2/15 Wonder 4-day and Universal Orlando

[jlowejd5]

Coming soon. I'm about halfway through writing it. Should be done later this week. But if I go ahead and promise it, that means I have to finish it. I heart pressure!

More soon...

 

[mousetravel]

Waiting on your trip report!

 

[jlowejd5]

Okay, let’s set the scene. There’s me, 35 (yikes), a lifelong Disney freak. That obsession has only gotten worse in the last few years, now that we have the financial ability to travel much more often. I’m a lawyer, but not really. I’m in-house at a software company, so I wear jeans to work and surf the net when I’m not busy, usually obsessing over Disney trivia. It’s a rough life…

There’s DW, Michele, also 35. She’s an OB/Gyn, which is stressful enough. This is our fifth DCL cruise (two three-days on the back end of a Land/Sea (Beach Club and Polynesian), two four-days, and a Western swing on the Magic). This is also our fifth anniversary, so we’re repeating our honeymoon four-day, but without all the insanity of a wedding the day before. Nice.

Friday, February 13th. Michele worked a half-day, and I just sorta wandered off about 2:00. And she’s mad that I beat her home. Hee hee. Tonight is the last-minute stuff, plus a trip to dinner and to drop the dog off at doggie day care for the week. He’s a 3-year-old boxer named Diablo, and he’s a pretty, pretty princess. We’ve watched him scoot five pillows into a pile on the couch to sit on. It’s absurd. But the folks at the pet care place love him, and he’s very adaptable to change. So off he goes, then dinner, and I think we were both in bed by about 11.

Saturday, February 14th. Up and out the door by about 6:30 or so. We’re a little nervous, because we’re trying a new airline. We’ve been on the same Delta flight, direct from Columbus to Orlando, every time we’ve gone, but Delta scaled back. Our only non-stop option is on AirTran, which just started flying out of here a few months ago. But, thankfully, no problems, and they start boarding early, so we didn’t even break stride, just walked right on. Great flight, and we’re on the ground in Orlando by 10:30 or so.

The scariest thing about that flight was that it was about evenly split between Disney guests and folks going to the Daytona 500. Very much two separate groupings there. I haven’t watched much racing since Rusty Wallace retired, but I didn’t know every fan in the world now had their own jacket matching their favorite driver’s fire suit. It was disturbing, to say the least.

Since we flew down a day early (because you never know about Ohio in February) we had rented a car, which meant we actually had to go claim our own luggage. Boo. But we got our bags and headed to the Budget counter. I kinda felt bad for the counter folks there, because of the four of them, only one was able to get people through. The other three had two people who had almost no mastery of the English language, and the other one had two young guys who were trying to rent a car with a pre-paid credit card with only the exact amount of the rental on it (which left no option for extra costs). Our actual experience with Budget was fine. Got the car, went across to the garage, picked it up, and out we went.

We drove from MCO over to Downtown Disney for the afternoon. We got a nice parking spot under a tree, and walked in. We were starving, and I’d heard good things about T-Rex, and we were able to walk right in and get a table. I have nothing but good things to say about the place. The food was really good, the service was excellent, and the restaurant itself was awesome. We were in the Fern Forest, so we had a good view of the ice room and the aquarium bar.

After lunch, we did some shopping and wandered around for a while. It was starting to get hot (at least as compared to 20 degrees back home) so we got some pop, headed back to the car, and headed out toward the Port. That drive is really not all that bad, but don’t expect many places to stop on 528 between the outskirts of Orlando and the coast, less’n you wants to wrassle a gator for his lunch.

We were staying at the Radisson near the port, and I also have nothing but good things to say about it. Extremely close and convenient, friendly staff, decent rooms for the money. Could have been more parking, but that’s pretty minimal. The guy at the front desk who was checking me in was getting screamed at on the phone by somebody who was trying to rent a room for his 15-year old son and his friends, and was just incensed that the hotel wouldn’t allow a full room of juveniles. I felt so bad for the guy, but he maintained his cool and tried to talk the guy down. I hate when people believe the rules don’t apply to them, but more on that later…

We hit the room, somewhere on the first floor way in the back, and just crashed out for about two hours. By the way, this is a theme that will repeat itself often during this report. This was maybe the laziest, most relaxing vacation I’ve ever taken, ever. Whoot!!

After we woke up, we decided to go out and look for dinner. This was a bit of an adventure, which wasn’t helped by the fact that it was Saturday night AND Valentine’s Day. We turned right out of the Radisson and just drove. We saw a couple of interesting places, but nothing that jumped out at us. So we turned around. We’d heard good things about “Grills” over on the water, but by the time we got there at 7:00 it was already a two hour wait. So we went back to the hotel, and they told us the best pizza joint in town was Papa Vito’s. I won’t argue. It was delicious, and showed up to the hotel in like 25 minutes. Lights out not long after that.

 

[jlowejd5]

We slept in and basically took our sweet time this morning. Please be aware that the entire population of the hotel appears to be people headed to cruise ships, so the bags start rolling over the flagstones very early.

Checked out of the hotel around 10 and wandered out looking for breakfast. We’d passed an IHOP the night before, but when we drove by there was a line out the door into the parking lot. No go there. So we stopped at the McDonald’s across the street from the Radisson. Ooh, fancy foreign food. I don’t think the McMuffin is really Scottish, and if it’s not Scottish… (oh, Mike Myers, we miss you)

Dropped off the car at Budget (which is about three buildings down from the Radisson) and caught the shuttle over to the port. Very convenient. The porters met us right at the door of the shuttle and took our checked bags. A hint: If you’re not using the Magical Express, save your luggage tags and put them on just before you get to the port. It’s the easiest way for them to get your bags correctly up to your room.

