Boo to the Halloween on the Highs Seas Crew Oct. 2016, Fantasy Trip Report

[jenseib]

Oct. 20, 2016, Thursday Day 2

 

I was up early just like I normally am on vacation. I literally rolled out of the bed and decided right then and there I was heading to the desk to see about changing rooms as there was no way I could sleep 2 more nights on this mattress.

I got dressed and headed that way.

 

Once there I was helped right away and explained the issue and the CM asked if I wanted to change rooms or just have the mattress replaced. Well I didn’t know that was going to be an option. I told her if they could that would probably work best so we didn’t have to lug our stuff to another room.

 

After that I headed out to take some pictures.

This café has small things for take-out and is open earlier and later than the food court area.

 

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I was starving and so tempted to get a yummy chocolate muffin, but we had talked about all going together for breakfast last night, so I decided to wait for the other 2 to rise and shine.

 

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As you can see they have a lot of basic choices so you won’t starve to death if you need something early or late. You can also refill your mug here.

 

 

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I then walked over and took a peek in Rix Lounge.

 

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I loved all the different funky seating areas.

 

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The Convention Center is down that way and I never did walk over there and check it out. From where I am standing, Rix is on the left and the Pepper Market is on the right.

 

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I then headed outside to watch the day come alive. I have always seen gorgeous pictures of this resort and the reflection on the lake so I went and tried for some shots of my own.

 

 

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I typically bring my Canon DSLR with me on my trips and take a ton of pictures. I did bring it this trip, but the summer of 2015 I bought an Olympus Tough point and shoot camera. I had seen some nice pictures taken with it and I wanted something a bit easier to carry around and durable and waterproof as well. It surely doesn’t take as nice of pictures as my DSLR, but it really does a pretty decent job,especially in daylight. My shoulders are really bad and I have had issues with them and my neck for 20+ years so carrying the big camera is taking its toll on me these days. I ended up taking the majority of the pictures from this trip with my point and shoot and my phone. Only a few times did I purposely carry the big guy around and I was aching soon after. As much as I love what it can do, I think in the future I am going to be leaning towards just taking the Olympus Tough. Especially to destinations I have been to already.

This morning’s pictures were a mixture of the phone and the Olympus.

 

I decided to do some facebook live broadcasting and I walked around the resort and recorded it all live as I went. I did find out that certain areas have much better wifi reception than others. In some spots it was almost non-existent,which is a pain when they base so much of everything Disney offers online now.

 

As I was filming, I did walk over by the dig and the guys were working and I confirmed that it was a wall/fence being built around the pool. The guy said I was the first person to guess what it actually was and he made some joke about what the last guy thought it was and I didn’t understand what he said so I just laughed and pretended like I did. LOL.

 

It was time to head back to the room then and wake up Claire as I knew she wouldn’t be up unless we woke her. She is a night owl and loves to sleep in.

 

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And I realized there was a faster way back to the room….straight through here.

 

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We had been turning out a different way and taking a long way along the buildings before. Our room was straight to the middle and then a left turn and the walk came right up to our door.

 

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I went in and got Claire moving so she could shower and get ready to start the day.

We headed off to the Pepper Market for breakfast. We had all been talking about Mickey waffles and that is what we all were going to get!

 

We took a look around till we found the station that had them.

 

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I told Mom to get the kids meal and Claire and I were both getting that too. It’s more than enough food for breakfast and a pretty good deal in price, plus you get a drink with it too.

 

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Mom is always starving and then she eats like a bird and she ended up throwing most of hers away. Honestly she should have shared with me. I would have been fine with 1 waffle and 1 sausage…and then that leaves more room to snack later…right?

 

Since we were not hitting the parks this trip, I wanted to try out new things and today we decided on Winter Summerland for putt putt golf with our free vouchers.

 

We headed to the bus stop and took the bus over to Blizzard Beach. Winter Summerland is right there and just off to the side. Claire kept asking me questions about itand I had to keep telling her that I had only seen it once when I did a tour of Blizzard Beach and it was only basically a glance.

 

Blizzard Beach was closed for maintenance so the bus was not full. In fact, only one other couple was on the bus with us. When we got off though, they headed towards Blizzard Beach and disappeared and I never saw them again. I am not sure where they actually went.

 

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I made Mom and Claire stop for a few pictures.

 

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We let Claire pick which course we should play and she picked Winter. We got our stuff and headed out to play.

 

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This past summer we went with my Mom and sister Gail and her girls to my sister Amanda’s house for a long weekend. We played putt putt twice while visiting and all the girls had such a blast. I think it might have been a first for all of them, or at least the first time they remembered doing it.

 

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I loved the theming here. They did such a nice job.

