Laura & Family - May 2007

DAY 2, Saturday May 26

Well, my family is being very lazy this morning and they are sleeping in (I must admit the beds are pretty comfy) so I go down to the hotel gift shop and buy the local paper. It's pretty quiet in the lobby even though the hotel is packed judging by the parking lot which doesn't seem to have any empty spaces. I decide to go and sit outside by the pool to read. It's overcast and a bit breezy but other than that a lovely day. The pool area is pretty nice. Jungle tropical looking (again surprise, surprise given the safari theme to the hotel). It's a nice sized pool with a long python slide. The slide isn't open yet (opens at 9am). There is a little hut with towels and some pool type accessories for sale. There is also a small circular kiddie pool with a little fountain. I'm the only one out there so I sit down to read. Soon I'm joined by 2 ducks. Yep, you heard right ducks. And believe it or not they proceed to waddle over to the pool and wade right in!!!! As if they do this all the time.

Soon a kid comes out to swim and so does a woman who dives in to swim laps.. well you heard of swimming with dolphins? Well, here at the Sheraton Safari we feature swimming with ducks~LOL. Those ducks were so brave they didn't even get out.. just swam right along with everyone else...I couldn't resist taking a picture although I was wondering about how hygenic that must be...Hope there was a lot of chlorine in there to kill all the germs....

Back to the room and DD and DH are just lounging around in PJs. DD is playing with her legos and DH is watching TV. They are both feeling very lazy and since the weather outside is so iffy we decide to go over to Downtown Disney to see Pirates of The Caribbean. They finally get up to shower and off we go. I want to stop by Epcot guest services first to pick up our Disney Dining Experience card and get that out of the way since we're eating dinner at a Table Service restaurant tonight...I ordered it about a week ago when I realized our other one had expired. The gal told me that since it took time to mail it out she would have a temporary card left for us at Epcot guest services so we could start using the discount right away.

When we get to the parking lot we tell the gal that we are just going to Guest Services to pick up our Dining card and she is very nice and doesn't charge us for parking. The place is packed!! I get on the long line and DH and DD decide to wait in the car... smart move! After a 10 minute wait to get in through bag check and at least a 30 minute wait at GS, if not more, it is finally my turn. I hand the CM my driver's license and he goes off to get my temporary card. Comes back and asks if it could be under someone else's name. Nope. He leaves again. Tells me he can't find it but his manager is looking. To make a long story short.. it's not there!!! What?!? I am so not happy. It's Saturday. DDE only has office hours Monday - Friday 9am-5pm. Monday is a holiday. So now I'm without a dining discount for 3 days?!?! The CM feels really bad but there's nothing he can do. His manager suggests we talk to the managers at the restaurants we're going to eat at and explain to them what happened and hope they're nice and give us the discount anyways and if not to just pay the bill and call DDE to complain during the week and ask for a credit. I call DH and he is skeptical about this. Again the CM says he wishes there was something they could do but it's a different department and they have nothing to do with the Dining discounts. I was obviously not happy. He then said he felt bad that I had waited on such a long guest services line and then got up there and my card wasn't there, he said I can't do anything about the card but I can do something about all the time you wasted. I can give you fast passes for your party so you can get your time back and not have to wait in a long line. I graciously accepted as that was very nice of him to offer....He felt so bad that he ended up giving us fast passes to use on 2 different Epcot attractions... Well, this day was not going well but at least he was trying to spread a little magic on us...

DH, the eternal optimist, doesn't want it to ruin our day so off we go to Downtown DIsney for our movie. I'm looking forward to a welcome distraction as I'm disappointed about the "bump" in our plans and the thought of not getting discounts on our meals... We get to DD and get lucky enough to get a space right near the theater in a packed parking lot. That's a good sign! There was a long line at the box office, looks like others had the same plan. We get on line and DH disappears. Soon he's back with good news. Seems he went in search of those little electronic ticket purchase booths like we have at our AMC theaters back home and sure enough he found some just inside the lobby. And better yet, no one seemed to know they were there so there was no line at all! Well done David! We get out of line (and some smart people follow us) and in just a second we've swiped our moviewatcher card and are ready to buy tickets. There are 2 choices: Pirates 3 and Pirates DLP. Having no idea what that is, DH asks the ticket taker guy who is clueless but fortunately a nice guy behind us in line says that it's like high definition TV with a better quality picture and screen quality. The price is the same ($7.50 for each adult and $6.50 for child) so we decide to get this for the 1:45 show.

