January 2007 trip log notes

[cstephens]

Thursday - continued

We then headed off to Downtown Disney. Parking was a bit hard to find, but after that was done, we had to decide where to have dinner. We wandered over to the Portobello Yacht Club, and their menu looked good, so we stepped in. Luckily, even without a reservation, it was only about a 5 minute wait. I knew I’d enjoy the restaurant because even though it was also a fine dining establishment, they didn’t treat us any differently because of what we were wearing. We both enjoyed the minestrone soup, and I had a terrific ahi tuna cooked as little as possible while the husband enjoyed the veal, and we also split a side of asparagus, though we both passed on dessert. Definitely somewhere we’d go back to and recommend. We then spent quite a bit of time walking through the various Disney stores, including World of Disney, Once Upon a Toy, Pooh Corner, Disney Tails, The Art of Disney and other places. Luckily, we got out of there with only buying a few items. There were a few other stores we had wanted to visit, but it was alte enough that they would either be closed or would be closing shortly, and they were on the other side of Downtown Disney. We had thought about making a visit to Pleasure Island, but by that time, it was already a bit late and we were already quite tired, so we decided to head back to our hotel.

Interestingly enough, on our way back to the car, we were approached by a Disney employee who asked if we wouldn’t mind taking her survey. The survey actually took about 5 or 10 minutes, but she was incredibly polite and helpful the entire time, a decidedly different experience than we’d had at the Universal parks.


Today, we’re spending some time at our resort, and the husband wants to rent a watercraft to tool around in the river. Later this afternoon, we’ll head back to Islands of Adventure. We might stop in for a second ride on Revenge of the Mummy at Universal. We may also catch the Sinbad Stunt Show at IOA. We do plan to do Dueling Dragons, and he’ll go on Spiderman again so I can go on it this time as well. And, I’ll hopefully be up for another run on Hulk. After that, it’ll be dinner somewhere in Citywalk.

On Saturday, we’ll be park hopping between the Magic Kingdom and Epcot, with dinner at Le Cellier. Sunday, we’re not sure what we’re doing in the morning, but we’ll need to leave for the airport in the afternoon to catch our flight home.


Friday, January 12 - random things day

The husband had wanted to rent a sailboat at our resort today, but with the small size of the craft and my complete and utter inexperience, we decided to rent a two-person sea raycer instead. We drove around the lake (not river) at the CBR for about an hour, and that was a lot of fun, and the weather was perfect for it. We then headed back to Islands of Adventure, got there around 3:30, and rode Dueling Dragons. You're given a choice of the red dragon (fire) or the blue dragon (ice), so I of course picked the red dragon. It's a suspended coaster, and it was ok, but I liked Hulk a lot better. We then wandered around the Jurassic Park Discovery Center for a while again and then we rode the Spiderman ride. It really is a fairly spectacular ride, and the effects are really cool, especially when you're levitated and then when you're about to come crashing to the ground. The effect of traveling in the air was enough that I had to close my eyes through parts of it because it was making me dizzy. We only had about 35 minutes left before both parks closed, so we decided to skip a second ride on Hulk and went back to Universal instead to ride Revenge of the Mummy again. When we got in line at about 5:45, the posted wait time was 40 minutes. It ended up taking about 25 minutes, and it was another fun ride. The park was closed at that point, so we headed out in search of dinner. We decided on Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, which neither of us had been to before. We had a good dinner there, and the place had a fun atmosphere, though it was a bit loud. We then wandered around Citywalk for a bit, but there aren't nearly as many stores there as there are in Citywalk at Universal City. This was one of the nights we came back to the resort fairly early in the evening.