The Brits at the Beach Club RE-VISITED! THREAD 2 COMPLETE! About This Page:

[chezp]

Friday 27 December - part four: the beauty of sharing a room with a Japanese Cast Member, a special treat and Nine Dragons – is it as bad as they claim?!

Next we met Marc from Canada, who perhaps wasn’t the best guest speaker, but then as I haven’t heard any of the others, maybe I’m being unfair. He didn’t seem to know what we wanted to hear and relied on us to ask all the questions. It would’ve been nice to hear more from him without our prompting. Even so, we did pick up one or two interesting snippets.

All the Cast Members from each different countries share with Cast Members from different countries, so they can learn about other nationalities. Marc told us he was sharing with a Frenchman, but he has a friend, who’s sharing with a Japanese guy and it’s not unusual for his mother to ring up at 3.00 in the morning, as she can’t work out the time difference. As Mark explained, his friend doesn’t speak Japanese and his room-mate’s mother doesn’t speak any English, so trying to explain that her son is asleep and unable to come to the phone can be interesting. We found a similar thing later in the vacation with an English girl, who’s sharing with a Chinese girl and also experiences the regular out of hours phone calls!

I kept expecting the tour to end at any minute, but no, we still had the transport storage area to see, complete with two character buses, one for the Summer holidays and one for the Christmas holidays. There were also Tapestry of Dreams floats, which were being worked on. All of Disney’s transport is designed and built at a facility near Magic Kingdom.

Our final stop was the marina, where the Friendship boats are stored at night, along with various fireworks barges. The globe for Illuminations only has a matter of inches clearance every time they take it into the lagoon. Bearing that in mind, it’s amazing it’s still in one piece!

Brad explained about the story behind Illuminations, which starts with chaos as the earth is formed. Then there is peace and the earth slowly develops, as the globe comes out on to the lake. The next stage takes you through the development of man and technology and if you look hard enough, you’ll even see Walt during that section. Finally, there’s a crescendo, celebrating all that we have achieved on the planet. And if you’ve ever wondered about the globe opening up at the end to reveal a flame, it’s very simple. Count and you’ll find there are nineteen flames lit around the lake. The flame in the globe is then the twentieth, signifying the twentieth century. It all makes sense when someone explains like that. And to think, the skeptic that I am, I thought it was just a good excuse for Disney to let off thousands of dollars worth of fireworks every night and create the biggest explosions they possibly could!

Mark was in his element with this part, as he loves fireworks and particularly Illuminations. He was even happier to find out that we’d have preferred seating in Italy for tonight’s performance of Illuminations! At least now we could assess the story in detail, or alternatively just enjoy all the fireworks!!

And then the tour was over and we exited out into China. It was amazing how far we’d walked since we entered the backstage area, without realizing it. We did really well out of this tour. As well as the preferred viewing area, we also got Undiscovered Future World pins, re-entry tokens for Test Track, meaning another ride without a wait at any time (these tickets weren’t dated! ) and a 20% discount at lunch that day at either Nine Dragons in China or Akerhaus in Norway. Now we did already have 3.45 Priority Seating at the San Angel Inn in Mexico, but after some discussion, we decided we were pretty hungry and as there was still half an hour before our PS time, we’d go for Nine Dragons instead. After all, a 20% discount was worth using!

Before we came out to Florida, I hadn’t heard a single good report about this restaurant, but the menu did look very nice. Our server, Min, was very attentive and the food arrived very quickly, all of it was excellent quality. Mark had the beef for starter, but I passed on appetizers, as all of them had pork in them or some other type of meat. Particularly disappointing, as so much of the main course menu was vegetarian or seafood dishes.

For the main course, I went for the scallops in black bean sauce and at $15.50, I thought that was reasonable. Scallops are notoriously expensive over here and to get a dish like that in a Chinese restaurant, I’d usually pay the equivalent of $10 - $12 anyway, so for a Disney meal, I thought that wasn’t too bad. Mark had the spicy orange duck and both of us loved our food, which was accompanied by vegetable fried rice.

We then both had a mango mousse dessert, which we did think was overpriced, when we got the bill - $6.75 each! Again, the prices weren’t on the menu, so we didn’t have a clue until we got the bill. We really must start asking how much the desserts are to avoid nasty surprises like that. All in all, including the two expensive desserts and two glasses of wine for me, it came to $75.22, with the 20% discount, but again the 15% gratuity was automatically added in. This was a bit on the pricey side for lunch, but it wasn’t as expensive as we’d been led to believe. After all, if we hadn’t had dessert and I’d had a soft drink, you could’ve taken $25 off the meal. Certainly, the quality of the food and the service couldn’t be faulted.



