BONZO
<font color=660066>Has been known to go off topic!
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2001
WEDNESDAY 16th May 2001
Cast list: -
Me (Shaun) - Wallet opener, chauffeur and bag carrier
DW (Alison) - Chief planner, navigator and mother
DD # 1 (Alexandra 7) - Cautious, shy and parking lot number guru
DD # 2 (Laura 5) - Daredevil, chatterbox and sleeper
This morning I am completely engrossed in a TV programme called Understanding Gods Dietry Principles. Wow, we never get stuff like this in the UK
The troops are reluctant to rise, especially Laura who sleeps on despite our attempts to wake her. A bucket of water soon works!! (Only joking - but she takes a lot of persuading to leave that nice comfy bed!). I'm not surprised she's tired, she's walking all the time and it turns out that we don't hire a stroller the entire holiday! (This really shocks us as she doesn't usually have any stamina at all!)
Breakfast in room and head off to Epcot but its so HOT again today!
We parked close to the entrance despite it being 09:50 and its not busy at all apart from busloads of obnoxious school kids in large groups screaming and whooping all over the place.
However, we do manage to stick to the plan quite well. Off to Test Track and we take in turns to do single rider access instead of babyswap or FP as its a lot quicker. This ride is really faster than you might think! Test Track gets our vote for Best Ride In Epcot!
Over to Imagination ride but its a bit dark and loud for DDs to enjoy. We remember the old days with Figment - what a shame! We didn't do the film here as the girls hate 3D films. We've tried to be really sensitive to what they do and don't like this holiday and not force them on to rides, but some of them we just know they'll love if they'll just TRY!
Over to Land and we spent ages here. Started with collecting FP for Living with the Land, we can never believe how popular this ride is, good job it's on FP! Then it's onto Food Rocks which was very funny, informative and DDs loved it. Im not sure how much of the message got through though. They still ate a load of rubbish this holiday! Well, I'm sure 3 weeks of eating fries and burgers and drinking coke won't kill them. (Our dentist may kill US but that's a different matter!!)
Onto the Circle of life film hosted by bored looking CMs but we all enjoyed the film and a respite from the heat. Onto Living with the land ride, again we all enjoyed this.
We went upstairs to go out to continue with the 'plan' but were accosted by a CM holding menus and a clipboard. "Hi girls, do you fancy having lunch with Mickey Mouse and his friends?", was the question posed to the girls! Well, what do you think their reaction was???!!! We wavered and were done for! If we weren't going in we needed to say an instant and firm NO! But we didn't (hey, what good parents we are - keeping the girls happy all the time!).
Anyway we decide to go for it off plan once again! The food was good, Catfish in breadcrumbs, beef, chicken, mashed potato and gravy, assorted vegetables for us and chicken strips, fries, macaroni cheese for DDs. All served family style 'all you can eat'. Strawberry cream cake for dessert, free drink re-fills, beer for me and coffee. The big plus point was that Mickey, Chip n Dale and Pluto all came out to play for photos and autographs. DDs had lots of interactive time with the characters who came around several times and stopped to play noughts and crosses etc. They pretended to be scared of DDs' cat print on their t-shirts and scared of Cruellas autograph in their autograph books!
The service was good here, the waiter was very attentive. (He was either good at his job or fancied one of us - Alison thinks it was probably me!!!)
By now we are flagging, or maybe its the beer! So we head off to the Living Seas. Somehow DDs do not believe me that we are actually UNDER the sea. Kids! Huh!
Move back for home and ride in Spaceship Earth. When did they change the voice over away from Walter Kronkite? This turns out to be DD#1's favourite ride on Disney property! We ended up knowing the ride back to front and inside out by the end of the holiday!!
We point out Walt Disneys image on one of the old TVs and ask Alexandra Do you know who that is?, she replies Oh yes, it's Adolf Hitler! Whoops, I don't think those history lessons are much good at school! Well she's only 7, but we fell about laughing!
Its Soooo hot so we decide to go back to CBR for a swim. When we get back to the car we are again very grateful for the windscreen shield we bought on day 2 of the holiday. I'm sure it lowers the temperature by at least, oh, 1 degree!! How I wish there were some undercover parking!!! I'm sure people would pay extra $$ for the facility!
Head back to CBR waving to the lovely security guard on the gate. Everyone is so friendly here! Back up to the room - oh that lovely air conditioning in the middle of the day!! The beanies are all watching the Toon channel again! We quickly all changed into cossies, picked up our huge bag of laundry and headed down to the Aruba quiet pool. Piled the clothes into a machine (note here - every time we did some washing it cost $5. $1 detergent, $2 washing machine, $2 dryer. We kept meaning to buy a large box of detergent from walmart etc. but kept forgetting! Trouble is, when you stay for 3 weeks you need to do some laundry - I don't think Disney would appreciate their guests going naked!!).
We had a lovely, long, cooling swim in the pool before heading over to the food court for a snack. Had tuna subs and pasta and sauce. Very good! The worst thing about the food court is having to eat with plastic cutlery all the time! On the way back to the room we stopped to feed the ducks with the food the CBR sold in the little machines by the beach. The girls loved doing this! We spotted many ghekkos and wild rabbits at CBR as well over the 3 weeks.
Back to the room to crash out at about 9pm.
Will we wake up easily tomorrow?? Set the phone alarm again just in case (we ended up doing this every day, and all raced to answer it to hear Mickey say "Up and at 'em!" What a wonderful way to be woken up!!)
