Hi All~
I really wish I could have posted each day of the trip...I was SO excited to do so. Oh well.
We headed back to meet our friends, Diane & Don. They arrived on July 4th and we met in the Lodge lobby. Diane & I actually met on the old Disney AOL boards...we were both CM's at TDS and have been friends for years! She lives in Omaha and we live in MA, so we get to see each other once a year at WDW (sometimes twice if we are lucky!)
When I came out of the ladies room, I saw Dana talking to Don. Diane and I hugged and then she immediately told me what happened a few minutes prior to our meeting. When they arrived in the lobby, they saw Dana standing by a chair with a blonde woman sitting in it. Diane thought it was me so she came up behind the woman and kissed her on the head!

well, the woman did not find it the LEAST bit amusing, and one could possibly understand that....until the rest of the story unfolded. She remained sitting in the chair, and then her husband came over shaking his head. Apparently, their room was not ready. I believe at this point it was about 4:00. Well, this woman went ballistic! She was yelling and extremely angry. She then picked up the house phone and started yelling at the CM. She said she was going to try and get a room at the AKL. We never saw them again so perhaps they did get their room at the AKL.
We had dinner ressies for Kona so we took a bus to the MK. Can I just tell you, the 'express' bus to the MK rocks!!!!!!!!!

in all honesty, the bus service was fantastic this trip. I have to say nearly EVERY time we got to the bus stop, our bus was waiting for us wherever we were going. I remember years ago this was not the case at the Lodge. We decided to walk into the MK for an hour or so since Diane & Don had just arrived. We did not find it as crowded as we thought it would be (of course we later found out it had been closed down for a period of time, and that later on in the evening Main Street was gridlocked

). We left when it began to rain and hopped on the monorail. We stopped at the Contemporary and looked at all the shops. We headed to the Poly, checked in and waited a bit of time. It was VERY crowded. I think we were seated about 10 minutes or so after our PS -oops -ADR

time. LOL.
We went to the beach and man was the place HOPPING!!!!!!!! It was crowded, but very nice. The fireworks were wonderful! The floats from the Water Pageant were floating by and they were shooting fireworks from the island in sync with the display from the MK. They were really beautiful. We headed back to the Lodge and hung out in the lobby drinking coffee/hot cocoa and some people

were even eating yummy ice cream from Roaring Fork...I cannot believe the strawberry is fat free frozen yogurt! YUMBO!
We were going to Epcot the next day so we decided to meet in the lobby @ 9:30. It turns out that was so much better than meeting at the bus stop!!!!!!!!