Nine Dragons
Starter N/A 8
Main course 9 8.5
Dessert 7 8
Service 9.5 9
Atmosphere 8 8.5
Value for money 6.5 6

Average: 8.00

Next: Back to Epcot for our special viewing of Illuminations and we use our Imagination!

[Cinderbrella]

Your tour sounded very informative, Cheryl! Sorry about the disappointing lunch at the food court.

[Colexis Mom]

Another great update! Lunch sounds expensive, but yummy

More please

[DawnDenise]

I'll have to put Nine Dragons on my list in the future. It sounded yummy! Another great update!!

[Laughaholic]

I can't wait to read more Cheryl, I'm glad you back to writing this again!

[lauren-roxy]

Sounds like a very delicious meal Cheryl, although a little pricey. That sounds like very interesting tour to take, you guys really got to do a lot and see a lot too!! Can't wait for more!!

[chezp]

Friday 27 December - part five: Back to Epcot for our special viewing of Illuminations and we use our Imagination!

After our late lunch, we walked back to the Beach Club for a break before tonight’s viewing of Illuminations and to book the bus over to Busch Gardens for tomorrow. The tour hadn’t been as exhausting as I’d expected and there were plenty of chances to sit down and rest, but even so, it was good to be able to relax for a while after it.

We headed back into Epcot at around 7.00, as I wanted to try and hit some of the many attractions we still had to do there. Our first stop was Journey into Imagination. I don’t remember the original ride at all, so I can’t compare this one with that, but with Figment, the ride is so much more fun now and a lot better than the last version, which was instantly forgettable. That song was extremely irritating and twee though!

I did want to do Living with the Land as well, but that still had a half hour wait, despite how late it was. We’ll do it another day. So instead we walked slowly over to Italy and we were the first people in the preferred seating area. We met Jeb a little while later, who was on his honeymoon and had just dived with the sharks, a present from his new wife. He was extremely enthusiastic about life as a married man and told us all about it. Bless. However, he was a little too enthusiastic, if you know what I mean! We were saved when Cathy and Terrance from our tour group arrived, straight from Alfredo’s. They were so full of praise for it, that I decided that we had to try it out before the end of the vacation.

I have to admit that having seen the fireworks every time either from England or the fireworks cruise on the water between France and England, Italy was a far better place to view it. I saw things we’d never noticed before, or was it just because we were paying more attention, following the tour? I guess we’ll never know. Anyway, it was a stunning and a lovely way to finish off the day.

After the fireworks, we chatted to Cathy and Terence for ages and agreed to their kind offer to join them for dinner at the Rose and Crown on New Year’s Eve. Cathy was sure it wouldn’t be a problem, changing the booking from two to four people, but I decided I wouldn’t cancel our Priority Seating at Le Cellier until I knew she’d managed it for definite. This would turn out to be a very good decision. I loved the way we were able to chat to them and wander back towards our respective resorts (Cathy and Terence were staying at Port Orleans) without anyone hassling us, even though it was way back closing time.

It didn’t surprise me though, as two years ago, we’d been notified Disney would be testing out their New Year’s Eve fireworks at Epcot a couple of nights before the big night and we might get woken up. Now in 2000, we were leaving Disney on 30 December, so we decided to wrap up warm and go and watch. We weren’t allowed into the park, so watched what we could from the bridge between the Beach Club and the Boardwalk. Anyway, as we wandered up that night at around 11.15, people were still coming out of the parks! Clearing the parks every night must be a monumental job and not one I’d want when the Magic Kingdom closes at midnight and opens again at 8.00!

However, everything does close dot on closing time at Epcot, including anywhere to grab a snack. Having eaten last at 3.15, we were getting hungry, so when we got back to the Beach Club, we headed for the Riptide Lounge, thinking that’d be a great place to get a snack, but no, they also stopped serving food at 9.30 p.m. and it was now past 10.00, so Mark went to the shop and came back with some pretzels, which kept us going. I had another of my Raspberry Coladas, while Mark had a Bud light. The Riptide is a great place to end a day at Disney and just watch the world by, with a nice drink. (Great shame it’s no longer open – we miss it a lot! )

The weather today was dry, but cloudy, with temperatures in the mid 60’s.
The best thing today was the view of Illuminations from Italy and the Future World tour.
The worst thing today was the poor selection of food at the Land.
The funniest thing today seeing people’s faces when we came out of the backstage areas. They all seemed to assume we were important people!!
Today we tried the Undiscovered Future World tour
And the result was it was an excellent insight into Disney and now we want to do more backstage tours.
The most magical moment today was seeing the Cast Center at Epcot.

Pedometer: 9.3 miles

Next: Today might not have been a good choice to do this!

