If you took note of our FastPass roster, you can see that we completely skipped over our Spaceship Earth FPs. Does anyone care? No? Good. Because neither do we.
Now, it's time for some bier! Und musik! Und brats! Und more bier! Well, maybe not more bier, because a liter is A LOT of beer already. Even if I have been intentionally avoiding beer all afternoon to make a liter or beer seem like less than it really is.
We check in to the restaurant. While the kids and I wait, Kristin goes inside to hit the restroom. Which, as everyone knows, is an almost foolproof trick to get seated early.
As expected, we get buzzed (bleeper buzzed, not beer buzzed), and Kristin's nowhere to be found. Just like clockwork. We take our seats, eyes on the back to see if we could spot Kristin. Nope. No dice. Where is she?
We're seated front row center, which is perfect! Our host asks us to take the seats at the far end of the table, and we do. Our waiter arrives soon after and informs us that those seats are already taken. Ok, just tell us where we should sit. We're not picky! The final seating arrangement has us on the other end of the same table, which makes no difference to me. In fact, that will just make it easier for me to make my 17 trips to the buffet. Oops, I forgot I'm eating more healthy now. So 15 trips to the buffet. BUT NO MORE.
I don't know how, but we somehow missed Kristin exiting the restroom. She did put two and two together, though, and came back into the restaurant when she didn't see us waiting outside.
Our tablemates return from the buffet, and it's too couples who appear to be older than us, but not much older. They seem nice enough, but we sort of kept to our own conversations. No biggie. We do cross-prost, though, so it's not a complete segregation.
And what did I prost with? This:
Warsteiner Dunkel. I love the Schoffenhofer Grapefruit, but that's more of an outside-walking-around-in-95-degree-heat beer for me. Plus, I love me some dark beer. And "dunkel" means "dark". This concludes the lesson for all of those who don't know a little German...even the one sitting over there.
If you didn't get the last joke, go rent "Top Secret". Or just whine that it's not available at your local video store or for streaming on Netflix, like I do. Or read one of my four previous Trip Reports.
I really do want to see that movie again, and think the kids would find it funny.
We get our food, and here's what it looks like:
I go heavy on the brats, dumplings, and red cabbage (the latter not on the plate above, though). The kids keep it limited to mostly bread. Ok. One great thing about the
Disney Dining Plan is you can easily close your eyes to the fact that you're paying a lot of money for the kids to eat bread.
There were a lot more options than I showed, but those are the important ones. Plus, the food's really secondary (or tertiary, if we don't count beer as food) for why we come here:
It's showtime! I love these guys. In fact, I love a lot of polka. I illegally copied Frankie Yankovic's (Weird Al's dad) "Polka Favorites" album from the library and listen to it often. I also have two CDs from the Epcot Biergarten band, Oktoberfest Musikanten. Or Martin Gross and the Sonneshein Express. Whatever they're billing themselves as these days.
Kristin asks Emily if she wants to dance. Emily declines. That's odd, since Emily LOVES dancing. But not THAT odd, since she doesn't really like dancing when we want her to dance. I step up in her place, and out we go.
The two of us dance together like we do most things together - she wants me to lead, then decides that my leading is insufficient, so she takes over. We do successfully avoid bowling over any of the children out on the dance floor, whose idea of "dancing" is apparently running around trying to lure adults into accidnetally bowling them over. But we don't bowl them over. TALENT.
Back to the table, and it's time for dessert. For Kristin and the kids, at least.
I don't know what any of that is. It's all good, though. Like most Disney buffet desserts.
I opted for more brats, dumplings, and red cabbage for dessert, though that probably doesn't count. I wish the band played longer (didn't they used to play longer?), but I guess you can't work them to death and expect them to still be "on" for their performances.
That's ok. We can find others ways to entertain ourselves. Such as "camera phone":
As I said before, THIS is the pose:
Emily photobombs the next one, turning it into my favorite photo of the entire trip:
Alright, done. We settle up with the waiter, and then it's back out to World Showcase!
