Epic trip 2012: The Orlando leg

The Giant Tinker Toy at the entrance to Downtown Disney

While my computer and the blog site refused to talk to each other for the past two years, life has continued to be full of adventure. We got to travel to lots of places, mostly with Uchenna's work (meaning we got to stay in some high-end hotels we wouldn't otherwise consider), including a conference in Detroit; an assignment in Bellingham, WA that allowed us to also see Seattle and Vancouver, BC; a friend's graduation in Chicago; California for a wedding and a funeral; Utah for a recruiting trip; and the list goes on.

This year we combined work and personal into one big, two-week trip. Remember that one-time trial week of a time share we let ourselves get talked into? Well it was expiring this spring and we thought, great, we're not going to be able to use it and there goes our money.

But then Uchenna got a chance to take a training course in Orlando (hey, if you're going to have a training course, why not Orlando?) and we thought that's not too far from Myrtle Beach, one of the time share options. And we've never been anywhere like Myrtle Beach.

So an ambitious plan was formed to spend most of the first week in Orlando, fly up to Charleston, SC, on Thursday, then drive the two hours to Myrtle Beach on Saturday and fly home the following Saturday. Shwew!

Since it was such an epic trip, I'll just talk about Orlando here, and talk about the other two locations in later posts.

Our flight was at 6 am, which meant we left the house at about 4:30 am. Two weeks in an airport parking lot can add up, so a VERY kind friend drove us to the airport. We were in transit during the morning session of Conference, but we got to our hotel in time for the afternoon session. We had it streaming on our computer, but unfortunately fell asleep about 5 minutes into the first talk.

Our hotel, where the course was being held, was the Lake Buena Vista Hilton, within the Disney Resort and right across the street from Downtown Disney. Beautiful hotel, fabulous location. And housekeeping left us little towel animals. Can I live there for, like, the rest of my life?


While Uchenna was in his class all day, I browsed through the shops in Downtown Disney. How many departments of people do they have sitting around dreaming up Disney merchandise? This t-shirt was one of my favorites. Here's the back and the front.

I almost bought these Star Wars/Muppets mash-ups. Cracked me up!

There were also fantastic galleries of non-Disney stuff, like glass art, whimsical or quirky or just beautiful.

In the evenings Uchenna and I went to dinner and wandered around listening to the street performers.

We didn't actually go to this dinosaur-themed restaurant, but had to get pictures. It looked like Rainforest Cafe with dinos. Planet Hollywood was really lively. Seemed all the high school bands and cheer squads and dance troups performing that week were eating there the night we went. The DJ kept sending shoutouts to the various groups, which necessitated lots of cheering.

The other restaurants were calmer, like House of Blues and Raglan Road. We had lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express, but there was another Puck restaurant that seemed to think its celebrity chef was pretty special.

Of course we had to get pictures with the various Lego sculptures around the big Lego store. Yes, I looked closely and that sea monster is totally made of Legos!

 Here I am having a princess moment.

Downtown Disney stretches along the side of a small lake, with this lovely waterside walk.

We thought about going up in this tethered hotair balloon, but either there were long lines or it was grounded due to high winds at upper altitudes.

We loved the beautiful garden setting.

The last night we were there we went to see Hunger Games at a Downtown Disney theater was set up as a restaurant with a counter-like table in front of each row. The servers took orders before the show started, then discreetly brought it out during the movie. I thought it might be distracting, but not too bad and certainly novel.

Downtown Disney was so fun and we were looking forward to the later stages of our trip, so we didn't worry about going into Epcot or the Magic Kingdom or going on rides. Besides, we did all that the last time we were there, in 2009. Stay tuned for the our continuing adventures in South Carolina.