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

[poohsgirl]

<font color="purple">Cheryl, I've just finished reading both threads of this report and they are awesome!
Your birthday was truly magical ! It's funny to read things in your report and know how much has changed or not,ie ride at Living Seas, you are a MEGA DVC owner now, etc.
I wish I could stay at Disney for 19 days. My longest stay was 11 and that was due to hurricane Frances extending it by a day!
Now, get on with it, you've still got many days left to report! </font>

[chezp]

[ QUOTE ]
<font color="purple">Now, get on with it, you've still got many days left to report! </font>

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes ma'am! I am trying, but a lot of the time when I log on very early in the morning EST I can't post anything. I promise I will try and do it as quickly as I can, but bear with me, especially as we're away on vacation next week!

[chezp]

Monday 23 December – part three: “what did you say that rope’s there for?”

When we left the Swan, we were extremely lucky. A boat was just pulling into the Swan and they asked us where we were going. When we told them the Beach Club, they told us to jump on board. Once we were on the water, they told us they weren’t meant to pick anyone up, as they’d been told to go straight over to Epcot, which had just closed for the night and they needed all the boats there as soon as possible. What great customer service – and that also explains how there are always enough boats waiting to take people when that park closes!

As we travelled back, the Cast Members told us how once upon a time (and I’m still not sure if this is a Disney fairytale or not! ) boats had travelled from Epcot to the Magic Kingdom, but it took 45 minutes to travel between the two parks and the service was eventually stopped, because if the boats broke down, it took too long to get other boats out to them and get them going again. I’d love to know if this is true or not – personally I think it’s a myth, as I can’t see any water marked on any map which would link Epcot and the Magic Kingdom together.

They also solved the mystery of what that rope is now for at the front of the Friendship boats. We had assumed it was put there because there was an accident and someone had fallen overboard, but no, apparently not. It was part of Disney’s reply to 9/11 and is there to deter terrorists. We couldn’t quite get our heads round how the rope would help to do that , but I guess the thought is there… I think our idea of it stopping people falling off the boat is a better one…

We were back at the Beach Club by around 10.00 and headed straight to bed – although it had been quite an easy going day, I think the rush of the previous few days had caught up with us!

The weather today was sunny with temperatures in the high 70’s.
The best thing today was Cirque de Soleil.
The worst thing today was all the people walking in late at Cirque de Soleil.
The funniest thing today was the clowns at Cirque de Soleil.
Today we tried Palio
And the result was we had an excellent meal and it’s somewhere well worth trying.
The most magical moment was getting a boat back from the Swan, when they weren’t meant to stop to pick us up.

Pedometer: 5.8 miles

Next: a return visit to a Magic Kingdom attraction – more than 20 years on!

[Tara O'Hara]

Cheryl how lucky you guys were to be able to take that boat!

[Cinderbrella]

I'm glad that you enjoyed your evening!! More please!

[DawnDenise]

Another wonderful update Cheryl!

[chezp]

Tuesday 24 December (Christmas Eve) - part one: a return visit to a Magic Kingdom attraction – more than 20 years on!

I wanted to go back to the Magic Kingdom today to finish off the park, as we still had a few rides to do, including the Haunted Mansion, Country Bear Jamboree and the Enchanted Tiki Room. Yes, believe it or not, despite the fact that we’d been in Disney for nine days and had already spent a lot of time at the Magic Kingdom, we still hadn’t made it on to any of those attractions! I didn’t want to leave without seeing them – especially not the Haunted Mansion!

We weren’t exactly up early today and didn’t get to Magic Kingdom until 9.00, but it really wasn’t as busy as I’d feared, despite the fact that it was nearly Christmas. I was expecting the crowds to have really picked up by now, as that was our experience on our last Christmas visit to Disney in 2002, but it wasn’t the case at all.

We walked straight up to the Haunted Mansion and I looked for the new tombstone (I guess it was new then!) I think I spotted it, but there were no rolling eyes. Does it do it all the time? The ride was longer than either of us remembered and Disney seems to have made a conscious effort to make it scarier, which we welcomed. I love the banquet scene, there’s so much to see every time and a bit like Cirque du Soleil, you never see it all in any one trip.

As you can see, it was a bit dull and overcast today:




Still, that didn’t stop us from enjoying the park. When we escaped the Haunted Mansion, the Country Bear Jamboree was about to start another show, so we piled in to see the Christmas show. I haven’t seen this since my first visit to Disney in 1981 and Mark had never seen it. It was great fun and about the only thing which I could recall from 20 years earlier was the talking deer, moose and buffalo on the wall. I loved the red nose on the deer and the Christmas lights on the antlers of the moose. Very entertaining.