 

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I’m not very good at putt putt, so I don’t even pretend to be, but we had a lot of fun…and at one point in time we each got at least 1 hole in one. When I got mine, I was talking on the phone with Skip and just basically putted without looking. LOL.

 

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I also did some facebook live filming a few times.

 

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The ball went up this swirl and then was shot out.

 

 

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I loved all the Christmas décor and took a lot of pictures.

 

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The last spot you basically just shoot your ball up a ramp and it eats it. But we aren’t that talented and had to try more than once. If you know what it looks like you would laugh at us. I didn’t get a picture of it, but it is right behind this Christmas tree.

 

 

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Once we finished up, I told Mom and Claire I was going to run over quickly to the Summer side and take some pictures.

 

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Each hole was a counterpart to the Winter side.

 

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Basically I had to run the whole course to be able to see everything and I tried to pass the golfers discretely.

 

 

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Isn’t this bench so cute?

 

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After I was done doing that, we made a bathroom stop and I think we may have bought a drink at the snack bar there too.

 

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Mom was doing something, maybe talking to Dad? ....so I took pictures and we looked around.

 

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This is the snack bar…isn’t it cute?

 

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I made Claire get in the sleigh so I could take her picture. I had to force her to smile.

 

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More pictures of the décor.

 

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And then we headed to the bus stop again, with a look over at Blizzard Beach.

 

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And we waited and waited and waited and waited.

 

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Did I mention that my Mom isn’t patient? LOL. She was grumbling about how long it was taking and it was, but we don’t know if we just missed a bus or not. I told her after a while we could just get on the next bus that came and then transfer and head to Disney Springs, but the next bus that came was for Coronado!

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Once it finally did come we headed back

 

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and made a quick stop in our room to repack our bags and do whatever it was we had to do. I guess I took a few pictures too.

 

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The bed was stripped and bare. I didn’t get on it, but it was clear they either had changed the mattress or were getting ready for a new mattress to arrive. Yay!

 

 

 

We then we headed off to Disney Springs to do another new thing!

Off to Disney Springs! We were dropped off and the bus driver reminded us that this is not where we would be picked up and gave us the number….yeah yeah I know…it’s WAY over there!

 

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And we headed into the shopping district that I do not care for.

 

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I did see the lunch trucks out but I don’t think they were open and even if they were we would not have stopped as we had other plans for lunch.

 

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We were headed here!!!!

 

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Claire loves to bowl and when I told her they had a new bowling alley she was excited and wanted to do this on one of our down days.

 

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We headed in and they asked if we wanted to eat or bowl and we said BOTH! So they set us up with a lane and explained out it worked and got us each a pair of shoes. Bowling is by the hour so we could bowl as many games as we could in that hours time. It wasn’t cheap, but not outrageous either. I do remember thinking the shoes were kind of pricey. Mom said she would pay. I didn’t argue. There was no need for her to pay, but she loves to do this and so far I had paid for the hotel and got the free golf, so she probably felt like this was her contribution.

 

We settled up at our lane and looked over the menu and also found our balls then got started.

 

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The place is really big but I was surprised it didn’t have a lot of lanes. It wasn’t really that busy for the bowling part though, so that was nice.

 

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The balls were so colorful and cute.

 

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And it had a little bit of a Disney theme on the walls.

 

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We made our orders, burgers for Mom and I and pizza for Claire….again if I had been thinking right, I should have share with both of them. Mom only made a dent in her burger and Claire couldn’t eat all the pizza.I could have eaten half of Moms burger and had a slice or 2 of pizza and been fine.

 

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First game is over and I AM THE WINNER!!!!!!

 

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Claire was mad because she was last.

 

The food came so we ate and bowled some more.

 

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I took nice and blurry pics as you can see.

 

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And a strike for Claire!!!!!

 

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Claire whipped our butts this game! I guess she was mad about losing the last one.

 

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We played one more game but time ran out before we completely finished, though we were close to the end. I was winning that game,but Claire was the average winner of all 3 and she didn’t let us forget that! Hahahaha

 

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After that we kind of wandered around and I took a few pictures.

 

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We went inside the candy store to check it out but didn’t buy anything, probably because we were still so full from lunch.

 

 

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After shopping around we headed back to the bus stop.

 

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We had a little wait, and Mom and Claire went off and sat down while I waited in the line, which consisted of just me.

 

The bus came and we headed back to CSR again. I was so tired and so was Mom, but Claire was jumping for a swim. I really just wanted to take a nap, but being the good mom I took Claire to the pool. My Mom did take a nap though!

 

My bed was now made up, so the new mattress had arrived and I was happy about that.

 

Claire and I headed to the pool. I found a lounger and sat (was too tired to swim) and she jumped in.

 

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I did a live video from my chair again and Claire had headed off to the slide. I kept watching from where I was but never saw her come down. Then all of a sudden she was in front of me smiling. I had totally missed her sliding and swimming back to me.

