Vacation 1998: Part One

GenePool Humor

Vacation 1998

Day One: Getting There Is Half the Fun

We were sure something was going to go horribly wrong.

Most of the stress associated with vacations, in my opinion at least, revolves around the actual travel involved in getting to one's chosen vacation spot. Last year, we spent fully half of the trip traveling, which significantly increased the overall stress quotient. This year we only had to worry about getting to Disney, and getting home from Disney again. We were taking a direct flight to Orlando, and we already had a coupon for a discount on a Mears shuttle to the hotel. By all accounts this sort of simplicity should result in lower travel stress.

So naturally, Clinton chose this week to stick his middle finger up at the international terrorist community, the same community that has a tendency to reduce the occasional airplane into bite-sized pieces. To compound matters, Mother Nature had her middle finger firmly extended in the form of Hurricane Bonnie. At the time of our flight Bonnie was taking aim for the Bahamas, because evidently she hadn't heard we weren't visiting there this year. We were somewhat concerned she'd realize her error and adjust accordingly, possibly while we were still in the air.

But we had no control over either of these things, and so, we ignored them. And, we had a good stiff drink.

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6:00 A.M. I am up with the alarm, shockingly. Our flight is at 10:35 A.M. and we are already packed. I get up this early to make sure that our timely packing has actually taken place and I did not just imagine it.

8:30 A.M. Our ride to the airport arrives. Originally, my parents were to take us there, but, inconveniently, two of their best friends had decided to get married forty years ago this week, so mom and dad were at the Cape for the party. I consider it bad taste for them to choose friends with such inconvenient anniversaries, but I keep it to myself.

Our next option for airport service was Uncle John, who was already taking the dog for the week. He initially agreed to drive us, but begged off when it was discovered that his band is playing two gigs in two different, non-contiguous states on the same weekend. We'll be buying John a schedule book while we're down there.

The third option is an old high school friend of mine who recently moved one town away from us. Her name is Tamson. You don't actually need to know her name, but I promised I'd mention it in return for the trip to the airport. Everybody wave.

9:00 A.M. Okay, so we arrive at the airport, check our luggage outside with a bellman, he takes our tickets and exchanges them for boarding passes, and then says that Deb's ticket didn't come up in the computer. He doesn't know why, but he insists it's nothing to worry about. He suggests we go to the gate to get her boarding pass.

So we go inside, go through the metal detector, find the gate, and discover an empty desk. Because they don't man the desk until an hour before the flight. So we go back out to the main part of the terminal, find the Delta counter, and get in line. I ask a man who is wearing an official-looking jacket if, given our dilemma as described, we are in the right line. It takes a great deal of hand-waving to get his attention long enough to actually elicit a response, on account of the fact that he is evidently there only to provide information to travelers of the female persuasion. Nonetheless, we are in the right line.

We get to the front and explain our boarding pass problem to a friendly woman who then punches up the information on the computer and says "well, it appears Deborah isn't going."

Upon seeing our shocked, stunned, horrified faces (it's a good thing weaponry is discouraged in airports) she says "you didn't think I was serious, did you?"

Now, this I don't get. There are more signs warning against the brandishment of a sense of humor in airports than there are gate location signs, and she's actually surprised that we can't tell when she's kidding.

She then asks us if we'd left our luggage unattended at any time or if we have been approached by any individuals asking us to carry something on board for them. I am very tempted to tell her about the nice fellow in the turban who asked us to bring his brother Ahmed a new alarm clock. I decide not to.

10:30 A.M. We board the plane. It takes off. It does not explode.

This turns out to be a very uneventful flight. The children are by now accustomed to flying, so much so that they have gone beyond the joy of novelty and straight into sheer boredom. Becky starts asking me if we're in Florida yet when we're still over Massachusetts.

1:50 P.M. Having arrived successfully at Orlando airport, and having collected our luggage, we make our way along the terminal, discount coupons in hand, in a desperate search for the Mears shuttle.

We encounter a nice fellow named Ian, who not only gives us solid directions to the Mears counter but also informs us that it would be a tremendous waste of time to take this shuttle because he could get us there in half the time. We are mildly suspicious, but he has an official-looking card clipped to his pocket, so we opt to give it a shot.

Ian, it turns out, is a perfectly honest fellow, despite being British. The Mears shuttle goes to ALL the hotels on the Disney property, which takes an hour and a half. But at Ian's flat rate for taxi service, we end up paying the same amount of money and getting there in only half an hour.

2:15 P.M. Ian, after discovering we're from Boston, (and while driving a very reasonable rate of speed,) tells us a tale.

"The first two weeks I was in this country I was pulled over while doing about a hundred miles an hour along Interstate 95.

"The officer asks, 'do you know how fast you were going?'

"I said 'about 97?'

"He asks, 'do you know how fast you're supposed to be going?'

"I said '95?'

"'You're supposed to be going 55 miles an hour on this road, not 95' he said, and he starts to write me a ticket.

"'Well,' I say, ' if I'm only supposed to go 55, why are there all these signs on the road saying 95? Everywhere I look are signs with the number 95.'

"'That's the highway number, not the speed limit!' he said.

"'Well how am I supposed to know that?' I asked.

