Trip Reports

February 20-23, 1999

Cast of Characters:

Julie (narrator)
Matt (Julie's husband)
Stuart (Julie's brother)
Dana (Stuart's wife)
Kyle (Dana & Stuart's 16 month old son)
Mom & Dad (Julie & Stuart's parents)
Saturday, February 20, 1999

This was the only "warm" day of the trip with a high of 72. We took advantage of the weather to go to Blizzard Beach. Matt discovered that he's really too tall for the toboggan rides because his knees were rubbed raw from not fitting on the slider. Aside from that, we both had a really great time and tried everything except for the tallest slide. The only reason we didn't do that was because we ran out of time!

We didn't get to the park until 2 in the afternoon and it closed at 5:30. We had our picture taken on the family raft ride and Matt looked very nice in it. We would have bought it except I looked very terrible. I was making some kind of strange face and it was not a pretty sight.

That evening, we had reservations at Victoria & Albert's which is Disney's top restaurant. It has a prix fixe menu at $80 each plus wine pairings for another $30. We were both a little apprehensive that the meal would be a lot of exotic food that we wouldn't like but we found everything incredibly well presented and delicious. To get to the restaurant, it's located at the Grand Floridian hotel. They only offer valet parking and you're directed into a gigantic Victorian lobby filled with fresh flowers in huge arrangements. You take an iron elevator to the second floor (or traverse up a grand staircase straight out of the movies which we did coming down) and then the restaurant is hidden away off the back of the building. Once you check in, you never move your own chair, open a door or place a napkin on your own lap. Everything is done for you. The restaurant only serves 16 tables at a time for two sittings a night. Four of the tables are in a side room with a fireplace and that's where we were seated. Once you arrive at the table, you are given a personalized, keepsake menu. Ours mentioned that we were celebrating our 8th "monthaversary". I think I'm going to miss celebrating these come July when we don't do it anymore! We had two people waiting on us, Victoria (really Linda) and Albert (really Luis). Every course is fully plated on Wedgwood china and the presentation of everything is very artistic with each course looking like a sculpture. When they bring out, for example, your entree, they bring out not only the entree but also the appropriate silverware. At the end of the course, everything is taken away but the wineglasses (if they are still full). They even scrape the breadcrumbs from the tablecloth in between courses! The meal began with freshly baked rolls and a pre-appetizer, which was a sushi of some kind. It had salmon and nori and perhaps some avocado and cream cheese. We also each were treated to a glass of champagne. For the cold appetizer, Matt had some smoked buffalo tenderloin and I had a quenelle of goat cheese with greens. We each also had a glass of sparkling wine with that. After the cold appetizer, it was time for the hot appetizer. Matt went the meat route again with veal in a garlic, onion and mushroom sauce while I chose the potato horseradish crusted oysters, Matt had Chianti with his appetizer while I had a white wine of some kind. At this point, I have three half finished glasses in front of me, plus a water goblet. I didn't have much of a chance to catch up on the wine because the soup course came out. Matt chose the chicken consommé and I had a very delicious shrimp curry bisque. For the entree, I had black bass over crab dungeness with some Chardonnay while Matt had an Angus strip with squash polenta and a glass of cabernet sauvignon. That was followed up by some royal Stilton with walnut bread and burgundy poached pears plus a glass of port. The port was very strong.

I was very happy to be served some coffee which they brew right on the table using a vacuum method - the water is in the bottom of a huge closed bowl and the coffee is in the top of another bowl. A heat source is ignited below the water and the water boils up into the top bowl (picture an hourglass with the water in the bottom and the coffee in the top except instead of the coffee coming down to the water, the water goes up to the top). Matt doesn't drink coffee but he thought the method was interesting. The desserts were outstanding! Matt had a caramelized banana gateau and the cake was presented underneath a birdcage composed of drawn, spun sugar. It was beautiful! I had the most incredible creme brulee and my only sorrow was that I was unable to finish it since I was so stuffed. Dinner finished with much picture taking (we made friends with the table next to us) and we were presented with truffles (which we didn't touch since we were both stuffed), a chocolate card of congratulations (which we had for a snack the next day) and a rose. The manager came over to our table at one point and thanked us for coming - we didn't see him do that with anyone else. I couldn't believe how stuffed I was and we didn't eat all day except for a very light snack at noon in preparation. I also didn't count on how much the wine would affect me.

