gtpoohbear
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2008
Chapter 0. Getting Some Boring Stuff out of the Way
So, I did actually start a pre-trip report. And it was going pretty well until life just got in the way and I ended up abandoning it. But if you want to catch up, here it is: http://www.disboards.com/threads/ptr-heading-to-the-other-side-in-july.3507701/
I will try to do better with the real thing, actually most of it's written already, just needs proofreading and pictures. Hopefully I can handle that!
A little bit about our trip:
Every year we take one “big vacation”, (plus we sneak in several smaller ones too). We’ve gone all over the country to various touristy cities and destinations, and have done a “big” Disney trip 3 times now (and more small ones than I can count), so it was time to shake things up and do something different.
DH and I were last at Universal 15 years ago, shortly after getting married and graduating. And had been several other times throughout our childhood and college. So obviously a lot is going to be new for us this time.
I have worried for months about the heat. This may be obvious from the title! I don’t like heat. And I like humidity even less. We live in Colorado- a typical summer day here is in the mid 80’s, with about 20% humidity. And always a nice breeze. And DH will tell you that I STILL complain about it being too hot, lol! But, circumstances dictated that this was when we could go, so we’re going to try to make the best of it. Heat index of 115 degrees, here we come! It will be okay, right???
Some quick introductions:
Jaime (me) - I’m the family travel planner (probably missed my calling to be a travel agent, or so I’ve been told.) Officially a stay-at-home-mom right now, though I’ve been doing some freelance/contract writing work. I was worried I might have to work on some final edits during our trip, but luckily my last version that I submitted just before we left was accepted. Whew! But, it was a very stressful few weeks trying to get it done, and the main reason I couldn’t keep up with the PTR. At least I have a good excuse.
Brian (DH) - He is a software engineer at Google. Loves vacation, mountaineering, adventure, fun, good food, and never knows when to quit. Definitely not the “relaxing” type, lol! He has grown a little tired of Disney in recent years, so I thought this would be a good way to keep him interested in theme-parking.
Lily (DD, 12 yo) - She’s usually an emotional basketcase - high strung, easily stressed, and almost always annoyed with at least one of us. Sounds lovely, right? Well she IS capable of being very sweet and mature, but only when all the stars align correctly. She is a competitive swimmer and on a water polo team, and plays the oboe. And starting her last year of middle school (gulp!) next month. She LOVES Harry Potter, and her biggest fantasy in life would probably be to become a Hogwarts student.
Owen (DS, 5 yo) - Other than also being rather shy and timid, he’s about the polar opposite of his sister. Very sweet and affectionate, usually happy-go-lucky, and just wants to make everyone smile. Unless he’s tired, and then all bets are off. He is also on a swim team, and takes rock-climbing classes. He’ll be starting 1st grade next fall, and I’m having trouble accepting that my ‘baby’ is growing up so fast, sniff!
Before the Vacation, and Getting There
We actually combined two trips into one. My whole family lives in southwest Florida, so we flew from Denver into Ft. Myers on Sat, July 2 to spend a few days there with them. I do enjoy visiting my family, but it’s also stressful. It feels a little like walking a tight-rope the whole time, trying to keep the peace between everyone. We had a nice visit overall, but were relieved when it was time to head out to our real vacation on Tuesday morning!
We are not very good road-trippers, so I knew the 3 hour estimate on Google maps was highly optimistic. Especially since we would need to make a grocery and lunch stop on the way. We took the back roads instead of the interstate, and got to see the more natural, rural side of Florida along the way.
The first two attempted grocery stops didn’t work out - the first was a Publix that wasn’t having its grand opening for a few more days, whoops! And the second was a Walmart, but not a supercenter, so no groceries. I didn’t even know they still had any of those! Finally we found a Winn-Dixie, also didn’t know they still had THOSE, lol! Owen was thrilled because they had tiny little shopping carts that he could push around.
The rest of the drive was uneventful, and we arrived at the Royal Pacific Resort a little after 1pm. (I have to admit I was a little sad to be just passing by the signs for Disney World. Another time though, another time.)
