Florida, part II

At about 2pm on Friday, Ryan and I made our way down to the lobby and checked in at the Top Achiever's Group welcome desk. We were greeted by my regional Career Services Specialist, Connie, and given all of the information we would need for the weekend. We took the booklets back up to our room and then left the hotel.

We walked down the boardwalk, toward Big River restaurant. It was amazing how they made it literally look like you were back in time! We shortly came upon an amazing hotel called Swan and Dolphin Resort. It was composed of two buildings across from each other, separated by a large walkway. The building on our left had swans on each topmost corner of the building. It also had clamshells with huge water fountains inside them. The building on the right had huge fish (apparently dolphins) standing on their heads, also in the topmost four corners. Amazing architecture!

We passed a few more resorts, one of which had a white sand beach, and stopped at our destination: Fantasia Miniature Golf. It had two courses - one, a real miniaturized version of golf complete with sandtraps; the other, a traditional miniature golf course. We chose the latter. The course was beautiful and the 18 holes were divided into five sections from the Fantasia movie. They had amazing statues of many of the characters - which we later discovered were just plastic. They looked so real! Ryan and I wound up tying our game, which was a miracle since I felt like total crap. I was sweating profusely, probably a result of my body trying to rid itself of the cold I'd gotten.

After miniature golf we hiked back to the Dolphin side of the Swan and Dolphin Resort and ate lunch in a little cafe inside. Ryan got a tuna melt that was fancier than anticipated. I got a bowl of chili because I thought it would help clear out my sinuses. It did. Our waitress was awesome and brought us a whole pitcher of water - she said we looked really thirsty.

Between the flight, lack of sleep, gaining a cold, and walking around in the sun, I was pretty beat by this point. We decided to walk back to our hotel and sleep a bit before the opening reception. I slept pretty much until the reception at 8 - Ryan walked around the Boardwalk a bit more.

At 7:45 we went to the lobby and boarded a bus outside. I was feeling super crappy at this point. No one (except the VPs) knew where we were going for dinner. After the bus took us on a bit of a wild goose chase, we finally wound up on a backlot. We got off the bus and were given Mouseketeer ears to wear with our names embroidered on the back. We were then ushered inside Disney's Hollywood Studios and had a picture of our entire group taken in front of "The Great Movie Ride". It looked like Mann's Chinese Theatre in LA! After the pictures of our group were taken, they ushered us inside "The Great Movie Ride". Winding through the turnstiles and aisles set up outside the ride, I wondered what in the world they had in store for us. After a few speeches, I found out.

Stepping into the ride area, we walked down a small set of stairs and were promptly handed a TAG-tini (which was supposedly a pomegranite martini but I couldn't taste so it didn't matter). All of the cars for the ride were off the tracks for the night. In the place where they would have gone, tables were set up in two different areas of the track. The first area was set up kind of like a mobster area, New York, perhaps. The second area was straight out of a western movie. We sat in the western area. Our table was already outfitted with glasses of water and a mason jar of iced tea. We also had western actors visiting our tables to talk to us regularly. The found looked amazing! On our side was a buffet with three potato salad, a traditional salad, chicken, prime rib, and probably some other things I've forgotten. The other area had macaroni and cheese, cornbread, and other "southern" style foods.There was also an open bar, which I didn't partake in except to get some whiskey (blah!) for medicinal purposes.

After dinner was done, we were escorted to a new part of the "ride" - Munchkinland. Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West were there, along with some rather creepy looking animatronic Munchkins. They had dessert set up in this area, along with tea and coffee. I skipped dessert (couldn't taste anyway) and had about three cups of herbal tea. It made my throat feel a bit better.

After about 10 minutes in this area, they moved us to the final area of the ride - a dance floor. I didn't much feel like dancing so I enjoyed watching Mel go to town. That lady can dance! I sipped my tea and enjoyed watching everyone dance around. Finally, it was time to go. We boarded our buses and went back to the hotel. I think we arrived around 11pm or so, which was nice since I had a work session at 8am the next morning! I got more hot tea at the hotel and stood in the hot shower for about half an hour trying to get rid of all my illness. It helped a bit. Finally, about midnight, I went to sleep.