FRIDAY 18TH SEPT
We both fell asleep really quickly and fortunately never heard one sound during the night. One thing we were very fortunate with this year was people in rooms around around us were almost silent!! Never heard one peep which was excellent. But we were awake early, very early.....I knew around 5.30am I wasn`t getting back to sleep, so sat and watched the resort lights twinkling and the very few people that were around getting everything ready for the day. It`s easy to forget when a hotel runs as smoothly as this does for us that there`s so much goes on behind the scenes to make it this way.
It is interesting to see the development of the new Sapphire Falls hotel due to open next year.........
So, I make a decision that we will get showered and try and Skype Kyle then head to Peach Valley Café for breakfast. So we connect to Skype and connected immediately.....he was keeping an eye out for us knowing we may be up early. Connection was poor with normal internet connection....it was fine for generic internet stuff but Skype needed the upgrade, we would do that later. We did manage to chat for a bit despite cutting out a few times, and it was lovely to see him. We showed him around the room he knew so well and said it was nice to see it. Skype would be a lifesaver this trip. We switched off after 20 minutes and decided we were hungry now.
It was so early but lobby was fairly busy, we headed out and got car and drove the few minutes to the café in Dr Phillips. I did however forget my camera. This place is very local, not many tourists but food is so good. It opens at 7 so we arrived not long after opening. We were seated and ordered quickly. I had Pecan cinnamon roll pancakes and Tom had two eggs, bacon, sausages and toast.......I may or may not have stolen a sausage from him!! Food was so good and I couldn`t finish my pancakes, but they were gorgeous. We sat for a while and then as we weren't doing any parks till Monday thought about what we would do next.
First stop was walmart for suncream. Always our first stop. We burn so easily so we buy it there rather than from home. I have Factor 30 and Tom has 50. We use No-Ad, have used it every year and never once had sunburn. We also buy the cooling gel.....just in case and hopefully never have to use it.......we spend ages in here........pick up water, Pepperidge farm cookies and other bits and bobs like shaving gel and other stuff we don`t bring........go to see our friend Roslyn who we speak to every year, only to find she has left. We were sad as she was a lovely lady who we enjoyed talking to every year. We drop things off at hotel and take a couple of pics as sun is now shining
Our favourite spot.........
We are not fond of the Florida Mall at all, but always go at least once, but, it had changed since last year and the food court in particular was very nice. We mooched around a bit and got some pictures of the Crayola place Janet had asked me to check out......
We bought a few things then stopped for lunch. I am allergic to onions, garlic and msg among a few other things, so Chinese from mall food courts are out......or so I thought.....we saw the oriental eatery place had a sign up saying no msg.....so I thought well, ok give it a try and pray I didn`t regret it. It was nice and I had no ill effects from it apart from an incredible thirst.....it was far too salty.....
I can`t remember what Tom had but it was nice and spicy......I had bourbon chicken with noodles and a huge amount of water, but glad we tried it. We sat for a bit as this bit of the mall is really nice now, so much more spacious and lighter
So now we were duly fed and watered we headed back to the car and decided to go the Mall at Millenia.......our favourite mall in Orlando.......It didn`t look too busy which it never really is, but they have taken a huge amount of the car park for valet. So we had found out last year we couldn`t use the valet as it invalidates our car insurance for the rental, so we park in normal spaces and walk, but we`re fairly close......I`m conscious we don't have sun cream on yet. But we head in and have a quick mooch around, head to Macy`s and I get a moisturiser and a mascara. Wander around and look at bags, watches and a few other things. Walk past the Apple store as it`s busy, it`s always busy. We are planning to get me a new ipad as a belated birthday present this year......I had my birthday before we left this year and got a few bits, but would get some other stuff here. We decided at this point we would head back to hotel and chill for a bit as we were doing horror nights tonight.
We didn`t go in.......but Kyle`s favourite place......
Arrived back and dropped stuff in room. Went down to lobby and asked if a friend was around. He was, it was so lovely seeing him again. Probably the nicest guy on earth. We caught up and he asked if we had seen new rooms yet, we hadn`t so he took us to T1 and showed us one.......We loved it!!! Long story short he asked if we wanted to move to one of them, let him know and we could switch.......although we do love the view from T3 this room was beautiful. He said think about it and let him know. We would. So we caught up some more then headed up to our room to change for HHN.
Before that though we headed up to Club Lounge. We like the 6th floor in T3, it takes seconds to get up there. As we walked in one of our favourite guys from last few years was sat.....Thomas.......he immediately got up and hugged us and welcomed us back. We chatted and then sat down as they were just about to set stuff out..........we caught up some more once he was set up. Such a lovely guy and we really get on well with him. The staff in here were mostly new, but so nice. I saw one girl and almost dropped my drink......she was the image of my niece Joanne.....same facial expression as well......only Joanne is blonde and Mara is dark haired.....uncanny though. So we had a few glasses of wine and met Anthony, another new face and we came to know well too. Very nice guy.
And again with the building work at Sapphire Falls and one below of the Orlando Eye from the Club Lounge......
We felt so comfortable in there, wasn`t too busy either. But we were heading to horror nights, and as our day tickets were not going to be activated till Monday we were using for the first time the general queue entrance outside!! We were of course going to use the seperate hotel guest entrance to the side, but even that would be busier than we were used to as we always did Stay and Scream. This would be the first year we were doing it this way, so would be interesting to see how it went. We could go 10 nights during our trip with the RoF ticket, not that we planned to go all those nights but it was nice that we could.