The Home In Time For-ty Tour 2010 Day Twelve 31st Aug 2010

[mkingdon]

Previously on this tour...

The bit before we go Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven
Day Eight
Day Nine
Day Ten
Day Eleven

Day Twelve – 31st August 2010

So we come to the main event of this trip. A day oft thought about over the past few years, and to wake up in such a lovely location got the day off to the perfect start.

Staying in this location feels like being in the eye of a storm. There is a certain calmness and serenity here, despite the fact that you are actually right in the centre of multiple theme park madness.

Looking back on this day now, all these weeks later, I feel a mixture of total satisfaction that everything went to my long held plan and that I was lucky enough to be able to be there, but also a gut wrenching sadness that we are not there again, right now, waking up to do it all again.

If there is anything I regret about the overall plan this time around as a whole, it is that I tried to cram too much in. As Louise will tell you, this is something I am well practised at, but still, we were all paying the price now for the very hectic pace of the trip so far.

This presented itself again in a wake up time of 9.40am. At the time, I was gutted to have slept in so long, but it actually turned out to be the perfect start to the day. With a late start, we knew that we could now get ready, and go straight out to one of the main attractions of the day, a Kitchen Sink, rather than set off for Epcot, and have to walk back for an early lunch at Beaches & Cream. The fact that today was to be centred around the World Showcase, which also only opens at 11am, was another factor in the natural perfection of this start to the day.

I am woken by three females, which is obviously not something I don’t get to say too often these days…or any days for that matter.

They are all bearing gifts.

The first package is my special T shirt for the day.

It carries a special logo on the front.



And a special message on the back.



So I am up and dressed, but others are not quite so keen to do so.





Cards are opened from those not able to be with us in Florida, and from Jakki et al, who had kindly given me a card and present all those days ago when we met in the Main Street Bakery. I had kept my promise not to open either until today.

Jakki also handed me this card, which she told me Ariel was too shy to deliver herself. Truthfully, she would have been in breach of the latest restraining order.



Eventually we are all out and about, in search of probably the most calorific breakfast in the history of man.



We are all dressed in team colours today.

We wander through to Beaches & Cream and arrive with perfect timing five minutes before it opens.





As the doors open we are first in, and are quite aptly therefore the family of the day, and we get a special table with a posh tablecloth and balloons and stuff.



This what Beaches & Cream looks like without people!



We do not need the menus today. There is only thing we want to order. THE KITCHEN SINK!

There is more squirty cream being used behind the counter than at Russell Brand’s stag do. Ten minutes or so later, the lights start flashing and the dish is brought forward.





It is greeted like some sort of sugary God, and we pay it the correct amount of respect by taking photos and admiring all its glory.





Then, it is time to begin!



The events of the next few minutes are not captured on camera. Nobody wanted to pick up the camera and risk losing out on a brownie or Oreo cookie buried deep within.

I know a lot of us here watch Man vs. Food, and I often watch him and try to appreciate the pain he is going through with his challenges. Well, twenty minutes in, I was struggling. Emily had thrown in the towel, and Louise was just pretending to be interested, which always happens when squirty cream is involved.



It was down to Rebecca and me to uphold the Williams honour.
It wasn’t pretty towards the end.



Frankly Rebecca could have gone on to eat another one,



But I had to really dig deep, both into the sweet sticky gloop that remained, and into my resolve, to ensure we could say……we finished the kitchen sink.





The saving grace for me was having the genius idea of ordering a coffee too. The anti sweetness of this really helped to push on through the vomit barrier, into the land of large scale gluttony.

By 11.35, we were done, and in today’s challenge of Man (and Women) vs. Food…..Man (and Woman) won!

We walked, quite slowly, to International Gateway fighting four cans of cream and a strong gag reflex.

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Here we saw an unusual character out and about.



Yes, it was Margaret, looking like she’d had another night on the cocktails!



The plan for today was to work our way around the showcase, just wandering, and soaking in the unique atmosphere and experience of the World Showcase.

First, was France. It may not surprise you to know that we did not visit the Patisserie today.

There was a ten minute wait for the film, so we waited inside, whilst Louise sat outside soaking up the burning sun, which was very hot today. It had to be, I ordered it for my birthday.





