Monday, November 17, 2008

Sunday-The Drive and Boardwalk



The first official day of our vacation was Sunday, Nov. 9. We left Loganville pretty early in the morning because we wanted to optimize on our time in Disney. I took the first driving shift mainly because I didn't want to drive in Orlando. We stopped at an outlet mall about 14 miles from Disney because someone Scott works with had told him they had a good Disney outlet. I was not impressed. I was impressed with the outlet mall and could spend a week in that place alone, but we did not even go to one store because there were no parking spaces. Plus, by that time, I really didn't want to shop. What? Yeah, I know. I was pooped. So, we drove on to Disney and checked into our hotel. The package that we had purchased from the travel agent did not include our first night there so, Scott had gotten us one night at the Pop Century Hotel (one of the "value" hotels on Disney property). This place was seriously cool. It had stuff from the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's. When I say "stuff" I mean they had huge words on the sides of the buildings (one building for each decade) that said stuff like "Totally Radical Dude" and "Far Out". The background for the pool area outside the 70's and 80's building (we stayed in the 80's) was a huge laptop (like the size of the side of a building huge). They had one of those softish play mats close to the pool that was a huge qwerty keyboard. And the best is that they had a huge Roger Rabbit standing on a barrel of turpentine that was as tall, if not taller, than our building. Also, almost every stairwell was topped with a rubix cube, which lit up when it got dark. This place was definitely pointed more towards families with kids, but it was fun. They had a huge gift shop. After we checked in (before we saw all that stuff I just listed), we spent about 45 minutes looking at the gift shop.
After we checked out our room, we headed over to the Boardwalk Hotel. Behind the hotel, they have a real Boardwalk that looks out over the little lake area that connects Epcot to several hotels and Disney Hollywood Studios. They had a bakery, several places that sold hotdogs, and the ESPN Club, which is where we ate dinner. There were a surprisingly large number of Steelers fans there. It was kind of shocking. The food was okay. I guess it was typical sports bar food. But, it was fun to be there on a Sunday night with all these die-hard sports fans. A kid next to us had gone to the bathroom and came back exclaiming about it: both bathrooms had a flat screen tv hanging over the stall (one for every two stalls). We both had to personally check it out because he was so excited about it. Crazy.
Well, our camera is kind of slow to download pictures once the SD card gets full and I am trying to download from a full one. So, I have about 10 minutes left on this one. I'll do a slide show and add it to this post from Sunday soon. I probably gave too much detail, but hey, it's my blog, right?

5 comments:

Andysbethy said...

You two are so cute. I'm eager to see pictures!

Allison said...

I love the details! Isn't the Boardwalk fabulous?! I stayed there 2 yrs ago and it is so much fun!! I actually had my b/day dinner last month at Spoodles on the Boardwalk.

Unknown said...

I love the details! more more! :)

Linzyann said...

Hey, we stayed in the 50s area of the Pop Century when we went last year with the fam. We thought it was pretty cool too (my only complaint was that staying in the 50s area was SUCH a long walk to get to the lobby and I was pregnant so any extra walking just was not fun.) But anyway, more details, more details - that's the best part!!

Midlife Mom said...

Can't wait to see all of your Disney pictures! We LOVE Disney and go every year with our kids and grand kids. We have never stayed at that hotel but it sounds like fun! We have stayed at the Boardwalk Hotel and liked it there. We would walk down to the pastry shop in the morning to get some stuff for breakfast. I liked the fact that you can walk to Epcot and hop on a boat to MGM. There is a LOT of walking though but I suppose it's good exercise!