We now have about 50 minutes to kill and realizing we're hungry we walk across the way to the Wolfgang Puck Express for a quick snack. It's practically empty which surprises me as we love this place and Downtown Disney is pretty crowded judging from the packed parking lot. Since we're going to get popcorn and I've brought some candy for the movie we decide to just share. We order a Margherita pizza ($10.75) and hearing that the Soup du J'our is Split Pea, a favorite of Leia's and mine, we decide to share a bowl ($4.50). Upon our request, the soup comes out right away. It's a big bowl and really good. We fill up on that so David gets lucky as we only have one slice of pizza each and he gets the rest. We have to wait a bit for the pizza since they cook it fresh but it was worth the wait and really good. We still get out of there in plenty of time to head back over to the theater and get our popcorn.

David decides to go to the theater to get our seats and Leia and I wait at the snack stand. They have a special where you can choose 3 items for $7.50 so we get 2 Cherry ICEES and 1 popcorn and we're on our way. We get back to the theater and are surprised to see there is a huge line outside the theater of people waiting to get into the show! Reminds me of when we went to see Star Wars! Fortunately, David had gone ahead and was towards the front of the line. There was a large group of adults up front dressed as Pirates. I thought how cool that the movie theater staff is dressed up and into it but it turned out they were just fans.. or should I say fanatics?

We get good seats and settle in to a LONG bout of previews... FINALLY the movie starts. An eerie beginning but all in all a good show. Entertaining even though they seemed to jump all over the place and the dialogue was a bit difficult to follow at times. Knowing to stay we wait through the credits and see the special clip- well worth staying for! Having read here on the list to wait until the "very very VERY end" I thought there might be another clip and made DD and DH wait until they turned the theater lights on and then we all realized that was it.

Well, back to the hotel to decide what to do about dinner......

We have 8:10 pm priority seating for Cape May Cafe. DH decides he's going to call ahead and talk to the manager and discuss our dilemna with the missing DDE discount card. First, he gets on the laptop, pulls up our current American Express statement and sure enough finds the debit from DDE for payment for our card. He calls Cape May, explains the situation to the manager and that he has a copy of the credit card statement showing in fact we did pay and our card has already been charged. The manager was just as nice as could be and said no problem, we would get our discount.... yeah!!!.

Jamie the manager greeted us when we arrived and said she had taken care of everything for us. We were immediately seated and we never even had to tell our server, she had already briefed him. When the check came, the discount was already applied.

The meal was wonderful! This is David's favorite restaurant in all of Disney. Amine was our waiter and he was EXCELLENT!!! He remembered us from last time we were there and realized David like to drink lots of water and actually gave him his own carafe to refill as he desired. After 5 bowls of clams it's not surprising he needed all that water LOL. But even if you don't like clams the food is good here. There is a small salad bar with several different salad & fresh fruit items and peel your own shrimp and 2 soups (Tomato Bisque and Clam Chowder which I highly recommend), the seafood station with clams (both plain steamed and the ones steamed with garlic), mussels, steamed potatoes and corn on the cob. They had 2 kinds of bread: cornbread and parker house rolls. A carving station with roast beef. A kids section with mickey shaped macaroni and cheese (very creamy and yummy!), chicken fingers, mini hot dogs and pizza. Then another hot food section with pasta of the day, assorted veggies (try the broccolini), baked chicken, bbq ribs, steak tidbits and mushrooms, sausage and peppers, salmon and more.

The dessert bar was really good too. I like that they had mini size pastries so you can try several different kinds. My favorite was the little Key Lime Tarts. Leia loved the Mini Oreo Mousse pastries with an Oreo cookie base and David loved the Flan which they serve with fresh berries. There were also little cakes, brownies, cookies, cupcakes and apple cobbler.

After eating we went out back of the Beach Club hotel and got out there just in time to see the fireworks from Epcot.

We should have walked after this meal too but we had to rush off to find a 7-11 to get our lottery ticket.... our luck is changing from earlier today so one never knows...

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