franandaj
I'm so happy, I could BOUNCE!
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
- Messages
- 37,723
Day 2
I woke up around 7ish and since we didn't have any morning plans, I closed the curtains in the living room to block out the morning sun, and went back to bed. It wasn't until around 9AM that I woke up feeling rested enough that starting to wake up made sense. It was still 6AM on my body clock, but since I went to sleep around 9PM my time, it was OK, I would eventually adjust. I opened the curtains and finished unpacking the suitcases. Since we were staying a while I always like to unpack and put things in the closet and drawers and such. If we are staying 4 nights or longer I don't want to live out of a suitcase.
While I was unpacking there was a knock on the door. It was housekeeping and they wanted to come in and change the towels or do something. I thought that was odd since we don’t get trash and towel service until the 3rd or 4th day of the stay. She seemed adamant about doing it, and I told her that she could come back after noon. I hoped we would be gone by then since our FP opened at 12:25PM.
When packing the days before, I had forgotten to get the whole bean coffee from my garage freezer so I was going to need to have someone else prepare my caffeine this morning. Fran had pulled the covers back over her head so I knew she wasn't ready to get up yet. I went down to The Petit Cafe and got myself an Americano.
They also had some pastries in their case, but they didn’t appeal to me that much.
Then I went to wait for the front desk so that they could activate my new Marie MB. It came out in December and I was lucky enough to have a friend pick it up for me and then through the friend of a friend network it was delivered just a week before my trip.
Back in the room, I told Fran it was time to get up. She'd had plenty of sleep by now, and I was going to make breakfast. Now remember this is the "unplanned" trip. Tonight on the loose schedule we were going to Trader Sam's and trying to get 'Ohana bread pudding. Fran said she didn't care what we did, or if we even went there. Ugh, I hope I can get her out of this funk.
But since she said that I decided to do some research. You see when we couldn't get into Topolino the night before, I made a reservation for 9PM on Monday night. Last night, dining that late would have been fine cause we were still on West Coast time, but one week into the trip that would be pretty brutal to eat that late.
So I opened up the app and looked for what was available for tonight and lo and behold there was an 8:20 reservation available, so I snagged it and canceled the Monday night one.
I fixed us a small breakfast. I wasn't feeling like eating eggs, I just made some bacon, the pastry we got the night before, and V8 juice on the side.
The ice maker in our fridge wasn't working so I headed down the hall to the ice machine to get ice to fill my water bottle. On my way I ran into a gal from maintenance and asked if the ice maker should be working. She followed me back to the room and took a quick look at it. She was pretty sure the water had never been hooked up, but to fix it she would need a work order. She had me call the front desk and within moments she was back to fix it (she just waited in the hall). Another guy came up a few minutes later and she admitted that she was unable to move the fridge herself, but the water line not being connected was indeed the problem.
We took down her name so that we could give her a good word, that helps CMs a lot. Her name was Mirana
At this point we were pretty much ready to go. Our FP started at 12:25 and the first and last were throw away passes. The only option for transport from this place to Epcot and DHS is the skyliner. While many of you might think this is cool. I'm still a little traumatized that it's first accident happened the first day on my arrival of the last trip. Plus the fact that Fran and I have to ride in separate cars and several cars apart. Only one scooter can travel in the gondola. I have separation anxiety and the fact that I could be stuck alone in a car is a little disconcerting. Even more so is the fact that Fran could be stuck alone and have to be helped out without me being able to be there to help and comfort her.
But we do what we must do and if we have to ride the dang skyliner to get anywhere, we ride the skyliner.
It was kinda cool soaring up over the tops of the resorts.
However, it was definitely a little disconcerting as the gondolas entered the terminal. The cars approach the stopped ones rather quickly. But the braking mechanism does kick in quickly. I can see how the accident happened. I suppose after a few dozen rides, I will be OK with the whole thing.
Here is me being brave taking a selfie in my solo car.
We took one car from the Riviera to the CBR and then we had to disembark. The CBR is the "hub" for the Skyliner and they have three different lines converging here. Once we finished our leg from the Riviera, we had to transfer to another line for the Studios.
We arrived at DHS without incident and I was only slightly traumatized waiting for Fran's car to arrive.
