Return to Bay Lake Tower

[faline]

My brother and his family (brother, sister-in-law, nephew aged 11) arrived in Florida on Saturday for a visit with us and some Disney time.

Their flight from New Hampshire arrived on time and, after picking up a rental, they arrived at our home in the mid-afternoon. We spent a pleasant evening going to the restaurant in our community and getting in some pool time.

The next day was Easter Sunday and nephew decided he wanted to go to the Titanic Museum. They had more artifacts there than I thought they might so it was a pleasant way to spend a few hours. Each person's ticket to the museum is a White Star Line Boarding pass. The reverse side gives you the name and a brief history of one of the Titanic's passengers. At the end of your museum tour, you are able to find out if the person on your boarding pass survived the sinking or not. If you have a few extra hours on your trip, I'd recommend a stop at this location. After a non-traditional Easter dinner, we were off to bed to be ready for our Disney excursion.

Monday morning, we were on our way to Disney. Brother and family were booked at the Grand Floridian and we were staying at Bay Lake Tower. We had both done on-line check-in but rooms were not ready when we arrived. Strangely, and at the last minute, brother was able to capture a fastpass for 5 on Slinky Dog so we all made our way over to Disney Studios. Wait times for all rides were very long. We all grabbed lunch from quick service windows in the Tower of Terror area. Brother and nephew headed off to ride Rock n Roller Coaster which he had fast passed. The rest of us sat this one out. We waited in stand by to ride the Star Wars ride and that wait wasn't too long. Nephew really wanted to ride Tower of Terror and we had time to kill before our Slinky Dog fastpass so we waited in the hour long stand-by ride - something I would not normally do. We enjoyed our late afternoon Slinky Dog ride. By then, our rooms were ready so we made our way back to get settled into our resorts. I had been able to get a late dining time at The Wave so we had dinner there before retiring to our respective resorts.

Nephew wanted to go to the Magic Kingdom on Tuesday and it was certainly packed!!! My husband and I managed to get on Pirates before my brother and his family arrived at the park. They had fastpasses for Splash and went immediately there. They hadn't had anything to eat yet so grabbed snacks from Starbucks while we decided what we would do with the rest of the day. All of the Magic Kingdom rides had extremely long standby wait times so we went over to the Grand Floridian where nephew and sister-in-law got in some pool time while the rest of us hung out at the pool bar. I was able to grab a late lunch reservation at the Grand Floridian Cafe so we went there after nephew and sister-in-law got changed. Following lunch, we headed to the bus stop and headed on over to Animal Kingdom. Brother had been able to get a Flight of Passage fastpass for this afternoon. We were able to do that, visit Expedition:Everest and Dinosaur. None of us had seen Rivers of Light so we did that. It was artistically pretty but I didn't enjoy it as much as Fantasmic. With our late lunch, none of us was hungry so we headed home after the show.

[faline]

Part 2:

It had been decided, we would go to Epcot on Wednesday. My husband and I got there shortly after opening and we were able to get on Frozen with virtually no wait. We were also able to the Seas with Nemo; Living with the Land, and Journey into Imagination all with no - to relatively short waits. I hadn't yet heard from my brother so we headed over to Yorkshire County Fish Shop and grabbed some fish and chips for a quick lunch. In the meantime, brother's family had arrived and went directly to Test Track. Since we were eating lunch by time they got off that, they headed over to Liberty Inn for some lunch for themselves. We met back up by Spaceship Earth in time for our fastpass there. We also had fastpasses for Soarin' so completed our world tour. Dinner this evening was scheduled to be at Citrico's so we all headed back to our rooms to get ready for dinner. We monorailed over to the Grand Floridian and met up with brother and family in Mizner's temporary location before heading upstairs for a very yummy dinner!! No-one left that restaurant hungry!!!

Sister-in-law had wanted to get over to Disney Springs to do some shopping but brother and nephew weren't particularly interested in doing that. I suggested that she and I head over there on Thursday morning so we made plans to meet at the Grand Floridian lobby. In the meantime, husband decided he wanted to do an errand and go home to check on the pool since he had just replaced a malfunctioning unit the week before. After we left brother's family on Wednesday evening, he tried to make some fastpasses for the Magic Kingdom for nephew and him for Thursday. That is when he discovered he only had 4 day park hopper tickets instead of 5. Since he had already booked fastpasses for Friday, he would have used up all the days on this fastpasses. Early Friday morning, he headed over to concierge to fix the problem and they wanted to charge him well over $200 to add the additional day. A call to his travel agent, another trip to concierge, and with the aide of his travel agent, the additional day was finally added to his park passes for a total increase in price of $17!!! Nephew was now quite disappointed as they had planned to get to the park early that day. Fortunately, Disney gave them each 3 any ride fastpasses in addition to the 3 fastpasses they were entitiled to. Using a combination of the 6 fastpasses they had for the day, they had a very enjoyable Magic Kingdom day and nephew was able to ride all the rides he was interested is including Seven Dwarfs!! Husband ended up driving me over to the Grand Floridian where we picked up my sister-in-law and he dropped us off at Disney Springs. We wandered through a number of the shops there. Ultimately, my sister-in-law who was in search of a new Disney themed pocketbook settled on a Dooney and Bourke bag she had seen over at one of the shops in the Contemporary. After a lunch at Earl of Sandwich, we bused back to the Contemporary and she was able to get the bag she wanted. Sister-in-law headed for the monorail back to the Grand Floridian and I headed back to my room. Husband had not yet returned so I had some quiet time that afternoon. We had reservations at California Grill this evening where we had another lovely meal (love goat cheese ravioli) and once again left stuffed!! This evening, we headed over to Top of the World at Bay Lake tower where we were able to watch the fireworks before calling it a day.

[faline]

On Friday, we were slated to be at Animal Kingdom where brother had booked another ride on Flight of Passage as well as Expedition Everest and the Safari. The day started off rather dark and dreary with rain and the threat of continuing rain showers. Since we were checking out on this day, we packed all our things and stuffed them in our car before driving over to Animal Kingdom. We headed over to Expedition Everest and, on the way, it began to rain. The ride was still running but we didn't do it. In fact, we told brother and family to enjoy themselves and we had decided we would just go on home and would see them whenever they arrived back at our house. They ended up not going on the Safari so returned to our home earlier than we expected.

We were able to enjoy a pleasant weekend with brother and family including lots of pool time and a Saturday visit to the Kennedy Space Center before they left early on Monday morning for their flight back to New Hampshire!

[nicster]

Nice family time and adaptive skills! Thanks for the report.

[Cinderelley]

Sounds like a wonderful trip