Another very long day, and not a lot of photos to show for it! OK, perhaps "not a lot" isn't the way most people would describe it, but there are definitely fewer than I have taken on most other longish days of the trip.
Photos: today only (sorry, no captions yet, it is late!), all days
We started the day at the other Disney water park, Typhoon Lagoon. We went around their lazy river, which went all around the circumference of the park just like the one at Blizzard Beach. I think this one might have been shorter, but I'm not sure. We then spent a fair amount of time in the wave pool, which was different from the Blizzardish wave pool we saw yesterday–whereas the one at Blizzard Beach produced medium-sized waves on a continuous basis, the one at Typhoon lagoon produced only about one wave every two minutes, and that wave was positively giant. It was fun, although we almost lost the little dry box I had around my neck which had, among other important things, our room keys in it. That would have been a bad thing. Fortunately some folks behind us found it and were nice enough to return it to us almost immediately. That's all we really did at Typhoon Lagoon; we were there for a couple of hours, then we made our way back to the hotel bus.
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We went back to the hotel to change, and then headed out to Epcot for a bit, because I wanted to see the remainder of the "Innoventions" areas that we had so far missed. That area is where we got to ride a Segway scooter some days ago, and it's where I remember a robot arm drawing a picture of me when I was there fifteen years ago or so! Sadly, it appears to have gone through a major redesign since then, and the exhibits weren't nearly as interesting to me. We did however ride "Spaceship Earth" again (that's the ride beneath the giant Epcot ball), which is one of our favorites, so it was all worth it. We had dinner reservations at the Contemporary (read: "ugly") Resort at 4:50, so we headed for the monorail at about 4:00.
The monorail proved to be excruciatingly slow. We were held up in monorail traffic for what seemed like monorail hours, both before and after we switched monorails at the transportation and ticket center. (Monorail.) We actually missed our reservation time, and didn't make it to the (ugly) Contemporary Resort until about 5:00. It was all fine, though, they led us right to a table at the Contemporary Steakhouse.
Again, the Disney Dining Plan that we got for free with our tickets paid for itself today, as Anna and I both ordered filet mignon, an appetizer, and a dessert, and didn't have to pay anything. What a deal! A popular topic of discussion is whether or not the dining plan would be worth it, if we had had to pay for it instead. The consensus answer seems to be yes; although one is likely able to eat for a day less expensively than the cost of a day of the Disney Dining Plan, using the plan gives you better-quality food than you might otherwise get, and you don't have to worry about the cost while you're there!
After we finished eating, we were going straight to a special event at the Magic Kingdom, "Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party." Anna had paid extra for these tickets, and had even bought us costumes for the event–Tinkerbell and Peter Pan! (I was concerned about dressing up as Peter Pan, but Anna did some extra research and made sure the costume didn't have tights!) We changed there in the Contemporary Resort, and were headed for the monorail when Anna discovered that she didn't have her room key. Actually, she realized, someone had come into the bathroom while she was changing in a stall and asked if someone by her name was there. Anna, mystified, chose not to respond, and the person was gone when she was done. An employee in the bathroom said that the person had gone to turn it in at the "front desk," so we walked around the hotel to many desks-front before we finally found the key right at the entrance to the Contemporary Steakhouse where we had just eaten. 🙂 The monorail over to the Magic Kingdom was much, much more pleasant than our previous experience–basically non-eventful.
The Halloween Party was great! They had a special parade twice while we where there, with Disney characters dressed up in Halloween costumes! There were lots of Disney villains in the parade, including Captain Hook, the villain from Peter Pan. When he saw us in the first parade he shook his hook at us, and then he walked right over to us and stared us down in the second parade! Before the parade started, the Headless Horseman galloped through the parade route–very cool. Throughout the parade and throughout the park, Disney employees were handing out candy! Anna collected quite a bit of it, despite the fact that neither one of us particularly like candy. Our costumes, and hers in particular, were quite popular–a manager in the Contemporary Resort came over and gave us a coupon for a free dessert because she liked our costumes so much, and we had lots of children asking to have their pictures taken with us. It was fun!
The party ended at midnight, but we left at about 11:30pm, and suffered through a long (but efficiently-managed) line at the bus stop for the trip back to the Pop Century. Tomorrow, we get to go home and see the dogs again! We are both very excited about that!
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