Hilary's resurrected TRs - October 2001

[Hilary]

These reports were lost in the DIS boards crash of long ago, but I've been asked to re-post them (I won't say who asked me as I wouldn't want them to attract too much hate mail ). To avoid taking up the whole TR board, I'm posting each set as a single post. Here goes:

Background stuff and getting there

We are:

Me (Hilary) – chief trip planner, itinerary arranger and clean-sock-supply checker.
DH (Jeremy) – chief fund-raiser for planned trips and itineraries. Fishing fanatic.
DD1 (Rhian) – 17th birthday three days before our trip. Dolphin fanatic. Those of you patient enough to have read previous trip reports by me may remember that Rhian and bathrooms have a strong and time-consuming bond, and that she goes into ‘holiday training’ a couple of weeks before our trips to practice getting up, and ready to face the world, in under two hours. You think I’m joking?
DD2 (Amy) – 12 and a half. Bouncy. Has been known to be accident-prone. Budding animator (and very good at it, too).

It may have ‘all started with a mouse’, but the planning for this trip started in June 2000, when I booked a Britannia flydrive direct with Thomson from Cardiff to Orlando International for 12th to 26th October 2001. Extra legroom seats also booked (Jeremy is 6’3”), all-inclusive car-hire and insurances booked. Sharp intake of breath taken when accepting total price for 4 of us. Even with a 10% discount we were looking at over £2300 just to get there (well, it was half-term week, and only Amy qualifies for a child price), but I’m a real bargain hunter and am likely to go into a decline if I can’t get a good deal. But I wasn’t going to let a little thing like that spoil the planning, and next came the accommodation decisions.

I booked the first night at All Star Sports (we wanted to be on-site ready to take advantage of Early Entry on our first morning), a villa in Port Charlotte (on the Gulf coast) for the next week, and the last six nights back in Walt Disney World at Dixie Landings. Then we joined the Disney Vacation Club in the summer of 2001, so I cancelled Dixie Landings (or Port Orleans Riverside as it had become) and made DVC reservations at Old Key West. Then I got an excellent rate for the first night in the WDW Dolphin, so cancelled our one night at All Star Sports. Well, it kept me busy…

And there we were – ready for another Floridian adventure – with a whole new set of experiences lined up, and raring to go. Then came the atrocities of September 11th, and our two weeks in the US seemed very uncertain and considerably less appealing. However, as the weeks passed towards our departure day, we began to hope that we would still be able to travel, and eventually October 12th dawned and we were off.

Well, to be precise, October 12th hadn’t dawned when we set off, as we had to leave the house by 5:30am, so it was definitely still dark when we woke up at 4:00am! The cat had been dispatched to the cattery the previous day, so once we’d done the last-minute packing and locking up, we set off to Cardiff airport. Aren’t the roads quiet at that time of the morning?

We’d taken heed of the Britannia web-site information about hand luggage, and packed one see-through bag between us – I’ve never been able to travel light, so this was a bit of a challenge, but we knew it was for good reason. We checked in, (why do I always feel so guilty when they ask the “did you pack these bags yourself?” “have you left the bags unattended at any time?” questions?), then went for a coffee until it was time to board. I can’t say I actively enjoy flying, but normally I don’t really mind it. After September 11th, however, I have to admit to being much more apprehensive about this flight than any other, and that wasn’t helped by the fact that Amy and I were sitting on the other side of the plane from Jeremy and Rhian, with four seats between us. I’d have been happier if we’d been all together.

The flight was uneventful apart from a telling-off from the cabin crew, and then the Captain, when they discovered that someone had been smoking in the toilets. I was waiting for the “I’m going to keep you all in detention until someone owns up”, but it didn’t come to that. Although I admit to being strongly anti-smoking, and can understand the crew being extra sensitive at the moment, I didn’t really like the way we were all ‘told off’ like naughty school children. Jeremy said he was 99% sure it was the man sitting across the aisle from him, but he didn’t snitch.

Miracle of miracles, we all got the meals we’d requested, which must be a first. Another bonus was that Amy managed to eat hers and keep it down – the travel sickness pills worked well this trip! The ‘feature film’ was ‘A Knight’s Tale’, which we all enjoyed, and they also showed ‘Dinosaur’ and ‘Charlie’s Angels’.

I overheard one conversation during the flight in which a woman sitting nearby was telling someone she’d only booked her seat the day before and was a bit annoyed that she’d had to pay £169, when her daughter had flown out the week before for £99. I tried to forget the amount we’d paid all those months ago, and to convince myself that there must have been some late cancellations – there are so few Cardiff-Orlando flights that the school holiday dates usually sell out months ahead. The bargain-hunter in me was very envious.

Our arrival at Orlando was hassle-free until, having been successfully reunited with our luggage at the first carousel, we passed through the customs area and I was pulled to one side (they must have phoned ahead from Cardiff to tell them how shifty I looked when they’d asked me about packing the bags myself).
“Do you have any items of food with you, Ma’am?”
“Yes, I have some tea-bags and sugar. Oh, and some chewy biscuits” I replied, wondering whether I could plead extenuating circumstances and ask for an extension on my WDW Annual Pass if I had to spend the entire two weeks behind bars, and the pass expired before I could use it again.
“Just bring your bags through here.” said the Customs Officer, beckoning us to an area with rows of trestle-tables. He went to the other side of the table - I got the impression we shouldn’t follow, if we knew what was good for us – and we lined ourselves up opposite him.
“Open that case for me, please” he said, pointing to the case that did, indeed, contain the meagre self-catering supplies I had so casually packed all those days ago (how did he know which case they were in?).

There followed much fumbling around for padlock keys until eventually our worldly possessions were revealed in all their squashed post-flight glory. The officer lifted one corner of a toiletry bag, shuffled a couple of pairs of socks around and then (probably feeling sorry for us, if that was the best we could display in the way of socks and toiletries) declared himself satisfied that we had no sheep, bullocks or other farmyard livestock concealed about our persons, bade us on our way. We adopted a light-hearted air of “Customs search? Yes, but we knew we had nothing to hide, so it was all just fine and dandy”, zipped up the bag and went around the corner to give it to the nice man snarling at anyone who put their cases on his conveyor belt not exactly lined up, or with the wheels facing the wrong way.

Oh the joy that is Orlando International airport.

We still had the car-rental obstacle course to complete, but, apart from being stung by the “please sign here for your full tank of petrol which will cost you approximately three times what you’d pay at the pumps – but then you’re a tourist so you deserve it” scam, it proved pleasantly straightforward. We did the customary ‘Rental Car Crouch’ around the car in the parking lot, checking for any scrapes or bumps that might be deemed to be our responsibility, and Jeremy got the desk clerk to sign the receipt to say that our car was scratched before we had even unlocked the doors. Then it was off, and on to the open road - once Jeremy had mastered the knack of getting from neutral to drive, that was. Actually, it took three days before he realised that it was so much easier to achieve this if you depressed the brake pedal first – goodness knows what he did to the gear box (do automatics have gear boxes?) in the meantime, as he had to practically wrench the lever out of the floor to get it to engage, until he realised what he should be doing.

So then we really were off to Orlando, and our first port of call – The WDW Dolphin.

 

[Hilary]

Friday, October 12th 2001

The Dolphin and The Drama

So, having managed to negotiate our way out of the Dollar rental parking lot, it was time for me to put my navigational skills to the fore and get us to the WDW Dolphin in the most direct and least contentious manner (“Why are telling me to go off here when the sign says we should carry on?” “Are you sure you want me to go in that entrance marked ‘service vehicles only’?”, etc., etc.). I may not be the first in line when it comes to volunteering to drive in Florida, but I think I can rightly lay claim to a pretty good record on the old map-reading. I am proud to report a clean sheet on this occasion, and we arrived at the Dolphin without mishap. A round of applause would have been nice.

We had already decided we were quite happy with self-parking and would politely decline any offers of valets or bell-hops, so we pulled up at the checking-in entrance and began to unload the bags. Once the car had been emptied, Jeremy disappeared to park the car and the girls and I trundled the cases to the nearby revolving doors. Did you notice the mistake there? Three cases, a couple of handbags, assorted loose maps, cameras and bottles of water in the hands of three tired travellers do not mix well with heavy revolving doors, but at least the ensuing centrifugal force made sure we all ended up in more or less one heap on the other side, without even trying. We scooped up our belongings and staggered to the nearest bench to wait for Jeremy. Now, I just know there’s someone out there who has visited the Dolphin before and is about to say “but you didn’t have to use the revolving doors, there are some very user-friendly ones that open for you automatically as you approach with your hands full…”. Yes. Thank you. I know that now.

Wow! We were in a huge entrance lobby lined with exotic greenery and with a high, domed ceiling scattered with twinkling stars. Every now and again a shooting star travelled the length of the ceiling, and we sat gawking, probably very unattractively, taking it all in. Jeremy arrived, back from parking, and we headed to check-in. It was, by now, about 3:00pm and our room was ready, so we crossed the main lobby to find our set of lifts. Well, we’d been impressed with the entrance lobby, but this was even more stunning. We were in a larger circular area, with a high, tented ceiling suspended over a water fountain in the centre. There was a grand piano on one side, and big squishy sofas and low tables all around the perimeter. We decided to have a good look around later, once we’d taken the bags to the room and freshened up.

As we emerged from the lift, we appeared to have pressed the wrong button and had arrived at the beach. Well, not literally, but the carpet was sand-coloured, with scattered beach towels along its length, and the corridor walls were painted with bobbing waves and fluffy clouds along a blue sky, with every room door disguised as a beach hut! We were already in sensory overload, but when we found our room, opened the door and checked out the balcony, we were really thrilled – we had a view of the Boardwalk resort with Epcot behind and Spaceship Earth on the skyline. Yes, indeedy, we had arrived!

Suddenly, we didn’t seem quite so tired any more, and there was some serious exploring to be done – we were only here for one night and I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss too much. Our flight had been earlier than usual and we thought we’d try to make use of the ‘extra’ couple of hours by taking a stroll to the Boardwalk. So, once we’d all showered and changed out of our travelling clothes, we went to find something to eat (easier said than done – we definitely needed longer than one night to even begin to find our way around the Dolphin), at Tubbi’s Buffeteria, and then headed outside. We made a circuit of the Dolphin and Swan grounds and pools and sat on the beach for a while, soaking up the very relaxing atmosphere and welcome sunshine.

Then we crossed the bridge to the Boardwalk, and decided to continue round and complete the circuit by visiting the Yacht and Beach Club as well. As we arrived at the far end of the bridge that linked the Boardwalk and the Beach Club, we saw a path to the right and discovered that this was the way (which I’d heard about but never seen) to the International Gateway ‘back door’ to Epcot. Now, coincidentally, I just happened to have put our Annual Passes in my bumbag (didn’t want to leave them in the hotel, did I?), so I chivvied the troops and off we went. I think I got away with making this look unplanned.

We’d never had the energy to visit a park on our arrival night before, so this was another ‘first’ for us. Next came our first encounter with the increased park security as we lined up to have our bumbags searched before passing through the turnstiles. It was very quiet at this entrance, so the delay was negligible, and the searches were reassuring. We strolled through the entrance and made for the bridge between the UK and France pavilions, where we stopped to take in the sights and sounds of our first park visit this trip.

Next to me Amy said, in the kind of tone she might use to tell me she wanted to buy a postcard, or what she’d had for lunch at school yesterday, “I’ve got my knee stuck”.
“What do you mean, you’ve got your knee stuck?” I replied, nonchalantly.
“It’s stuck – in the railings.” We were standing looking over the railings near the UK ‘park’ next to the lagoon.
“Well, unstick it then.” My voice seemed to have gone up a couple of tones.
“I can’t, I’ve tried”
I looked down at her legs, and could see that one of them was our side of the railings, whilst the other had a foot on this side but the rest of it, from the ankle to the thigh, was heading in an independent manner in a northerly direction towards the American Adventure.

Okay, I confess, I burst out laughing. With hindsight, this was probably not an appropriate reaction to facing the prospect of having to send for the fire department to come and cut down the railings in one of the busiest theme parks in Florida in order to extract my daughter from them, but I couldn’t help myself. Amy was, by now, on the verge of tears, so I controlled my hysterical outburst and told her to try straightening her leg and then pulling it back through. No luck. Jeremy and Rhian were, by now, aware of the drama unfolding before us, and had also succumbed to an equally inappropriate fit of giggles. Amy joined in with the giggling for a minute - until she remembered what we were laughing at. There followed a lot of thinly disguised tittering (Jeremy, Rhian and me), a few crumpled bottom-lip moments, and much pushing and shoving of the errant knee (Amy).

Jeremy (tends to be of the ‘let’s make a huge fuss’ persuasion) tried to physically man-handle Amy’s knee back through the railings, but this upset her as she said someone might notice, and she wanted to wait until the coast was clear. May I just remind you that we were in a major theme park on a glorious evening a couple of hours before a stupendous fireworks, music and laser show was due to start, and Amy was asking us to wait until there was no-one around. Not really likely, was it?

In the absence of any brighter suggestions, Jeremy thought we should get some soap to try to help her knee slip out, but we reminded him that the restroom soap in WDW parks was that nasty gritty powdery stuff, and I didn’t see how that would help much, even if we could manage to get a handful of it back to the railings without being arrested for starting another Anthrax scare. Amy’s knee was now starting to look a bit red from all the pushing and prodding, and I didn’t feel Jeremy’s alarmist approach was doing much good to her bravado (she was holding out pretty well, considering). I agreed with his inspiration that they would probably sell bars of soap in one of the UK shops just down the path, and he and Rhian were dispatched to find some.

