DAY 2 – Thursday 9/01/22
Who: Sue (63), DVC Member
Holli (58), friend

Plan: Pool, Concierge Lounge

Actual: Last night I’m sure I was asleep by midnight, although I don’t think I ever hit a really deep sleep. I could hear vacuuming around 1:45, which I assume was out in the lounge. I didn’t get up until almost 6, which is late for me but it’
s fine since I’m not rushing off to a park. After making my cappuccino I brought it back to bed to enjoy while doing online stuff. I was able to check certain hotel information from the tv, so now I know what time Mara and the gift shop open. This
year I’ll remember to buy my Disney calendar (saw them last night on the way to the bus)!

Sometime after 7 I wandered out to the lounge to check the offerings. Quite a few people were already out there eating breakfast. I couple of the cast members recognized me from prior trips and came over to welcome me back & chat for a bit. Last night
one of the evening cast members did the same – stopped by our table to say it was nice to see us both again. One of them, Elaine, has been here a long time and she told me she was retiring in October to relax and travel. She’ll be missed!

The hot breakfast today was the French toast bread pudding w/sauce and biscuits & gravy. They also had turkey boboti (like quiche) and some fat sausage links, along with the usual every day stuff (bagels, hard boiled eggs, oatmeal, fruit, cereal,
pastries). Went down to Mara and picked up some packets of butter and grape jelly, then returned upstairs. On my way to the room I got one of the sausages to go with my English muffin (from home) for breakfast.

The sausage was pretty good, and having the toaster in the room is handy for the English muffin. After eating I did some more online stuff until it was time to head down to the pool around 9. The pool still doesn’t open until 10, which is ridiculous!
However, I relax on a chaise lounge outside the pool until I can move inside the fenced area at 10. At Kidani I’d be out of luck, because I don’t think there are any chaise lounges set up outside the fence – so I definitely don’t want to be
staying there!

Last night I snacked on some of the cookie from Gideon’s and it’s delicious! I’m so glad its “limited stay” was still happening on my arrival! The September cookie is less appealing to me – peanut butter laced with ground espresso then
coated with Reese’s pieces and chopped up peanut butter cups. The ground espresso part is what makes me hesitate – not sure how that would taste, and risking $6 for a cookie I might not like is a bit much.

As soon as I got outside to my chaise lounge I realized it was uncomfortably hot – worse than last May by a long shot! The air was stifling and not moving at all. They opened the pool area about 10 minutes early so I moved in there and began frequent
trips to the cool shower. Holli arrived around 10 and noticed the hot weather too. She spent most of the time reading in the pool.

Between trips to the shower my morning was spent mostly on my work phone dealing with time sheet approvals and order approvals and other minor issues. Due to the holiday there’s an early payroll cutoff today and between covering 2 jobs and having
vacant subordinate supervisor positions there was more activity to handle than usual. That’s another reason to not bother with the parks – although the main one is still the heat/humidity.

By 11:15 I’d moved to the shady table, and just extended my legs into the sun. It was too hot to have my whole body out there. In fact, I was reading my kindle and got a message that it was in too high of a temperature (sun was hitting it) and I
needed to put it in a cooler spot to not risk damage!

When Holli had come down she said the chocolate cake from last night was really good. I’d forgotten all about it. I lasted until almost noon in the shade, then texted Holli to let her know I was going upstairs to shower and dress. Passing through
the lounge another friendly cast member welcomed me back and although I didn’t recognize her she was talking like we’d seen each other before. It might have been she’s just friendly like to all her guests. She told me if there’s anything I want
to please let them know.

I took my shower and got dressed, then tried a couple bites of the cake (it’s still just chocolate mousse to me – not cake) and Holli was right – it’s delicious! A group of the beige antelope were lounging around, along with a stork of some kind.
It was just after 1 at this point so I decided to visit the gift shop and buy the calendar.

The 2023 calendar is back to having actual photos from the parks, which is what I like. My dvc membership got me 20% off, although my annual pass would have done the same. Back upstairs in the lounge I stopped to chat with Jack, who was working the
desk. He brought me up to speed on some of the cast members who retired during covid and were no longer working here. He said they get a lot of the same guests over and over, which is no surprise to me. I’m one of them and hope to keep it that way!

I dropped off the calendar, grabbed the laptop & phones and went out to sit in the lounge. Immediately Elaine was at my side asking if she could bring me a drink or anything. The sauvignon blanc yesterday was a different brand than last time, so today
I decided to go back to the Indaba chenin blanc. I also mentioned the ice needed replenishing. When she brought the wine to my table she also had the ice and asked if she could put some in a cup for me – how nice. I put a few stalks of celery, some
ranch dressing and a few grapes on a plate, and nibbled on that for a very light lunch. This time of day there’s not any real food up here – it’s all snacks (chips, trail mix, pastries, muffins, cookies, uncrustables, hummus and olives.

