Saturday, the 23rd
We had found out through the interblag that in Orlando… Church Steet was the happening place to be. It was so awesome, that the whole reason Downtown Disney came into existence was to thwart the Church Street area. We decided to scope it out for ourselves. Make a day out of it, y’know? Well… here’s what we learned.
Church Street is a ghost town during the day. As is 90% of the surrounding area. There were about 5 small cafés open in the area, and a chocolate shop. We had a gentleman approach us who was hoping that we could spare “just two cents”. Which of course turned into “just a dollar”. We ended up giving him a $5 Canadian bill. He then prayed for us. I’m ambivalent as to the corelation between the currency and the prayers… but my point was: Downtown Orlando *looks* nice. There’s some cool statues, like the above ones that are in the area… an old train… some wicked architecture. But I think that there was some sort of a calamity that has the locals thinking that 2pm on a Saturday is a bad time to be open.
In the evening, we had hoped to make it to Disney’s Polynesian Resort for Disney’s Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show, but we were a little late in coming up with that idea, and by this point all of the reservations were booked until the day after we would be flying back home. Instead, we made reservations for the Kona Café which was also at said resort. As you may be able to tell from the pictures, it was a super nice looking resort, that half made me wish that we weren’t staying at the Marriott. There was tons of lush greenery, and fountains with a really cozy decor. The plate that you see in the middle of the above image, was a free desert that we were served after our meal to congratulate us on our successful marriage. The Lilo and Stitch were etched onto the plate with chocolate! There were lots of other cool things at the Kona. I’d definitely recommend this place to anyone in the neighbourhood.
After dinner, we made a circulation of the guest shop, and found some cool items that needed to be procured. Some post-cards, some Mickey and Minnie mugs for Andrea’s parents, and a photo album/scrapbook which seemed perfect for us to put items in to remember the honeymoon in a non-digital format. We were actually intending on continuing on into Epcot to do some shopping, however it started to pour once we got on the monorails. We decided to just make the monorail a round trip, and headed back to our car at the Polynesian. I snagged some photos back at the Polynesian entrance… where you can see that it is highly reminiscent of Jurassic Park.
The rain was pretty intense on the way back to our hotel. See the mist coming off the other cars?
Sunday, the 24th
Atlantis Lands.
Sunday saw us sleeping in, watching a space shuttle landing live on tv and then getting breaklunch at TGI Friday’s. It was the most affordable meal we had eaten out at the whole time we were in Orlando. Plus we got crayons. After that we went to ye ole Disney again. This time, it was Disney’s Hollywood Studios. This place used to be MGM Studios, but I guess that Disney finally caved a few years back and decided to rename. This park was pretty cool and seemed much more entertainer driven. By that I mean, that it was celebrating the creators of film and music more so than the mouse. Though… they never stop advertising the mouse. They also had lots of old cars around.
One of the cool things… at least from our perspective… was the Animation showcase at DHS. The actual presentation that involved Mushu… well… sucked, but after suffering through that we got to see some amazing ass art. In the image here you’ll see some of the concept art from Up, a promotional image from the insanely long under production Rapunzel Unbraided, and a painting from… something I don’t recognize 🙁 it reminds me of a Bill Waterson painting though. We also had our picture taken with Mr. Incredible. It was incredible.
After we came out of the Animation showcase, we waited in line briefly for some ice cream before heading off to see the Beauty and the Beast Musical Show. The leftmost image on the left is of the Tower of Terror ride and was taken while we were in line for said ice cream. After we saw the musical performance, we hopped into line for the Aerosmith Rock ‘N Rollercoaster. That’s when the rightmost image on the left was taken. This was at around 4P
M. The afternoon. All signs pointed to rain.
Awkward silence much?
We waited in line for the Aerosmith roller coaster for close to an hour. Thunder was starting just as we made it in doors. By the time we were ready to get onto the coaster… there was some sort of an emergency. The coaster was shut down, sirens were sounding. After a few minutes, we were all evacuated out of the building and given tickets to allow us to skip the line-up when the ride was running again. We were evacuated into a thunderstorm. My feet submerged in water, we ran to the most logical place we could think of for shelter. The tower of terror! Oddly enough, there was no line-up at all! We went on the ride, which I must say: is awesome. It was probably that much more intense what with the real thunder and lightning going on outside. Probably wasn’t the smartest thing to be on with such bad weather… but by the time we were done with the ride we were ready to head back to Epcot to do some shopping. You’ll notice that in the bottom left, there were some girls walking on the sidewalk. This was a good half hour or so after it stopped raining, and was the sidewalk leading to the Epcot entrance. We continued on our way to Japan, trying not to vomit on the Canadian pavilion.
Canada
We did some heavy weight binge shopping at Japan, and then found ourselves caught between furiously hungry and wanting to get out of the park. We decided to stop in at the Moroccan pavilion for some dinner and then tried to split. Again, we were distracted by the closing ceremony. Epcot does a pretty heavy duty fireworks show called IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth.
A small part of the fireworks. A minor climax early in the show.
And so back in the luxurious comfort of our honeymoon suite, we sat back to reflect on that which was purchased. For Andrea’s brother, we bought some wine. For Andrea, some sandals and socks. For me: Candy. The most important thing that I have discovered on the honeymoon… is that Japan makes good candy.