Got through security and went up the escalator. The place was mostly empty, and this was probably 11:15 or so. On our last cruise, the 7-day Western, the whole building was packed full of people by 10:30, and we were in Group 11, I think. We did apparently miss the tiny lady who was giving out the group numbers, though. It turns out she was surrounded by a massive 10-person family, and we never saw her. Walked through the ropes and up to the Castaway Club check-in.

Our CM who helped us must have been having a bad day, though. He was very abrupt, and almost seemed ticked that I had everything in order (passports, signed contracts, etc). Plus he forgot to give us our CC lanyards. Normally, I wouldn’t have said anything, because I try not to be one of the people who whines when I don’t get free stuff, but they are just ridiculously handy to keep your KTTW card and ID in. I ended up going up to one of the ladies at the very front desk, and she almost sprinted over to get them for us. And she was about 103 years old, so that was pretty impressive. So thanks to her.

There’s a new thing I didn’t know about, which is that they now snap a digital photo of you once you’ve checked in, to match up in the system with your KTTW card. It wasn’t an inconvenience at all, just one additional step before we could go sit down and relax. Dining rotation was PTTA, and we were in 5622, which is the first time we haven’t been on Deck 6 someplace.

When we were on our 7-day, our rotation was PLAPLAP, which immediately became the source of any number of jokes. Jacques Cousteau: “ah, chess… here, choo see us as ve chase ze elusive plaplap back to it’s natural home…” So I had to send a message to our 7-day cruising pals to let them know we’d discovered the Ptta, the only known natural enemy to the dreaded plaplap. Yeah, we’re nerds…

We ended up in Group 5, which meant we were on the ship by about 12:15 or so. Even by that time, the place wasn’t really full. Maybe the WDW buses hadn’t shown up in force yet? I dunno. Oh, man I love this ship. Everybody’s so friendly, and when you tell them it’s your fifth cruise, they genuinely seem happy to hear it. And the best part about this one is that I’d already booked Palo (brunch and dinner) online, so there was no need to worry about any of that. I did walk down to Wavebands for a second, because there wasn't a card in our room confirming our Palo reservations. But that's normal, I was told. So don't panic.

We wandered back to PC for lunch. Normally we end up going to BB, but it always just seems so crowded and crazy up there, with people looking for tables, and napkins blowing all over the place and stuff. We wandered around up on deck for a while afterwards, since our rooms weren’t going to be ready until 1:30. About 1:00 we walked back down to 5 and sat in the big comfy chairs outside the Buena Vista Theater. I felt like such a geek, because there were no less than about a dozen different groups of people who came up the steps and couldn’t find the kids clubs. I kept giving directions. I couldn’t stand to see them confused. They dropped the strap back to our hallway about 1:20, and our bags were already outside our room. That made unpacking a snap.

We had a message on the bed wishing us a happy anniversary. I don’t remember actually telling anybody it was our anniversary. Still not sure how they found out. Oh, well. Michele has a rule that nobody is allowed to sing to her at a restaurant. It’s a good rule, but it means that I’m very tight-lipped when it comes to things like birthdays and anniversaries and stuff like that.

We just sorta chilled out and unpacked for a while until the lifeboat drill. For the first time ever, we were happy about the drill, because our assembly station was inside AP. That was nice. But, and here’s where my contempt for people who don’t obey the rules rears its ugly head again, they tell you a couple of times to keep your life vests on until you get back to your stateroom. They mean it. The guy walking back up the steps in front of me took his off immediately, which meant the six-foot strap was dragging on the ground. So I stepped on it, on purpose. Which, of course, ripped the vest out of his hands. So he has to stop, like human cholesterol in the passengerial artery, and pick it up again. Now, what if it had been a kid, or an old person, who had tripped on it going up the stairs? There’s a fun vacation, with the first day of it spent getting a cast on an arm or a leg. People, just do what you are supposed to do, and everything works out okay. Are they dorky-looking? Sure, but there’s 2000 of us wearing them all at once, so you’re no dorkier than anybody else.

Anyway…

The show that night was the Golden Mickeys. A fun show, helped out by a good Rona Rivers and some kids who were obviously having some fun. It’s not Michele’s favorite show, but then again we both miss Hercules. After the show, we changed for dinner and walked down to the Cadillac Lounge, where they had a “Tribute to Frank Sinatra” at 7:30. Wow. I swear when we walked in I thought it was just a recording. Kenne’, the piano player, is just truly outstanding. If you have a chance, GO SEE HIM!! Had something called a Mae West Martini. Tasted like happy, happy cough syrup. Wow.

Dinner that night was at Parrot Cay. It had been a while since we’d done late seating, which I actually prefer, so I kinda forgot about the line. They even mentioned it a couple of times, that there was no need to line up, but people have selective hearing sometimes. We wandered over just about 8:15, and the line stretched back well into the Promenade Lounge. We were seated at an 8-top, but only one other couple ever showed up. They were nice folks, but that first night the wife was VERY queasy, which sorta stunted conversation. Our servers were Ricardo from Peru and Mehmet from Turkey. Mehmet was brand new, but he did okay. I can’t imagine how stressful that must be, overcoming a language barrier and still trying to live up to the heightened Disney standards. My hat is off to all the servers and staff onboard. I was going to do a big review of all of our dishes, but I’ll be honest, I don’t remember what all we had. Oh, well. Let’s just say it was delicious. We pretty much just crashed when we got back to the room, so that’s the end of day one.

 

[Olga]

Looking forward to more. The lady that sprinted to get you a lanyard, the life vest strap and a lazy vacation ..

