Disney 2010: Day 8 (Part 2)
What day is it again? We’ve lost track of all time and space at this point.
We headed out for dinner around 7pm and wandered around some. Finally settled on TGI Fridays before heading back to the hotel to kill time before we were supposed to meet up with Lee for the shuttle launch. We watched the Bud Shootout, and then John surfed the internet while I started watching Runaway Jury. Almost forgot, we saw this insane Lobstermobile, on the way back to our room, at the “Boston Lobster Feast” buffet. The lobster must weigh as much as the car.
Lee called around 11:20pm, so we headed downstairs to meet him at the front of the hotel. It took around an hour to get to Kennedy Space Center where we would be watching the launch of STS-130. It was scheduled to go at 4:39am. It was very chilly on the causeway where employees were assigned to park. Not much wind, but my hands were freezing as I tried to hold on to my hot chocolate. We were about 4.5 miles away from the launch pad and could see the shuttle. Unfortunately my little P&S camera isn’t good enough to get decent shots so Lee told me he’d send me his once we’re all done.
I sent some commemorative envelopes to selected people at home. They’re addressed and stamped, but won’t get postmarked and mailed until the launch has actually happened. And then we waited, and waited, and waited some more. As we were waiting, the clouds were starting to move in and the chance of a launch dropped from 80% to 30%. Unfortunately the numbers just weren’t on our side — the launch was scrubbed at T-9 (4:30am) because the clouds just wouldn’t clear. It’s been rescheduled for 4:14am Sunday night, so I think we’re going to try again while we’re here.
It took us over 3 hours to get back to our hotel because the traffic was so bad. John is still sleeping, and I’ve been up for less than an hour. I think we’re going to putz around Orlando some and then have dinner at Cafe Tu Tu Tango before heading out again tonight. Since my camera won’t capture any of this, here are some photos from NASA’s photo gallery. (Photo credits and copyright as described on the NASA website.)
Disney 2010: Day 8 (Part 1)
I know Day 8 isn’t over yet, but I figured I’d post anyway. We’re at our new hotel now; John is napping and I’m on hold with Airtran checking to see if we can get a better flight out of here.35 minutes on hold and counting……
First things first. We woke up to this monster:
We slept in and got everything packed up to go. I took a couple of final pictures of the view from our patio and the Lion King characters in the sheers before we headed to Downtown Disney to buy a gift for the guy who’s watching our cats.
We did a little shopping at Downtown Disney, then had lunch at T-Rex. We got an appetizer platter that included chips and queso, onion rings, a quesadilla, bruschetta with eggplant and goat cheese, and St. Louis-style ribs. It was very tasty, and we were glad to be able to spend time in there — it’s very intricately themed.
And then we picked up our rental car. I reserved a Chevy Aveo for $55 and fully expect to have some issues getting all of our luggage into it. But there was no Aveo waiting for us; instead, we got this. Yes, my friends, that is a brand new Dodge Charger. It’s pretty sweet.
So, we’re here in downtown Orlando, with a rental car, and plans to meet Lee and his dad around 10pm or so to go see the launch tomorrow morning. We’re in the hotel that I stay at when I come down here on business, so I can’t wait to show John my favorite restaurant and mini-golf course which are on the other side of the block. Airtran finally answered and it looks like there’s nothing open until Monday; so no flight changes. But they did tell me that there are some business class upgrades left available for me to use my free vouchers on (from my frequent flier miles), so I will call after midnight while we’re waiting over at Kennedy Space Center to claim them.
Signing off for now so John can use the computer to pay our bills. 
Disney 2010: Day 7
We woke up to this monster:
We started the day somewhat sure we aren’t going home, but still hoping that the storm would pass quickly and we could get out of here.
Our first stop for the day was Animal Kingdom where we had some “cleanup” to do. We had missed the Kilamonjaro Safari and the Finding Nemo show on our first cruise through, so we came back to do them. While we were at Animal Kingdom we also finally caught a glimpse of the “Tree Lady” who I’ve been looking for but never seen. It’s very cool to watch how she slowly walks around on those stilts and raises long poles above her head to mimic trees that are around her. When she covers her face, you would never know she wasn’t a real tree.
And look what else we found! He’s only been here for three weeks (which is still a lot longer than the newborn monkey we saw — 3 days old).
From Animal Kingdom, we took a bus to the Ticket and Transportation Center, and then a ferry from there to Magic Kingdom to finish up our shopping. We left Magic Kingdom just as the rain started. But not before we saw these HUGE rice krispies treats in the Main Street Confectionary. They’re $50 each.
I called our friend Pam to send her hugs over the wires since she was supposed to be getting married on Saturday. All is well — they and their officiant are staying overnight at the resort where the wedding is, so they’re getting married no matter what. But she mentioned that she had heard that flights were being canceled already. I called Airtran and sat on hold for 35 minutes and was told ours was not canceled. 20 minutes later in our room (where we found a puppy towel animal) I got an email that our flight is canceled. UGH. Right now we’re rebooked for a flight home at 6:30pm on MONDAY; and that’s the first one I could get. So the plan of the moment is to:
- Pick up a rental car at the Disney Car Care Center
- Check out of Animal Kingdom Kidani Village and check in at the La Quinta downtown
- Meet up with Lee to see the shuttle launch from the NASA employee guest area (super cool!)
