Part 28: Future World & Cirque du Soleil (continued...)
(Still) Thursday, 2nd November 2006
The Nemo attraction was good - short and sweet, nothing more. We enjoyed the atmosphere in the Living Seas and the boys were very impressed with the diver doing her demonstrations in the tank. Up next was Turtle Talk with Crush and that was a huge hit with all of us. Very funny dialogue. I'll add a short video clip of that later (don't worry, I didn't use any flashes or lights of any kind!).......
After this we made our way to the aquarium and all I can say is "wow"! What a vast array of beautiful fish - such wonderful colours. Alice was mesmerised by them. As luck would have it, it was feeding time and it was quite a sight to see the diver being followed by hundreds and hundreds of fish all anxious to get a bite!
Alice spotted a star fish and Garth told her it was Patrick (Spongebob's friend) - she was thrilled with this and waved at him. Word spread fast and a little boy next to us said to his Dad "I heard that boy say this is Spongebob's friend Patrick" and so a few kids gathered around to get a glimpse of a real life Universal character in Disney's Epcot.
I had visions of all the star fish being removed en masse in a massive tank some time later that day!
Here's Alice entranced by all those fish.....
We spent quite a long time in the Living Seas and it turned out to be a great family occasion and very relaxing because, other than Turtle Talk, there was no great pressure to line up or get FPs or anything like that. We were just browsing and enjoying ourselves. When we were finished there we decided that we'd do one more thing (Test Track) and then make our way over to The Boardwalk for a long break and a swim before returning to Epcot later for our ADR in Alfredos.
So while DH took the boys to Test Track I went to the UK with Alice to see if Snow White was around. She was!! However, Alice was now asleep so I decided to hold off a while and get something to eat and wait for the boys and DH before joining the line. I, er, shared a portion of Harry Ramsden fish and chips with Alice
(yes yes, I know she was asleep but that's not the point. 
) and I 'cleverly' placed the shortbread dessert in front of her.
When the boys came back Alice was waking up so we went to meet Snow White and Dopey. This was a terrific experience and I was so glad Alice had worn her Snow White dress again today
(remember eons ago in the last chapter, she had worn the dress the day before for our Akershus lunch but Snow White wasn't there). Snow White was absolutely wonderful. I asked her why Dopey was there and not the other dwarves and she said "well you see, the alarm went off at 6am but Dopey didn't know that it meant it was time for work so he went back to sleep while the others went to the mine. Rather than leave him alone, I took him with me today".
She then gave this look that said "what can you do with him?" - very funny!
Here are my favourite Alice pics - meeting her very favourite Disney character.
In the first two pics Alice is showing Snow White a little toy zebra called Zeb Zeb she carried with her everywhere in her bag. She had Zeb Zeb cuddled in her hands ready to show Snow White when the time came. Show White was very impressed and said "oh do you love animals?" and Alice said yes so Snow White clapped her hands and said "oh so do I!" Alice was thrilled. I can't say enough good things about this interaction. It was just amazing.
Afterwards, we strolled back to the Boardwalk and, having tried unsuccessfully to get them some lunch for DH and the kids on The Boardwalk (
once more, I must say they really need a decent CS place here!) they opted to have lunch back in the room instead.
As always, time caught up with us too fast and although we had planned to spend an hour or two exploring World Showcase before our ADR at Alfredos, we ended up running out of time and making a dash just to get to the restaurant on time. We loved Alfredos
(and I was sorry to hear about it closing soon). The staff were very accommodating with the meals - at this time Garth was not a fan of pasta
(unlike the rest of us) but this meal brought him around and he actually cleaned his plate - it was a basic pasta in tomato sauce but up to then he would never eat that kinda meal and really loved it!
We had a wonderful server who was very happy to talk about his home country. We love Italy and have been fortunate enough to go their twice. It turns out he grew up in a town very near a place we had stayed in many years ago called St Bartalomeo. He was pleasantly surprised that we knew all about this small town and we had a lovely chat with him. The desserts were delicious and I loved how he brought out the dessert trolley showing us everything they had - it made it so easy to choose. Here's a couple of pics.....
He gave DH a hard time for ordering coffee instead of capachino
and made a big show of serving my capachino
("real Italian") while pretending to practically slam DH's coffee down in front of him. lol! He then said that I was welcome back in Italy any time but not so much DH and his awful coffee.
He was terrific and we left him a nice tip for his trouble. After this it was time to dash back to the BW to get a cab to Downtown Disney for Cirque du Soleil.
First we got this nice sunset pic...
I have vowed that if
(I mean WHEN - must stay positive) we get back to Disney World we're gonna make sure we don't end up running and racing next time. It seemed on this trip like we never left enough time to get places.