 

[jlowejd5]

Nassau. Well, not really. This was our fourth trip back through that particular port, and we’d already done everything we wanted to do. First time there, we got off and walked all through the market and got hassled to braid Michele’s hair. Second trip, we went over and toured Atlantis, which was actually very cool, if a bit of walking to get around. We did the aquarium tour and walked all through the casino. Very neat. Last time, Michele stayed on board and my friend Michael and I went to look at watches. We did get offered a romantic hansom cab ride through the streets of Nassau, which we gigglingly declined.

For this trip, we didn’t even pretend like we were getting off the boat. Michele booked the electric seaweed thing at the spa, which she very much liked, even if it was, in her words, “extremely disturbing”. We ate a late breakfast in a nearly empty Parrot Cay, and then sauntered up on deck for a while. We sprawled out by the adult pool and read for a while, then she wandered off to the spa and I went back down to the room before I got completely sunburned. For the most part, this is how today went. We didn’t set out to accomplish anything, and by gum, we were successful. We ate a light lunch from Pluto’s Dog House and just people-watched. A note: They no longer have napkin dispensers up at the pool-side dining locations. You can get them if you ask for them, but don’t do what I did, which is walk around for ten minutes looking like an idiot, thinking you must have missed them somewhere. I sorta understand why they did this, because I remember the last one we were on, on a windy day at sea there were napkins blowing all around where the wind had plastered them up against the plexiglass all over Decks 9 and 10.

We did make a stop late today at the DVC desk. We’d been talking about joining for a couple of years, since way before we could afford it. We had the dvds and all the information, and we had decided to buy in, but we wanted to talk about points and pricing and stuff. The guy, who was super-nice, told us that if we knew most of the basics, we would be okay skipping the “group meeting”, since it was designed more as a basic information session. So we scheduled a meeting with one of the sales folks at 9:00 the next morning. More on that later.

The show tonight was Toy Story the Musical. Meh. It was okay. I mean, I appreciate the difficulty of the costuming and the sets and the wire work, and technically it was a brilliant show. I was a back-of-the-house drama geek in high school, running lighting and helping with staging, so that’s always something I notice. But it just didn’t grab me the way the other DCL shows do. It probably doesn’t help that Toy Story is not my favorite Pixar flick. I will, however, give respect to the little green alien segment of the show. I had “Obey the Claw” in my head for hours. That part really made me giggle. If it’s on the next cruise we go on, we’ll probably skip it and not feel too badly about it. If you’ve got kids who are Toy Story devotees, this will be a great show for them, don’t get me wrong. But for us, not so much.

I will again at this point sing the praises of Kenne’ on the piano in the Cadillac Lounge. The 7:30 show was all Ray Charles. Just knocked your socks off. We even gave him $5 and requested our favorite ever Ray Charles song, Seven Spanish Angels, the duet with Willie Nelson. And he nailed it. That’s talent. The 10:30 show was the Best of Diamond and Manilow, but we were exhausted and skipped it.

Dinner was Triton’s. I think it’s the restaurant whose menu has the least number of “me-friendly” choices. But even a bad meal there is better than most places on shore. So I’m not complaining. Luckily, our tablemates were feeling a heckuva lot better, so we had a good time talking and getting to know each other. They’re both in the medical field as well, so we all had something in common. And that’s pretty much all of day two.

 

[jlowejd5]

Castaway Cay. Well, kinda. We docked at CC without any problems, which is good. I had heard that a few weeks before, DCL had been unable to dock there. That would have been disheartening. But luckily, Captain Gus got us in safe and sound. We got a quick breakfast up at BB. By the way, this is the first time we’ve stayed this far aft (5622 is the first stateroom off the aft lifts on the starboard side on Deck 5), and it was extremely convenient, especially for food and the beverage station on Deck 9. Very cool. The one thing we noticed at breakfast out on deck is that it was REALLY windy. I’m talking 20-30mph sustained winds, the entire time we were eating. Whew.

After breakfast, we walked down to the DVC desk for our meeting. They took us down to the DVC “conference room”, which is an inside stateroom on Deck 2 with all the normal furniture removed and an office wedged into it. It was surprisingly roomy, but as it also doubled as the DVC goodies storage room, it was a bit Mad-Hattery. We met with Ricardo, who was just super-nice. As I said before, we were pretty familiar with the guts of the DVC, so we could skip that portion of the pitch, and move right into dollars and points. We were in there about an hour, and walked out with 270 points a year at the Animal Kingdom Villas. Plus hats.

The astounding thing to us was the amount and quality of the incentives that they were offering onboard the ships if you bought in. First, they gave us $6.25 per point back as a gift card, and allowed us to basically cut our down payment by almost 60%. Second, they gave us a “free week” with RCI, which is now their partner in non-Disney-owned timeshare properties. Then, they gave us the option of a free 7-day cruise in a category 9 or an “extra” year’s worth of points. We debated, but finally decided on the extra points (which are known as “Developer Points”). And we’re glad we did, especially with the “bounceback” offer that showed up the next night. While we were waiting on some stuff to print out, I asked Ricardo what an average week of sales onboard looked like. I almost fell out of my chair when he told me that on average, they did about $300,000.00 a week in DVC sales. Wow. I guess that would explain the dozens of people we saw over the next two days wearing brand new DVC member red hats.

