Downtown Disney--The Last Hurrah!

23 Dec 09--Last night was our last night in the Orlando area, so we went to "Downtown Disney", a free-to-meander-along about a mile section of properties seemingly designed to get that last nickel out of your pocket that you didn't spend at the other venues. haha By the way, I am typing this and uploading the pictures as we are driving along the highway back to Tallahassee...how "high tech", huh?!

Downtown Disney is along the lines of a boardwalk, with lots of restaurants, specialty shops, arcade halls and shows you can attend for a fee. Just being out in the crowds people watching is fun for me, and of course we had to eat, and then there was plenty of free entertainment also out in the street that was fun to watch.

Don't the bows make all the difference in the mouse ears?!

There were lots of restaurants and cafes to choose from, with most of them having longs lines, especially if you didn't have a reservation. We chose the Rainforest Cafe because it had no line for a party of 2 and also because there was one in San Antonio that we had never gone to, so we thought we would try it. That and the T-REX restaurant have fun interiors, especially for kids. T-REX was actually better, but we didn't want to spend time in line.

Here are some indoor shots of T-REX and the Rainforest Cafe...I think the T-REX was the better of the two, but I really liked all the fish tanks in the Rainforest Cafe.

T-REX

And the Rainforest Cafe

And fish in the Rainforest Cafe tanks. I have always liked fish tanks. We had one for years in Montana and then again in Texas, but they were fresh water tanks...the really nice ones are the salt water tanks!

Here is some of the street entertainment...one is a guy leading lots of kids in a dance,

and another guy is leading both adults and kids in a dance. It's funny how many adults will get out there once they get the first volunteer to go up.

They also had an outdoor Lego site where lots of people were working on building Lego stuff. Look at some of the stuff the Disney people made with the Legos. And I thought I was a creative kid! I guess the delusions started early. (Those dogs, the girl and the camera person are all made of legos.)

We could have taken a ride on this balloon, but I thought we would wait till we go to the hot air balloon festival in New Mexico next October to try it. (Sounded like a good excuse at the time.)

So, we had a great time in Orlando, and have come to the conclusion that ol' Walt Disney knew 2 things: First, how to put on a good show, and secondly, how to make a boatload of money!!! Touche! to Walt!

Merry Christmas everyone!