The film washed over us in our sugar induced haze, and soon we were walking on to the next country, Morocco. On the way though Belle insisted I had a photo with her, I guess so she can show off to Ariel, when they meet up at the next “DPMWC”.

(Disney Princess Mud Wrestling Club). Now there’s a mental image for the men folk out there!

The first rule of DPMWC is that you don’t talk about DPMWC.



Anyone else think she looks like Sandra Bullock?

Armed with my birthday gift card courtesy of Steve and Di, Louise tries in vain to convince me to buy one of those big lamps in Morocco. Not a chance.

So now I have invented a theme of taking a photo of the girls in each country, which as you can see fills them with absolute delight.



We usually spend a lot of time in Japan, browsing the shop, but today being my birthday surely I would be spared such activities.



No. Rebecca selects a Hello Kitty backpack for school, and without too much more damage we move on.

As we leave the midgets on the bongos have started.



So after a bit of watching of that, we are on to Italy, skipping America for now.



This looks very different now the new pizzeria is open, and is huge in comparison to the area that used to be available to wander around. In the shop here, I am afraid I have to report some pretty serious financial damage, as we got a few gifts and Louise has to buy jewellery here, it is the law.

Having missed out America as the Voices of Liberty were not yet due, we now double back to make sure we catch them. On our way back, we see some characters, and pop in to say hello.



Just prior to this photo, Goofy had actually caused me grievous bodily harm whilst trying to hug me. His huge nose caught me in the face, ripped my hat off and nearly broke my glasses. I can’t say too much more as it is in the hands of my lawyers.

Fearful of the huge tongue, I leave the girls to it this time.



So this is America. I know technically all of this is America, but you know what I mean.



The singers of the Voices of Liberty may change in terms of personnel year to year, but the quality does not. They are always fantastic.



Our plan now was to invade Germany. We have a look around the shops, and as I have often commented some of those young female cast members can be quite a distraction.

You have to admit, she has a cracking pair of jugs.



For completeness, this is the girls in Germany.



The wandering continues now.



China is next, and again this is one of those countries that we tend to spend longer in.



Once again we leave Louise to soak up more UV rays, and we do the film here. Louise is struggling with a very painful back at this stage of the trip, and I won’t go into details here, but it lasted all the way home and into her recent hospital admission/operation! So I guess she wasn’t making it up because she didn’t like the film in China!

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Back out in the sunshine, the water is lovely I am toad!



We sit in the sun for a bit, waiting for the acrobatics show to start. As we sit, I am approached by a Dibber, who recognises us, he tells me he loves the trippies, and as quickly as he arrives he is gone. As usual I am pretty useless in these encounters and forget to ask who he is. However I have since found out that it was Tin666 (Martin) so thank you for coming over to chat and apologies for being my usual
divvy self.

We marvel at the young Chinese girls for a while, which is a bit odd as you can get arrested for that if they happen to be on a web site!



This just isn’t natural!





Due to the painful back, it is down to me and the girls to enter Norway, without the protection of Louise. Frankly this is suicide, with all these hot blooded blonde ice maidens from Norway at liberty to do with me what they wish. Turns out they wished to get me into the boat and off the ride as quickly as possible. I put that down to them not wanting to have to fight the internal battle of their desires for longer than was necessary.



So Mexico was next, and Emily’s expression does not improve. Honestly, she is perfectly happy when not being photographed!





By law we are required to try on big hats.



And again, Louise rests up as the rest of us dare to ride the white water rapids that is the Donald Duck thing in Mexico.





To ease Louise’s pain I did the decent thing as we entered Mexico and got her a frozen margarita.

This did end up with the girls falling out with each other though, as Louise offered them a taste, and Rebecca grabbed it first, much to Emily’s disgust. I told her this is only because Rebecca is clearly our favourite and she should just learn to live with that.

You can see what she thought of that. This is the Canada photo by the way.



After we’d done the longish stroll from Mexico across to Canada, and even though O Canada is a firm favourite, the film did not start for fifteen minutes, and Rebecca really wanted to watch the British Invasion which started at the same time. So, as I said, with Rebecca being our favourite daughter, we decide to skip Canada for later, and go on to the UK.



