There was no Monday Links this week because The Wife and I made a weekend excursion over to Disney to meet up with some of her work friends.
Hotel Happenings – We stayed at the Dolphin, which is on the Disney property, but it’s not owned by Disney. I think it’s a Marriot property. Anywhoo, because we were a bit late to make our reservations, we couldn’t get the room Friday. Darn, but the reservations clerk said it would be okay for us to go to the hotel and at the very least, we would be able to drop our luggage and then go to the parks. Due to the vast number of rooms, we might even be able to get a really early check-in.
So, we picked up The Wife’s boss/friend, at oh-dark-early on Saturday and made the trek across the state. When we get to the hotel, we were fully expecting to just be able to secure our luggage and head to the parks. But, they actually had rooms available. Well, that was fortuitous. We had enough time to drop our stuff and catch the bus over to Animal Kingdom.
Animal Kingdom Happenings – I’m not the biggest fan of Animal Kingdom. Still, I enjoyed doing their little safari excursion. Although, my lower back wasn’t too pleased when we got off. We joined up with The Wife’s co-workers and “friends of friends”. They stopped for breakfast, so The Wife and I stopped for something called a Chai Marsala. Would not recommend that. We hung with the group as we went through some of the exhibits, but The Wife and I aren’t real big on rides, so we split off from them while they went on the Everest rollercoaster. About midday, The Wife and I split with the group and headed to Magic Kingdom.
Magic Kingdom Happenings – By the time we got off the bus at Magic Kingdom, The Wife and I were tired and hungry. It didn’t help that the place was crowded enough we had to sit on a railing to eat our lunch. We wandered around Main Street, picked up some souvenirs, and then headed back to the hotel.
Day One Wrap-Up Happenings – The bus didn’t take us directly back to the hotel, so we had to walk a short distance to hotel. Plus it took some personal navigating as the walking directions from Apple Maps sent us into a construction zone. By the time we got back to our room, we were exhausted. We just crashed. It was bad enough that we didn’t realize until we got up to get dinner that we hadn’t quite closed the door.
Epcot Happenings – Day Two was going to be Epcot only. One of the nice things about staying at the Dolphin was we could take a boat over to Epcot. Even better? The boats drop you right at the World Showcase, which was what we wanted to do. For me, the biggest draw in the World Showcase is Japan – because I’m a bit of a weeb. We made a quick excursion there, just to see the offerings. We had lunch in France before we went to go meet up with her work friends in Mexico. They were going to the whole Drinking Around the World thing. I wanted to go to Mexico to get another ceramic parrot for my office to replace one that had broken. After a quick detour through the United Kingdom, we walk around to Mexico. Go into the main building to the shop that sells parrots. Nope. Only these little things. Damn. Oh well. From that point, we waited on her friends. About this time, we’d been in Epcot for a bit over four hours. We were waning. So, we said our regards and then decided to head back to the hotel. A few stops in China, Italy, and Japan before we grabbed the boat back.
Overall Happenings – Overall, we had a lot of fun, but it was a lot of time on our feet. The Dolphin is a great hotel for being close to everything. There were some lessons learned if we do this again next year.