Mon - DH planning to go to AK early and spend time trying to get the perfect pictures on the safari and the walking trails. I will probably hit Epcot and try some of the Food & Wine stands.....well, the food stands anyway.
Dont know if the pictures were perfect but some were darn close so mission accomplished for him
.and I did hit up a few food stands so mission accomplished for me too!
That evening we plan to go back to the studios for the Osborne Lights. I don't know how smart that is since it's the first night they will be lit and I imagine it will be a zoo - but it's also extra magic hours that night so DH seems to think that will give us a better opportunity (more time) to see the lights. Since we are at Boardwalk we can take the walking path to get "home" so the crowds won't affect us as far as transportation
When I left you last DH was back in the room uploading his pictures, and I walked back from Epcot to take a break for awhile before heading out again that evening.
I showed him my newly purchased (and recently lost and more recently recovered) ring.
And after much drama here it is!
This is the top of it carved out in the shape of a guitar
On one side is the letter B
and on the other is the letter D
After a brief rest in the room, probably did a little laundry and straightened up the kitchen a little we walked to the Hollywood Studios. If you are familiar with the lay-out of the Boardwalk Villas, our room was on the 2nd floor overlooking the quiet pool and the Community Hall. That was handy for Danny at night when he would go down to the hot tub because we were so close. However, with me in my
scooter we had to go all the way back up the hallway to the elevators which are just off the lobby, so I could go down one flight and get outside then we had to walk all the way back around the side of the resort to get on the walking path to the Studios. Had I not been using a scooter we could have gone down a flight of steps near our room and right out and on to the path. My scooter definitely added some additional walking for Danny!
At the Studios we
.uh
.walked around and looked at stuff
.

I dont think we rode any rides because we were there so late and there were no fastpasses available. I think we went to PrimeTime to see if we could get in as a walk-in but the wait was going to be too long. I dont know if we checked anywhere else, or considered any counter service places, but we wound up over at Sci Fi and were able to get in fairly quickly there. We sat there for a few minutes and Danny downloaded the Disney Mobile Magic to my phone. But while we sat there messing with it we discovered that it didnt list Tower of Terror, Rock N Roller Coaster or Toy Story. Didnt understand what good it was if it wasnt showing the good stuff. We played around with the maps thinking if we got to where they were on the map they would pop in we never did have any luck with that.
After just a few minutes of waiting they took us to sit in the back seat of a car on the back row. I ordered the Douple Dip appetizer as a meal its a dish of chili and a dish of spinach avacado dip with a pile of tortilla chips. Danny had the Beef and Blue salad which had a pretty good chunk of steak cut up on a salad. He doesnt like Blue cheese dressing so switched it out for ranch so it was actually Beef and Ranch instead of Beef and Blue.

We both also ordered Diet Cokes. She brought our drinks over and I took a drink (while Danny was still messing with my phone) and it just didnt taste right. I asked Danny to try it and to try his and he agreed with me it was too sweet. We are both actually diet Pepsi drinkers, so we know diet Coke will taste different than we are used to, plus fountain soda usually tastes a little different than bottled, but it was more than that. We thought maybe she brought regular instead of diet so we flagged her down and told her. She whisked them away and brought back 2 more they didnt taste any better. She said she filled them herself. She offered to go try a different drink station. We said if she didnt mind we would appreciate it this time it tasted better. Somebody must have hooked the wrong kind up to the other one, or something. We noticed later that that she only charged us for one drink instead of 2. We also have the Tables in Wonderland discount so our total cost for the meal was $31.14. I finished nearly all of my dip and chili, but only about half the chips he cleaned his plate.
It was only 6:23 when we left and we went from there over to the Writers Stop. For such a little shop, we always manage to spend a lot of time in it. We both love books and they always seem to have some interesting ones in there
..plus they have yummy treats!! Yummy treats like giant cookies we left with a chocolate chip cookie for him and a sugar cookie for me. I really wanted the carrot cake cookie
.but recently I had been having some
ahem
issues

with cream cheese. I hope it was only a temporary thing, because I really like cream cheese, but I wasnt going to tempt fate on vacation so I went with the safer looking, and also yummy, sugar cookie. We bagged them up and put them in the basket of my scooter for later. Check out time was 6:44.
We were in the neighborhood, and the Osborne lights were getting ready to start. But it was the very first night, we didnt know where to be or what was happening, and it was an absolute zoo so after attempting to go over there and wait, we decided that was too much trouble and got out of there. I dont know what we did
.probably walked around and looked at some more stuff. Or maybe it was the other way around
..maybe we went to wait for the lights after we ate, then went to the Writers Stop and by the time we were done the lights had started
.. It could have happened that way
. Im thinking thats more likely.
We stood at the end of the street and he recorded the lights for awhile, a CM came over and got a handful of people doing some line dancing, I tried to stay out of the way of people who were looking up at the lights and not down at the lady in the scooter. Danny was no help blocking traffic because he was attached to the video camera. One guy in particular was doing that walking backwards form of adjusting his camera and about wound up as a passenger in my basket! We tried to carefully work our way down the street. And they were stunning! I wish I could have left the cart behind and walked through the streets instead of spending more time watching traffic than I was watching the lights. Danny walked up and down, and back and forth and all around filming different things from different angles I was trying to follow him, but by the time I would catch up to him in one location he was backtracking to a different one
.it was a joke trying to keep up with him, but it was so crowded I also didnt want to lose sight of him either then spend the rest of the evening trying to find each other again. If you remember the old Family Circus cartoons - just picture any one of them where the kids were supposed to go from Point A to Point B and the route they actually took...
After several minutes of taking in the lights and the music we decided to try Toy Story. It was an Extra Magic Hour night and I think it was right around regular park closing time. I had read somewhere that towards closing time sometimes the wait times that are listed for some of the rides are actually longer than the wait really is
.possibly to discourage people from getting in line so close to closing. Well, we had never done stand-by for Toy Story, so we had never seen Mr Potato Head, we didnt know if we would be back over here early enough to get a fastpass any other day, and we had nothing better to do, so we got in line. I think the wait time said 80 or 90 minutes
.and it was pretty accurate. So much for that theory

Although, I guess it could be true and we were just there at the wrong time because of EMH

We watched Mr Potato Head, we watched the people in line around us, we watched our watches
..and eventually we got to our cart. I dont remember the scores other than Danny beat me but we won the same prize so he didnt beat me by much.
From there we worked our way towards main Street and I think we rode the Great Movie Ride. We considered going down to Tower of Terror, but after the long wait at Toy Story we really didnt want to do another long wait at the Tower. Especially since there I cant take my cart in with me. I usually park it and walk
.but I also usually have fastpasses.
With very little accomplished
.but the goals of eating and watching the lights accomplished, we headed out. On our way we stopped and he took the only pictures of the evening
Three of them of the tree
.and its bald spot. One section of lights near the top wasnt lighting up. Since we were going for the main purpose of seeing the lights Danny hadn't brought any of the still cameras with him - just the movie camera. It does take still pictures, but he just doesn't think to use it as a still camera. I haven't seen the videos yet, so I don't know what else he filmed other than the lights. He may have gotten it out for some of Mr Potato Head, but I wouldn't swear to it.
We walked back to the Boardwalk and stopped downstairs at the gift shop and picked up a couple more bottles of diet coke and a package of bagels for the room. The time is now 9:46 and our first complete day has come to an end.
I am guessing that once back in the room, I did more laundry, got the coffee pot ready for the next morning, got hooked up and went to bed and read for awhile. He most likely went down to the hot tub for a little bit and piddled around on the computer before coming to bed.
The next day was scheduled to be an Epcot day.....