Marching Along We're Adventurers ... FINAL UPDATE - Jan 20 Posts #108, 109, 110

Cdn Friends of Pooh

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Jun 8, 2006
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Well, another October trip come and gone…

To those old friends who have been with us during our previous trippie and pre-trippie, welcome back ... feel free to skip the next few paragraphs where we’ll reintroduce ourselves.

To those new friends who are just joining us, welcome to our trip report.

Who are we?

There’s me – Lee. I am an attorney with my own practice in the field of child protection. It’s not particularly glamorous work and can be extremely stressful but it has its own rewards…I’m not sure what they are yet.

And there’s Bonny whose background is in Human Resources. She worked in this capacity for a large casino company until the day before our trip last October when she decided she was getting really fed up and wanted out so the night before we left she emailed her boss to give her notice that she wouldn’t be back and she’s worked for me ever since.

We live in Edmonton, Alberta and have been making an annual trip to Orlando each October to celebrate our anniversary.

So now that we have introduced ourselves, come join us on our adventure where you’ll come in a stranger and leave a little stranger… ;)
 
I don't know if I can get any stranger... but I'll read your TR! Can't wait to see all your great pictures!:goodvibes
 

...singing the song of Adventurer's, up or down, north, south, east or west, and Adventurer's life is best...

Giddyup! :banana:
 
Whoohoo can't wait to hear all about it!!! I just got back today and can't wait to read about your adventures at HHN!
 
Add me to the list of people looking forward to reading another one of your fabulous trip reports.:thumbsup2
 
Sorry for the delay. We had to get caught up on work, then we had to prepare and set up our yard haunt for Halloween. :scared1:

To top it off, Bonny had her eye surgeries this past week. :scared:

Needless to say the TR had to be briefly put to the back burner. What was even more maddening was that I had already done the Travel Day installment and was just waiting to add the pictures. Of course, now that Bonny got the pictures ready I discovered that I had lost the text for the installment and now have to redo it all. :headache:

I'm working on that now and we should be posting it sometime today...stay tuned :surfweb:
 
She's doing great thanks Raven. Because of how bad her eyes were, instead of the normal laser surgery they implanted new lenses. Her vision is perfect when looking long distances but still blurry when looking at things up close. It may still clear up but if not she'll just need to use low-powered reading glasses.
 
Our travel day started at 4:00 am…an hour when the only people up should be shift workers, alcoholics, and angry loners…

The alarm goes off and after a few mumbled blasphemies we’re up and getting ready to head to the airport. We get the car loaded up and after saying goodbye to three very confused dogs we’re off.

First we make a quick pit stop at Tim Horton’s to grab our coffee & bagels to munch on during the drive. Each year we’re amazed that we still have to wait in line at that early hour of the morning on the Saturday of a long weekend. This year was the first time we didn’t have to wait, though there was a line-up behind us shortly after we get there. Those of you who read our last trip report may recall we promised to bring Timbits to one of the CMs at the Canadian Pavilion at Epcot. We had discussed how to do this and keep them fresh since our first trip to Epcot wouldn’t be until Monday. We had been batting ideas around for quite a while then the day before we left we decided it wasn’t likely they’d be in very good shape by Monday so we reluctantly decided we couldn’t keep our promise. :guilty:

As we got to the airport, we quickly discovered that the first-class check-in counter was being used for a tour group of teenage girls. After having to listen to them for about 20 minutes before the NWA counters opened up we felt quite relieved we weren’t flying in coach where we’d have had to listen to them for the next 3 hours. :headache: We usually fly coach but we splurged for our October trip and flew first class. As we mentioned in our trip report, it’s not about being snooty or enjoying the extra perks as much as it’s about the extra room for me since Lee is not a small man by any means!!

We get through customs quickly and head through security. The first several times we flew to the US after 9/11 Lee was always selected at random for extra screening. This was a rather constant source of amusement for Bonny. This year it was her turn and she got selected for additional screening including a pat down. They were really nice about it and it only delayed us a couple minutes (and we were quite early to begin with).

After about a 40 minute wait we were on our way to Minneapolis. The breakfast served on the plane wasn’t too bad at all and after several more cups of black coffee we started to wake up and the excitement set in. :yay:

We got to the airport at MSP, which by the way is one of our favourites. We were about to go for a stroll to see which new shops had opened up in the mall section of the airport but we remembered we had to call Emeril’s to confirm our lunch reservation for the following day. We stopped to do that and when Bonny turned on her cell phone (Lee always leaves his at home when we go on vacation) we discovered there was a message waiting.