So we were feeling pretty good about ourselves, happy with our decision, and we headed down off the ship onto CC. Walked over to the gift shop, and found a couple of really nice shirts. Any time I can find a decent shirt in my size, I’m happy. DCL (and WDW) don’t offer any “tall” sizes, and I’m 6’4”, 270, so I end up with a 3X, which are unfortunately few and far between. Their 2X cut on me ends up looking like a half-shirt. And I’m not going there. (You’re all )

Jumped the trolley and headed out to Serenity Bay. Now, I am a huge fan of the cancelled before its time masterpiece of television Firefly (from Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy), and any of you who are also fans know what the name “Serenity” means to us Browncoats … there’s no place I can be / since I found Serenity / you can’t take the sky from me… (btw, if nothing in that last sentence made any sense to you, it’s okay. But I would always recommend people watching that show on dvd. You’ll be hooked.) So I’m always happy when I get there. Now, at this point, it’s probably 10:30 or so, and I’ve been here enough times to figure we’re going to be in a chair about ¾ of the way down the beach, and it’s going to take us fifteen minutes of sand-walking to get there.

But no. We ended up in chairs directly in front of the bar. So I’ve got great music behind me, beautiful water in front of me. What could be better? Well, maybe something less than the 20mph wind we were getting. It was almost too cold to take your shoes off, let alone go down to a bathing suit or even think about getting in the water. We stayed out there for about an hour or so, hoping as the day warmed up, it would get better. Eventually, though, we just decided to pack it in. We did hit the cookout over by the adult beach, which is just outstanding. I love how sheltered and secluded we felt.

There was a small group of people eating next to us, and I so wanted to just go over and sit down and hang out with them. They had sat next to us the night before at the show. The guy was probably early 60’s, and he had a not-so-hidden Mickey dyed black into his silver hair. I feel guilty I didn’t go over and talk to them. Michele and I want to be them when we’re older. He knew everybody, everybody seemed to know him, and it’s obvious that they were having a great time. If you’re out there sir, thanks for inspiring me just a little, and reminding us all that you’re never too old to dream.

I had another tiny episode of frustration here, as well. Now, as you know, DCL is very good (in my opinion) about enforcing their age restrictions. As adult travelers, I very much appreciate that. I’ve seen people asked to leave Diversions with two 9-year-olds. I’ve seen 16-year-olds asked to leave the adult pool. But always in a very respectful and quiet manner, which is the best way to handle it. So at one point Michele is up getting some more to drink, and sorta stumbles into the middle of a scene. I don’t know whether this guy was out on a bike or just walking around, but he’d brought his three young kids (probably 4, 6 and 9?) into the little food area, and he was filling up on drinks while his kids ran around making a ridiculous amount of noise and bumping into people. (Please remember there’s a huge water cooler just out by the tram stop that was not 40 feet away, put there especially for this purpose.) The CMs in the area were quietly informing the guy that this was an over-18 area, and he basically got belligerent and said “but my kids are thirsty”. Well, sir, in that case, then obviously the rules do not apply to you, and you are free to do whatever you want to do, all day, every day. The rest of us will just sit here in the dirt and eat wet cigarette butts so as to stay out of the way of you and your obviously superior offspring.

I sarcasm.

Anyway… After we ate, we rode back to the central part of the island, which, sheltered from the wind, was warm, sunny, and incredibly comfortable. Oh, well. We eventually made our way back on to the ship and started looking at DVC destinations. And we watched one of the jet-ski tours come zipping by the ship. We may do that next time. It looked fun. But it looked like everybody was doubled up, and Michele looked at me and said “hey, pal, I’m getting my own, bite me”. Hee hee…

We got a call from Ricardo with DVC and asked if we could come and sign our official papers that evening, so we did. We were totally planning on watching Bolt in 3-D, but it just sorta never happened. I heard good things about it, though. So now, with the Castaway Club stuff and the DVC stuff, we have two more tote bags than we had 48 hours ago. That’s a lot of toting capacity.

We had Palo reservations tonight, which we never miss. We’ve had some amazing experiences there, and cannot say enough good things about it. Our server was Coskun (I think) from Turkey. Just as he pronounced his name, somebody behind us sneezed, so I haven’t the foggiest idea how it’s actually pronounced. He was really, really good. We are hugely devoted to the Palo calamari, and we always get an order. We remarked how much we love it, and he ended up bringing us two orders. That’s a lot. I had the lasagna, which was a special dish, and it was fabulous. Michele ordered the salmon, but when it arrived, it was a HUGE piece of fish, but unfortunately had this raw onion relish stuff on top of it (which wasn’t really mentioned in the menu). Michele does NOT do onions, and the problem was that the flavor of the onions and soaked down into the fish and really drowned out the salmon. She debated about saying anything, but the next time he came to the table, he knew something was wrong. We felt bad, but she ordered the filet (which showed up in like five minutes) to replace it. Our server apologized, the maitre d’ apologized, but it really wasn’t that big a deal.

Then, of course, the soufflés. Please allow me a small moment of Homer Simpson here, while I wipe the drool off my chin…

They were showing the first Pirates movie on the Dumbotron, and we talked about watching it, but we were both exhausted from another long day of doing nothing.

 

[jlowejd5]

Sea Day. Hmm… Something is odd. I’ve been on “Sea Days” before, and I don’t remember us going quite this fast. I opened our curtain this morning, and we are absolutely flying along. And I see buildings in the distance. Usually, on the sea days, we’re just plodding up the coast about 6-8 knots. But not this morning. I flipped on the stateroom tv to the bridge report channel, and am astounded we are pulling almost 20 knots. I was confused. I flipped over to the “Indiana Jones You Are Here White Line On The Map Channel”, only to see the little arrow indicating the boat miles off course, heading directly west towards the coast of Florida. About ten minutes later, they came on the intercom and let us know that we were diverting into Ft. Lauderdale because of a medical emergency. So that explains it…

We have Palo Brunch reservations at 10:30, so we have a lazy morning, get dressed, and head upstairs. We were just coming into the Ft. Lauderdale harbor when we left the stateroom, and we got some pictures of confused people on the beach taking pictures of the ship. There was a Princess ship at anchor, but I don’t think they were used to seeing us. There was a post on the DIS boards I saw when we got back where somebody said “is everything okay? My mom lives on the water in Ft. Lauderdale, and the Wonder just sailed past her house…” How much would that freak you out?

