This was Orlando and other places in Florida. Our first real vacation, 1987, we had been married 2 years. We live in central Illinois. In the Sunday Chicago Tribune we saw an advertisement for a cruise that we could afford. This was back in the days before internet so we had a local
travel agent check it out and book it for us. He checked and said it is legitimate, but warned us that it was NOT going to be the love boat. I think it was the Vera Cruz or the Vera Cruz line, it sailed from Tampa. We knew it would be small and nothing fancy, but we would get to see Mexico.
We were so excited. Hubby bought a spiffy new suit, I bought a spiffy cocktail dress. We combined the trip with a visit to Disneyworld and after that planned to stay at relative's winter home. Free lodging, near a beach. We would see hubby's cousin and her family for just a day, they would be finishing up their visit to the house as we were arriving.
We drove to Clearwater to spend the night. I INSISTED on staying at a hotel on the beach. I insisted on a higher floor so I could get a picture of the sunrise. We got the last room in Clearwater and paid top dollar. Crappy hotel. Room had a broken ac unit but it did have the balcony I insisted on. We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. We had a waitress that was apparently going through a breakdown of some kind. Nothing that we ordered was brought to us. Same story with everyone around us. All of the people our poor waitress was serving ended up in line to pay at the same time. While we were comparing notes (good naturedly, we all could tell this girl was in a miserable place in her life) the waitress flies into the room and proceeds to scream at all of us, just a tirade of swear words that I don't even remember. Any way, by then the AC had been fixed in our room. I set the alarm to get up and take a picture of the sunrise. I opened the balcony door and encountered a fog bank so thick I couldn't see 5 stories down. I couldn't see beyond the balcony. I could hear the water, that's it.
Now all we needed to do was navigate across the causeway and head to where the boat was. First try, went wrong way and ended up headed right back across the causeway in Clearwater again. Tried two more times, third time was a charm. We are extremely nervous and agitated at this point. We get close enough to see the boat but are now under a bridge on a road blocked by construction. Drug dealers are in front of us. It's a not a good place to be. We eventually got to the boat.
Now for the cruise story which we call The Cruise to Nowhere. We waited 3 hours. They instructed us to get in lines by name and by dinner seating. Hundreds of people are in neat little lines, totally organized. After another hour or two of delays the announcement finally comes that due to a problem with the boiler the cruise has been canceled. Pandemonium erupts. We are given 3 choices; a full refund and leave, a trip on another boat at another time, or we can stay on the boat overnight while docked, get a free dinner and complimentary cocktails, and also get a full refund. We had nowhere to go so we decided to stay overnight on the boat and leave the next morning after we could consult with our travel guy and he could help us.
All of the neat little lines are gone and there are two more hours of chaos while every single person has to be processed all over again. Our luggage has all been put on the boat, then all taken off, and is now in a huge room that we get to visit a few people at time so we can find all our pieces ourselves. It took a while to find all our luggae, it was in no particular order. My big suitcase which was in perfect shape the last time I saw it now is wearing a huge orange banner that says DAMAGED UPON BOARDING. The banner is covering a big hole that has been punched through. We get our luggage and find our room. Room is a very generous term. This ship is old. The room is tiny. My DH's bed is slanted at an angle, he will be sleeping with his feet elevated above his head. The porthole is inches above the waterline. I am freaking out that when I lay down, I will be underneath the water. DH sees a cockroach but does not tell me until we are on land again.
We have a lovely dinner, in our lovely fancy cruise dinner clothes. At that point, all of our shipmates proceed to get snockered with the free booze that is meant to soothe all those bad tempers. We don't drink, so we watched a movie in the little movie theater and went to bed. The next morning I get up very early and attempt a shower in the cozy bathroom. Remember that boiler problem? That would translate to No Hot Water. I wake up my DH and say let's hurry up and get off this ship before all the hungover people wake up and realize there is no hot water. The ship was probably scuttled to the bottom of the ocean shortly after this.
Now our travel agent suggested we leave our reservations alone and visit Disneyworld at the end of our trip as we planned. So we are now going to rendezvous with cousins at the free place. Instead of us each staying there alone, we will all be together. It's a big enough place, we get along with the cousins fine, this should be o.k. As we are getting settled in with them that is when the cousin announces that she is weaning their 9 month old baby off the bottle. Cold turkey. For those of you who have gone through this experience it is not fun, for the baby, or for anyone else living in proximity to this baby. We would go out to dinner and the poor baby would see another child with a bottle and wail. She wailed at night. She wailed in the morning. She wailed at naptime. She wailed when we went anywhere in the car. Our nerves were shattered. It was time to move on to Disneyworld.
We stayed at what was once the Delta Court of Flags. No idea where we even were or what it is called now. We got into the room and honestly we were both sufferering from shattered nerves and wanted nothing more than to relax and enjoy the rest of our vacation. For some reason I wanted to move the night stand. In doing so I managed to drop the night stand squarely on my toe, smashing the nail and bruising it badly. I will now have to limp through Disneyworld with a smashed toe and in something other than my comfy tennis shoes since I can not have anything touch my bloody toe. We head to one of the many hot tubs to relax. There is a man floating there face down when we climb in. He stays face down for a very long time. Longer than either of us can hold our breath. We are just climbing out to go call 911 when the guy finally comes up for air. Darnedest thing we've ever seen. We did have a great time at Disneyworld, but the other part of the vacation was truly a shambles and we have many good laughs about it now.
The other part of it that we laugh at is from the time we left our home until the time we returned we had only 3 meals that were good with good service; the one on the ship, a nice meal at Epcot and a Denny's on the way home. We tipped the waitress $10 we were so grateful to be treated well. Every other meal, no matter what state we were in, breakfast, lunch or dinner, was a disaster. It was as if we were cursed.
I was in the Navy and went through bootcamp in Orlando! But hey, I made it, so I guess it wasn't all bad! 
- you get the picture. I, DW, was up all night. Needless to say - by the next moring - the 'girls' stayed in the CR room and the 'boys' went to MK and had a great day. Great pictures too - we missed the memories 
