faline
05-24-2010, 07:01 PM
When our margaritas have been consumed, we head towards Maelstrom. The large tour group headed that direction while we were consuming our Margaritas. The stand-by wait time is 20 minutes and I wonder if that is a result of the influx from the tour group. While standing in line, I glance over at the fast pass distribution area and see that the return time is in about 30 minutes. So why am I standing in a 20 minute line? We hop out of line, insert our tickets into the fast pass machine and walk away with a return time that will allow us to visit the China Pavilion in the interim. As we head to China, we see that the acrobats have just finished their performance.
We enter the pavilion and enjoy the cool air while we wait about 10 minutes or so for the next film. Once we have explored China and the gift shops, we return to Norway and are able to walk right on a boat with our fast passes. The stand-by line is still listed at 20 minutes. After the trolls banish us, we view the short film about Norway and enter the gift shop. We wander through and I spritz myself with Lailla on the way out.
It’s getting close to our Le Cellier dining reservation time so we head over there. They have a check-in counter set up out on the promenade, even before you enter the path by the gardens and ponds. Once checked in, we make our way to the restaurant, fully expecting to see the waiting area crammed with folks but there is no-one there. We are seated almost immediately. As we are being led to our table, the woman asks if we’ve eaten there before. When it’s clear where she will be seating us, I respond by saying we have dined here before and most often have been seated right about in this very spot!
Our server is nice and efficient. We order a tomato stack as our appetizer which we split. For dinner, Gene has the strip steak and I have the fillet mignon. I request that mine be rare. When it is delivered, the person bringing it announces it as medium and when I state I ordered it rare, she states, she’s sorry, she misspoke and it is, indeed, rare. I cut it open to find that it is more on the medium side of rare than it is rare but, (a) I don’t really want to start over (after all, you can cook it more but you certainly can’t cook it less) and (b) It is so tender it makes up for it being just slightly more cooked than I would optimally like it. By time we devour all of our meals as well as a good amount of the bread sticks we were served, we are far too stuffed to order a dessert. So it’s not long after 7, when we leave the Canadian pavilion. Were it around 8, I might have thought about staying for Illuminations but certainly do not want to hang out for 2 hours.
Perhaps, on our way out, we’ll check out Soarin’. Rather than go back into the pavilion, we check out the ride board which tells us the wait time has gone down from 60 minutes to 50 minutes. Looks like we won’t be Soarin’ Over California on this trip! Spaceship Earth, however, has a five-minute wait so we decide we will ride this before we leave. When we exit, I say I want to get our boarding passes printed out so we head over to Guest Relations.
Here’s another new thing on this trip! When I ask the cast member if she can print our boarding passes, she tells us, we can do it ourselves in a little room set off to the right as you walk into the Guest Relations office. In this room, is a couch along with a desk containing a computer and a printer. I wasn’t too worried about missing the 24 hour window which had already gone by as we had paid for Early Bird boarding. Still, I went to the Southwest site and it would not accept the confirmation number I had written down. I tried a couple more times and it still would not accept it. I ended up calling Southwest and was able to determine that the confirmation number I jotted down was incorrect and off by one character.
Once I got the correct confirmation number, I was able to quickly print out our boarding passes – A17 and A18. However, we were in that little room so long I felt sure a cast member would come to check on us to figure out if we were just hanging out and surfing the web or really printing boarding passes but no-one ever came by.
By now, it was about 20 minutes until 9 and it was so close to Illuminations, we decided we would stay and watch it. We went back and found a spot behind a fence and a ways back from the lagoon. Unfortunately, we also had picked a location that put the globe directly behind a column in our line of view. If we had realized this sooner, we could have moved quite a bit over to the right as those spots had not yet been claimed. By time we realized it, though, we were not longer able to select a more favorable spot further off to the right! Still, it was nice to see what we could. We did opt to begin walking out as Illuminations was on its final number.
Of course, there were quite a large number of people at the bus stop when we arrived. I thought for sure we would not make it on the next bus to come. This was pretty much a sealed deal when we discovered that, once again, part of a party was a couple of parties in front of us and the rest of the cousins and babies and strollers etc. were a couple of parties behind us. So, of course, the part of the party ahead would not drop back to the rest of the party behind and instead expected that all the rest of the relatives would sidle past us to join the family members ahead. As it turned out, they cut off the line of folks entering the bus with the very pleasant couple in front of us. The driver then reopened the doors and indicated he could take two more passengers. The young couple in front even offered to allow us to board instead of taking the boarding themselves but we indicated they should go ahead. They even asked us if we were sure which was very sweet of them!
