After our quick trip to MGM, we headed for a bus back to the GF. We wanted to settle into our rooms and have plenty of time to get over to the Magic Kingdom for Wishes. Unfortunately, it took an hour and a half from the time we walked out of MGM's gates to the time we arrived at the bus stop at the GF. So frustrating! On the bus, we discussed our plans for the evening with Mom and Dad. We had thought that they would come to the Magic Kingdom to watch Wishes with us, but they said that they were tired from traveling, and wanted to stay and get settled in their room and then watch Wishes from the GF. This sounded reasonable, but we had ordered them a cake to be delivered to their room by GF Private Dining at 10 pm, so that it would be waiting when they returned from the MK and so that we could stop by their room and see it!
With this new plan, Jen feared that they would be asleep before 10, and if they weren't, there wouldn't be a chance for us to see the cake anyway! Jen thought all of her surreptitious planning had been for naught! She thought about telling Dad about the cake in advance so that he would answer the door and accept the cake when private dining delivered it, and would take a picture of the cake so we could see it. She then decided against telling him, and thought about calling private dining when she got to the GF and was away from Mom and Dad to arrange for the cake to be delivered another day.
When we finally got back to the GF, we headed to the check-in desk to find out where our room was. We learned that we would be in room 8344 in Boca Chica, one of the buildings we had requested.
Mom and Dad were in Sago Kay. After we were told where our room would be, Jen decided to head over to the concierge to see if they could get in touch with private dining to arrange for another cake delivery time. Jen spoke to a lovely woman at the concierge desk and told her about the original plan for a 10 pm delivery, and then asked if the woman at the concierge desk could connect to private dining and perhaps see if the cake could be delivered earlier, so that at least Mom and Dad would be awake when it arrived. It turned out that the cake was already ready (at about 6:30 pm)! Jen was told that the cake would be delivered within thirty minutes, and was completely delighted! After feeling totally relieved that the cake that she had wanted to surprise Mom and Dad with would indeed remain a surprise, Jen popped into the Sandy Cove Sundries shop and picked up some postcards to send to her friends.
In the lobby before Jen went to bell services:
During this time, Laura and Liz went to bell services to collect the bags that we had stored with them during the day. Bell services told us that we could meet a CM with our bags right outside of the door near the large staircase in the lobby. We thought this was rather odd. We figured they may as well just hand us our bags right by bell services rather than take them from bell services and meet us outdoors.
Waiting outdoors for our bags:
Love those GF garbage cans!
We waited for a few minutes and then we were absolutely delighted when our confused CM arrived in a giant, giant vehicle with only our three little bags as passengers. We thought this was pretty amusing. Apparently the GF thought we had left large suitcases with them. The CM was like, “um, where are your suitcases?!” He was super nice and we quickly assured him that we could certainly carry these bags ourselves. We asked if he knew where we could find our water that we had ordered. He looked in the storage room but couldn’t find them. He then invited us in for a look!
Liz loving the GF storage facilities!
We adored our tour of the storage facility, but after we searched high and low with our new pal, we also couldn’t find the water. We were so confused and so was the CM! He then was like, “hey, did you guys order a cake?” And we were like “actually, yes,” but we were again confused, because why would a cake from Disney Dining be in this garage?
He took us to a refrigerator, where there was indeed a cake for someone with our last name! However, we quickly realized that a giant, half eaten sheet cake was not what we ordered and that it must belong to someone else. While Jennie often takes extreme measures for a good slice of cake, we supposed that even she would not go so far as to order a giant sheet cake and consume the better portion of it before sending it off as a surprise to Mom and Dad.
All three of us soon gave up, and the CM said that perhaps the water was waiting in our room and to let them know if it wasn’t. We then parted from our new friend and proceeded toward Boca Chica!
After collecting our bags, Laura and Liz met up with Jen who was walking along the path around the pool to our room in Boca Chica.
Reunited, we all continued along the path to find our room.
We walked to the far end of the hallway on the third floor, and worried that because our room was at the end of the hallway, we would be getting a view not of the pool, as we had anticipated we might get, but of another building.
We entered the room and were pleased to see how large it seemed, while Jen was chatting on her phone with our parents. They were letting us know that their water had been waiting in their room when they arrived. We walked into our dark room and didn’t understand how to turn on the lights. As Liz and Jen were trying to solve this mystery, however, Laura suddenly began screaming. We absolutely could not believe what we saw when we made our way to our balcony doors.
THE MAGIC KINGDOM!
We were completely elated when we realized that we had been given a room with a Magic Kingdom view! Our cameras definitely did not do this view justice. It was lovely in person! Dad was still on the phone and later said that he thought something was terribly wrong when he heard us screaming uncontrollably. He even said he thought we’d seen a bug! So surely you can understand just how crazy this reaction really was. It was quite simply the greatest view ever.
Narcoossee's was right below us to our left, but straight ahead out of our window was Cinderella Castle, the train station, and Space Mountain! We couldn't believe our luck, having paid for a Garden View, and being given a great Magic Kingdom view room! As we continued to jump up and down and squeal, Dad also told Jen that he and Mom were so surprised by the cake they had just received and wanted to thank us for it! The cake had arrived about 10 minutes after Jen asked the concierge to call private dining about delivering the cake as soon as possible. After we screamed some more and took pictures of our amazing room, we ran out to Mom and Dad's room to see their cake.
Our room: