April 1999- Old Key West
Day 7- Friday
Wake-up was at 9:00am with a courtesy call from Mickey. After breakfast we headed to Epcot. Today was the start of the International Flower and Garden Festival. We knew it would be crowded and had planned to at least see the flowers. If we only did this and didn’t get a chance to ride any of the attractions, we would be happy.
True to form for me, I saw someone I knew in the parking lot. It never seems to fail. Whenever I am in Disney, as big as it is, I always see someone I know. I have seen friends, classmates, and even a chemistry professor. After parking in the outer boondocks, we caught the tram and herded with the others through the gates.
Right inside the main gates the flowers started. In this section there were huge butterfly flower arrangements as well as a HUGE Peace symbol make entirely of flowers. It is amazing how overnight Disney can plant SO MANY flowers! There must be more people working at night in that place than during the day.
Each of the countries around World Showcase had their own display. Most had topiaries of characters, usually from movies set in that particular country. For instance, Mary Poppins, Pooh, Tigger and Eeyore were in United Kingdom. Beauty and the Beast, Mrs. Pots and Chip, and Esmeralda and Quasimodo were over in France. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Germany. The Japan pavilion had an incredible showing of bonsai. Over at the American Adventure, Mickey and Minnie were decked out in red carnations and Goofy stood in front of a huge flower United States flower-flag.
We continued around the lake to Norway. The line was HUGE, so we skipped it. Mexico was a walk on so once again we took a trip along the "Rio del Tiempo". Back in Future World we walked through some of the tents that had been set up for the show. Most displayed garden and flower related items to purchase. The largest had shows set up with lectures on gardening. There was a horticulturist from the Univ. Of FL talking about indoor plants native to FL and how to keep them going green. We stopped by The Land for lunch, and then rode Spaceship Earth once again. Having seen most of what we wanted we headed out the main entrance and up the ramp to the Monorail. At the TTC we transferred to the Ferry and over to the MK. We walked up Main Street and to the Castle. My dad hadn’t seen it since it had been pink so we stopped for pictures. Afterwards we decided to do a little touring so we grabbed a bus to the BoardWalk and a Friendship boat back to Epcot.
Now it was time for dinner. We had made priority seating at Coral Reef. We had never been there but had heard so many good things about it. Of course we all had fish and enjoyed both the meal as well as the view. Now back to the room so that dad could gather his belongings and skee-daddle out of town. Our last night at Disney was spent with a relaxing swim at the pool. We did some last minute wash. It is great to have the washer and dryer as we didn’t go home with any dirty clothes. One last trip to Conch Flats for an OKW shirt and to spend the last bit of our Disney Dollars. As my dad always says, it wouldn’t be vacation if you came home with some of your vacation money. Especially the Disney Dollars. After packing most of our clothes we headed to bed.