You're welcome, Nebo. Hope you get out to the left coast soon.
Oh, okay then. Fly if you must. There are sometimes some good fares from ORD-LAX.
-Bob
ORD-LAX? You kidding?
Sounds like something I'd find at Walgreens, next to the Immodium.
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Ok, I got a little industrious and went outside and took a few pictures for the heck of it. Did this yesterday, and of course woke up this morning to a couple more fresh inches of snow.
it's because of winters like this that made me so crabby when we run into cold weather in Florida.
The scary part of driving after the storm around here is that you can't see around the "walls" built up until you are already out there in traffic.
And lastly, you can see just the back end of our beloved Santa Fe sticking out of the driveway.
I have the feeling these piles won't melt until June.
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Saturday night, early
The damage was done, and it can't be undone.
No "Do Over", no goin back, no calling "times" and no summer reruns.
I can't even throw the flag and challenge the call to a review.
Live with it.
That's a list of my options, right there.
Great, for a "list", it's severly lacking.
After a couple of drinks in the room it was time to get over to the Yacht Club.
Pretty funny in a way, we just stayed over there in July, but NOW we are going to actually EAT there!
But no car, time to get creative again.
Fuzzy cups made the trip with us, we got on a bus headed for the Studios.
It was cold tonight, but not quite as bad as the last two nights.
And I had to tell my self, repeatedly, stop complaining about the cold, and no point in complaining about the back either, it's not going to suddenly get better.
So much for the "new and improved" Nebo, what I need is to be closed down for 3 months of "refurbishment" in Disneyspeak.
Wait, even that might not be a good idea.
I might reopen as Michael Jackson from 20 years ago!
Stop it.
Stop the complaining.
Just stop it.
We have found that, even though all the guide books say Pop Century is in a remote location on Disney Property, that except for Magic Kingdom all the rides seem shorter to ALL the other parks than the other resorts do.
And unless you're on a monorail resort, ALL the other resorts seem to take forever to get to the Magic Kingdom.
I don't think we're making that up.
Pop is close to Buena Vista Drive, which is the main road to all the parks, water parks, and Downtown Disney.
Pllus, unlike many other mods or Deluxe resorts,,,there's only one bus stop at Pop.
In almost no time a'tall we pulled up at Disney's Hollywood Studios, we walked toward the entrance, then kept walking past to the boat dock. One thing strange about the Studios is that they have the Christmas Tree outside the park, but it sure is pretty.
At the dock we got on the first boat that came along.
It didn't matter which, all we know is that sooner or later it's going to have to stop at the Yacht and Beach Club.
Sooner,,,, or later.
You never know which it will be ahead of time.
This is something I have always found hysterical about staying at an Epcot resort.
No matter what anybody tells you, nobody EVER knows ahead of time where a Friendship Boat is going to go first after it picks you up at a dock.
Yes, there are signs at the reosrt docks, but those are just some "possible" destinations you may stop at, more like suggestions to the captain and crew.
If you are at one of the resort docks instead of at a Park, you are not going to find out what's next in line until you're under way and the captain or crew member get on the microphone.
It's never the same, even if you figure out whether or not they are "coming" or "going",,,,it 's really just a crap shoot of what the current Captain will decide to do and what will come out of his mouth.
Here's a typical example:
"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, we will be leaving the Boardwalk and heading over to the Yacht and Beach Club, followed by the Swan and Dolphin. We will then head back to the Yacht and Beach Club to pick up the sunglasses I left there the first time we go over there and then we should be at Epcot in 25 minutes. After Epcot we will boat over to the Yacht and Beach Club again, followed by the Swan but not the Dolphin this time, and then Hollywood Studios.
"After a stop again at the Swan and Dolphin we will then make the rounds again at the Yacht and Beach Club and the Kennedy Space Center, but we won't be stopping at the Boardwalk so if that is your destination, you better swim for it when we go by." "Hopefully, we will be at our destination,
Castaway Cay in less than two hours."
"Thank you for choosing the Friendship Cruise Line."
Well tonight we didn't have too much a problem, second stop after Boardwalk but interesting enough though, a miscommunication concerning the bus stystem later after dinner.
