Readers add so much more pressure.. but i'm here to meet the challenge by adding more elements to make this worse:
This Trip report will not occur in chronological order.
That's right, I'm going to skip some entire days, some partial days (thus the half TR), and write about the afternoon of the second to last day first. Give up yet?
There is some reason to this madness. One of the things I never done in Orlando is the universal parks, in fact I've never really been anywhere off disney property except for the drive from and back to the airport. Except for the one unfortunate incident in January, where I accidentally drove out of the disney gates and had to turn around at the gaylord hotel. An excursion totalling less then 3 minutes, but devastating nonetheless. Usually i'm pretty good with directions, take me through a town once and I can figure out the general lay of the land. I mean, i may not know all the street names but i can find my way to my hotel or restaurant or whatever no problem, ask anyone, except DW that is. However, Even thou we been going to disney a good bit the last few years, and get a rental car every time, I don't have a clue how the roads work or where anything is inside Disney. It just never came up, we just follow the signs and it takes you there, in fact, you can miss a turn and the next sign still says you're going the right way.. take the second right or whatever, and there you are. I guess there's a limit to how many turns you can miss, then you run out of purple signs and boom.. you're doing a u-turn in the parking lot of the Gaylord.
Anyways, we did some universal days this time around, and it doesn't seem proper to write about those on the disney TR board, so the first 3 days or so of the trip will be skipped, except for the quarter of a day we went to Disney for CRT. And to say, after reading over a year of bad universal reviews here, it was surprisingly decent.
And now on with the trip report:
Day 6.5 -
Yup, I'm starting on the afternoon of day 6.
if you're still reading, i'm impressed. The day's been on my mind since we got a call from the flying fish about something i left behind that night and they were nice enough to find me and now mail it back to me. Rather then risk not getting to it at all, I want to get it out of the way first.
It was a bright and sunny afternoon in the magical land of Disney, and there was a palpable excitement in the air. Our hero (me) dressed in his newly purchased shirt sporting the Chelsea FC logo skipped gaily through the international gateway of epcot, ready to lead his favorite soccer to victory by drinking beers and shouting at a television from several thousand miles a way. Surely such an unstoppable force behind them, victory is guaranteed.
Okay, so this is what my wife has to put up with. I picked Chelsea randomly as "my team" to follow when I had to learn about soccer for work a few years back, then two weeks before our Disney trip I start fretting about the whole trip because I wasn't sure if I would have to miss a game while in Disney. Good thing the game was going to be on a Disney owned station. We talked about finding a nice sports bar or just heading to the espn club to watch the game, but in the end I decided I would be more comfortable heading back to the room.
We stopped into the beach club marketplace on the way back to browsed through their chilled alcoholic beverage section. I was pleasantly surprised at both the quantity and varieties they offered. We ruled out getting some wine pretty quick, since Disney doesn't provide corkscrews or wine glasses in the studio (portofino bay did by the way), and went for a bunch of beers, flavored beers, appletini in beer bottle, margarita in beer bottle etc. We elected to goto the gift shop side of the store to pay since I was started feeling a little self conscience standing in middle of a bunch of family's getting their afternoon gelato and soda refills while holding an armful of alcohol. Plus there was no line at that end of the store. Thankfully, the CM didn't comment on our purchase. We made some small talk as she put our bottles in a plain brown paper bag. DW said something about how whimsical the music was in the store, the CM told us how annoying the same 5 songs could get if you listened to them all day. It was oddly exciting, I felt like i was 18 again (i mean 21.. hi mom), walking out of some seedy convenience store at midnight with a bag full of boons farm. except of course.. it was noon on a weds, I'm so old I don't remember the last time i was carded at a store, and It was the most expensive SELF SERVE bottle of miller light I've ever purchased.
I won't rehash the full 3 hour soccer game.. I'll be happy to give play by play commentary to anyone who requests it. Suffice it to say.. It was an average game, with a exciting ending. I was bouncing off the walls and sitting in the middle of the bed stunned and speechless within a 5 minute period. DW gives me the requisite amount of time to sit and and stare blankly, and then gently talks me into rejoining rest of the happy world in Disney.