It turned out to be a call from our hotel earlier in the morning telling us that our reservation would be cancelled unless we called them by noon Orlando time. :eek: By the time we received the message that deadline had passed but Bonny called right away and discovered that they cancelled our reservation because there was a problem with our Visa card. We had booked these reservations back in February then in July we had switched to a new reward program which required Visa to issue new cards. As you’ve probably guessed by now, we forgot to change the card on the reservation. We’ve stayed at this hotel a number of times before, and to be honest we really didn’t appreciate how they handled the situation. Yes it was our mistake but we didn’t really see why they couldn’t have just told us there was a problem with the card and to call them asap while holding the reservation for an extra couple hours, especially since it’s off-season and they were far from full. After quite a bit of hassle from the hotel we finally got our reservations reinstated. We were both pretty ticked off at how rude they were when we called them to try and get it straightened out and were debating calling Disney to try to get into POP then cancelling the Comfort Suites reservation. We finally decided to just keep the reservation we had because we got a really good rate but agreed we would just not stay there again. :mad:

Once we got our hotel mishap straightened out, it was almost time to hop on our plane to MCO so we headed to the gate and shortly after we got there we were boarded. We took off and a few hours later had arrived at Orlando. Along the way we snapped a few pictures from the plane.

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To try and save a bit of time, we decided that Bonny would go down to the Alamo kiosk while Lee waited at the baggage claim carousel. Every time we had gone to Orlando in the past, it took a long time to get our bags and we weren’t expecting this time to be any different. That Alamo kiosk is fantastic…we’ve used it twice and both times had our rental car paperwork in hand very quickly. Every time there’s a thread on the Dis about the Alamo self-serve kiosks someone mentions that they can’t use them because they don’t have a US driver’s license. Well neither do we and we’ve never had any problems whatsoever. This time Bonny had our rental car paperwork in hand and made her way back up to the baggage claim carousel before it had even started up. We were both very pleasantly surprised when our bags were amongst the first ones out of the chute. Before we left, we snapped this pic of the ad for MNSSHP that was right across from the carousel.

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We headed out to the parkade and were about to load our bags into a Kia when one of the Alamo staffers pulled up in a Saturn Aura and told us to take it since the a/c was already running and it was cooled off. We thanked her and hopped in and were on our way. In case we don’t get to mention it later, we have to tell anyone who may think about buying one of these cars to be prepared to spend a fortune in gas. At home we drive a 2004 Toyota Rav4 SUV and a 2006 Mustang GT. Both of these are considered to be guzzlers but neither of them is anywhere near as thirsty as this Saturn we had. Our hotel was less than 10 mins from Disney and less than 15 from Universal. We only took one day trip to St. Augustine but otherwise stayed close to the hotel and we still ended up going through 6 tanks of gas in the 2 weeks we were there.

We got to the hotel and were curious to see if our reservations had actually been restored. Sure enough they were and we got checked in with no problems. To be perfectly honest we were both a bit disappointed as we had gotten a bit excited about going back to POP instead. We had booked these reservations before our first stay at POP so we really didn’t know any better. Plus over the 2 weeks we thought we’d get a lot more use out of the fridge, microwave, and extra room we had at Comfort Suites. Anyhoooo we got up to our room and promptly discovered our room keys didn’t work. So Lee had to run back downstairs to the lobby to get the keys reprogrammed. Finally we get into our room and snap a few pics before we unpacked.

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After a short rest, we get changed into fresh clothes and headed off to Downtown Disney. We take the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator which results in us exiting out the side of the hotel instead of through the lobby which is usually closer to where the car is parked. When we popped out the side next to the garbage dumpster we saw these glowing eyes peeking at us. Just for fun we snapped a quick pic of the racoon.

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We got to DTD around 8:00 pm and of course it’s almost impossible to find a parking spot (duh – what did we expect on a Saturday night). After driving around for about 20 minutes we finally found a spot and headed to Earl of Sandwich for a bite. After we ate, we did a bit of browsing and were amazed at how much busier it was than on our last trip in May. After an hour or so of browsing we start feeling the long day and headed back to the hotel. We set the alarm for the next morning and quickly dozed off.
 
You can't start a trip without the Tim Hortons stop! It is too bad that you couldn't get the Timbits, I am sure the CM would understand though, it was a nice thought anyways and you tried to follow through on it and that is what counts.:goodvibes

I would have been really freaked out getting that message from the hotel. I agree that they handled it very badly at least it all got fixed in the end.

The room looks nice and comfortable and it was in a nice central location. You two have AP's I believe?
 
Glad you got the hotel straightened out, but I love Pop too, I would have called Pop! :lmao: It looks like a nice hotel, hopefully everything keeps going well for you!

Hope Bonny's still doing well with the eyes! I hate wearing glasses, but I think I'd feel weird if I stopped. ;)
 


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