Holli arrived and used my room to get changed since her room still wasn’t ready. When she came out she got a glass of the chenin blanc and some of the snacks. She likes more of that stuff than I do, so she had more to pick from. She told me she had
a family from hell right next to her at the pool – crying baby, whiny loud toddler and a mom “asking” the clearly overheated and overstressed little ones to behave. Thankfully they didn’t stay long.

We enjoyed the lounge, and it got fairly busy at one point. The couple with the little infant was back, reminding me of Ari’s first Disney trip at 6 weeks of age – also here in the concierge lounge. I talked to the mom and found out the little guy
was 5 months old! Ari would have been quite a bit smaller than him.

The cast member from last night kept our wine glasses filled, but approached me with sauvignon blanc so I had to tell him I'd switched to chenin blanc. This is great service, although I really didn’t want a second glass <g>. He came again to pour
Holli more and she slowed him down. I was waiting on a timesheet correction but decided to just check it later. I put the laptop in the studio, grabbed my sunglasses and camera and headed down with Holli to the animal viewing areas. It was due to be
raining later, so this was our window of opportunity. Plus, she was STILL waiting for the damn “room ready” text from Disney despite checking in before 10am (it was now after 3:30).

We went out to see the animals but it was a bust – they were all very far away. The pool was closed, even though thunderstorms weren’t expected for another 2 hours. Coming back in we stopped at the front desk and Holli’s room was ready. We got
her stuff and moved it downstairs to the 5th floor, right over the lobby (very convenient). She has a nice view of the closed pool. I went back to my studio and waited for a staff to redo his timesheet so I could re-approve it. Finally that was done.

I talked to my friend Michael at work for a while, catching up on each other’s day. Once we finished up it was almost 5 so I went out to the concierge lounge and grabbed a 2-person table for us tonight. Holli showed up around 5:15, having spent time
on her balcony in the oven heat, lol.

Tonight the special dishes were tomato soup w/paneer cheese and buttered chicken. The tomato soup was really spicy, but good. The buttered chicken was outstanding! We both love this, and I hope they have it again when Amanda is here since it’s one
of her favorites. Besides that they had variations on the usual stuff, with prosciutto rather than the meat they had last night (Bresaola??), some different cheeses, and cut-up watermelon.

We enjoyed plenty to eat & drink. One example of the excellent service here – I went up to get wine and the chenin blanc was empty. I pointed that out to a cast member. She not only got a new bottle, she poured me a glass so when I went up to get
some she handed me the new glass – very nice!

There was one couple who were truly odd. Both were masked (the only people), but we don’t know if they’re immunocompromised or what, so that’s not an issue. She was wearing gloves. Over a year ago the CDC recommended NOT wearing gloves because
not only do they not do any good, they can do harm. They spent an inordinate amount of time getting 1 plate of food and staying away from everyone. Finally they went down the stairs and took that 1 little plate back to their room. It was just very odd.


The other negative thing was a couple of ignorant clueless disrespectful parents in the lobby with a boatload of kids including one little one (stroller age) who would shriek an ear piercing noise repeatedly as he & his siblings ran around the lobby.
The siblings were climbing all over the furniture – this is why we can’t have nice things. People are jerks. The shrieking was so bad a number of times both Holli & I jumped and ran over to the railing to see who the offending jerk was, wishing we
could give them the evil eye or something. Holli is a very nice person but even she said she wanted to yell down to them to shut the F*** up! It was ridiculous. I don’t know why they were there for so long, as it was hours past rooms being ready,
and if they were waiting for dinner it shouldn’t have been an hour or more!

At 7 we left the lounge, walked through the lobby without approaching the obnoxious family who looked like they were getting ready to change a dirty diaper on a lobby sofa (totally without any class whatsoever) and went out to view the animals. It was
sprinkling very lightly, but once again the threat of storms didn’t materialize.

At Arusha Rock we had some giraffe and zebra to watch, which was fun. We eventually moved to the area by the pool and found giraffe off in the distance, a zebra nearby, and a group of addax. A cast member came by and we chatted with him about the
giraffe. We headed back in a little after 7:30 and Holli said she was going to put on her swimsuit and go to the pool. I went to my studio and worked on the report.

A little after 8 I went out to the lounge for dessert. They had the vanilla cones, chocolate mousse tarts, berry tarts, carrot cake, oatmeal raisin cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and peanut butter & jelly sandwich triangles. I took a cone, oatmeal
raisin cookie, chocolate mousse tart and berry tart – all were very good! The lounge was quite busy, with most tables full. I was glad to have my room right here on the corner – couldn’t be more convenient!

I enjoyed the desserts and then finished up the report for the day. Today was a delightful day, other than the weather being so incredibly hot/humid! I enjoyed relaxing by the pool but would have like to be sweating less. The lounge was wonderful and
having company there makes it extra nice. Tomorrow should be a repeat of today, hopefully with less work interruptions and I’d like to see better weather but that’s not likely to happen this time of year. Tomorrow night Chris, Amanda & Ari arrive,
so it’ll be nice to have their company as well!

Sue/WDW1972

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