In My Stylish Yet Affordable Boots

See you real soon!

The morning following my birthday, we slept in. We'd definitely stayed out past our bedtime! After a leisurely waking and getting ready, we were off to Fantasia Gardens to play some mini golf. We've played both courses on previous trips, and this time chose the Gardens course. After a heated competition, I am pleased to report that for only the second time ever, I WON! I savored my fabulous victory all through lunch at Beaches & Cream at the Beach Club Resort. After lunch, the busy (and hot!) week-so-far caught up with us and we made our way back to the resort for some nap time before our dinner reservation that night.

After a refreshing nap and shower/change of clothes, we were off to our dinner at Chef Mickey's! I'm not a big fan of buffets, but the food was surprisingly good. We were seated in a great location and all of the characters came around fairly quickly. I was also surprised by our server bringing me a special birthday cupcake! After dinner, we grabbed the monorail from the Contemporary over to the Magic Kingdom for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party. We enjoy these specially-ticketed events, and had a fun evening of riding our favorite rides at the Magic Kingdom, people-watching for the costumes people were wearing, and checking out the special fireworks and parade.

Even with a nap, we crashed immediately following the party, since The Husband had an early morning tee time at Lake Buena Vista, and I had a mid-morning pedicure scheduled at the Saratoga Springs Spa.  My pedicurist, Maria, was awesome - cheery and sweet and easy to chat with. I chose Essie's Scarlett O'Hara as my color and was very pleased with the results. After the pedi was completed, I headed back to our room to await The Husband's text so we could meet up at The Turf Club for lunch. We had a nice lunch there before heading off to Blizzard Beach for our first trip to one of WDW's water parks! We spent a few hours on the slides and lazy river before heading back to our room to pack what we could for our departures the following day. Once we completed that task, we decided on the Magic Kingdom for some casual touring and making a second attempt at the Wishes fireworks. Mission completion! We actually watched from a new-to-us vantage point behind the castle in Fantasyland this time.  I should note that the weather on this day was absolutely gorgeous; cool in the morning, in the 60s, warming to the low 80s during the day. Bliss.

The weather the next morning was equally gorgeous, which made it slightly easier to bear packing up the rest of our stuff, dropping our checked luggage off to be checked through to the airline, packing everything else in the car, then heading off to Disney Hollywood Studios. Sadly, we failed at getting either a reasonable stand-by line or a reasonably-timed Fast Pass for Toy Story Mania, so we did not get to ride again. We were successful, however, in getting photos with Sorcerer Mickey and the cast of Up! We enjoyed our traditional last-day lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater, our people-watching with a frozen Coke, a final tour of the shops for any last-minute souvenirs, and then another round of mini golf over at Winter Summerland. Unfortunately, there was not another fabulous victory for me to savor, but it was fun to play the Winter course on this trip.

After a quick change in the bathroom (we knew it would be much cooler in MKE upon our return), we headed off to the airport. Or tried. Oops. But we were able to right ourselves without too much difficulty and get on the correct highway to return to the airport. The flight back was uneventful and we arrived in a chilly rain.

All in all, a fantastic trip. I'm so glad we got to do some new-to-us stuff on this trip, even though we missed some of our favorites as a result (Soarin', It's Tough to be a Bug).  I am already looking forward to our next trip, whenever that may be!

The one about the food.

And the music. And the food. And the music. And also more food and music. And the Jesus skywriter.

But I'll start where I left off - Toy Story Mania. What a fantastic ride! In spite of the pain of getting up and going early enough to be there for rope drop, I'm glad we did. I did not score particularly well, but in my defense, I was kind of taking in the whole experience and sort of slow with my shooter. The Husband did quite well, however!

After Toy Story Mania, we grabbed a quick breakfast at Starring Rolls Cafe, then left the park and headed off to Sea World. We had an enjoyable day seeing the sea critters, and even had an extended underwater viewing of the manatee habitat while a thunderstorm blew through during the afternoon. Overheard in the Wild Arctic exhibit, while observing the beluga whales, a guy said to his girlfriend, "Hey, these are those manatees!" Um, notsomuch, dude. The Arctic and the Everglades? Not exactly the same.

When it started looking likely that we were going to get rained on again, we made our way out of the park. Just as we arrived at the car, the rain started again, so we'd made a good decision. We drove back to our resort for a bit of a break, then we were off to Epcot to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at the Eat to the Beat concert! We arrived early enough to grab some beverages at the San Juan, PR booth (frozen mojito for The Husband, frozen dragon berry colada for me), and chicken souvlaki and spanakopita at the Athens, Greece booth. Yum. We got great seats for the BBVD show, which was really good; they played a mix of their older stuff and some Cab Calloway covers from their newest release.  This is the fourth time we've seen them play in some venue or another and they always put on a good show.

