It was around noon at StormInto Bay, even though I was feeling better, I still had those two little nebos arguing it out above my head.
That's right, even though I took the painkillers out of the room, they are still in the pocket of my shorts, angel nebo keeps telling me to just leave them alone, you can put them back in the bottle later.
Devil nebo is saying, "Holy Cow, what are you waiting for? It's been over 3 hours now, you have proved your resilience, your abstinence is remarkable, you truly are worthy, now swallow the damn things and get down to not just feeling better, but actually feeling remarkable!"
My devil nebo is an eloquent speaker.
I swallowed the damn things.
A half hour later I was feeling betterer.
I was also feeling a bit like a troublemaker.
We decided to leave the noodles and go and explore the rest of the pool area, I wanted to know how much they enforce things, so I ripped off my orange plastic wrist strap, but I put it in my suit pocket just in case.
It seemed like there are 3 main areas to the pools.
With your back to the buildings, facing the lagoon with the pool in front of you, on the far right is more of a kiddies pool, with a sand beach area leading into it. Some tables, lots of loungers, not much shade.
In the middle is the lazy river which is all we've been in so far.
On the left is the other lagoon type pool.
One fork off this pool leads to a strange dead end, so we swam over to it. Ok, walked is a more accurate term.
In this dead end is about a 15 foot diameter whirlpool, I don't mean like a hot tub, I mean whirlpool, it will slowly spin you around inside it forever.
This sounds interesting, but unless you're a little kid, it's really not. One or two trips around that circle and your looking for the exit.
Now, earlier in the trip report I mentioned that I will tell you how to break into this maximum security pool complex.
This is not foolproof, but that's why I tore my band off, "I gotta know!"
First of all, it seems like the gatekeepers leave in the late afternoon, at least they did when we were there, so no wrist bands required.
I'm sorry FSmth, but I know all these good readers here wouldn't try to bring a whole family into this hallowed area as pool hoppers.
But now, how to get in during the heat of the day?
Remember in The Great Escape, they worked for months digging a tunnel out of the German POW camp, and all would have gotten away if the tunnel was just 10 feet longer and reached the woods?
Well, that's how you break into this POW camp,
except this time, instead of under you go over.
The entrance and stairs to the huge pool slide is across the outside promenade and on the beach, anyone walking by could climb the stairs if they chose.
Where you need a room key card to get through the gates, of course you're not going to carry it with you to go on the slide so here's where the wrist bands are supposed to come into play.
Only the cast member up on top didn't even seem to look for them. He's just making sure it's clear down below before he sends the next slider. I did it twice, sans bracelet with no problem.
As far as slides go, it's very strange.
You can't see it.
It looks like it's just a straight slide down to the pool, but you can only see the very top and the first section, no matter what other viewing angles you can find, it's hidden in the trees.
It's partly enclosed, starts out real slow and picks up speed with twists and turns at the bottom before you are flung into the water with your nose acting as a hood scoop on a '57 Chevy.
It's probably the best slide in Disney, way better than at Vero, but it's a pain to get to, you have to leave the complex at the other gate by Hurricane Hanna's, then cross over to the beach and start climbing.
Two times was enough, we went back to our table to get out of the sun.
15 minutes later, as we were sitting there talking, I remembered to shake out my watch band.
My watch never comes off, ever.
At most I will slide it up my arm a bit when I wash my hands, but that's as far as it ever moves.
But water will collect in the band and underneath it against my wrist so after I shower or swim, I try to usually just shake it out for a second.
I went to do this now, but it was totally dry, it was that hot out. I put it back on.
A few minutes later, it felt like a fly was on my arm and I absentmindedly just ran my right hand up my left arm as we talked.
My hand came away wet.
Huh?
I looked up, nope, no birds under the umbrella performing an aerial attack.
I looked around, no rotten kids with noodles messin with me.
So I looked at my arm more closely.
"Holy Cow!"
The top of my arm was covered with thousands of little tiny water blisters, I'm assuming from exposure, or over exposure to the sun.
I showed Smidgy, she immediately checked her arms.
She had it to a degree too, just not as bad.
Strange thing, neither of us were sunburned, I can only assume it's part of an aging thing because as much time as we have spent in the sun this trip we should be black, and we're not.
I've noticed this more and more over recent years, I don't get as dark as I used to, I guess that pigment that releases melatonin or whatever it is must be dried out.
If I ever find our honeymoon pictures you'll see what dark really is.
Time out:
As I am writing this, Smidgy is downstairs watching tv and she just started shrieking.
She went to let in Mischief, the cat I adopted when we weren't together, and Mischief brought home the bacon again, so to speak.
"Oh Mischief, Mischief, how could you? Steve, Mischief just brought hom Chip and Dales' mother this time, OH, and it's still squirming, Oh Mischief, how could you?"
"Sorry, can't hear you, don't have my aids in."
I lied.
No way did I want to deal with that.
Still not sure what the outcome was, I hope it won't be flopping around on the coffee table when I come downstairs.
But, I disgust.
Digress.
