After our trip to Downtown Disney, we whizzed back to Beach Club Villas to freshen up for dinner at Flying Fish with Nathan & Jensey. I was very excited to learn that they were free to meet us again before we left town!
We had a lovely walk over to the BoardWalk from the Beach Club.
Along the way we passed the wedding location Sea Breeze Point, where we discovered...
Wedding: The Aftermath...
As we passed, I spotted something so sad – they’d forgotten the sand ceremony!
The Loneliest Sand Ceremony
“Um, guys? I’m still here! Hellooooooooooooooo! I can’t exactly wave or anything...”
(A sand ceremony, for those who don’t know, is a popular wedding ceremony substitute for a unity candle. The bride and groom simultaneously pour two different colors of sand into the jar, which is then sealed up and placed at the back of a curio cabinet until one of their children accidentally breaks it while feeling around for a box of matches.)
A sand ceremony in progress, courtesy of the Roots
So when I saw the Loneliest Sand Ceremony I knew somebody (and by “somebody” I mean “the bride”) would freak out when they discovered it was missing. I wracked my brain for a way to get it back to them, like maybe calling the Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings office or wandering the halls at the BoardWalk Conference Center peeping through keyholes for weddings. Just then the father of the bride came huffing and puffing up to Sea Breeze Point. As he snatched the sand ceremony, he said sheepishly, “And this was my only job!”
We continued on to the BoardWalk and got there a little early, so we snapped some pictures.
Better 1...
...Better 2?
This picture isn't blurry - you just need glasses!
When we got to Flying Fish, Nathan & Jensey were already there, as usual – they beat us everywhere! I was hoping we’d be seated in the tent-y part of the restaurant, but no dice. At least we had a
view of the tent-y part!
Flying Fish is another restaurant that we tried on our honeymoon and weren’t knocked out by but really want to like it so we tried again. I remember on our first visit, our scallops were burned (they called it “grilled”) – yikes!
This time, DH and I played it safe and split the dish everyone raves about:
Signature Flying Fish Cafe Potato-Wrapped Red Snapper - Creamy Leek Fondue, veal glace, and Red Wine and Cassis Butter Sauce
It was pretty good, but this was the first time on the whole trip that we split a dish and I didn’t feel like I got enough. They didn’t split it for us, either – we had to transfer gloppy leek fondue and red wine sauce to the extra plate they brought.
Nathan & Jensey split the Signature Flying Fish Cafe Char-Crusted New York Strip Steak - Wilted Rhapini, Roasted Fingerling Potatoes, rainbow carrots and Classic Sauce Foyot – another dish everyone raves about. I like the idea that a seafood restaurant like Flying Fish serves the best steak on property, but I can never bring myself to not order seafood there!
I don’t know what they thought of their meal, so I will make it up:
“I can't really taste all those adjectives in the description...”
It was so much fun to hang out with them again, even though it’d only been about 24 hours since we’d seen them last. It seems like each time we meet, we discover more in common – this time it was our mutual affection for
Mystery Science Theater 3000. As it turned out, they’d just watched “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” which features one of my absolute favorite MST3K lines: [Martians capturing Santa] “Santa Claus, you’re coming to
town!” Um, OK, you had to be there....
Anyway, I got to brag about the time
I met the hosts of MST3K, and then we expounded at length about the their new venture,
RiffTrax, which offers HIGH-larious MP3 commentaries of current movies that you play along with the movie as you watch it.
Any dining experience that lets me expound at length is A-OK in my book!
Nathan tries out Lacey’s prize – turns out it can’t actually be used as a replacement eyeball...
And our server was very nice and eager to please. She even brought us our sixth FREE anniversary dessert.
Guess what it was.... just guess! (No, flatbread doesn’t count as a dessert, even in Orlando)....
Free Creme Brulee!
After dinner we walked into Epcot to catch IllumiNations, doing a little window shopping along the way. We didn’t have a lot of time to find a good spot for the show, so we lurked at the rope blocking off the upper French terrace, hoping that the corporate event scheduled there would be a no-show cuz of the cold. As it turned out, they never did show up, but the guide still wouldn’t take down the rope – booo!
It turned out to be a pretty crummy place to view the show, but it wasn’t until later that Jensey and I discovered we’d both been kicking ourselves thinking we were the ones who picked it (which means it was obviously Nathan & DH’s fault, somehow, and they’d both better make it up to us with cake!)
IllumiNations from behind the velvet rope at the upper French terrace
It was also FREEZING cold again, and the wind was blowing smoke our way. Boo! After the show we hustled back to our room at the Beach Club, cranked up the heat, and cut four more slabs of leftover anniversary cake! We kept Nathan & Jensey there as long as we could (“Um... did we tell you about the time DH threw up...?”) but they were eventually able to sneak out when we slipped into a sugar coma.
Up Next: Last park day, and Dancing Around the World Showcase!