Disney Diary - Day 8

Here Comes the Rain

August 30, 2008

As I noted earlier we didn’t have near as much rain as we thought we were going to listening to the weather reports before we left. This day was the exception though. It rained pretty much all day – sometimes pouring, and other times just drizzling, but rainy and yucky for pretty much the whole day. The plan called for us to sleep in as late as we wanted, so that is what we did – I think we slept until almost 9am, which is late for us even by weekend standards. We ate cereal and such in the room as we were trying to use up the food we had brought since we didn’t want to be taking much with us back home.

When we were ready we leisurely headed out to the bus stop and headed to Epcot. We made the mistake of picking the very back of the bus to sit. There are 4 seats across the back of some buses, and this was one of them. Do not sit in these four seats unless it is a cold day and you want to be warmed up – definitely do not sit here near the end of August when it is hot, hot, hot! The engine or something from the bus is on the other side of those seats and they get very warm. Color me stupid because we had discovered this on an earlier ride and I still sat there without remembering/thinking about it. It hadn’t started raining yet, but the air had that real humid feeling it has when it is hot outside and it is going to rain. Sitting in the hot seat – literally – was not one of my bright bulb moments for the trip. We couldn’t move either because by the time we remembered (because we were burning up!) the bus had filled up with people, and there was no where to move to.

Anyway, we arrived at Epcot and since it was already 11:30am, we went right for lunch at Sunshine Seasons. Another good meal using 3 credits instead of 4. I shared the butterfinger cheesecake dessert with Katie and it was oh so yummy! My only real plan for the day was to get our picture taken at the Disney Visa both in Innoventions West. I have a Disney Visa on which I earn rewards points to help pay for our trips and one of the other perks is that you get a free 5x7 photo taken with the characters at Epcot. By this time it was raining pretty good, so we decided to just do stuff in the Innoventions buildings until 1:30p when the picture taking station opened. We did lots of fun games and interactions – like a game where you identify fire hazards, and an interaction where you get to move a large robotic arm. There were lots of hands-on type things that Katie could do too – like assemble an emergency kit for extreme weather. Very educational but fun field trip kinda feel. We finally did get in line for the Visa picture and that line was way longer than I imagined – we probably broke our 20 min. wait rule – it was probably a half hour or so. Katie did pretty good in the line though, and I was impressed considering this was day 8 of an exhausting trip. Here is the pic I had the cast member take on my camera while we were posing. We got a nice glossy one too – but I’m too lazy to scan it in when I have this one that is almost the same.

After getting the pic taken, we had to wait in the park for about an hour for it to be ready for pic up at the camera place at the front of the park – sorry the actual name of the place is escaping me right now. We did some more Innoventions stuff including Club Cool again before heading to the front of the park. I was so disappointed to find out that our pic wasn’t ready yet. You have to pick it up the same day – only at Epcot, and we weren’t planning on returning later – had other plans. I explained the situation to the cast member and she just bent over backwards to make sure I got my picture. I said several times, that it was okay and I had one almost like it on my camera and she called up the chain to several supervisors to get approval to have me pick it up later at our hotel. Thank you Jan in the photo place at Epcot! So now I have my glossy 5x7 too! So we headed out of the park all wet and soggy, trying to stow our wet ponchos so we wouldn’t get the bus all wet on the way home.

For dinner Sean and I had a date night planned at Narcosse’s. Katie went back to the Cub’s Den for dinner, which she was really happy about and we fed Alex from Roaring Fork and sent him to the Arcade with a $20 bill. 13 yr old bliss for him. Narcoose’s is at the Grand Floridian, another hotel on Disney property. A very expensive hotel from what I hear/read. We had figured out that several buses are shared between WL and GF, so we hopped one that was going to Downtown Disney, knowing it would stop at Grand Floridian first and got off there. There is no official direct route between Wilderness Lodge and Grand Floridian, so we felt pretty satisfied with ourselves for having figured that one out. We saved so much time that we were almost 30 min. early for our ressie. We wandered around the grounds for a little bit admiring how pretty the resort was before heading into Narcoose’s. Once inside, there is a counter where you can see the chefs preparing the dinners. On the counter they had a live lobster just sort of wandering! Had to snap a photo.

For dinner I ordered – what else – whole lobster! We were using 2 table service credits each here, and could order anything on the menu with them, so I was getting my money’s worth! It was very delicious! Sean ordered the Salmon, but our waiter misunderstood him and when he said, “I’ll have the Salmon” the waiter thought he said, “I’ll have the same” and he brought two lobsters. We spoke up immediately and they brought Sean’s salmon out very quickly after that. We both enjoyed our meals and the almond crusted cheesecake there was just too die for – very yummy! I’d eat there again in a heartbeat. We took the slow way back to Wilderness – the monorail from Grand Floridian to Magick Kingdom, then the boat from MK to WL.
Unfortunately there isn’t much else to tell for the rest of this day – we headed back to the hotel for a little alone time while Katie and Alex were still otherwise occupied and then began packing for the return trip home.