Day 16: Pool Towels and Late Fireworks

  Orlando, Florida, United States
Saturday, August 5, 2006

01 - Hanging Out in the House

Today was another relaxing day.  I woke up at 9:00 but I laid in bed until 11:00.  I wasn't able to fall asleep but I just hung out.  When I went into the living room mom and dad were sitting out by the pool so I went online and looked at a few websites while I had a bagel for breakfast, and then I went to get dressed.  When I was done getting ready I watched TV in my room.  VH1 had a special on "Celebrity Breakups and Scandals" so I watched that before mom, Mike and I played a game of California Rummy at 2:00 which Michael again won.  We hung out for a while before we decided to go for dinner at 5:00.  We were supposed to go for lunch at Olivia's at Disney's Old Key West resort but had decided against it, so now we decided to go to Cracker Barrel.  We drove over there and were seated right away at a dirty table.  We asked to move and went to a table in the back of the restaurant.  Our waitress came by five minutes later and she was an elderly woman who was sweating profusely.  It was freezing in there so much so that I put my jacket on!  I don't know how she was sweating but it was skeeving me out regardless.

05 - Cracker Barrel

We ordered and it took a good twenty-minutes for our food to come out.  Again we didn't get our biscuits before our meal but we got them with our dinner.  No big deal.  Mike and I both got chicken fingers.  I forgot what his side dishes were but I got fried apples, coleslaw and mashed potatoes.  The gravy on the mashed potatoes were all gloppy and gross and the fried apples were like the inside of an apple pie but gooier.  I didn't like them.  Mom got a big salad and dad got Chicken Fried Chicken.  No one really liked their food.  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.  The restaurant was also dirty and our waitress had no idea what she was doing, and we were all turned off by cracker Barrel.  The bill came to $60 and we paid before going into the country store next door.  We looked around and I got a dollars worth of ten-cent lollipops.  No one else got anything so after I paid we went to sit outside.  They were playing a lot of loud country music which definitely isn't for me, but it was nice sitting out on the rocking chairs.  Well, mom and I sat on the rocking chairs while dad and Mike played a quick game of oversized checkers.

20 - Cracker Barrel

We left soon after and were back at the house by 7:30 where we just hung out and watched TV.  Mom, dad and Mike watched Michael's G4 shows in the living room while I watched a Flavor of Love marathon on VH1.  I hadn't ever watched that show because the commercials made it look nauseating.  Unsurprisingly, the show was even worse than I had imagined it would be, haha!  I wanted to go to the Polynesian Resort that night to look around and see the Magic Kingdom fireworks.  The night we had done that the year before had been one of my favorite nights of the trip so I really wanted to do it again.  Mike had absolutely no interest in it so mom, dad and I left for the Polynesian Resort at 8:40.  We wanted to leave at 8:30 but it took ten minutes for mom to make Michael a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Why Michael couldn't just make it himself, I don't know.

50 - Polynesian Resort

We got to the Polynesian Resort by 9:40 which was a good time for seeing the 10:00 fireworks.  We walked around an outdoor path around the front of the lobby and went into a back entrance.  Mom wanted to get coffee but Captain Cook's, the small snack store near the Polynesian beach, was being renovated and was now located a few yards away behind the small pool.  We asked the guy at the Disney Vacation Club desk where we could get coffee and he gave us a Disney Vacation Club pin before telling us that we could go around the back to the new Captain Cooks or we could go upstairs to the second floor of the lobby to the small snack bar that we had passed when we had lunch at the Kona Café.  We decided to go up to the small snack bar on the second floor since it had been nice when we passed it a few days ago, and the guy at the Disney Vacation Club desk had just told us that it was really nice.  When we got up there it was packed!  A million times more crowded than it had been the other day.  There was also a man playing the guitar and singing "Tequila Sunrise" by The Eagles.  It was a very fun and festive atmosphere; it was as if we really were in a big Hawaiian resort!

55 - Polynesian Resort

We walked over to the snack bar only to find that it was closed.  There was no one behind the counter and all of the muffins and cakes that had been there the last time we were there were gone.  Mom and I ran to the bathroom while dad watched the singer, and then we all went back downstairs and out the back exit of the lobby to walk over to the temporary location of Captain Cooks.  The walk back there was really nice.  The grounds of the Polynesian Resort are great; there are tons of palm trees and lit torches.  When we got to Captain Cooks the place was pretty crowded since you could also get sandwiches and regular food there and a lot of people were getting late night snacks.  Mom got her coffee and I grabbed a TON of napkins!  I mean a ton.  Hey, I wanted to add them to my collection.  Disney charges an arm and a leg for their food and drinks anyway, so they wouldn't miss the few napkins we took.  Dad had taken a handful too without me knowing, so we had a whole collection of napkins!  It was great.

65 - Polynesian Resort

We made our way over to the beach, our napkins carefully hidden away in my bag, and walked by the big pool.  The place was hopping!  The pool was packed with tons of kids and adults alike having a great time.  We went down to the beach and I wanted to sit on the lounge chairs in the sand but mom and dad didn't want to sit in the sand so we all sat on a lounge chair by the pool.  By then it was 9:45 and the fireworks weren't going to start for another fifteen minutes so dad and I took a walk out onto the pier.  There was a shuttle boat bringing people from the Polynesian Resort to the Magic Kingdom and back, and the pier offered a great view of the lit-up Grand Floridian and Contemporary Resorts.  Dad and I played around with the camera and tried to take pictures and we got some good shots.  We then made our way back to the beach and at five-to-ten we moved the lounge chair down the beach to the walkway that was directly across from Cinderella's Castle in the Magic Kingdom.  The view was great!  The castle was changing colors and we could hear the whistle of the Walt Disney World railroad every few minutes.  It was purely magical; I love Disney!  Mom went and got five towels from the pool area for us to use as cushions on the lounge chair, too.

72 - Polynesian Resort

At 10:00 we geared up for the fireworks and... we waited... and waited... and waited.  By 10:15 the fireworks still hadn't started.  I had no idea what was going on but the fireworks were always at 10:00 in the summer.  We hung out on our little lounge chair and took in the atmosphere until 10:25 when I saw the Electric Water Pageant in the distance, making its way towards the Wilderness Lodge.  The Electric Water Pageant usually starts at 9:00.  Then, as the wind blew in our direction, I heard the music from the SpectroMagic parade making its way towards us from Main Street.  SpectroMagic was supposed to be at 9:00!  I knew that something was wrong and that the entire Disney schedule was a good hour behind.  We didn't want to wait around until 11:00 so we cut our losses and left.  And took our five towels with us!

73 - Polynesian Resort

Trying to sneak these towels out of the resort was absolutely hysterical.  Mom laid her jacket over them and then hung them on the back of her bag.  Dad also had two of them rolled up and under the back of his shirt, and it looked like he had a big hump on his back!  We took the dark back paths out to the parking lot and when we got to the front of the resort we saw a maid walking towards us.  We stopped dead in our tracks and pretended we were looking at the flowers and plants in the area.  When the maid passed us we kept walking, only to be stopped by a maid behind us who we hadn't seen!  She asked us what we had been looking at and when I told her the plants she said that she was just making sure that we hadn't seen a bug or anything.  We smiled and kept walking; mom's oversized jacket and dad's hump in tow.  It was hysterical!

We were back at the house by 11:15 where we just hung out.  I watched TV in my room and watched the premier of the new season of Flavor of Love on VH1. I thought it was pretty good and it made me laugh a few times until one of the girls crapped on the floor.  Yes, she took a crap on the floor.  And I'm done with the show forever.  I shut it off and was asleep by 2:00.