Note: Min's trip report is in Coral and Bill's comments are in Blue.

Click to Read:   Intro   -   Part Two

Part One's Prelude

It had been a rough week. Things were crazy at work, my new position had been kicking my butt for the past few days. Min had started a new job and it was giving her fits as well. We were both a bit frazzled and needed a break when Friday evening rolled around.

June 6, 2003 - Friday

Well I got off work around 6 p.m. on Friday night. When I got home, Bill had not cooked dinner so I was thinking we might be going out to eat. I sat down at my computer to check my email and read RADP for day.

I was busy working away at my computer and trying to keep Min from seeing what I was working on.

Then I tried to get Bill to give me a hug. He told me to leave the room and "don’t come back now, ya hear" (of course, he was kidding but I did not know that at the time).

Yep, I was being "mean" but if I had not run her out of the office, the surprise would have been ruined.

I went to watch TV and rest my feet for a little while.

Meanwhile, I got busy finishing up "the surprise." Check of the finances, check on the Florida Resident's rates for moderates, quick budgeting of meals and other park expenses and then the call to WD Travel Company. Hang up when the voice response unit picks up. Everything was set. Now to make up for being "mean" to my darling wife.

About 35 minutes later, Bill called me to come back into our office. I walked in and sat down at my computer again. He said, "want to do something wild and crazy?" I said sure. He handed me the telephone and said hit redial. I hit redial, the line rang and Walt Disney Travel Company picked up. I asked him if we were going to upgrade our trip in the fall from Coronado Springs to a deluxe resort. He said, "no, make new ressies for tonight and tomorrow night." Next thing I knew, I had a nice lady on the phone checking the moderates for rooms and rates. I told her that we were Florida Residents. She had 3 rooms at two different resorts, I chose Port Orleans - Riverside. We had been to Port Orleans a.k.a. Port Orleans - French Quarter a couple of times before but had never stayed at Riverside. After I got off the phone with WD Travel Company, I went to pack. Soon afterwards, Bill came into the bedroom and helped finish the packing. We were out the door by 7:45 p.m. We stopped and got gas and some munchies then we were on I-95 heading south. It was raining and the traffic was stopped at the I-295 and I-95 merger. After a short while, things began moving and we were passing the St. Augustine exits in about half an hour. Near Daytona, we decided to call and make  PS arrangements for breakfast and dinner. We chatted the whole way down and I also called my mom to let her know that we were going out of town.

During the PS call and the call to her mother, I believe I heard Min say that she was shocked or in shock over two dozen times. I love it when a plan comes together.

We pulled up to the check-in parking at Riverside at about 10:20. We were checked in by a great CM named Jen and got our Play-4 passes. We told her about RADP, WDWIG/All Ears and that we were celebrating our 3rd Anniversary this weekend.

Min was still "in shock" while we were chatting with Jen.

We finished checking-in and went to our room Parterre Place 9556, one of the Magnolia Bend buildings. We were expecting 2 double beds, we opened the door to find a king. We are not sure who put us in this room, the reservations agent or Jen, but it was a wonderful surprise.

It certainly was. The only part of the trip that I dreaded was getting the 2 double bed room. We are both large folks and had had the "pleasure" of sharing one of the double beds when we had brought my mother with us to WDW last year. Now we could stretch out a bit.

We got our stuff put away. I was hungry and needed something to eat to take my meds with so we walked over to the Colonel's Cotton Mill. We decided to share a sausage sub with peppers and onions. It was okay.

Not really. It was kind of blah and my stomach "thanked" me later for giving it peppers so late at night.

Then we went back to the room and went to bed. It took us both a while to fall asleep.

Yep, we had been on a real adrenaline rush this evening. Then I had a bit of trouble sleeping, the stomach thing I mentioned above.

June 7, 2003 - Saturday

We got up and got ready for breakfast at Cape May, our PS time was 9:30 am. We drove our car to the Beach Club. We checked in early and had about a five minute wait before we were seated.

Got a picture of Min with Minnie in the lobby right before we were seated.

While we enjoyed the buffet, the characters came by and visited with us. Goofy stopped by while Bill was getting some fruit. Goofy tried to take Bill’s hat and I got a picture of Goofy wearing the hat. Chip and Dale came by and I got Bill's picture with each of them.

I was sorry that I had missed Goofy because he is my favorite character but clowning around with Chip and Dale is always fun.

After finishing breakfast, we drove over to Disney-MGM Studios. We parked in Film 29 and rode the tram to the gate. After getting through security and the entry gate, we headed for Indiana Jones and just missed getting in for the show.

Things were a bit crowded in the area as it was one of the Star Wars weekends and everyone was heading for the lines near Star Tours.

We went to Sounds Dangerous for the first time and it was pretty neat.

No real wait, just a few minutes in line answering trivia questions from the overhead monitors and then we were in.

We then worked our way through the crowds around Star Tours and headed for the Muppets Theatre.

Again no real wait, we walked straight in, watched the pre-show and then headed into the theatre.

We took a stroll by Al's Toy Barn, the shuttered Hunchback stage and then to New York Street. Stopped for some photo ops on New York Street with Cruella De Ville and Li Shang.

The back street that leads from the Hunchback stage area to New York Street was undergoing some rehab and you could see the steel skeleton that holds up the building facades.

We bypassed our normal stop at the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground and headed over to the Backlot Tour.

From the Backlot Tour, it became more obvious that there was rehab work being done and it encompassed most of the Washington Square area near the old Hunchback stage.