We walked around the hotel a little and then went back to our room. Actually, Matt walked and I stumbled. We stayed at a one-bedroom unit at Old Key West where we took advantage of the Jacuzzi before crashing. The next day, my parents, brother, sister in law and nephew arrived on AutoTrain. We changed rooms at the resort since they put us in a very smoky smoking room and ran into everyone at the front desk.

Sunday, February 21, 1999

We went into the Magic Kingdom on the bus for lunch at the Crystal Palace. We had a little bit of a wait outside where I took this picture of my dad with Matt. They were having a good time just waiting on the porch, telling jokes.

While the men were conversing on the porch, I was attempting to take pictures of my 16 month-old nephew, Kyle. I was trying some close-ups to see if I could capture his personality a little. Some of my favorite pictures of myself were taken when I was around his age

When you enter the Crystal Palace, there are some topiaries of the Winnie-the-Pooh characters made out of dried flowers. They are beautiful! This is my favorite picture of this trip. I'd never been here before and the food wasn't bad. I particularly enjoyed the pink lemonade.

My 16 month-old nephew, Kyle, on the other hand, particularly enjoyed meeting the characters. He enjoyed meeting Piglet, Eeyore and Winnie the Pooh. However, Tigger seems to be his favorite. He went crazy over Tigger.

Matt & I wandered around a little but the lines were incredibly long and it was cold & rainy. We were trying to do things he hadn't done during our previous two trips so we wandered through the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. Then we sat through the new Enchanted Tiki Birds show, which we both HATED. We took the raft to Tom Sawyer's Island where we had fun jumping on all of the bridges and saying boo to each other in the caves. Finally, we hit two favorites (People Mover and Carousel of Progress) before leaving the park. We were the only ones singing along with Carousel of Progress, which was disappointing. That's one of our favorite things to do, to sing along to "It's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow."

Another one of our favorite things to do is to take pictures of each other on either the People Mover (I know it's called Tomorrowland Transit Authority these days) or the Skyway. The Skyway was closed for rain so we chose the People Mover.

For some reason, resort buses aren't that plentiful for Old Key West and we had almost an HOUR wait at the bus stop. That was not fun. We decided that we'd drive from then on out. That's one reason to have a rental car. We're both impatient when it comes to waiting for buses, especially when it's cold and rainy! As soon as we stepped into our new room, Mom & Dad were inviting us to EPCOT for dinner with them at the Canadian pavilion. Off we went to find the reservation wasn't for another hour. We wandered the right side of World Showcase, stopping to buy Matt's brother a fez in Morocco. Matt had to try on the fez to make certain that the gift was appropriate as his brother has a large head.

Dinner was decent at LeCellier but the service was very poor. We went to join my brother in line for Test Track, which was having a soft opening. We ended up waiting until 10:30 for this ride (the park closed over an hour before) because it broke down right when we were at the front of the line. The ride wasn't all that great but they've poured a ton of money into it. I've never seen so many Snap-On Tools in my life! They must have $500,000 worth of wrenches alone in the queue area. Matt & I then left the family for a night at Pleasure Island. We saw a very lame comedy show and then went to the Adventurer's Club for their last show of the evening. After that, we decided to head back for some sleep.

