Well the azaleas and the rhododendrons have come and gone, but the wildflowers and the hydrangeas are just now blooming.  Now if we could get some more rain so the vegetable garden will grow and Lis will have to stop watering it.  🙂

We ended the night at the Magic Kingdom to see the fireworks.  The fireworks actually started at 9pm, but luckily we got there an hour early because people were already lining up to get spots to see them.  We went down and staked out a spot in front of the castle, but with about 15 minutes Disney employees came around and asked everyone to stand up and move forward because there were so many people (we can’t imagine what this would be like in the middle of the season?).  Anyway, besides the fireworks Disney also put on a laser show on the castle itself.  The laser show choreographed to go with the music and characters could be seen moving from one section of the castle to the other.  In addition, the castle took on different motifs to match the different movies and character… all this was actually pretty impressive.  We probably won’t ever do that again, but it was worth seeing.

We made a quick trip around the world, stopping for Werther’s Orginal Caramel popcorn in Germany and some Italian gelato in Italy.  The Italian gelato tasted more like ice cream rather than gelato – the only real flavor was cookies and cream.  We asked if they had Pistachio and the girls behind the counter, both from Italy, said that was their favorite, but they had to ‘Americanize’ the gelato…. sad.  It was also the Spring Flower show and they had lots of extra displays throughout the park.  The one regret was that we didn’t actually eat here… would have loved to have the bangers n’ mash in England.

They also had a very nice model train set up outside of England… we are sure Gung Gung would have appreciated this one…..

We spent Wednesday morning until about 2pm at Animal Kingdom.  We were able to see the Lion King show and went on a safari… the safari was a little bumpy and Lis was queasy by the end of it so we opted out of the white rapid rides.

Kimono dragon

This is from the Avatar area – they say this is pretty cool at night because it’s lighted up like in the movie.

Rod has been at Best Buy for 15 years and for probably 10 of those 15 years the stores he has worked in has come pretty close to winning the annual Holiday Achievers contest (November – January).  However, only the 10 best teams in each territory (there are 6 territories in the company) actually win the contest.  Each year those 60 stores get to send their Leadership team (Supervisors and Managers), plus a guest to the Best Buy Achievers event.  Well this year, Rod’s store finally won and we got a chance to go to Walt Disney World!  Now WDW may be the most magical place on earth, but if you don’t like to get on the rides it may not be the best thing you could win.  🙂  One guest, Lis, got to go for Free – all expenses paid but we were allowed to bring other guests.  A couple of Rod’s co-workers brought their kids with them too, but Alex and Sam opted to stay at home.  Sam did have school all week including Prom, while Alex had finals…. that being said, I’m not sure they would have made the trip anyway.

Even though we don’t really like the rides, we still had a pretty good time.  Best Buy put us up in a hotel in Disney (right next to Epcot) and gave us quite a bit of spending money for food for the week and  2 days worth of passes to the park of your choice… including Universal Studios.  We chose Animal Kingdom and Universal Studios, but opted to upgrade for the Disney Park Hopper which allowed us to visit as many parks as we wanted to on Wednesday and then for Thursday chose Universal.   We ended up not going to Universal on Thursday as there were scattered showers all day, so we gave those tickets to some friends and relaxed and went to Disney Springs (shopping mall) for lunch.  Overall we had a good time,  and we some photos with some pretty famous people.  We will have a couple of more posts with photos from the various parks, but here are some photos of the hotel and Achiever’s event.

Early, Early Flight on Monday morning – 5:45am… we had to leave at 2:30am to get to the airport, but we stayed up til 11pm watching GOT

Hotel Dophin… right behind us is the Hotel Swann – they had BBY employees in both

They had 4 pools between the 2 hotels… this one with a waterfall and a slide.

The only selfie Lis has ever taken….

Walking back from the boardwalk… the ferry can take you to the boardwalk, Epcot and Disney Studios.

Monday night cocktail party/dinner on the “beach”

We made a stop at the snack bar during registration a couple of times… lasted us almost all week long.

Gaming computer setup

Range Hood with built in LED screen for viewing Netflix, recipes, etc.

98″ Sony 8K TV… retails for about $60k

ATT/HBO had a booth with the throne for GOT