On With the Shows
The Hospitality House was a short, maybe 3-4 minute walk from the room we had at Old Key West. I’ll post pictures of the resort as part of my usual morning walkabout the following morning.
Bus board reported the next ride would arrive in about 10 minutes. It was accurate.
First stop when I arrived was Guest Services. There was just one person/group ahead of me. My turn came, I explained that I had purchased a date-specific ticket starting tomorrow, changed my arrival date by one day and I’m here now and I want to go to the park.
No problem! Took about 3 minutes and I was good to go.
My friends had a busy morning at Hollywood Studios before my arrival, with a day planned around all of the things an almost 3-year-old girl would love. I was so excited that I was going to see part of the trip from that perspective.
I believe they arrived at the park sometime around 7-7:30 am and headed for Star Wars Land. I had a chance to check that out with Mark on our departure day. My friends had a reservation for “lunch” at 10:10 at Oga’s Cantina. If you have looked at the menu there, you know that it is pretty much a liquid lunch as they don’t really serve actual food.
Then my friend ~N and her granddaughter ~S designed a droid. They told me the process was very complicated and the CMs there had to help a lot. But ~N got to use an electric screwdriver so she was excited about that.
They spent some time in Toy Story land and went to meet some characters. Unfortunately, while they were in a meet with Olaf, their personal Maclaren stroller was taken! The lot there is small and out of the way of the main pathways. ~N checked to see if it had been moved by a CM, but it was not. As they were walking through the park a few minutes later, they overheard another family talking about their stroller going missing, and later in the trip, a family in the MK met the same fate.
So, heed the warning that if you need a stroller for your child(ren) for a trip to Disney, it is best to either bring a cheaper model or rent one from an offsite location. There are some pretty sketchy people out there!
Disney gave my friends a voucher for a stroller rental for the rest of the day and then she ordered a rental, a Cadillac of strollers complete with Lo-jack tracking, for the remainder of the trip, to be delivered the next day.
I am caught up now with my friends’ trip, and with my friends, just before the start of Beauty and the Beast.
I had invited one of the frequent posters to the Beach Club FAQ board, AGoofyKindaGirl, to join us for the day. She lives and works locally (almost in the shadow of Spaceship Earth) and is as sweet in person as she is on the boards. I’ll call her ~GG (Goofy’s Girl) for the remainder of this account for reasons that will become obvious in an upcoming update.
It has been years since I have seen Beauty & the Beast. The show was a no-go during family trips and class trips with ‘tween boys. I think I saw it one year by myself while the boys were getting their adventure on at Indiana Jones.
Having spent the past 10 years immersed in a local community theatre group, I appreciated the talent and staging of this show. But the very best thing about this production, and all the shows we would attend in the next few days, was watching ~S as she was mesmerized by the shows. It was absolutely magical!
And now we invite you to relax and pull up a chair as we proudly present…
The back of this guy’s head!
Cropped him out! That’s better!
After the show we took a snack break and I had a little issue I had to deal with.
Earlier in the report, I told you that we had dinner plans for a large group at Via Napoli. Originally, the reservation was for 8 people at 4:15 pm (me, Janet, ~N, ~S, Sue & her DH, our CM friend Lauren and another friend from the BC FAQ thread, ~sw). Lauren told me it would be tough for her to make it to the reservation in time because she was working, so a few days before the trip, I called and was able to split our group into 2 reservations of 4 each, for 5:25 pm and 5:40 pm.
Unfortunately, one of the friends who was going to join us, ~sw, had to return home earlier than planned, however ~GG was able to take her dining spot. Earlier that day, Lauren informed me that she had picked up an extra shift at work, so she wouldn’t make it at all. Then, I heard from our friend Teena who said she cancelled her original dinner plans and that she and her granddaughter Lily could join us.
Perfect! Almost…
We now had 2 reservations, at slightly different times, for a total of 8 people, but we now had 9 planning to come.
It’s complicated.
During our snack break, I tried calling Via Napoli directly to see if they could accommodate our group, but I got kicked over to Disney Dining Reservations, with a 20 minute wait time.
Sue, and Disney Signature Services to the rescue! During our snack break, I texted this note to Sue to see if the club level concierge services could help us.
They called Via Napoli directly, and we were told we should show up at 5:20 and they would try to honor our request to be together, but no guarantees.
You’ll have to wait a couple of updates to see how that worked out.
That settled, or at least settled as much as it would be until we arrived at the restaurant, I needed to Let It Go! Literally. It was time to go to the Frozen show.
As the mother of boys, who are now young adults/men, Frozen was not part of our Disney history. I watched the movie once, with Ben. Mark has never seen it. However, this was my second time seeing this show. In 2016, when I was visiting Teena and helping her pack for her move to Vegas, she insisted that I see it.
It was good then- hilarious hosts, great songs, enthusiastic audience, SNOAP! It was great now. Watching ~S at the show was so much fun. She belted out the tunes and waved her arms when it was time to make snow. The show next to me made the show in front of me so much better.
When that show was done it was time for:
The Scariest Ride at WDW