Downtown Disney – Boathouse, Splitsville and the end of Vinyls
It’s been a while since we’ve been to Downtown Disney. They have the parking lot completely torn up for the new Disney Springs construction, so I’m glad we decided to take a bus there from our hotel. There is now only one bus stop which is on the far East side of the Marketplace, and of course we were going to Splitsville on the complete opposite West side.
One big change we saw right away was the infamous Boat House. We heard so much about it on Twitter we couldn’t wait to check it out. We made our way through the restaurant (which smelled delicious) and down to the docks to check out the fancy Chris Craft boats. As we were contemplating which one we should purchase first, we noticed the water taxis were taking people from one side of Downtown to the other. Doh! Wish we would have realized that back at the bus stop! Oh well, our feet were still fresh and new at this point.
Here’s a few shots of the boats and the Boat House.
As we continued through the crowds we noticed a few new shops along the way, and lots of construction. None of the new shops really peaked our interest (though I may come back for some hat shopping) until we got to D-Street and the new Superhero store.
D-Street was kind of depressing as there were hardly ANY vinylmations left in the store. Since we collect vinyls, this used to be our favorite store at DD. We knew the end of anything new coming out was on the horizon, but this definitely confirmed that for us. I thought Disney was making a fortune on these little addictive pieces of plastic, and they were so much fun to trade in the parks (much more fun than pins because you never knew what you were going to get). I wonder what is going to replace Vinyls in the future? Infinity? I guess we will have to wait and see.
The Superhero store was really small and VERY crowded. The girls picked out some hero shirts and when we were checking out I asked the associate if they were planning on expanding the store. He said this store was just a trial, and when Disney Springs opens they will most likely have a much bigger store. I think that’s a great idea as everyone loves Super Heroes, plus you can wear the shirts at both Disney and Universal! Bonus!
When we were browsing I overheard someone saying “Oh look, a Men in Black agent” – yeah.. no. This is Disney..
We stopped by Guest Services to get our tickets (since they were FL resident tickets we had to show ID to get them linked to our MagicBands) and there was a long line (welcome to Disney!) so we decided to go to the other window over by DisneyQuest. For now it was time for some bowling and dinner at Splitsville! When we got there we were told it would be an hour wait for a bowling lane, so we got a pager and were seated upstairs for dinner. Apparently there was some sort of corporate event going on upstairs, and they were handing out awards so there was a lot of loud cheering and general ruckus going on.
I got the Grilled Avocado with Ahi Tuna which was delicious and very filling. Mr. Roamer got the pizza which ended up being way too much food for one person. The girls got sushi which looked awesome.
Bowling started off super stressful (for me). The pager kept going off while we were finishing dinner so 3 of us went downstairs to check in so we didn’t lose our place. The hostess carried our bucket of shoes to a lane, said there were some balls already in the return area and if we needed more to let our server know. She said we had 1 hour and 20 minutes. I asked her when the timer started, after the first bowler went? The answer was yes. So we all started to put on our shoes and look around for a ball that was the size and weight we wanted, only to notice the timer had already started ticking down! Mr. Roamer hadn’t even made it down yet. I started to panic and went to ask the hostess about it when our server showed up. I explained that we hadn’t even found any balls we wanted, my shoes were too big, our party wasn’t all here, etc. etc. and the timer had already started! She graciously reset the timer for us and brought us all the balls were requested. Just a heads up, when you check in for bowling, you better be ready to go (i.e., use the bathroom first as I did not do). At least now you know!
After dinner we went to Guest Services to link our tickets and planned to take the boat back to the bus, but were told their system wasn’t working properly and we would have to go back to the Guest Services we were at earlier which is half-way through Downtown.
We did stop in at our favorite art shop Pop Gallery and there happened to be an artist Alan Foxx in there signing his work. The girls picked out something and he signed it with a poem for each of them about pursuing your dreams, or something like that. Pretty cool though!
Back to the hotel for an early start tomorrow at Magic Kingdom!
