[njlaura]

The rooms weren't ready yet so we headed over for lunch (and caffeine for Sally) in the food court.

What a madhouse this food court is. Maybe it's because we were there at such a busy time of the year but man there were a LOT of people in there! I was starting to wonder if we'd made a mistake picking this resort. CSR never felt this crowded. I really enjoyed the salad station here though. Dried cranberries, blue cheese, mandarin orange vinaigrette...yummm. I'm going to make this salad for work tomorrow.

This was the hottest day of our stay at about 86 degrees. I love leaving cold weather in the morning and arriving to summer weather. We decided to spend some time at the pool until our rooms were ready. This pool looked great in the pictures but we found it a little disappointing because A) there weren't enough chaise lounges for the crowd and B) with all the trees around there was debris everywhere. Sally noticed that you could tell how long somebody's been away from their "saved" chair by the amount of leaves on their towel. I think some people save their place first thing in the morning before they leave for the parks.

Sally, Drew and Miles were able to get in their room at 3:00 but our luggage still hadn't made it to ours. They brought our luggage up at 4:00 and put it in our second floor corner room. Yay! Thanks room assigner!

We spent some time in the gift shop buying mouse ears,autograph books and pins for the kids. You can see them all disnified while waiting for the bus.



I had made reservations for dinner at Chef Mickey's thinking it would be a fun start for our vacation. We were seated fairly quickly at a table near the kitchen. Luckily, Sally isn't afraid to ask for a better table. We were given another buzzer and got a table in the main room about ten minutes later. Thanks Sally!

Here's Perry in front of the restaurant.



The characters were a lot of fun but I wish I could have remembered all the things to say to them to get them to react in funny ways. I remembered to ask Minnie where's the ring and her reaction was very cute. I like how Donald covered up the kids' mouse ears for the pictures. I wish we had gotten a shot of it. Here are some pictures of the "kids" with the characters.







I wasn't crazy about the atmosphere here. It was a bit sterile and the tables were packed a bit too closely. The food was meh but I wasn't expecting a gourmet dining experience. It was really for the kids that we came here. Drew thought the prime rib was excellent. The Mickey dessert things looked better than they tasted. I found the mousse a bit gummy.

I was impressed when the bills came and they had separated them out for us without us asking. Yikes! That little glass of chardonnay is 11 bucks! Boy, Disney really makes you pay for your alcohol.