ESPN Grill
We were up at 6AM thanks to our daily wakeup call of Gantu cleaning himself loudly. Sometimes it is just his paws, sometimes it's something else. He just makes sure he is loud enough to wake us up as you know, he needs his breakfast by 6:30AM or he turns into a very sad dog.
I mean, just look at that face...
So they were fed. I ate some string cheese and my husband some cereal. Aren’t we exciting for a dining report?
We loaded up my husband’s truck with our stuff and the two furry children (our third is off on an adventure with a professional handler to teach her how to be a show dog along with some shows- she returns January 26th) and took them to our boarding facility. With that taken care of, we headed onto I-75 to fight traffic through Fort Myers and Charlotte County before continuing onward to Disney. We timed it to miss Sarasota & Tampa traffic though!
As we had alcohol, chocolate and other things that shouldn’t really just hang out in a truck bed in an unattended parking lot at ESPN Wide World of Sports, we were heading to the Boardwalk to drop off our luggage, booze and Jell-O shot mixing supplies since our room wouldn’t be ready yet. I am very glad my husband was driving as around 9:20AM, I checked on my phone and noticed our room had been changed to a handicap accessible room with a roll-in shower. Um, what? I doubled check to make sure I had reserved a normal standard room and we had. We had been changed by the room assigner. So I try to call DVC member services and get a busy signal so I did online chat. They gave me the number to BWV guest services who then put me in contact with operations. Not that I have anything against handicapped rooms on most trips but my husband was running Dopey and the need for a tub was there. Epsom Salts and Ice Baths were in his future! They took my number and told me they would call us back. Well, at 11AM we arrived to drop off the luggage and head to ESPN Wide World of Sports and never got a call from them. But we’ll get to more of that story later.
At ESPN Wide World of Sports, I was on the verge of hangry and in need of a beer or cider as well. We went to the grill as our first stop since it was the easy option for food.
My husband and I both went with the cider option as the beer was either an IPA or Bud Light. The cider was very refreshing. Our food arrived quickly enough on real plates. Sorry for the bite out of the photo but as I mentioned above, hanger was there! My buffalo chicken sandwich was exactly what my stomach needed. Chicken was nicely fried and had a buffalo ranch sauce on it.
Buffalo Chicken Sandwich
My husband went with the Turkey sandwich. He was happy enough with this.
Turkey Bacon Club Sandwich
Not the fanciest meal but it met our needs and the food was fresh. Despite all our race weekends at Disney, this was the first time we’ve eaten at the ESPN Grill at Wide World of Sports. We’ll probably go back if similar situations are present to us.
We went through the expo and I got more beer. It was a little more hoppy than I like but my husband and I shared it and the citrus helped me put up with the hops well.
Sunshine Brunch
I liked that the shops had these options for shirts and I almost got this but I went with a Stitch “I run on coffee and chaos” instead.
We headed back to the Boardwalk a little after 1PM to park the truck and to make sure that our room situation was handled. We were ensured it was and that we were rebooked back to the room we needed. (Side note: I went through my dvc point manager when home and it looks like they had changed my reservation to a handicap room on January 5th without notifying me) Our room wasn’t ready but they made sure that the ‘guest waiting’ was checked and they had our cell phone number correct. My husband didn't want to do much so we hung out in the lobby for an hour and then decided to go take a ride on the Skyliner so kill some time as our room was going to be ready by 4pm right, especially since we were waiting?
The skyline was a nice time killer and we made it back to Boardwalk around 3pm. Room wasn’t ready so back to the couches we went and I played on my cell phone and wondered why Todd was all alone.
At 4pm, no room and the check in was like, we have no updates. We were more than annoyed now, given the other issue we had to deal with this morning and how we never got the call we were promised anyway. And now that it was after 4PM, we called it and decided to drive to Disney Springs so we could get dinner.