A couple of weeks ago (a few weeks after my last vacation) I began thinking that I should start blogging about the vacations that I take. So now, 2 weeks after that (about a month after my last vacation) I'm finally getting to it. ;) So before any more of the trip fades from my memories, here goes.
At the beginning of October, Jeff and I went for a long weekend (Friday through Monday) at Disney World in Orlando with our friends George, Diana and Chuck. They stayed for the week following that with some other friends of theirs, but Jeff and I only stayed the 4 days.
-- FRIDAY --
We headed out to Orlando on Friday morning, and got checked into the resort where we were staying.
While we were in Vegas last year, Jeff and I attended one of those icky timeshare presentations to get free stuff just for listening to them drone on. We got tickets to the Medieval-times-like show at Excalibur, which was very cool. (We would have gotten Ka tickets, but Ka was not even showing the week we were there, go figure!) And we got free 2-night stay for future use, which I kept thinking would have so many restrictions on it that we'd never be able to use it. But it worked out great . We didn't necessarily have to use the 2-night stay in Vegas. We had a choice between Vegas, Orlando and somewhere else. We ended up being able to upgrade from 2 nights to 3 nights (and just pay for the 3rd night), and upgrade from a room for just the 2 of us, to a suite for the 5 of us. After all that, we ended up with very inexpensive accomodations at a very nice place!
The resort was probably a year or less old, so everything was very new. Some of the buildings and pools were still being built. But the pool they had was awesome. And the suite had a flat-screen tv and full kitchen and all that, very nice. I'd have almost been ok with never leaving the resort! Almost :P
After checking into the suite and getting settled in, we headed to Downtown Disney to get food
and hang out at one of our favorite places, DisneyQuest. DisneyQuest is basically a giant, 5-story arcade, but that description doesn't really do it justice. They've got anything from VR-type games, to bumper cars, to the old school games like PacMan and Space Invaders. And once you pay to get in, you don't pay any extra for the games, they're all included in admission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisneyQuest
http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdw/entertainment/entertainmentDetail?id=DisneyQuestIndoorInteractiveThemeParkEntertainmentPage&bhcp=1
We went down to Orlando/Disney last December 2005 with George, Diana and Chuck for a week, and they knew we'd all enjoy DisneyQuest. We ended up getting an annual pass (one of those things that usually pays for itself after only a few uses. ) One big benefit of the annual pass is being able to just go to DisneyQuest for a few hours after a day at the theme parks, or hang out there after dinner. So instead of trying to squeeze everything at DisneyQuest into a one-day or two-day admission, we could spend a little bit of time there EVERY day. We decided we liked having that convenience of being able to go there in shorter doses than have to spend all day indoors at one place. And we also figured we could make a point of coming back down for a few days before a year was up and make it even more worthwhile. So, this trip in October 2006 was the before-a-year-was-up trip :).
So Friday night, we ate dinner at Wolfgang Puck (yumm). Walked around toward Pleasure Island to check it out and see what was there. Then hung out at DisneyQuest for a little bit. But called it a night fairly early. We squeezed in a game or two of the Pirates of the Carribean game, probably their best game. It's a game where you get 3D glasses and go into this room that looks like you're on a ship. You have a steering wheel, and cannons on each side of the ship. One person gets to be the captain, and everyone else is shooting other pirate ships, collecting booty of course. The drivers can step over and do some shooting while they're not busy driving if they want. And at the end, you fight the big ghost-pirate ship. It's a great game.
I also had to revisit the Space Invaders game that kicked my butt last December. I used to be able to get pretty far in that game every time as a kid! But it was frustraing that couldn't even get past level 1 anymore! I was determined to defeat those Space Invaders. But was disappointed that it didn't happen Friday night.
-- SATURDAY --
We headed to MGM Studios theme park for the afternoon. Hit a few rides, and a fun stunt-car show. (see the car jumping across two ramps.)
For dinner we ate at a Polynesian restaurant called O'Hana that George and Diana knew we would love (and have been looking forward to returning to since they introduced us to it last December!)
http://community.iexplore.com/planning/journalEntryDining.asp?JournalID=26401&EntryID=17006&n=O'Hana
Basically, unlimited meat. Guys come around to the tables with various types of meat on a large skewer, and you get to try a lot of different things and eat as much as you want. The trick is not to fill up too much on the unlimited appetisers (wings, etc.) and side dishes (mashed potatos, beans, etc.) But also save room for dessert, they have the best bread pudding with ice cream and banana's foster sauce that I have ever had. I'm drooling just thinking about it. The pic on the left is Jeff right after the guy put way more steak than he asked for on his plate! He took care of it though. :) The pic on the right is (L to R) Jeff, George, Gayle, Diana.