Chapter 1. Cooling off in the Pool. Or NOT! At least we have Perfect Seats. Or NOT! (Day 1)
I had pictured in my mind us spending the afternoon settling into our room, unpacking, maybe hitting the pool to cool off. For some reason it didn’t occur to me until just before we got there, that we probably wouldn’t be able to get our room right away. Well, we could be flexible.
We had a short wait to check in, and spent the few minutes observing the lobby. It was nice, but not quite the “wow” factor of the Polynesian, which I know it is often compared to. Of course, that was the “old” Poly, the new one is much less impressive. But, the a/c was cranking, which felt glorious given the sweltering conditions outside, and we were all in generally high spirits.
I was anxious to make sure everything was okay with our reservation - I had booked through a 3rd party, which always makes me nervous. And the kids were not on the reservation yet. I had actually lost sleep the night before worrying something would go wrong here. But all was well, and adding the kids was no problem at all. But, our room wasn’t ready. She said we would get a text with our room number later.
We went ahead and made our Express Passes. I couldn’t believe how much Lily and I looked alike on our passes - I had such a hard time telling them apart all week!
We went back outside to park our car. In hindsight, we should have gone ahead and unloaded, and let Bell Services hold onto our stuff. But we just grabbed what we needed for swimming and left the rest in the car. Did I mention yet that it was HOT?? That swampy, yucky, I-feel-like-I-can't-breathe HOT.
We wandered out to the pool, assuming there would be locker rooms, or some sort of changing facility. Finally, we stumbled upon a small, one person restroom next to the pool and ended up changing in it. A non-air-conditioned restroom. And it was swampier than the Amazon in there! Yuck. But I just kept seeing that blue water and imagining how good it was going to feel to cool off in it.
Brian had already picked out some chairs when Lily and I came out, partly in the shade, but also in the sand. I actually didn’t realize that there are a lot of chairs NOT in the sand, or I would have made him move. I hate sand. Sorry, I just can’t stand the stuff. Not a beach person, lol! We suffered through getting everyone sunscreened, because both kids were hot and grumpy by now. I sent them ahead to the pool while I finished sunscreening myself.
Finally, cool blue water, here I come! I ran towards the zero entry section, anxiously awaiting that blast of cool refreshment…. And it didn’t come. Instead my toes hit more warmth. More heat. Just a wet variety. What??? Surely it was cooler in the deeper parts. Nope. It was like a giant hot tub. Seriously, the water temperature had to be in the mid 90s. And I started feeling panicky!
I had counted on this to get cooled off. And that obviously wasn’t going to happen. We met up in the middle of the pool and commiserated about the highly inappropriate water temperature. But, there wasn’t much we could do.
I didn’t stay in too long, because it was actually making me hotter to be in there. At some point, I tried to go get a cup of cold water from the dispensers, but only resulted in burning my feet (we hadn’t thought to get our pool shoes out of the car) because it was empty when I got there. The splashy kids area was a little cooler, but you had to tolerate constantly getting blasted in the face with water guns.
This wasn’t exactly turning out to be the afternoon I had hoped for, and not how I wanted to start the trip. But, the kids did have fun playing in the pool, even if it was too warm for their tastes. After a couple of hours, I decided to wander around and see if I could find a better place to get dressed. I still hadn’t gotten a text for our room, and there was no way I was getting dressed in that tiny steam room again.
I got really lucky, just as I was finding a restroom (and air-conditioned one at least) someone right in front of me asked a janitor if there was a locker room somewhere. She said there was one in the gymnasium and offered to take her over there. So I followed along. Man I wish we had found this earlier! It was so much nicer in there. I leisurely took my time getting dressed, finally feeling relief in the cool locker room. Then I went to gather everyone else up and get them ready for the evening.
We stowed our swim bag with bell services and headed out to the boat dock. We had an early dinner reservation at Hard Rock Cafe, then tickets to the Blue Man Show! We got lucky and just caught a boat that was about to leave, and were excited as we started pulling into CityWalk.