Amy and I adopted as casual a stance as we could manage, considering the physical limitations imposed by having one of our four knees making its own escape bid in a different direction, and waited. Amy then declared she was going to have one last really good try (probably spurred on by the prospect of being publicly rubbed into a lather by her father when he returned with the bar of Lily-of-the-Valley or English Lavender or whatever), and she set about squeezing her knee with both hands and pulling her leg back at the same time. There was no ceremonious ‘pop’, but she did it! She now had both legs firmly on the same side of the railings, with a bruise the size of a dinner plate rapidly developing on one of them. Never mind, at least she was out! We sprinted down to the UK shops, and Amy found Jeremy and Rhian dithering in a somewhat mercenary manner over whether or not they should spend $7 on a bar of genuine English soap, or just call the fire department and done with it (only kidding).

Drama over, we needed a break, but Amy wanted to see how long the wait was for Test Track, so after ice creams all round (well, we’d saved $7 by not needing the soap), off we went. Not surprisingly, there was a longish wait and we were too tired by now to want to hang around, so we called it a day, said goodbye to the railings as we passed (making sure Amy kept a wide berth), and headed back towards the Yacht and Beach Club, and then ‘home’ to the Dolphin.

Although we were all really ready for a good night’s sleep by now, I was determined that we should make the most of our fantastic Epcot view, and we sat on the balcony waiting for Illuminations at 9:00pm with me nudging anyone not paying attention. (Do they have any idea how lucky they are to have this room?). Despite the prodding, Rhian nearly fell asleep a couple of times, but just managed to keep awake long enough to see the final fireworks before crashing out. Amy’s knee was now a lurid purple where the bruise was coming to fruition, but it toned in quite nicely with the peach and pale green décor.

All things considered, this evening had been quite a memorable way to start our two weeks in Florida, even if not entirely in the way I had imagined during the planning stages.

Tomorrow – an early start in Magic Kingdom, then the drive down to Port Charlotte to find our villa for the next week.

 

[Hilary]

Saturday, October 13th 2001

Magic Kingdom and Driving to the Coast

In my usual first-morning-in-US-time-zone fashion, I was wide awake and trying to quietly make a cup of tea and read the freshly-delivered Orlando Sentinel by 5:00am, whilst I waited for the other three Sleeping Beauties to rouse themselves. By 6:30am (and a few cups of tea and much rustling of well-thumbed Orlando Sentinel later), we were all awake and ready to set off on our planned Early Entry to Magic Kingdom. It’s become a bit of a tradition that we have our first Magic Kingdom breakfast of each trip in Tony’s Town Square restaurant, but we knew that Tony’s wasn’t open for breakfast at the moment, so decided to grab something to eat in The Dolphin before we left.

Having failed miserably to complete a full and frank investigation of the numerous restaurants here last night – we saw quite a few places from the outside, but couldn’t find their entrances – we thought we’d save time - and face - by going to Tubbi’s again. Hopefully, we might be able to re-locate Tubbi’s without having to leave any greasy imprints of our quizzical foreheads on the spotless windows as we peered inside, mouths drooling with hunger, wondering how to find our way to the other side of the glass. We also knew that Tubbi’s was open 24 hrs every day, so we couldn’t be too early for breakfast. It did mean, however, that we wouldn’t make Magic Kingdom in time for Early Entry, but we hoped the reported smaller crowds would mean this wouldn’t matter too much.

Tubbi’s located and stomachs filled, we completed the few bits of packing in our room and then checked out from our one night in The Dolphin. We took the cases to the car (avoiding the revolving doors this time) and then went to wait for the bus to the Magic Kingdom. Twenty minutes later we were treading across the ‘Walk Around the World ‘ bricks and heading, with a spring in our step, for the MK turnstiles. In front of the turnstiles there was an array of trestle tables with Security personnel checking all bags being taken into the parks, and we were impressed with the efficient manner with which this was accomplished. Less efficient were our fumblings with bumbag clips, water bottles, cameras and park passes as we tried to pass seamlessly from the Security check to the turnstiles. (We improved our technique for this during the second week of the trip). In no time at all, we were emerging from under the railroad bridge and into the atmosphere of Main Street! The first thing we noticed was the music – brilliant – it was good to be back.

We strolled up Main Street (it seemed pretty quiet considering we hadn’t made Early Entry), and headed through the Castle to ride whatever we could find without too much of a line. This was another break from family tradition, as we did not – drum roll, please – have a plan! I can almost hear the gasps of disbelief from here. Our last WDW trip as a family had been over the New Year and I had gone into planning overload to make sure we got to do and see all the exclusive Christmas / New Year events and attractions. This time, I hadn’t planned anything at all – we’d only decided on MK this morning because it was the Early Entry park - and it took the rest of the family a while to get used to it. They kept asking me where we were going next, and I kept replying “I don’t know – where do you want to go?” (Exactly the way all we ‘veterans’ tell everyone NOT to do Disney!) It made a nice change.

So, in new-found ‘go with the flow’ fashion, we found no lines at Winnie The Pooh and made that our first ride of this trip. The Haunted Mansion was next, followed by Aladdin, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Tomorrowland Transit Authority before we needed refuelling and called into Cosmic Ray’s Starlight café for a snack, after getting Fast Passess for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. The air conditioning in Cosmic Ray’s was a bit too fierce for us to hang around, so we stopped off for our family Buzz contest (yes, since you are probably wondering – I did score quiet well, thank you) on our way out of the park and back to The Dolphin. It had been a flying visit, but it was enough of a WDW fix to keep us going until we returned at the end of our week on the coast.

Back at The Dolphin, Jeremy went to the general store in Tubbi’s (we may not have been guests here long, but we were pretty regular Tubbi’s customers by the time we left) to buy a couple of snacks for the journey, and the girls and I checked out the shops near the foyer. Bizarrely, there was a WHSmith shop, but it sold mainly clothes and jewellery – very strange to us Brits! All we managed to buy were a couple of postcards, and then we bundled into the car and headed roughly south-west for three hours until we arrived at Port Charlotte (yes, it was that simple).

The journey was very, very uninspiring. We’d chosen to use the inland route as we thought it might be more interesting than whizzing straight down the Interstate, but we were disappointed. We passed through a few towns, but apparently any places of note were hidden from the main route through, and we must have missed them.

When we arrived in Port Charlotte, we followed the villa directions and found ourselves in the labyrinth of a residential area, with our villa at the end of a small cul-de-sac. We’d never rented a villa in Florida before, so we were keen to investigate. We had picked one of the cheapest villas available from the brochure, so I was prepared to be underwhelmed, but I needn’t have been. We had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living / dining area, kitchen and study / third bedroom, with a lovely pool and surrounding deck, and a ‘garden’ leading down to a waterway running along the bottom and one side of the grounds, complete with our own private jetty. There was a waterway at the back of the house, more water on one side, the road at the front and dense vegetation at the other side, so we didn’t feel exactly hemmed in by the neighbours! In fact, when we arrived, the whole area was incredibly quiet, and we didn’t really hear anyone the whole time we were there until, on our last morning, there were two children riding their bikes out on the road. Very relaxing.

Jeremy and Amy headed straight into the pool, whilst Rhian and I explored our new home and unpacked. Then we headed out to find some supplies, and somewhere for dinner.

We couldn’t get over the number of Stars and Stripes on display everywhere as we made our way back through the residential area. Practically every other house had either a flag or a banner with ‘God Bless America’ or ‘We support America’, or something similar outside, as well as a lot of decorations for Hallowe’en. Many front porches were decorated with ghosts and pumpkins as well as the flags and banners, so there was plenty to look at as we drove around ‘our neighbourhood’!

We found a restaurant called the ‘Chef’s Garden’ and dithered around the entrance, looking at the menu displayed outside. As we were still deciding, an elderly man (we discovered that there were an awful lot of elderly people in Port Charlotte) came out and said “I hope your meal is as good as the one I’ve just had – it was real good”. It briefly crossed my mind that he might be an advertising ploy, but we went in anyway. And what an excellent choice we had made.

We were probably the youngest customers in there by about 20 years (and that was me and Jeremy, not the girls), but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves in a Derby and Joan kind of fashion, and the food was really good. Rhian’s order came with a soup starter, and the server explained that the choice was either Lemon Chicken or Cabbage Rice soup. As Rhian is vegetarian, the chicken was a no-go, but I knew the kind of reaction I would get at home if I served up anything called ‘cabbage rice soup’, so I watched with interest (no, better make that amazement) as she tucked in and declared it some of the nicest soup she’d ever tasted. Do any of you have a recipe for cabbage rice soup, by any chance? If this was a foretaste (no pun intended) of our dining experiences in Port Charlotte, then we were in for a great week.

By the time we’d stocked up on supplies from Publix after the meal, we were just about ready for bed, but I noticed Jeremy wasn’t too tired to remember to set his alarm for 6:30am to try the fishing from the bottom of the garden. And I thought getting up for WDW Early Entry was obsessive….

 

[Hilary]

Sunday, October 14th 2001

Punta Gorda

Jeremy was hard at work with the fishing rod by the time it got light at 7:00am; I was hard at work on the pool-side lounger with a cup of tea and the pile of local information brochures and leaflets found in the villa. Well, someone had to do it. These holidays can be such a slog. What do you mean, you’ve got no sympathy?

(As Jeremy’s not likely to read this, I can tell you that he didn’t catch anything, but it’s to be our little secret, okay?)
So, after breakfast in the villa, we set off to do some intrepid exploring and headed towards Punta Gorda and the Fisherman’s Village (which, from the leaflet, didn’t look as though it had much to do with Fishermen, but more to do with shopping – but Jeremy hadn’t read the leaflet). Once we’d negotiated the many turns of our residential area, we discovered that Punta Gorda was all of five minute’s drive away, just across the Peace River bridge, so the exploring turned out to be not-very-intrepid after all. Fisherman’s Village was well sign-posted and we drove into a near-empty parking lot. As we approached the entrance to the covered walkway which led to the shops, we discovered the reason for the lack of crowds – it was 11:30 am on a Sunday, and the shops didn’t open until 12. Doh!

Never mind, this gave us ample opportunity to explore the marina alongside, and to enquire at the sales booth about the advertised fishing and sightseeing boat trips. We’d done a bit of research at home and discovered that the fishing trips were likely to be very expensive if you were on your own, as the prices tended to be per boat, rather than per person. This was borne out by our enquiries here, and Jeremy decided to go away, have a think, and count the contents of his wallet before booking anything. He had been very keen to try some tarpon fishing, as this area is reputed to be the ‘tarpon-fishing capital of the world’, but we were told the tarpon season really finished around July, so he crossed that off his wish-list for this trip. Better make that 'tarpon-fishing capital of the world, but not in October', then. By now, the shops had opened, and we enjoyed a leisurely couple of hours browsing, and even doing a bit of spending as well. Unknown to me at the time, Amy got into conversation with a man in one of the shops (hasn’t she ever listened to my advice about strange men?) who was showing her a shark’s tooth necklace he was wearing. The shop had a life-size replica of the largest shark’s jaw known to exist (about seven feet in diameter), and his necklace was one of the genuine teeth found in the jaw. You heard it here first.

Our heads brimming with such interesting facts and figures, we went back to the villa for an afternoon around the pool. As we drove down one of the (many) roads on the way to the villa, an animal crossed in front of the car and we all looked with astonishment as we recognised it as a bobcat. It was probably no more extraordinary than seeing a fox on the road at home, but it was a treat for us.

The road that ran the length of Port Charlotte, and continued into Punta Gorda, was the Tamiami Trail, and it reminded me of Kissimmee’s 192 with strings of assorted malls and supermarkets, as well as various individual shops all along it (there seemed to be an awful lot of Animal Shelters and Health Care Centres). The biggest difference was that there were few hotels here.

On our way back to the villa this afternoon, we had spotted a fishing tackle shop – ‘Fishin Franks’.Yes, quite. But it was the only tackle shop we’d seen, and Jeremy wanted to buy some bait and get some local knowledge on the fishing front. He didn’t want to drive there on his own, as he was less than 50% sure he’d ever find us or the villa again, so we all went along for the ride. Well, sitting outside the shack that was ‘Fishin Franks’, I suddenly understood all those warnings about keeping car doors locked and not making eye contact with anyone who looked ‘suspicious’.

Frank was evidently a popular guy. There were numerous comings and goings, with a selection of rusty pick-up trucks parked up front, and a steady stream of customers heading in with their empty bait buckets, but Jeremy showed no sign of emerging just yet. Meanwhile, the girls and I were starting to turn a nasty shade of puce sitting in the car with the air conditioning off, so, rather than admit that I didn’t want to chance turning the ignition to get the a/c running for fear that the automatic gear box might engage itself and take us straight across the six-lane Highway before I could shout “Fishin Franks”, we got out of the car to stand in some shade.

I know, I know, I’m an irresponsible mother. I had earlier been blissfully unaware that my younger daughter had been lured into a shop by a strange man asking her if she wanted to come up and see his shark’s tooth, and now I was making them both stand outside some shack on the main highway with an eye-opening assortment of red-necked characters just waiting to hi-jack the lot of us. What can I say? We survived. And Fishin Frank was, by Jeremy’s reckoning, a thoroughly nice guy (and a mine of information), and so were all of his customers. I was beginning to feel like one of the locals already.

