I guess I better finish the trip report part of this pretty soon, eh?
On our last day, my parents joined us. We started the day chowing down on cherry turnovers and crumb cake, and my parents arrived at Beach Club at shortly before 9. The wife and I realized that we forgot to pick up an Epcot 25th anniversary shirt we wanted so she and Jack stayed behind (they didn't have park hoppers) and my parents and I made the short walk into Epcot and I stopped into Mousegear for the shirt (and some extra monorail track while I was there
). Epcot was
empty at this point!
We walked back, loaded our luggage into their car, and drove over to Animal Kingdom. First stop was fastpasses for Everest, then we waited in line for the Nemo musical. I think we ended up in exactly the same seats we sat in last trip - about 6 rows back from the front of the stage, very close! The show was still good, and photography was now allowed so I shot a decent number of photos. They are taking "no flash" seriously, and a CM came by our row twice to track down someone who was sitting to our left occasionally taking flash photos. That reminds me, I didn't mention this in the last day's trip report, but on Spaceship Earth, they did a voiceover at one point to tell someone to stop taking flash photos. Now, it would be really slick if they could tell just that particular vehicle, then I'd be very happy to see them crack down on everyone.
While I'm on the topic, I will say that I was happily surprised to not see all that much use of flash on dark rides on our whole trip. We saw a little on one Pirates ride, but other than that, I can't remember flashes going off being noticeable. Let's hope this is a positive trend and not just a fluke!
Once Nemo was over, my parents and I rode Everest - my Mom kept her eyes shut through much of it and felt no need to do it again, while my Dad and I got a couple more fastpasses "just in case".
It was getting to be lunchtime by now, and we tried the Tamu Tamu Refreshments counter service. They have tuna, chicken, ham, etc sandwiches on wheat, and the tuna was decent enough (not as good as at Columbia Harbour House, but then, what is?), but seating was a real problem. There were no empty tables and we ended up huddled around a tall (you stand up to use it) table out in the sun. Anyway, we were right next to the drums so Jack went and played on those after we ate, and looking over the bridge, we noticed an alligator and a turtle hanging out in the water.
Next stop was Kilimanjaro Safari, a pretty good ride (including a rhino right next to the trucks), except the lions were completely hidden, and nearly all the animals were on the
left side of the truck and I was all the way on the
right side!
Oh well, not a huge deal, it just meant yet another visit without many good Safari photos.
Next up was Pangani Forest, and I
finally got decent photos of those darned naked mole rats!
After that, we took the train to the petting zoo, then headed back so that we could try to catch the Lion King show. We missed the first minute or two of crowd warm-up and animal noise training, so I missed the photography restrictions. There must not have been many as it looked like a sporting event with all the flashes going off! Almost worse were the many little focus assist beams - usually you don't notice them, unless you're facing another bleacher full of seats like you are in that show. The flashes and focus assist lights were
very annoying, to say the least.
Dinner was coming fairly soon, so we split up and my father and I did a quick ride on Dinosaur, which was pretty much a walk-on, then used our fastpasses for another Everest ride. We then headed for Yak & Yeti for our dinner there. I've heard great things about the theming in the different rooms but we really didn't get a chance to check it out, as we were seated in the very first table near the entrance. Oh well, that's a neat room, too... There's really not much on the menu that appeals to me but what I did have was pretty decent. I wasn't blown away by the service - it wasn't
bad but not you expect from a Disney table service restaurant. Also, for some reasons, our receipts were different here than our other five table service ones, which no receipt that shows you the total of what it
would have cost and suggested 18-20% tips, so I had to figure that out by hand. Kind of a pain.
Speaking of that, the new multiple-receipt thing they do for the dining plan is a bit of a debacle. The waiter brings out two receipts - and honestly, I can't even remember what was on the second. One is a normal-looking receipt with a spot to put a tip at the bottom, along with suggested tips. I think the other was similar but had to do with the dining plan. I was putting the tips on my Disney Visa (5% back on dining at the moment!) so I'd give the waiter my room key and the Disney Visa. They'd come back a couple minutes later with more receipts - one gets signed for the dining plan (and shows you how many you have left), another is another standard restaurant-style one for the charge card, again with a spot to fill in the tip, but this time with the tip showing as the only charge. If you weren't understanding it, it'd look like they're asking for a tip on the tip! I did spend a couple minutes talking to the waiter at the SciFi Drive-In and his biggest frustration is the amount of paperwork it takes now, and that it's no fun telling customers that the tip isn't included, and no appetizer, either. I couldn't get out of him whether or not he thought he was being taken care of better under the old way or the new one. Personally, I'd much rather pay a little extra for the plan and put gratuities back on there to be paid automatically.
Anyway, at this point, the park was in Extra Magic Hours mode so my parents wouldn't be able to see any more attractions, so we wandered out to the exit, stopping here and there to look at things. We said our final goodbye to Disney World and made the drive back to Cape Coral.
The rest of the trip is relatively simple.
We did virtually nothing at all on Thursday except lie around the condo and go swimming occasionally. On Friday, we went for a boat ride, stopped at a restaurant for lunch, and came back. We did get to see a dolphin in the canals and I got a few shots, other than that it was a fairly uneventful ride.
On Saturday, we went to Ft Myers Beach, which was
very crowded, and worked at sand castles for a little while. We wandered down the pier, which has signs on it forbidding shark fishing, and in the time we were down there, only one guy fishing caught anything - a shark about a foot long or so! After everything got a good luck, he did toss it back (it probably didn't hurt than a DEA enforcer was heading over!) After that, we picked up our rental car from the newly redesigned Ft Myers Airport, which was amazingly quick and easy. We headed back to the condo for another swim, then I headed out to meet ukcatfan and his wife and kids. This was a real blast, I had originally figured that it would be a fairly quick visit then I'd meet back up with the rest of the family, but we ended up chatting for a while (2 hours? maybe not quite that long but pretty close) and could have kept going but I really had to get back to the family. Kevin, it was great meeting you and your charming wife, hopefully we can get together again in a future trip.
Sunday morning, we loaded up the car and headed for Orlando. I had plans of visiting the Belz outlet store that has discontinued WDW stuff for 50-80% off, but despite my best efforts, I either couldn't find it, or found it and thought that it was the wrong place. It actually seems to be the latter - apparently the name changed to Prime Outlets, but when I miraculously found a parking spot (the place was completely full, with cars circling endlessly) and looked at a mall map, it didn't look right - from what I'd read, the place I was looking for had two Disney outlets, plus a Universal Studios one. This had no Universal and only one Disney. I guess we should have checked it out but we were running of time, so we headed back to the car. After some more driving around, I gave up in frustration and we just stopped by Wendy's on the way to the airport. Fortunately everything went smoothly there, security wasn't too busy and moved quickly, and our flight was uneventful and landed about 10 minutes early. Then back to the grind. Bleah!
So that's it! The complete trip report. Now I've started processing the photos properly, and I'll add some more ones to the thread.
I read parts of the manual today while I was stuck waiting in jury duty!
I am inspired for my upcoming trip. My newest lens is a fisheye, so I can't wait to get there and start shooting now! Thanks for sharing.
) I was wondering what kind of strap you are using for your tripod. I have a bag for mine, but it's more of a pain to have to take it out of the bag and then set it up. I'm thinking a simple strap would make it one less step to go through to get to using the tripod.
