We pin traded through several countries and enjoyed the scenery. I took lots of pictures but this is my favorite.
Disney has frogs...real frogs...not everything is animatronic. Who knew.
We also spotted the candy lady, Miyuki, in Japan.
***Disclaimer*** If you are easily offended or have a tendency to take everything personal on the disboards please do not read the following story and just skip down to the next batch of photos.
We happened upon Miyuki just as her show started. I knew of Miyuki because I read the disboards but Donald had no idea who she was. I quickly explained that she makes beautiful candy sculptures and gives them free to random children (and some times adults). Donald was instantly worried as soon as he heard the word "free". He knows how that word can bring out the worst in people. I was looking forward to the show that is Miyuki (and the audience
).
Miyuki quickly whips out animal candy sculptures. While she is making these sculptures...she constantly talks...in a monotone voice. I personally love her accent but Donald quickly tired of Miyuki saying the same thing over and over again. I think I have her spiel memorized. Don't quote me on it because it was three weeks ago but her speech goes something like this "My name is Miyuki, I make sugar candy for you, rice candy for you, good candy for you. Watch me and I will show you, show you how easy candy is, I make animals, I make animals for you. You like, I make dragons, dolphins, tigers, eagles, birds, many kind of birds. Many people come to watch so only one candy per family. I chose, I chose family to give candy to. You chose what animal you like. I make many animal, many animals for you. You watch. I show you how to make. Sugar candy, rice candy, good candy. Many people love me, love my candy. I pick, people will cry, kids will cry, but I pick who gets my wonderful candy." Like I said don't quote me on it, I might be slightly off.
Anyway, Miyuki makes an animal for a girl in the front row. The boy next to her (wearing the same shirt as her), raises his hand for the next piece of candy. Miyuki says only one per family but he insists he is a different family and a woman even chimes in that he is a different family. Miyuki asks the boy what animal he wants. The audience collectively sighs and curses under their breath because they all know Miyuki just got snowed by two siblings. I am laughing inside while Donald starts to fume. See I tend to not get worked up over strangers actions if it doesn't impact me but Donald on the otherhand
gets slighted very easily by perfect strangers.
I continue to enjoy watching Miyuki make the candy animals while watching the crowd out of the corner of my eye. Watching the crowd can be just as entertaining. Parents start edging their kids closer to the front, adults half raise their hand waiting for that moment when Miyuki looks their way so they can fervently shoot their hands up in the air. Yep good times.
For the third animal, Miyuki chooses an adult woman. I personally applaud Miyuki's choice while parents slightly curse the unfairness of an adult taking away a chance from their kid. Miyuki asks what would you like and the woman responds "A Rose."
Miyuki quickly responds "No soup for you. I make candy animals, animals for you, I make dragon, panda, eagle, purple people-eater, hummingbird." The woman runs off in shame. Ok maybe not, she chose an eagle.
It is at that point that Donald has reached the end of his rope. Apparently Donald watched the first two kids who snowed Miyuki celebrating their ill-begotten gains with their parents. As Donald was considering teaching their parents a lesson in lying, I distracted him with the thoughts of more pin trading.
Side note. I never raised my hand for the candy and never even considered raising my hand. For one, I hate volunteering for anything and two, it wasn't chocolate. I might have reconsidered if she was sculpting rise crispy treats dipped in chocolate but nope, it was just plain old hard candy.
After more pin trading, we head to the nearest food booth, Athens.
I can't rememeber the name of the dish but it was a spinach cheese pastry piece of carp. Yep, we weren't impressed. We then head to the next booth but the line is long. Ok fine, lets try another and come upon another long line. Apparently the cat is out of the bag and everyone in Orlando knows about the Food & Wine Festival's soft opening. Darn it.
We decide we aren't that hungry, especially since we have a 4 pm reservation for Coral Reef. We decide to head back to Future World and pin trade in the nice air-conditioned Innovations buildings.
We have fun playing some of the games like this one for Waste Management. It is actually a pretty cool game where we learned about how much garbage we are producing. Luckily neither of us are very wasteful so felt proud of ourselves by the end of the course.
Donald then watches me make homemade paper.
We enjoyed innovations but it didn't take us long to pin trade our way through the building so we decided to get fast passes for Soarin and ride the Living Land ride.
We both love this ride. We did the Behind the Seeds tour in January and loved it (but not enough to pay for it again).
We then headed to Coral Reef.
I will try to be nice because I feel like I was not so nice talking about Miyuki but anyway Coral Reef was loud and packed with kids. Lots of kids, lots of kids who kept running up to the Aquarium behind the guests who were lucky enough to get front row seats. I am so glad I wasn't that lucky. We got seats on the second tier which gave us a great view of the aquarium without having to worry about kids behind our chair, touching our backs, being annoying while we are trying to eat. Are me and Donald the only ones who find it rude that parents let their kids run up to the aquarium squeezing in behind the chairs of people trying to eat. It seemed to me that all tables had views of the aquarium so I didn't see the need of all the kids having to touch the glass. Just my opinion. Flame away, I've got my fireproof jacket on.
The food was great but the atmosphere had a lot to be desired. Our waiter was really great. We enjoyed our food but won't be returning to the Coral Reef. Once was enough for us.
After dinner, we rolled ourselves back to Soarin. Soarin was the only ride that we had to wait for even with fast passes. I think we ended up waiting 20 minutes. Yep, 20 minutes is a short wait but we were spoiled from our January trip of no waits.
We played around futureworld for awhile and then decided to call it a night. We were skipping Illuminations. Last trip, we got a special viewing as a prize for the dreams promotion. We loved it but really didn't want to see it again, at that moment. We were both tired. The long week was finally catching up with us.
We made it back to our room around 9 pm. After hearing a loud noise Donald stepped outside on our balcony and discovered we could see portions of Illuminations. I was impressed for like two seconds and then I went back inside. Donald watched the show while I amused myself by looking at our pins from our great trading day.
I think we finally went to bed around 11 pm. Every night, I downloaded my pictures to my laptop and then to my USB drive. I am paranoid about losing my pictures so I have two backup sources. Actually I had a third backup source (CD's) but I never took the time to burn my pictures to the cd's. The USB drive is so handy and takes up less space. Plus I wrote in my journal, talked to family, blah, blah, blah. We never made it to bed before 11 pm. We don't believe vacations are for relaxing.
I don't think Donald and I know how to relax.
Yep, he is a keeper. I really was surprised and never caught on about the whole direction story. Which I really should have because now that I think about it, he never prints directions for anything. Anyway, Donald felt really bad about lying to me. I was like I have no problems with you lying to me to surprise me like this. 
You might be confused but it is one of those presents where it is the thought that counts. Donald and I have an ongoing joke about Sea Monkeys so it really touched my heart that he bought them for me. He also bought me a rock crystal kit, another inside joke but very sweet. The third present was a piece from the Hawthorne Village Disney Halloween Collection. My second favorite Disney movie is Sleeping Beauty. He bought me Maleficient's castle. Donald is an expert gift picker outer and I was in tears at that point. He made my birthday absolutely amazing and I will always cherish all the thought and effort he put into my birthday. It made turning 33 not as hard as I thought it was going to be.
Yeah, a couple of swear words might have escaped my lips. I quit swimming around that area after I realized there were sharks right there. They might have been behind glass but anyone remember Jaws 3 or Deep Blue Sea? Glass is nothing to sharks. 
Never again. I will keep my feet on Earth from now on. I did enjoy watching the other random couple who rode the ride with us. They took their job assignments very seriously.