By the time out boat pulled into the dock, Smidgy was dying for a bathroom so she asked if I'd be ok and she ran on ahead.
For the rest of the trip, with my back the way it is we are the Hare and the Tortoise and I'm sure you can figure out the casting. Or, better yet, she's the female cat with the spilled white paint strip down it's back and I'm Peppy LePew.
Hey, it's better than Peppy LeCar.
Took a picture walking into the courtyard:
From there I went over to the smoking area that I spent so much time in when I was desperately trying to concoct ways in July to dump the full noodle on Diane, or what to do if Stroller Guy should give me a hard time.
Boy, that seemed like just last week.
Here's the famed Stormalong Bay pool, no, you don't need reservations for pool rope drop in this weather.
Then we went and checked in at the podium and they couldn't yell at me fast enough for wearing my hat yet.
still.
whatever.
Smidgy told her we're just getting the buzzer right now, all right? Take it easy. With buzzer in hand we went back out to the smoking section only to find a bunch of kids sitting in the rockers along the railing.
I asked one of them if he had a light and he giggled and said no.
"Oh, I figured you did since you are sitting in the smoking only section," I told him, and they got the hint and left.
Halfway through that wonderful, lovely cigarette that I was slowly, and steadily, inhaling with great care, seeing the wisps of smoke waft out of my nose and curl upward, feeling the warmth as it traveled down into my chest,,,filling my lungs with heated gasses, then slowly exhaling it back out the..............
Sorry, got carried away.
The buzzer went off and we went inside and were seated.
My hat was in my pocket now.
As most of you know, The Yachtsman Steakhouse is a signature restaurant meaning it takes two credits to eat here. So, since we are talking credits, I have to give them their own "credit", the prices on the menu were just hysterical!
Something else I made sure to notice:
Diane made sure I packed at least one nicer shirt but it definately, absolutely, unequivically, had to have a collar.
"It says men must wear a shirt with a collar"
After checking around, I saw 3 men that technically their shirts didn't qualify. Oh, they were nice shirts I guess, but I'm sorry, that is not a real collar. Back in the room I pointed out to her that my plaid lumberjack type shirt has the required "collar",,,,,,but that's as far as I got because she started to look for a knife.
When the waiter came over, I can't remember for sure what, but I know we each ordered some kind of "special" drinks, hopefully Smidgy can remember. Then he told us that we can order any type of potatoe with our steaks, not just the pairings listed in the menu.
Great! I told him, I'll have Tater Tots, but they have to be Ore Ida or there's no deal.
He just looked at me and walked away.
I'm sorry, I really like Ore Ida Tater Tots.
Well, I do!
When he came back with our drinks we ordered and I was behaved,,, well, as "haved" as I can be after drinks and painkillers.
I ordered the fillet mignon with garlic mashed potatoes.
Loved the potatoes, and the steak? Ordered it medium, and it turned out to be a perfect 7 ounces of squishy love!
I just loved it!
I still put the fillet at Le Cellier on the top rung, but this was right up there, along with the fillet at Jiko's.
Diane ordered the 244 ounce Porterhouse listed at 42 bucks in the menu.
They brought it over to the table with a fork truck.
It came,
She looked,
She conquered!
Whoops, 24 ounce, that second 4 stuck, no, wasn't quite that big.
She would have picked up the bone and gnawed around it like we do at home but for the fancy restaurant thing.
You want to be carefull around her when she's eating a Porterhouse or T-Bone, we're talking out of control carnivore here. She once almost needed stitches in her hand breaking open a t-bone to get the bit of meat she couldn't reach inside.
For dessert I had plain ol' crumbrewlay, ok, creme brulee,,, and she got something like the Napolean Bananapart,,,,,, hey, I'm close on that, it was Napolean, with bananas.
I liked mine, she liked hers.
At this time I just couldn't sit any longer and our waiter did that disappearing act thing they do in fancy restaurants when you are ready to pay the bill. Never could understand that, you'd think they would want to turn over the table more quickly.
Finally we are back outside having a smoke. (sigh)
At this time we realize that we aren't going back the way we came here, going to have to take a bus to DD to catch a Pop bus home. The Studios closes at 7 tonight, by the time we get back there by boat, good chance we'll end up having to go to Downtown Disney anyways.