Accompanied by a spectacular thunderstorm, we drove to the nearest Publix, stocked up, went back to the villa and cooked for ourselves tonight. Tomorrow, we planned to find the shopping mall - after a spot more fishing, of course…

 

[Hilary]

Monday, October 15th 2001

Port Charlotte, shopping & conversations with the locals

Jeremy was up early again to fish from ‘our’ jetty, and I enjoyed a very peaceful start to the day by sitting at the poolside. I could get used to this. The temperature was already up to 80 degrees by 8am.

Today’s mission - to find Port Charlotte Mall - but the only map we had was the photocopied version from the villa company giving arrival directions, and the mall didn’t appear on that. Right at the edge of the map, a couple of miles up the Tamiami Trail, there was somewhere called the Port Charlotte Centre of Administration so, assuming this must be something like a Town Hall, we headed there to ask for a map of the town and directions to the Mall. It was a very impressive, modern building, and I tagged along behind several other people heading inside, hoping it really was like a Town Hall, and open to the public – and not the Port Charlotte branch of the CBI or anything.

Through the doors, I found a stand full of public information leaflets, but no maps. There was an enquiry desk, so I approached the lady on duty and enquired whether she had any maps for sale, and whether she could direct me to Port Charlotte Mall. She had no trouble with the first part of my query – no, they didn’t sell maps. The second part, however, appeared to cause her some problems.
“Do you mean this mall?” she asked.
“Which mall?” I replied.
“The mall right across the street here.”
“Would that be Port Charlotte Mall?” I asked.
“Yes, this is Port Charlotte, and the mall is just across the street outside.” She was clearly wondering which banana boat I’d just arrived on.
“Oh” I said, trying hard to look intelligent “Thank you.”

I hurried out to find the others waiting in the car, and as I turned from the entrance of the building, I could see, all of 100 yards the other side of the parking lot, one of the enormous entrances to the mall. No wonder the woman had looked at me strangely (no comments, thank you). If only our photocopied map had been ¼ inch wider, we’d have seen that the mall was right next door to the Centre for Administration. It was hardly worth starting the car up to switch from one car park to the other, but we crossed the road, parked again, and then set off to explore the mall.

Without going into too many details, suffice to say that we all found some shopping to suit us, and some things which we would just have to return for another day. Top of our list had been a decent street map of the area (successful) and a new pair of canvas trainers for me (unsuccessful). Fired by our recent wildlife encounter with the bobcat, we also bought a book of Florida Wildlife, and Jeremy managed to slip in two guidebooks called ‘Pier and Bridge Fishing in Florida’ and ‘Saltwater Fishing in Florida’, just to cover all options. I could see the excess baggage charge looming (books are heavy, aren’t they?). We also found a fantastic shop full of surf clothes (and a sale), and a branch of ‘Old Navy’ which I loved.

Lunch was called for, and we opted to stay in the mall and grab something from the food court. After lunch (something Greek and tasty, but I can’t remember what it was), we regrouped near the restrooms. Idly scanning the posters displayed here, I did a double-take at one which was advertising a forthcoming concert for this Saturday in Port Charlotte - for a Beach Boys concert! I am willing to lose all claim to any street credibility by admitting that the Beach Boys are one of our family favourites (it’s our age, I expect), and if we’d known in advance about the concert we could have arranged the trip around the concert. As it was, we were due to drive back to Orlando on Saturday morning, so we discussed the possibility of staying on in Port Charlotte and checking into a cheap hotel for the night. After much discussion, the logistics of it got the better of us, as we had already arranged to share an Illuminations Cruise with caroley and micklou from the DIS boards on Saturday night, and we stood to lose some DVC points if we cancelled the first planned night at Old Key West. Sorry, Beach Boys – it would have been good to see you.

After lunch, we left the mall and went to Walmart, which was a few hundred yards further down the road. The credit card was starting to overheat (most unlike us – we don’t usually do much shopping on our trips to Florida), so we dragged Jeremy away from the fishing tackle section and went back to the villa for a swim. I think that last bit bears repeating – “… we dragged Jeremy away …”, as he’ll probably deny all knowledge of showing the remotest interest in any shopping, and claim it was all for our benefit. Huh! He was already making a shopping list for his return visit before we’d even left the parking lot.

The Gulf Coast sunsets are reputed to be magnificent, so we decided to find Port Charlotte Public Beach this evening, with a view to watching the sun go down, and maybe even having a bit of a paddle in the Gulf of Mexico. We’d seen a sign to the beach quiet near the villa, and now we had our newly-acquired street map, so there was no stopping us. It was a breeze – well sign posted and plenty of parking. It was a lovely spot, with a long, low wooden pier, a couple of picnic tables under shelters, some tennis courts and a café and restrooms, all alongside a narrow stretch of clean sand reaching round to a wooded headland. There weren’t many people around, just a family at one of the picnic tables, some people on the pier and a few elderly tennis players.

I had seen, somewhere, that the parking charge here was 25cents per hour, so I had a couple of quarters at the ready when we arrived. As I was about to put the first quarter in the machine, one of the elderly tennis ladies, South American in appearance, scurried over and waved a finger at me.
“Nomoney, ees affer fife oclock. Nomoney”
“I’m sorry?” I was aware that Jeremy and the girls were suddenly, and very obviously, busying themselves with locking up the car and pretending they weren’t with me. It was also slowly dawning on me that the small, weather-beaten Port Charlotte resident striking up such an interesting conversation with me was, in all probability, one sandwich short of a picnic.
“Ees affer fife oclock. You noneeda money.”
“Oh!” I beamed, hoping I had deciphered correctly, “It’s free after five o’clock?”
“Yess. Nomoney. If you wanna you can putta money, but you no needa money affer fife. Iff you wanna money you canna park ere – ees money leff, but you noneeda annymoney. Ees affer fife.”
She beamed back at me, and waved a tennis ball towards Rhian and Amy “You wanna ball for si gels?”
Even if ‘si gels’ had wanted a ball, I think my answer would probably have been the same “Oh, no thank you”.
“Iss one dollar. Si gels wanna ball for one dollar? You noneeda money for park ere affer fife. Si gels wanna ball for one dollar?”
“No. Thank you very much.” I smiled confidently, praying she would take this to signify the end of the conversation, and was relieved to see that she had turned to rejoin her abandoned tennis match. Port Charlotte was certainly turning out to have some very interesting inhabitants.

Well, wasn’t that nice of her to let me know we didn’t need to pay the parking meter? I would be lying if I told you I would have been totally surprised to find a parking fine slapped on our car when we returned, but I really couldn’t face going through the whole conversation again, and left the meter empty, fingers crossed.

I headed towards Jeremy and the girls who had managed to sidle towards the other side of the parking lot whilst my multi-linguistic skills had been put to the test. Yes, they found it all highly amusing, but it always is when it happens to someone else, isn’t it? I eyed the other beach users with some trepidation – was this where all the local eccentrics met up in the evenings? – but everyone else seemed content with strolling along the sands, and we followed suit. We put the paddling on hold when we saw the water, as although it was very clear, it was dark brown, and looked just like Coca Cola without the bubbles.

We’d strolled along the beach one way, strolled back the other way, and strolled up and down the pier, but there was still another hour to go before sunset, and the clouds had thickened considerably since we arrived on the beach. We decided that a spectacular sunset was unlikely this evening, and abandoned the plan to stay and watch it, and went back to the villa instead.

Tomorrow – a visit to Gasparilla Island and Boca Grande.

 

[Hilary]

Tuesday, October 16th 2001

Gasparilla Island and dolphin spotting

It was an overcast start to the day today, and seemed quite a bit cooler at ‘only’ 70 degrees at 8am.

We planned to drive over to Gasparilla Island to visit Boca Grande, and to look into fishing and sightseeing boat trips on offer over there, so that we could compare with what we knew was available in Punta Gorda. The drive was very straightforward, and we were soon crossing the Myakka River estuary. As we were about half way across the bridge, Jeremy (who should have had his eyes on the road) shouted out
“Look, there’s a dolphin!”
Rhian, being the dolphin fanatic of the family, practically leapt out of her seat, but although we all scanned the water below, none of us could see anything that might be a dolphin. Jeremy said he was absolutely sure that was what he’d seen, and it had just appeared for a moment as it broke the water’s surface below the bridge. Rhian was especially disappointed not to also have spotted it.

After another fifteen minutes or so, we reached the toll bridge over to the island ($3.50 – a bit of a shock after the 50c tolls we’d been used to!), and everyone was on red alert looking out for any likely shapes in the water as we crossed, in the hope that we might see some dolphins here. The island had one main road running its length, so we decided to drive straight to the southern end and then stop off at any interesting points on the way back.

The drive from the mainland to the far end took all of about twenty minutes (it’s a small island), and there wasn’t an awful lot to see along the way, as some of the more interesting looking side-roads were marked ‘Private’, so we didn’t detour. The road was wide and tree-lined, and all along the route there were gated apartment and condo resorts. There was definitely an air of exclusivity about the place, and everywhere looked pristine and well maintained. Once at the far end of the island, we parked near the Historic Lighthouse and walked over the boardwalk to the beach at the point, in the Gasparilla State Recreation Area.

There was a dilapidated pier at one end of the beach, and the other end rounded the point with a rocky outcrop at the water’s edge. As we made our way towards the water, we passed several huge piles of shells which had been washed up. We fell on them as though we’d never seen shells before (we live right on the coast in South Wales), but, naturally, these were so much better than anything we’d see at home! There was a lady making her way towards us, carrying her sandals in one hand and stooping to pick up shells with the other. As she drew near, she called out “Good morning” and then added, by way of explanation “I forgot my collecting bag today”, and waved her shoes to show us they were stuffed full of shells. Well, we’d forgotten our collecting bags, too (didn’t know we’d need any), but Jeremy thought there might be a couple of supermarket carrier bags in the car, and went back to fetch them.

If you’ve been reading about our previous days on this trip, you may recall that my track record isn’t too impressive when it comes to conversing with the local residents, so when the shell collector turned to walk up the beach towards us, my heart sank in case she was about to embark on another conversation from a parallel universe. I needn’t have worried – she told us all about her brother living on the island and how she had come to visit him and look for a retirement home for herself, but that everything was far too expensive for her to consider. (Obviously this island was as exclusive as it had appeared to us when we drove through.) We chatted for a while, then bade each other “Have a good day” (you’d think we’d been here three years, not three days), and went about our respective shell collecting with renewed enthusiasm. I was just relieved to have successfully completed a ‘normal’ conversation in this area.

Then Jeremy (who had returned from his carrier bag retrieval) was at it again. “Dolphin!” he shrieked, pointing out to sea. And this time, we did see it - and another, and another! We all stood peering out to sea, and every now and again we were rewarded with another fin breaking the surface, sometimes alone, sometimes in a group of two or three at the same time. They weren’t particularly close to us, but they were unmistakably dolphins, and we were spellbound. Rhian was, obviously, absolutely thrilled to have seen them, and Amy quickly snapped out of a brief sulk (she hadn’t seen the first three or four, and thought she never would) and stood transfixed once she’d made her first sighting. We all stood watching the water for about twenty minutes, but then the heat began to get too much, and the dolphins had moved further away, so we got back in the air conditioned car and drove to the island’s only ‘town’, Boca Grande.

‘Town’ may be a bit of an exaggeration, as there were a few very small shops and restaurants, a gas station, and a couple of rather up-market dress shops, but not a lot else. One of the shops was ‘Orvis’ – for those who might not have come across Orvis before, they are an American company with a couple of branches in the UK (as well as a mail order business) which sells ‘quality’ (i.e not cheap!) huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ clothes and accessories, and a few items of rather expensive fishing tackle. Think Millets meets Harrods with a New England slant, (then take out Millets again) and you’ll get a rough idea. Anyway, this particular branch was only about 20’ wide and had half of the window full of Orvis merchandise, and the other half was adorned with posters of fishing boats and ‘You can book here’ signs. It looked like the kind of place we should check out for a) cheaper Orvis bits than we could get at home, and b) boat trips. We went in.

There was a genteel hush as the door closed heavily behind us, and I felt this was likely to be a pretty quick visit. I got the feeling Orvis wouldn’t be able to compete with the kinds of bargains we were used to in Walmart, somehow. Not far behind us, two ladies had also entered the shop, and were now in deep conversation with the shop assistant behind the counter. This gave a more relaxed air to the shop, and I didn’t feel in quite such a rush to get out before we broke something, and had to take out a second mortgage.

Eventually we had all turned over enough price tickets to be absolutely sure there was nothing we needed here, and we made a move towards the door. Then Jeremy saw the posters in the window and remembered mission no. 2, to look into boat trips. He was primarily interested in fishing trips, but we also thought it would be nice to do a trip around the island if there was an excursion running today.
“Excuse me, how do we find out about boat trips from the island?” he asked the assistant, during a lull in her conversation. She looked completely blank.
“Could you tell us where we can find the excursion boats, please?” Jeremy tried again, thinking that perhaps his British accent had caught her by surprise.
At this point, I began to wonder whether there was some kind of voice-changing mechanism between Jeremy and the lady assistant, because her reaction bore no resemblance to his question. ‘Affronted’ is the best I can describe the expression that spread over her face as he spoke. She spluttered and gawped like a goldfish, completely lost for words, and her eyebrows were rapidly disappearing into her hairline. If I hadn’t heard for myself what he’d asked, I could have been forgiven for assuming he had gone up to her, slapped her around the head with a wet haddock, and said
“Excuse me, but would mind terribly if we all stripped naked and ran up and down your counter for a while? Oh, and by the way, I’ve just trodden in something very unpleasant and it’s all over your carpet. Hope that’s okay.”
Whilst she was still giving a good impression of a beached flounder, one of the other customers came to our rescue and offered to show us the way to the marina, although she doubted that there were any boats available there for excursions. We were completely flummoxed by the reaction to Jeremy’s request, particularly as there were posters in their window advertising boat trips! I still don’t have a clue what that was all about, but I’m glad it was Jeremy who asked, and not me!

