Our whole family plus two special girlfriends and one great friend, which made a party of eleven, drove nine hours south to Orlando, Florida for our Disney World and Universal Studios park adventures.
We drove four separate cars so we got to the hotel first to check in and check the place out.
WOW!!! Westgate Lakes Resort & Spa is AMAZING!!!!!
From the minute we pulled into the parking lot, it was just like Disney World. Friendly employees greeted us with warm smiles and directions to where to go next.
The foyer of the hotel had a humongous greeter desk with multiple beautiful young ladies to help us with every aspect of our Orlando visit.
Check-in was a piece of cake. It’s a timeshare place so they offered all this free stuff (breakfast, rental paddle boats, bikes, etc) if you sat for a 90 minute timeshare meeting. We declined because we already own one.
Up to our rooms we went.
WOW!! We rented two-two bedroom (sleeps 8 each) places. Each place has 1 King, 2 Fulls, and a Queen pull-out couch. Our room is absolutely beautiful!!!
The kids couldn’t get over the size of the jacuzzi bath tub in the master bedroom.
Here is the rest of the place in pictures.
And here we are on the patio with a breathtaking view of the lake.
And here is my attempt at a video tour of our hotel room. Spoiler alert: may cause motion sickness!
After everyone arrived and after a little rest time, we headed to a nice birthday (mine!) dinner at Shogun Japanese Steakhouse. This is a Benihana/Kanki-type restaurant where the chef cooks right in front of you while catching shrimp tails in their chef’s hat and building onion volcanoes.
Our chef Tam and our waiter Chris were both hilarious!
First course was a choice of miso or clear soup. I chose the miso.
Second course was the house salad with ginger dressing.
Next, Tam cooked the meats. We had steak, shrimp, chicken, and calamari.
Here’s Tam our chef. He looks mad but he was really very nice.
We also had fried rice and veggies. The dinner was delicious. If you’ve never experienced a family friendly Japanese steakhouse for teppanyaki chefs cooking on tableside grills you’ve got to try it. Besides the whole experience of the show, the food is absolutely delicious!!
Here’s a video of Tam in action cooking our wonderful meal!
It was a great day of travel and a little entertaining dinner with the family. This was our view from our window this evening.
Tomorrow, we’re headed to Universal’s Islands of Adventure.
Love y’all,
Linda
