Besides, I really wanted to see some of the shots I had taken yesterday.
Vistana is a timeshare property; like many timeshares in the Orlando area, Vistana also rents their one- and two-bedroom condo units out on a daily basis like a hotel. I had stayed at Vistana in 1998, and I knew and liked the resort and it's amenities. Although I knew that the possibility of buying a timeshare here was remote at best, I figured it couldn't hurt to spend two hours of my vacation listening to a sales pitch, especially since the compensation was a free 3-day Universal Studios park-hopper pass.
When I arrived at Vistana, I was directed to the proper building and waited in a room along with several other folks who were there for the sales pitch. The pitch was supposedly only going to take two hours, and they provided breakfast (bagels, donuts, juice, coffee), so after entering the room, I grabbed a bagel and cream cheese and sat down. We hadn't even finished eating yet when the Vistana people showed up and began their presentation.
The group portion of the presentation consisted of a movie and a live speech by a sales rep. After that, we were broken up and a single sales rep went with each person or family. My sales rep seemed to be a friendly guy (read: car salesman), and he took me around to look at the Vistana property a little, and to look at a model of a single-bedroom unit, since I had stayed in the two-bedroom unit previously. Then we sat down at a nice table near the pool and he began to sell in Ernest.
I could tell by the numbers that there wasn't a Scud's chance in Iraq of my ever being able to afford the place, but I felt it would be rude to simply tell the guy, "Look, the answer's no! Gimme my free ticket!" On the other hand, I also didn't want to drag it out too long, because I was bored, and the sales guy could probably use his time more effectively to sell to another customer. Eventually, I put a stop to it by gently telling the guy, "I'm sorry, I just don't see how I could possibly afford any of these units." He seemed pretty put off by this (I'm sure those guys work on commission), and dumped me unceremoniously at a pick-up window, where I waited in line to get my Universal pass. By the time I was finished, it was nearly noon.
After leaving Vistana I stopped at Walgreens and picked up my rolls of film. I was pleased with both rolls, and decided to bring more film to this Walgreens in the future. It wasn't really out of the way for me, since I had to drive a bit to get back to Parc Corniche anyway.
Since I had a 4-day Park Hopper pass to Disney World, I had resolved that today would not be a park day. Instead, I would spend the day visiting some of the various off-site shopping venues I knew of. First was the Maingate Flea Market on 192, not far from World Drive. I had only been here once before; the various flea markets around WDW are all pretty similar, with hundreds of vendors hawking thousands of products. The Maingate Flea Market, however, was fully enclosed and air-conditioned, making it a more desirable destination for most tourists.
My best friend, Rick, with whom I grew up and have shared many adventures (and misadventures) over the years, requested before I left on this trip that I make a small detour to Medieval Times to buy him a t-shirt, as his old Medieval Times t-shirt was suffering from extreme age. Since the 192 Flea Market is just across the street from Medieval Times, I figured that this was a good time to take that side trip. I'd been to Medieval Times dinner show several times, as well, so I was familiar with the place, which is made to resemble a European castle of the middle ages. So early in the day, however, the place was empty; the gift shop was open, but there were only 2 or 3 other customers there. I grabbed Rick's t-shirt and was out again in less than ten minutes. The only hard part was remembering which shirt he wanted!
By now I was getting hungry, so I went to the Mercado. The Mercado is a shopping village on International Drive; its Spanish-style buildings house shops, stores, and restaurants. I went immediately to the food court, where in years past I had gotten the best Greek salad in the entire world from a little deli. Unfortunately, that deli was gone this year; I wound up going with Chinese food from one of the other places. I wandered around a little after lunch, looking in some of the many tourist-trap stores to be found there, before getting on the road once more and heading for the Belz outlet malls, at the northern end of International Drive.
Belz is a typical outlet mall, or should I say malls. Belz has 4 buildings, with maybe two hundred stores, selling clothing, electronics, housewares, and of course, Disney merchandise. It was the Disney merchandise that always attracted me; nestled in two of the Belz buildings were official Disney outlet stores, called Character Warehouse and Character Premier. These two stores carried Walt Disney World merchandise, mostly last years stuff, at substantial discounts. I can remember getting t-shirts from these stores with $45 price tags on them and paying only $20. As word of these stores has spread over the past few years, the bargains had been getting smaller and smaller, but most stuff in the stores was still $20 off, and sometimes more. I visited both places and bought a bunch of stuff, some for myself, some for the horde of family and friends at home that I always seem to buy for when I'm on vacation.
I turned in about 11pm, wanting to be rested and fresh for Universal Studios tomorrow.
Walk miles: 4.0
Drive miles: 139