So, to the marina. Oooh, lots of big boats here, but not a whiff of anything as mundane as an organised boat trip, either for fishing or sightseeing. We were puzzled and disappointed, but we felt we had given Boca Grande a good chance to sell us a boat trip, and if no-one wanted to do business with us, that was their loss! We knew a marina in Punta Gorda that would help us spend some boating cash. We concluded that Boca Grande wasn’t really our kind of place, so we drove off the island, and back to Fisherman’s Village at Punta Gorda to sort out a boat trip with people who didn’t seem to have any difficulty understanding us, and would be only to happy to take our money with a smile.

Jeremy knew which fishing trip he wanted to arrange, but the girls and I couldn’t decide which of the ‘sightseeing cruises’ we should do. The one which would have suited all of us wasn’t running again during the rest of our time here, so we had to decide between Rhian’s choice of the ‘Dolphin Cruise’ out into the harbour, or the ‘Nature Cruise’ up the Peace River, which Amy and I fancied. We returned to chat it over with the lady at the booking kiosk, and told her we would definitely make up our minds over lunch. She recommended a place right at the end of the marina for lunch, as we could sit next to the water and she said we might even spot some dolphins while we were there, as they sometimes came that far into the harbour.

There was a table vacant right on the water – and there, just out in the harbour, were the dolphins! We stayed at the table for about an hour whilst we had lunch, and every couple of minutes another fin would appear on the surface of the water in front of us. Do you know when things just seem as though they were meant to be? Well, that’s what this felt like - it was as though the dolphins had been called in especially for us. Well, that made the decision a bit easier, anyway – the ‘Nature Cruise’ it would be, as we’d seen enough dolphins to keep us all happy this trip!

After a swim back at the villa, we went to TGI Friday’s for dinner. I’d been wanting to visit TGIFs since our first trip to Orlando, so I was looking forward to our first experience. It turned out to be quite a disappointment. The burgers were good, but the service wasn’t too hot, and there was a general air of everything being a bit too much bother. Rhian’s glass of orange juice was definitely ‘off’, so we asked for a replacement, got no apology and a second glass which was just as bad! A shame, really.

To make up for the disappointment at TGIF, we made a quick detour to Walmart on the way home. It doesn’t take much, does it?

Tomorrow, we had our ‘Nature Cruise’ to look forward to.

 

[Hilary]

Wednesday, October 17th 2001

Peace River Nature Cruise

Definitely cooler this morning at 60 degrees at 8 am – hope this isn’t the start of a trend.

Jeremy was down at the water’s edge and I was pottering around checking on the clean sock supplies, as is my inclination, when I heard someone outside. It turned out to be Brian, the pool maintenance guy. And what a friendly chap Brian turned out to be. We chatted whilst he swept and skimmed (probably wishing he’d called when we were out so that he could just get on with his job, uninterrupted by the likes of me), and he told me how he couldn’t understand the Brits who came throughout the summer heat.
“Are they crazy?” he asked.
I tried to explain about the limitations of school holidays, but I don’t know whether it answered his question!

I asked Brian about the area our villa was in, and he said he didn’t know of any other villas nearby that were rented out like this one, but there were quite a lot of holiday homes used exclusively by their owners. He reckoned the area was pretty much just regular residential homes.

After breakfast we had a quick trip to Winn Dixies for some supplies, then made lunch in the villa before setting off for our afternoon boat trip.

The boat was much bigger than I had expected – I was hoping it would be a bit more substantial than a kayak, but thought it would be rather more intimate than the vessel waiting at the quayside. Then again, I imagined the river would also be a lot smaller, so I’d obviously got the wrong idea altogether. There were about 40 of us on board, and the boat certainly wasn’t full. Everyone made for the seats on the top deck, and we managed to get the only four seats with a view of the back of an advertising hoarding fixed to the side of the boat, rather than the majestic sweep of the estuary that everyone else could see. This was, of course, all my fault as I’d made a last minute bid for the restrooms whilst we were all waiting to board, and when I returned Jeremy was pacing up and down muttering to himself about me having a ‘bladder the size of a thimble’. He was moaning about me making us miss the pole position for boarding, and when we couldn’t sit at the front I got the hard stare and tutt-tutting treatment for a while. I was forgiven as soon as the boat moved out in to the harbour, as everyone at the front made a hasty retreat from the howling gale that hit them head-on, and we were still snugly tucked in at the back. The advertising hoarding didn't prove to be as much of an obstacle as we'd thought either, but I don’t think Jeremy went quite as far as congratulating me on my excellent choice of seats.

There was a narrative provided en-route from one of the rangers who worked in a nearby state park, so we were kept very well informed. The trip lasted about three and a half hours, with about an hour of this spent getting from the marina across the harbour and back, so we had a good two to two and a half hours going up the Peace river and back down again. During that time we spotted several alligators, the largest of which the ranger estimated to be about nine feet long (gulp). We also saw bald eagles, an osprey, roseate spoonbills, wood stork, snowy egrets and lots of other birds whose names escaped me! Most of the banks were lined with mangroves, and the ranger mentioned some of the plant life as well, but my note taking has failed me, I’m afraid, and I can’t remember what any of it was called.

As well as the wildlife, this was an interesting stretch of river for spotting the very exclusive (and, no doubt, extremely expensive) properties that were dotted along the banks. I confess that my binoculars weren’t always trained on the birds and alligators!

There was a cool breeze all afternoon (we’d hoped it would be more sheltered as we moved upstream), and by the time the boat docked back at the marina we were all quite chilly. Once we were back on dry land we soon warmed up, and drove back to Port Charlotte to find somewhere for tea.

The first place we tried (didn’t make a note of the name) looked quite busy by the number of cars outside, so we paused to peer through the doors before venturing inside. It looked okay, so we stepped in and waited behind a couple also standing there, assuming they were waiting to be seated. Then I noticed there was singing coming from further in the restaurant, and as that ended, rapturous applause broke out. I turned to see whether Jeremy knew what was going on, but he and the girls were already making a quick getaway, so I followed. They had all noticed the poster advertising the live musical entertainment evening (I hadn’t), but it wasn’t until we were inside that they’d seen the Port Charlotte pensioners were out in force. I’m not normally one to turn down the chance of live musical entertainment, and I would have been quite happy to dine alongside the pensioners, but this really wasn’t our style. After our rapid exit, we found a nearby Dennys and had a pretty uninspiring meal there. I hope the pensioners were more impressed with their meals than we were!

Back to the villa, and remembered to put out the trash (now it’s little things like that which really make it feel like home…)

 

[Hilary]

Thursday, October 18th 2001

A brush with the Law and an unexpected shower.

Another cool start to the day, which meant that Jeremy set off for his fishing boat trip with extra jumpers, rather than extra suncream as we’d expected.

We’d decided that the girls and I would stay at the villa whilst Jeremy took the car to the marina for his boat trip. So before he left, we went to the paper stand at the end of the block to make sure I had plenty of reading material to keep me occupied for the morning, as we’d be unable to leave the villa until Jeremy returned. What a civilised thing paper stands are. I could get used to the idea of just driving up, paying up, collecting the paper and driving away again. I’m sure, with practice, you wouldn’t even need to get out of the car – like a drive-through newsagents.

So, at some pre-dawn time, Jeremy set off (armed with extra jumpers, lots of drinks and a range of maps designed to maximise the chances of him finding his way back to the villa before the girls and I ran out of supplies) for his pre-arranged ‘Backwater fishing trip’. The fishing trips on offer locally had basically come down to a sea-fishing trip or a backwater trip and, on the basis that it would be the most different from any fishing he’d get at home, Jeremy had booked the backwater trip. He had been fishing backwater all week from the water’s edge at the bottom of the villa’s ‘garden’, but hadn’t caught anything (although we’d spotted some fish in the water), so a lot was riding on this boat trip.

The girls and I had an uneventful and very relaxing morning pottering about the villa, in and out of the pool (they were in, I was out). The clean sock supply was checked and found wanting, so I made full use of the laundry facilities and hung everything on the twirly line to dry. What I hadn’t bargained for was that within an hour, everything on the line was burnt to a crisp (it doesn’t work like that in Wales, surprisingly enough), and by the end of the morning we were back to a full complement of clean, if a little crunchy, underwear.

Around lunch-time the fisherman returned, but it had not been a wholly successful mission. He’d found his way back to the villa, which in my book was success enough, but the fishing had not been an unqualified triumph of man against nature. The grand total caught stood at three – a sheepshead (a specie of fish, not a gruesome find), a ladyfish and a mangrove snapper. Well, it was more than he’d caught back at the villa, but it wasn’t going to set any new records. Apparently the ‘conditions weren’t right’. Yes, well.

After lunch we went back to Port Charlotte Mall to finish the shopping we’d started a few days earlier. There were a couple of items Jeremy and I wanted, but it was mainly the girls who wanted to spend some of their holiday money here. Once Jeremy had finished his spending, he decided to leave us to it whilst he had a ‘rest’, as his early start and busy morning were catching up with him. He said he’d wait for us on a seat in the mall, and we went to make a dent in the stock of the surf shop.

Rhian did a good impression of a kid in a sweet shop here, and didn’t know what to drool over next. She was taking armfuls of stuff to try on, and Amy and I were quite happy looking around and picking out a couple of items here and there. As it became increasingly obvious that we would be spending longer in here than we’d anticipated, I thought I’d better go and tell Jeremy that we were still ‘browsing’. I left the shop and checked all the benches nearby. I couldn’t see Jeremy there, so walked further up the mall, and eventually saw him settled in a sumptuous cream leather recliner chair, which was part of a sales display. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, he was asleep, mouth open, but at least he didn’t appear to be dribbling noticeably. I decided not to wake him (I didn’t think he’d be going anywhere in the next few minutes anyway), and turned to go back to the girls in the shop. I was aware of two lads walking towards Jeremy, nudging each other and grinning in a kind of ‘check out that old codger’ way. No, I don’t know him - never seen him before…

Many dollars lighter and several carrier bags heavier, we emerged from the surf shop and made our way to the recliner chair display to find Jeremy. I was a bit taken aback to see the chairs were empty and thought maybe he had wandered off to look for us. Just then, he appeared from a nearby shop doorway looking very sheepish. He’d been fast asleep in the chair when he woke up to hear someone calling out to him
“Sir? Sir, are you alright, sir?”
He opened his eyes to see a figure standing over him. The figure was in uniform. It was the Sheriff.

Jeremy didn’t think he actually added “Now, move along please, you can’t stay there”, but that was clearly what he meant. I was trying to ignore the headlines flashing before my eyes as he was telling us this (‘British vagrant found in mall’ ‘UK man confuses mall for motel’), and the girls couldn’t decide whether to be completely humiliated or fall about laughing at the thought of their father being ‘moved on’ by the Sheriff. All he needed was a bottle of cider and a bit of string round his waist. Whether we’d finished our shopping or not, we thought we’d better leave Port Charlotte Mall and went to find somewhere outside for tea.

We’d heard good reports of the Olive Garden in Orlando, so when we saw there was a branch (an olive branch? sorry- couldn’t resist that…) in Port Charlotte, we put it on our must-do-if-we-can list, and tonight was the night-that-we-could. I have to say I felt very underdressed as we walked in. The servers were all in very smart Italian waiter style black outfits with full length white aprons, and the diners within sight of the door appeared to be dressed up for a night at the Opera. As we were shown to our table I was relieved to see there were other diners in shorts and tee shirts like us, but we were definitely in the minority, and I felt a bit uncomfortable. Still, once we’d got the (very large) napkins on our laps it was less obvious that we were lacking in the gold lame department.

The food was excellent, and we had a good time people watching and overhearing snippets of other people’s conversations. We’d just about finished our meal, and were chatting to each other, when there was an almighty CRASH! I looked up, expecting to see a window smashed at least, but all I could see was a graceful arc of water and ice cubes making it’s way elegantly, and seemingly in slow motion, from the server’s upturned tray towards the back of Rhian’s neck. I winced, Rhian gasped, the server shrieked, Rhian ducked– but the water carried on past Rhian and on to the floor behind her. The whole tray load of plates and glasses followed the jug, ice and water to the floor, and Rhian ended up with a tasteful smattering of assorted salad dressings on the back of one leg, but was otherwise unscathed. As Rhian peeled a stray lettuce leaf from her calf, the server ran from the room, and two others came immediately to mop up and ask whether Rhian was okay. She was fine, but whilst they were fussing over her, I was aware of a diner at another nearby table quietly mopping the top of her head with her serviette, so I guess the carnage spread further than they imagined. It was certainly a meal to remember, although possibly not for conventional reasons.

After a quick stop at ‘Fishin’ Franks’ for more bait (you’ve go to hand it to Jeremy, he’s persistent if nothing else), we headed back to the villa and to bed. Tomorrow would be our last full day here.

