Somewhere in the midst of all this I threw up. Not a pretty image in a trip report, I know, but afterward I did feel better. I was still worried that once it started it wouldn't stop, and I'd be running to the bathroom every half-hour or so, which is the typical pattern for a stomach virus, but once, apparently, is all it took. Guest Services also sent up some generic Tylenol, which brought down the fever pretty quickly, and by 8am I felt good enough to try taking the drive myself.
I did quickly stop at Parrot Cay to give my waitstaff their tip vouchers; I didn't go in, I just gave them to the man at the door, who made note of which table I had been with and promised to make certain that Paul, George, and Darko got them.
Paul took the kids and the luggage to their rented minivan, parked in the lot across the street, while Rosie and I found my rental car in the near-side lot. The drive to WDW was pretty uneventful, although I realized halfway that I had $1.75 on me, and no credit cards or ATM card! I had packed my wallet, and all I had on me was my drivers license and my Key to the World card, which was only good for charging stuff on the ship. And of course, Rosie's purse had gone into the minivan with her luggage. I looked forward and behind, but didn't see the van, so Rosie called Paul on her cell phone (thankfully they both had them), but he was way ahead of us and already past the first toll. My $1.75 covered the first toll, which was $1.50, but the second toll was a different matter. We got off the Beeline onto Sand Lake Road and took that the rest of the way to Universal.
Somehow we caught up with Paul and the kids; we pulled into HRH just ahead of them in fact. We transferred my luggage to the trunk of my rental car, I thanked Rosie and Paul profusely for their help, and I was off to the Walt Disney World Dolphin while they checked into HRH. I had intended to go to Universal during my trip, so we arranged to meet Saturday, since Rosie was entitled to front-of-line access as a Universal hotel guest. I was certainly looking forward to that!
Since I was feeling a little better, I decided to make a brief grocery stop at a Walgreens, where I picked up some snacks and a bottle of Pepsi. I pulled into the Dolphin about 10:30 or 11am... and pulled out again 5 minutes later. It seems I had not read my documents carefully enough; I was actually booked at the Swan, which was pretty much the same as being booked at Dolphin, but the two hotels do have separate check-in desks. The young woman who checked me into the Swan was a pretty girl who recognized my neighborhood when she looked at my ID. She was a transplant from an area called Glen Burnie, which is only a few miles from my home in Pasadena. I was beginning to feel fatigued by then; having skipped breakfast, and being sick all morning, I was feeling better, but exhausted. This, perhaps, explains why I didn't catch the girl's name.
The bellman arrived a few minutes later and got me transferred to my new room without incident; the new room was 226, second-floor (with a tiny balcony), on the corner of the building. The windows faced the Dolphin and the boat dock between the two hotels, while the balcony faced Disney's Boardwalk, although there really wasn't any true view from the balcony. Being on the second floor, I was below the treetops, and that side of the hotel had some pretty large, full trees planted along the wall, totally blocking any view from the second- and third-floor balconies.
Well, all I could have seen was the back wall of some of the Boardwalk buildings, anyway.
Owing to my early rising that morning, I hadn't had time for a shower, so I took one quickly and zonked for several hours. By the time I woke up, I was starving. And it was raining, steady and heavy. I hate rain, so I decided to break into my snack supply and just nibble right there instead of going out. I ate a bagel, and watched the rain for a while.
After some grapes, and a quick check of my email, I looked out the window at the rain which was still falling steadily, and said out loud, "Well, I can either sit here all day feeling sorry for myself or I can go out there and at least try to have some fun!" Given the choice, I chose the latter option, and a few minutes later, wrapped in a Mickey poncho and carrying my new shoulder bag, I walked out of the Swan toward Epcot. I walked past the Yacht & Beach Clubs, noticing that a few hardy souls were actually playing water dodge-ball or something in the pool, and after about ten minutes I was digging my Walt Disney World Annual Passport out of my wallet to enter Epcot through International Gateway. I only cursed a little at the fact that my AP was pasteboard as I tried to keep it dry. The rain had slacked off a little.
My first stop in any Disney park is usually one of the shops, and this was no exception. International Gateway has a very nice little gift shop right next to it, which I browsed for several minutes. I noted that the 'Make your own Disney mix CD' machine was gone; I had never tried it, but it was a good idea. I wondered if all such machines were gone from WDW or if they just moved the one from International Gateway to a better location. I had never seen the machine in use.
The rain was making my shoulders ache, so I got a locker and left my bag in it (forgetting to take my cell phone out first, of course), before walking off through the World Showcase. At this point, bagel and grapes notwithstanding, I was hungry, so I stopped in the U.K. and got some of those excellent fish & chips from the walk-up stand. The rain had eased up to a light drizzle, so I found a table (with an umbrella, naturally), and sat down to have a real lunch. Since I hadn't had a full dinner the night before, and I hadn't had breakfast this morning, this fish & chips basket was my first actual meal in 24 hours. I was worried that I might still be a little sick, and eating too much too fast might give me a tummy ache, but the food was just what I needed to feel more energized and ready to have a little bit of fun.
My strength left me at this point. I became weak. I could no longer resist the pull toward Mouse Gear, the biggest gift shop in Epcot, and probably the second-biggest in all of WDW, after the World of Disney at Downtown Disney. I'm not sure, but I think Mouse Gear is actually a little bigger than the Emporium at Magic Kingdom. I browsed through the place for a while, really missing the old layout from before the unnecessary rehab done to it in 1999, then I went over to Ice Station Cool for a refreshing soda. No, this year I didn't try the Beverly soda from Italy; Beverly is probably the rankest sludge ever foisted on a body of consumers in the history of soft drinks, and I didn't want to take the chance of losing my fish & chips. I did try some of the citrus-flavored stuff from Japan, though.
I was actually getting a little tired by now, so I decided to head back to the Swan and call it a night early without staying for Illuminations. I love the show, but I had seen it a few nights prior on an Illuminations cruise, thanks to the generous invitation of Nanci Rossetti, and watching it in a light drizzle from a spot around the lagoon just couldn't compare. I walked all the way back to International Gateway and got on a boat.
I got all the way back to my room before I remembered my shoulder bag, still safely ensconced in a locker at International Gateway. Tired or not, I only had a little time to get that bag before the lockers were cleaned out for the night, so I trudged all the way back, skipping the boats, which were slower than walking, and rescued my bag from the locker just as Illuminations was ending. Then I got onto the boat again to spare myself the long walk back to the Swan.
Unfortunately, I didn't spare myself a thing; the boat was full to capacity and beyond, and I was forced to stand up instead of sitting down. Worse, the Friendship boats have no handrails in the ceiling like the Disney buses have, meaning that I had nothing to hold onto as the boat clunked it's way into the dock at the Boardwalk. No seats opened up, so again I got off the boat and walked the rest of the way back to the Swan.
Waiting for me when I got back was a message from Clubhouse Members Rob (who posts as Merle) and his wife Melissa. They were scheduled to meet with me and a few other tomorrow for breakfast in the Castle with Cinderella, but Melissa had gotten sick on the ship at the same time as me, and she wasn't feeling up to breakfast, so they were canceling. Although I was feeling better, I still didn't feel 100% either, so I figured that tomorrow would not be quite as much fun as I had hoped. But I figured I might as well try to salvage some of it; there were 5 other people still scheduled to show up for breakfast, plus me, and we were supposed to meet several other families before breakfast, so even if I woke tomorrow feeling like Death on Holiday, I was going to show up at the Partners statue as advertised.
Walk Miles: 6.3