But our table at Palo gave us a great, almost 360 degree view of the port area. Some of those houses are just right on top of the water. Very nice. I’ll post some pictures from home tonight (I haven’t even downloaded my pix yet, that’s how lazy I am). They actually had us sitting at one table, but moved us over next to the window so we would have a better view. Our server from last night is our server this morning. He says “why you did not tell us it was anniversary?” How the heck do they know this stuff?

He then says “for you, I have special surprise”, and out he walks with two plates of the calamari!! I swear I don’t even remember saying anything about coming back for brunch the next day while we were at dinner the night before. In fact, I’m almost sure we didn’t. We got some funny looks from the other diners, because calamari is definitely not on the brunch menu. Oh, but so good. But that’s four plates of calamari in about 14 hours, so it may be a while before we go to Red Lobster…

As always, the rest of brunch was fantabulous. One note, we saw Michael while we were there. He was our Palo dinner server with some friends of ours on a past cruise, and was just an awesome server. One of our tablemates that trip kept flirting with him, and that led to six of us eating (by my best estimate) eight appetizers, nine entrees, and no less than ten desserts (six soufflés plus one of everything else on the menu to share). So, needless to say, we loved him, even though it took us twenty minutes to waddle back to our staterooms that night.

I don’t have much recollection of the rest of that afternoon, other than the fact that it most definitely did NOT involve eating anything. Except for some soft-serve ice cream, I think. We relaxed by the pool and read for a couple of hours, hung out in the room, and just sorta people watched. (anybody see a pattern here?) We thought about stopping in for some bingo, but just couldn’t bring ourselves to haul up off the deck chair.

Eventually, it was showtime. That night was Disney Dreams, my clear cut favorite among all the Wonder shows. Remember, all you need is faith…trust…and pixie dust… (and if you just did the hand motions, then you’re just as cool as me) Just a stunningly good show, even the fifth time I’ve seen it. It still packs an emotional wallop, and it’s fun to pick up on some of the little things I’ve not noticed before.

Dinner that night was at AP, and it was so deliciously good again. I do find it somewhat odd that there’s not a lot of pasta dishes in the main dining rooms, but that’s such a minor thing. We passed out our tip envelopes to our servers, told Mehmet that he’d done a fine job being brand new, and that we really appreciated all the extra effort he’d given. Again, it was just the four of us at the 8-top, so we mostly gossiped about the ‘medical emergency’ that morning. Our tablemates had heard that it was an older gentleman who was having an MI, and that he was taken directly from the ship to the hospital for an angio. I hope everything worked out okay for him and his family/friends.

After we finished eating, we said goodbye to our new friends (who were leaving on an early flight, so neither of us were going to be at breakfast), and headed back upstairs to pack. Always the saddest part of the trip, and the most nerve-wracking, making sure you have everything where it needs to be. Our advantage is that we’re not heading directly to the airport, so we didn’t need to worry about any of that nonsense. I started to put the bags out, and our stateroom host, Alain, was right there to take them. The CM-only area where they stack the luggage was directly across from our stateroom, so he took them right from me and put them in the pile with all the rest.

And that’s pretty much the end of that day. A little melancholy, but we knew we still had plenty of vacation to go, as opposed to immediately getting on a plane. So that was nice.

 

[jlowejd5]

Thought I'd perk this one up with a few photos of odd, random stuff. I got a ridiculously awesome lens for my Nikon D40, so I'm hoping some of the quality stays even though I've compressed these for upload and display.

Here's backwards luggage forklift driving guy. He was so fast and efficient.

Cast Members returning from some sort of shopping trip. This was a constant flow from 1:30 until almost 3:30.

The Ariel View Television (The DumboTron) prior to the Sailaway Party.

Cruise Director Peter

The last little bit of land leaving Port Canaveral. Mine! Mine!!

 

[jlowejd5]

The real Diablo, and the towel dog our host left for us.

Der Dutchman (that's a joke only the midwesterners will get)

Entering Ft. Lauderdale port.

Ft. Lauderdale beach.

 

[jlowejd5]

Entering Ft. Lauderdale port.

That arrow is us, trying to get back on line.

Restocking the Wonder, early Thursday morning.

The view from our Universal hotel room. The two towers are Dr. Doom's FearFall, and the green and purple thing is the Hulk coaster. Whoot!

 

[ldeninge]

, less’n you wants to wrassle a gator for his lunch.

Thanks for an awesome trip report, with so many witty and wonderful phrases. I've never seen "less'n you wants to..." in print before, but being a fellow midwesterner, have HEARD it said all too many times!!

 

[frdeb1999]

Wonderful TR and pics!!

 

[srethlake]

They didn't happen to serve the yummy long-john's on the Der Dutchman while you were there...just wanted to let you know somebody understood that and it was very cute!

 

[LMO429]

enoyed your report!

 

[enchanted72]

I knew I liked you and then I read the bit about the Serenity and knew it was true! We LOVE that show!

Great report!

 

[anetnmike]

Can I just say a loud AMEN to the life jacket rant?
I mean COME ON people! We ALL have to do it , just keep the thing on!
Thank you. I feel better now.
Loved the TR, by the way.
I realxed just reading it. Really!

