Day 6

Thursday - Feb 4^th

This morning began with me going downstairs to what I'm now referring to as Hell's Dining Room, which is really the Dining Hall at POP. In the morning it is absolute chaos - no one cares about anyone but themselves. It's truly survival of the fittest down there in the mornings. Wonder how the mornings are at the Polynesian?

I picked up a POP waffle with strawberries and whipped cream for E, while I had an everything bagel with cream cheese. Yum, quick, and cheap (again, only if you're on the dining plan). The cashier only charged us 1 dining credit for all of this.

After eating and being leisurely for a few hours at POP, we headed over to Epcot. Upon entering the park, E was approached by a cast member asking him to take a booklet. It was a survey of the park and they wanted our notes and opinions of events, rides, character greetings, etc that we experience while there. They even promised a gift card upon returning the booklet at the end of the day.

The hunger murmurs were awaking, around 1130am. With the world at our feet, we decided a Chinese lunch would be in order. Nine Dragons had available seating for us at noon. The reviews of this place were not favorable online so I had put a mental pass on this place from the beginning, but since we weren't paying (the dining plan was) we thought we'd give it a try. For appetizers we ordered cold chicken tenderloins with a lime-cilantro sauce and cold thinly-sliced spicy beef. The chicken was good, the beef was delicious! The appetizers were shared.

The entrée we tried to share but we had our obvious favorites. I ordered the orange-ginger chicken with white rice, while E had the sweet & sour pork on a bed of garlic infused spinach fettuccini noodles - a combination you wouldn't think would work but it totally did!

For dessert, I ordered the ginger spice cake. It wasn't that special. E had banana cheesecake egg rolls. He said this was possibly the best dessert he had during our entire stay. I tried it and I disagree with his statement; I thought they were ok.

The bill came to around $75, total. It was a redemption of 1 dining credit per person.

After food, we proceeded to more rides including the Maelstrom in Norway and the Three Cabarellos in Mexico. Maelstrom I still state is dumb other than the riding backwards in a boat and I'm still unsure of their statement on off-shore oil drilling they try to make at the end of the ride. The Mexico ride I thoroughly enjoyed. Again another boat ride but I found it to be cute and entertaining.

From the World Showcase at Epcot, we moved onto Future World (also at Epcot). We were able to get on Test Track (via our Fast Passes we obtained upon entering the park, before lunch), Ellen's Energy Adventure, and The Seas with Nemo & Friends. Test Track is just awesome and is a must do for anyone. Ellen's ride is ok. Won't be doing it again, as we've now done it. Nemo was a blast! It's just like the Nemo submarine ride at Disneyland but with this one you board a clam and go into an aquarium. The aquarium is so awesome!! It's huge. Can't believe I hadn't done this ride before, as I know it's been here for awhile. Oh, well … lesson learned … it is now a must do upon every trip.

It was about 3, and we had 430pm dinner reservations, so we headed out of Epcot. First we had to drop off the opinion questionnaire. No problem. They ended up giving us a $20 gift card! Awesome!!

Yes, I know you can't believe that we already had dinner reservations again. Well, there's a reason for this. Thursday happened to be the only other day of the week that Fantasmic is running and if you book a dinner/show package, then you get reserved seating for the show. With hearing that you should be in line 1 ½ - 2 hours before show time without a reservation, we opted for throwing 1 dining credit toward a "dinner" to guarantee reserved seating.

On a side note, I had been trying to book this dinner/show package ever since we booked our vacation. I would call Disney dining about once a week to check on reservations, and it was never a go. I call the morning of the show and was able to claim a reservation at Hollywood & Vine at Hollywood Studios at 430pm, with tickets for Fantasmic at 7pm.

Hollywood & Vine is a buffet style restaurant. I didn't venture anywhere in the food line past the salads and rolls. Both were delicious. I believe the rolls are made on site, as they were hot and fresh. I attempted a few desserts, but they were average so I pushed them aside. E also indulged in the salad and rolls option. He tried the mac n' cheese from the kids section out of sheer curiosity, but found it absolutely revolting. He enjoyed a few of the desserts, but found them pretty average too. We both really couldn't stuff much into our maws as we were both still full from lunch.

Not sure what the bill would've been but I believe I saw the dinner buffet was around $30 per person.

We didn't wait long after eating to head on over to Fantasmic for seating. We didn't want to miss out. This is a show I've seen in Disneyland but have missed it at Disneyworld the past 2 times. I'm not sure how it happened, but it did. E had never seen it, even in CA. Anyway, this is a great show. It is very dark, loud, wet, explosive, and just plain awesome. I'm glad it was a little different than the CA version.

We left a couple of minutes early, before the show ended to try to beat the people traffic to the hotel buses. Well, other people had the same idea we did. The line for POP was outrageous! We instead opted to jump a bus to Saratoga Springs hotel, another bus to Downtown Disney, and a third bus to POP. This all took about an hour, but my bet is that it was most likely a 1 ½-2 hour wait to get on a single bus from HS to POP.

It was almost 10pm by the time we got to our room. Can you believe it? We were hungry. Hell's Dining Room was packed yet again with the same people, but now grubbing for dinner. We didn't feel like fighting that crowd so we opted for the room service pizza idea.

This was a total of 2 dining credits. They never gave us a total $ bill, so no idea how much it costs to the average Joe without a dining plan. We were given 2 salads, a large pepperoni pizza, 2 desserts, and the best part which was a 2 liter bottle of diet Coke. The Diet Coke from the soda fountain in Hell's Kitchen had been broken all day. Online reviews said the pizza was cold and yuk. We disagree. It's good pizza. And, with only a 30 minute wait time, we received our pizza steamy and hot. Maybe it was the location of our room? Who knows. Anyway, we threw out the salads and desserts but gobbled up a good portion of the pizza. No, not all of it.

After pizza, we both passed out from extreme carb coma.