Disney Bar-B-Que

Tuesday 6 July 1993. We had had a relaxing day, visiting Disney's Island of Discovery and spent the afternoon in the hotel, playing cards and watching the day's thunderstorm send lightning down to hit the lamp post opposite our room...

Outside the hotel around 5:30, waiting to be picked up by a bus. We had booked to go to a bar-b-que for a meal that night and I'm not sure why we were amazed at being taken back to the same spot and the marquee that we had seen earlier - but we were... We were told that there would be a competition between all the buses going and that they were all named after a Disney character. To our amusement, we found ourselves on a Minnie Bus!

The barbie was served along the front of the marquee with all manner of meats, beans and afforded us probably our first taste of B-B-Q sauce (we were very conservative in our eating habits back then!) Seated at long trestle tables we got into conversations with people seated near to us and it was a good meal.

Then a cabaret - a comedian whose jokes were more to the American type of humour than to our own and then an excellent group. Whilst the group were playing, the room filled with Disney characters.

Once Mickey and Minnie had done the length of all the tables, signing autographs and posing for photos, they went to the space before the stage and danced together, leading to several thousands of feet of video tape whirring through cameras! Out of all of the couriers from the many buses, we saw Jonathan on the way in (remember him from the Silver Springs day?) and were amused that old Charlie who was on the Tigger bus asked his passengers to cheer for "Tiger!" Not a big Disney fan then Charlie...?

The food disappeared, but the drinks were free and plentiful. The band was good and the atmosphere was that of a party. At 11:00pm we were ushered onto the white beach and watched from a distance of a mile and a half, the firework display at the Magic Kingdom. On the horizon lightning was playing, adding to the display.

Then it was back to the buses, where my badge fell off. It was stuck back on unceremoniously... We had bought some sweets which looked exactly like Polo Mints right down to the hole and colouring of the wrapper. They tasted like dentists' mouthwash though and I gave an "Ugh!" of surprise and to my horror it shot out of my mouth and went rolling down the bus aisle!

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Disney World's Discovery Island

Tuesday 6 July 1993. We were knackered after last night's scare about getting lost on the roads so we were late up and anyway had decided not to go into any of the big parks. Our Disney tickets included days at their smaller and less well known parks so we visited the Island of Discovery, a tropical island with a zoo.

The island was reached from another park called Fort Wilderness that was themed on the old American West. As we walked down to the beach of white sand to get the boat to the island we passed a huge marquee that was being made ready for a bar-b-que.

We deliberately missed the first boat out to the island in favour of having a drink - it was already very hot - and sitting here to take in the view over the lagoon.

Once actually on the island the heat increased seemingly ten-fold. Probably it was just the humidity as we were entering a jungle environment. The island had many timber walkways over swampy ground. Below we could see crocs and alligators, turtles and all around us were lots of vividly coloured birds. Parrots, parakeets and some gliding birds - paragliders...? One of which pooped on me... At one point a long snake slithered across our path just in front of us. I made sure that it wasn't going to get close enough to poop on me...

Even though there were plenty of drinking fountains about, the heat was getting to us and we were relieved to get back on the ferry to come back to Fort Wilderness.

We had a quick look around Fort Wilderness and peeked into the large marquee again. A stage was being set up so there was going to be some sort of entertainment with the barbie!

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