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Cast of Characters: Joanie-DW (41), Bob-DH (51) & Marie-DD (19) staying in a studio unit at Beach Club Villas - 6/5-13/2003
Meeting Kristin & Keith Melnick and Jimmy (2)
Trip Report - Day 6 - Tuesday - June 10, 2003
Ok - we've been here for what is now starting our 6th day and haven't yet been in Stormalong Bay. Our initial plan at the beginning of this vacation was to go out early in the morning, come back after lunch and swim and then go back out in the evenings. This has yet to happen since it has rained almost every afternoon (or threatened to rain). Our whole reason for staying at the Beach Club Villas was this pool since Boardwalk is our home resort. All in all, with the exception of the pool, we much prefer the Boardwalk. Since the Yacht & Beach Club wasn't really designed with the villas in mind, they are kind of stuck there and seem like a far walk from everything. It is still a beautiful resort, but I felt disconnected.
We got up early and decided to go to EPCOT and ride Test Track before the lines were too long and then
go back and hit the pool. This was not an early opening day for EPCOT, so we left the beach club at about
8:40 a.m. (DD stayed in bed - sleep was more important to her). We had to wait a few minutes at the
International Gate entrance, but at about 8:52 a.m., they let us through. We headed immediately to
Test Track and get in line. It looked like a walk on - we ended up riding with the first group of
riders - 2nd car in line. As soon as we got off, we got right back in line (single rider this time) since the wait was already 30 minutes. After doing Test Track a second time, we walked over to the bakery at the Boardwalk - those cheesecake brownies are scrumptious. I ate half of it and brought the other half back for DD. As we headed back, we almost had a true and certifiable disaster. There was a grounds maintenance man using a weedwacker/grass edge trimmer and must have hit a rock which flew up and hit the skin at the corner of my eye. I felt like I was shot, but was very thankful it didn't hit my eye. I don't think the man was paying enough attention to even notice. We stopped for a few minutes, but there didn't seem to be any permanent damage so I was going to go back to the room and put a little cold water on it and be thankiful it wasn't worse.
It was now about 10:30 a.m. so we changed into our suits, grabbed a refillable mug and down to Stormalong Bay. This pool definitely makes it worth staying at this resort.We spent a few hours here and went back to shower. DD actually came down to lay in the sun, but decided it was too hot and headed back to the room after about 30 minutes.
DH has started collecting all kinds of different disney license plates, so after our showers he went
down to Beaches & Cream for a chicken sandwich (someday he'll sprout wings and fly) and then caught a
bus to Animal Kingdom and transferred to a bus for the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We were actually going to
be at Blizzard Beach the next day which would have been much closer, but the childlike excitement was
getting to him and here I was worried about the 2 yr old. Sometimes he had more patience. Anyway,
while he did this, DD and I caught a bus to the marketplace. Note to men everywhere - if you do what my DH did - do it at your own risk - it is dangerous to send a woman alone to the shopping village with room charge!!!!! I did take it fairly easy on him. Picked up DD's Eeyore pillow buddy - some kitchen towels for the lady who is watching our cat (she just built a new house and was mentioning she needed more disney towels), a t-shirt for me and then headed to the Christmas shop. I would have been moving quicker - but the heat once again was unreal. Go figure - no rain today! As we walked to the Christmas shop there was young guy with a british accent at the Pick A Pearl stand looking for a gift for his girlfriend - he grabbed my daughter and had her pick out the oyster for him. We stayed until the lady opened it - WOW - a fairly large beautiful gold pearl.
Into the Christmas shop we headed, which is where DH was going to meet us. I ended up finding a few antennae toppers I didn't have, some eeyore ornaments for DD and 2 new Radko ornaments. They did have some on sale for about 30-40% off, which is rare, but I preferred the ones which were full price (of course). DH told me to get 2 - I liked the monorail with characters and he liked the one with Mickey and the train. Without doing too much damage to the room charge, and running out of time, we caught the bus to the Beach Club to drop our packages off.
We turned right around to go meet the Melnicks at MGM for our 4:50 p.m. ressie at Mama Melrose on the Fantasmic Package. DH walked over and DD & I (now known as the heat weinies) took the boat. We arrived only 5 minutes late and were seated almost immediately. Another wonderful meal! After dinner, DH, Kristin & I rode Tower of Terror (Kristin's first time ever). We picked up 3 fast passes for later and headed to Oscar's around 8:20 p.m. (T of T took a long time - the tip board had said 20 minute wait but the time posted at T of T said 50 minutes - before we got in the stand-by line we asked the CM and he said 15-20 minutes - it took 55 minutes). We headed into Fantasmic and were seated on section second from the right about 5 rows up from the bottom. The show was wondereful and Jimmy handled it pretty well, but I'd forgotten how loud it was and as long as we let him cover his ears he did fine (plus the $13.00 Buzz light year I bought him from the vendor). After the show, we went back to T of T to use the fastpasses and this time DD, Kristin & I rode. It was about 2 minutes to 10:00 when we got off and DD & Kristin ran (and I do mean ran) down to R n RC, but they had just closed the line since the park was only open until 10:00 p.m. We really wanted to let Kristin ride that since they would be leaving in the morning along with DD but it wasn't to happen this trip. Oh well, there is always next time. We did a little shopping on the way out before we parted ways, and DH, DD & I walked back to the Beach Club.
