Around Walt Disney World

During our two week stay, we had a few days where we didn’t schedule a visit to a theme park. We took the downtime opportunities to visit some of the resort hotels, have dinner at a few great restaurants and do a little shopping.

Downtown Disney is huge, and it is going through an expansion that will double its size! We spent an afternoon wandering through the shops, including a great Lego store and the world’s largest Disney store. We ended that day with a dinner at the Raglan’s Irish Pub where we were treated to live Irish dancing.

At the Boardwalk Resort, we had a nice evening walking along the waterside before dinner at a super fish restaurant.

For our last day at WDW, we spent the day at the campground. Russ rented a bike and we took a nice wooded ride over to the Wilderness Lodge. That evening we went to the Chip and Dale Campfire where we roasted hot dogs and had s’mores while Chip and Dale mingled with the crowd and a country singer led the crowd in campfire songs.

We had a terrific time at WDW and I am sad to see it end. You really do have an opportunity to totally immerse yourself in the Disney dream. Not that there weren't challenges - particularly the crowds. But only Disney offers such a complete high quality experience. Now it’s back to real life.



Downtown Disney had a Harley Davidson shop. Russ just had to try out one of the rides.



Really large and cool Lego displays surrounded the store.

The Loch Ness Monster in Legos.  I think it was about 40 feet long.

Can you pick out the non-Lego kid?

This is advertised as the world's largest Disney souvenir store. 

This was shut down by the time we saw it. You and 100 of your friends can take a ride in the gondola.  It is totally tethered, so you just go up and then down.

We had amazing seats for the live Irish dancing.  The food at the pub was pretty good also.

This is a view of the lake that connects the campground to the Magic Kingdom and a couple other resort hotels.



A nice little program of music was played as a group of barges was towed across the lake.  This was done just before the fireworks from the Magic Kingdom.  We stood on the beach of the campground to watch.



The Boardwalk Resort is designed to look like an upscale hotel and boardwalk from the 30s.

This is one of the really swanky hotels (not that any of the others are low class).  I think this is the Dolphin hotel. It was connected by water to the Boardwalk.

We had dinner at the Flying Fish Café and enjoyed some nice fresh fish.

 



Getting his riding legs warmed up for our little tour.



We didn't see any wildlife except squirrels and birds, though it is reported that you can see deer in the early morning or at dusk.

Disney touches were everywhere, including this bike path.



The Wilderness Lodge reminded me of the Grand Californian Hotel in Anaheim. Very impressive.





The lobby was full of Native American displays, like this headdress.



And then there was the Disney character totem pole.



One of the evenings that we weren't at a theme park, we had dinner at the Lodge in the Whispering Canyon Café.  We had our own private fireplace.  The place was pretty quirky. If you asked your server for ketchup, he would start hollering at the top of his lungs, "We need ketchup". He would keep this up until a bunch of children would show up carrying bottles and bottles of ketchup.  There were yours until someone else needed ketchup. Then you were supposed to carry all that ketchup to the table requesting it. Fortunately, you could borrow kids from adjacent tables to help you.



So excited to go to Chip 'n Dale's Campfire!

 

Everyone had the opportunity to interact with the chipmunks.  It was great fun!