Where did the wand go?
The adventure of complications for this vacation started at the gate. Everyone went through except my father-in-law and myself (holding up the rear). He used his room key (which was supposed to have his park hopper on it), and it kept coming up invalid. Tried a number of times to no avail. The CM says there is no entitlement on it. So we go over to Guest Relations and talk to the helpful CM there - I believe her badge said she was from Norway. She checked the card, and said there was no entitlement on it at all, except for room access. I explained that I had the Park Hopper transferred to the card at SSR, and she said we'd have to get that taken care of back there. I asked "But what are we supposed to do now?", and she gave us a single-day pass so that we could at least go to the park and not have to go all the way back again. I'd take care of the pass issue when we got back.Where did the wand go?
After spending some time in the Futureworld area and hitting some of the attractions (not Soarin' though - Fastpasses were pretty much gone) we started heading over to the World Showcase, to at least Canada and United Kingdom from what I remember, and of course we stopped for some drinks in the Rose and Crown.
It started to get dark, so we headed back to the front of the World Showcase and grabbed some space under the trestlework for the tree lighting ceremony. There already was a fair crowd, so we ended up pretty far back. For the tree lighting they had a ceremony with cast members from each country on stage with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Pluto, along with Chip & Dale (those chipmunks are everywhere), doing a little stage show. Goofy shows up dressed as Santa, talking about setting a new tradition for lighting the tree, and they start singing some carols in various languages. Then the tree and the trestles were lit while singing "Silent Night" (the new tradition), with the lights of the trestles dancing with the music.The lighted latticework between Futureworld and World Showcase
From there we went around the World Showcase. The only storyteller we managed to catch was Father Christmas in the United Kingdom. But by the time Illuminations was to start, we were tired enough from our early morning to call it a night.A somewhat obstructed view of the Epcot Tree
We went back to SSR, and I walked (I enjoyed the walk from the Paddock across the bridge to the main building) to deal with the park hopper issue. I brought the original cards as well, and explained the situation to the CM. She checked, and sure enough the room key did not show any entitlements - but neither did the original. While poking around, she said something to the effect that the entitlement had somehow ended up on a DIFFERENT card! I have no idea how that could have happened. What I SHOULD have checked is whether possibly both entitlements ended up on my mother-in-laws card instead, but its too late to check that now - I don't think we have the card any more. The CM went back to the office, and after a bit came out and said that they couldn't reverse what had happened, but instead issued a new 7-day Park Hopper in its place, on its own card - which looked unfortunately just like a room key but printed with "Park Hopper" on it instead of the guest name, etc. - even worse than what I was trying to avoid by getting it moved to the room key in the first place. We'll just have to deal with it. Someone's got a free 7-day hopper on a card somewhere - you're welcome...
Back across the bridge and to bed.
Previous Page
- Index - Next Page