Next we headed over to Tomorrowland, after I noticed on my events programme that both the Carousel of Progress and the Timekeeper were open for business. I’m glad we saw the Carousel of Progress, but when we went in, it was only half full - a great shame, but it was a lot busier by the time we left. I do wish Disney would open this year-round, so more people could enjoy it.

I videoed bits of it, as I figured the next time we come back, it probably won’t be open, as it’s got such limited times of opening. I think I was right to do so, as the next trip looks like it’ll be in May 2004 (of course, it was! and I can’t see it being open then somehow, but I hope I’m wrong. (and I was – it was open full time at that point, because Alien Encounter was closed for its transformation into Stitch’s Great Escape!)

Interestingly enough, Mark’s sister saw the video a couple of weeks ago and told me what fond memories she had of it and how disappointed she was that it was closed on their last trip in 2000. It just goes to show it creates a lasting memory in people’s minds, particularly the only time she’d seen it before 2000 was in the early 80’s!

I was really pleased to see the Timekeeper open, as I’d read on the boards that it had stayed closed over Thanksgiving, so I didn’t expect it to be open for Christmas, a very pleasant surprise. Again, this should be open more of the year. It was certainly busy when we went in and Tomorrowland needs some more attractions open for the rest of the year, as currently all the traffic is pretty much going to Alien Encounter, Buzz Lightyear or Space Mountain. There’s nothing else to take crowds in any other directions there. I love this 360° film, it’s so well done and very humorous. Nine Eyes is a great character and one you can really care about. The one comment everyone made as we left thought was that the Twin Towers are still in the New York scene.

We then grabbed a quick chocolate muffin at the Lunching Pad. The guy who served us was a total nightmare. They didn’t have a full list of what they were serving, so we asked him and I got an answer I could just about understand, but when it came to asking for hot water for our teabags, forget it. First he gave us cold water, then we asked for milk to go with it and he just ignored us and went on to serving the next person. Very ignorant…. Not a good start to the day, food wise. You should never deprive the English of tea at breakfast, it puts them in a bad mood for the rest of the day!

Next: the characters give us double vision!

[lauren-roxy]

Just got caught up with your last two updates Cheryl!! What a magical time you guys are having!! Your pictures are great!! Sorry about your tea in the morning, I'm not too happy until I get my Diet Pepsi!! Can't wait to read more!!

[DawnDenise]

Another great update!!! Sorry to read about the tea!!! Looking forward to more!!

[Cinderbrella]

What! You've only been on Haunted Mansion once so far?
Sorry about the lack of service for your breakfast. I like milk in my daily cup of tea, too.
Hmmmm..... character double vision. Uh oh. Hopefully you haven't been to much sangria.

[Colexis Mom]

Another great update Cheryl Sorry for the mess at the Lunching Pad

More please

[Tara O'Hara]

Great update Cheryl! Sorry about the tea incident! Hopefully your next meal will make up for it!!

[chezp]

Tuesday 24 December (Christmas Eve) – part two: the characters give us double vision!

We backtracked to Adventureland and as we walked over there, we realised Disney’s characters have now got out of control. Sure, we love seeing them (I think the 67 autographs proves that! ) but really, there are other characters Disney isn’t exploiting yet and they’re ones in existence in the parades already, like the other six dwarves apart from Dopey, none of whom have we ever seen for autographs. Equally, Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh is now on some of the parades and could be out signing autographs. (I’m glad to see that Disney listened to this – as we saw Rabbit out signing autographs on our December 2004 trip!) OK, so Dumbo couldn’t sign autographs, but couldn’t we have him out for photos?

Anyway, the reason I say all of this is because as we walked from Tomorrowland to Adventureland, we saw two Timons and two Genies. Now if we spotted this, there’s every chance that children did as well. How does a parent explain that to their youngsters? Disney magic I suppose, but it is a bit sloppy on Disney’s behalf. And it wasn’t the only time it happened during the vacation, there were a number of other occasions, all at Magic Kingdom where we saw two Donald’s, two Pluto’s etc. in short succession. Needless to say, we didn’t stop to get any autographs, as all the characters we saw, we already had.

We headed over to the Enchanted Tiki Room and it was great fun, as always. I was never a fan of this, until they revamped it and added in Iago and Zazu (I’ve probably just made myself really unpopular with some people by saying that!), but now it’s excellent. It’s really brought it up to date and injected a new lease of life into it. Next Disney should apply that treatment to the Jungle Cruise. Much as I always loved that ride, it does need an update now that you’ve got Animal Kingdom to visit.

As we’d now seen all we wanted to at the Magic Kingdom, we decided to head out of there for the day and went to guest services to get ourselves a Priority Seating for 1.00 at Akerhaus in Norway. When we left the Magic Kingdom, we were again able to ride in the driver’s cab of the monorail. I was fascinated to learn from our driver that they only have six days training before they’re allowed out on their own to pilot a monorail. I knew it was simple, but even so!

