Day 5 - 12/18/96Go Back to Trip Report - Part IIIThe talk of the campground was the coming cold weather. It was kind of hard to imagine since the weather had been so nice the previous 4 days but sure enough when we woke up there was a chill in the air! The temperature was still around 60 but was predicted to drop to 30 and below in the coming days and nights. Since we had stayed up late last night, we decided to get up when we got up, which was about 8:00 am. We drug out our turtlenecks and sweatshirts and headed out to MGM. Even though Wednesday is early entry for MGM the crowds weren't bad at all. We arrived at the park around 10 am so we decided to catch the 10:15 Beauty and the Beast stage show. We were lucky to catch some of the preshow which featured an a capella quartet called Four For A Dollar. I haven't seen them mentioned much in the newsgroup so we were very pleasantly surprised by their act. BatB was a good show but paled in comparison to HoND. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get anyone to go on TZToT with me so we ended up skipping it for the whole trip.
We left Sunset Blvd. and, noticing the next HoND show was at 12:15, headed in that direction. We detoured into Muppetvision 3D then headed to the Backlot Theater. We arrived in plenty of time to make sure we would get a seat near the front and beside the stage/ramp that extends into the audience. For those that haven't seen the show, these are prime seats as Esmerelda, Clopin, Quasimodo and Phoebus all come down this ramp to sing during the show and interact with the crowd after the show. We sat on the left side of the stage just a few rows back. Matt was our preshow juggler and he got me into his act! He juggles these yo-yo looking things called Diablos on a string and he gets a guest to "inspect" one Diablo while he juggles the second. Later, he asks the guest to throw the second Diablo and he's supposed to catch it on the string but of course he doesn't and the guest looks like a turkey. The show was again fabulous and Katie, who was sitting next to the stage got lots of smiles, a pat on the head and Clopin called her "sweet pea" which she relished.
We then headed to ride Star Tours and rode with no wait. Katie was really getting into this ride now and insisted we ride again, which we did. We then headed for the kids favorite in MGM, if not all WDW, Pizza Planet. We had 2 cheese pizzas, 1 pepperoni and two large drinks which we shared between the four of us. Total $15.41. We then went to see the Voyage of the Little Mermaid. This is one of our favorite attractions at MGM but we ended up getting seats on the far right which seemed to throw off the sound some. Also, dumb me lost my sunglasses. Add that to the lithograph yesterday. We walked down the street to the 101 Dalmations tour. The first stop, if I recall correctly, was to talk about some special effects like the use of a blue screen which involved a volunteer pretending they were Roger on his bicycle being pulled by Pongo. The second stop had to do with animal effects like the dalmation puppies, horse, skunk, etc. The third stop was a useless look at empty sound stages that apparently are going to be used in the near future to shoot some space movie or show. The final stop was the best. There were various props and sets from the 101 Dalmation movie, including Cruella's clothes, her car, and the mansion. We then headed over to the Great Movie Ride and again got John as our tour guide. I'm sure he's a nice guy but there was something about his voice that even the kids grew to dread. It was kind of a nasally sing-song type of voice. Anyway, we decided to head back to the campground to take a break and do some more laundry before our 5:50 pm reservation at Whispering Canyon.
Just before we left for dinner, Brian started complaining of a headache so I gave him some tylenol. We arrived at Whispering Canyon and were seated immediately in a dining area that was maybe half full. Our server was Looney Lucy and she did a good job playing up her role while explaining our dining options. She dubbed Katie "Crazy Katie" and Brian "Brazen Brian". By this time Brian was getting somewhat pale and was very lethargic. We ordered the grilled cheese meal for Brian and Katie and we had the "pigs and cows" which consisted of beef brisket, ribs, rosemary chicken breast, smoked turkey leg and sausage, corn on the cob, red potatoes and beans. We thought everything was good except for the turkey leg. Brian picked at his food but mostly just laid his head down on the table. Then, without warning (except he obviously wasn't feeling good) he vomited all over the floor. I took him to the bathroom while we were moved to another table. Looney Lucy told us that Brian was the third to barf that day and we therefore changed his name to "Barfing Brian". After Brian threw up it was like he was transformed. His color came back, he gobbled down his grilled cheese dinner and then he insisted on dessert. We orded the mud slide which was several pieces of brownie with ice cream smothered in hot fudge. Total for the meal $70.27. We then went into the lobby and sat in the rocking chairs while we listened to a church brass ensemble play traditional Christmas music. Very nice.
We ended our day with a visit to the Grand Floridian. We stopped out front to watch the fireworks in the Magic Kingdom and then proceeded into the lobby. The GF, in my opinion, had the best and certainly the biggest Christmas tree of the resorts. We sat in the lobby and talked to a couple from Yakama (sp?) Washington while listening to the band play big band type music on the second floor. The kids parked themselves at a TV to watch Toy Story. Something I had not noticed before was that there was kid-sized furniture around the TV. I'm talking a real sofa and upholstered chairs, not kiddie chairs. We then went outside and walked around the grounds before heading back to our car and back to the campground.