"Anyway we went back and forth like that for quite some time. He eventually gave up on the ticket and just let me go. Of course, I knew right well what the speed limit on the road really was."

After hearing this story, I've decided to adopt an english accent.

2:40 P.M. We reach the hotel.

We're staying at Disney's Caribbean Beach resort. The Caribbean Beach resort consists of five clusters of buildings, each representing a different island in the Caribbean, and surrounding a man-made lake. In terms of square footage and number of rooms, this is one of the largest single resorts in the country. It's so large that if you took Disneyland, in California, and moved it to Florida, you could drop it on the Caribbean Beach resort and it would fit snugly, as well as crushing thousands of tourists.

Check-in takes place in the Custom House, which is where we first discover the two things we'll remember most about Disney: lines, and air conditioning.

3:00 P.M. At the front of the line we are greeted by a very nice Disney employee who prints up room keys and gives us detailed instructions on how to go about spending massive amounts of money. See, the room key is a magnetic card with my name on it (all four keys have my name on it) and it is also linked up to the prepaid Dining Disney-Style plan we signed up for, and it is our pass to get into the parks. It is also linked up to the room charge, which is paid for by one of my credit cards. From this point on no matter where we go in the kingdom, we need only present our room key to pay for whatever we wish to buy. This last option is available for ALL the keys issued to us. In other words, we could, if we so wished, give our children the freedom to buy whatever they wanted all by themselves. I do not EVER want my children to have this much freedom.

3:15 P.M. We and our luggage are driven to our room by a very nice man who speaks like Donald Duck. Becky and Tim simply do not know what to make of this, given that he is not dressed at all like Donald Duck. They actually find this mildly disturbing.

4:00 P.M. The room is nice. We like it. We do not, however, stay in it long. After unpacking and changing we immediately wander to the bus stop for our first trip to the Magic Kingdom. But first, we call ahead and make reservations at the Crystal Palace.

They don't really call it a reservation, actually. They call it Priority Seating. All it is, is a reservation that ceases to exist if you're ten minutes late. I don't see the difference either.

4:45 P.M. Becky learns an important lesson: before grabbing Daddy's hand, make sure there isn't a lit cigarette in it. I feel bad enough about this already, but certain persons (i.e., my wife) would accuse me of sanitizing my account if I neglected to mention this. (Becky was fine. It only stung for a couple of seconds after we had the hand amputated.)

5:15 P.M. We ride Space Mountain. I'm sure you've heard of this ride before.

5:30 P.M. We take the Skyway. This is a gondola-type ride that goes from Tomorrowland to Fantasyland. These names may mean nothing to you, so let me attempt to translate. Fantasyland is where all the character rides are, like the Dumbo ride and Cinderella's Carrousel. Tomorrowland is how the future was supposed to look like twenty-five years ago. Ugh. Let me try again. It's how, twenty-five years ago, the future was expected to look. In the future. Look, never mind. I will say that they were way off regarding the future when looking at it twenty-five years ago. They now advertise this area as the "future that never was."

Anyhow, the Skyway, aside from being an excellent place to look spit on people and to see rides we might want to try, dropped us off much closer to our intended destination.

5:45 P.M. Splash Mountain. We wanted to get to this a year ago, but the line always looked too long. In hindsight, this seems a tad naive since, as I've pointed out before, Disney is even better at hiding long lines than it is at making neat rides to go with them. The "line" that we saw as too long last year was the part of the line that stretched out in front of Splash Mountain itself, and since when we visited it this year we saw no line out in front, we thought "hey, we should get right in!"

After walking through an alcove we discover a rear courtyard that's big enough to hold seventeen thousand people. I know this because that's how many people are there in front of us. It takes us thirty minutes to wend our way through the courtyard, until we enter a faux barn that we really hope is the start of the end. It isn't. It also isn't air conditioned. The line goes back out of the barn, up a flight of stairs, back INTO the barn again (the barn has two levels) and then, finally, on the other side, we find the ride. This all takes nearly an hour.

There are two or three times when I seriously consider the possibility that there isn't even a ride at the end of this line, which is how I thought of the P.T.Barnum ride. My idea is, put up the ropes for the line, accounting for, say, an hour's worth of waiting, and have it end at a giant set of doors. When the guests go through the doors they find themselves outside the park.

I'll be sending my idea to Disney World next week. I expect it to be a big success.

Anyhow, Splash Mountain is very cool. All we really knew about it was that it ended with a big drop. We didn't realize it takes ten minutes to get there. So every time there is a drop of any consequence whatsoever, we start screaming. This is only mildly annoying for the people sharing the ride with us.

7:10 P.M. We eat dinner at the Crystal Palace, and I can finally see straight again. This is the first real meal any of us have had all day. In what can best be described as the first indication of the hell to come, Timmy has three bites and announces he's full.

9:00 P.M. After the fireworks display we make our way back to the hotel, where we immediately put the children in bed.

Just kidding. Even though they had not yet seen it, the children are well aware of the existence of a swimming pool in their immediate vicinity. They can smell chlorinated water at a thousand feet. So Deb takes Becky and Tim to the pool for a short visit.

10:00 P.M. The short visit becomes an hour-long stay. But surely after all this excitement they'll fall right to sleep.

11:00 P.M. Then again, maybe not.