- Do whatever on Sunday afternoon and Monday
- Fly out Monday night and then recover at home on Tuesday
I did laundry at the resort while I was arranging the car and new flight info, and making phone calls to let everyone and their mother know what’s up. With all of that done, we had a wonderful evening to look forward to at “Jiko: The Cooking Place” at the Jambo House side of the resort. We had decided to do a really nice dinner for our last night down here, and this restaurant took 2 table service credits. It was definitely worth both of them. When we arrived at the resort, they were still doing free family portraits, so we stopped by and had pictures taken before dinner. I’m not going to bother going into all of the details of dinner. Just know that we ate ostrich, shrimp, lamb, goat cheeses, and had these for dessert:
John’s was a Lemon White-Chocolate Mousse with Sour Cream Ice Cream. Mine was a trio of choclate goodness — a Flourless Chocolate Cake, White Chocolate Ice Cream, and Chocolate Mousse. They also brought this tasty Pistachio Creme Brulee as a gift for our anniversary. The drawings on both my plate and the “gift” plate are actually chocolate that’s been painted on. “Shangilia”, on the plate below, means “Congratulations” in Swahili. They also gave us a card with anniversary good wishes written in 6 African dialects.
For anyone who is keeping score, here is our current family of towel animals that we’ve found in our room… they wanted a group portrait.
When we went to bed, we were looking at this. Oh my.
Disney 2010: Day 6
We started our day at Hollywood Studios to finish up the things we missed on Sunday. First we did Toy Story Mania (and grabbed Fastpasses for later), then the Toy Story Character spot to see Buzz and Woody. John beat me by almost 10,000 points.
We had some time to kill before the Beauty and the Beast live theatre show, so we browsed the shops down the boulevard and collected some pressed coins. A very nice lady in the candy shop gave us chocolate covered marshmallows on sticks for anniversary. They had sprinkles and M&Ms on them too — talk about sweet. Holy cow!
Along the way, we ran into a DVC kiosk. We’ve periodically talked about investigating the Disney Vacation Club (timeshare) since this is our fourth trip, but have never actually done it. With almost no plans for the rest of our day and $100 in it for us, we went ahead and made the appointment to go see Saratoga Springs later that afternoon. From there we got to Beauty and the Beast with a few minutes to spare. It was a great show! Lots of singing and dancing; all of the songs from the movie.
Our appointment with DVC wasn’t until 1:40 and our Toy Story Mania Fastpasses didn’t start until 12:50, so we had more time to kill. First on the list was lunch, which ended up being at the Studio Catering Flatbread Grill. John had a chicken caesar wrap that he says was pretty good. I went with the BBQ. We were right next to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids movie set, so we decided to stop and check that out. Pretty darned cool! We had a great time climbing the spider webs.
After the webs we used our TSM Fastpasses. This time I won… and then off to Saratoga Springs for our DVC tour.
The Saratoga Springs resort is beautiful, and it’s probably the one that we would call our “home away from home” if we were to buy into DVC. The DVC program itself would seriously work for us because we could use it at any Disney resort world-wide, or at over 500 other locations world-wide….. and a lot of the places we have been talking about going (Gatlinburg TN, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Mexico, Great Britan, France, Sedona AZ, etc) are on the club. The question for us is: do the numbers really work with the way we vacation. The buy-in is reasonable, but there are annual maintenance fees of up to $700 (increasing by up to 2% per year) for the next 50 years to think about. So we really need to think about that, run some numbers, create massive spreadsheets, pray, and think some more. But enough of that — here are some pictures of a one-bedroom studio with a jacuzzi tub that looks out on the lake (the room we’d probably be renting with our points).
After the tour they dropped us by the ice cream parlor for sundaes, but we passed because we had dinner scheduled at Restaurant Marakesh in Epcot later that evening. We did stop for free family portraits though. They did the standard one, but after watching John enjoying the toy train that was running around the tops of the walls, they did one over at the ice cream bar with the train in the background too and gave us both. Unfortunately they’re only printed copies; I may try to scan them later because the second one is pretty neat.
And then it was off to Epcot where we saw a funnel cloud, Alice in Wonderland, Mary Poppins and lots of seagulls before dinner. We had dinner at Restaurant Marakesh in Morocco. Instant favorite. We both had couscous dishes; mine was beef with zucchini and other veggies. John’s had beef, plums, sesame seeds and a honey sauce. Both were amazing. The entertainment was good too.
After dinner we wandered around some, and John bought me a pearl at the Pick-A-Pearl stand in Japan. It’s pretty crazy; you select an oyster and they shuck it right there with lots of ceremony and drums banging. It was a very pretty 7.5mm pearl; white with some pink shine to it. We had it mounted on a very simple gold setting that would fit on the necklace I brought down here with me. We finished the evening at the tequila bar in Mexico. I bought a flight of three traditional tequilas, but John didn’t want any. The bar tender brought over a free fourth shot for my birthday. No worries — they were only 1/2-ounce shots; not whole ones! John had one, and I had the other three. And then we went back to our room where these little guys were waiting for us.
So.. what’s next? We’ll finish up Animal Kingdom and get our shopping done at Magic Kingdom. We’re keeping an eye on the weather back home; not quite sure what to expect.
