Sunday, March 13

All I gotta say is, thank God for the Pancake House. On the first day back from a wonderful vacation, I needed those yummy pancakes to help me forget how much it sucked to be back in Michigan. We did get a late start this morning so we didn’t even get out of there until 1 or 2, but it’s always worth the wait there. Stef and I spent the day vegging on the couch, which was a nice break after so much running around this week. Sean and Marina and the kids came over for dinner around 6:30, so it was nice to see them. We had a really great dinner, and even better desserts: Coldstone cake, a fruit pizza, and canolis. Mmmmmmm. Stef and I made it back to campus well after 10 tonight, and that's all she wrote for Spring Break.

Saturday, March 12

Sniffle. Our last day. Well, the nice part about it was not having to get to the airport until 1, so we took our time getting packed up this morning, and still had a couple hours to kill over at Downtown Disney before hitting the road. We got to the shopping area about an hour before any of the stores were open though, so Stef and I seized the opportunity to catch some more time in the sun by laying down in the park. It was so gorgeous out today. Oh, man going home sucks. Anyway, once things started opening up we ran over to the House of Blues so I could look for a new pair of shades, but came up empty handed because the ones they had didn’t look anywhere near as cool as the ones from Vegas. There was just enough time left before we had to leave for the airport to grab one last lunch at Puck’s though, so Stef and I headed over there and got a couple of chicken Caesar salad sandwiches which were fabulous. Anyway, we finally made it to the airport a couple hours before our flight, and passed the time burning through this week’s EW at the terminal. Stefy and I watched “Lost in Translation” on the plane, and we made it back to Michigan by around 6:30. It was 30 degrees outside. Gah. We pretty much went home and crashed on the couch watching SNL.

Friday, March 11

Our last full day of vacation…sigh. Today was the big day at Epcot, so we got a really early start by getting up at some ridiculous time like 6:30 or 7. It was worth it though, since there’s so much to do at Epcot. We made it to the park at around 8:30 or 9, and kicked things off with a ride on “Spaceship Earth”, which is quite possibly the best ride ever conceived by man ;-) . We spent the next couple of hours doing all of the big rides and attractions with the whole group, because we totally worked it perfectly to get fast passes for the things we wanted to go on, and we were able to just keep doing one right after another. The newest ride at Epcot is “Mission: Space,” which is supposed to give you the feeling of being launched into outer space. The intro video for the ride is narrated by none other than wannabe space man Gary Sinese, and the funniest part was how many freakin’ times they warn you NOT to ride if you’re susceptible to motion sickness. After we actually got on the thing, we figured out why though. This was perhaps the only ride I’ve ever been on that has barf bags in front of the seats, and there were a few moments during the ride when I though I might need to grab mine. I mean, the effects are cool, and it’s certainly not as shaky and painful as the Back to the Future ride at Universal, but it was definitely an unpleasant experience. I don’t think anyone particularly enjoyed that one. So, after riding Epcot’s version of the Vomit Comet, we all headed over to the World Showcase, and grabbed a quick bite of lunch in “Mexico”. The food was REALLY good, but I don’t know if it was El Az good. Stefy and I broke off from the group after lunch, and spent the afternoon walking through the rest of the countries. We took a break around 3 in England to catch the “British Invasion” show. It’s basically a Beatles impersonation group, and they played about a four song set which was a lot of fun. Once the show was over, we made plans with the rest of the Sprio clan to meet up in France for dinner at around 7 p.m., so Stef and I had about three hours to kill. We cooked up this great idea to use the time to take the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom, so we could take all the cute pictures we weren’t able to get when it was raining on Wednesday. Of course, after riding the train for about 30 min and finally getting to the other park, we realized that we didn’t have “Park Hopper” tickets, meaning that we’d basically killed an hour for no reason. So yeah… we felt a little retarded for that one. It really wasn’t too big of a deal though, since we still had a good couple of hours left to stroll around Epcot before dinner. Anyway, we managed to pass the time with another WONDERFUL ride on “Spaceship Earth” before heading over to the “Chefs de France” for our last big dinner of the trip. Our meal was FAN-TASTIC, but we had to rush to finish a little bit so we could get out of there in time to catch the big fireworks show over the lake. We got outside a little later than we’d hoped to, and consequently had to fight for a decent view of the show, but it was still really cool. We finally made it out to the car, and everyone was pretty much wiped by then. It was a loooong day, but I think we would’ve done it all over again tomorrow if given the chance.

Thursday, March 10

Universal, day two. The weather was sooooo much better today, although I think anything would’ve been an improvement. We took our time getting ready this morning since we covered so much of the park on Tuesday, so we didn’t get there until 12:30 or noon. Our first stop for the day was at the Hard Rock Café, where we had an excellent lunch, and filled up for the rest of the day. After that Stef and I decided to break off from the group for a while so we could go on the Nickelodeon tour. The wait in line took about a half hour or so, and we were really excited once they finally let us in, but it turns out that what we were waiting for wasn’t a tour at all (like it used to be). They walked us onto the set of one of their game shows (or something like that), and split up the kids from the adults. I’ll admit, it was a little depressing to get lumped in with all the camcorder-toting parents, but I also didn’t feel like getting slimed while we were there. They basically ran through this mini game show over the next 20 min, and then ushered us back outside. Stef and I were more than a little disappointed, since back in the day they used to take you on this long tour of the Nickelodeon facilities, and now it’s this BS game. I guess the glory days really are over for Nickelodeon. Anyway, we kinda just laid low for most of the rest of the day at the park, since we’d already done so much. Stef and I had a caricature done of the two of us while we were killing time, and it came out pretty cute. We all met up again for dinner later on in the afternoon at Margaritaville again, only this time it was much busier, and we also were meeting some of Dolly’s friends who were joining us to eat. The food was fantastic again, and it we all had a really great time. Stef and I grabbed some Cinnabon on the way out of the park, and then we all finally hit the road to head back to the resort. Everyone was pretty pooped tonight, and we pretty much crashed by the time we got home for the night.

