January 5th, 2015
This morning started off with excitement! As you guys may or may not know, I have respiratory distress a lot. I don’t always have the lung power to move crud out of my airway & need a quick push on my tummy to help. It’s often worse at certain times of the day, morning especially. I had gotten up and we were packing up to move to Coronado Springs resort. It was Mom’s Birthday so we had her favorites planned! Feav had just walked out the door to take luggage down to the van and Mom thought he had forgotten the keys. She stuck her head out the door to catch him but stepped a bit too far out & I heard the undeniable sound… CLICK.
The door completely closed behind her & automatically locked. Mom nor Feav had their Magic Bands on. I was locked in the room alone! This is an unbelievably dangerous situation because mornings are so unpredictable and I can go from fine to can’t breath in literally a few minutes. Mom knew the situation was dire and sent Feav one way for help while she ran the other way. She quickly found an employee and was back in the room within probably 3 minutes tops. I was okay but it wasn’t a fun way to start off her Birthday!
Checking in at the Coronado Springs was a much better start! This place is totally beautiful. We got our room assignment and our package had started so we headed to grab lunch at one of Feav’s favorites, Pepper’s Market at the resort.
Since this resort has a south of the border theme, the majority of the food here is spicy. No surprise why it is one of his favorites. As you can see the portions are huge! This is a Crab Cake sandwich with garlic parmesan fries. Feav also got a huge brownie with his meal.
Disney dining was part of the Stay, Play, and Dine package and this was his quick serve meal of the day. At the moderate resorts you get the dining plan that includes one quick serve, one table serve, and one snack per person per day. He got to choose an entrée. a desert, and a drink. We also each got a refillable mug to use the entire length of our stay. If you are someone who drinks coke’s, tea, hot chocolate, or coffee you can use your mug while you dine and get a bottle of water with your meal to save in take to the park with you!
Mom had the Philly cheese steak sandwich but since she is diabetic the chef was happy to serve hers in a bowl without the bread. As you can see it was still a huge serving! She did order a desert that came with her meal, but she ordered vanilla and chocolate swirl ice cream for me. All of the food was terrific but the best part about our lunch here was the fact that we saw a lot of familiar friendly faces from our last trip. The staff at Pepper’s Market remembered us and made it a point to ask how we were doing and how our year had went!
When we finish our lunch, we headed to our room to get everything situated before we ventured out to the Parks. This trip we were in the Ranchero section of the resort which I admit was a pretty long hike to the food court! As always the surroundings were beautiful and our room was great, but we were still a long way away. The good thing about it is that each section has its own parking lot and bus stop so unless you just need to go to the food court, you were at least close to transportation.
With our luggage in the room we hopped in the van and headed to today’s destination. Hollywood Studios! When we were planning the trip I told Mom since it was her birthday to pick anything she wanted to do and anywhere she wanted to eat and I would work on getting the reservation. She wanted to ride her favorite ride at Disney.
I’m not sure why this one is her favorite that it’s definitely a must do every trip. This time I even used a fast pass to make sure we got on the ride with no wait. This ride isn’t one that you usually burn a fast pass on because the line is typically small, but when a birthday girl makes a wish you pull out any pixie dust you have!
Her love of this ride could stem from the Wizard of Oz scene since I had so many pictures from that area! By the time we rode The Great Movie Ride and Star Tours it was creeping closer to 7:00 so we headed off to make it to our dinner reservation in time.
Tonight we’re a dining at mom’s favorite restaurant, the brown derby. She had been here before on a previous trip and had lunch and absolutely loved it! This time we all came for her birthday dinner. She was a huge fan of the Cobb salad but this time tried something new.
Crispy Spiced Duck Breast… locally grown cauliflower, Romanesca, with a blood orange gastrique and duck confit over a purple potato hash and currant-port sauce. It was ok but not something my crew will get again.
After we ate, we wandered around and checked out some of the shops. The Christmas decorations definitely gave main street that same feeling any small town main street has during the holidays. There were decorations on every light pole and lights on the buildings!
It was a getting close to time for the park to close so we said goodbye to Hollywood Studios and headed back “Home”. Tomorrow we had a lot on to to do list but before we headed to our room we took a few more pictures while refilling our mugs. OK OK, I was refilling my mug with the nightly hot chocolate! Not going to lie, I kind of got hooked on hot chocolate before bedtime during the Disney trip. It’s Walt Disney world, things like this happen! Need to get hyped up for tomorrow. DESTINATION: Epcot