 

[Hilary]

Friday, October 19th 2001

A bit of misplaced history and a noisy night

This morning we were off to the Ponce de Leon Historical Park in Punta Gorda, and I gave the rest of the family the benefit of my knowledge about Ponce de Leon being the first westerner to set foot in Florida, and I concluded that the park was obviously to mark the spot where he’d landed. Okay, I admit that was the sum total of my knowledge about the historical facts relevant to today’s expedition, but it was more than the rest of them knew. They weren’t all that impressed.

Not wishing to skim over the significance of this momentous discovery of our favourite US state (no, I haven’t actually visited any other US states yet), I thought I’d delve a bit further and give you a bit of background information. So I consulted my various Florida guidebooks, and what did I discover? Yes, Ponce de Leon was the first westerner to set foot in Florida, but it wasn’t anywhere near Punta Gorda. I still haven’t fathomed out exactly whereabouts in Florida this historic happening took place, as some information I’ve read mentions St Augustine on the east coast, and others talk about a memorial to mark the site at Bradenton near Sarasota. With hindsight, it would seem we spent the morning in completely the wrong place, which just goes to prove the point that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

So, if you want to visit the site where Ponce de Leon first landed in Florida, don’t go to the Ponce de Leon Historical Park in Punta Gorda. But if you’re looking for a pleasant morning on the boardwalk in the mangrove forest, a stroll along the beach and inlet, and a tour around a Wildlife Sanctuary, then this is the place for you.

We arrived at the car park and decided to investigate the boardwalk first, as it offered a lot of inviting shade. There were information boards at intervals throughout the forest giving details of the varieties of wildlife which might be encountered, but all we saw were a lot of crabs scuttling away as soon as we approached, and a whole forest full of mangrove trees which weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. After about ten minutes, the boardwalk emerged at the edge of the inlet, and we stopped to watch a couple of boats make their leisurely way down to the sea. There was a boat ramp here, and there was some gentle activity with a few families launching dinghies.

Things were going well up to this point, but then Jeremy spotted some fishermen and he disappeared to chat with them about their tactics and whether the fish were biting today. There followed much sighing and exclamations of “why didn’t we come here at the beginning of the week?” as he tried to work out a way of fitting in some fishing here before we left the area to head up to Orlando.

Whilst Jeremy was interrogating the local anglers further, the girls and I went to have a look along the very narrow beach, and it was only then that we discovered the Wildlife Sanctuary. There had been no mention of this in any of the local information literature that we’d seen, so we weren’t sure whether it was just a private venture, or if it was open to visitors. Once we saw the ubiquitous Gift Shop we guessed it was open to the public, so we rounded up Jeremy and went through the gate.

We hadn’t got more than a few feet inside when a guide appeared from inside one of the wooden buildings, and asked whether we had visited before. When she learnt that we were first timers, she began to tell us all about the centre, and to take us around each of the enclosures within the compound. The centre had been established to look after rescued birds and animals with the aim of rehabilitating them back into the wild whenever possible. There was a burrowing owl, looking very nervous, on ‘display’ for the first time today (they live underground, and he’d had to have a tunnel system built for him), a couple of eagles, a talking crow called Lorn, lots of pelicans, and an assortment of other birds no less memorable in themselves, but whose names I can’t remember.

About half way around the ‘tour’, the first guide excused herself and handed us over to another guide who continued where she had left off. He was asking us where we were from, and appeared to be mimicking our accents – until we discovered he was originally from Sunderland, and had moved to the US when he married his American wife about eight years earlier. I seem to remember we took up an awful lot of his time as we talked about all sorts of topics apart from the Wildlife Sanctuary! I can’t imagine how we got onto the subject, but he was a mine of information about careers in art and design, and he told us all about the pros and cons of moving to the states from the UK.

The Gift Shop beckoned and we found a lot of unusual and interesting things in here, so the pocket money took a bit of a pounding. There had been no entry fee to the sanctuary, but visitors were asked to make a voluntary contribution to their funds, and we did so willingly, as it had been such an enjoyable and unexpected find.

We were really wilting from the heat by now, so we went back to the villa and spent the afternoon by the pool and starting to get things sorted out for packing up tomorrow.

We’d decided to have our last Gulf coast meal back at Harpoon Harry’s in the Fisherman’s village at Punta Gorda, hoping to see some more dolphins like we had a few days before, and to have our last shot this trip at watching a Gulf sunset. We set off about an hour before sunset, having decided that if we couldn’t get a waterside table straight away we’d wait at the bar until one became available. It had started to rain a little by now, and we had to dodge the puddles on our way from the car.

Well, we were in luck, there were two waterside tables free, and we made a bee-line for the one right at the end of the decking. As we settled ourselves in, the man at the next table leaned over and told us that the server had already moved a couple of parties away from that table as there was a leak from the corner of the roof which splashed the table if the wind gusted. Thanking him, we moved to the other free table and settled down to enjoy a relaxing evening, envisaging a glorious sunset, dolphins splashing playfully nearby and the gentle sound of the lapping water against the dock under our feet. Ah, this was the life.

We hadn’t been there more than a couple of minutes when some huge black clouds appeared, and the rain fell out of the sky on one side of the harbour. The other side was still bathed in brilliant sunshine and the contrast between the two horizons was pretty dramatic. We suddenly understood perfectly why the server had warned against sitting at the end table – there was a small stream running straight between the salt and pepper pots – and we kept a close eye on the cascade of water streaming off the roof above the table next to us now. The prospect of a memorable sunset was looking less likely by the minute.

As we sat enjoying a drink before our meals arrived, the noise levels began to climb steadily, and we saw a slightly different side of Punta Gorda than the genteel retirement resort that we had previously judged it (and Port Charlotte) to be. When we’d arrived, about a third of the tables had been quietly occupied, and there were a couple of people at the bar – pretty much identical to the atmosphere when we’d had lunch here on our previous visit. Within forty minutes the place was absolutely jumping. There were motor bikes revving up outside, the tables were now all full and the bar area was standing room only. The couple of pool tables and amusement machines at the back (that we hadn’t even noticed before) had queues forming, and there was a heady mix of strobe lighting and psychedelic images over a small dance area swarming with teeny boppers jigging along to the disco music. No wonder the dolphins were no-where to be seen tonight.

On top of this sudden surge of activity, there appeared to be a family feud in full swing at one nearby table, with a lot of snarling and sulking to accompany the insults being hurled between mouthfuls. At another table, the six children of the family squashed in together were all apparently deaf (apologies if they really were, but I don’t think so) as the father insisted on shouting everything at them several times, followed by the mother shouting at him not to shout at the children. Then the children would all shout back at both of them – mostly simultaneously. Then I noticed they also had their dog with them. Another beer seemed like a good idea.

As the volume inside Harpoon Harry’s increased, the sky outside darkened until it was completely black right across the harbour, and then the thunder and lightning started and the rain fell in an unending torrent. There was now a vertical curtain of water between us and the harbour. An ark seemed a sensible project right at that moment, and a few circular saws whining away, accompanied by a couple of pneumatic hammers, wouldn’t have been noticed above the racket that was already going on. It was like the tropical storm inside the Rainforest Café (multiplied tenfold) but this one was for real. I’ve never known so much rain fall out of the sky in such a short space of time so noisily.

The lightning across the harbour was spectacular, and although we didn’t get the Gulf sunset we’d hoped for, this was an amazing experience all the same. On the basis of “if you can’t beat them, join them”, we stopped on the way out to play a couple of games of pinball and air-hockey (gave the teeny bopper disco a miss though), and then made our way back through the puddles to the car.

The rain had more or less stopped by now, and away from the raised decibels of Harpoon Harrys’ it suddenly seemed incredibly quiet and still, and we drove back to the villa for a final evening by the pool. Amy managed to get her night time swim (she’d been trying to fit it in ever since we discovered the pool had lights), but we had to drag her out when the lightning started up again for fear of any unplanned light frying.

Although maybe not in the way we expected, this evening’s ‘meal experience’ had been a fantastic way to end our week on the Gulf Coast - much more memorable than a quiet sunset, I’m sure. Tomorrow we would be heading back to Orlando for a few days with a mouse.

 

[Hilary]

Saturday, October 20th 2001

WDW & the Illuminations Cruise - here we come!

It was time to leave Port Charlotte and our first taste of villa life in Florida - tonight we had an appointment with a mouse, some DISers and an Illuminations Cruise. As if that wasn’t excitement enough for one day, we were also about to discover exactly what ownership in the Disney Vacation Club was all about. We’d joined the DVC in July this year (not exactly on the spur of the moment, but a bit unexpectedly) and were making our first use of our newly acquired points to stay in a studio at Disney’s Old Key West Resort. All this anticipation of things to come helped to lessen the regret we had about leaving Port Charlotte behind. We’d had a really great time here – very different from an Orlando week, (that had been intentional), but just as enjoyable, with more than a few memorable moments. I have a feeling that this area of Florida hasn’t seen the last of us.

We packed the car, (eventually resorting to loading up the back seat once we’d finally admitted that it wasn’t all going to fit in the trunk) and by 10:00am were on our way to Orlando. Having had such an uneventful journey on the way down, we’d decided to a different route back, and went via the coastal road towards Tampa before joining the eastbound I4. Despite the longer mileage, this route proved to be quicker (but equally dreary), and we were driving under the Walt Disney World archway and then through the security check at Old Key West by 1:00pm.

We checked in, our room was ready, we were given the obligatory “Welcome Home” that is the customary DVC greeting to members, and we drove around to find our base for the next six nights. Once we’d unloaded the car (carefully managing to miss all the signs that pointed out the existence of a lift, and subsequently nearly passing out from the heat and exertion of carrying everything up two flights of steps) we went in search of lunch.

There is no food court at OKW, but there was a pool-side service counter which sold hot dogs, burgers, fries, sandwiches and drinks, so we filled up from there, but couldn’t face sitting out in the heat to eat lunch and took everything back to eat in the comfort of the air conditioning in our room. Fortunately our room was quite close to all the central amenities, as we were showing definite signs of wilting with the heat now (British wimp syndrome). Being used to spending many happy times in the various food courts of other Disney resorts, it was a disappointment to find that OKW was lacking in that department, but I was prepared to delay my final judgement on the resort until later in the week. Could it live up to the old Dixie Landings?

Our next mission was to arrange Rhian’s ‘Dolphins in Depth’ programme at Epcot. She had been wanting to do this since we first heard about it, but had to wait until she was 16 to be able to participate. There had been so much else we wanted to do when we’d come to WDW last New Year (Rhian’s first visit after turning 16) that she’d decided to leave the dolphins until this trip. Then we’d wondered whether we might find any dolphin swim experiences anywhere near us in Port Charlotte, so had decided to wait until our WDW part of the trip before booking the tour. So first stop this afternoon was Guest Relations in Epcot.

We tracked down the bus stop nearest to our room, and set off on the Epcot bus, feeling as though we’d never been away. Isn’t it strange how quickly you get back in the Disney routine? Once through the security check at the Epcot turnstiles we called in to Guest Relations and Rhian managed to get ‘Dolphins in Depth’ booked for later in the week (and got her 20% AP discount). Next, I asked about a limited edition lanyard that I had heard was available to Annual Passholders. The CM apologised profusely, but said they had all gone. However, she took a note of our names and address and promised to mail them on to us when fresh supplies became available. Nothing from them yet, but I’ll keep you posted…

After a leisurely stroll through Future World (no plan, remember?) we got the next boat over to ‘Germany’ and walked round World Showcase towards the International Gateway, drooling unattractively as we checked what was on offer at the food stalls for the International Food & Wine Festival along the way. All the stalls had pretty long lines, so we decided not to try any of the food here today, but to return for a gastronomic evening later when we could do it justice. The living statue was performing in ‘France’, so we stopped for a while to watch him / her, then left Epcot and strolled around to the Yacht and Beach Club, looking for Beaches and Cream where we hoped to eat (sketchy plan creeping in here).

We found Beaches and Cream, but as we didn’t have a PS we asked at the podium whether they had a free table. The CM went to check and said we could go straight in, so we dived through the doors to find our table. I was amazed – this place is so tiny! One wall was completely mirrored, and it took me a while to work out that there wasn’t another half of the restaurant on the other side (or if there was, then our doubles were sitting at a table through there, ordering exactly the same meals as us). There were about five booths, eight small tables and maybe a dozen bar stools, and not a lot of room between any of them. Still, we had our table (lucky) so we were happy.

Amy hadn’t fallen over / got stuck / broken anything for a few days now, so she decided it must be time to put that right, and promptly knocked over her glass of water whilst trying to move it out of the way when the server fetched our meals. Almost before the first drop of water hit the table, the server called out to someone behind the counter “She’s split her drink, could you get me a cloth please”, placing great emphasis on “she’s” just to make sure everyone knew whose fault it was / or wasn’t! There was a lot of mopping up activity, then more cloths were called for. As it was only water that had been spilt, and Amy would dry off very quickly outside, Jeremy told the server not to worry about any more mopping up, to which she replied, quite seriously, “Yes, but I have to wipe the table.” Do you get the vague impression that maybe Amy’s welfare wasn’t top of her list of concerns?

None of us were hungry enough to justify ordering the ‘kitchen sink’ dessert, so after our burgers and fries we went to sit on some rocking chairs outside, and to wait until it was time to meet up with Mick (Micklou) and Carol (caroley) from the UK DIS, ready for our Illuminations Cruise. I took the opportunity to take another look at the mug shots Carol and Mick had sent me in the hope that I might vaguely recognise one or other of them when the time came. I wasn’t hopeful – it would be getting dark by the time we had arranged to meet – but at least I was doing my homework like a good moderator.