 

[jlowejd5]

Back on land. We knew we had all kinds of time, so we slept until about 7:00 or so, showered, and headed out the door. We sat for a few minutes on Deck 5 overlooking the atrium and watched people leave. That’s always fun, to see who is cool and prepared, and who is freaking out because something’s gone screwy. We wandered off the ship by about 8:15 or so, headed down the escalator, and picked up a porter. I have to say, these folks are worth every dime we tip them. I have to schlep my bags around all the time, so why not find a dude to help me for a couple of bucks. Plus they make it easy because they know exactly where they’re going, so you gain a few minutes of standing around time.

Breezed through customs and headed out to the Budget pick-up area. Again, this is the first time we’ve experienced this particular form of transportation, so it’s all new to us. Major kudos to DCL and the porters on how easy they make it to get where you’re going. We were the only ones who got on the shuttle at the DCL terminal. We thought, sweet, this will be easy. Then we drove over to the Carnival (I think, I wasn’t really paying attention) terminal, and completely filled the shuttle, and left people standing there who couldn’t fit on. I guess there’s something to be said for the Magical Express, after all. The whole shuttle waiting area was packed full of people, but I have no idea where all they were going (other rental companies, hotels, etc). But, since we’re vacation ninjas, we quickly (and quietly) worked out our strategery. When we got to the rental place, I would take care of getting the car, and she would handle the baggage. I was third off the bus. Yay. Got our car easily, loaded the bags, and headed out toward our new destination, Universal Orlando.

We had skipped breakfast, so we ended up stopping at a Denny’s just outside of Orlando for a quick bite to eat. Once we were done, we headed on to UO and our hotel, the Royal Pacific Resort. Holy cow. What a gorgeous place. Imagine the beauty of the Polynesian, with the advantage of being 30 years newer. I can’t imagine staying anywhere else when we come to UO. The bellmen and front desk folks were awesome, and they had a room ready for us when we got there at like 11:00. We were in a water-view room (the pool complex) on the fourth floor of Tower 3. We were actually the very last room in that wing, continuing a long-standing tradition we have of being as far as humanly possible away from the elevators in whatever hotel we’re staying in. It’s become something of a joke at this point. But again, that’s a small thing.

The hotel brought the bags up while I went to park the car. We unpacked, relaxed for a few minutes, and headed out to see the parks. The grounds of the hotel are just amazing. The boat ride from the dock over to the CityWalk area is very convenient. I don’t think we waited more than about 8 minutes at any point during the stay. Very happy with the transportation.

We had decided to go to Universal Studios first. I had been there forever ago, all the way back in 1991, and I remember almost nothing about it. But when we were in California last October visiting Disneyland, we rented a car and met some friends at the Hollywood version of Universal, and had a really good time. We got our tickets from the little electronic kiosk, which was pretty convenient, and got through the turnstiles and into the park. Now, anybody who knows me won’t believe this, but I had absolutely no plan to follow. Normally, I’m “Pal Justin”, the one who knows which shows to go see, which attractions are skippable, and what time the 3:00 parade starts. Plus, occasionally, I’ll wiggle my arm and spout out inane Disney trivia. But for this one, I was in full-on wander around mode.

We headed back into the park and just sorta soaked it all in. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, perfect temperatures, a little overcast. It looked like everybody there was stopping at Jimmy Neutron and Shrek 4-D, so we kept walking back in and rode Revenge of the Mummy. A word of warning: UO prohibits any kind of carry-on baggage on about 75% of their attractions, which means no camera bags, backpacks, or anything like that. They have free electronic lockers next to the headliner rides, but I decided to leave the camera bag back at the hotel. Not worth fighting through the crowd. Mummy is awesome. Very cool.

After we got off, we got picked off the street to participate in a tv watching and rating thing. Basically, they showed us seven differently cut previews of the new NBC/Universal series “Kings”, and we had to tell what we liked and didn’t like. I tried to give coherent answers, but I wanted to jackslap the people around me. I could see their monitors, and I saw things like “I liked it when the tank blowed up” and “When your a king life is good” and “AWESOME!!”. (all grammatical errors [sic]) So now I think I have to watch at least the first couple of episodes of this thing. Plus they paid us $10 each, which was cool.

A word about Universal attractions. As a guest at a UO resort, we were entitled to flash our room cards and take advantage of the Universal Express Plus option, which, in Disney-speak, meant we got all-time FastPasses for every attraction and show. Wow. Now, granted, the park was not overly full, but what this meant was that we could do the entire park in about four plus hours. I think the longest we waited was about 10, maybe 15 minutes. And the posted time for the Simpsons ride was 70 minutes when we showed up. Obviously, it would be very hard for WDW to put a similar program in place, simply based on the fact that they have like 70,000+ hotel rooms on property. Day Guests wouldn’t ever be able to ride anything. But I can tell you that I will never again visit UO without participating (either by staying there or by buying it). It gave us SO much more free time to see the parks.

After that, we knocked out Jaws, Men In Black, Simpsons, got some lunch at the slowest-moving pizza line ever, did the E.T. Adventure (which made me twitch for Reese’s Pieces for a day and a half), then the Horror Make-up Show (which is underrated and really a good time), and then decided that we’d pretty much had enough for the day. Jaws is still fun. The MiB ride is better than either Buzz Lightyear (Orlando or Anaheim). The Simpsons Ride is one of the most enjoyable rides I’ve ever been on. It’s really well done, it’s funny, and it’s self-deprecating enough to be funny for the park-savvy guests, too.

