couldn't finish these, which didn't bode well for the rest of our food unfortunately.

I thought they were awesome in every way, Kristy says they were perfectly cooked, but other then that, they were cheesy fries. I thought that was the point. Oh well.
I went with the Margherita Pizza, which I thought was well done, but I found the sauce was a bit to tangy. It was still good though, but not sure if I would order it again.

Kristy ordered sushi, the Ninja Crunch roll to be exact. She thought it was very good. Her only complaint was that the rolls were not consistent in amount wise inside the roll. Other than that she really liked it.

Dinner was good, but it wasn't great for 55 bucks. Our service was only ok, but the food was good. Maybe we need to eat there again, and be waited on by an actual waiter.
So we finally made it to the hotel and decided to eat our shingle.

Kristy thought that it was good, a 5 out of 10. She did think it was better than what others had said about it. She would not buy it again. So that left me with my half, and a quarter of hers...... All I can say is sometimes you're the windshield and sometimes your the bug. With two pieces of Gingerbread cookie in my possession, today I'm the windshield. That's right, the windshield.
Goodnight good people. Have magical dreams, and we'll be talking to you tomorrow night. Thanks for reading.

 

[rachel09985]

Love your photos! Those cheese fries look amazing

 

[shawn68]

Thanks Rachel, they were amazing! So much so, I want more!
So today was move to Pop Century day. We arrived around 10:30am, and since we taken part in online check-in, it was a breeze. Autumn was very nice, and also very quick. She made sure our magic bands that we brought with us from home worked correctly, (and they did), then sent us on our merry way to get our resort cups.
Scotty checked us out at the register, and he was very kind, and also pretty darn quick.
We filled up with a coke and coffee and headed to room 1304. This is when we felt like we were home. Yes, we did the happy dance in the elevator.

We pretty much used today as a relax day. We took DME to DTD for lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express at the Marketplace.
Kristy chose the Oven Roasted Salmon, and Creme Brûlée for dessert. I chose the Half Rotisserie Chicken and for dessert I had the swirled frozen yogurt.
Kristy did not realize hers was very much like a salad, but she enjoyed it VERY much. She said her dessert was very good, but she had wished it was warm. By the way, she gets it every time we come to Disney, and says the same thing every time. You'd think she'd learn.
Kristy's Meal

My Meal

These meal pics were taken with the ipone because I didn't lug the camera with us. Bad move.
We then went back to the hotel to relax, and get ready for dinner at Kristy's favorite restaurant, Boma.

Our reservation was for 5:10pm, and we arrived at 4:40. After we checked in, we were told it would be about 15 minutes, but it turned out to be more like 5, which was fine with us.
Our server was Kevin P. He was very attentive, and was overall very nice. He didn't hover over us, and we like that.
So, he finished his welcome speech, and released us to the food.

Of coarse Boma is Kristy's all time favorite place to eat in all of Disney, so she said " Wonderful as always. Great food, amazing service, and did I say the food was great? Beautiful to my mouth." ........ Yup, she's a bit of a cornball.
I thought it was what it always is. Good food, good service, and a great atmosphere. It's consistent, and in todays ever changing world, that's a big plus. Overall, it was a great way to truly start our trip.
Well, here are some shots from Pop tonight.

Hope y'all are having a great day. Keep it magical.