Hi all, we're back and wanted to drop in before I start my mounds of laundry.
4) Met Music City Mama at the Sci Fi. We were the hitchhikers in their car!!!

What are the chances of that???
Pretty crazy, huh? It was so nice meeting you! We wound up staying the whole day and waited it out for Hoopla in the rain until they announced that it was cancelled.

Did you wind up seeing it another night?
And how about that storm Sunday night?? In the eight years + we've been here, we've never experienced one that crazy!!! What a show!!
Hi Teena!

I know we already talked about this last Monday, but I just wanted to pipe in about what an awful storm this was. Like I mentioned, we live where have "tornado season" and the weather that night seemed perfectly capable of producing one. Pretty scary. We went into Le Cellier that night with not even a hint that the weather was anything other than very nice and came out to that.

And when we finally braved it to walk back to the BC, we caught the end of Illuminations. Can't believe they didn't cancel it.
Thanks, Teena, for introducing the boys (especially my 9 year old) to pin trading, although, DH and I are still not sure if we should be "thanking" you.

I'll be back later with a funny story re: something DS9 said about you.
I can't weigh in on To Cruise or Not To Cruise, having never done it. (I get motion sick just going on the boat from the Beach Club to Disney's Hollywood Studios.)
But I have stayed at both the Royal Pacific and the Hard Rock over at Universal. If you're staying there for convenience to the Universal Parks, go for the Hard Rock. It's a much, much shorter walk to the theme parks. It felt like it took forever to walk from the Royal Pacific to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Islands of Adventure. And the wait for a boat was extremely long.
I'm staying at Portofino Bay for the first time next month, so I can't comment on that one yet. But I think the commute to the theme parks is even longer from there. (I'm going for a conference, so distance won't matter to me.)
I think the Yacht Club and Beach Club are much nicer than the Royal Pacific and the Hard Rock.
I can't speak for HRH, but BC/YC are definitely nicer than RPR.
Thank you! Although I was just so happy to be going back to BC (at first I thought we were going to have to stay at the Dolphin) but in my heart I really missed CL. I was so lucky that when we were able to upgrade to CL they had an opening. Unfortunately they changed it so that families of 5 cannot book a gv cl room, just sv cl or deluxe cl. While I LOVED our deluxe cl room that year it definitely wasn't in our budget this time. So I'm praying that we get one of the better sv rooms - but at least we're back to CL!!!!
Feckless - We are venturing over to the "dark side" for three nights. We're staying at Royal Pacific so I'll let you know how it goes! The other two times we went to US we stayed at HRH so I'm a little leery. The kids really want to see Harry Potter world and run some crazy roller coasters. However given the choice I'd dump it in a second for a chance for a cruise!
Best Aunt - now you've got me nervous. When we stayed at HRH it was a quick walk to US. I thought that RPR was closes to IOA - how long of a walk are we talking? Longer than from BC to DHS, because we do that one all the time! Now I'm thinking of switching over to HRH if it's a big difference. Kids picked RPR.
The walk is about 10 minutes from RPR to IOA. Definitely shorter than the Epcot resorts area to DHS. I plan on doing a brief review of US/IOA and RPR on that forum in the next few days.
I need to start on laundry, but I'll be back later. Happy Father's Day to the dads!