Star Wars, Bar Bores and No Chores...26 August 2017 - Day 9 - Back to the bubble...

[ladyofleisure]

We were glad of our early night, and made our way into the Club lounge for breakfast before packing up in our room and making our way to Volcano bay which had an extra morning hour from 8am.

I do use the envelope template that’s available on the Dibb for mouse keeping daily tips, and I had amended the template to leave one every day for our Universal housekeeper, who did a sterling job tidying up after all of us, and kept us stocked with plenty of toiletries etc. Joe was particularly impressed with the Voss water. I suspect he is going to need a very well paid job as he does tend to have expensive tastes…

We packed our things into the car, but decided to take the free hotel transport to Volcano Bay which was a breeze, it was a very overcast day, but we managed to ride everything everyone wanted to (they only downside to the weather was that in certain areas of the water it was downright cold). I was surprised at that and wondered what will happen in the winter months? I suppose some of the pools are so huge etc. and with the lazy rivers it’s better to keep them cool as the weather can change so quickly.

Anyways, we had an enjoyable morning, then got dried off and at 11am (yes we had really ridden everything we wanted to in two hours) we went to Bambu 603 where we sampled a bacon cheeseburger platter with French fries $11.99, two chicken fingers platters $19.98 and a Mahi Sandwich platter $14.99 total $46.99 tax $3.06 total $50.02. The restaurant was virtually empty at this point as it was early for lunch but with all the swimming we were famished. The food was fine, nothing special but definitely edible.

We had also reactivated our freestyle mugs for the day but didn’t make best use of them.

I don’t know why, I suspect it’s because just didn’t want to ride each and every slide, that Volcano Bay felt a little on the small side. Around lunchtime it was noticeably busier. As we had been there 4 hours at the point we sad to be ending our Universal time, but we all agreed we had done everything we wanted to. We did offer the children the chance of going back to the park, but they were not bothered, so we decided on shopping instead.

So we hopped back onto the little bus, and were soon back at the Hard Rock hotel. Cole, Tia and Joe were feeling thirsty, so they popped back up to the lounge to grab a quick cold drink while Antony and I reloaded the car and we said goodbye to this magnificent hotel for the final time. We consoled ourselves in the fact that we will definitely stay there again.

The children then re-appeared, and off we went in our lovely car for some retail therapy away from the rain. First of all we went to Walmart on Kirkman Road, it was about 2.30pm at this point. We were in there what felt like forever and we bought lots of underwear, clothes, root beer and some Coors light in those aluminium bottles for Antony. Our total spend was $233.50 – tax was $15.18 so the total paid was $248.68.

We also went to a nearby Dollar Tree and I bought lots of sweets to take into work, like Caramel Apple Taffy, Cry Baby Gum, Chewy Candy, Hershey Kisses, Lollipops, Pen, Clips, Socks, Batteries, Liquorice, Nestle Crunch, some Permanent Marker all kinds of things I really didn’t need. Fun shopping though! I spent a total of $13.85.

We had had enough of shopping at that point, so we made our way back to Port Orleans Riverside. I should add that the weather had been a bit of a washout, it was raining as we left Volcano Bay, and that set the theme for the rest of the day where it was mostly tipping down!

We were chilling out in the room a while, watching the rain, when horror of horror we noticed Cole’s little bag was missing.

As we all tried not to panic, we made the horrible discovery Cole’s bag had been forgotten and was still in the club lounge (we hoped) back at the Hard Rock Hotel. Cole actually had all the spending money he had left in that bag as he wanted to make some purchases, and that was about $150 dollars. He was absolutely distraught.

Antony and I asked the children to wait in the room, and I went to see a Disney concierge in the hotel lobby and asked what we could do as soon as we discovered it was missing, (we were going to ring ourselves but with the Hard Rock Hotel being such a large property and not wanting to upset Cole any further and trying to play things down etc., we had thought it better to ask an ‘expert’ before driving back to the hotel as we were really reluctant to make things even worse for him.

Disney and Universal were just brilliant. We left relevant details, the relevant staff at the hotels spoke to one another (this took a few hours) and Cole’s bag was located, still in the lounge and intact. Disney even sent a driver over to collect it for us and it was delivered back to the hotel concierge for us to collect, no harm done, but a little boy’s holiday close to be ruined (it really would have felt that bad to Cole as he was taking it to heart). Bravo to both Universal and Disney – customer service second to none…

Back to our plans for the day, we had booked fastpasses for Splash Mountain 3.55pm, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train 6.25pm, and Big Thunder Mountain at 5.15pm. The weather was just too poor to contemplate them though as for a good few hours the rain was just bouncing off the floor. We watched from our balcony back at our room at Port Orleans, and contemplated what was going to happen, as we had booked the Spirit of Aloha dinner show tonight and we knew they had difficulties running that in inclement weather.

I rang, and the advice was as far as the cast member knew, that the weather was expected to clear by show time, and to continue with our plans to get to the Poly and watch the show. We left it as late as we could, and while it was still raining the weather cleared up a lot.

I had collected our tickets from the concierge service at Port Orleans Riverside, and this saved an awful lot of time compared to 2015, when we had collected them at the Poly. However, we still waited an age after we arrived to pick up our lays etc. and found ourselves on the last minute to enter the luau. We had originally wanted to visit Trader Sams before our meal, but as the weather was against us, we are saving that for another trip. Joe, Antony and I had all seen Spirit of Aloha in 2015 and Joe had really enjoyed watching the fire eaters and we had an excellent server.

Tonight wasn’t quite so good, the children were struggling to eat very much as the rain hadn’t really cooled down the heat, and I think it’s just one of those dinner shows, when you have seen it once that’s enough. I also think that as we entered relatively late, dinner felt a bit rushed. It was fine though, and afterwards we returned to resort and resumed our tradition of showers, watching a bit of American telly and trying not to fall asleep too early, before we could no longer fight off the urge to go to sleep.

Day 10

[Goldia]

Oh no not another lost bag! I'm so glad it got sorted out relatively quickly and he was reunited with his spending money, I imagine he was distraught.

[ladyofleisure]

It was such a shame I think for Cole he would have struggled had it not been returned - he was incredibly lucky...

[yellowrose78]

What a panic over the bag, so glad it ended well