Day 1- Sunday
I arrived into Orlando right on time shortly before noon on Sunday thanks once again to Delta. One of the benefits of having traveled for business is my Silver Medallion status. I had been upgraded on the Cincinnati to Orlando leg of the trip which made for a quick exit off the plane. I headed right to National and had my rental car paperwork in hand before my luggage had come out on the belt. I used my AP for a ‘special rate’ which was a bit higher than Dollar. Usually the service is better with National and since the difference was minimal, I thought it would be worth it. National has changed their setup, placing all of the Compact cars at the back of the lot, requiring you to walk for what seems like forever. They told me I could take a Compact car with only two doors for my Economy car. Well, there was only one compact car left and it had four doors. I had to pretty much haggle with the National people to get even that!
After leaving the airport, I headed right for the resort. Since the resort was at 100% capacity, not unexpectedly the room was not ready. The lobby was quite impressive. It is in a round room (silo?) which is about 6 stories tall and had a Christmas tree that must have been at least 40 feet. After walking around the Carriage House (check-in area) I went back to the car to make a PS for the Biergarten in Germany for this evening for my dad and I. Dad was on his way from South Florida and we had planned to spend the day and evening at Epcot. Since the Candlelight Processional was scheduled for that evening, neither the Biergarten, Restaurant Akershus nor Le Cellier had any available PS times. Well, guess we’d have to play it by ear. Shortly after, dad called to say he had made it to the Marketplace and wanted to make sure I was in the area before proceeding to the resort. Since the room wasn’t ready, I ended up driving over and we decided to head to MGM. On the way there, I called WDW-Dine (gotta love those cell phones) and made a PS for Sci-Fi for lunch. Since this was Florida I had to put my shorts on. A cold front had come through over the past day or so and it was a bit chilly in the shade. Trying to stay as much as possible in the sun, we made our way through MGM and over to Sci-Fi. It looked like most of Central Florida was in MGM today judging by the local cars in the lot and the huge crowds in the park.
After checking in with the podium at Sci-Fi we wandered over to the new street “Streets of America” to check out the San Francisco area as well as the lights from Osborne. Since they knocked down the buildings on Residential Street for the Stunt spectacular, they moved the Spectacle of Lights to the “Streets of America”.
Lunch was fun. Our Car Hop was Michael. I had the vanilla malt as usual. After lunch we tried to make our way around the park. There were so many people and the breeze had kicked up that decided it wasn’t worth it and made our way back to the resort.
We checked dad in and got our room number. It was finally ready so we made our way over to the building. There are only four buildings open at this time but you can see all of the buildings going up. When the resort is completed, it is going to be HUGE! Our room, 1434 was in the last building. What is amazing is that although the resort was at 100% of capacity you would never know, you couldn’t tell as you didn’t see nor hear anyone else.
After cleaning up, we made PS at 50’s Prime Time Diner as we thought it would be nice to see the Osborne lights The crowds had thinned considerably as the temperature had dropped a bit more since the sun went down. The Spectacle of Light was nice, it seemed like all of the lights were there but arranged differently. After walking through the street, we made our way to 50’s Prime Time. Cousin George served us our dinner. We both had the Pot Roast and took cheesecake to go. Back at the room we enjoyed dessert and vegged out to end the day.