When we got there it was just before 1PM and she had a thing we needed to take care of online for DL CA at 10AM Pacific so we went through security and then waited while she took care of business on her phone right at 1PM. You know how these Disney things work, they sell out in less than minutes.
Business taken care of we headed to our first FP which was Star Tours. They had all new scenes, at least to me! It was very cool! She checked out the dump shop with no purchases! Shocking! And then we went to our next FP. ToT.
It was very cool. I love this version. It's so much better than ours was. Ours is much better as Guardians.
We checked out RnRC but the standby was 75 minutes. I was scared off by the fact that the single rider line could be as long as the standby line sign. Plus we were both feeling a bit peckish and wanted something to eat. We didn't want to wait in a line, so we checked the app for mobile ordering. Rosie's American Grill won with the Chili Cheese Dog inspired by @Steppesister even though hers was from Cosmic Ray's in MK. It was a huge amount of food. I'm not sure how one person eats this much alone!
We did a little shopping. I found some Dark Roast coffee in one of the shops, and we found Mickey hand corn holders. Fran won't use those little yellow corn ear holders that we have at home, but she said she would use these.
We decided to head to Disney Springs and Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar. We could get there on a bus and get back to our resort via bus. While the skyliner might be cool, it's kinda lonely riding a by yourself. Even if we don't talk to each other on the busses, the fact that we are in a space together is calming.
Bus service started to DS at 4PM and we headed out of the park and in that direction around 3:45. When we got to the bus stop there were already two scooters waiting. At 3:52 a bus pulled up and they boarded. The driver said he would send another bus our way. Sure enough at 3:59 another bus to DS was pulling up!
We exited the bus to this sign and I took that as an omen that we made a good choice on our next activity.
We missed getting to sit in the diving bell by less than a minute. The host outside was talking to us as we parked our scooters and sort of delayed us walking into the bar. Just as we started to walk in a family strode in without saying hello to the guy and made a beeline for the diving bell. Later they were joined by folks who doubled their party in size, and they moved outside, but we were almost done so I didn't move to snag it.
I ordered the Fountain of Youth, cause it was a blue drink. It had vodka, blue curacao, white cranberry juice, and sweet and sour. It was really sweet, I didn't care for it, Fran liked it a lot and offered to finish it for me
We contemplated some appetizers and she almost ordered the queso, but I wanted to eat our fancy dinner that evening.
She got the Monkey mug drink.
When they bring you the collectible mug, the waitress told her to give him a name and feed him twice a day.
Looking around the room, they have all kinds of interesting stuff on the walls.
Our waitress told us fun stories about some of the stuff on the walls, the only thing I remember was the coin that got seared into one of the bad guy's hands was on a wall somewhere.
When my first drink was too sweet, I ordered a Florida Mule, and this one was very good. It was much better.
The room has all kinds of neat stuff going on, we were seated near this ancient ice making machine. It would bubble, make some noise, and then it put out one of those cool sphere ice cubes like they serve at 1901.
We finished our drinks, paid the check, and headed back to the bus.
I swear for this day we had @pkondz's bus pass cause the moment we pulled up at the bus stop, I turned around to see a Riviera bus pulling up to take us home.
Fran took a nap, and I worked on my notes, took a shower, got dressed, and generally futzed around until she got up and did the same.
Since dinner was in our hotel, I just walked from the West Tower where our room was located to the East Tower where all the restaurants were located.
We took the elevator two floors up, and Fran asked, "Where do we go?" And as soon as we got out of the elevator she said, "Oh, it's just like the Fantasy." Tell me if you understand that reference cause I had the exact same thought!
We put in our name in at the podium, and they told us the various locations we could wait. We chose the Terrace and headed across the restaurant to the door. Now I knew that Ellen (podsnel for those who remember her), was going to be dining here tonight. She had a reservation at 7PM with all her TA folks as they were on a business trip. But she didn't know Fran and I had made a reservation for this evening. Those of you who know Ellen will remember her as a shy and reserved kind of gal who doesn't get overly emotional and do crazy things, right? Haha who am I kidding? As soon as she saw us, she jumped out of her chair, came running over giving us big hugs, and saying, "Oh my god! I haven't seen you in forever," and all sorts of other nice things. As we were getting reacquainted, the hostess came to tell us our table was ready. She followed us to the table and we chatted some more until one of her bosses came over, so we said we would catch up later.