[lauren-roxy]

Wonderful update Cheryl, can't wait for more!!

[Minnie Lor]

Just now getting caught up with your report. Love it! My husband and I will have to schedule a tour after reading your report. We loved KK tour last fall and were just talking the other day about taking another tour. None of the descriptions grabbed us, that is until I read your report. Thanks.

[DawnDenise]

Another great update!!! More please!!!

[Colexis Mom]

More please

[chezp]

Saturday 28 December, part one: Today might not have been a good choice to do this!

We were up fairly early to go to Busch Gardens. After our quick usual chocolate chip muffin breakfast at Riptide, it was off to the Orlando Premium Outlets, but this time not for shopping. The bus was due to pick us up there at 9.30, but we were delighted to see it arrive at 9.15. Having said that, we did have to make two more stops, which hadn’t been made clear to us on the leaflets, so we didn’t head out properly until 10.00, which was a bit annoying, as it meant we would get to the park later than we’d originally thought. Equally annoying was having to stop to let off a Japanese family, who thought the bus was going to the Magic Kingdom! Oops…

We were the first ones on to the bus at our stop, so we got chatting to our driver Len, who had a wealth of knowledge about Central Florida and shared a lot of information with everyone during the drive there. I didn’t know that Disney only actually owns two of the resorts on property, the Contemporary and the Polynesian. The others have all been built by other hotel companies and are run by them on a lease basis, although the staff are Disney employees. Guests aren’t allowed to know which hotel chain runs which hotel, that’s part of the deal with Disney. Or is that just another piece of Disney folklore?

I don’t think it was forklore when he told us about the winter of 1980 / 1981, when the cold weather had a devastating impact on the orange crops. Apparently the effects are still being felt more than two decades later. Having been in Florida in January 1981, I could believe it, as I still have vivid memories of being given lots of oranges to eat, because the frost had got them and they were all dying. By the next morning, they’d be dead and the truck driver couldn’t get them anywhere by that point.

I have to confess I missed a lot of his interesting stories, as I fell asleep within 20 minutes of starting out. It’s very unlike me to sleep during road journeys, so I must’ve been tired. My eyes really did not want to open when we neared Busch Gardens, but that could also have had something to do with going to sleep in my contact lenses!

There are a number of advantages to taking the bus to Busch Gardens. The main reason we do it is so that we don’t get lost on the way back to Orlando, apparently it’s happened to Mark on a couple of occasions now when he visited with his family, so he won’t drive out there. Also, you get to park right by the entrance, meaning no long walk or tram rides from the parking lots and you don’t have to pay for the parking. In our case, because we’d pre-purchased our tickets, which were combined ones for Busch Gardens and Sea World, in the UK, we didn’t have to pay for the bus. We were told it was included in the ticket price, which was good value.

The downside to the bus is that it went on to make the extra stops and we were tied to the time we were going back. Today, we had to be back by 7.00, which did allow us a long time in the park, but as we had an early start the next day (we were due to go swimming with the manatees and had to be up and leaving Disney just after 5.00 in the morning! ), I wasn’t too impressed with that. I’d rather have left a bit earlier this morning and then left a bit earlier in the evening as well.

I knew it wasn’t going to be the best of days, when the bus pulled up and we saw the queues just to get into the parks. I’ve never seen anything like it, the queues were about fifteen to twenty people deep. It must’ve taken us 10 minutes just to get into the park. We quickly figured out the reason for this. It was the last day for Florida residents to renew their annual passes for next year at a discount rate and I think a lot of people must’ve left their renewals to the last minute! I think Busch Gardens could improve this aspect a lot and could learn from Disney. At least their Christmas tree was impressive!


The security check is after you get through the turnstiles, meaning you have to queue for a second time, rather than being checked as you’re waiting to get into the park. They were pretty abrupt and not what we’ve been used to at Disney. Not a good start to our day.

My mood improved as we walked through the Myombe Reserve, which is populated by the monkey family – baboons and gorillas in particular. The baby baboon was entertaining the children. It climbed half way up a tree and then decided to relieve itself. The kids thought that was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I was videoing at the time, but had tactfully gone on to film another baboon, but when we played the video back, all you could hear was the kids gleefully screaming “look at that baboon – it’s peeing” !!





Next: Congo vs. Kali River Rapids and a Skyride

[Colexis Mom]

Another great update Cheryl Can't wait for more of Busch Gardens

[lauren-roxy]

Great update Cheryl!! I love the picture of Mark with the gorilla!! Can't wait to hear more about the park, it has been at least 10 years since I have been there.

[DopeyGirl]

Since I have never been to Busch Gardens, I am really enjoying reading about it so far!!! That pic of Mark with the gorilla is so funny!!!

More please!!!