What is this planning you speak of? Day 3
Groaning, I woke up bright and early for the Intercot breakfast meet and wondered who's idea it was to meet for breakfast. :P PopPhan was nice enough to not rub it in my face that I did it to myself. DS and DDIL were starting on a 3 park whirlwind day, since DDIL had to fly back to Phoenix in the morning due to work.
I was on my merry way to the Polynesian when I get an urgent summons to DHS. Something was wrong with DS' ticket (which I just bought the night before), and I had to be there to straighten it out. Interestingly enough, this had happened with his ticket during our trip earlier this month. I am wondering if it has to do with me buying it and assigning it to him through the app. "No worries," I thought. I still had an hour before the meet. I got the ticket straightened out and headed out to the bus stop.
With all the construction, the bus stop is in a different place, out in the middle of nowhere. 30 mins later, still no Polynesian bus and no cast members to ask. People were lining up behind me and in other resort lines. They had been at the extra magic hours at Toy Storyland and were leaving now. Still no bus. I was seriously thinking about taking a taxi, but no one knew where the taxis were with all the construction. Finally, a bus pulled up, and we all gratefully piled on. Then the bus driver tells us that service from the park back to the resort doesn't start until 11 am. A supervisor happened to see people lined up for the buses and called to get buses. I think this is a stupid idea. 1.) You market these extra hours in Toy Storyland. When people are done with them, they should have a way to get back to their resort when the time is up. 2.) If you're gonna go with this stupid idea, at least post it so that people know and let them know an alternative way to get to where they are going. 3) Have a cast member in an easily accessible place to get info from.
I finally made it to the Polynesian and met some great Intercotees. :) I really liked hearing everyone's stories about their first trip to Disney World. So many of us thought "this will be our once in a lifetime trip" on that first trip. Now we're all hooked.
I asked PopPhan where to get the annual passholder cutting board at Epcot. He told me it was inside the gold domed building next to Mission Space. There's a gold domed building next to Mission Space? All I could think of was Universe of Energy. He said it was between Mission Space and Universe of Energy.
After breakfast, the kids had left DHS and were at Epcot. Initially I went to the bus stop to meet them at Epcot. After sitting there for a few minutes, I noticed a board with bus times on it. It said I had to take the monorail to Epcot. Duh. So, I headed to the monorail. The first thing I did when I arrived at Epcot was go looking for the gold domed building. There it was - giant and golden. In my defense, you can't really see it on the way to Mission Space because of the trees, but I don't know how I missed it all those years I went on Universe of Energy.
I got a return time on Test Track and headed to World Showcase to meet the kids. They had worked their way counter clockwise from the International Gateway and were in Germany. I made it to the African Outpost and had to stop to take a break. They found me there, and then we continued their circuit. I was still full from breakfast but couldn't resist sampling the Greek offerings. We got one of each and found a place to sit. It was all delicious.
It was time to design our car. DDIL wanted to make a weird car, so we wound up with a V shaped car roof. The ride seemed pretty tamed down from when we were there with the whole family. DS mentioned something about it also.
We left Epcot and headed to AK. DS and DDIL went to EE while I got a return time to Kilimanjaro Safaris. DDIL managed to score fastpasses for us for NRJ later in the evening. Initially, I thought I would go explore Gorilla Falls, but they closed it at 5 pm. It was 5:20. I found a bench and laid down on it. I reminded myself of that guy who was on the planning DVDs one year who supposedly checked out all the resting spots.
We went on the safari, but the animals weren't too active. Then we headed to NRJ, stopping to get a FoP return time on the way. I was dragging by the time the park closed at 8 pm. The thought of walking to the bus stop, standing in line for a bus, transferring somewhere to get back to DHS, riding the tram to the parking lot and then driving to our room was too much for me. I hopped on the Lyft app or Uber or whatever it was. 9 mins later, we were comfortably ensconced in a car with Sean driving us to DHS. Sean was great. He had obviously been doing his job for quite a while and asked where we were parked. He dropped us off near our truck, and we could see the Star Wars fireworks going off as we left the parking lot. I was so glad to be out of there before the mass of people came pouring out of the park.