They brought us bread and oil with balsamic while we perused the menu.
We started off with the Ricotta, the description says: Tomato, Aged Balsamic, Cracked Pepper, Basil, Epi
I'm not sure what we were expecting, it was not this, however it was absolutely delicious. They make it in house, and we really enjoyed it. We ended up taking some of it home to save room for our entree.
While we were waiting, the fireworks at Epcot went off. They gave us some notice to go out on the terrace so we could watch them. Not the best pictures, but what I could get from my cell phone just to give you the idea.
Our next course was the Linguine Scampi, Shrimp, San Marzano Tomatoes, Garlic, Lemon, Italian Olive Oil
It was a huge portion. This picture is after we split it in half. The sauce and pasta were very tasty. The shrimp were overcooked. It was a little disappointing. Last October, for half the price, we had a lovely scampi at Tony's with perfectly cooked shrimp. This dish was rather unfortunate. We ate it anyways because I think for somewhere around $40 we weren't going to let it go to waste. As I said the sauce and pasta were very good.
We contemplated dessert and the chocolate cake with a warm center was tempting, but we weren't really hungry after stuffing ourselves with pasta, cheese and bread. We could have eaten it, but we were smart and passed on dessert.
Ellen and her party were just finishing up, and I finally met Brooke, TA extraordinaire, and all around nice person. FB has been suggesting that I add her as a friend for quite a while now, and we agreed that since we have met, now we can actually be friends!
Ellen insisted we take this picture.
They were heading over to the Boardwalk to have a drink with MEK. We were too darned tired to do anything but go back to the room.
Fran ate some of her cookies in the room, and had some of the raspberry pastry for a midnight snack.
I took a bath and went to sleep.
I woke up around 7ish and since we didn't have any morning plans, I closed the curtains in the living room to block out the morning sun, and went back to bed. It wasn't until around 9AM that I woke up feeling rested enough that starting to wake up made sense. It was still 6AM on my body clock, but since I went to sleep around 9PM my time, it was OK, I would eventually adjust. I opened the curtains and finished unpacking the suitcases. Since we were staying a while I always like to unpack and put things in the closet and drawers and such. If we are staying 4 nights or longer I don't want to live out of a suitcase.
While I was unpacking there was a knock on the door. It was housekeeping and they wanted to come in and change the towels or do something. I thought that was odd since we don’t get trash and towel service until the 3rd or 4th day of the stay. She seemed adamant about doing it, and I told her that she could come back after noon. I hoped we would be gone by then since our FP opened at 12:25PM.
When packing the days before, I had forgotten to get the whole bean coffee from my garage freezer so I was going to need to have someone else prepare my caffeine this morning. Fran had pulled the covers back over her head so I knew she wasn't ready to get up yet. I went down to The Petit Cafe and got myself an Americano.
They also had some pastries in their case, but they didn’t appeal to me that much.
Then I went to wait for the front desk so that they could activate my new Marie MB. It came out in December and I was lucky enough to have a friend pick it up for me and then through the friend of a friend network it was delivered just a week before my trip.
Back in the room, I told Fran it was time to get up. She'd had plenty of sleep by now, and I was going to make breakfast. Now remember this is the "unplanned" trip. Tonight on the loose schedule we were going to Trader Sam's and trying to get 'Ohana bread pudding. Fran said she didn't care what we did, or if we even went there. Ugh, I hope I can get her out of this funk.
But since she said that I decided to do some research. You see when we couldn't get into Topolino the night before, I made a reservation for 9PM on Monday night. Last night, dining that late would have been fine cause we were still on West Coast time, but one week into the trip that would be pretty brutal to eat that late.
So I opened up the app and looked for what was available for tonight and lo and behold there was an 8:20 reservation available, so I snagged it and canceled the Monday night one.
I fixed us a small breakfast. I wasn't feeling like eating eggs, I just made some bacon, the pastry we got the night before, and V8 juice on the side.
