Grand Floridian Visit

We spent three nights at the Grand Floridian this week. On the plus side, we didn't have any rain during our stay (though we badly need rain right now in this area of Florida). On the negative side, it was extremely hot for this time of year (even by Florida standards)!!!

On Tuesday morning, we drove over and, along the way, received information that our room was not yet ready. While we originally planned to go to Epcot on this day, we decided time at the pool might be a better option. After parking the car and pulling out the bag I had prepared with our pool stuff, we walked over to Gasparilla's for some breakfast. I had quiche and my husband had a breakfast sandwich which came with tater tots. Fully sated, we walked over the quiet pool but it wasn't very quiet at all as they were power washing the walks just outside the pool area. So, instead, we walked over to the lakeside pool and settled in there. We didn't spend much time in the pool itself as the water is much colder than I am used to with my at-home pool. I'm guessing the pool water was somewhere between 80-84° while our pool at home is running around 92°. We were only at the pool for a couple of hours when we received our room number assignment on the 4th floor of the Villas building.

We headed back to our car, grabbed our other bags and headed to our room. We'd only stayed in a studio at the Villas once before. I really liked our room which was spacious. Our bathroom was separated with a toilet and full sized tub in one room (We never ended up using this tub except as a place to hang wet bathing suits.) and a sink and walk-in shower in the other room. The balcony was quite large. From our balcony, we could watch the monorails coming and going, see over the Wedding Chapel and also had a view over to the Poly and the ferry boats. By walking to the end of our balcony, we could see all the way over to the Contemporary and the tops of Wilderness Lodge.

Once we had unpacked and rested for a bit, we decided to see if we could get an early dinner reservation at La Hacienda. We'd only been to this restaurant once before and that was quite some time ago. We were able to get a 4 pm reservation so walked over to the main building and picked up the two monorails over to Epcot. (The whole area where the trams used to drop people off is entirely dug up at this point in time).

Since we were still a bit early and Spaceship Earth didn't have too long a wait, we jumped on the line there and rode there. With still some time to spare, we went into the Mexican pavilion and waited in a 15 minute or so line to ride Gran Fiesta Tour. Heading back outside - it was now around 10 minutes before 4 and the restaurant doesn't open until 4 - but there was already a line at the checkin area so we joined that. Right about 4, we quickly got checked in and were admitted to the lobby area to wait to be seated. That wait was only a couple of minutes.

Our waiter came to us quickly and provided iced water. We ordered drinks and our dinner. We selected Del Mar (grilled fish, shrimp and scallops) which came with sides of black beans and rice and was designed to serve two. The waiter had already taken our menus from us and announced he would be bringing us some chips and salsa. He asked if we would like him to also bring guacamole and I said "sure". What he neglected to tell us - and which I didn't find out until I saw the bill at the end of the meal - is that the guacamole comes at a cost of $12.00!!! I thought that was a little sly on his part but did not make a complaint. The Del Mar was good and certainly provided lots of food - we didn't finish it all.

On exiting the restaurant, it felt far too hot to spend any time walking around World Showcase so we headed back to the monorail and returned to the Grand Floridian. Once there, we stopped into Mizner's temporary location (They are using the tea room in the evening for Mizner's while the revamped lounge is being constructed upstairs) for drinks and to listen to the band.

Returning to our room, we sat on our balcony for a while and it was pretty early to bed!!