WDWCrazyKaren
01-15-2008, 10:33 AM
Cast:
Me-43, Event planner by day, Disney planner by night
DH-40, Cranky Disney Nay-sayer
Ok, I left you as we were headed towards our room. We wound our way through the buildings to Broadway, third floor, in the back, overlooking the parking lot. It was SO quiet!
There were towel animals in every window we passed (except for ours, for some strange reason) but we did have a towel Mickey on our bed. The room was very clean. I really had forgotten how small they are. We will most certainly be staying at a moderate or deluxe for our next trip with four of us. But for the two of us, it was fine.
The week before we landed, there had been frost warnings in central Florida. We land, it's 80 degrees and sunny. Good thing we packed shorts!
We did a VERY quick clean-up and change and headed out to the bus stop. This is the first time I've ever gone to Disney World and not rented a car. I was a little worried about the wait times for busses, not to mention crowds, but we decided to chance it.
Epcot is my traditional first park, so into the line we went. Seriously, not 60 seconds passed before the Epcot bus pulled up. We got onto an empty bus. With only one exception, this would be the norm all week long. A very few minutes later, we were deposited at the entrance to Epcot. My hands were trembling as I grabbed my husbands hand and practically ran to the entrance. Our first biometric reading passed, and there it was. Spaceship Earth. The "Imagination" song playing in the background. I can hardly speak, and anyone who knows me will know that that NEVER happens. DH knew right at that moment, that no matter what happened next, this was where I needed to be right then. He saw the look on my face, he could feel the skip in my step. His heart (which is normally three sizes too small) grew when he saw me there. He smiled at me and told me I was in charge and he would just follow along. It was going to be a good week.
Spaceship Earth was open, and my traditional first ride was underway, with only about 4 people walking in the line in front of us, we walked right on. The smells, the familiar sights of my favorite park, the sounds, everything fell into place. We rode, and while I loved it, I'll grudgingly agree with folks here about the trip back down. I am laboring under the impression they are still working on it and once it's done, the silly video for the trip down will be replaced by whatever might be going on behind those black drapes.
We made a quick stop at the Lunching Pad to share a few chicken strips, fries and water, then made our way to Ellen's Energy Adventure. 37 minutes later (I wonder how many times they said "this is a 37 minute ride") we wandered slowly over to Imagination, then straight into HISTA. We did not wait more than one minute for any of these. Either good timing, good karma, or Disney magic. It didn't matter to me! DH got a huge kick out of HISTA. He was having fun! Surly McCrankyPants was having a good time at Disney World??? Don't tell anyone! It would ruin his horrible reputation!
We skipped over Test Track and Soarin' just for today. We knew we would have a long wait, and we were only an hour away from our first beer....I mean dinner....at the Biergarten, so we decided to leave those for another day. It was around 6:00PM by now, and we were dragging. We'd been up since 3:30AM, and the cold medicine could only do so much for DH, so we decided to hop into line a little early for our dinner ADR, just to see if we could get in.
There was a fairly long line to the podium at the Biergarten, but we hopped in. That's when our first annoyance of the trip happened. The people behind us in line started to complain. Loudly. About having to stand in line. Hello? Where are you? You're at Disney World, and you complain about standing in a line? Did a helicopter drop you right in front of the German pavilion and you aren't aware of how Disney works? Come on! I'm sure the fact that mom and dad were already about 12 beers into the night had nothing to do with it. Their 2 small sons were just fine, but mom and dad decided that if they just complained louder and longer than anyone else, the line would move faster. ARGH.
When we got to the podium, they told us they would have no problem seating us early for our ADR, handed us our pager, and told us it would only be a few minutes. We hopped into the line for a beer, only to be told they were out of beer at that kiosk (after we waited about 10 minutes in the beer line!). So, we wandered to the outside beer stand, and as soon as we got to the counter to order, our pager went off. We scrapped the idea of getting the beer at the counter and decided to order it at the table, so in we ran with our little buzzing pager of joy.
Only to be seated with the cranky, loud line waiters! Of all the people, in all the Biergartens around the world, we had to sit with them. Sigh. To make it worse, they were from Minnesota, so we then had to take stock of ourselves and ask if all Minnesotans were that rude. We decided to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and say that it's only them.
DH ordered a beer about the size of my left thigh. We got some food, but neither one of us was too crazy about it. I'm from hearty German stock, I've been to Germany a number of times, but none of the food was too appealing to either of us. Maybe we were just too tired. The band didn't play while we were there, and I engaged a couple from Michigan who were also sitting at the table with us into a chat about bread (wow, I'm not too thrilling to talk to, am I?) and we ate pretty quickly. We dumped the beer into a few "to go" cups and beat a hasty retreat out of the Biergarten. The original plan was to hang around for Illuminations, but we were just beat, so we opted to head back to the hotel as we did have an early start the next morning.
DH swallowed his "to go" cups with a small grimace. Becks is not his style. Neither is Miller Lite or Budwieser. Which lands me into a little hot water later in the trip.
We shuffled off to Broadway after a nano-second wait for the ASMu bus, and settled in for a long winters nap.
We had ADR's for Chef Mickey's in the morning. I had my doubts about DH faring well at a character breakfast!