Anyway, back at the Boardwalk, the boys needed the bathroom so we took care of that and who should we bump into but Mike and K
(our friends from the TGM forums who we had met for the MNSSHP parade and in Norway the day before!). They had just had dinner in Spoodles and were checking out the hotel itself. We were under pressure to get going by now and I felt a bit rude running off after just a few minutes but we kinda had to. Thankfully there was a taxi van sitting there so we got to DTD in just a few minutes with plenty of time to spare.
Buying tickets for Cirque du Soleil was a much debated and analysed decision. Much as I wanted to see the show
(and I knew DH and the kids would love it too) we had decided that it was just too expensive and we weren't going to do it. Then one night, a couple of weeks before our trip, I saw a documentary on TV about it and it struck me that, most likely, it will never come here to Ireland and so this was a unique chance to see it. The boys were amazed by the stuff they saw in the documentary but being good kids, they know how lucky they are to get to Disney World twice and wouldn't dare push their luck by asking to see Cirque du Soleil. I had told them that the tickets were too dear and they would never question that but I could tell by looking at their reaction to the TV show that they would just love to go. So just a couple of weeks before out trip, I decided to book the tickets and surprise them all!! So a few days before the show, we were talking about the upcoming days and the boys and DH all agreed that Thursday would be a good night to see Illuminations instead of Wednesday. Yikes! That's when I decided to tell them about the surprise and I'm glad I did. We needed a good break that afternoon and I know if I hadn't told them in advance about Cirque du Soleil they'd have worn themselves out in Epcot that day.
So anyway here we are, in Downtown Disney, ready to collect our tickets for this amazing show. Now this is where planning really pays off. I had printed out our booking confirmation and handed it to the guy behind the desk and when he saw it he smiled and said "thank you SO much". I gave a puzzled look and he said "you would not believe how many people show up without their confirmation numbers and not even sure whose name they booked it under many moons ago". So we got our tickets and made our way inside. We found our seats which were fabulous - category 2
(no need whatsoever to pay out for category 1 tickets) - we were bang in the middle with a great view.
Now a funny thing happened here. We were seated in front of a group of friends - about six girls and guys in their 20s. When we took our seats I heard "OH GOD!" from behind us but I didn't pay much attention to it. Then the guy behind me said "we should move, can we move?" Another voice said "why? These seats are great". First voice said "you don't know why we need to move? You can't see why the show is ruined for us now???" I started to think he might be referring to us but at the same time thought no way, that I was maybe being paranoid. But just then I turned to look at the person behind the voice (sitting directly behind me) and as I looked at him just then he pointed his finger at Alice and said to his friend "THAT's why".
Obviously he felt that she would ruin the show for him.
But the best part of this was that ten minutes into the show a group of four or five people came in and thought that the people next to us were in their seats. They stood there and made a big drama out of the fact that someone had taken their seats - all this while the show was going on! A member of staff came quickly to move them and they walked towards the next section where their seats actually were. I thought it was so funny that a group of adults interrupted their (people behind) night whilst Alice did not make one single sound for the whole evening.
When it was over I made a big deal of saying to Alice
(loud enough for those behind me to hear) "you are the BEST girl", "you were SOOOOOOOOOOO good all evening, yes you were, oh yes you were, BEST BEST girl".
We were absolutely exhausted coming out of the show. In fact, Garth was struggling to stay awake towards the end and, as much as he loved it, he was quite relieved that it was over to he could get some sleep. But we were blown away by it and all agree that we had never seen anything like it. DH and Wayne in particular were almost speechless!
We took the
(what seemed like) endless walk to the bus stop and finally our bus arrived and we made our way back to our villa. We were checking out of the BW the next morning
(but due to check back in the following Sunday) so DH and I had to force ourselves to stay awake and pack up our stuff. Again!
This is where I once again questioned the wisdom of changing resorts so many times. But it had to be done. We did as much as we could that night but had to give up eventually, vowing to get up early to do more packing. We soon fell into a deep slumber, having had a really great day. I was really looking forward to the next day too - breakfast at Cape May and then our second Animal Kingdom day.
Thanks for reading!! !
Better safe than sorry I guess.
But when I got there DH said Nemo wasn't starting 'til 10. I guess I missed that piece of info in my planning! But not to worry. I remembered hearing that Character Connection is really quiet first thing in the morning and, as it happened, DH said a CM had approached him earlier asking if they'd like to come into Character Connection as it was empty. So this felt right and off we went and sure enough, we had the whole place to ourselves!! 
I miss BWV & Epcot World Showcase all the time... sigh... The early mornings and late nights are the best. 
That feeling of having Epcot all to yourself... 
Priceless!
Don't keep us waiting too long for more...
Isn't the draw of WDW unbelievable??!
