Walt Disney World, January 2017, Part 1

By Nick

Saturday 1/21/17 

We flew out of Philadelphia on the earliest flight we've ever taken, 5:55am! We arrived in Orlando, boarded the Magical Express bus, and arrived at Disney's Boardwalk Villas at 9:30am.

Our room wasn't ready, so we walked over to Epcot and had a bit to eat at France's Les Halles Boulangerie Patisserie.

It was a gorgeous day, and as we had no FastPasses, we just wandered around taking advantage of several of the photo opportunities unique to the inaugural year of Epcot's International Festival of the Arts.

We made our way to the Festival Center located at the Odyssey, where in addition to art galleries featuring Herb Ryman and Mary Blair, art worskshops are held, you can find The Painter's Palate.

Barbie and I split the Trio of Savory Croissant Donuts which were fantastic. 

This really got my hopes up for more food offerings, and the next stop didn't disappoint.

At E=AT/\2 we had the BLT and Pop Artsicle, both great!

We made our way over to the Germany Pavilion to say hello to friends Heather and Richard.

The four of us chatted for awhile before going our separate ways. I'd received a text that our room was ready. When I looked at the text which had our room number I was somewhat disappointed to see it was on a low floor, as I'd requested a high floor with no bulkhead. Oh well, maybe it will be a fantastic view, I thought. 

We headed over to the Boardwalk, and...

What is a bulkhead? Well, it's a wall instead of an open balcony, so when you sit outside, you see...

As my co-host on the Disney Exchange Podcast, Dave, said, if this was a cruise ship it would be considered an obstructed view and be several hundred dollars cheaper. So, I decided to ask if we could change rooms. I went to the front desk and was told there was no available room for that evening, but we'd be moved the next day.

We showered and went to Disney's Hollywood Studios to meet long time blog friend Gaylin, who we had never met, despite knowing each other at least 8 years! 

We used our FastPasses for Toy Story Midway Mania before an early dinner at The Brown Derby. 

After a ride on the Great Movie Ride and a visit to Star Wars Launch Bay we picked out what I thought would be a good spot for the Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular, on Hollywood Boulevard.

Wrong! I was unaware that, unlike the previous fireworks show, Star Wars: Symphony in the Stars that the pyrotechnics are not directly over the theater, but are now off to the right if you are facing it, and our view of the fireworks was obstructed by a tree. It was at least a good view of the projections.

We had been invited to join Heather and Rich at the newly opened AbracadaBar at the Boardwalk, but, as we had been up since about 2am, we called it a night!