When you wish upon a star 8/24/2012

Outside the hotel

Our digs for this weekend

After a relatively short and pleasant flight, we arrived in Orlando right on time at about 10:30 a.m. We had marked our luggage so that Disney would pick up our bags at the airport and deliver them to our room. That way, we could skip baggage claim and go directly to Disney transportation to our hotel, the Contemporary. Directly after stepping off the bus at the hotel entrance, a young lady approached us, and asked if we were Mr. & Mrs. Blank. Upon confirmation, we were greeted warmly and given our checkin documents, and then led to our room--no standing in line to check in for us! We found our room after a bit of a trek, and upon opening the door, figured we had come to the wrong place. What we had confirmed for was a standard room. What we got was a suite with king bed, 2 sleep sofas, 2 baths, 2 refrigerators, and a water view from 2 sides, windows on 3 sides (it was an end unit. In addition, we have a spacious living area, 2 tvs, 4 clothes closets. Very nice. Once we settled in, we checked out the hotel's workout area (we'll visit there tomorrow), pool, and restaurants, and had lunch. We figured we'd kick back for a bit, then go into the park for dinner and the light show and fireworks.

Dinner was great at an Italian restaurant in the Magic Kingdom, and the light show was sweet. But I must say that the music that accompanied the light parade was like the "It's a Small World After All" sing-song variety that makes your ears bleed after listening to it over and over for 20 minutes. The floats in the parade were festooned with LEDs, as were the characters that rode the floats and walked and danced the route.

But the highlight was the fireworks that followed the parade. The theme was "Wishes". Set to music from various Disney movies, the fireworks and lighting effects on the Cinderella castle synced well. It was a fantastic show. You can see the finale here.

Rather than take the monorail with the thousands of other people herding out of the park after the fireworks, we decided to take the pleasant 10 minute walk back to our hotel.