Jen's January 2003 World Tour

Monday, January 27 - Day Three

We’ve had dinner at Boma a couple times now and really liked it, but we’d heard breakfast was excellent as well. We decided it was finally time to try it. Thankfully, due to it being off season and late in the morning, we were able to just do a walk-in. (Good thing, too, as we had called dining to see about PSs, but the system was down, most likely due to that nasty worm that’s been about lately! Maybe that’s why the schedule channel had been down on the resort TVs had been down, too. ; )) Anyhow, I had been prepared for some rather exotic fare, but I was surprised to find that other than the breakfast flatbreads, boboti, and something called Bushman’s Skillet, the food was pretty basic breakfast items. However the "frunch" juice was excellent and we had our fair share of that!

While we were at Animal Kingdom Lodge, it was a must to do some exploring as well. We went to one of the animal viewing areas where we watched the different critters come and go and Keith had an interesting conversation with a CM from Botswana. (We get into so many different conversations with different CMs, as well as guests from all over the place. That can be just as enjoyable as taking in all of the attractions.)

After checking out the animals and making a trip to the hotel gift shop, we headed off to the bus stop. We had the Downtown Disney bus entirely to ourselves. Even the driver was amazed at how quiet it was that day, but, hey, we like those kind of crowds! ; ) The driver was even kind enough to slow down once the Pop Century came into view. (I had noticed it on Mear’s on the drive-in and found it very shocking that the second sign that I was officially in WDW was a giant Rubick’s Cube with the word "Duh!" in larger than life bright colors. Though I have played many times with a Rubick’s Cube in my lifetime and said my share of "duhs", I’m not so sure I like it on the side of a building! Keith, however, had been chatting with the other passengers at the time and so missed this garish sight.) Needless to say, we had quite a bit of fun joking around about seeing the buildings on the other side of the hotel (50s and 60s era).

Once at Downtown Disney, we took the long walk to DisneyQuest. I have to admit, on the way to the ticket window, I was a bit intimidated by the simulator out front advertising Cyberspace Mountain. At a computer station, you can build your own original roller coaster track and then you wait in line for a simulator pod so that you can actually "ride" your creation. Until I saw a model simulator outside of DisneyQuest, I hadn’t realized just how creative one can get with the track, simulating such things as upside down loops and even things you couldn’t do on an actual physical roller coaster.

Anyhow, soon we had purchased our tickets and were on the "cyberlator". I thought this was a rather cute introduction to DisneyQuest, with the boisterous Genie as our elevator guide. After this trip, we headed immediately to the floor with the virtual Jungle Cruise and new Pirates game. The Pirates game was one of my favorites of the day. It felt like we were on a moving boat and I had a lot of fun firing the cannons at the other ships going by - and I did a pretty good job at sinking a number of ‘em, too! Our crew was quite proud as we earned a rather decent score. My other favorite game of the day was Buzz Lightyear’s Astroblaster. It did take a couple of games to get the hang of it and decide who was best suited for the role of driver (to steer the bumper car and drive over the "asteroids" to use as ammunition against the other vehicles) and gunner (the person who loads the cannon and fires at the star targets on the other cars). We realized that Keith was a better driver and I’m a better gunner and, by our last game, I was quite pleased because Keith made sure I had lots of ammo and lined us up within the targets and I had gotten quick at loading the cannon and nailing the other teams. : ) I did make it onto Cyberspace Mountain (ours was a slow coaster with a thrill factor of two), but I was glad that the ride itself wasn’t very long because it’s an awfully tight space in that simulator! We also played a bunch of the old school video games as well as other, newer versions such as Aladdin’s Flying Carpets and the Virtual Jungle Cruise.

After our day of play, it was time for dinner at ‘Ohana at the Polynesian. This was the third new activity in a day of firsts. We arrived just before the fireworks at Magic Kingdom, so while we waited, we watched from the upstairs waiting area. As for the restaurant itself, we were very impressed. I had been concerned about my picky eater husband, but he was already talking about finding an excuse to go back again later in the week!

Full but happy, we headed to the beach. It was rather chilly out there on the water, but we toughed it out so that we could catch the Electrical Water Pageant (another first). I was very curious about this predecessor of the Electrical Parade, a longtime favorite of mine. Despite the cold, we were glad we got to see it.

Before we headed on the trip back to our hotel, Keith said that earlier in the evening, he had met Chandra, Chris’ spouse in one of the gift shops and wanted to take me by there, too. It ended up that she was on break at the time, so Keith decided to write a note on my new castle note paper. (When we didn’t see Chandra in the shop, I still wanted to look around and found goodies that I wanted. I particularly was glad to see that there were official Disney window clings for sale, as I’d only previously come across the unlicensed versions. At the same time, I was disappointed that, like California, WDW only sells magnetic bumper stickers - who has metal bumpers anymore? I’m getting to where I have quite a nice little Disney theme with my car and it would have been cool to have added one of those "Been there, done that, going back!" stickers to it, but alas I don’t have metal bumpers.) In the time it took us to complete the note, Chandra was already back so we visited for just a little while, expressing that we would love to get together with Chandra as well as seeing Chris again later in the week. (Here comes Keith’s excuse to get to ‘Ohana again!) We left e-mail addresses before heading to our room for some rest.

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