Day 2 coming up!
Karen
Me-43, Event planner by day, Disney planner by night
DH-40, Cranky Disney Nay-sayer
Ok, I left you as we were headed towards our room. We wound our way through the buildings to Broadway, third floor, in the back, overlooking the parking lot. It was SO quiet!
There were towel animals in every window we passed (except for ours, for some strange reason) but we did have a towel Mickey on our bed. The room was very clean. I really had forgotten how small they are. We will most certainly be staying at a moderate or deluxe for our next trip with four of us. But for the two of us, it was fine.
The week before we landed, there had been frost warnings in central Florida. We land, it's 80 degrees and sunny. Good thing we packed shorts!
We did a VERY quick clean-up and change and headed out to the bus stop. This is the first time I've ever gone to Disney World and not rented a car. I was a little worried about the wait times for busses, not to mention crowds, but we decided to chance it.
Epcot is my traditional first park, so into the line we went. Seriously, not 60 seconds passed before the Epcot bus pulled up. We got onto an empty bus. With only one exception, this would be the norm all week long. A very few minutes later, we were deposited at the entrance to Epcot. My hands were trembling as I grabbed my husbands hand and practically ran to the entrance. Our first biometric reading passed, and there it was. Spaceship Earth. The "Imagination" song playing in the background. I can hardly speak, and anyone who knows me will know that that NEVER happens. DH knew right at that moment, that no matter what happened next, this was where I needed to be right then. He saw the look on my face, he could feel the skip in my step. His heart (which is normally three sizes too small) grew when he saw me there. He smiled at me and told me I was in charge and he would just follow along. It was going to be a good week.
Spaceship Earth was open, and my traditional first ride was underway, with only about 4 people walking in the line in front of us, we walked right on. The smells, the familiar sights of my favorite park, the sounds, everything fell into place. We rode, and while I loved it, I'll grudgingly agree with folks here about the trip back down. I am laboring under the impression they are still working on it and once it's done, the silly video for the trip down will be replaced by whatever might be going on behind those black drapes.
We made a quick stop at the Lunching Pad to share a few chicken strips, fries and water, then made our way to Ellen's Energy Adventure. 37 minutes later (I wonder how many times they said "this is a 37 minute ride") we wandered slowly over to Imagination, then straight into HISTA. We did not wait more than one minute for any of these. Either good timing, good karma, or Disney magic. It didn't matter to me! DH got a huge kick out of HISTA. He was having fun! Surly McCrankyPants was having a good time at Disney World??? Don't tell anyone! It would ruin his horrible reputation!
We skipped over Test Track and Soarin' just for today. We knew we would have a long wait, and we were only an hour away from our first beer....I mean dinner....at the Biergarten, so we decided to leave those for another day. It was around 6:00PM by now, and we were dragging. We'd been up since 3:30AM, and the cold medicine could only do so much for DH, so we decided to hop into line a little early for our dinner ADR, just to see if we could get in.
There was a fairly long line to the podium at the Biergarten, but we hopped in. That's when our first annoyance of the trip happened. The people behind us in line started to complain. Loudly. About having to stand in line. Hello? Where are you? You're at Disney World, and you complain about standing in a line? Did a helicopter drop you right in front of the German pavilion and you aren't aware of how Disney works? Come on! I'm sure the fact that mom and dad were already about 12 beers into the night had nothing to do with it. Their 2 small sons were just fine, but mom and dad decided that if they just complained louder and longer than anyone else, the line would move faster. ARGH.
When we got to the podium, they told us they would have no problem seating us early for our ADR, handed us our pager, and told us it would only be a few minutes. We hopped into the line for a beer, only to be told they were out of beer at that kiosk (after we waited about 10 minutes in the beer line!). So, we wandered to the outside beer stand, and as soon as we got to the counter to order, our pager went off. We scrapped the idea of getting the beer at the counter and decided to order it at the table, so in we ran with our little buzzing pager of joy.
Only to be seated with the cranky, loud line waiters! Of all the people, in all the Biergartens around the world, we had to sit with them. Sigh. To make it worse, they were from Minnesota, so we then had to take stock of ourselves and ask if all Minnesotans were that rude. We decided to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and say that it's only them.
DH ordered a beer about the size of my left thigh. We got some food, but neither one of us was too crazy about it. I'm from hearty German stock, I've been to Germany a number of times, but none of the food was too appealing to either of us. Maybe we were just too tired. The band didn't play while we were there, and I engaged a couple from Michigan who were also sitting at the table with us into a chat about bread (wow, I'm not too thrilling to talk to, am I?) and we ate pretty quickly. We dumped the beer into a few "to go" cups and beat a hasty retreat out of the Biergarten. The original plan was to hang around for Illuminations, but we were just beat, so we opted to head back to the hotel as we did have an early start the next morning.
DH swallowed his "to go" cups with a small grimace. Becks is not his style. Neither is Miller Lite or Budwieser. Which lands me into a little hot water later in the trip.
We shuffled off to Broadway after a nano-second wait for the ASMu bus, and settled in for a long winters nap.
We had ADR's for Chef Mickey's in the morning. I had my doubts about DH faring well at a character breakfast!
Day 2 coming up!
Karen