I don't need your stinkin' money
So where were we? Ah yes, I remember now. We were leaving the Garden Grill restaurant after a great lunch.
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So – some of us are in the restrooms and the rest of us are hanging around at the top of the escalator when our server comes rushing out of the restaurant and comes up to us saying, “you left your change.” Huh? We told him that it was supposed to be a bit extra for him because he was a great server but he was insistent that we take the change from him. He said, “I don’t need it,” and practically threw the money into my hand, and dashed back into the restaurant looking quite irate. Strange. We looked at each other for a few seconds wondering if what just happened really did happen. :confused: Oh well, the rest of our group returned from the restrooms and we went downstairs and joined the line for Living With The Land.
The line didn’t look that long for the attraction but for some reason they were so sloooooooow loading the boats that we eventually waited about 30 minutes before getting on. Then when we got seated in our boat Steven decided that he was tired, but didn’t want to go to sleep, and proceeded to have a screaming fit all the way around the ride. And of course it’s not one of those attractions where you can bail out half way. We were stuck there holding this screaming child in a boat full of people trying to hear the man at the front tell them all about the giant cucumbers. Even Harry was turning round and saying, “don’t cry Baby Steven, it’s alright.” Of course, it wasn’t alright though. If I’d have been able to stand up, Steven would have calmed down straight away but I was confined to my seat, trapped in a boat. About 3 seconds after we got off of the ride Steven was fast asleep on my shoulder. See, told you. All I had to do was stand up. :(
We decided to give the rest of Future World a miss and head on into World Showcase. I’d already decided I wasn’t going to mention Honey I Shrunk the Audience because there’s no way I was going to subject Ellie and Harry to the gairy snake, so that one was out. Test Track and Mission Space were out because we decided not to go through all the child swap malarkey involved, and to be quite honest, none of us really wanted to ride Mission Space after reading reports of motion sickness epidemics and stuff. Wonders of Life kind of got forgotten about too, but we’d managed to get a lot done here in Future World, and have a long lunch, so it was time to visit the back half of the park.
So as we head away from The Land pavilion I suddenly start to do some number crunching in my head regarding lunch. After a minute or so I stop dead in my tracks, almost causing a buggy pile up, and gasp with horror, “he didn’t add on the gratuity!” :shocked025: Oh my God, I couldn’t believe it. Every time I called WDW Dining I was told that groups of 8 and over automatically have a 15% gratuity added to the bill. Every time we checked into a restaurant we were told that 15% gratuity would be added on to the bill. When we checked into the Garden Grill we were told by the CM at the podium that 15% gratuity would be added on to our bill. And it suddenly hit me that our server had not added the 15% on to the bill. That’s why he came out of the restaurant and threw our change back at us. He thought we had stiffed him. No way did we mean to do that, he was an excellent server. It’s just that when the check came we assumed, as we had been told by many people, that the gratuity already was on there. So we just checked the final total, rounded it up a bit – because he was a great server and deserved a bit extra – and left the money on the table. Nightmare. When I told the others what had happened we were all horrified. What to do? Should we go back and apologise? Then Big Steve pointed out that if we were told the gratuity was added on then why didn’t our server add it on? Also, his attitude in the way he came out and threw our money back at us suggested he wasn’t such a great server after all. In the end we agreed with Big Steve, if someone can go from very nice to nasty just over a few dollars then maybe they didn’t deserve the gratuity. I don’t know. Even now I wonder if we should have gone back. I know these people rely on their tips to make up their ridiculous basic salary, but he did go a bit overboard when he thought we’d wronged him, when we’d made a genuine error. Anyway, we learnt to scrutinise every check with a magnifying glass after that incident.
So after the horror of what had just happened had sunk in and melted away we head off toward World Showcase. We managed to get past Pin Central without Lisa spotting it, :lol: walked through the festive archways and swung a left at the Christmas tree and headed into Mexico. Adrian waited outside with Steven who was still sleeping after his earlier tantrum and the rest of us ventured in. Did the little antiquated ride in here – no line – and had a quick browse around the shops inside. Ellie didn’t want anything in here strangely enough. Maybe it was too dark to see anything. Anyway we exit the pavilion just in time to catch the end of the Three Kings telling their Christmas story. Oh and El Rio de Tempo is not gairy.:D
