carolfoy
<font color=cc6633>One has Ones hat and One's orf.
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2005
- Messages
- 8,316
ITS THANKSGIVING!
The hotel is packed and its boiling hot so we head for a morning at TL again. This time we’re more sensible and cover ourselves with suncream, the kids are straight in the pool and even TLis packed today.
I enjoy just lying in the sun for a change and Ruth, Reg and Mum enjoy a leisurely ride on Castaway Creek. The boys love this too and go around half a dozen times. Ruth, Reg and Dan present Callum with a wonderful gift of a Stitch towel, with a hood and paws etc, he loves it of course and walks around like a huge Stitch for ages.
After some
lunch we lay for a little bit more then 3 o’ clock comes round and we decide to make a move. All showered and changed we catch the bus over to the AKL so I can nosey around this hotel which I’ve never seen but is on my list of places I must stay. The lobby is amazing and the Christmas tree is beautiful, we go out to the animal viewing area for a bit then down beside the pool for a quick coffee before heading to MGM.
After looking around the Lodge I must admit to being a bit disappointed, I’m not sure why, it could be because I’ve stayed at several real safari lodges so it wasn’t the big surprise I was expecting. It is really gorgeous, there’s no getting away with that but I’m not now convinced I’ll ever be staying there. I was far more impressed with the Poly and the Contemporary, both of which I wasn’t sure about prior to looking around. Maybe that’s what is so good about taking time out to look, you really can decide on a better basis.
Anyway, coffee all drunk we head for MGM. Its packed but theres only a 20 minute queue for Star Tours, so the kids are happy and ride this one again.
We head back to The Great Movie Ride and get the Cowboy version this time, still a great ride.
Its 5 to 6 so I check in at The Hollywood and Vine for our thanksgiving/Fantasmic dinner.
Whoops! I cocked up, I’d made the ADR for 6:30 so we wandered around the shops a bit more.
The girl at the H&V warns me that they’re running about 40 minutes late. I must admit to thinking this whole ADR thing is a bit strange, if its an Advance Dining ‘Reservation’ then wheres your reservation??? There were a family of 13 there who were booked for 6:00pm and were still not seated at 7:15, why take a ressie for 13 at that time if they can’t cope with it? Seems strange to me. Admittedly they were busy but when we were seated at 7:15 we knew we’d have to hurry our dinner to get a good seat for the 8:30 Fantasmic.
The range of food was great, salads, cold meats, roast meats, steak, salmon, loads of it. The puddings were lovely too and the big chocolate Fantasmic model was lovely.
Our server was Khadeesh and he understood we were in a hurry so we paid the bill and got the fantasmic pass quickly.
We head up to Fantasmic through the short cut entrance at about 8:15 thinking we weren’t going to get good seats but the stadium was only half full!! It must have been due to them having another performance earlier in the evening so we got seats right at the very front.
I love Fantasmic and sitting so close made it extra special, the fire across the water really warmed us through and there was no wind so we didn’t even get wet.
After the show I persuaded the gang to walk back across to The Streets Of America as we still hadn’t seen the Osborne Lights, with a bit of grumbling and ‘my feet hurt’ we get back there – its wonderful, you have no idea what to expect until you round a corner and see this amazing light display, there’s Carols playing (including me) and special not cold Disney Snow fluttering down, what a wonderful atmosphere. Absolutely worth the walk back over.
Passing Star Tours on the way back we relent and the kids ride it again twice in a row, they’re happy as Larry now.
Back to the bus for about a 10 minute wait and its back to check on the mousekeeping antics (Darth Tater had killed Mickey) and it’s a Baileys and a bed time.
The hotel is packed and its boiling hot so we head for a morning at TL again. This time we’re more sensible and cover ourselves with suncream, the kids are straight in the pool and even TLis packed today.
I enjoy just lying in the sun for a change and Ruth, Reg and Mum enjoy a leisurely ride on Castaway Creek. The boys love this too and go around half a dozen times. Ruth, Reg and Dan present Callum with a wonderful gift of a Stitch towel, with a hood and paws etc, he loves it of course and walks around like a huge Stitch for ages.
After some
lunch we lay for a little bit more then 3 o’ clock comes round and we decide to make a move. All showered and changed we catch the bus over to the AKL so I can nosey around this hotel which I’ve never seen but is on my list of places I must stay. The lobby is amazing and the Christmas tree is beautiful, we go out to the animal viewing area for a bit then down beside the pool for a quick coffee before heading to MGM.
After looking around the Lodge I must admit to being a bit disappointed, I’m not sure why, it could be because I’ve stayed at several real safari lodges so it wasn’t the big surprise I was expecting. It is really gorgeous, there’s no getting away with that but I’m not now convinced I’ll ever be staying there. I was far more impressed with the Poly and the Contemporary, both of which I wasn’t sure about prior to looking around. Maybe that’s what is so good about taking time out to look, you really can decide on a better basis.
Anyway, coffee all drunk we head for MGM. Its packed but theres only a 20 minute queue for Star Tours, so the kids are happy and ride this one again.
We head back to The Great Movie Ride and get the Cowboy version this time, still a great ride.
Its 5 to 6 so I check in at The Hollywood and Vine for our thanksgiving/Fantasmic dinner.
Whoops! I cocked up, I’d made the ADR for 6:30 so we wandered around the shops a bit more.
The girl at the H&V warns me that they’re running about 40 minutes late. I must admit to thinking this whole ADR thing is a bit strange, if its an Advance Dining ‘Reservation’ then wheres your reservation??? There were a family of 13 there who were booked for 6:00pm and were still not seated at 7:15, why take a ressie for 13 at that time if they can’t cope with it? Seems strange to me. Admittedly they were busy but when we were seated at 7:15 we knew we’d have to hurry our dinner to get a good seat for the 8:30 Fantasmic.
The range of food was great, salads, cold meats, roast meats, steak, salmon, loads of it. The puddings were lovely too and the big chocolate Fantasmic model was lovely.
Our server was Khadeesh and he understood we were in a hurry so we paid the bill and got the fantasmic pass quickly.
We head up to Fantasmic through the short cut entrance at about 8:15 thinking we weren’t going to get good seats but the stadium was only half full!! It must have been due to them having another performance earlier in the evening so we got seats right at the very front.
I love Fantasmic and sitting so close made it extra special, the fire across the water really warmed us through and there was no wind so we didn’t even get wet.
After the show I persuaded the gang to walk back across to The Streets Of America as we still hadn’t seen the Osborne Lights, with a bit of grumbling and ‘my feet hurt’ we get back there – its wonderful, you have no idea what to expect until you round a corner and see this amazing light display, there’s Carols playing (including me) and special not cold Disney Snow fluttering down, what a wonderful atmosphere. Absolutely worth the walk back over.
Passing Star Tours on the way back we relent and the kids ride it again twice in a row, they’re happy as Larry now.
Back to the bus for about a 10 minute wait and its back to check on the mousekeeping antics (Darth Tater had killed Mickey) and it’s a Baileys and a bed time.
