How Many Days In A Row Will We Wear Tie Dye (or Disney 2009 review): Part 11.1featured

This review WILL be finished this week. I’m determined to make it happen LOL. I don’t know how I’ve let it drag on for so long, but I’m determined to finish it! Especially since I’m officially back in cruise mode and have SO much planning and such to put up!

Oh, and while I’m on that…we’re going into Fort Lauderdale a few days early so if anyone has any good local recommendations for places to eat/things to see/things to do, please suggest away! Same for Atlanta dining recommendations (downtown Atlanta or Buckhead area). We almost always end up at Maggianos despite the fact that we frequently dine there at home. Time for something new 🙂

Andddd back to Disney

The game plan for our last day in Disney was set: wake-up, shower, breakfast at Chef Mickey’s, Downtown Disney, Epcot, pack and then Magic Kingdom for evening magic hours. It was a lot to pack into one day, and we were exhausted already and we had an eight-hour drive ahead of us the next day (and a 12-hour drive the following day), but we were determined to make it work.

So we woke up around 8:00 am. I hopped right into the master shower and Stephanie hopped in the guest shower (major perk of the 1-BR room was the two bathrooms…two showers, to toilets and two more areas to get ready) and we were dressed and ready for breakfast just in time for the quick walk over to the Contemporary for our 8:30 reservation at Chef Mickey’s.

We had a short five-minute or so wait before we were seated (bypassing the photo area again…because really, how many family pictures at Chef Mickey’s does one family of adults need?). I’ve already pontificated enough on my opinion on Chef Mickey’s. Why’d we eat here twice when I can barely tolerate eating here once? Because Stephanie really wasn’t convinced of The Wave (our dinner there has changed her mind and we will be trying it for breakfast at some point) and there was a convenience factor of just being able to walk over, eat at our own pace and control how much time we spent there.

It was every bit as loud and busy as it was every other time we’ve dined there. The food? Meh. The fruit wasn’t quite ripe, the eggs were flavorless (and I guess they either don’t have tabasco sauce or our server couldn’t be bothered to find some for me) and everything seemed a bit more greasy than usual, but the challah french toast was rather good, the bacon was a few steps above the limp sticks they were a few days before and the coffee? Well it had caffeine in it so it was good enough for me. I have food pics of the buffet area on the page before this one (I think) from earlier in the trip, so I forewent those in favor of sticking around to order some milk (instead of that pulpy “orange juice” that the rest of the family was gulping down). But never fear- I always have food pics of some sort ;o)

The meal came to $106.46 and we redeemed four meal credits. Since grandma was eating both meals in the room as well as out with us, we had a lot of extra meal credits remaining (especially since some of her counter service meals were paid for out of pocket instead of using credits because she didn’t want a full meal and it would have been wasteful of the plan) and we decided to get room service the following morning so they’d all be redeemed.

Since we had so much to do, we didn’t intend on sticking around for all of the characters, but they were making the rounds pretty quickly and I think we ended up meeting with all of them. Mickey and Minnie liked my new sparkly ears and we stayed long enough for me to get my pictures before heading back to the room to regroup for the day.

We went back to the room to get everything ready for the day since we all had things to do before going to the park. Mom wanted to get her and grandma packed and then they would head over to Epcot and Stephanie and I? Well…we had a task at Downtown Disney to accomplish.

See, when we were at Disney the year before, we ended up saving all of our snacks and we ended up with around 35 credits the day before we left. It took us an hour and a half at Goofy’s to get them all and we swore that the next time we went to Disney, we’d use them as we went on whatever we wanted (except for beverages because that’s kind of a waste). Except we were too full from all of our meals to eat snacks, too, and we had around 50 snack credits left…again. So Stephanie and I were off to Downtown Disney to spend the snack credits on things for the ride home and Mom had us run errands at Walgreen’s and Publix, too, while we were out (good thing we know the area so well!)

We walked through the lobby of the Bay Lake Towers to get to the car and we really hadn’t spent much time in the lobby all week. It’s quiet and small, but very nice. Modern, upscaleish. It’s certainly not as grandiose as the lobby of the Grand Floridian or as beautiful as the lobby of the Polynesian, but it’s a very nice area to meet up with friends or family or to catch a quiet moment (since most people enter and exit through the bridge).

We drove over to Kissimmee (a quick ride…less than ten minutes) for a stop at Walgreens and another at Publix to grab a list of things Mom wanted for the ride home and then made our way to the Downtown Disney Marketplace to spend 50 snack credits like kids in a candy store (which technically, we were LOL).

It’s odd coming back to Downtown Disney after a week in the parks. The last time we were there, our vacation was just beginning. Now? It was drawing to a close. We were exhausted and sore and the overwhelmingly wet heat drained us by the minute, but we’d spent so long anticipating this trip and it moved way quicker than I thought it would.

Goofy’s Candy Co. is a veritable wonderland of sweets. Between the display cases of chocolately delicacies and pastries, rack after rack of every kind of candy imaginable- both bulk and packaged and the ever-popular create-your-own treat option, spending 50 snack credits shouldn’t be a problem…except it came to feel like a chore! We started out with the create-your-own since those take the longest and then grabbed baskets to fill up as we waited. I think we were there for about an hour before we walked out with three large bags full of snacks ($97 worth….it really came out even…or 30 snack credits) and we still had 20 snack credits remaining. It really isn’t as easy as it sounds to spend 50 snack credits. And we say this every time…but NEVER AGAIN will we leave them all for the last day LOL.

Be sure to tune in for a special edition of “What will 30 snack credits get you?” at the conclusion of this review…because I took pictures of it all 😉 Cookies, fudge, confections, all kinds of create-your-own…the four of us went into sugar shock when we got home with all of this stuff. Beyond that, we picked up a few packages of nuts to snack on for the ride home (a nice use of a few snack credits that won’t put you into a diabetic coma) and some boxed cookies and packages of hard candies (those stay good for a long time).

Our task complete, Stephanie and I piled back into the car with the goods and headed back to the hotel to get them into the air-conditioned room, where they wouldn’t melt into a sticky mess, and got our park stuff together before finally heading towards the monorail to Epcot.