Day 2 continued...
The sitter that we had the IPO arrived right on time. She was young and friendly and most importantly, someone that I felt comfortable with leaving the kids with.
We had given
Aladdin charging privileges so that the plans for this evening could run smoothly. We left the sitter with instructions for them to eat a room service meal, chow down on the left over cake, enjoy the club lounge, make their way out to the beach,have fun at the arcade and/or if anyone wanted, to stop at the caricature artist and let the older three boys have one done. Basically, we left her with a list of approved activities that should have kept any child busy for the next week.
We just wanted her and the boys to have a choice about what they did and we didn't want to feel guilty about them just sitting around the room all night.
Child care settled dh and I walked down to dinner. This was the night of our vacation that we had chosen to celebrate our anniversary. Our 13th anniversary to be exact. We chose to dine at Artist Point (a new one for us) for our anniversary dinner. We ended up being ever so glad that we did!
Upon arrival we were seated almost immediately. I think it's because we had reservations for five minutes after the restaurant opened. That meant they had a lot of tables to chose from.
Our table was in the perfect location, we could see straight out of about four sets of windows. The views out of all of them were so pretty (as most of the views at the WL are).
We were seated and handed menus and then left alone to ponder our choices. Very shortly though a CM (not our server or the person who had seated us) came over and took our menus from us and told us that he wanted to make sure we had the right menus. It was then he handed us menus that had this written on the bottom. By the time we saw it, he had disappeared and we were never even able to thank him.
That was a big surprise for both of us. I hadn't mentioned to them that it was our anniversary. Nor had I asked the IPO to do so...but I had mentioned that we were going to be celebrating our anniversary when I called about booking the child care for the boys. I know that sounds like mystery solved...and it was BUT, it also shows just how thoughtful the IPO was. **At first I had called in and asked for anniversary ideas from the IPO staff, but during that call I spoke to someone with no ideas and no interest in coming up with any. So, in contrast, this seemed even nicer.** I had made our dining reservations weeks before our child care reservations were made. So the IPO CM took it upon herself to look up our plans for the evening and then to add a note that we were celebrating our anniversary. That totally rocks customer service wise.
A few minutes after we were given our special keepsake menus, our waiter appeared with a champagne toast for us. It was a very sweet touch. Both dh and I enjoyed it very much. The addition of a raspberry floating in it made it seem festive.
Let me take a break right here to say just how terrific our server was. He was funny, attentive, kind, helpful and always around at the right times although it never felt like he was hovering. So two thumbs way up for the service at Artist Point.
It was the best service of our entire WDW stay.
Back to the food, the real star of this meal. Dh started off with the crisp venison spring rolls with hot sweet and sour sauce. Dh said his appetizer was excellent!
I chose the smokey portobello soup with roasted shiitakes and chive oil. This ended up being a bowl of pure mushroom goodness. I have had one other bowl of soup in my entire life that was better than this. I had a fresh lobster bisque on the French island of St. Marteen that was out of this world amazing (I dream of it still). The mushroom soup at Artist Point is "up there" with the fresh lobster bisque...that is the ultimate compliment that I could give. Sorry that I forgot to take a picture before I sort of swirled it all together.
For our main dishes we both chose the same thing. We chose the buffalo sirloin. We differed in what we had as sides. Yes, our awesome waiter offered to have them mix and match any of the main entrées on the menu in order to give us our perfect meal. Either of us would have been more than happy ordering off of the menu, but this choice gave us the freedom to mix and match the ultimate meal!
Here is what ended up on my plate. A grilled buffalo sirloin with chipeta potato truffle fries, sautéed wild mushrooms and wild mushroom butter. Sorry for once again digging in before I snapped the picture.
The buffalo was so tender and moist! It was a great meal. And the truffle oil added to the fries was a great touch! Dh had the same buffalo sirloin served with fingerling potatoes, fennel and apple cider sauce. Both dh and myself LOVED every bite of our dishes!
Dessert was almost as good as the meal and appetizers had been (it was great actually but not a "top of every dessert ever" sort of dish). Dh chose the hazelnut chocolate torte which was served with blood orange sauce and honey lavender ice cream. I tried a small spoon of his ice cream and it was very good!
I chose the heirloom apple tart. It came with buttermilk ice cream, pecans and spice syrup. It was delicious.
We had coffee and tea after dessert. We just sat there and relaxed and talked about the past year and the one yet to come. I chose the Vanilla Rooibos herbal infusion tea...Oh my goodness! VERY GOOD! I have since placed an order for some to be delivered to my own door and I cannot wait!
Following this amazing meal we made our way back up to our room and ran into the boys and their sitter waiting for room service. They had already been out and paid a visit to the caricature artist. Here is the caricature he did of
Aladdin. I think the one we had done last year was better but this one is still good.
The one of
Goofy was way more like him (we thought).
And I think that they did a great job on Stitch! The artist even captured the Jack Skellington on his shirt! We think this caricature is right on the money!
After taking a quick peek at their new caricatures, giving out a few hugs and doing a quick change of clothes, we left them with the sitter to enjoy their room service dinner.
Dh and I were on our way to Universal Studios...*gasp*...to see the Blue Man Group.
WE LOVED THIS SHOW! It is the most unusually fun show ever. And I thought that when we saw Cirque last year I had trouble finding a way to describe it...The Blue Man Group is even harder to explain and even MORE worth seeing. At least for both dh and myself if we were to see one of those two shows again, it would definitely be the Blue Man Group. We were in the very front row so I was a bit nervous going in and not knowing what to expect. It was so strange, but even though neither of us was ever taken up on the stage, we felt as if we were part of the show and not just watching it. I loved every second of the show. Even when toilet paper, paint, cereal, marshmallows and other assorted items made their way into the crowd. I must say, this is the first show that we have ever been to that provided us ponchos to wear during their performance.
I cannot do it justice, so I won't go further into trying to describe a Blue Man Group performance. What I will say is GO! GO!! GO!!! It's
SO much fun! Also, don't forget your camera the way we did, you have great photo opportunities with the Blue Men themselves after the show.
We happily made our way back to the WL and our boys (who were happy and ready for bed by the time we walked through the door), got ready for bed and fell asleep thinking about what tomorrow would bring...our first park day of the trip!
Up next, our first park day!
To be continued...
LOVE the TR Jay!! Can't wait to read more!
It's good to have you here. I will try to get the next update posted tonight.
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older ones, though, I'm sure you appreciate that!
Glad to hear your boys had such a good time with the pool activities! 
. I have seen a couple of reports on The Wave and have a feeling it may be added to our growing list of poss ADR's for next summer. Keep up the good work you're brightening up a very wet & dull Scottish October