Unfortunately, there were apparently too many boats out and about, and we had to wait out in the middle of water for about 10 minutes for a spot at the dock to open up. Oh well. I really didn’t remember CityWalk at all, not sure if it’s changed a lot, or just not something that “stuck” from 15 years ago.
We checked in at HRC and were seated right away. Definitely glad we had a reservation, as they were telling walkups 15-20 minutes. Once we were seated and had ordered, I started to feel us slowly relaxing and finally slipping into “vacation mode”. Owen fell in love with the plate that his kids meal came on (it was shaped like a guitar), so we had to ask if there was a way to buy it. Of course there was, lol! So he got his first souvenir.
It was a good meal, mostly uneventful, but we were in good spirits by the end and ready to head to our show, which conveniently was right next door. (Not an accident, that’s why I picked it for dinner tonight, of course!)
We made it to our seats about 20 minutes before showtime, and I was pleased to see that the seats I had specifically picked for us would work out great. You see, I’m short (and of course so is Owen) so carefully picking a seat where we won’t be blocked by heads is very important to me. So I had selected the first row of a section, with an aisle between us and the section in front. With only a few minutes before the show left, the back rows of that section were still empty, so this was going to be perfect.
And then all my plans fell apart. With less than 5 minutes before showtime, some of the ushers came to our section and told us that they were actually using these rows for a “special event” tonight, but not to worry, they were giving us seats much closer to the stage. Closer. But not elevated above heads. Now, I am usually a very soft-spoken and non-confrontational person. But I made my unhappiness at this point known pretty clearly. This was my new view.
Shortly after being moved, I decided at the last minute that I really needed to make one more potty-break before the show started. (I knew I shouldn’t have drank two Diet Cokes at dinner, lol!) I thought I told Lily where I was going, but I did bolt out of there pretty quickly since I knew I only had about a minute. (And I wasn’t the only one at the moment making a restroom sprint, lol!) I got back into my seat right as the lights were dimming, and apparently the rest of the family was in a tizzy because they didn’t know where I had gone so suddenly, and Brian assumed that I had stormed out in anger. I laughed and assured him that I just had to pee! But I was still annoyed, and trying really hard to shake it off.
We had seen the Blue Man Show over a year ago in Las Vegas, I wasn’t sure how much of it would be the same. A lot of the scenes were, but there were some new ones too. Overall it was great, of course. And I loved listening to Owen giggle through much of it. If you’ve seen the show before, you may have seen the Twinkie scene (we saw that one in Vegas too). I don’t know if they plant the audience volunteer, or give them some intense training before the show, or if we just got really lucky, but they picked this old lady to go up on stage (she could barely walk, the Blue Men almost had to carry her up there.) She was absolutely hilarious! She was totally running the show for that whole scene. If she really was just a random audience member, they need to hire her.
With the show over, it was time to trek back to the hotel and get settled in. I had finally gotten a text, right at 4pm, but not with our room number. Apparently we had to go back to the desk and get new keys, Sigh. And we had one bag with Bell Services, and the rest of our stuff still in the car in the parking lot. So it was a tedious few minutes once we were back, getting everything sorted out.
I realized when they brought our luggage up, the flaw in our plan. We had made a grocery stop to get breakfast stuff and snacks for the room. And then left it in the car all afternoon. Nothing that really needed to be refrigerated, but it really didn’t need to be left in an oven for hours either, oops! It was still hot to the touch. Hopefully it wouldn’t give us food poisoning.
Despite all the shuffling around, we were mostly in bed by 9pm, which had been my goal. But I didn’t sleep well. The room still felt hot to me. But too cold for DH. (This is a common problem for us, let’s just say our internal thermostats are set very differently at night, lol!) So he was constantly trying to snuggle up close to me for warmth, I was constantly getting annoyed and pushing him away because I was already hot. And our early dinner caused him to be hungry all night, several times I was awoken to the sound of him loudly munching on snacks. OH well. Hopefully adrenaline would push us through the morning! The alarm was set for 5:30am...