Wednesday, March 09

Talk about a blah weather day. This was our big day at the Magic Kingdom, but the rain was decidedly less than magical. We kicked things off by buying a lovely set of four $7 rain ponchos with Mickey Mouse on them—so stylish. Things picked up pretty quick though when Stef spotted Goofy posing for pictures right near the entrance. We went over for the obligatory photo op with our man Goofy, and the lady who was there handling the crowd told us to go into this hotel right next door to get our picture taken with the mouse himself, Mickey. Well, that turned out to be the move of the day, because we hit the motherload with characters inside this place, meeting: Pluto, Mickey, Minnie, Chip and Dale, Alladin, Peter Pan and Wendy, and Cruella DeVille. So, within about 15min we’d met just about every Disney character that was on duty that day, and we got a ton of really cute pictures taken. We made our way over to Tomorrowland next so we could do Space Mountain, and while the wait was pretty short like everything else on the trip has been, the weather only got worse as the time wore on. We did a couple more of the best rides, like the Haunted Mansion and the Hall of Presidents, but we couldn’t handle much more of the weather, as it only kept raining harder, and getting colder. So, after eating a really yummy lunch at the Lady and the Tramp-inspired Italian restaurant, we pretty much split out for the day. It was still kind of rainy and gross for most of the rest of the day, but it died down enough for us to venture out again a couple hours later back to Downtown Disney for dinner at none other than Wolfgang Puck’s…again. It was totally worth it though, because the food there is just fantastic. We went to see “Be Cool” at the theater right next door to the restaurant, and while it was nice to just sit and chill for a while, the movie was definitely a bust. I mean, it wasn’t particularly good on its own, but it didn’t help either that the other 8-10 people in the theater were ALL talking the whole time we were in there. People like that should just be shot. Anyway, that’s it for Wednesday. Tomorrow’s back to Universal, so it had better warm up!

Tuesday, March 08

This was our first day at Universal, and while it was a little chillier and a LOT windier outside, it was still pretty gorgeous. We started out at the new park—the Islands of Adventure—and basically rode every freakin’ ride at the place in a couple hours. We couldn’t figure out what the deal was, but it was totally dead today. The longest we had to wait for ANY ride was maybe 10min. It was fantastic. After grabbing a quick bite of lunch, we jumped over to the older Universal Studios side of the park, and did a fair amount of the stuff there too, which we didn’t think we’d even get to until our second day here. The highlight of the day was definitely the new Mummy ride, which is especially surprising, considering how lame I think those movies were. It’s kind of like a roller coaster in the dark, but there’s lots of cool little tricks and false endings and stuff, so we all really enjoyed it. We ended the day at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville at the Universal City Walk, which was especially fitting because Stef’s mom and aunt are the quintessential Parrot Heads. We all had a lot of fun there though, and of course the food was wonderful (hello—meat loaf sandwich!). The ride home was a bit of an adventure because we managed to get turned around in the wrong direction for a little while, and it was funny because all of the girls wanted to hurry up and get back to the room so they could catch American Idol. Well, thank God though—we managed to make it back in time to catch most of tonight’s episode. Stefy and I decided to hit up the hot tub after Idol for the first time on the trip, and we quickly decided that it would be our last. The whole hot tub was filled with these drunk college kids who were on spring break, and clearly didn’t have enough money to go out and drink at bar, and were too lame to pick up any chicks even if they could, so they were more than content to get hammered by themselves at the resort. I just wanted to live it up, and soak in the hot tub with my soul mate…ah well.

Monday, March 07

The warmest day of the week by far. It was in the low 80s for a good chunk of the day, and we certainly lucked out with the best time to do the water park. Stefy and her mom were raving about how great Typhoon Lagoon was, so of course it had to be closed on the one day we wanted to go there. The fall back plan was to go to Blizzard Beach instead—which was the park we went to with the band trip four years ago—and it was actually much better than I remembered. It was basically a lazy day to lay out in the sun and catch some jams on the pod, but Stef, Lily and I did venture out for an hour or two into the rides at the park. The lazy river was wonderful, if not a little chilly. We did a couple fun tube slides too, but the highlight of the day was going down their big waterslide “Mt. Gushmore”. It was seriously the biggest damn slide I’d ever seen, and it was one of those ones that you have to lay down on your back for, and it basically just shoots you straight down. The coolest part about the slide though was the ride up to it. Since the theme for the whole park is winter—a novelty that was lost on us Michiganders—they have a chair lift that carries you up to the top of the platform, so that was pretty cool. Anyway, the trip down the slide lasts all of three seconds, but it was pretty sweet, and we were definitely proud to have made it out alive. Everyone was thoroughly sun baked by about 4 in the afternoon, so we took a leisurely ride through the town of Celebration, Florida on the way back to the room. This is the all-inclusive town that Disney built where everything was entirely pre-planned, which gives a certain Stepford quality. It is very cute, but definitely walks a tight line with the creepy. Anyway, after our afternoon cruise, we eventually made it back to the resort, and spent some time just vegging in front of the TV and relaxing. Stef’s Aunt Dolly and cousin Lilly split out on their own tonight to meet up with some friends who live down here, so Stef, her mom, and I all went out for a nice dinner at the Outback—my favorite. That was pretty much it for Monday though.