Day 7 - Happy Birthday, Russ!

Today (Thursday) is Russ' birthday and initially we were going to sleep in, but since we did that yesterday, he decided he wanted to go to Epcot this morning!


First thing I did when we arrived was drag Russ over to Guest Relations and get him a Happy Birthday pin. All day cast members were saying "Happy Birthday, Russ!", which he seemed to get a kick out of and appreciate. And seems like Epcot was a good choice today as the park seemed practically empty, relatively speaking. We actually rode Soarin' 3 times first thing! We pretty much stayed in Future World seeing The Circle of Life, Living with the Land, and the newly reopened Journey Into Imagination with Figment. We also went to The Seas with Nemo and Friends and caught Turtle Talk which features Crush, the sea turtle from "Finding Nemo". During Turtle Talk, the audience faces a screen that looks into the ocean. Since you are in The Seas where many large windows look into an ocean environment, this looks much like any other such window. Crush is an interactive 3D animation that talks with the audience in the "human tank". He looks at the person he's talking with and really interacts with people. For example, the host will ask a kid his name and Crush will say "Hello, Jimmy." He makes jokes and takes questions from audience. The show lasts about 10 minutes and is simply amazing. We learned that the most important word in turtle language is "dude", which can have many different meanings depending on how it's said (as Crush demonstrated). So for the rest of the day every time a cast member said happy birthday to Russ, he responded by saying "well, thank you very much, dude (or dudette)!" The cast members seemed to really enjoy his response.


Dinner was at the California Grill on the 15th floor of the Contemporary Resort. I had called they day before to request a window table, but you can only make those requests when you check in. However, the girl did note on the reservation that it was Russ' birthday. I had been told when we made the reservation a couple months before that they didn't do anything for birthdays (unless you wanted to purchase a birthday cake). So I had brought some of the Mickey Mouse confetti that was leftover from our anniversary dinner a couple years before and was going to ask the hostess if she would put it on the table before we sat down.


When we arrived, I requested a window table and was given the standard "I'll request it but can't make any guarantees", and as I could see she wasn't going to be the one to seat us (plus Russ was standing right there), I didn't give her the confetti. We went into the bar to get a drink and very shortly our name was called. Rafael led us to a perfect window table that already had Mickey Mouse confetti on it as an indication to the staff that we were celebrating a special occasion! These windows offer a panoramic view of the Seven Seas Lagoon and Magic Kingdom. If you time your dinner right, you can see the fireworks from there, and that's what we planned to do.

A short time after being seated, Rafael returned and said that the restaurant wanted to take our picture and give us a copy to celebrate the occasion! (I had our server take one, too, so we could post it here.) Then when Russ' dessert arrived, on it was a little chocolate "plaque" that read "Happy Birthday from the California Grill!" Not bad for a place that doesn't do anything for birthdays!!

California Grill is a five star restaurant whose menus change frequently to take advantage of fresh market fare. The meal was excellent as was our server, Charmaine, and when the fireworks started, we actually went outside to the observation platform so we could hear the fireworks as well as see them, then returned to finish dessert.

When we returned to our campsite about 10pm, a cast member drove up in a van and handed Russ a birthday card signed from Mickey and Minnie. What a nice end to an excellent day!