Disney Madness, Part One

Does it tell you anything about my trip that it's taken me 2 days to even coordinate myself enough to sit down and write something?

And even now that I *am* sitting, I can guarantee it will be less than cohesive.

Note to self... schedule a day for down time next time, because dropping right back in is a fool's errand.

So let's see. Where to start.

There's the... um, adventure?... TR endured on his way to Florida in Le Van. About halfway through the middle of nowhere, his check engine light came on. AWESOME! He spent the next, oh, 20 hours or so fighting with that, attempting to find service stations. Finally he decided to just hope for the best, and of course he made it, but the van needed a doctor visit.

Which is fine, because that meant we rented a car.

What kind of car? We'll get to that later.

As for me, I spent Thursday furiously working through everything possible, cleaning my desk so that nothing would hang over my head while I was gone. I was mostly packed, but knew I'd have to finish up some last minute stuff... my mind was mostly at work, but halfway onto the plane!

I had been working hard to get as much school work done as I could, too... who wants to do homework on vacation?! My English teacher was kind enough to give me an advanced list of the Week 5 (already??) work, so I was able to get pretty caught up. I still ended up doing some homework while I was there, but not much!

So at last it was Friday morning. I got The Kid up and ready for school, dropped her off and then headed back home to meet my friend Melissa, who I plied with Starbucks in exchange for a ride to the airport.

I did homework while I waited for the plane, having gotten through security in 3 minutes flat and thus burdened with an excess of free time. No moment wasted, I tell you. I'm SO EFFICIENT.

Anyway.

I totally lucked out on the plane; TR set me up with a window seat because he's awesome, but as an extra bonus, the seat between the window and the aisle ended up unoccupied! The nice guy on the aisle and I high-fived over that one.

Finally landing after our very pleasant flight, I admired the gorgeous landscaping at the Orlando Airport. Well... I thought it was landscaping, turns out that's just how Florida looks. It's unbelievably gorgeous. Those palm trees! All that green!

TR picked me up in the ailing but able van, and presented me with a lei (we were staying at the Polynesian), a button saying "1st Visit!", and my Key to the World.

Isn't that cool? I felt so welcomed... and I wore that pin all week! It earned me greetings, discussions on how my trip was going, and a thorough Fairy Dusting which I'm still finding bits of even now, thankfully!

We arrived at the Polynesian and were immediately greeted by the thing I was looking forward to seeing in person most... the Monorail! I love the Monorail. I wish we had one.

There's no way to accurately describe this place, so I'll just direct you toward the link up there, and give you this picture to look at, which was the view from our room.

We could see the boats going back and forth, the castle at the Magic Kingdom and Space Mountain across the lake, both lit up all night, the other two lagoon-side resorts (the Contemporary and Grand Floridian), the ibis and lizards that were everywhere, and the monorail. We could also see the fireworks at night.

It was absolutely glorious! In fact we spent a whole day there, our feet and legs too tired to go on, renting a boat and eschewing our dinner reservations for pizza, mojitos and fireworks from the balcony. It was tough, but we managed.

The boating happened again. It was necessary. I drove, TR took many photos, and we shared (sort of - I got carried away) a Mai Tai when we got back. A lovely afternoon.

And look what was waiting on the bed for us the first day! We loved our room attendant, Sylvia. She also left us what we named The Towel Princess, and a cute towel dog who I neglected to photograph. We loved Sylvia.

It would have been perfect if not for the adjoining door. Know what happens when you have an adjoining door at the Happiest Place On Earth?

Small children.

Well, a little bit of imperfection just highlights the good stuff, right?

Right?!

Once we had our stuff sorted, it was time to head out and start experiencing the parks themselves!

First, though...

Dinner.

Kona Cafe is part of the Polynesian, and we ate dinner and breakfast there twice. Dinner was the same thing both times because oh my...

Tuna Oscar**
Served with Fried Green Tomatoes,
Tempura-fried Jumbo Lump Crab,
and Wasabi Hollandaise

**That is not my picture. The thing I love about Disney best is the Disney Freaks. There are literally photographs of everything we ate there, taken by other people. This a) shows the consistency of deliciousness available there and b) shows that people are insane. I'm insane too, I just didn't have a good camera with me so *my* picture of the Tuna Oscar was atrocious. Just so you know.

Yeah. Twice.

For desert the first night, in celebration of a week of not having to be an adult in any capacity if I didn't feel like it, I got the most ridiculous desert on the menu.

The Kona Cone.

Again, not my photo. As evidenced by the copyright. Duh!

This is a waffle cone. Filled with two scoops, one vanilla, one chocolate. With a chocolate Mickey in it. And sprinkles. And M&Ms. And cotton candy.

Who would feed this to their child? Seriously!

It was pretty awesome.

It was a good thing I loaded up on the sugar though, because we had a long night ahead of us...

Epcot at last!!

There's no way I can go into full detail about our time at Epcot. There was too much. The first and last ride at Epcot for me was Spaceship Earth. I was completely blown away by the detail and everything else, and was a weepy mess by the end. That happened a few times actually, most notably the Hall of Presidents, American Adventure and Last Day rides.

Okay, there's no Last Day ride. But I was bummin', and there may have been hormonal imbalances going on, so there.

So since I can't quite detail everything for you, I'll sum up. During our week, we experienced all of the following at least once.

• Air conditioning pit stops.
• Test Track at midnight.
• Mission Space is not for the faint of heart, but if you're going to do it, do the orange line and grab a sick sack.
• Stupid Judy!
  
• The fountain of a thousand oversprays! So welcome on a hot day. And they were all hot days.
• The Land Pavilion... baby alligators, feeding fish, hydroponic instruction, Farmer Mickey, the best salad ever on Earth and SOARIN'! I loved that ride so much.
  
• Turtle Talk is the coolest thing ever.
• The store in Japan was enormous.
• Canadian steaks and soup and Tropical Mojitos.
• Strawberry Oolong Tea Slushies in China.
• Orange Cream Vodka Slushies in France.
• Margarita Slushies in Mexico.
• German beer by the murrfurrin' quart. (Yes we pretty much drank our way through Disney. Vacations RULE.)

The detail on all the buildings blew my mind, and Hidden Mickeys are EVERYWHERE. I got a little obsessed actually, I started seeing them even when we weren't actually at Disney. Like in the fan at the hotel on Hutchinson Island. And in the fields on the way home on the plane. I think I have a problem.

So that was Epcot. Not really, but you get the idea.

Well, I think that's enough for one day... I have at least 3 more blog posts I can squeeze out of this trip! There's Magic Kingdom! Animal Kingdom! The beach! It's all coming. If I can remember.

It's all getting hazy...

I think I'd better go back there and do some fact checking.

You know, for accuracy.