We were a bit surprised when we got on the monorail at the Ticket and Transportation Centre, heading for Epcot, to see a non English speaking family who didn’t get off at the TTC. Of course, they ended up going straight back to Epcot, where they’d obviously started from. The look on their faces when they saw Spaceship Earth again was a picture! Even more puzzling, they were clutching guidemaps for Animal Kingdom!!

It was at this point that I managed to avert disaster for the day. I looked down at the video camera and wondered how on earth I’d managed to tape 18 minutes worth of action already, as I’d put a new tape in after Carousel of Progress. I knew I’d shot some footage of the characters and our trip over to the Ticket and Transportation Centre on the monorail, but I could’ve sworn it was registering 8 minutes when we got out of the driver’s cab and that was the last time I’d filmed anything. Sure enough, I’m sure you can guess what had happened. As I rewound the tape, I found lots of lovely footage of my feet, the floor of the monorail cab etc. etc. I’d left it running by accident! Fortunately, I was able to rewind and tape over it, rather than being left with 10 minutes of what, quite frankly, would have been rubbish!

We stopped for photos at Spaceship Earth, as I love the poinsettia Christmas trees they have there and just had to get our photos taken with those in the picture.



And another photo of my favourite Disney icon!

Next: a slice of Norwegian life and “where did you get your ponchos from?”

[chezp]

Tuesday 24 December (Christmas Eve) – part three: a slice of Norwegian life and “where did you get your ponchos from?”

We arrived at Akerhaus a few minutes early, despite browsing in all the shops on our way there (we wanted to start working out what to spend our Candlelight Processional discount on tomorrow ). As we got to Akerhaus, we just managed to miss the first cloudburst of the day. Our server, Froydis, was very chatty, particularly after she found out about our plans to visit Oslo in November 2003. (Of course those plans went out of the window in favour of a trip to Disneyland Paris – at least now we are finally heading there! ) She couldn’t have been more attentive if she’d tried.

The food was just as good as I remembered from our last couple of trips and not at all filling, meaning I could go back for plenty more courses! I lost count of the number of times I went back to the buffet to attack the fish and cheese on offer and we still both had room for dessert, despite the indent we’d made on the buffet.

The only problem with a lot of the World Showcase restaurants is that they show you the desserts, you don’t get a menu with prices on, so you pick the one you like the look of. I went for a 100 years of magic one and it turned out to be $6.99, while Mark’s was half that price. Mind you, it did look good – and tasted good too!



I love this buffet, because there is a lot of choice for those who don’t eat meat. There’s lots of fish and cheese on offer, very different to other buffets – and just perfect for me! If you like fish, you’ll love this and there is still a good selection of meat as well. In total, including a generous tip, the meal came to $55.12m, which we thought was good value.


A couple of shots of the interior of Akerhaus

Akerhaus Me Mark
Starter 7.5 9
Main course 9 8
Dessert 9 9
Service 10 9
Atmosphere 8 9
Value for money 9 9

Average: 8.79

When we came out of Akerhaus, it wasn’t raining, which I though meant the storms had passed for the day. How wrong can you be? We walked around World Showcase, heading towards Italy and settled down to watch Masquerade there, that magical performance that we’d loved a few days earlier, but just as the performers came out, the heavens opened and they had to abandon the show. We took shelter in the shops in Italy for a while, hoping it would pass by quickly, but it didn’t, so it was time to dig out our ponchos.

Now we were stopped a fair few times by people who asked us where we’d got our ponchos from. They cost a lot when we bought them at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester at home in July – think about $8 each, with the exchange rate the way it is! For those who don’t know, it’s a major sports event, involving all the countries of the British Commonwealth. We went to watch the athletics, but basically it’s like the Commonwealth version of the Olympics, with a whole host of sports, including swimming, diving, boxing, gymnastics etc.

Anyway, typically for Britain, rain threatened on the nights we were there, so we bought ourselves some ponchos, which were red and despite the initial outlay, they turned out to be a good investment. Firstly, you could easily spot each other in amongst a sea of yellow Mickey ponchos and secondly, they seemed to be better designed than the Disney ones. (In fact, they’re still going strong to this day – they’ve so far seen us through three Disney vacations and will hopefully survive a couple more yet! )

We certainly seemed to have all the luck as we left Epcot. We stopped off to buy a phonecard, just before International Gateway and there was a torrential downpour outside and we were safely undercover! Unfortunately our luck was not going to hold for the rest of the day on that count…

Next: “how much wine?” and “so this is what a Florida storm is like”

[Colexis Mom]

Another great update Love the 100 YOM dessert And glad you caught the tape and only had 10 minutes (and not an hour) of feet

More please