We had a couple of hours before our ADR at the flying fish, and DW had seen some sort of tinkerbell bird bath on a previous day that she wanted get for her sister. So We head into Epcot intent out going through every flower and garden themed shop in the park. During the flower and garden festival... there's a lot of those. In the middle of the afternoon on a rather humid 90+ degree day.. a lot of those seem to be outdoor shops. After about 45 fruitless stops we finally break down and ask one of the CMs if they had the bird bath. They did! -----YEAH!!!!
but it's sold out everywhere! ----- NOOOOOOOO
Over a week ago! ----- Wait.. we weren't here over a week ago, and DW have seen it, so it's still out there somewhere YEAH!!!!!!!!!
We thank the CM, and try to figure exactly where DW saw the bird bath.
DW: "It had to be yesterday or the day before"
Me: "That narrows it down to 4 parks and downtown disney"
DW: "do you remember anything about where we were when we saw it?"
Me: "I never saw it"
DW: "Where could we have been that I would've not shown you something I liked?"
Me: "One of those flower and garden shop, you were looking at things and i was trying to not think about yard work"
Having narrowed down the field, we continued our quest, finally ending up at the festival center in the old wonder of life pavillon. Which I believe is the furthest possible point one can be from the international gateway and still be in epcot. International gateway being where we enter the park, and need to exit the park for dinner. They have a pretty extensive store with literally dozens of tinker bell items for your garden. None of them were made for a bird to bath in. Finally we gave in and pick out a different tinker bell item.. I think it's just something you poke into the lawn and it's supposed to be decorative.
mini rant:
This is where I think Disney's marketing and merchandise is truly genius. No one store on property has all their products, not even the bigger spots like Mouse Gears or even WoD, and all their products seems to be in limited supply. Don't be fooled by the 4 shelves full of that salt and pepper shaker you're eyeing. That's all they got, it's all right there. You may think you can goto a different shop and see if you find something you like even better, but you're wrong. The other shop won't have these exact ones, and the next 150 people to come in this shop will all want YOUR salt and pepper shaker and empty all 4 shelves in 10 minutes flat. So later in the day, you'll come back and a very nice CM will sympathize with you and say things like "oh yes, they were so cute! but we sold of them 17 seconds ago". Of course, if you got them on your first trip, you'll find 15 other things that you like better at the next store, and another one at the next park, and 4 more at WoD and need a whole new suit case and second mortgage because you're bringing home 53 sets of salt and pepper shakers.
rant over.
We goto check out and tell the CM our sob story about the bird bath defeated us, when suddenly, no we don't get the bird bath, she notices the Chelsea shirt I was wearing.
CM: "hey did you see the game?"
Me: "grrrr"
DW: "Yeah, we saw the game it was fun"
CM: "I saw it too! I was happy with the result thou"
Me: "grrr"
DW: "At least it was a good game, everybody has to be happy about that"
Me: mumbles
CM: "What did you say?"
DW: "He's kinda bummed out"
CM: "Oh, Well i don't care, my team won and i'm going to be happy and bubbly and I live disney and you're dog is smelly"
I made up parts of that conversation. I'm not usually a grump, but I spent the last hour walking around looking for a bird bath, trying not to think about that particular game. I'm not in a terrible mood, but i'm certainly a little bit sulky as we head toward dinner on the boardwalk.
I have had to avoid Disboards the last few days just so I wouldn't feel guilty about not writing my the TR. To be honest, I figured it would be difficult to make myself take the time to sit and do it rather then read other people's, but this TR thing is actually harder to write then I anticipated as well. I expected to do the whole afternoon/dinner/night in about 15 minutes.. but here I am, tired and out of time, and not finished. At least you were warned in the title.
I really didn't think you meant it when you said you were going to write a TR for this one, so good job for starting it!! 
This is my favorite line so far.
I like it! Write some more 