After dinner, we spent Saturday evening hanging out at Magic Kingdom.
-- SUNDAY --
Jeff and I wanted to take advantage of the pool at least one day.
So we tried to get up early (early for vacation anyway, 10-10:30am maybe?) so we could go to the pool. I headed down their first, maybe around 11, while Jeff was still dozing in and out on the couch and everyone else was still in bed. I laid out for almost an hour, decided I was hot and would go for a dip in the pool. There was this smaller pool to the side of the big pool (3rd pool pic above). So I decided to see if it was a big hot tub or what. I stuck my foot in and it seemed normal pool temperature. So I started to get in, and I didn't get in very far before I thought "WOW, this is REALLY cold." Surprising for a pool to be that cold in Orlando, toward the end of summer, when the daytime temperatures are still in the 80's. I didn't get in much past my waist when I noticed a button you could push to make it like a whirlpool, and a little sign next to it that said "Cold Dip Spa." Aha, no wonder it was so cold. This was the polar-bear pool! So I high-tailed it out of there and into the normal pool, which felt awesome! After a little while there, I went back to my chair to lay out and doze off some more. Shortly after that, Jeff came out to the pool and found me. I told him about the polar bear pool, which he thought was awesome! (of course, he would). We laid out for a little while then he went to get in the cold pool. He got right in, was loving it, and said "this is just like the pools in Buffalo in the summer!" and "this is the best invention, ever." I called him a polar bear, told him he was crazy and I went in the regular pool for awhile :) When I got out, Jeff was still in the cold pool. I tried again to get in, and granted it was MUCH easier to take after having been in the regular pool. I was able to jump all the way in to the cold pool, but didn't stay long before I scooted over to the hot tub for a bit. Didn't stay there long, just enough to warm up from the cold pool. We hung out a little while longer in the regular pool, swam a few laps, then laid out a bit more to dry off before heading back to the room.
Once we all got cleaned up and ready to go, we grabbed lunch, then headed out.
We picked October to come down because Epcot has a food and wine festival every day
throughout the month of October. At the back of the park, they have their international area with buildings representing many different countries. During the food and wine festival, each country has their own booth and they sell food and beverages that are representative of their countries. Here are some highlights that I remember, I'm sure there's some that I'm forgetting:
- I can't remember what country, but one of them had Mango Wine. Jeff thought it was too sweet but I liked it a lot.
- Mexico - Margaritas of course.
- China - I don't know what it was called, but they had some very good chicken skewers in some kind of peanut sauce.
- Italy - They had a lot of stuff I wanted to try but I didn't have enough hands for everything. So I got some kind of sparkling white wine that I couldn't pronounce but tested excellent! And they had a really good pizza. I wanted to try the tirimisu and/or canoli too but I didn't. It wasn't really time for dessert yet anyway ;)
- Germany - Brats with Kraut. These were very good.
- America - They had Sam Adams Cherry Wheat beer on draft. I really like this beer in bottles at home, but Jeff says it tastes like cough syrup with the cherry flavor. I don't agree, but hey that's more for me :) I could not believe how much better I liked this beer on draft like they had it there, as opposed to in a bottle like at home!
- Canada - Cheesy potato soup.
- Greece - Baklava of course.
After that, we headed back to DisneyQuest to kill a few more pirates. And I tried again, to no avail, to defeat the Space Invaders. In one game, it came down to a one-on-one shoot out between me and one of the Invaders. We both took our shot, but alas he was a slightly quicker draw than I. And it was at such close range I didn't have enough time to duck out of the way. We both shot and killed each other but since I died first, game-over for me. Grr.
We also played AstroBlaster, a bumper car game where you run over these rubber balls and they get pulled up into your car. Then you take the ball and load it into a cannon inside the car, and shoot at other cars. You can have 2 people in the car, one driver and one shooter. Or you can just do both yourself. If you hit specific targets on other cars, they spin around in circles. I think our car wasn't picking up ammo that night. It seemed like I was driving the car right over lots of ammo but vary rarely was any actually ending up inside the car. Or I'm just a sucky driver.
-- MONDAY --
We had to check out of the room by 11am. We dumped our stuff in the room where our friends would be staying the rest of the week, then headed back to DisneyQuest for a few hours before we had to catch our early-evening flight. We got to play Pirates several more times. Played AstroBlaster again. Our car worked much better (or else Jeff is just a better driver). But it sounded like Chuck ended up with the same defective car we had the day before that wouldn't pick up ammo. And,
finally I defeated those Space Invaders!!!!
