Jen's January 2003 World Tour

Saturday, January 25 - Day One

Traveling is always somewhat of a stressful situation, but things were especially tense Friday evening. We were scheduled to fly out on a "red eye" flight just after midnight early Saturday morning. That evening, we had set out to have a nice dinner out with my mother-in-law prior to heading back to the house to handle last minute details before packing up to head to the airport. Our nice dinner out was truncated by Keith having major muscle spasms in his back, probably the WORST muscle spasms, ever! We had to have our dinner packed up so that he could get in the bathtub to soak in warm water and let the Advil kick in. Neither of us had said it at the time, but we were worried about not making it on our flight. Thankfully, those meds did kick in and his back did feel better. Phew!

On our flights, we did sleep more than we expected, but it’s never enough sleep. (In a way, though, this sleep deprivation seems to be an odd way to subsequently beat jet lag as we’re always good and tired that first night, enabling us to get up what would still be a somewhat early time back at home.)

We arrived in Orlando, in the mid-morning, about ten minutes early. We managed not to get jinxed this time, unlike the last two times when our arrival at our hotel was delayed by one thing or another.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that it was warmer than we had expected. We still wore our jackets, but we weren’t in need of gloves, etc., unlike those unfortunate folks earlier in the week!

We eventually made our way to Coronado Springs, the hotel we are staying in for this trip. I think Keith has fallen hard for Port Orleans Riverside, the hotel we stayed at in February. I don’t even think we had stepped off the Mears shuttle when Keith said, "I miss Riverside already." (But they didn’t have availability for the whole week.)

We went to check-in and hoped beyond hope that maybe, maybe, maybe our room would be ready early. No go. We were given a room key, though, but only told that we were in a specific building (Casitas 5) and on the fourth floor.

We were hungry and thought maybe if we killed some time there at the hotel, our room would be ready soon afterward. So we made our first trip to the Pepper Market, the place I’ve read so many mixed reviews about. (Actually, I’ve read mixed reviews about Coronado Springs, period!) It does feel weird to have to pay a tip for someone taking you to a table and clearing your plates, while you have to walk over to order and then schlep your own food to the table. (However I had been told to always take my food to go, but without a room to sit down in and smokers in the area just outside the lobby, we really didn’t have anywhere else to go.) Then we were disappointed again when we found out that the refillable souvenir mug doesn’t include hot chocolate, our favorite beverage to have in the morning.

As we were finishing up lunch and figuring out our game plan, I happened to mention to Keith that it was probably too late to go to the Tarzan Rocks meet that chrisrails had planned. Keith suggested that we should try anyway and if we were too late, we were simply too late. So, as bedraggled as we may have been on very little sleep and in last night’s clothes, we headed over to Animal Kingdom.

Once in the park, we made a very brief stop. We happened to be walking by some caricature artists and recognized one we met back during my brief birthday trip in September! She remembered us, too, so we told her we had an engagement, but would try to come back by later.

I seemed to remember something about Dinoland and a billboard, but Keith and I couldn’t agree as to whether that meant the sign for Dinoland or the actual billboard near Primeval Whirl. We decided to part ways and then meet back at 1:20. I didn’t see anyone at the billboard and Keith didn’t spot anyone at the Dinoland entrance. I suggested to Keith that why don’t we just see the show anyway.

We found a place to sit in the theater. Keith told me he was going to comb the theater, just in case, looking for a lone guy with a video camera and an LP button. Guess what? Despite not having his LP button on, Keith found Chris! (And he likely wouldn’t have found us, as our LP buttons were in our luggage being held at Bell Services since we didn’t have a room yet!) The show was as good as before (we even recognized the same bass player as last February!)

We decided to hang out some more, so Chris showed us some of the more hidden nooks and crannies in AK.

Chris wanted to tape Flights of Wonder so we caught the last show of the day. It was especially entertaining because one of the volunteers had seen the show previously and wasn’t cooperating. That lead to a running commentary by the two people leading the show, picking on Pablo from Miami. They dealt very well with this spontaneous change in the show. : )

Later on, we stopped by the caricature spot and discovered, amusingly enough, the interconnectedness of relationships between all of us. We knew one of the artists, she of course knew the other artist, the other artist knew Chris, and Chris now knew us! That’s pretty wild, especially considering we’re in California and have become acquainted with Florida folks. : )

We did some other things, just before the park closed, and then once the park had closed, we discussed dinner plans, but first we wanted to see if our room was ready. Chris was kind enough to drive us in his car to the hotel and then hung out in the room while we sorted out some of our things. This also gave us time to check on the availability of PSs for dinner. We’d decided on a buffet, but our options were variable. In the end, we decided to try Trail’s End at Fort Wilderness, a new experience.

We were again fortunate in that Chris offered to drive (saving us having to do the transfer thing on the bus system). The food is pretty straightforward American, but it’s an inexpensive (for Disney World) buffet and pretty decent. We got our fill and, by then, everyone was pretty tired. Since Chris had his car, we were able to make good time getting back to our hotel, where we bid adieu to Chris and were quite ready for bed!

It was a good first day because not only did we get to experience the usual park fun, I made a new friend. : )

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8