We got back from our weekend in Orlando a couple of hours ago, and never got the pictures from Lucy's camera! They're at a party tonight, but I emailed her to ask her to send them to me. Hopefully I'll be able to post some this week.
Anyway, we went to Orlando with Lucy and Phil this weekend. They came down and spent the night here on Friday so we could get an early start Saturday. We had a couple of delays Saturday morning, but were at the Epcot entrance by about 10:00am. We did a couple of rides first (nothing too vigorous, since Lucy's 3 weeks away from giving birth) then headed over to the world showcase to start drinking. Alfred and Phil were planning to drink around the world. In case you have not heard of this little adventure, you basically have a drink in each of the 11 countries (and 1 outpost, if you're not a wuss) in the world showcase. I thought about joining in, but (wisely) opted to just drink casually in a few countries as the drinks interested me. Apparently this has become rather popular, as we ran into people drinking around the world all day.
We started the morning strong in Mexico, with 2 beers for the boys and a frozen margarita for me. When they gave us our order, they mistakenly included an additional margarita - bonus! It was a good omen. We went on Mexico's ride, made a reservation for dinner, and moved onto Norway. Beers for the boys, nothing for Tracy. Rode Norway's ride, met a couple of guys (Jeremy and Jason) traveling the world for one of their (Jeremy's) birthdays, moved on. China. The boys got beer, I opted for some plum wine. While drinking, we met a couple of large groups also traveling the world, with matching t-shirts: some blue shirted fraternity group, and some green shirted friends celebrating the birthdays of 2 of the participants (Dave and Face, which was a nickname for Lisa). A couple of green shirts offered to sell me a shirt in the bathroom for $5. I think they may have been kidding. After China was the African outpost, which the blue shirts skipped because it wasn't on their shirts, but the green shirts didn't. Again, the boys had beer, I think I had a bottle of water. We lingered a bit in Africa, enjoying the non-professional drum playing by some kids. Finally we moved onto Germany.
Ah, Germany. We were looking forward to brats and a beer stein here. We ordered our brats outside and took them inside to watch the show. We were given quite the run-around while trying to order our steins, which pissed me off, but eventually someone came through. However, since the steins were 48 ounces, we ended up sitting there for quite some time. It really set us back, time-wise. But eventually we finished and moved onto Italy. Dave and Face were on their way out as we were coming in. By this point I was rather tipsy, having had a few of my own drinks and shared quite a bit of Alfred's stein. I went on an adventure to the bathroom, marched alongside the American colonial band, then sailed back across the ocean to Italy. I think the boys got wine. We stopped and got some coffee on our way to America, then had burgers and beer in the New Country. Oh, and some delicious, refreshing Coca Cola. I think the green shirts were on their way out here as we walked up, too. We lingered here a bit.
Finally we moved onto Japan. Here we ran back into Jeremy and Jason, who by now had made it to the second-last country but had to back track because Jason had skipped a couple of countries, puked, then had to go back to make up what he had missed. All the guys did sake shots together. I bowed out, as sake is not my favorite. Then we tried to ditch the J's, unsuccesfully, before moving onto Morocco. We got sangria there, which I sampled, then hunkered down to listen to some music and get rid of the J's. Next was France. Phil got wine, Alfred chose beer, and I had a frosty orange Gran Marnier drink. By this point, both Alfred and Phil were really showing their drunkenness. We were also starting to discuss our dinner plans, since it had somehow gotten rather late. Our Mexican reservations were for 8:30, and Phil particularly did not want to go back. After some discussion we headed to the U.K. Here we finally ran into the Dave and Face bunch again, who told us that the bars closed at 9. Our hopes for a Mexican dinner were dashed. A round of beers (and a cider for me) later, we finally staggered into Canada. Labatts all around! The boys were really quite pleased with themselves for successfully drinking themselves silly.
Our world tour complete, we watched some fireworks, did a bit of baby shopping, and left. We ended up at a Pizzeria Uno for dinner, and finally crashed at the hotel around 11:30. As Ellery would say, what a day.
It was great, the longest we waited for any ride was maybe 15 minutes. Also, I have a new favorite ride there: the Simpsons ride! It was so fun! It's a motion simulator ride that makes you feel like you're on all these different types of rides in Krustyland. The ride itself is really cool, a lot like Spiderman, but there's a lot of little jokes in there too that makes it better than Spiderman, at least in my opinion. We actually went on it twice. So fun. I didn't even really mind waiting in line because they show clips of Simpsons episodes while you wait.
Then after we got off, they gave us 4 free express passes to skip another line later in the day. It was awesome! We used them for the Jurassic Park ride, although we should have saved them for the Dr. Seuss trolley thing. We tried to go on it 2 or 3 times, but decided not to wait in the line each time. Oh yeah, and we were drunk by then. Because, you know, Universal has 2 bars that have Happy Hour. I had at least 1 too many drinks. We rode the Dr. Seuss carousel like 5 times. We apparently sat in traffic for an hour and a half on our drive through Orlando, but luckily I kept falling asleep. I slept through most of the drive back, which is probably really good because I kept feeling nauseous. Anyway, good times were had all around. Thank you for driving us back, Mercedes!
