Good day. And welcome to Day 3.
Day 3 is sort of like the Two Towers of our Vero Beach experience. In that we all remain together in spirit but need to take different paths to reach our Mount Doom in order to defeat the evil lord Sauron. And our Mount Doom? It’s a great vacation.
And our Sauron? It’s sobriety.
Don’t worry. We end up winning.
I mean, the day isn’t all Two Towers. A lot of it IS all of us together so a good chunk of it is like Fellowship of the Ring. And the day officially starts with Nickie and I taking a walk on the beach. So um…I guess that’s kind of like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey?
I don’t know. What I am trying to say is I am a nerd that is bad at movie references.
You know. Just like Ferris Bueller.
…
On with Day 3!
Day 3 began with me waking up on my lonesome at around 6AMish. 6Amish? 6 Amish? Good idea for a new reality show!
But anyways, yeah 6ish. I wanted to head over to the fitness room for a few miles on the treadmill.
I would have taken a picture of the fitness room but honestly, it wasn’t…great. Definitely not the best part of the resort. No windows. Only a couple treadmills and only one actually worked. It felt a lot like the fitness room was sort of an afterthought.
But I still got a run in. So that’s good.
I got back to the room, got a quick shower in, and Nickie asked if I would like to take a walk on the beach.
I did. I did want to.
It was a nice day, if a little windy. But it was definitely nice to have some time for just Nickie and I. On account of #love.
And while we were walking the beach, there were a bunch of…pipers? Maybe? They kind of just followed us down the beach and it was fun watching them run back and forth to get food whilst avoiding the water.
And look, there’s me!
Every day should begin with a walk on the beach.
And if a beach isn’t handy, feel free to walk back and forth in front of your bathtub. And for a real dose of authenticity, make sure your bathroom floor is dirty. And trap a live seagull
After our beach walk, Nickie and I went back to the room to get the boys up and get ready for the day. On account of we were meeting up with the Chicago and Florida Goodys for breakfast!!
Breakfast that morning was at the resort. They do a character breakfast every Saturday morning called Goofy’s Beachside Character Breakfast. Which is a bit of false advertising. On account of it takes place in a windowless room on the first floor. But they have strategically-placed beach stuff and Finding Nemo characters strewn about the room.
So yeah, the theme is sort of all over the place. But…BUT. This thing is like $22 bucks per adult. In Disney terms, that’s basically free.
The breakfast offerings were pretty standard stuff – eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, pastries, etc. But there WERE Mickey Waffles!!! Also bread pudding! So I mean, I’d love to live in a world where that’s standard.
Here’s my plate….
I went with eggs, bacon, sausage, some cheesy potatoes, a cinnamon roll, bread pudding and a Mickey Waffle. And they had both whipped cream and chocolate chips. So it would have been rude to not use them.
Jeff’s plate, however, made my plate look like an idiot.
But I still had one trick up my sleeve. All I had to do was say her name three times into a mirror.
Being that this was a character meal, we were then visited by this character. Everyone says he’s always so grumpy, but Donald always seems happy when we see him. I think it’s probably because he likes us most.
And similarly, everyone always paints Goofy as this big dummy, but dude has put together this whole breakfast shindig and literally puts it on every week. Bravo, Goofy. Brah. Vo.
Plus, I love when the chef comes out to see how the meal is going.
All in all, breakfast was fun. Food was good. Nothing insanely special but I definitely would do it again if I were staying at Disney’s Vero Beach.
And after breakfast, it came time for paths to diverge. Myles, Jeff, Scott, and I had a tee time to get to. And it was a special tee time. On account of it was Myles’s first time actually golfing. He had been to par 3’s before and the driving range, but this was his first time on a real-time actual golf course.
The plan for the rest of the crew was to go on a dolphin cruise, but the captain had texted early in the day to say the water was a little too rough to go out. So it would be rescheduled to the next day. Sooooo, they had to resort to hanging out at the resort.
See what I did there?
So off I went to grab the clubs and the car.
And look at Myles. He looks like a real golfer person.
Golf was about 10 minutes away at Sandridge Golf Club. We arrived about an hour or so before our tee time, which was good. On account of Scott had to buy golf shoes. On account of he’s Scott.
But we also wanted to get some practice in. First stop was the driving range.
We then practiced our chip shots and hit the putting green. After all that, we were still early for our tee time but we talked to the starter and he told us the foursome before us didn’t show so their loss was our gain. Whoop.
