The Beach Club Resort

Our plane was right on time and we left Midway at 6 a.m. this morning.  The flight was pretty uneventful except that it was packed.  Cam played on the iPad while he listened to his iPod.  I downloaded the six hour BBC series Pride and Prejudice and watched the first two episodes.  Meg tried to sleep and Doug slept off and on the entire flight.  I couldn't believe how well I did on the flight.  I wasn't really anxious at all which was a big improvement form February.

The Magical Express was ready when we got there and we were at the hotel by 11 a.m.  We decided to try the Beach Club Resort for our first night at Disney World.  It is across the lake from the Boardwalk Inn and is said to have the best pool out of all of the resorts.  We did really like Storm-A-Long Bay.  The pool had a sandy bottom.  There was a pirate sip slide, a lazy river, a hot tub and a whirl pool.  We spent almost all afternoon at the pool.  Cameron really enjoyed it and he and Meg even joined in one of the poolside games.  He had to try and drop a scoop of ice cream onto a cone in her mouth while she was lying down.  Needless to say it fell splat on her forehead.

Brett arrived just before our room was ready.  He had time to eat lunch and relax a little bit before we checked in.  Our room had a small balcony and the resort was closer to EPCOT via the walkway.  There also was a nice marketplace to refill our mugs and buy snacks.  Overall, however, we decided that the Boardwalk Inn was our Disney resort of preference even if the Beach Club had a wonderful pool.  Meg and Cam spent the rest of the day saying, "Boardwalk for life" while Brett chimed in with "Boardwalk represents."

We went to EPCOT to check out the food and wine festival during the afternoon.  Doug tried escargot and I had baklava.  The Heinisch children stuck to their favorites - German pretzels, but each vowed to try something new this trip.  We rode the Mexico ride first and also were able to fit in Nemo, Figment and Spaceship Earth before catching the monorail to Magic Kingdom.

For the first time in a long time I decided to ride Big Thunder Mountain with everyone.  It was a lot more fun than I remembered.  I sat out of Space Mountain, but did enjoy the Dwarf Mine Ride and Splash Mountain.  We also took Brett, Doug and Cam on the Little Mermaid ride as they had never been on it.  Everyone liked it a lot better than they thought they would.  It always reminds me of how much Meg was scared of Ursula and would hide her little figure in the closet.  We decided to head out about midnight as we were all exhausted, but were still able to see Mickey's Philharmagic and ride Winnie the Pooh, Tomorrowland Speedway, and Pirates of the Caribbean before we caught the bus back to the resort.  I was impressed with how long Cam and I made it up tonight as we slept about five hours between the two of us the night before.  Good thing we have breakfast reservations at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow morning and not any earlier.