This one's a bit late as I was knackered last night so came home and slept. Tom's just gone to the resort pool while I'm still in bed with the Do Not Disturb sign on the door having a lie-in.
So yesterday morning we went out to what seemed like the middle of nowhere for a ride through a swamp on an air boat. For those who haven't seen one, an air boat looks like what'd happen if you strapped the fan from a hovercraft onto a small fishing boat, but forgot to add the skirts. As we set off you could see why they use them - the water was full of reeds and plants, and if you'd had a standard propellor-driven boat it'd have tangled up in seconds!
The guide took us out through a seemingly endless channel of tall water plants, swooshing through the water one way and another, and occasionally stopping to spot alligators. They're very well-camoflaged beasts - quite often they look like a rock or a bit of dead wood under a tree, which I suppose is the idea! We saw some mothers with their young, and at least one male. I'm not sure how well the photos came out but I was snapping away, more so than the alligators, who seemed particularly blasé about having a boatload of tourists gawping at them from really quite nearby!
After the boat ride we headed for the Fantasia Mini Golf back at Disney. Unfortunately the heavens then opened and we spent a good 10 minutes hiding in the tunnel section waiting for it to stop. It then also turned out to be rather difficult to hit a golf ball that's floating around in a puddle of water, but hey.
For lunch we headed across to Typhoon Lagoon, where we again managed to avoid a downpour, munching pulled pork and pineapple burgers under a shelter while it poured outside. Once we'd got changed for swimming (and hidden the bags under a parasol on the beach area - Disney wanted about $13 for a locker rental, which seems rather steep!) we did a circuit of the lazy river (which takes ages) while the rain poured down on us. You get rather underwhelmed by the water features spraying you when there's just as much water coming from the sky!
A blast on some of the flumes and tube rides and a quick dip in the wave pool and it was time to head back. We needed to return the hire car before they stopped running their shuttle buses, and we had Fastpass and dinner reservations at Epcot.
Spaceship Earth is a rather imposing structure at the entrance to the park (it's the thing that looks like a massive golfball), and we'd got a Fastpass for that, despite the queue up to the merge point only being about 10 people longer! We then visited Soarin', which I rather enjoyed, including the tongue-in-cheek airline boarding video. After Living With The Land, it was time to head across to the World Showcase for our dinner reservations (in "France", of course)
Our waiter, Etienne, was very friendly, and I was merrily trying to pronounce the dishes we wanted to order in my very best French accent - don't think he noticed We did share a few giggles about the Disney interpretation of French cusine though. I ordered a pan-seared salmon fillet on a bed of lentils, which was rather nice and a change from the usual burgers! Tom had duck (most of one, by the looks of the portion size!) with some sort of cherry sauce. For pudding I went for the creme brulee (very nice top, slightly bland custard) while Tom had the profiteroles.
We managed to catch the IllumiNations fireworks show, though from the wrong end of the lake to see it properly, then walked up for a nosey around some of the different country areas. Through doors you might not even notice we found exhibitions of jewellery and art, which made a nice change from tacky rides - speaking of which, we took one of the last opportunities available to ride Maelstrom, which is apparently being closed shortly to retheme into a Frozen attraction.
After that we were both very tired and headed back to the resort where we pretty much fell asleep immediately!
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