The ice maker in our fridge wasn't working so I headed down the hall to the ice machine to get ice to fill my water bottle. On my way I ran into a gal from maintenance and asked if the ice maker should be working. She followed me back to the room and took a quick look at it. She was pretty sure the water had never been hooked up, but to fix it she would need a work order. She had me call the front desk and within moments she was back to fix it (she just waited in the hall). Another guy came up a few minutes later and she admitted that she was unable to move the fridge herself, but the water line not being connected was indeed the problem.
We took down her name so that we could give her a good word, that helps CMs a lot. Her name was Mirana
At this point we were pretty much ready to go. Our FP started at 12:25 and the first and last were throw away passes. The only option for transport from this place to Epcot and DHS is the skyliner. While many of you might think this is cool. I'm still a little traumatized that it's first accident happened the first day on my arrival of the last trip. Plus the fact that Fran and I have to ride in separate cars and several cars apart. Only one scooter can travel in the gondola. I have separation anxiety and the fact that I could be stuck alone in a car is a little disconcerting. Even more so is the fact that Fran could be stuck alone and have to be helped out without me being able to be there to help and comfort her.
But we do what we must do and if we have to ride the dang skyliner to get anywhere, we ride the skyliner.
It was kinda cool soaring up over the tops of the resorts.
However, it was definitely a little disconcerting as the gondolas entered the terminal. The cars approach the stopped ones rather quickly. But the braking mechanism does kick in quickly. I can see how the accident happened. I suppose after a few dozen rides, I will be OK with the whole thing.
Here is me being brave taking a selfie in my solo car.
We took one car from the Riviera to the CBR and then we had to disembark. The CBR is the "hub" for the Skyliner and they have three different lines converging here. Once we finished our leg from the Riviera, we had to transfer to another line for the Studios.
We arrived at DHS without incident and I was only slightly traumatized waiting for Fran's car to arrive.
When we got there it was just before 1PM and she had a thing we needed to take care of online for DL CA at 10AM Pacific so we went through security and then waited while she took care of business on her phone right at 1PM. You know how these Disney things work, they sell out in less than minutes.
Business taken care of we headed to our first FP which was Star Tours. They had all new scenes, at least to me! It was very cool! She checked out the dump shop with no purchases! Shocking! And then we went to our next FP. ToT.
It was very cool. I love this version. It's so much better than ours was. Ours is much better as Guardians.
We checked out RnRC but the standby was 75 minutes. I was scared off by the fact that the single rider line could be as long as the standby line sign. Plus we were both feeling a bit peckish and wanted something to eat. We didn't want to wait in a line, so we checked the app for mobile ordering. Rosie's American Grill won with the Chili Cheese Dog inspired by @Steppesister even though hers was from Cosmic Ray's in MK. It was a huge amount of food. I'm not sure how one person eats this much alone!
We did a little shopping. I found some Dark Roast coffee in one of the shops, and we found Mickey hand corn holders. Fran won't use those little yellow corn ear holders that we have at home, but she said she would use these.
We decided to head to Disney Springs and Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar. We could get there on a bus and get back to our resort via bus. While the skyliner might be cool, it's kinda lonely riding a by yourself. Even if we don't talk to each other on the busses, the fact that we are in a space together is calming.
Bus service started to DS at 4PM and we headed out of the park and in that direction around 3:45. When we got to the bus stop there were already two scooters waiting. At 3:52 a bus pulled up and they boarded. The driver said he would send another bus our way. Sure enough at 3:59 another bus to DS was pulling up!
We exited the bus to this sign and I took that as an omen that we made a good choice on our next activity.
We missed getting to sit in the diving bell by less than a minute. The host outside was talking to us as we parked our scooters and sort of delayed us walking into the bar. Just as we started to walk in a family strode in without saying hello to the guy and made a beeline for the diving bell. Later they were joined by folks who doubled their party in size, and they moved outside, but we were almost done so I didn't move to snag it.
I ordered the Fountain of Youth, cause it was a blue drink. It had vodka, blue curacao, white cranberry juice, and sweet and sour. It was really sweet, I didn't care for it, Fran liked it a lot and offered to finish it for me
We contemplated some appetizers and she almost ordered the queso, but I wanted to eat our fancy dinner that evening.
She got the Monkey mug drink.