Since we were pretty much wiped out by that point, we headed back to the resort, grabbed a quick dinner at Artist's Palette, then crashed.

Next morning, we slept in - my birthday, my choice. :) After getting some breakfast, we intended to hang out at the resort pool for awhile, then heading over to Epcot to enjoy more Food & Wine action before our dinner ADR at Rose & Crown. However, the day took a slight detour for The Husband when he attempted to go back to our room briefly after breakfast, before joining me at the pool, and his key card wouldn't work in the door. A new card, a visit by the maintenance guy, and about 45 minutes later, he finally made it. In spite of that, we floated in the pool for awhile, then got ourselves sorted and headed off to Epcot.

Oh. My. The food. And drink. Out of twenty-seven stands, we ate and/or drank at twelve total stands, ten of them on my birthday. Here's the rundown:

• Desserts & Champagne: Austrian Bundt Cake, Grand Marnier Parfait with Orange Coulis
• Rio de Janiero, Brazil: Leblon Frozen Caipirinha
• Buenos Aires, Argentina: Grilled Beef Skewer with Chimichurri and Boniato Puree
• The Mouse Catch: Trio of Cheeses - Dorothea (Dutch), Piave (Italian), Mahon (Spanish)
• Mexico City, Mexico: Corn Tortilla filled with Shredded Pork and Purple Onions, Mousse de Piña Colada y Coco
• Krakow, Poland: Kielbasa and Potato Pierogi with Carmelized Onions and Sour Cream, Chopin Raspberry Chiller
• Cape Town, South Africa: Seared Beef Tenderloin with Sweet Potato Puree and Mango Barbeque Sauce
• Munich, Germany: Apple Strudel with Vanilla Sauce, Beck's Oktoberfest
• Bologna, Italy: Cannelloni, Polpettini (veal meatballs in red sauce), Primavera (strawberry, banana, & peach slush)
• Paris, France: Chocolate Milk Crème Brûlée, Parisien Cosmo Slush

We kind of had to stop at that point, because of our dinner plans.  We made a few stops along the way at some of the permanent country pavilions in the World Showcase, as well as stopping to see Richard Marx at the Eat to the Beat concert. Weirdest moment of the day: a skywriter who first wrote "PRAISE JESUS", then "JESUS 4 GIVES", seemingly aimed at the masses at Epcot.

We checked in a bit early for dinner, but we were ready to get off our feet for awhile, and still kind of full from grazing.  We did get lucky and were seated outside for fireworks viewing. We had a delicious meal (if a bit large and un-finish-able after our grazing) and enjoyed the fireworks. Our server brought me a birthday card signed by the waitstaff, which was a nice touch.  After dinner and fireworks, there were Extra Magic Hours, so we took advantage and rode some of the rides in Future World before heading out of the park and over to Boardwalk to Jellyroll's for dueling pianos! I love dueling piano bars, and we had an enjoyable time singing along (and even dancing along, at one point, to The Time Warp!) before heading back to the resort to collapse.

The Happiest Place on Earth

When we last saw our intrepid travelers, they were on their way to a Polynesian luau...

We had a great time at the luau, which doubled as our anniversary dinner. I drank some fabulously fruity concoction out of a coconut carved into a monkey's face, the food was good and plentiful, and the entertainment was fantastic.  After dinner, however, we were pretty much done after a second day of early wake-up, and thus we crashed.

We slept in this morning for a bit, then headed off to Downtown Disney to do a bit of souvenir shopping and to ride the Characters In Flight tethered balloon. That was So. COOL. We went 400 feet into the air and could see all over the Disney property. We're going to try to go again, this time at night.

After the balloon ride, we grabbed some lunch at Cookes of Dublin (mmm, fish & chips...), did our shopping, took a quick break for something to drink and some air conditioning, then headed off to the Disney Hollywood Studios. Unfortunately, we were too late in the day to easily check out the new Toy Story Mania attraction without an extremely long wait, and they were out of Fast Passes for it. So The Husband went off to ride Tower of Terror (not a favorite of mine), while I killed some time wandering the shops and catching glimpses of the parade. Once I'd wandered through all of the shops I could easily get to during the parade, I found a bench in the shade to wait for him. While waiting, I was first asked to take a guest survey. Can I just say how much I love surveys? I'm always happy to give my opinion. :) Then, just before The Husband arrived, another Cast Member just stopped for a chat and asked if we were celebrating anything. I told him about our anniversary and my birthday. He said, "How many years?" I said, "Eleven." I could tell, however, he wanted to go for the joke, so I quickly added, "Can't you tell how young I look?!" We all laughed, then I told him my actual age, and whether he was putting me on or not, I can't say, but he looked fairly surprised that wasn't younger! That's always a nice feeling. :)