Look how happy we were those other people had a bad day.
At Sandridge, they have two courses – the Dunes Course and the Lakes Course. Since there was a tournament at the Dunes Course, we ended up playing the Lakes Course. Which obviously meant water.
But no worries, there was also a lot of sand. Phew, right?
As we played on, Myles seemed to have a great time golfing.
But I think maybe he enjoyed driving the golf cart more.
While we were playing golf, as I mentioned, the rest of the gang was having fun back at the resort. Their day also started with golf. Of the mini kind.
They played miniature golf is what I am saying. Yup, this resort has a MINI GOLF COURSE.
That round of mini-golf, which I understand included a heavy use of not only clubs but feet as well, was followed by some well-deserved time at the pool. And they participated in some fun poolside activities like dancing and limbo. The cast members at Disney’s Vero Beach are great at what they do – playing tons of games, doing tons of crafts. They’re pretty great.
Owen’s limbo skills won him a prize, which he gifted to Gwen.
Afterwards, he sat back and basked in glory of victory under a glorious sun.
Everyone else also basked in his glory it seems.
Well at least for a little bit. He quickly picked up a paddle and played Gwen in one of many MANY ping pong matches.
Back at Sandridge, our golf game continued on. And honestly, it was a pretty great day.
As I mentioned, the Lakes course did have some sand. And on one hole, Myles hit his ball into trap that led off into the water. I drove him over, he hopped out, and walked to his ball. As he neared the trap, he let out a loud, “Whoa!” and called me over.
Waiting about ten feet or so from his ball was this fella.
Needless to say, Myles was not prepared to play this one where it lied. So I ran in, stared the wild beast down, and grabbed his ball. I then ran away like a scared child and tossed his ball onto the fairway.
Our full match lasted about 4 hours or so. After finishing up, we drove back to the resort to meet up with everyone before dinner.
When we got there, everyone was sort of all over the place so I took Myles to get a snack at the Wind & Waves Market since we hadn’t had lunch. He got a hot dog, but I have a hard time resisting any food that’s Mickey-shaped so I grabbed one of these.
Everything tastes better when it’s Mickey-shaped.
Soon enough, everyone met up on the porch in back of the lobby and we all dispersed to get ready for dinner. Jeff and Sheila headed back to Captain Hiram’s since that was where we were having dinner that night.
The rest of us got ready and met in the lobby.
We all hopped in the Ford Expedition and drove over to Captain Hiram’s. Dinner that night was at Blackfins.
The waitress led us to our table, which was right by the water. Is nice.
The place gave me heavy Cape Cod vibes. From the water to the décor to the menu, it was def a cool atmosphere in there.
This was one of those meals where I only got my meal photographed. I know. I just didn’t want to be intrusive. One of my rare moments of politeness.
For my cocktail, I went with a Mai Tai, which was good. I mean, not the BEST Mai Tai I have ever had but it did the job.
We also got some calamari and onion rings to start, of which I have ZERO pictures. For this, I have no excuse. But I do recall both being pretty good. The onion rings especially.
I ordered off the specials menu for my entrée and got the Fried Oyster Po’ Boy.
I thought this was VERY good actually. Good amount of coating, nice fry to it….without feeling too heavy.
After dinner, all 10 of us loaded into the Expedition and drove back to Disney’s Vero Beach. The kids wanted to continue their High School Musical education so they rented part 2 from Island Grove and brought it over to the Chicago Goodys’ room to watch. Jeff and Sheila went over as well while Nickie and I secured a table at the Green Cabin Room.
The activity that night was Heads Up so we were looking to win more frisbees. While Nickie and I waited for the others to join (and we waited A WHILE), I ordered up a Grey Goose martini dirty.
Just as we let the cast member know we would like to join the game, the group showed up. We got our drinks ordered and got in the game.
We played a couple rounds of Heads Up and then the cast member turned it back over to trivia, where we KILLED. Yup, more frisbees. And while you may think winning more frisbees would stop being exciting at some point, you’d be wrong. Plus, watching Scott try to fold them up was worth the price of admission.
We once again had a lot of fun in the Green Cabin Room. Annnd a lot of drinks, including Fireball shots. Which are always a good idea. Right?
Pretty full, pretty awesome day. Stay tuned for Day 4. On account of there are DOLPHINS!!
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