When they bring you the collectible mug, the waitress told her to give him a name and feed him twice a day.
Looking around the room, they have all kinds of interesting stuff on the walls.
Our waitress told us fun stories about some of the stuff on the walls, the only thing I remember was the coin that got seared into one of the bad guy's hands was on a wall somewhere.
When my first drink was too sweet, I ordered a Florida Mule, and this one was very good. It was much better.
The room has all kinds of neat stuff going on, we were seated near this ancient ice making machine. It would bubble, make some noise, and then it put out one of those cool sphere ice cubes like they serve at 1901.
We finished our drinks, paid the check, and headed back to the bus.
I swear for this day we had @pkondz's bus pass cause the moment we pulled up at the bus stop, I turned around to see a Riviera bus pulling up to take us home.
Fran took a nap, and I worked on my notes, took a shower, got dressed, and generally futzed around until she got up and did the same.
Since dinner was in our hotel, I just walked from the West Tower where our room was located to the East Tower where all the restaurants were located.
We took the elevator two floors up, and Fran asked, "Where do we go?" And as soon as we got out of the elevator she said, "Oh, it's just like the Fantasy." Tell me if you understand that reference cause I had the exact same thought!
We put in our name in at the podium, and they told us the various locations we could wait. We chose the Terrace and headed across the restaurant to the door. Now I knew that Ellen (podsnel for those who remember her), was going to be dining here tonight. She had a reservation at 7PM with all her TA folks as they were on a business trip. But she didn't know Fran and I had made a reservation for this evening. Those of you who know Ellen will remember her as a shy and reserved kind of gal who doesn't get overly emotional and do crazy things, right? Haha who am I kidding? As soon as she saw us, she jumped out of her chair, came running over giving us big hugs, and saying, "Oh my god! I haven't seen you in forever," and all sorts of other nice things. As we were getting reacquainted, the hostess came to tell us our table was ready. She followed us to the table and we chatted some more until one of her bosses came over, so we said we would catch up later.
They brought us bread and oil with balsamic while we perused the menu.
We started off with the Ricotta, the description says: Tomato, Aged Balsamic, Cracked Pepper, Basil, Epi
I'm not sure what we were expecting, it was not this, however it was absolutely delicious. They make it in house, and we really enjoyed it. We ended up taking some of it home to save room for our entree.
While we were waiting, the fireworks at Epcot went off. They gave us some notice to go out on the terrace so we could watch them. Not the best pictures, but what I could get from my cell phone just to give you the idea.
Our next course was the Linguine Scampi, Shrimp, San Marzano Tomatoes, Garlic, Lemon, Italian Olive Oil
It was a huge portion. This picture is after we split it in half. The sauce and pasta were very tasty. The shrimp were overcooked. It was a little disappointing. Last October, for half the price, we had a lovely scampi at Tony's with perfectly cooked shrimp. This dish was rather unfortunate. We ate it anyways because I think for somewhere around $40 we weren't going to let it go to waste. As I said the sauce and pasta were very good.
We contemplated dessert and the chocolate cake with a warm center was tempting, but we weren't really hungry after stuffing ourselves with pasta, cheese and bread. We could have eaten it, but we were smart and passed on dessert.
Ellen and her party were just finishing up, and I finally met Brooke, TA extraordinaire, and all around nice person. FB has been suggesting that I add her as a friend for quite a while now, and we agreed that since we have met, now we can actually be friends!
Ellen insisted we take this picture.
They were heading over to the Boardwalk to have a drink with MEK. We were too darned tired to do anything but go back to the room.
Fran ate some of her cookies in the room, and had some of the raspberry pastry for a midnight snack.
I took a bath and went to sleep.
BRILLIANT!
I would have loved to have done a 1 bedroom (we are a family of 5), but needed to keep the budget more reasonable since we are doing several trips this year. I usually try to rent points through a DVC point rental website, but have had bad for most of my requests for 2020. I will try to remember to post some pics here for you. We go next month.
I'll call you once we get to San Diego on the 20th that way you can see which is better.
). Although I am also trying to persuade my husband on a California or Paris related Disney trip first 
Thanks for taking the time to do these, I really enjoy them 
I'm still bitter about that.