After checking out the new American Idol Experience, riding Star Tours, seeing the Muppets 3D, and riding Rockin' Roller Coaster, we were getting hungry, so we headed off to the Magic Kingdom to get a bite to eat and see Spectromagic. We found ourselves a good spot for the parade, and just as it ended, it started to rain a bit. By the time we got down to Main Street USA, the sky had opened up and we were soaked. We chose not to stay for the Wishes fireworks, but sloshed our way back to Saratoga Springs. We did, however, see some pretty spectacular natural fireworks on the way back, accompanied by some loud rumbles of thunder!

We have an early day planned for tomorrow - a quick stop at DHS at rope drop for Toy Story Mania, then off to Sea World for much of the day, then to Epcot to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy perform at the Eat to the Beat concert series for Food & Wine. Phew.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

Oh, wait, that was The Go-Gos, not The Bangles. Ah, well.

The Husband and I are in Orlando, celebrating our 11th anniversary and my 37th(!) birthday. People, it is HOT. I'm from Wisconsin. Sometimes we get a couple of 90-degree days. Sometimes we have kickass summers like this one, where most every day is somewhere between the mid 60s and mid 80s and I don't want to die from the heat. Anyway, we come here a lot at this time of year because of the aforementioned anniversary/birthday convergence, and much like I hear about childbirth, I love the end result of our awesomely fun vacation and forget about the horrendous heat until we arrive again.

We left MKE yesterday morning, after getting up at 4:15 AM. I am not exactly a morning person, so much of the getting up, getting ready, cab ride to the airport, and check in at the AirTran counter is kind of a blur. However, what's not a blur is us being upgraded to business class. Awesome. Granted, it's only about a two and a half hour flight, but the extra legroom was tremendously appreciated.  Upon arrival in MCO, our luggage came off faster than I've ever seen it here, and shockingly *together*! We picked up our rental car and were on our way!

Our destination for the first night here was the Hard Rock Hotel at Universal Studios. We found our way easily and checked in, though our room was not yet ready. They promised to call my mobile phone with our room number when it became available, so off we went to get some lunch and hit the Universal Studios parks. We grabbed lunch in the on-site restaurant, The Kitchen, which was quite good, and spotted The Bangles having lunch as well (see, now the first line of this post makes more sense!). They were playing a show to benefit breast cancer research at the hotel last night.  During lunch, it started raining pretty hard, so we waited that out a bit, and when it let up some, we grabbed the water taxi over to the theme park and Citywalk area.

Honestly, we are not fans of the Universal parks, but there are a few new things since we were last there, so off we went. The Simpsons ride is *phenomenal* - so well done! Over in Islands of Adventure, I was sorry more of the in-progress Harry Potter area was not visible. After some touring, we were running out of gas (see: 4:15 AM wakeup), it was after the time our room should've been ready, and yet there was still no message. FAIL. We headed back to the hotel, finally got our room number, and then had to haul our luggage up a flight of stairs, as there was no elevator available from the self-park area. We spent the rest of the night chilling in our room and had room service for dinner.

This morning, up early again with a 6 AM wakeup call. We packed up to head over to our next destination - Saratoga Spring Resort & Spa at Walt Disney World! We checked in easily, were given both Happy Anniversary buttons for both of us and a Happy Birthday button for me, and they also took my mobile number to send a text when the room was ready. We grabbed a quick breakfast in The Artist's Palette, then headed off to Animal Kingdom for our first day of park touring. We had a fabulous day in the park, saw quite a few active animals on the safari, tried out the new Picnic in the Park option for lunch, and SSR texted me promptly at 12:01 with my room number. WIN.  After a bit more touring, we headed back, have unpacked, picked up our tickets for our dinner luau at the Polynesian tonight, and had a bit of a nap. The Husband went up to get some drinks and snacks, and surprised me with a pair of Crocs with the holes shaped like Mickey ears, which I'd pointed out to him this morning (for, like, the 87th time).  I know, they're the ugliest shoes on Earth (not exactly "stylish boots";-) ), but I've been wanting a pair of these particular ones for years. I love having a pair of easy-clean shoes around. But the point is, isn't he thoughtful? :-)

And with that, I'm off to get ready for my anniversary dinner with my awesome husband!