Then we went to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire - Play It! Guess who was there? Dennis, the guy from the WDW Travel Planning DVD. Neither of us scored in the Top 10 but it was neat to watch the show. Then we went to Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream. That was a very good show.

Got a bit rushed when walking through the exhibits prior to the movie. I definitely plan on making another stop here when we go back in October for Min's Big 3-0 Birthday celebration.

After that we walked to the Animation Courtyard to take a few pics with Lilo and Stitch. Next, we decided to check and see if The Great Movie Ride was open a day early but it wasn’t. Then we walked through the pin trading location under the BAH to check out the pins. We walked over to the other Min and Bill's, the dockside diner, a must see each time we go to the studios. Since it looked like it was going to rain and I was getting a little tired, we made a trip through Keystone Clothiers and Mickey's of Hollywood on the way down Hollywood Boulevard heading for the front gate. Bill brought me a new Mickey mini-coin ring to replace the one he had bought me on our honeymoon. It had broke a couple of months ago. We got our hands stamped, caught the tram and rode to the car.

It was nice having the car, but the oven effect inside when we first got in made me wish for a nice air-conditioned WDW bus trip back to Riverside.

As we were driving back to Riverside, we decided to take a ride through Caribbean Beach as we had never stayed there before. We got out and took a look around Old Port Royale. It looked like it had a neat food court. Then we went back to our room at Riverside to rest.

Min had vetoed CBR for this trip since it did not have elevators but once we saw that the buildings were only two-story tall, we added it back to our list of resorts for future stays. After all, it would be no worse that going upstairs to our apartment at the end of the day.

After we had rested for a couple of hours, we headed over to Epcot. We had made a PS at The Garden Grill for dinner. We rode Spaceship Earth and Living with the Land. While riding Living with the Land, it began to pour outside. We were so glad to be inside and dry, but it was so loud in the greenhouses that we could not hear the guide talking about the plants. After that we headed upstairs to The Garden Grill. We were about forty minutes early for our PS, but they took us in anyway. They did not seem that busy and as we walked towards our table, I told our hostess that it was our anniversary.

Min made me tell the story of surprising her, again. At least she wasn't "in shock" anymore, I had begun to wonder if she would every come out of shock.   :)

After we finished dinner, we were surprised with an Anniversary cake by the staff, it had a white chocolate disk with a picture of Mickey and Happy Anniversary on it. Then we had a "re-hitch'n ceremonie." Meagan, the hostess, asked us to stand up and then introduced us to all the guests sitting in the immediate area. She then went on to say that since the staff and restaurant guests had not been invited to our wedding, we had to do it all again. We said our "I Do's" again. Then we had to do the "you may kiss the bride" kiss while the staff counted from one to 100. We started kissing and they started counting, 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8... 9... 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. After the kiss, we were presented a certificate of record for our "re-hitch'n ceremonie." It was a cute little piece of Disney magic and a little bit embarrassing.

One of those pieces of Disney magic that seems a little bit more special and a little bit less embarrassing in the re-telling.

After a couple pieces of cake and the devouring of the white chocolate "Happy Anniversary" disk, we left The Land Pavilion and headed for the World Showcase. Stopping here and there to look around and check out the topiaries, we soon finished the Canada to Norway trek. We stopped in Norway and rode the Maelstrom. This ride had been closed for rehab when we were last here in October. It looked like they had repainted and done some touch-up work in the queue area.

I really like the Maelstrom and had missed not getting to ride it back in October.

After that we decided to go and find our favorite seats for IllumiNations. We had about a 30 minute wait, so we got those gourmet ice strawberry drinks from the stand right in front of us. They were not very good.

Horrid is the word I would use, but that just one man's opinion. I was really looking forward a Minnie's Strawberry fruit bar but the earlier rain had closed down the ice cream carts.

IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth was awesome, as usual. Afterwards, we trekked with the crowd out the front of the park and onward to our bus.

I noticed Min singing along with "Promise" on the way to the bus. I made a mental note to pick up the Epcot CD with the IllumiNations music and "Promise" when I got the chance.

Back at the hotel, we walked through Fulton's General Store, the gift shop, before heading back to our room and off to bed.

This was the first time that we were using the take a break in the middle of the day strategy as advocated by all of the RADP vets. Don't think we will ever go back to touring in "commando mode."

June 8, 2003 - Sunday

I checked our messages at home and found a bunch from our friends who we had planned on getting together with yesterday. Bill insisted that he had emailed them on Friday night before we left about the surprise and that we would not be around this weekend. I called to let them know about the surprise and that nothing bad had happened. They had sounded worried in their messages.

Yep, I sent out an email to tell everyone about the trip. Unfortunately, I sent it to one of my secondary email addresses instead of the group address for our friends. This, of course, left everyone looking for us, hence all the phone messages.

Then we got up, got dressed and were at Downtown Disney Marketplace by about 9:30. We walked through some of the shops and then ate lunch at Rainforest Café. The rain started again while we were eating. After lunch we walked through a couple more places and then went back to Once Upon a Toy, where I found a Winnie the Pooh I really wanted for my collection. We also got two CDs.

Remember that mental note to pick up the CD with "Promise" on it, well that was one of the CDs we bought. The other was the "Mannheim Meets the Mouse" CD, a combination of two of my favorite things, Disney and Mannheim Steamroller.

Then we got in the car and headed back to Jacksonville.

Click to Read:   Intro   -   Part Two