We wandered out of the park, jumped the boat back to the hotel, and wandered out to the pool for a while. Eventually, we had to come back in and change for dinner, which was at Emeril’s restaurant at CityWalk. Now, having just gotten off the cruise ship, we weren’t expecting too much, but I have to say the food may have been better here than on the Wonder. The service was perhaps the best I’ve ever had, anywhere, and I filled out a comment card onsite and sent them an email when I got home to let them know what a fabulous time we had. Amazingly good food, and our table was out on the little porch area so we could watch the rest of CityWalk go by. If you have the opportunity while you’re there, I highly recommend Emeril’s. And, including dessert and a huge tip, the two of us got out of there for about $125. Back to the hotel and crashed out for the night.

 

[jlowejd5]

Today is Islands of Adventure. Whee! The park didn’t open until 9, and we were not in any kind of hurry, so we took our time getting ready. Now, the temperature today was predicted to be a high of 62. Which, for Ohio in February, is downright balmy. But we spent most of the day giggling at what had to be Florida natives wearing sweaters, scarves and gloves. Yes, gloves. First, most of the people wearing six layers looked like they weighed 85 pounds soaking wet, so step one is eat a sammich. We were perfectly comfortable in shorts and a windbreaker, which is honestly what I’d wear 365 days a year if I could get away with it. So yay us.

Huge benefit to the Royal Pacific Resort: their breakfast bar. I wish every hotel I ever stayed at for anything ever had exactly what the RPR had in their lobby. It was absolutely perfect. Milk, juice, coffee, tea, bagels, donuts, assorted pastries, cold cereal, instant oatmeal, plus all the toppings and fixings you could possibly want. So incredibly convenient. If I’ve got a big day of park touring in front of me, I don’t really want to sit down and have eggs and sausage. A bagel and an OJ and I’m ready to go. Granted, not the cheapest bagel I’ve ever eaten, but I’ll pay for the convenience.

Plus, I’m convinced that Disney has genetically engineered their breakfast sausage to drain every ounce of liquid out of your body about 45 minutes after you eat it, giving you just exactly enough time to get from your resort into the parks. So you come off of your first ride and you’re so dry-mouthed you can’t speak. But hey, here’s a $3.00 Coke to soothe your parched tongue. Brilliant!!

I have a general question about our vacation, which we happened to take when apparently all of Lawn Guyland, Bwahston, and New Hampshah were completely empty. And this is directed (mostly tongue-in-cheek) at my East Coast brethren: Are any of you ever happy? I mean really content with the world? We spent two and a half days in the theme parks watching one domestic squabble after another. Everyone was angry at everybody else in their traveling party. So we got to listen to hours of the most stereotypical nasally New York accents you’ve ever heard, getting louder as the day went by. Imagine being in a park where half the people sound like background actors from The Sopranos and the other half sound like Chandler’s girlfriend Janice from Friends, and both of them are having a bad day.

One of the problems I had (and this is just a pet peeve of mine) is that at every opportunity, someone was right behind me, reading a sign out loud. That drives me to distraction. Unless you’re traveling with a small child, a foreigner, or some sort of special needs person, everybody can read the signs. For example, the pizza place. They only had like three things on the menu. Pizza, chicken fingers, and beverages. Why do we need to recite the entire contents of the vast menu out loud? Three times? Grr. But anyway, please understand that I was glad to have all y’all there. If nothing else, it will make it that much easier the next time I talk to my friends from Parma (and that one’s just for the Clevelanders our there). Plus I like to study other accents so I can do them better, and this week was a mimic’s dream.

So on to the park. I had a little trepidation before we got here, based on some of the things I’ve read about the restraint systems in the big rides. I’m 6’4”, 270, but carry most of my size and weight in my chest – my suit jacket is a 52 Long. I’m athletic and relatively healthy, I’m just barrel-chested. Which always puts me on edge when I’m dealing with anything other than a lap bar. The over-the-shoulder harnesses are usually okay, unless (as they are at UO) they’re the ones where you have to buckle the strap to the seat. For example, I’m perfectly comfortable on the Mummy, Expedition Everest, Mission:Space, Space Mountain, etc. because none of those have the additional buckle at the bottom. And it’s even more frustrating when I see people who are grossly more out of shape than me who can ride with no problems because they carry all the weight in the hips and thighs. You can squoosh butt-fat. You can’t compress a ribcage.

Thankfully, UO has taken that into account. They have a couple of “Modified Seats” (in row 3 and row 6) on Hulk and Dueling Dragons that are specially designed for people with larger chest measurements. There are tester seats outside both rides, and I was extremely happy to realize that the modified seat actually gave me about an inch or two wiggle room. Yay! So I was able to relax a little bit, because those coasters are the big draw at IOA, and I would have been extremely disappointed if I wasn’t able to ride them.

So we did the Hulk first thing, and wow what a ride. That’s maybe the fastest / most G-forces I’ve ever pulled on a ride. But smooth and fun. Then we did the Spiderman ride, and that is honestly the best motion simulator I’ve ever been on. It was just outstanding. Not to be missed. We skipped the “Toon Lagoon” section, because it was a little too cool for water rides. We did stand around and watch some of the people coming off of Ripsaw Falls, and I have to say, those boats are absolutely flying when they come down that last drop. Very cool. Jurassic Park didn’t have much for us, as we weren’t doing the water rides, so we just sorta meandered through and looked at the theming and the decorations.

Next up was the Lost Continent and Dueling Dragons. Almost. I’m hoping when they open the Harry Potter area that the congestion eases up a little bit, but it’s a real nightmare to get from the Jurassic Park area to the entrance to Dueling Dragons. Non-riders congregate at the entrance/exit to DD, and just stand there, sheeplike, right in the middle of the way. They’re perched on every available surface (including the tester chairs, which had two squirming children in them getting what looked like ice cream all over the handles and seat surfaces) just sitting there. MOVE!! It’s also confusing to first-time riders, because the people exiting the ride are coming back down the “Express” entrance, so you begin to think the ride is down or something. We heard from a ton of people as we salmoned upstream that they were down to one car on each track. So we ended up turning around and coming back later.