For some reason it was just on the tops of the arms, but we thought we maybe oughta call it quits for the day, let's get something from Hurricane Hannas and bring it back here to eat.
We both got a cheeseburger and fries, same price as in all the food courts and it was pretty good. Then we headed back to the room.
On the way we had to pass past the quiet villa pool again, and now the construction workers were all over, but the pool was still open, with people in it and others sitting around trying to ignore them.
As we walked around the pool, DIane was carrying most of the stuff, I had a bag and the camera in my hand that once again we never used.
At the edge of the pool is a young couple with two small children taking each others pictures by the pool. As we walked near them Diane said, loud enough for them to hear, "Steve, why don't you take their picture for them so they can all get in the same shot."
I couldn't believe she said this.
This exact situation has happened before, somewhere else, but apparently the elephant has forgotten this time.
Oh well, if you insist.
"Sure, why not?," and the mom's and dad's faces lit up.
I put down my bag, raised our camera to my face and through the viewer I could see this look of confusion on the mom.
Glancing to my right I could see this look of sick disgust on Smidgy's face, "Oh Lord, how could I have been so stupid?"
I put the camera back down.
"Oh, you want me to take their picture with "their" camera, of course, that would make a lot more sense!"
I'm sorry, this is about the 3rd time this has happened and I got to play this and it always amuses me.
I walked over and the dad gave me this big, fancy camera. "Know how to use this?"
"Oh sure, I am a photographer extraordinaire."
I backed up looking at it,
I had no idea.
This thing had more levers, dials, buttons and switches then a nuclear reactor.
So, to buy time, and for my own amusement, I made them play the game.
You know, the photographer's game, similar to Simon Says.
Nebo says take two steps to the left.
Nebo says take one step backward.
Nebo says you should put the little girl in the middle.
Wait, wait, you through your hands up in disgust and I didn't say Nebo says, now you all have to go back 3 steps.
It's amazing the power the cameraman has, you can make people do almost anything if your good at it.
I had them backed up right to the pool, if I would have said take two more steps backward, it might have worked, but there was a lip by the pool edge, they wouldn't have just fallen in but probably bashed their heads on the way down so I kept them there.
By now I at least figured out how to take a shot, but it could have been set on "fireworks" for all I know, but it seemed to come out very well.
Mom was happy, but for some reason they didn't ask me to take a second shot, not sure why.
Just relaxed for a while in the room, then I made a couple of drinks in fuzzy cups and we went down for a smoke, which led to two.
We finished off the fuzzy cup drinks just wandering around, peaked into Captain's Grill, peaked into Yachtsman's Steakhouse, then I popped for two margarita's at Hurricane Hanna's which fit perfectly in the fuzzy cups. Then we went in search of the hidden pool.
This is probably one of the only pools in all of Disney that we have never seen.
It is the Boardwalk Inn quiet pool.
And wow!, there's a reason we never saw it.
You've heard the phrase, "You can't get there from here?"
That describes the directions to the quiet pool over there.
I figured that there had to be a way from the actual "Boardwalk" to go in and out, just like at the Boardwalk Villa pool and the main Luna Pool.
I figured wrong.
If I'm wrong about this, someone please correct me, I can take it.
From what I can tell, the only way to get to the pool area is to walk down the main center path into the lobby of the Boardwalk Inn and Villas, you have to climb a bunch of stairs to do this.
At the lobby, make a left, walk way down to the end where the elevators are, now press 1st floor, and go back down.
Now you have to walk around till you find an outside exit, this will take you to the quiet pool.
We did all this, luckily I was leaving breadcrumbs behind as we went.
This area is amazing. Kind of like finding Eden.
There wasn't a single person in the pool.
There wasn't a single person sitting by the pool.
It's 7:25 on an extremely hot and humid July night.
There was a nice smoking area on one end, we sat, we smoked, but not quite as nice as the one at Beach Club Villas. And all around the pool are gardens, some of the rooms here have private gardens, like you might see in an old forties movie.
Very pretty, but kinda eerie.
Total solitude, total removal from wandering tourists eyes, and totally creepy.
Yeah, you don't have to worry about pool hoppers here, that's for sure.
We followed the breadcrumbs back out, slowly walked back to our room and hit the hay early tonight.
Tomorrow is Thursday, our last day here, it's also Emh again at Epcot and since we have been giving Epcot short shrift the last couple of trips, we want to be there for rope drop.
Right before we turned out the lights, I had to do it.
I turned to Diane and held out my arm, "Does this look like it's infected to you?"
tomorrow
NO! NOT THAT!
The hair, the hair....
The fun thing to do with the noodles is fill them up point the other end at someone then blow into your end. It sends the water all over the other person if you blow hard enough.
the stand was out of the lime variety so I went inside the Pyramid and got one from the bar in there that is hidden in the corner - my wife said it was the best one she'd had all week and could actually taste the alcohol in it. Unfortunately it was the same price as the rest of the one's out of the machines, I guess I should feel lucky that they didn't charge more for them.
(and now McDisney)
