Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention: Chris and I are staying at Kidani Village with a Savannah View May 25-27.
I am so happy to have this to look forward to, and so grateful to my grandparents' DVC!
Day 2: Part 2
After the impromptu family reunion, Chris, his GM James, and I walked over to the boat dock to catch the friendship to DHS. After we had been waiting for awhile, I realize that I forgot the giftcards and the camera: which were kind of important, as we were eating at Yachtsman Steakhouse that night. Chris begrudgingly ran back to the room, but we definitely missed a boat or two. Oh well. I snapped these pictures while we were waiting:
Sea Breeze Point and The Attic!
I also should have told Chris to grab me a sweatshirt or a cardigan. I was wearing a sleeveless dress, and I was FREEZING. I was going to be a tough New England/Milwaukee girl and tough it out, but by the time we arrived at DHS I was ready to turn into a popsicle (just like Jennifer). Chris made me buy a sweatshirt; thankfully, they had the one I had been eyeballing at disneystore.com for a month! (The picture is lifted from the website, mine needs to be washed.)
After I bought my sweatshirt (by the way, there were only 2 people ahead of me in line but I was in line for almost 20 minutes due to some major incompetence... ugh), we headed over to the streets of America so I could see the Osborne Lights. I was SO excited! Chris and James kept being all annoying and asking "What is it? What do they do?" and I really just wanted them to shut up so I could prepare for the awesomeness that was the lights. They were quiet for a bit though once the lights came on!
I truly could stare at them all day. I also made them stand in line for some PhotoPass pictures.
Yes, James always dresses like that: he's really in to Steampunk. He got asked 8 times if he was a Castmember.
And I really like this one of just Chris and me:
I wanted to stay and look at the lights longer, but I could tell the boys were being restless: and, unfortunately, it wasn't exactly the romantic event I had imagined in my mind. Chris doesn't get to see James very often though, so I bit my tongue. From there, we headed over to the GMR, as it only had about a 15 minute wait (and the line was INSIDE! It was so cold!).
Just a quick rant about my GMR experience: James is a really nice guy, but he's also a bit of a know-it-all. When we went through the Fantasmic scene, the guide mentioned that the name "Yen Sid" was a palindrome for "Disney," and James started muttering to himself "No, Yes Nid is an anagram, stupid." Blah blah blah. No, James, his name is not Yesnid, it's Yensid. But, again, I was being Nice and didn't say anything. Grr. I hate know it alls who are wrong.
Anyway, after we got off GMR it was less than an hour until our Yachtsman Ressie, so we said goodbye to James and headed out. But first, we snapped some pictures. This one is SO ridic, I had to post it:
We decided to walk to the YC instead of taking the boat. It was cold, but we figured we would be even colder by the water, and we might warm up a little if we walked. (The walk was still REALLY cold though.) I took this pretty picture of the Boardwalk sign:
And here's a good one of the Yachtsman lobby.
Thankfully, we arrived early enough for me to fix myself a little in the restroom; after some park touring and that walk, I was looking a little rough.
I was pretty impressed by Yachtsman at first: I had never been there before, and it was nearly as stuffy as I had imagined. We were led over to a nice couch to wait for our names to be called. I took this picture of the butcher area
Blech! I should preface this, of course, by saying that I am not exactly a beef fan (far from it), but Chris LOVES steak and beef, so I suck it up for him. This picture, however, just reminded me as to why I am not a big beef person! Blergh.
Our name was called, and we were led over to our table: we were seated, unfortunately, at one of those half table/half booth contraptions but, unlike at most other places, the tables were actually a decent way's apart so we weren't sitting on top of another couple. That's the worst part of being a twosome at WDW: we always get the crappiest tables, and I really despise those half booth contraptions. This one was at least the best one I had been at. Our server was nice and fairly attentive, but also fairly slow. Oh well.
For dinner, Chris ordered... I don't know, some sort of steak thing. I think a strip?
He said it was good. Those mashed potatoes, however, were SO GOOD!!! Mmmm.
I got the ravioli:
And it was certainly the fanciest ravioli I have ever had. The beef was really tender, and I imagine the beef was excellent, but I am just not a beef fan. It was pretty good though!
For dessert, I had a piece of peanut butter chocolate cake, with a side of salted caramel gelato.
While the dessert was good, I complained about it all week. Why? Because it was $11. Do you see that piece of cake?!?! That is NOT an $11 piece of cake. It was like 3 bites! And the gelato was completely surrounded by salt: which I suppose is to bring out the flavor, but that was just entirely too much salt. Yuck!
It was around this time that I got a phone call from my dad. I was starting to get worried about him: his flight landed at 7:30, and I hadn't heard from him by 9:00. (I was sure he would call me because he couldn't figure out how to use the Magical Express.) Instead, the phone call I got was even better:
"Jack, you're NEVER gonna believe what happened to me."
"What?!"
"I almost got arrested!"
"..What?!?! What happened?!"
"Well, you know the monorail thing?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, I got off the plane and I was walking to it (and, by the way, my gate was, like, the furthest away you could be), and as soon as I got there, the monorail took off. So I was like 'Aw, man' but then I saw three doors: two of them were roped off, but the one in the middle wasn't. So, I figured, hey, it's a nice night out, I'll just walk! So I was walking along and then a security guard came up to me with his hand on his gun and told me to drop my bag and put my hands up. So I did, and he told me I was breaching security and was committing an act of terrorism!"
Oh yes. My dad had decided, instead of waiting another 3 minutes for the next shuttle, to walk along the path. After the security guard yelled at him, he was escorted to a private room where he was patted down ("molested," as he called it), questioned for an hour, and screamed at by a FBI agent over the phone. He was also police escorted to the DME. This proved to be EXCELLENT fodder for the rest of the week, as any time any one of us saw a heavily marked security door, we would tell my dad to go through it. This is, perhaps, his last greatest story, and this is how I like to remember him: as lovable, yet foolish. (He sent us a text on the 8th that simply said "Saw the door. Clearly marked.")
Well, that provided something to talk about for the rest of dinner! After dinner, we headed back to our hotel room (it was such a quick walk!), and awhile later, my dad swung by and we visited. He told us more of his inquisition (which I filled in earlier), and we made fun of him. A LOT.
We tried to get him some food, but we went down to the quick service place at 11:05: and they closed at 11! (he was not a happy camper) We said goodnight a little after that, and then Chris and I went to sleep.
in shock with Lacy's amazing gesture to take Thunder in. That's pretty radical. +1 to Lacy! 
)
Now THAT is a quite a story--I love it. That's the best way to remember someone. <3