About five minutes later, another bus was steered into our bus stop and we were the first ones aboard so we were able to sit and relax on the way back to Coronado Springs.
When we arrive back at Coronado, there is a message on the machine. As I suspected it was the one that says they hope we had a nice time but now, get out!
Our last full day of this trip has come to an end. Tomorrow we will need to return home!
We enter the pavilion and enjoy the cool air while we wait about 10 minutes or so for the next film. Once we have explored China and the gift shops, we return to Norway and are able to walk right on a boat with our fast passes. The stand-by line is still listed at 20 minutes. After the trolls banish us, we view the short film about Norway and enter the gift shop. We wander through and I spritz myself with Lailla on the way out.
It’s getting close to our Le Cellier dining reservation time so we head over there. They have a check-in counter set up out on the promenade, even before you enter the path by the gardens and ponds. Once checked in, we make our way to the restaurant, fully expecting to see the waiting area crammed with folks but there is no-one there. We are seated almost immediately. As we are being led to our table, the woman asks if we’ve eaten there before. When it’s clear where she will be seating us, I respond by saying we have dined here before and most often have been seated right about in this very spot!
Our server is nice and efficient. We order a tomato stack as our appetizer which we split. For dinner, Gene has the strip steak and I have the fillet mignon. I request that mine be rare. When it is delivered, the person bringing it announces it as medium and when I state I ordered it rare, she states, she’s sorry, she misspoke and it is, indeed, rare. I cut it open to find that it is more on the medium side of rare than it is rare but, (a) I don’t really want to start over (after all, you can cook it more but you certainly can’t cook it less) and (b) It is so tender it makes up for it being just slightly more cooked than I would optimally like it. By time we devour all of our meals as well as a good amount of the bread sticks we were served, we are far too stuffed to order a dessert. So it’s not long after 7, when we leave the Canadian pavilion. Were it around 8, I might have thought about staying for Illuminations but certainly do not want to hang out for 2 hours.
Perhaps, on our way out, we’ll check out Soarin’. Rather than go back into the pavilion, we check out the ride board which tells us the wait time has gone down from 60 minutes to 50 minutes. Looks like we won’t be Soarin’ Over California on this trip! Spaceship Earth, however, has a five-minute wait so we decide we will ride this before we leave. When we exit, I say I want to get our boarding passes printed out so we head over to Guest Relations.
Here’s another new thing on this trip! When I ask the cast member if she can print our boarding passes, she tells us, we can do it ourselves in a little room set off to the right as you walk into the Guest Relations office. In this room, is a couch along with a desk containing a computer and a printer. I wasn’t too worried about missing the 24 hour window which had already gone by as we had paid for Early Bird boarding. Still, I went to the Southwest site and it would not accept the confirmation number I had written down. I tried a couple more times and it still would not accept it. I ended up calling Southwest and was able to determine that the confirmation number I jotted down was incorrect and off by one character.
Once I got the correct confirmation number, I was able to quickly print out our boarding passes – A17 and A18. However, we were in that little room so long I felt sure a cast member would come to check on us to figure out if we were just hanging out and surfing the web or really printing boarding passes but no-one ever came by.
By now, it was about 20 minutes until 9 and it was so close to Illuminations, we decided we would stay and watch it. We went back and found a spot behind a fence and a ways back from the lagoon. Unfortunately, we also had picked a location that put the globe directly behind a column in our line of view. If we had realized this sooner, we could have moved quite a bit over to the right as those spots had not yet been claimed. By time we realized it, though, we were not longer able to select a more favorable spot further off to the right! Still, it was nice to see what we could. We did opt to begin walking out as Illuminations was on its final number.
Of course, there were quite a large number of people at the bus stop when we arrived. I thought for sure we would not make it on the next bus to come. This was pretty much a sealed deal when we discovered that, once again, part of a party was a couple of parties in front of us and the rest of the cousins and babies and strollers etc. were a couple of parties behind us. So, of course, the part of the party ahead would not drop back to the rest of the party behind and instead expected that all the rest of the relatives would sidle past us to join the family members ahead. As it turned out, they cut off the line of folks entering the bus with the very pleasant couple in front of us. The driver then reopened the doors and indicated he could take two more passengers. The young couple in front even offered to allow us to board instead of taking the boarding themselves but we indicated they should go ahead. They even asked us if we were sure which was very sweet of them!
About five minutes later, another bus was steered into our bus stop and we were the first ones aboard so we were able to sit and relax on the way back to Coronado Springs.
When we arrive back at Coronado, there is a message on the machine. As I suspected it was the one that says they hope we had a nice time but now, get out!
Our last full day of this trip has come to an end. Tomorrow we will need to return home!