Day 5, Sept 14, 2006

Today is Magic Kingdom day. We got a late started this morning. We finally get to the park after 10:30 and head to It’s a small world, but we did Haunted Mansion instead.

Next we did Peter Pan, and then finally It’s a small world. Country Bear Jamboree was next. We sat right in the front row. Something funny happened. My father was tapping me on the shoulder pointing out to me when I was taping something else and a new character appeared from behind a curtain, like this was the first time I am watching this. Also my mother decides to change her seat and steps in front of the camera while taping.

The big meal today (table service) is lunch at the Concourse Steakhouse as we have tickets for La Nouba tonight at Downtown Disney. My mother still talks about the time we stayed there back in 2000 when we ate at the Concourse.

We did what few people would do, we walked from the Magic Kingdom to the Contemporary. Back in 2000, it seemed shorter to walk then it did today, but still not a bad walk.

The meal was good, I had the onion soup, and NY Strip Steak. I had chocolate cake for dessert. My parents enjoyed this better then Spoodles or Le Cellier.

After eating, we did a little shopping in the Contemporary. I bought the Illuminations, Reflections of Earth CD, and a pin for my parents, a 2006 parents day pin.

I also looked for the 5 legged goat to take a photo of. Years ago, I took a photo of the mural, but with a camera that when I tried to blow up certain sections to look at it up close, it didn’t really get a good photo of it to be sure. I asked the check in person at the Concourse Steakhouse about where the goat was. She told me it's on the side facing the monorail, which can only be photographed while waiting for the monorail. It turned out she was wrong, scanned all the animals and couldn’t find one with 5 legs. I know it is there, just didn’t find it this trip.

We took a brief tour at the Grand Floridian, then headed back to Magic Kingdom for the bus back to the Pop Century.

After resting a couple of hours back at the hotel, we headed to Downtown Disney for the evening.

We did a little shopping, but we didn’t buy anything. We had dinner at Earle of Sandwich. I had a problem when they went to charge my meal on the dinning plan. The person working the cash register first swiped my card, but seemed to have trouble with it, and then she scanned it a second time on another machine. While eating, my parents told me they still had two quick service meals left each and I only had one. Since we had meals at the same time, there was something wrong. In my mind, I started to review where I ate all week. I did seem to be a quick service credit short. It so happened that I had Pop Century phone number on my call queue on my cell phone, so while still there, I called Pop and told them what my problem was, if they could go over where I ate all week to see what was what. She reviewed my account and realized that I had two quick service credits used a minute apart for the same price at Earle, so that was the mistake, which she easily corrected.

We had 9 pm seats for La Nouba. I wasn’t sure how much further it was to get there, so we didn’t do too much more shopping and headed to the circus tent building. We got there very quick, but not enough time to do anything but wait for the show. We were admitted about 8:15 or so.

My mother, who caught the pin trading bug, was going to trade for a pin, but the nice CM gave it to her. The pin said participant 2006 and has Dumbo on it. We didn’t know exactly what they meant by participant, so I asked.

With my cell phone and a special temporary email account I set up, I was sending updates of my trip to everyone on the Travel-wdw yahoo group, so I sent a email to everyone to ask the question. Within 10 minutes, Rose Cook and John (sorry, didn’t have a last name on the email) answered my question. It was a special pin given to Cast Members who contributed to the United Way this year. I showed my mother the emails and she was amazed that I got the answer like that so quickly.

I paid for this as 50^th anniversary present for my parents. When booking the seats, you can only choose the category of seats, not the locations. This delayed my purchasing the seats as the section that was available, I didn’t like. But the trip was getting close so I bought 3 category 2 seats. We had good seats, as we were sitting right behind where people enter, above the entrance, so there are no seats in front of us.

Now sitting down and typing this all out, I can tell you the parts that stood out in my mind. The show opens with two clowns who interact with the audience. Not going to say how J This is a pre-show as people still are entering and finding their seats. Once the show starts properly, no one is allowed to enter, as the performers all make a grand entrance from one side in the middle aisle and march slowly to the other.

The clowns perform different bits throughout the whole performance. The parts that I remember that myself and everyone else seem to enjoy are these. They had a group of oriental little girls who had the audience clapping at their act. They easily stole the show. The other performers were trick bike riders, tight rope walkers, and acrobats.

Sometimes there were too many things going on at once, and didn’t know what to pay attention to. The show lasted about an hour and forty minutes.

We headed back to the Pop and call it a night. We picked up the bus near Planet Hollywood. We had the usual long wait for the bus. While the bus driver was dealing with loading my father and another wheel chair party, another bus heading to the Pop stopped and everyone who wasn’t in our party loaded on that one, and they left when we finally allowed people to board.

My parents enjoyed the show, but couldn’t believe how much it cost, but I didn’t care J