[mikki]

Wonder - nearing end

Our last full day and I sleep in till 8am! We visit the Beach Club shop where they offer to get us a padded envelope to send the Eeyore pin. We set off to Epcot. We have a relaxing time in Epcot, visiting and enjoying both parts of "Imagination" and stopping at "The Land". We have a breakfast wrap at the "Fountain View Expresso and Bakery" and eat it in the empty space where the pasta restaurant was. Are the best bits of the new Epcot the bits they have not yet got round to developing/wrecking?

We tour both sides of "Innoventions", riding "Spaceship Earth" in between. It is the first time we have seen the Motorola film. We do some of their product surveys. Back at the Beach Cub, we collect the padded envelope. The man who got it offers to take our package to the post office and weigh it, getting a receipt for what it costs. We ask reception if they have a scale. They do not but between us we decide 5 stamps should cover it nicely. We have a nap before Andrew goes out to take pictures. We start packing. Seeking bubble wrap, we find the Beach Club store is out but the Yacht Club one gives us a nice roll. I buy the Thanksgiving Mickey that Andrew calls "Big Chief Big Cheese".

At "Martha's Vineyard", I have the red wine taster ‘flight’. We continue packing until almost 10 when we return to "Martha's Vineyard" and get a beer each just before it closes. We decide it is a gem. It is softer than its equivalent in the Yacht Club. It appears isolated because the original adjoining restaurant ("Ariel's") is not in regular use.

It is the day we leave. We rise about 7.00 and are packed and out of the room by 9.30. Beach Club check-in redeems itself (a little) by making no charge for our 1 local phone call. Art is on duty and we say hello and goodbye. We are in Epcot by 10am and hear a clock strike the hours. We check out restaurants like Coral Reef to decide where to have our last meal.

We go through Innoventions East and collect fastpass tickets for Test Track. We take pictures of the outside of the Mission Space pavilion - which look impressive - and ride Body Wars with a zero line. On World Showcase, there are an abundance of characters. We arrive as the 11.15 bus is arriving and I see Jiminy Cricket so we meet the bus and take pictures. Later, we find Aladdin and Jasmine in Morocco and Pooh, Tigger and Eeyore in UK. Mary Poppins is outside in the UK street. Between times, we have a "taste of China" sampler in Nine Dragons as our meal. This was pretty good and got us to try some things we might not otherwise have done. They were willing to bring refills of any of the dishes but we decided just two extras would more than fill us up!

We are back at the hotel at 2.35 and on the airport shuttle to the gate at 4.30. The Town Car and the resort close to a park together transform the final day into something very good. The flight was overbooked and they were asking for people willing to stay an extra day – this was the first time I had seen British Airways do this. We were relieved to see many people join the queue behind us – as the queue in front was so long we were slightly worried we might not get a seat! In the event we were on the 3 seats in the middle with Andrew in the middle seat. Unfortunately a very large lady got in the seat next to him (and incidentally into quite a chunk of Andrew’s seat!) which was not terribly comfortable for him. I had trouble sleeping as well so by the time we got home to a wet and foggy morning in London we were glad of a cheerful cab driver waiting for us to take us home.

It has been a wonderful trip with some great new experiences and some old favourites. Now all we have to do is look forward to the next trip!