Day One
I woke up bright and early and got on the road around 8:30am. (Note:this is incredibly early for me as I've taken the summer off from adulting and prefer to sleep in at least until the ripe old hour of 9.) The drive was about 9 hours and was relatively painless. I made a couple stops, but somehow managed not to lose too much time. There was some pretty heavy rain (check out that line in the sky!), but it wasn't the worst I've ever driven through and didn't last long.
I listened to audiobooks (Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas, for those who are curious) and podcasts on the way and it made the drive go by pretty smoothly!!
The Disney World sign came into view around 5pm, so I didn't make bad time at all! I pulled into the parking lot at Saratoga Springs Resort at 5:15 and went to check in. The CM working the desk seemed very (VERY) confused by the fact that I had brought my own MNSSHP magic band and didn't need a gray one. She actually didn't even put my room key on it until I asked! Finally I got it sorted out though and found my room... basically in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure how familiar everyone is with Saratoga Springs, but that place is massive.
My room was on the 3rd floor over at The Grandstand, which seemed a million miles away from everything. I had requested to be near the walkway to Downtown Disney. As you can see, that didn't happen... Luckily, the boat was fairly close though. The upside of the bus was that The Grandstand is their first stop, so that was nice coming back from the parks. The downside was that making four additional stops throughout the resort easily added on an extra 10-15 minutes to every bus ride. But I digress.
The room was shockingly similar to the room I shared with my mom at the Boardwalk Villas in December! The layout was identical but with (obviously) different decor. There was plenty of room and a pretty nice view from the balcony.
Once I unpacked I was STARVING!! I debated for a few minutes whether to just grab something from the pool bar, but ended up I taking the boat to Disney Springs (is it officially Disney Springs now?) and made the trek from the West Side to the Marketplace to grab some dinner at Earl of Sandwich.
I had the Full Montagu and a bowl of tomato soup, which was really good!! I also stopped at Goofy's to have a rice crispy treat made, since that's my favorite!! I was kind of disappointed by what I found... The prices were the same and I thought nothing of it as I filled out my form. When the CM started making it though, I watched as she
very carefully dipped the very edge of one side of the rice crispy treat in the chocolate... They used to just dunk the whole thing in, bury it in your topping, covering the entire thing with a thick coating of whatever you requested. Now they seem to make extra sure they use as little of the ingredients as possible while still getting a little on it.
They used to look like this:
Now they look like this:
I asked the CM about it and she went on a rant about how mad it made her and how "this isn't why people come to Goofy's." Then she said she needed to shut up before she got in trouble! Haha! I took my snack and left, but I doubt I'll go back again. It seems dumb to pay the same price for something of inferior quality.
At that point I was spent, so I made the long walk back to the boat on the West Side and back to my room to turn in early.
Always weird things happening over at that WDW.
