We left early Monday morning. Our flight was supposed to leave at about 9am, with a layover in Baltimore, and we'd be getting to Orlando around 2:50. Because our airport is kind of small, we didn't need to get there the 2 full hours before our flight, so we got there just after 7:30. When we got to the counter to check in, they asked us if we wanted to change our flight, to a direct flight. It left at 1:30, and got into Orlando an hour later than our original flight. They also said they'd give us each $100 in future flight credit, and upgrade us to first class. We said of course! We prefer first class. We generally fly AirTran, and it's usually pretty affordable to upgrade to first class once you get to the airport, so if there is room, we try to upgrade. The flight we were supposed to take to Baltimore was completely full, which prevented us from upgrading, which also why they wanted us to change flights. So we were happy that we could get a direct flight, and get first class. Plus, the $200 credit will help us when we go in February!
We had dinner reservations at Yachtsman Steakhouse at 8:30, and by the time we got to our hotel, it was after 6, so we were worried that we wouldn't have time to change and get ready. When we got to our room, I was happy and disappointed at the same time. I was happy, because we were greeted with a beautiful towel Mickey Mouse. :) But we had been given 2 full beds, instead of a King bed, like I had requested. I called and asked to be switched, but unfortunately they didn't have any King beds available, so we had to deal with it. :(We were worried that our luggage wouldn't get to the room in time for us to change before dinner, but luckily it came right before we were leaving, so we had a chance to get freshened up a bit before heading over to the Yacht and Beach Club.
We got to the Yacht and Beach Club a bit early, because we weren't sure how long it would take us to get there since we were using Disney transportation, so we had some drinks while we were waiting for our reservation time. At 8:30, we headed into the Yachtsman Steakhouse. Our dinner was SO good! We had the deluxe dining plan, so we were able to both have an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. Everything was great, the wine was great, the service was great. We loved everything about our dinner.
We were going to try to go out to Jelly Rolls after dinner, but we were so full and sleepy that we decided we'd head back to the hotel. We had breakfast planned for 7:45 at Ohana, so we wanted to get some sleep.
The next morning, we headed to breakfast nice and early. I had never done a character breakfast, so I was excited to see what it was all about. Since Ohana means family, everything was served Family Style. We got a big bowl that had scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and potatoes. We also got a big bowl of fruit, and they came around and served mickey mouse waffles. And to drink, there was coffee, and a really yummy fruit juice. I generally don't meet the characters, but since they were there, I couldn't say no to taking a picture with them.
After breakfast, we took the monorail to Epcot. As a rule, I generally try to do Magic Kingdom, or Hollywood Studios first on my trips to Disney. To be honest, I really don't care THAT much about Epcot. I know it's a lot of peoples favorite park, but it just hasn't done much for me. I looooove Soarin', but that ride alone isn't enough to make me want to spend a whole lot of time there. But because we were there mostly for the Food and Wine Festival, and because Cody hadn't had much of a chance to see the World Showcase, we decided to spend a whole day there. I wasn't sure that we'd need an entire day to get all the stuff done we wanted to do, but I was surprised that we easily spend the entire day there. We did a lot of things that I had never done before (Journey into Imagination, Captian EO) which made me happy, since there isn't a ton that I haven't done before!
We signed up for the "Behind the Seeds" tour, which is an hour long tour that basically was an extension of the Living with the Land boat ride. It was very interesting, and we learned some awesome things about hydroponic gardening! These are some Pumpkins that are "earning their ears"!
After the tour, we headed to the World Showcase. We went around the whole thing twice, and ate our hearts out. We ate so much food, but luckily it was over a few hours time, so we weren't too full. The reason we went to Epcot on our first full day at the parks, was because Hanson was playing that day. So, after we were done eating everything we could, we got our spot for the Hanson show.
They were great, as usual. I'm used to crazy Hanson shows, and people were actually very well behaved. I was shocked, though, that there were people who had stood in line for 5 hours! I don't understand why you would pay all that money to get into Disney, to not enjoy it! Even if you'd been in the park before, that just seemed awfully silly to me. Anyway, like I said, the concert, although short, was great. We had gotten a wrist band from the Chase lounge that meant guaranteed seating for the second performance. We figured we'd use them if we had an issue finding a spot for the first performance, which we didn't at all. Since neither of us slept very good Sunday or Monday night, we decided that we'd skip out on the other two performances. Our original plan was to go to the hotel for a few minutes to rest, and get cleaned up for our 9:00 dinner reservation, but I called to see if we could move our reservation up, and we were able to go at 7:30 instead of 9!
We had dinner at Narcoossee's at the Grand Floridian. Now, I have always wanted to eat at one of the restaurants at the Grand Floridian, and I am a little bit disappointed in our first experience there. When we got to the restaurant, we were a little early, so we decided to go to the bar and wait for our table. We sat at the bar for 15 minutes without getting a drink. There were people that got there after us that got served before we did. Cody was annoyed that we were clearly being ignored for whatever reason, and we got up and decided to wait outside instead. Then, when we got our table, our server wasn't nearly as awesome as the night before. The food was great, but our server seemed just a little too busy to want to pay much attention to us. I have big worries a lot when we go out for nice dinners that people will look at us and think we are too young, or don't look wealthy enough to be able to "deserve" to have dinner at a nicer restaurant. So, when the server didn't seem to want to pay attention to us, or when the bartender ignored us, it made me feel like we weren't wanted there. I know that might be crazy, but I still just felt a bit unwelcome. Like I said though, the food was great, and we did get a really great view of the fireworks from Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.
We were able to make it back to our hotel in time to swim for a second (the pool was FREEZING!) and we were sound asleep right after that, ready to spend the next day at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios!
Part 2 coming soon! :)