After that, we walked over and did the Dr. Seuss sky trolley thing, which was pretty neat. I loved Dr. Seuss books growing up, and the attention to detail they have there is just outstanding. We backtracked a little bit to Dueling Dragons, and then took in the 8th Voyage of Sinbad stunt show, which is a fun time. The only downside was that the ampitheatre where they have the show is very shaded and was probably 15 degrees cooler than the outside. Great when it’s hot, but when it’s only 63 outside, not so much. That was a fun show, and we had great seats and enjoyed ourselves. We did Spiderman again, just because it was awesome.

We couldn’t bring ourselves to eat another round of park food, so we headed back to our hotel and ate at the pool-side bar. Just a turkey sammich, but so delicious. We did some hot-tub time for a while, then went upstairs and took a nap. Our dinner reservations that night were at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. Great food, an amazing ambience, and good service. If you don’t like Jimmy’s music, don’t go. But we do, and the videos they were showing were fun and entertaining. And we got to see the volcano erupt twice. Very cool.

After dinner, we walked across to the Blue Man Group, where we had great seats on the aisle about half-way back. I’d never seen them live before, and we had a great time. It was loud, fun, entertaining, and very very cool. I highly recommend going to see them. That’s pretty much it for our last full day of vacation.

 

[jlowejd5]

This was kind of a goof-off day. We got up, finished packing, and dropped our bags off with bell services. After breakfast, we headed back on the boat to the parks. We started at Islands of Adventure. We were heading toward the Hulk when we both sort of realized that no cars were running on it. It was spooky quiet, and when we came across the little bridge, hundreds of people were heading back out of the queue area. Apparently, it was down. So we went over and did Spiderman again instead. The only other thing we wanted to do at IOA was the Poseidon’s Fury show, which probably wasn’t really worth the wait. It was neat, I guess, but there were WAY too many people and it was very hard to see what was going on, as most of the people just stopped in the middle of the viewing areas and forced those of us behind them to stand on the steps and try to guess what was going on.

Speaking of, I want to say a word to what I like to call the “four-wide” or “five-wide” families. You know the ones. They walk hand-in-hand down the streets of theme parks, and, depending on the size of the family, they could be fifteen or twenty feet wide. And almost always the outside of the line is a small child, being drug along, slamming into the hips of people trying to negotiate their way around the rolling blockade. And, of course, the speed of the five-wide family is set by the smallest and weakest among them, usually a crying child.

Now, I’m not saying every group should VonTrapp their way down the street in a single-file shortest to tallest line, but come on people, have a little common courtesy, please. Pair up, at least. Two- or three-wide is perfectly acceptable. Almost every theme park avenue is wide enough to allow four, maybe five pairs of people to pass each other. But if a six-wide meets a six-wide, you will shut down even Main Street USA. Not all of us want to walk as slowly as your three year old. So do us all a favor, skooch on over and let the traffic flow. Thank you.

We walked back past the Hulk, and it didn’t look like it was going to be open any time soon, so we left IOA and headed back over to Universal Studios. Here we mostly just picked up on some of the stuff we skipped on Thursday, such as Jimmy Neutron, Shrek, and Disaster!, plus we did MiB again. By that point, we were tired of being on our feet, so we sadly said goodbye to Universal and our vacation and headed back to the resort. We picked up our bags (again, the staff at the Royal Pacific is great), loaded them into the rental car, and headed for the airport.

Budget makes it ridiculously easy to turn your car back in at MCO (they come to meet you with a little hand-held thingie that even prints your receipt), so that was simple and easy, which I appreciate. We will rent from Budget next time we need a car. We head back in to the counter, where again we realize that not everyone is having a magical vacation full of dreams, wonder, and pixie dust. We were flying business class (6’4”, 270, remember?) so we were able to use the special check-in line. We paid a good deal of money for the convenience, and don’t feel guilty about it at all. There was probably a 15-minute wait in the coach check-in area, and nobody in the business class check-in line. So the guy at the business class terminal was helping to move coach class along, which makes perfect sense. So we step into the business class area, and he finishes his coach passenger, and then calls us over. The “next” lady in the coach line gives me this “excuse me?!?”, super-loud, as though I’d slapped her. The guy explains that he’s actually at the business class area, and that he needed to help us. And she keeps saying “but I’m next”. I was amazed I was able to keep my mouth shut. Yay for me. Michele said she spent the entire couple of minutes it took us to get checked in giving me an extra large helping of stink-eye. Whatever.

Relatively uneventful flights home, except we felt so bad for one of our fellow passengers. She was an off-duty flight attendant, either heading home or heading to Atlanta to fly out first thing in the morning. She was a very attractive young lady who (as we learned) was Thai. She got seated next to this guy, probably mid-fifties, balding, paunchy, overly loud, clearly in the middle of a midlife crisis. He talked to this poor girl from the second she sat down until the second they got off the plane, and probably followed her up the ramp and into the terminal. When she sat down, she had a rather large book and a pair of headphones, obviously intending to have some solitary time on the plane. And as the guy downed his fourth Irish coffee (on a flight that only lasted seventy minutes), I wanted to reach over, knock the Deepak Chopra book he was highlighting out of his hands, grab both lapels, shake him ever so slightly and say “dude, she is NOT going home with you…” But again, I did not. My force of will is something to behold.

And that’s pretty much the end of our vacation adventure. Thanks for reading, and I hope it was enjoyable.