6 Nov 2023
So Matt’s been in Florida for the past week; he’ll be down there a total of 3 weeks, which is the longest trip either of us has taken and the longest we’ve been apart since we got married!
I do have some time off in the middle of his trip, but I was going to use it to go home and meet our new nephew, but then my sister called a couple weeks ago to let me know her induction date had been moved up, so we both went home and were able to meet him before Matt left town. And while I’m looking forward to more baby cuddles at Thanksgiving, I would also like ditch the cold weather that’s settled in so, thanks to a flight voucher from my delayed flight earlier this year, I was able to get plane tickets, airport parking for my car and a shuttle to and from Matt’s hotel for under $200- can’t pass that up!
Thanks to a combination of a later flight out and daylight saving ending, the sun was actually awake when I left for the airport!
I think my plane may have come from Turkey…
Matt is currently staying at Disney’s All-Star Resort; his room is in the tennis-themed section:
Disney has a pretty robust transportation system, but there’s no good way to go directly from one resort to another- you have to use a park as an intermediary, so we hopped a bus to Magic Kingdom and then walked up to the Grand Floridian for dinner, catching this beautiful sunset on our way!
We also got to ride this monorail later:
That sign on the fence warned of snakes and alligators, but all we saw was this derpy deer:
And this raccoon:
(my phone doesn’t have great zoom)
Dinner at the Gasparilla Island Grill:
They have some seriously creamy mac’n’cheese!
Inside the Grand Floridian was this awesome gingerbread house!
It was made with 1050 lbs of honey, 140 pints of egg whites, 600 lbs of powdered sugar, 700 lbs of chocolate, 800 lbs of flour and 35 lbs of spices!
Matt had heard about a balcony at the Contemporary where you could watch the Magic Kingdom fireworks show, so we went out this sketchy door:
and found this little seating area:
Since we got there a bit early (like, over an hour early), I killed time by photographing the monorails trains as they came through:
But rather than post a dozen half-blurry shots of moving trams, here are some mediocre cellphone firework shots:
The balcony was actually a great vantage point:
Unfortunately, partway through the show, some guy sat himself in front of us and kept holding his cellphone in my line of sight. So annoying!
After the show, we scoped out a few other balconies to find a less-populated spot where we could catch the show another night.
