May 11, 2008 - Day 17: Epcot

Happy Mother’s Day to me and all you moms, and Happy Birthday to my mom.

Today we took it a little easier. I let the sleepyheads stay in bed until 11 am and then Brynna had a paper to finish to today so she worked on that while I packed up some more. Then we headed out to Downtown Disney around 1 pm and went to Wolfgang Puck’s Express for lunch. Best value for our counter service meal, it came to $53. I had rigatoni with chicken alfredo and caesar salad followed by creme brule. Gary had a bbq chicken pocket sandwich and Brynna had the 4 cheese macaroni, both had frozen yogurt for dessert. We enjoyed our meal so much, we decided we might go back tomorrow.

We popped into a few shops, and Goofy’s Candy Kitchen to see where we could spend our accumulated snack credits. There was much to choose from so we’ll go back there tomorrow as well.

Then we headed over to Caribbean Beach Resort, Brynna’s still on the hunt for a specific sweatshirt. It wasn’t there but we did pick up a few little things and looked around the resort. We’re definitely coming back here next time, we did stay here 9 years ago and loved it then too.

So off to Epcot next. We headed down to World Showcase since we hadn’t really been there yet, firstly to the new O Canada circlevision movie. It was really good, a definite improvement over the very old one they had before. Martin Short narrated it and was very funny.

From there we meandered around the lagoon until we found the American Theatre and a huge line in the sun for......Davy Jones! Yes, I jumped in line too and waited patiently in the sun (altho it was totally windy today so that helped). We got seated after about 20 minutes and waited for another 45 minutes, but at least we were partially shaded. It was a very good show, Davy’s still a cutie, even though he’s in his 60s! He sounds just the same and did a nice selection of some past hits and a few I hadn’t heard. He even came crashing, literally, through the audience just a few feet away from us so I was trying to video on my camera and I had Brynna trying to get a few shots. The show was only 40 min. long but worth it. It was also very packed too, and when we were leaving the next show lineup was already in place and very long too. He’s performing 3 shows nightly for 5 nights.

We headed over to Germany after, and strolled though the shops while we waited until our reservation time of 6:55. We were eating at the Biergarten tonight, and it was quite fun. You’re placed at a table with another family, in a biergarten type atmosphere, like you’re outside in front of a stage. Then the oompahpah band performed which was fun. The food was definitely a change from what we’d been eating and very good too. We had schnitzel, sausages, sauerkraut, hot potato salad, red cabbage, rouladen, pretzel rolls and then for dessert bavarian cheesecake (to die for), black forest cake and strudel. The family we sat with was from S. Carolina, very nice to talk to.

We decided to get the heck out of there before Illuminations as Brynna had to finish her paper and email it off. We’re going to finally see Illuminations tomorrow night after dinner. So we got back to the resort just after 9 and I watched a movie on TV and Gary read. To bed around midnight.