We stroll through the shops, and we chat with one of the CMs, (Clover was her name, but I couldn’t believe it was not Butter) about how she got to work there, as it is something Emily is thinking about doing when the time comes. She was very helpful. We just explained to Emily that all she has to do between now and then is learn how to speak to people!

We find a spot in the area in front of the bandstand, and settle in for the Beatles.

I just had to capture some criminal activity that we witnessed.



Despite the bad wigs, the Beatles were very good.



As the final chord is struck we set off, back to the hotel to allow enough time to be ready for out ADR at Kouzzinna later. The time is now 5pm.

We catch the boat back. I mostly wait for the next Zak and Cody filled two hours, and then we are all ready to head out again across the water.



We wander around what is one of our favourite places on the planet. The heat is at a perfect level now as the sun starts to set, and the scenery and atmosphere are just perfect. I shall be buying permanent residence here the second my balls drop. That is a reference to the lottery and not the late onset of puberty!





There is a certain amount of confusion as we check in, and it seems some young CM, takes us to the wrong table under the wrong name, which sort of explains the lack of marching band, free birthday cake, and personal appearance by Ariel. Eventually we are sorted and seated and look at the menu.





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We start with a sampler, with includes all sorts of olives, hummus and breads. We make light work of it, as you may have noticed that we skipped lunch, and only had ice cream for breakfast!

We had –

Me and Rebecca – The trio thing which had lasagne, chicken and a burger.



Louise – Had Lamb



Emily – Greek Lasagne



To be honest, the food was OK, and if we’d known the place would be full to the rafters with push chair age kids I would have booked somewhere else. I have nothing against kids in restaurants, as most of the time I am one myself, I just think we’d have preferred a quieter venue for this particular occasion. To demonstrate the quality of the clientele they allow in here, as we are finishing our meal Margaret comes in with Michael and Kathryn, and we have a quick chat.

She wishes me happy birthday. It was very nice of her to track us down. We’d mentioned where we would be eating so she made a special effort to come and say hello following her meal at the Flying Fish!

We ordered desserts and all I wrote down about them was that they took a while to come, and time was pressing on towards the start of ROE.

We are out by 8.35, and after a quick dash by me to the shop for some more painkillers for Louise we are off to Epcot by boat.







The girls are a touch hyper!











I stop at the shop at International gateway for some water for said painkillers, and have a bizarre conversation with the (elderly) CM, about having a wee during the night. Of all the things I had imagined on my fortieth birthday this was not one of them!

He mentioned a larger bottle that was better value, but then said if he drank that he’d be to the toilet a dozen times during the night. Being very young, I had no idea what he was talking about….and bought the smaller size just to be safe.

We take our usual spot on the bridge and all that hyperness has taken it out of the girls it seems.



Very shortly the fireworks start, and I have said no doubt every year, but they never fail to impress. The mixture of music and fireworks is superb, and on such a landmark day as this, it is absolutely where I wanted to be.



A great end to a truly lovely day, and one that shall be stored up in the memory for ever. I shall call upon it in the depths of both winter and despair, whenever either arrives, and I can then relive it over and over again.

A brief stroll “home”, and we watch a little TV in bed before sleep claims us just after 10pm. So far, being 40 is going pretty well.

[wizzo]

Wow! didn't think you'd bother today what with your "Man Flu" and losing the Merseyside Derby. Supreme effort old boy! and what a cracking day it was too!

Your combined eating power is now legendary! Move over Adam Richman

[dubletrub]

What a great way to spend your birthday. Great day.

[Milner]

What a brilliant day at Epcot and excellent way to spend your 40th you share the same birthday as my Dad (who is considerably older) considering I am 43 also excellent photos. Really enjoying your trip report.

[Guest]

Fantastic Belated Happy Birthday, I joined the 40th club this year too, alas due to my slipped disc our celebrations at WDW are next year instead. Hope Louise is ok

[moolie19]

another brilliant day, i have been looking forward to this installment all day

[TinkTatoo]

Glad that your day loved up to expectations and well done on defeating the Kitchen Sink, we couldn't manage it and that was in our "larger" days