It was about now that it dawned on me that we might face a bit of a challenge (others might call it a problem, I prefer the more positive approach) getting back to OKW at the end of the cruise. We’d come to Epcot by bus, and we’d planned to go back by bus, but the bus stop was at the main Epcot entrance and the cruise would drop us back at the Beach Club after Epcot had closed. We could get a bus from the Beach Club to Downtown Disney, and an OKW bus or boat from there, but we knew from past experience that the DD buses always took for ever, so we only wanted to do that if there was no alternative. I couldn’t think of an alternative. So much for not having a plan – look where it gets you.

On the Beach Club dock, we could see one of the CMs throwing bits of bread into the water, and eventually Jeremy could contain himself no longer and had to go and find out what was eating it. Well, it wasn’t fish, it was ducks, but inevitably the conversation got round to fishing, and the girls happily fed the ducks with the CMs bread, whilst Jeremy quizzed him on all things Floridian and piscatorial (or fishy to you and me). The CM just happened to be in charge of the cruises here, so we were pleased to be able to tell him we were booked on a boat this evening. He also just happened to spend all his spare time fishing, so Jeremy felt he’d found a soulmate for five minutes.

By the time the bread had all gone and the fishing chat reached a lull, we thought we’d take a walk back to the Yacht Club restrooms, and then it would be time to return to the marina to meet the others for the cruise. As we walked away from the dock, I heard a voice yell out “Hilary?”
I turned to see whether the voice was calling me, or whether there were another twenty seven other people also answering to the same name, and there were Mick and Lou!
“Mick?” I answered, and just for a moment it was like that bit at the end of the film ‘Crocodile Dundee’ on the subway platform (well, apart from me being called Hilary instead of Sue). Alright, alright - I only said it was a bit like it...

I recognised Mick and Lou from their photo, but they had two small people with them who I didn’t recognise, so I took a wild guess that they might be their sons – and I was right! (inspired, eh?) Lloyd and Austin looked just as embarrassed that their dad was shouting to some strange internet person as Rhian and Amy were that their mother had answered, so we did a few embarrassed introductions all round. I couldn’t work out how Mick had recognised us from the back (the photo I’d sent him was definitely taken from the front), but he said it was because I’d told him the girls and I were all about the same height and about a foot shorter than Jeremy – he’d thought we fitted that description so well we just had to be the right lot!

We still had a little while to wait before we’d actually arranged to meet up, so we agreed to reconvene back at the marina later, and hope that we’d find Carol then as well. The planning paid off – Carol and Stephen (luckily standing underneath a light and both bearing an uncanny likeness to their photos) were at the marina when we returned, and they had already found out that we’d been allocated skipper Ron, driving the pontoon boat Donald Duck. It sounded good to me – so now all we had to do was pay for the boat before it went through on Kazzie’s (another DISer) credit card, as she’d made the booking in her name with her cc details to hold it. She had been so generous about sorting out all the details for us, but somehow I felt that she might not be quite so magnanimous if she ended up with it as an unexpected item on her next VISA bill! Finances duly sorted, we were able to get down to the business of boarding.

Ron was being very chatty and cracking jokes at every opportunity, so when he asked Amy how old she was, I wondered what was coming next.
“Twelve”, she replied. Ron took her to one side and whispered something to her, then they rejoined our group and Ron asked Amy again how old she was.
“Thirteen”, she replied, giggling. Ron didn’t say a word.
Then Ron took Lloyd and Austin to find life jackets to fit them, and I asked Amy what all that business with the ages had been about. She said that he’d told her that everyone under twelve had to wear a life jacket, so that if she told him she was thirteen she needn’t wear one! She was happy.

Once on board, Ron handed out big white towels and told us that we should use them to wrap round ourselves to keep warm if we needed them (we didn’t, but it was a nice thought). Then we set off for a tour of the Boardwalk, Swan and Dolphin resorts and to MGM, with Ron throwing out information and facts all the way. It was sometimes a bit difficult to hear what he was saying over the noise of the engine, but what we did hear was very interesting, and it was great to have a skipper so willing to add a little extra something to our evening, and one who was so apparently happy in his work. Mind you, I can think of worse ways to earn a living than taking a boat round to watch Illuminations every night, so maybe it was no wonder he seemed chirpy!

We tied up under the bridge between ‘France’ and the ‘UK’ and waited for Illuminations to begin. It was just as evocative as ever, and our vantage point made it easy to believe it was being shown just for our benefit.

At the end of the display, we went briefly into the lagoon to turn around, and then Ron let Mick, with his family, and the four of us disembark at the International Gateway, and Carol and Stephen continued in isolated luxury back to the Beach Club marina. Actually, for all I know, Ron might have taken them on an extended cruise round the Bahamas, but I assume they went back to the Beach Club – I guess we’ll have to wait to read Carol’s TR to find out! My earlier worries about getting back to OKW were dismissed with a nonchalant “oh, I was sure it would work out alright, somehow” and we made our way towards the exit and the bus stop. We were back at OKW in no time, and bought a few supplies in the resort store for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Our verdict of the Illuminations Cruise? Fantastic – do it if you can. If you can share the cost of a boat it doesn’t work out all that expensive for what is a very exclusive viewing of Illuminations. Sharing a boat with others from the UK DIS was an added attraction, which we would have missed if we’d had the boat completely to ourselves. However, if you can’t get a cruise, you can get almost as good a view from many places around the lagoon. The atmosphere during Illuminations is electric anywhere in Epcot, but it seemed even more vibrant on the boat, so for me it was just the icing on an already pretty spectacular cake.

 

[Hilary]

Sunday, October 21st 2001

Do millionaires wear plastic ponchos?

Jeremy got up early and went to explore the fishing possibilities in the waterways at OKW, and returned with a spring in his step and tales of success. At last. We spend a whole week on the fishing mecca of the Gulf coast and he doesn’t get much more than a couple of bites, then we come back to WDW and the fish are practically falling at his feet. More Disney magic at work?

Despite the forecast of rain later, it was another glorious day as we set off for Animal Kingdom, and we were through the security checks, and then the turnstiles, for the 9:00am opening.

We picked up our FPs for the Safari, then went on the Pangani Forest Trail. The meerkats were as entertaining as ever, and there was a very pleasant young CM waxing lyrical about the naked mole rats (not the most naturally endearing creatures on the planet, I have to say, so all credit to him for being so enthusiastic). The gorillas were pretty active and they had drawn quite a crowd, so it wasn’t easy to find a good spot to view them. On the couple of occasions I did get a good viewing place, it was marred by the in-depth (and very loud) quizzing by a middle-aged Brit asking the CM his opinion of the British football league system. Apologies if I’ve just alienated all the footy fans, but if I’d wanted an earful of sidelines banter I’d have gone somewhere more appropriate than a few feet away from a gorilla family in Animal Kingdom, thank you. Mini-rant over.

The safari was a good one, with lots of animal activity, and an excellent guide (have I just been lucky, or have the guides improved on this?) We decided to have a look at the wait time for Dinosaur, and were sceptical when it was listed as 10 minutes. We went for it, it was only ten minutes (if that), and I have to admit to liking this ride a bit more that in the past. I was trying to evaluate it’s scare factor for our trip next year, when we’ll be with our nieces and nephews who will range in age from 5 to 12, and I have to say I think it’s much too intense for little ones. Judging by the tears here, it seems there were quite a few in agreement with my verdict! It’s a shame, because the dinosaur theme is naturally going to attract little ones. I’ll be interested to see what happens next year.

It was just starting to rain when we came out of Dinosaur, so we made a dive for Tuskers and filled up on muffins and churros, then left AK to return to OKW for a break. It was raining quite heavily by now, so we bought a poncho to supplement the three old ones we’d brought with us from home, and fought our way into them. I made a selfless gesture and let Rhian have the new AK one (the sacrifices we mothers make, eh?), Jeremy got the glorified plastic bag one which we’d bought in a camping shop for 99p, I got the old yellow MK adult one, and Amy had the child’s size one. It had obviously escaped my attention that Amy had grown about three feet since she’d last worn the child’s size poncho three or four years ago. It just about skimmed the bottom of her shorts and her elbows were struggling to contain themselves within the sleeve slits. Jeremy hadn’t fared much better with his bargain buy, and looked as though he’d found an old bit of clingfilm to wrap around himself. Difficult to imagine, I know, but Rhian and I actually felt quite stylish in ours – well, compared to the other two, that was.

Back at OKW, we stopped by the store to pick up lunch supplies and went back to rustle up a culinary masterpiece with the microwave. Well, we heated up a couple of ready prepared burritos, but it was about as near to self-catering as I wanted to get between theme park visits!

After our gastronomic extravaganza we set off for MGM. As we arrived, the Stars and Cars parade was just reaching the end of the route next to the ‘One of a Kind’ shop, so we hopped on to the low wall there and saw the last few floats disappear. We didn’t see much of it, but we planned to return to see it all one day.

In ‘no plan’ free spirit, we chose Star Tours as our first ride here, and it was a walk-on. I really wanted to do Who Wants to be a Millionaire? as I’d heard such good reviews of it, so we headed for there next. I wouldn’t admit this to everyone, but I confess that I actually watch the programme at home and was quite excited when we were able to walk straight in to the next show with two minutes to spare. I really should get out more.

Wow! I couldn’t get over how realistic the set was! Well, okay, I haven’t actually been to the real set, but this certainly looked exactly the same as the view from my side of our television screen. The atmosphere was electric, and as the music built and I could feel the adrenaline rising – goodness knows what state I’d be in if I ever got on the real show! Because we’d been about the last people let in to the show, we were sitting right up at the top of the auditorium and couldn’t see the top of the overhead monitors, but we did have the added benefit of no-one being able to look over our shoulders and laugh at all the wrong buttons we were pressing for the answers.

Without wishing to brag (although I can’t think why not – it wouldn’t normally stop me), I am pleased to be able to report that I got on to the leader board twice in the same show, so there was no way I was going to let that be our last trip to WWTBAM this holiday. I wanted that hot seat!

After another sit down watching the Muppets we decided to head back to OKW, and then drive over to Crossroads for dinner in Jungle Jim’s. We’d fallen in love with this place during our first ever Orlando visit, but hadn’t been there for a couple of years. Having heard mixed reviews of the place lately, I hoped we weren’t making a mistake going back there – sometimes it’s best to just stick with the happy memories. Well, in a nutshell, we weren’t disappointed, and apart from slightly slow service from the kitchen, we had a really good meal.

Our last mission for the day was to stock up on supplies from Goodings. I’d forgotten how ‘up-market’ this supermarket is! Compared to the Publix, Winn Dixies and Walmarts that we’d been frequenting in Port Charlotte, this place was like the food hall in Harrods. Slight exaggeration, but that was the impression we got.

Shopping accomplished, it was back to base, ready for an early entry morning tomorrow.

 

[Hilary]

Monday, October 22nd 2001

What do you mean – no Early Entry?

Up with the lark (do they have larks in Florida?) and off to the bus stop by 7:15am to get the bus to MK for Early Entry at 7:30am. There was no-one else at the bus stop, and before we had a chance to even sit down, the Magic Kingdom bus appeared. We stepped forward, the bus door opened, but just as we were about to climb up the steps, a CM standing at the bus stop asked where we wanted to go. As we were about to board a bus clearly marked ‘Magic Kingdom’, this seemed a slightly pointless question, but Jeremy answered politely in the kind of tone he might use to address some of the more intelligent looking maggots he collects for bait. The CM smiled a game-show host kind of smile “This bus will take you to the Magic Kingdom, but the park won’t be opening until 9:00am” she told us. She bore an uncanny resemblance to Tour-Guide Barbie from Toy Story 2.
“But what about Early Entry?” I asked.
“There is no early Entry”
“Isn’t today Early Entry at the Magic Kingdom for Resort Guests?”
“There is no Early Entry – that program has been suspended. Do you still want this bus?”

We shook our heads and looked at each other in disbelief. The CM waved the bus away, and we moved towards the store and out of earshot of the CM. We muttered to each other in hushed tones, but basically agreeing that the CM must have got it wrong – Disney wouldn’t do that, would they? Not without telling anyone. Anyway, we’d taken advantage of Early Entry only last week when we’d been staying at the Dolphin. She must be mistaken, maybe they’d just changed the EE days for each park.

Whilst we were mumbling away, we were standing next to the menu board for Olivia’s, Old Key West’s full-service restaurant. Taped across the Character Breakfast menu was a sign announcing that there would be no more Character Breakfasts, but that a Character Caravan would bring characters to visit resort guests on selected mornings instead. The plot thickened.

Fully confident that things couldn’t be as bad they suddenly seemed, I went to the Front Desk and asked what the park hours would be for that week. The CM in front of me glanced at her colleague, then handed me slip of paper denoting the park hours. This was suspiciously unlike the usual glossy leaflet announcing the park hours and parade times, and extolling the virtues of staying on-site with a fanfare and bright, happy photos. Instead, it was a small monochrome page with plain type and no pictures - there was no mention of any Early Entry days. I asked the CM about this. I may have imagined it, but she looked nervous.
“Oh, er, I believe they suspended that, didn’t they?” she said with an exaggeratedly casual air, checking with her colleague next door.
“Oh, yes. We had a message about that through from Head Office at the end of last week.” confirmed the other CM.
They both made themselves busy shuffling bits of paper.