 

Sadly, since she was alone in the pool, it was a bit boring and not as exciting as she had hoped. Sometimes she makes pool friends, but she didn’t today.

 

She decided to check out the hot tub after a while, which was right behind where I was sitting.

 

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In the background here you can see the new wall they were building.

 

 

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Still hanging at the hot tub. See the couple in the corner?

 

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They were pretty much on top of each other the whole time and I think that made Claire uncomfortable so she eventually got out.

 

I always love these birds of paradise as I never see anything like them at home.

 

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Claire got out then and dried off and I took some more pictures and we decided to walk around the area a bit.

 

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They had a tye die station, for a cost, which wasn’t too bad, and I asked Claire if she wanted to and she said no.

 

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We read about the campfire and I took a picture to remember the info on it.

 

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Claire had to go the bathroom so we headed that way and of course I took a picture there too.

 

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I think we stopped and got my mug refilled.

 

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We decided to take the bridge back to our room. We were trying to see which way was closer to our room, walking around the lake or taking the bridge, but in the end I think both ways were pretty much equal from the location of our room.

 

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We stopped off at the Concierge desk and asked for an activities sheet and saw what time the campfire was going to start at the pool,which was soon. Claire didn’t want to go. I kind of did, but if she didn’t then I wasn’t going to push it.

 

One of the things I wanted to do this trip was head to the Chip and Dale Campfire at Fort Wilderness. We had a late Beaches and Cream reservation, so after the campfire we would have to high tale it over there if we wanted to catch it. Mom said there was no way she could stay up that late,so I kind of scratched the idea. I guess it will have to be for another trip.

 

Mom was grumbling a bit on how late the B&C reservation was. When I originally made it, the plan was we were flying in that day and since we weren’t arriving till something like 5:30, I made it for late in the evening so we had plenty of time to get settled in and make our way over there. I tried changing it once we decided to arrive a day earlier, but of course by then, there was nothing open.

 

We decided to head over to the Yacht Club now and see if we could get in at Captain’s Grill and have some soup or appetizers before our dessert. I looked on the app and it had plenty of openings but I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take us, so I didn’t make one.

 

We got ourselves ready and headed off to the bus stop.

 

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They had the monitors, but they were either never on, or if on, never accurate, as in just frozen with one set of arrival times that never changed.

 

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We took the bus to Hollywood Studios and then made our way over to the boat dock. Claire was quiet and I noticed she was crying. Oh NO! What happened? With an emotional pre-teen I am often the reason she is mad about something. I asked her what was wrong and she waved me off. She said she would tell me later, but they were happy tears and not sad ones. OK??? Then Mom notices and asks and I tell her she will tell us later.

Well after Claire composed herself a bit, she said walking up by Hollywood Studios just made a bunch of good memories come back to her from when she was little and she really loves Disney World and is a bit sad we aren’t going to the parks. I told her my plan is to head there next year and if all goes well we will be taking Gracie (my granddaughter) and Paige (My other daughter). That made her a bit happier then. It really has been about 2 ½ years since Claire has been to the parks, so I understand her feeling a bit bummed about it. But we only has so much money to work with, and the cruise was pretty darn expensive.

 

We headed towards the friendship boat dock and were almost there and we saw the boat leave. Darn it! Mom was mad that they didn’t wait for us, but there was nothing I could do. So we waited for the next one and it wasn’t too long, but I could see Mom was not happy about waiting.

 

The next boat arrived and we boarded and soon were on our way. It does make a stop or 2 before arriving at the Yacht and Beach Club, but it was a nice relaxing ride.

 

We headed over to the Yacht Club and asked if we could get a table and they said yes, it would be just a few minutes (which I think they are trained to say) and a few minutes later we were led to a table.

 

We made our orders quickly and then we were served some bread.

 

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I ordered an appetizer. I can’t remember what it was and it was so good we ate it before I remembered to take a picture. I think it was something with crab or scallops. Claire didn’t eat it, but Mom and I did.

 

We also each got a bowl of clam chowder.

 

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Claire has expensive tastes. She loves Clam Chowder and she is a steak eater….and she likes BIG steaks! LOL.

 

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It was tasty and just hit the spot.

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We still had quite a while till our B & C reservation. I really think Mom would have left if she knew her way back. She is not a night owl.

 

We sat outside the Yacht Club for a while and just chilled.

 

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I think I called Skip and Mom probably called Dad then too.

 

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We decided to go and see if we could get in earlier and the gal told us it was unlikely, but to come back about 30 minutes before our reservation and she would see.

 

We took off just walking around then.

 

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And we realized that Illuminations was starting so we headed over to the bridge to watch.

 

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We could only see the higher stuff, but it was still nice.

 

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