So, while we are here,,,,,, I told her my back can hang in there for a while longer so we went to check out the decorations in the Yacht Club.
I'm afraid this is going to be a jumble of pictures coming up, the first part is the train set up at the Yacht Club.
I am pretty sure this Christmas tree is still at the Yacht Club. By the way, since it is obvious I have the camera with me, you may be wondering why there wasn't any pictures of the steaks.
The answer is simple:
I don't do pictures of food.
Especially, taking pictures of your meal in a fancy restaurant would just seem so redneck to me, no, can't do it.
Besides, at that point I still didn't know that Diane wasn't going to end up picking up that bone and start chewing on the bone, in case she does, it will be a good thing that I didn't call attention to ourselves by taking pictures of our food.
Now, it's over to the Beach Club.
The feature here is a Carousel, made with real chocolate horses.
Real chocolate, in the shape of horses.
Pretty sure real horses aren't made of chocolate.
But, are there FAKE chocolate horses?
Horses made out of imitation chocolate?
Instead of real chocolate?
And is my word count up there enough? Can I post this chapter?
Ahem,,,,, here we have some types of chocolate lovingly sculpted into the shape of horses that then go around in a circle all day long.
Kinda sad really, all day, one route, have to go in a circle, always counter clockwise, never passing the one in front of you.
Forever and ever.
Wow! Just like NASCAR!
This last picture is of the recipe of all that goes into making the carousel. But the recipe is also made of food, so, I would think we need a recipe for the recipe that showed what went into the making of the carousel.
That lived in the house that Jack built.
And finally,,,,, the Christmas Tree at the Beach Club;
Originally we planned on going over to the Boardwalk and Swolphin too but no way was my back going to allow all that extra walking about in the cold, so we looked for the bus stop to get us over to Downtown Disney.
And yes, we had to look for it.
Even though we stayed here for 5 nights just 5 months ago, we never once took a bus anywhere.
Found the bus stops and didn't have too long a wait for DD, then the bus driver made it funny, at least to me.
She pulled the bus into the first DD bus stop, not the one we had gotten off at for Planet Hollywood before when we went for beer.
So as we are getting off the bus, we were the last ones to do so and Diane asked our driver if she knew where the Pop Century bus stop is.
"Right here," was the response she gave Smidgy.
"Thank you", Smidgy replied, and started down the steps of the bus with me behind her.
Diane had assumed the driver had pulled temporarily into the Pop bus stop to let us all off, they do that a lot at the parks in the morning and drop you off closer to the entrance.
But the bus driver stopped her;
"No, I said right here."
Slightly irritated, Diane turned around to her again,
"Yes, I know, right here you said, and that's where we're going, right here," and turned around once again to the door.
But this time the nickel dropped in for me and I went and plopped back down in the first seat, wanted a good view for whatever came next.
But I was disappointed.
This time the bus driver explained herself.
"Miss, you want to go to Pop? Then please come and take a seat, I'm going there next."
Darn, just one more round and I think it would have been fun.
I'm not sure if the driver was supposed to switch over resorts or just did it for us,,, but she taxied just the two of us back to Pop Century.
And with that, we are going to bring this chapter and day to an end. Tomorrow we have the studios planned, can't wait to decide not to do all the good rides because of my back. Or is it even going to let me be able to go at all.
I'll assume the nicotine withdrawl may be affecting your brain!!! 
You're right about the temperature though and unfortunately we didnt go to discovery cove until the Tuesday... 
However, just take a look at the weather forecast in pkondz' neck of the woods 
My dad did it for us several times when I was a kid.
. 
I return you to your regularly scheduled Nebo 
.
WAAAHHHH!!!!!! 
(this means ME, not Nebo, although probably the same)
I'm sure Smidgy is grateful you were not even contemplating taking a picture of potentail bone nawing!
very funny!
but I took a little hiatus from the disboards. Although many times I thought to myself "I wonder whatever happened to Nebo & Smidgy?" So needless to say I was very excited when I came across this report. It only took me 4 days to read all 99 pages. Just like all your other reports Great job
Anyhow congrats on your success so far