Tomorrow: MGM, Sci-Fi Dine In and shopping!
Cast list: -
Me (Shaun) - Wallet opener, chauffeur and bag carrier
DW (Alison) - Chief planner, navigator and mother
DD # 1 (Alexandra 7) - Cautious, shy and parking lot number guru
DD # 2 (Laura 5) - Daredevil, chatterbox and sleeper
This morning I am completely engrossed in a TV programme called Understanding Gods Dietry Principles. Wow, we never get stuff like this in the UK
The troops are reluctant to rise, especially Laura who sleeps on despite our attempts to wake her. A bucket of water soon works!! (Only joking - but she takes a lot of persuading to leave that nice comfy bed!). I'm not surprised she's tired, she's walking all the time and it turns out that we don't hire a stroller the entire holiday! (This really shocks us as she doesn't usually have any stamina at all!)
Breakfast in room and head off to Epcot but its so HOT again today!
We parked close to the entrance despite it being 09:50 and its not busy at all apart from busloads of obnoxious school kids in large groups screaming and whooping all over the place.
However, we do manage to stick to the plan quite well. Off to Test Track and we take in turns to do single rider access instead of babyswap or FP as its a lot quicker. This ride is really faster than you might think! Test Track gets our vote for Best Ride In Epcot!
Over to Imagination ride but its a bit dark and loud for DDs to enjoy. We remember the old days with Figment - what a shame! We didn't do the film here as the girls hate 3D films. We've tried to be really sensitive to what they do and don't like this holiday and not force them on to rides, but some of them we just know they'll love if they'll just TRY!
Over to Land and we spent ages here. Started with collecting FP for Living with the Land, we can never believe how popular this ride is, good job it's on FP! Then it's onto Food Rocks which was very funny, informative and DDs loved it. Im not sure how much of the message got through though. They still ate a load of rubbish this holiday! Well, I'm sure 3 weeks of eating fries and burgers and drinking coke won't kill them. (Our dentist may kill US but that's a different matter!!)
Onto the Circle of life film hosted by bored looking CMs but we all enjoyed the film and a respite from the heat. Onto Living with the land ride, again we all enjoyed this.
We went upstairs to go out to continue with the 'plan' but were accosted by a CM holding menus and a clipboard. "Hi girls, do you fancy having lunch with Mickey Mouse and his friends?", was the question posed to the girls! Well, what do you think their reaction was???!!! We wavered and were done for! If we weren't going in we needed to say an instant and firm NO! But we didn't (hey, what good parents we are - keeping the girls happy all the time!).
Anyway we decide to go for it off plan once again! The food was good, Catfish in breadcrumbs, beef, chicken, mashed potato and gravy, assorted vegetables for us and chicken strips, fries, macaroni cheese for DDs. All served family style 'all you can eat'. Strawberry cream cake for dessert, free drink re-fills, beer for me and coffee. The big plus point was that Mickey, Chip n Dale and Pluto all came out to play for photos and autographs. DDs had lots of interactive time with the characters who came around several times and stopped to play noughts and crosses etc. They pretended to be scared of DDs' cat print on their t-shirts and scared of Cruellas autograph in their autograph books!
The service was good here, the waiter was very attentive. (He was either good at his job or fancied one of us - Alison thinks it was probably me!!!)
By now we are flagging, or maybe its the beer! So we head off to the Living Seas. Somehow DDs do not believe me that we are actually UNDER the sea. Kids! Huh!
Move back for home and ride in Spaceship Earth. When did they change the voice over away from Walter Kronkite? This turns out to be DD#1's favourite ride on Disney property! We ended up knowing the ride back to front and inside out by the end of the holiday!!
We point out Walt Disneys image on one of the old TVs and ask Alexandra Do you know who that is?, she replies Oh yes, it's Adolf Hitler! Whoops, I don't think those history lessons are much good at school! Well she's only 7, but we fell about laughing!
Its Soooo hot so we decide to go back to CBR for a swim. When we get back to the car we are again very grateful for the windscreen shield we bought on day 2 of the holiday. I'm sure it lowers the temperature by at least, oh, 1 degree!! How I wish there were some undercover parking!!! I'm sure people would pay extra $$ for the facility!
Head back to CBR waving to the lovely security guard on the gate. Everyone is so friendly here! Back up to the room - oh that lovely air conditioning in the middle of the day!! The beanies are all watching the Toon channel again! We quickly all changed into cossies, picked up our huge bag of laundry and headed down to the Aruba quiet pool. Piled the clothes into a machine (note here - every time we did some washing it cost $5. $1 detergent, $2 washing machine, $2 dryer. We kept meaning to buy a large box of detergent from walmart etc. but kept forgetting! Trouble is, when you stay for 3 weeks you need to do some laundry - I don't think Disney would appreciate their guests going naked!!).
We had a lovely, long, cooling swim in the pool before heading over to the food court for a snack. Had tuna subs and pasta and sauce. Very good! The worst thing about the food court is having to eat with plastic cutlery all the time! On the way back to the room we stopped to feed the ducks with the food the CBR sold in the little machines by the beach. The girls loved doing this! We spotted many ghekkos and wild rabbits at CBR as well over the 3 weeks.
Back to the room to crash out at about 9pm.
Will we wake up easily tomorrow?? Set the phone alarm again just in case (we ended up doing this every day, and all raced to answer it to hear Mickey say "Up and at 'em!" What a wonderful way to be woken up!!)
Tomorrow: MGM, Sci-Fi Dine In and shopping!
