Downtown Disney

Today we rode no rides, saw no shows, and only visited one theme park just long enough to have dinner. And yet, we had a fantastic time. We spent the day at Downtown Disney, which is basically a huge outdoor mall featuring restaurants, night clubs, toy stores, gift shops, and, of course, Disney merchandise outlets.

After a delicious lunch at the Earl of Sandwich (guess what type of food they serve there), we strolled along, looking for the perfect place to spend too much money. We settled on the World of Disney, as it had the largest selection and offered us a 10% annual-passholder discount. Along the way, we saw giant Tinkertoys, Lego sculptures, and Forrest Gump's boat.

Before leaving for dinner, we stopped in to check out DisneyQuest, a five-story, indoor, interactive complex of virtual reality games and simulators. We only had time for one game, because we had a dinner reservation to keep, but the game we played, "Pirates of the Caribbean," was fun and exciting. We and another couple took our posts aboard a pirate ship and sailed the seas doing battle with and raiding other pirate ships. Our team scored very well for first-timers. We were "conquering captains," by the game's estimation. If we have time, we'd like to get back to DisneyQuest and try a few more of its attractions. The Jungle Cruise game looks great!

We rushed out of Downtown Disney just in time to catch a bus that would take us to a transfer location where we could board a boat to our dinner reservation at Disney-MGM Studios. What we didn't expect was that the bus would first stop at the Typhoon Lagoon water park, where, because of heavy traffic and poor parking lot planning, we would be stuck for fifty minutes. We had to call the restaurant and push our reservation back an hour.

We finally reached Disney-MGM Studios and the '50s Prime Time Cafe, a cute little diner modeled after a home you might see on a 1950s sitcom. Each table is in its own little family dining room, and diners must respect "Mom's Rules": elbows off the table, no dessert until you finish your vegetables, etc. The dessert menu is presented in a View-Master! We didn't get to order dessert, however, because after we had eaten our pot roast, we were given yet another complimentary anniversary cake. We love Disney!

After dinner, we browsed the theme park for a bit before riding the bus back to our resort. This time we made sure that there would be no detours, and we arrived without incident. We have only a few things left to do tomorrow before we conclude this Walt Disney World "vacation from our vacation" and get back on the road.