Monday, February 22, 1999

Day 3 was mostly wasted. Matt had a golf tee time with my brother in the early afternoon. We made reservations for lunch at the Rose & Crown in the England pavilion at Epcot so we got there early. We also had our picture taken at the front entrance plaza. They take your picture all over the place these days. Of the various ones we had taken, this was the only one we bought. Matt realized that he had only brought jeans and a bathing suit with him, neither of which met the golf course dress code. We ended up buying him a VERY expensive pair of shorts (in freezing weather) but he ended up wearing a pair of my slacks,

which was REALLY funny because he's a foot taller than I am. We also picked up a very small teapot for me (just enough for two cups) and a porcelain tea strainer. I don't like making a full pot when I can't drink that much! We practically killed ourselves to make sure we were back at Old Key West at the meeting place, early for Matt & Stuart to go golfing. Keep in mind that Stuart had Matt's clubs. We waited for over an hour and they didn't show. Finally, Matt went to the course hoping that Stuart was there and perhaps we had the meeting place/time wrong. 15 minutes later, my dad shows up and he's very angry. I never quite figured out why he was angry. Anyway, we go back to his room where my brother wants to know where Matt is! It turns out that Stuart was driving all of them over, SAW US waiting for him but decided to go back to the room anyway. Stuart left for the golf course and my dad and I proceeded to fight. I didn't like being yelled at when all I was doing was WAITING like we had agreed and I wasn't the one taking the baby for an extra carousel ride.

Anyway, we ended up going to the outlet mall where I bought Matt two sweatshirts, a Rugby shirt, shorts and a t-shirt. I also took the baby on the merry go round at the mall three times. He liked that a lot. Then my dad took the baby on the merry go round. The operator was very nice and told us how he was retired but he now had the best job in the world because he got to see happy children all day long. He said that he couldn't go work for Disney because he has tattoos on his arms.

After getting back to the hotel, Matt called and came back to pick me up to go back to the Magic Kingdom for E-Ticket night. That's a special event offered for on-site guests so you can stay in the park late and go on the popular rides with no lines. We drove over and took the monorail in and got to sit up front with the driver. We didn't ask - they just offered it to us. Matt thought that was really neat. Stuart had the tickets and yet again, we got to wait for them (almost 30 minutes) after the agreed upon meeting time. No one was really into going on rides. We did go on Space Mountain twice, Timekeeper, AstroOrbiters Buzz Lightyear and Pirates of the Caribbean but that was it. Matt didn't want to get wet on Splash Mountain so we didn't go. Finally, we went to Downtown Disney and shopped a little. We bought some pocket mitt potholders, a cookbook and some jelly beans.

Tuesday, February 23, 1999

For our last day, we had breakfast with my parents at the Grand Floridian where we had marvelous pancakes. Mine were strawberry, served with fresh strawberries in the batter as well as on top. Matt says that for our next trip (this from someone who complained about going for this one!) he wants to stay at this hotel. It just SMELLS wonderful! I also did a good deed by reporting a leak in one of the sinks in the bathroom. The entire floor of the cabinets was flooded with about three to four inches of water. We went into the Magic Kingdom so Matt could go on the Haunted Mansion. They've made it much darker and taken the humor out of the ride. I didn't really enjoy it much. We also had our picture taken in front of the castle by Tomorrowland.

We said goodbye to my parents and went back to the Polynesian Village where we'd parked the car in the morning after Matt tried to Self Park us at the Grand Floridian and was too embarrassed to go back through the gate to valet park. At that point, spur of the moment, we decided to rent Water Mice, which are mini speedboats, and much faster than the old Water Sprites they used to have. Another plus is that Matt FITS in these and he didn't in the old boats. We had a blast! Matt especially loved gunning his boat along the shore. The ducks didn't like it much and they'd fly off away from him. I didn't like going near the ducks - I thought it was cruel to pick on them. Matt said the ducks like to get exercise.

We finished our vacation with a short visit to MGM Studios and lunch at the Brown Derby. Unfortunately, we didn't like the food and the table next to us had some horribly behaved children, one of whom took things off of our table while we were sitting there! The parents were not apologetic and did not speak English. We braved USAir for the flight home and here we are!

Julie Hauer

JulieD3964@aol.com

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