I was deflated.
“So there are no Early Entry mornings?” I repeated. I just wanted to check I’d got this right.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s correct.”
“Oh. That’s a pretty big perk to lose if you’re staying on site isn’t it?” I thought I was being very restrained under the circumstances.
“But there will be a Character Caravan visiting the resort on certain mornings, bringing the characters to meet on-site guests.”
“Oh well, that’s just fine and dandy then – a couple of people in fur fabric posing for photographs will certainly make up for losing an hour and a half of rides in the parks every morning. My mistake for thinking you may have just ruined my vacation by telling me that one of the main reasons for paying a teensy bit extra (never mind just joining DVC) for the privilege of staying on-site has just been snatched from our grasp, without so much as a squeak of an apology from a certain Mouse.” I wish I had said that, but instead all I could manage was a feeble smile of disbelief.

I relayed the confirmation to the rest of the family. We were not happy bunnies. As if on cue, a waft of jolly music came our way from the region of the bus stop, and the much-hyped Character Caravan drew up. The CM looked enthralled, the handful of guests as the bus stop looked bemused. The bus had blacked-out windows, so we couldn’t see what was inside, but then the doors opened and out came Minnie, Smee, Cap’n Hook and Pluto. They danced, they waved, they cavorted. They must have realised they were on to a loser, and giving the disgruntled bus queue a wide berth, they made their way towards the restaurant. It was all rather surreal.

With new-found resolve, we boarded the next bus for the Magic Kingdom, determined to be there for opening, whatever time that might be. The turnstiles opened at 8:30am, and with a resolute stride we managed to do Peter Pan, Cinderella’s Carousel, the Tea-cups, Speedway, Astro-Orbiter, Space Mountain and Splash Mountain all without a wait (we got FPs for the two ‘mountains’) - timing it just about right to catch the 12 o’clock show at the Diamond Horseshoe Revue.

We had seats upstairs for the show, and from where we were sitting, we could see that there were performers waiting in one of the stage-side ‘boxes’, which was something we’d never noticed before. Once the show started, we discovered that they were interpreters, signing for a party including a deaf child downstairs. Since plummeting to rock bottom this morning, Disney’s Guest Relations climbed back up a few notches in our estimation when we saw this.

After lunch we took a trip on the Liberty Belle Riverboat, the Railroad and Goofy’s Barnstormer, and then went to find a good spot to watch the new parade with the snowglobes that we’d heard about. The parade was good fun – although we were a bit worried about the performers inside the globes until we realised they must have some kind of air conditioning in there!

We left MK after the parade and went back to OKW for Jeremy to continue his fishing exploits and the girls and I did a little exploring in the shop.

Jeremy caught his biggest largemouth bass to date and was feeling very pleased with himself, so we decided to drive up to Dixie Landings (Port Orleans Riverside now) to celebrate with a meal in the food court, for old time’s sake. If only OKW had a food court like this…

We had decided to try one of the miniature golf courses, as we hadn’t done this before, but couldn’t decide which one to visit. Well, we drove towards Winter Summerland, but as we passed right next to the Fantasia course on the way, we stopped there. It was practically deserted. Not having been here before, I don’t know how busy it usually is, but there were never more than three or four other families there at the same time as us. Well, what a great course this is – especially at night. We had such a good time here – my only regret was that it didn’t last longer! Amy (naturally) lost her ball in the water, but didn’t mind going to ask for a replacement. Our favourite holes were the musical steps and the magic cave, but they were all excellent. It makes our local crazy golf courses in Swansea look pretty pathetic.

I think Jeremy won on points, but when we got back to hand in our clubs, the CM asked to see our score cards, and declared that Rhian and Amy had both won a prize for scoring a hole in one on that night’s ‘secret hole’! She didn’t know which name on the cards applied to which of us, so she wasn’t just targeting the children of the party – they really had both got a hole in one on the same hole. They were able to choose a free soft drink for their skills, and we all declared this a 10 / 10 evening’s entertainment. On top of that, we’d had 50% discount with our Annual Passes, so we also thought we’d had very good value.

So at least the day ended on a better note than it had started, and we knew we didn’t need to set the alarm too early for tomorrow, as there would be no more Early Entry mornings this trip.

 

[Hilary]

Tuesday, October 23rd 2001

Eating our way around the world

Spurred on by yesterday’s fishing success (not that he needed an excuse or any encouragement), and the fact that the early mornings would no longer be allocated to the parks, Jeremy was to be found staking out the waterways of Old Key West before dawn. The rest of us were still in the Studio, but had decided that today’s tentative plan (come on now, you can’t expect me to have No Plan At All for the whole two weeks) to visit one of the water parks would be better left until later in the week, when the forecast was for better weather than today. When Jeremy returned (with tales to tell of the ones that got away and the ones that didn’t) he agreed with our decision, and we set off for Epcot instead.

We arrived for the revised opening time of 10:00am and made straight for Image Works and Innoventions and spent a while sending some e-photos and postcards. We tried to get FPs for Test Track, but they weren’t in operation and we decided to give the 30 minute wait a miss. As we had only ever done Body Wars once before we thought we’d refresh our memories about it, and realised afterwards why we don’t do it more often! I know that all the simulator rides have pretty corny story lines, but we think this one is worse than most. We spent a while in the Wonders of Life pavilion and tried out some of the hands-on experiences – I really didn’t like one of them which made you think you’d burnt your hand – which were unusually queue-free today.

After a browse around the shops and a lengthy sampling session in the Ice Station we were ready for an early lunch, and went to the Electric Umbrella to eat and discuss our intentions for the rest of the day. The decision was to return to Epcot in the late afternoon to have a go at sampling all the dishes on the Food & Wine Festival stands (well, maybe not all of them, but we were aiming high) rather than having a full meal anywhere. In the meantime, Jeremy was keen to continue with his quest to deplete the fish stocks of OKW single-handedly, and the girls and I thought we could usefully be out of his way by taking a trip to Downtown Disney. Result! Whenever Jeremy accompanies us to DD he can’t wait to leave, and I seem to spend my time negotiating between him and the girls as to how much longer we can stay there.

So, Jeremy got the bus back to OKW and the girls and I caught the monorail to the TTC (our only monorail journey of the entire holiday – we must try harder next time) and then the DD bus from there. Even without Jeremy to hurry us along, we still didn’t seem to have as much time there as we would have liked, but by 3:30pm it was getting very hot and uncomfortable, so we caught the pontoon boat back to OKW. I really love the boat trips from DD – in my book, it’s a big bonus to staying at any of the resorts which have this service.

Refreshed, and reunited with Jeremy, we made our way back to Epcot at 5:30pm and went straight to World Showcase to begin the feast. Between the four of us (and over the space of three hours) we had:
Quesadilla Polly Choizo, Cheese Quesadilla (x2), Dos Equis Special Lager - Mexico
Cold Poached Salmon - Scandinavia (or Scandanivia as the sign called it)
Chicken Satay, Cold Sesame Noodles (x2), Yanjing Beer - S E Asia
Penne alla Carbonara, Villa Rocca Pinot Grigio - Italy
Kirin Ichiban Lager – ? can’t remember where this was from, and I probably didn’t care!
Yasai-Maki Sushi - Japan
Beaver Tails (one with chocolate and hazelnut and one with maple), Cheddar Cheese Soup, Moosehead Beer - Canada
None of the food dishes cost more than $2 or $3, with a couple of them being even less, but I’m not sure how much the drinks cost (I know, I should pay more attention to the important details).

Jeremy has wanted to have an evening doing this ever since the first time we visited during the Food & Wine Festival, but this year was the first time the girls had ‘agreed’ to trying any of the unfamiliar dishes. I wasn’t convinced that we weren’t going to end up stopping off somewhere for fries later, to fill them up after they failed to find anything they liked. Their verdict? The best food of the whole holiday! Kids, eh?!

As I said, this was taken at a leisurely pace as we strolled around the lagoon, and when we reached Germany we stopped to watch Tapestry of Dreams. On the lagoon side of the walkway, standing on a small podium, we could see a young CM (the same one we had watched in the Diamond Horseshoe Saloon) interpreting all the spoken words by signing for deaf guests – again, something we had never noticed before.

We didn’t have to wait long at any of the food stands, and it is something we will definitely be doing when we visit next year if the festival is on then. My mouth’s watering at the thought of it already. Of course, I realise that by next year one or other (or even both) of the girls will probably have decided to eat only food produced by Outer Mongolian wheat farmers or fifth generation Eskimo fish breeders and will be unable to tolerate anything sold from open-air food stands, but by then they’ll be old enough to look for the Outer Mongolian fries on their own! Jeremy and I will also be old enough to prop up the stands on our own.

As we’d seen Illuminations from the cruise boat a few days earlier, we decided not to stay to watch it tonight, and made our way to the exit shortly before 9:00pm whilst most people were staking out their viewing spots at the railings. We went via Test Track and couldn’t see much of a line, although the board was showing a wait time of 10 minutes. We found the end of the line, followed it through to the pre-show without having to stop, and were seated in our car straight away! It must have taken 2 minutes at the most. The ride felt much faster than usual, but I thought it must be because it was dark and just seemed like that, but when we staggered off, the others seemed to be saying the same. Does this ride vary, or were we all duped by the speed in the dark? Why was Jeremy looking as though he’d lost a lot of hair on the way round? Was Amy’s smile usually that wide? Were Rhian’s eyelids always stretched outwards like that? I guess we’ll just have to ride it again to find out…

…but not tonight. We got the bus back to OKW, stocked up at the store for breakfast supplies and then hit the sack ready for an exciting day tomorrow. Rhian had had her 17th birthday three days before we flew to Florida so, as we hadn’t had an opportunity to celebrate it at home, we’d agreed to designate one of our days in WDW as her ‘birthday’, and tomorrow was the day.

 

[Hilary]

Wednesday, October 24th 2001

Toby & Bob the dolphins, Joey & Lance from *NCYNC & TJ from Boma’s

Today was Rhian’s nominated ‘birthday’ to make amends for not having had time to do much celebrating on her real birthday three days before we flew out here. There weren’t to be any special badges, cakes, presents or anything, but Rhian was to call the shots today. She had booked her Dolphins in Depth programme for this morning, and had to report to the Guest Services window outside the Epcot entrance by 9:45am. Jeremy had strict instructions to be back from his early morning fishing expedition to meet Amy by 8:45am so that Rhian and I could leave for the Epcot bus in plenty of time to reach the meeting place before the dolphins started without her. We were at the bus stop by ten to nine for the ten minute journey.

By twenty past nine we were still there. Plenty of other buses had been and gone, but not one for Epcot. We’d never had to wait this long before! I didn’t know whether to run back to the Studio to get Jeremy to drive us – but I just knew that if I did, the bus would wait for me to be out of sight and then magically appear around the corner – or sit it out on the basis that if we’ve waited this long there must be one along soon. By half past nine I was really worried that we wouldn’t make it, and thought I would ask one of the bell-hops standing nearby to phone Epcot to tell them that we were trying to get there. Just as I was about to ask them, the Epcot bus appeared! We made it to the meeting point with two minutes to spare, so we needn’t have worried after all, but it was a close thing.

The CM holding a cuddly dolphin on a stick (really) took Rhian’s details and, because Rhian was under 18, I had to sign triplicate forms agreeing to allow her to participate, to be filmed, to interact with the dolphins, to be out of my sight, to breath, etc. etc., and generally to let Disney take over her life for the next three hours. I trusted them. I signed.

During the long wait for the bus, we had made various contingency plans for Rhian getting back to OKW to meet up with the rest of us after her morning with the dolphins, which all involved her getting the WDW bus back from Epcot. All plans were thwarted, therefore, when the dolphin-on-a-stick CM said that they would prefer it if Rhian could be met at the end of the programme – presumably so that there was a clear cut-off point for Disney’s period of responsibility should there be any law suits flying around at some future date. We arranged for me to meet them back at the same place in three hours time, and off they went.

From here on, I'm relying on what Rhian told me about the morning! The group of seven participants were taken to changing rooms where they could leave bags in lockers (you have to take a swimsuit, but NO cameras or videos are allowed) and 'freshen up', and sizes were noted for wet suits and water shoes. Then they were taken to an upper viewing area of the marine aquarium in the Living Seas to see the dolphins and other inhabitants, and hear a bit about them. They were standing on a platform at the top of the water in the huge aquarium, and the CM told them that if they should slip off, and into the water, they should keep smiling and wave to everyone, as all the guests in The Living Seas pavilion below them would be watching and taking photos! They didn’t fall in.

There then followed an instructional talk in a backstage area, telling them about the dolphin's anatomy, how the Epcot trainers work with the dolphins and the kinds of tests they get the dolphins to undertake to increase their knowledge about the way dolphins can communicate and use their senses. If any of you saw the Tamsin Outhwaite dolphin programme recently, there was a part in that showing the Epcot scheme using a series of ‘keyboard’ signals for the dolphins to communicate with the trainer, and this was one of the research programmes the group learnt about here. I think this section of the tour must have lasted about an hour.

Then there were some light refreshments provided, after which it was into the wetsuits and time for the dolphin interaction. The group was split into two - one of four (two couples) and the other of the three women (including Rhian) who were on their own. The two dolphins (Bob and Toby) were brought out and each went with one of the groups. The participants were in the water individually with the dolphins, getting them to respond to their training signals by turning round, swimming away, etc., and they each had an opportunity to 'bond' with the dolphin by tickling it and 'talking' to it as it lay in the water near them. The participants were no deeper than chest height in the water. This lasted about half an hour.