There was a message on our machine when we got back from the Kolonsky's who we would be meeting tomorrow at Blizzard Beach which ended with "and I'll tell you how you missed a great ride on Mission Space"! So it is opening earlier than originally thought, can't wait to hear about it.
Off to sleep after spending a little more time talking to DD, because she would be leaving in the morning and would be gone to the boyfriend's for the weekend by the time we would get in Friday night.
Mileage for today - 11.62 miles
Cast of Characters: Joanie-DW (41), Bob-DH (51) & Marie-DD (19) staying in a studio unit at Beach Club Villas - 6/5-13/2003
Meeting Ed & Johanna Kolonsky & Maria (13) and EJ (4)
Trip Report - Day 7 - Wednesday - June 11, 2003
We got up rather early this morning so Marie could pack - her and the Melnicks were leaving for the drive home - and we were meeting the Kolonsky's at Blizzard Beach for 9:30 a.m. We caught a bus for Blizzard Beach and arrived at 9:30a.m. with none of the Kolonsky's in site. The crowds were huge, maybe because rumor had it that the park had filled to capacity within an hour of opening the previous day. We waited - and at 9:45 a.m. they started letting people in. Finally at 10:05 a.m. the Kolonsky's arrived. We headed in, found a place in the shade to park our stuff, did Teamboat Springs 3 times in a row, rode the 2-man stormslides - NEVER AGAIN - I will use a single tube from now on. We flipped upon entry for the second year in a row. At least I was a little more prepared this time - last year I wasn't and caught Bob's leg smack in the side of my head (didn't knock any sense into me though). We headed to the lazy river to Lottawotta Lodge to eat lunch.
After lunch we all headed over to the tobaggan racers - DH got a head start on me and spragged his feet so I had a steady stream of water to the face the whole way down. We did the toboggan slides twice (choosing a different lane each time - there are 3) and stopped for a snow cone. Since DH is diabetic we got a sugar free one to share. These were incredible - and definitely worth the $3.15 - they were quite large. We took EJ over to Tikes Peak for awhile and went to ride the toboggan slides one more time (this way we all got to try each one of the 3 lanes), rode Teamboat Springs two more times and did the lazy river one complete time around. I am now burned to a crisp (I kept re-applying the 45 sunblock but the Florida sun is brutal) and it is 5:30 p.m. with the park to close around 6:00 p.m.
We dried off and went over to Winter Summerland to play mini golf. We chose the winter course at EJ's request. With the 50% off for each of us having an annual pass, the whole thing for 2 tickets, 1 soda & 1 bag of chips was $13.00 - quite a bargain. The only downfall was the skies were starting to darken. At hole 5 or 6 the wind started to really pick up and by hole 11 the lightning started. While we were on hole 12 they came and asked everyone to leave the course. We could wait it out or have our receipt stamped and come back at any time in the future. The skies looked pretty threatening so we all agreed to leave - plus DH and I had a 6:00 p.m. ressie at Cape May Cafe which we had already missed.
The lightning was starting to come fast & furious - no rain yet - Kolonsky's bus came as we got to the
bus station but there wasn't any for us yet. I know when they dropped us off in the morning they said
busses run until 1 hour after park closing with the exception of the EPCOT bus which runs from Blizzard
Beach until 9:00 p.m. It is now 6:58 p.m. and there is one other family at a bus station besides us and
the entire parking lot is empty. The lightning was actually coming much closer and I really felt naked out there. There was a disney employee with a walkie talkie under stop #2 - we were at stop #7 - I walked up and asked her due to the time would there be another beach club bus or should we grab the EPCOT bus and she said there would be another as she had not given an all clear yet. This made me feel better, but as lightning struck close by in the woods I'm think I left DH standing all alone down by the bus stop. Finally, our bus came and I felt alot better. We never actually got rain until right before we got back to the beach club. Bob immediately went over to the Cape May and explained that we had missed our 6:00 p.m. seating and they told us to come back as soon as we were ready and they would seat us.
After a quick shower we went down around 7:45 p.m. and had dinner and then walked into EPCOT to view illuminations. I'm so glad we finally got to see it this trip - it always gives me goosebumps and brings tears to my eyes.
Total miles today - 3.88 (this does not include Blizzard Beach of the 10 flipping times I walked up those steps - I think they added more steps everytime we climbed them LOL)
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
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