A Birthday at Walt Disney World

The Disney Blog is running a little contest, and to enter, I have chosen to describe a birthday that I spent at Walt Disney World.

Mine was September, 2002. My friend Daniel was unemployed at the time, I was dealing with a very stressful work project, so we both needed a bit of an escape. We didn't plan to travel there explicitly for my birthday (I would normally prefer that the day just pass by quietly), but Daniel decided that he was going to try to make it a memorable one. With all that extra time on his hands, he scoured the Internet looking for fun WDW birthday things to do. And decided to do every one of them. Well, not every one, but he did try to fit a few into the day.

Of course, it all didn't go as planned. He requested that a birthday card be delivered to the room, and it didn't arrive that day, or the next, or the next... Daniel can be pretty persistent, and kept at them. Balloons and a card were finally delivered on the day we were to depart. I got to enjoy them for about 10 minutes before we checked out. I remember trying to give the balloons away at the Ticket and Transportation Center parking lot, but no one wanted any part of them ("no one" meaning the parents, of course).

We started off the day at the Disney/MGM Studios, where Daniel made sure that I got an "It's My Birthday!" pin. We enjoyed the park until after lunchtime, when we suddenly had to make a detour over to the Grand Floridian. Daniel surprised me with a wonderful chocolate cake from the GF's bakery. He had ordered it a few days before, and understood that they would deliver it to our resort room. However, for some reason, they wouldn't deliver it, hence the sudden side trip. We couldn't carry the cake around with us all day, so we had to eat the entire thing right then and there.

Did I mention that we were scheduled to attend the Ice Cream Social at the Garden Grill an hour later? With our bellies full of cake, facing an early dinner at Alfredo's, there was just no way we could have all that ice cream too, so we cancelled that. We had a great dinner at Alfredo's, though, which included a birthday cannoli and being serenaded by all the Italian waiters. A wonderful ending to a memorable day!