Then they got showered (all toiletries and towels, etc. provided) and changed, were given their t-shirts and videos and some dolphin information - and that was it! The t-shirt is quite nice, the video lasts about 30 minutes (with about half of that a general dolphin information shot and the rest of it footage of the group in the water with Bob and Toby), and the information booklet gives useful follow-up contacts.

Was it worth the money (normally $140, but Rhian had a 20% discount with her AP, so it cost her about £80) for the three hour programme? Rhian had saved money she had been given for doing well in her GCSE exams and wanted to spend it on Dolphins in Depth, as it would be something she could always remember. She rated it 11 out of 10, and said it was the highlight of her two weeks in Florida, so I guess that mean 'YES'!

From our point of view, it was a way of enabling Rhian to have the dolphin experience on her own, with the other option being for all of us to go to Discovery Cove (at vast expense!). I'm sure DC would have been wonderful if we'd done it, but the rest of us weren't enthusiastic enough about it to make it seem 'worthwhile' at the moment, and it might not have been so special for Rhian if we’d all been doing the same thing. Maybe one day!

Whilst Rhian was busying herself getting to know Bob and Toby, I had returned to OKW, and Jeremy, Amy and I took a canopy boat out from the marina and explored a bit of the OKW waterway. We only had half an hour with the boat, so we didn’t have time to explore very far, but it was a lovely way to see around the resort.

Then we got the bus to Epcot, met up with Rhian (who was bursting to tell us all about her morning) and went to MGM for the afternoon, and started with lunch at the ABC Commissary. There was no stopping Rhian’s running commentary about the dolphins, but we managed to fit in a few attractions between sentences. But first I had to get those FPs for Who Wants to be a Millionaire – I had a feeling that the hot seat might have my name on it this afternoon (did I ever mention that I’m a born optimist?). We went on the Great Movie Ride to keep Rhian quiet for five minutes (only joking – we enjoyed hearing all about the dolphins – even after the first 27 times), and then it was time to make our way to the WWTBAM theatre.

We had a short wait before we could get into the auditorium, and by the time we got inside, the atmosphere was really electric. We had better seats than before, and I checked out the ‘competition’ in the other members of the audience. There were a couple of groups of young lads who looked as though they knew what they were doing, but I was still fired with hope that I could make it to the hot seat this time. The show started and I was happy that I gave my keypad answers really quickly. Then came the moment I’d waited for - the first contestant was out, and it was time for the next member of the audience to take their place.

I know you’ll all be asking “So, how did you do?” “Did you get any tricky questions?” “What does it feel like in the middle of all those pairs of eyes watching you in the hot seat?” “Did you use up all your lifelines?” Well, I’d really rather not discuss it, thank you, but suffice to say that I didn’t get in the hot seat – this time…

Undaunted (well, maybe a little bit), we made our way towards the park exit to find places near the One of a Kind shop to view the new Stars & their Cars parade. Amy had already ear-marked a photo in the shop which she wanted to buy, so she and Rhian went in whilst Jeremy and I waited in our parade spots. Amy emerged with her photo of Walt drawing Mickey ($5), and Rhian had bought a prop document from ‘Deep Impact’ ($10), which seemed very reasonable to me.

I could see that there was a camera man standing in a roped-off area facing straight up Hollywood Boulevard towards the 100 years hat, and it appeared that the parade was going to be filmed today. There also appeared to be an awful lot more people waiting for the parade than when we’d arrived during the parade a couple of days ago. As the parade time drew near, there was an announcement that today’s Stars & Cars Parade Grand Marshalls would be Joey and Lance from *NCYNC. This meant nothing to me (well, I have heard of *NCYNC), but the girls thought they might know who they were. Rhian was very sceptical that it would only be CMs dressed up as Joey and Lance, but as the parade was being filmed, I thought it probably would be the ‘genuine article’. I suppose that’s one of the downsides to Disney – we tend to assume that everything is make believe!

The parade began, and Joey and Lance made their brief appearance (Rhian conceded that it was really them) before the real stars came along in their fantastic motors. We liked this parade, but it didn’t have the ‘wow’ factor that some of them do. Once the parade had finished, we made our way back to OKW.

We had booked a PS at Boma’s in Animal Kingdom Lodge for this evening, but wanted to spend time looking around the resort before it got dark. We’d decided to take the car tonight to make the journey back to OKW more straightforward, and as we turned into the AKL drive I was absolutely amazed – we were no longer in Florida, we were now in Africa! The transformation was incredible. The driveway was lined with tall grasses and every tiny detail was African. We parked and soaked up the African atmosphere as we walked over to the resort entrance.

The lobby was quite spectacular (much like Wilderness Lodge), and we particularly liked the view out of the huge floor-to-ceiling glass panels at the far end, and the stairway down to the restaurants at one side. We had a look around the shop, then made our way outside and explored a couple of views of the savannah, spotting quite a few animals along the way, including giraffe, zebras, gazelles and bongos.

When it was time for our PS, we left the animals (four legged, not the children) and made our way to Boma’s, not knowing quite what to expect. The entrances to both Boma’s and Jiko share an area at the bottom of the staircase, with each restaurant having it’s own open entrance on either side of this area. As soon as we entered Boma’s the focal point became obvious – the enormous buffet counter with the open kitchens right behind. We were shown to our table, and then our server (Lindsay) came to explain the buffet to us.

She went through the whole length of the buffet, naming every dish, but as the names were African I wasn’t sure what was in them! As the girls and I are varying degrees of vegetarian, we usually do quite well with buffets as we can pick out the veggie dishes and leave all the meat without feeling we’re ‘wasting’ anything. However, I wasn’t sure that we would be able to pick out the veggies from dishes which sounded so unfamiliar to us, so I asked Lindsay if any of the things she’d described were vegetarian. She was very understanding, and went to great trouble naming the dishes we should look out for. It sounded as though we’d be spoilt for choice.

Jeremy made straight for the carvery section, and the girls and I made a start on the rest. I was suddenly aware that one of the chefs had come round from the kitchen and was shaking Amy’s hand! I wondered why she was getting all the attention, and as I turned to see what she was doing, the chef addressed all three of us, introduced himself as ‘the head chef, TJ’, and said that he understood, from our server, that we were vegetarian. I felt I should apologise and crawl away, but I could tell from his wide smile that this definitely wasn’t a problem, and he then walked the length of the buffet, with the three of us in hot pursuit, explaining each and every vegetarian dish laid out before us. It appeared that we wouldn’t go hungry here – we seemed to have hit the jackpot of the vegetarian buffets.

We staggered back to the table with plates groaning under the weight of so much fantastic food, and ploughed through the feast. We made several more trips to the buffet, sometimes for a small sample of something new to try, sometimes for a whole plateful of a new-found favourite. It was all delicious.

I was half way though my second complete plateful when TJ again emerged from the kitchen, came over to our table and told us not to get too full, because he was making something special for us in the kitchen which would be ready in about ten minutes. Too late, I’m afraid, I was already stuffed to the seams, and the girls’ eyes glazed over at the suggestion of more food to come. However, I was hopeful that we’d have room for the little taster that TJ was concocting if we had ten minutes to let things settle.

From where we were sitting, we could see TJ busy at work in the kitchen, and every now and then we’d see him stirring another huge pan. Eventually, Jeremy’s eyes popped out of their sockets and he said “I think this must be it” as he saw TJ making his way towards our table. Wow! Far from the little vegetarian taster I had imagined, here was an enormous sizzling platter (about 15” in diameter) of a layer of vegetables in a peanut sauce, fried noodles, vegetable wraps, spicy vegetable patties and crispy vegetables all artistically arranged with three huge popadoms in a fan shape on the top! None of us were really hungry enough to do this masterpiece justice by this stage, but I’m pleased to report that we made a valiant attempt and didn’t leave much. What amazed me was the fact that TJ had so obviously enjoyed doing this for us, even though we had such an extensive choice of vegetarian dishes already in the buffet. This was definitely beyond the call of duty!

And then there were the desserts – we had promised Lindsay and TJ that we would try their signature zebra mousse, and we were glad we did, although our waistbands weren’t so sure. The bill for the four of us was $112, which we felt was a bargain considering the special treatment we’d received.

We made sure we had a photo with TJ before we left, and then went to further explore AKL and maybe walk off some of the millions of calories settling themselves on our hips. The AKL pool looked stunning in the starlight, and there were still plenty of animals to be seen in the shadows. One of the CM guides (Issa) came over to talk to us, and pointed out even more animals and stayed chatting to us for a long time about the merits of his home town in Kenya.

We would have happily stayed a lot longer here, but I was very aware of the feast taking place on my legs as all the insects within a forty mile radius came to sample my calf flesh. They must have been able to tell that it had been freshly plumped up on TJ’s veggie special, and were calling in reinforcements from far and wide. I imagine Issa must have thought I was permanently hunched double with my arms flailing at my legs in wild swoops, as I seemed to spend the whole time we were talking to him bent down trying to swat anything that came within three feet of me. It would have been nice to talk to him at eye level, but I couldn’t risk it. Eventually the insect troops won the battle and we surrendered to the indoors, had another admiring look around this amazing resort, then headed back to OKW.

To round off a pretty wonderful day for all of us (but especially for the nominated birthday girl), we arrived back at our studio just in time to watch the Illuminations fireworks from our balcony. Now that’s what I call a good way to spend a birthday, real or otherwise.

 

[Hilary]

Friday, October 26th 2001

The Final Chapter.

Reader, I married him. … No, hang on – wrong book, that one’s already been done, hasn’t it? How about:

After breakfast in the room and a final tidy up, we were out of the studio by 10:30am, and loaded our collection of luggage into the car. We’d gained an extra two holdalls full of purchases during our two weeks in Florida, which is definitely a record for us, but I can’t decide whether that’s a plus or minus point. No, it wouldn’t all fit nicely in the trunk of the car, but Rhian and Amy don’t take up much room on the back seat…

We spent an hour or so strolling around the resort and taking some more photos, and had a relaxing sit down in the ‘library’, looking at the very strange and eclectic collection of titles on the shelves. The girls bought a couple of last minute ‘must haves’ from the shop, although they were limited to items they could fit into their hand luggage! I finally gave in to a DVC member pin which had been saying “buy me, buy me” every time I walked past it.

I admit I’d had a few reservations about Disney’s Old Key West Resort when we first arrived, but it had grown on me enormously throughout the week, and now I felt very much at home. There’s a definite air of relaxation and homeliness about it that I haven’t come across at other Disney resorts, but that may have been down, in some part, to the lower attendances everywhere. I would still prefer it if it had some kind of food court rather than the service counter, (or at least to have an under-cover, air conditioned area for eating, apart from the full-service restaurant) but I imagine the self-catering nature of the accommodation here makes such facilities unnecessary for most people. I know it’s a ‘home-away-from-home’ resort, but on balance, it still doesn’t quite beat the old Dixie Landings on overall appeal for me, although it would have to come a close second!

We left OKW for the airport at around 11:30am, and had lunch in the food court once we’d checked in. The difference in attitude of the staff here, compared to our week in WDW was a bit of a shock, but I suppose it was a good preparation for returning to the UK!

The flight left on time, the journey was very short (7 1/2/ hours) as we were helped along by strong Trans-Atlantic winds, and the monotony was interrupted by a slight disagreement (!) over the provision (or not) of pre-ordered meals. I thought the outbound trip had been too good to be true when we’d all been given what we’d ordered. We landed back in Cardiff at 3:50am which, to our body clocks actually felt like 10:50pm, so by the time we’d driven the hour and a half home, we felt as though we were just having a late night.

I’d been disappointed that our return flight time hadn’t been later in the evening this year, but I must admit that we found the readjustment back into UK time so much easier this way, as we didn’t feel as though we’d lost a night’s sleep anywhere. It was also compensated by an earlier arrival time at the beginning of our trip, so we had been able to enjoy our first evening in Florida, rather than just falling asleep more or less as soon as we’d arrived. Given the choice, I think I’d opt for these flight times again.

So, our final verdict of the two weeks? Well, what do you expect me to say, other than “Fantastic!”? The week in Port Charlotte had been an unexpected delight, as we really didn’t know whether we’d picked an area which would suit us, and our WDW time had been as wonderful as ever. Our one night in the Dolphin had been a taste of luxury, our first experiment with villa life had been a definite hit, and our DVC studio in Old Key West had been equally successful. We hadn’t attacked everything at break-neck speed this time, but still felt we’d covered most of the ground which interested us.

There were many highlights and memorable moments for us, but they would have to include:
 Amy getting stuck in the railings at Epcot,
 Seeing dolphins in the wild,
 Jeremy being ‘moved on’ by the Sheriff in the Port Charlotte Mall,
 The Illuminations Cruise with the other UK DISers,
 The fishing at Old Key West resort
 Rhian’s ‘Dolphins in Depth’ programme,
 Our meal at Boma’s,
And I’m sure Jeremy and the girls would have some more of their own choices to add to my list.

One of the reasons I felt able to relax a little, and not fill every waking moment quite as frantically as we might have done on previous trips, was the fact that our next visit was already on the drawing board, with the flights booked and deposit paid! So, now I can put away my trip reporting pen and head into planning mode ready for October 2002… and do you know what? I just can’t wait!

 

[wicket2005]

Thanks Hiliary, you kept me entertained during my lunch. We have got earlier flights this time, arrive at 12.30 and come home at 3.20 am. I am hoping the 3.20 am return will make jet lag a bit easier. Also thanks for jogging my mind about checking the car before driving it off, I had forgotten about that.