GenePool Humor

Vacation 1999

Day Eight: Fleeing the Scene

8:00 A.M.

We are up at what I consider to be exceptionally early in order to begin packing. But first, we make plans at the Garden Grille for a late breakfast in the sincere hope that we will be finished packing soon enough to enjoy one final meal, even if it is at a revolving restaurant.

9:00 A.M.

We're still packing. We showed a steady trend toward expanding disorder over the course of the week, because we're very fond of the second law of thermodynamics, which states, "we're slobs."

Okay, that isn't really fair. The problem here is, we arrived at Disney with x number of objects, all of which found a home in our hotel room within the first day. We subsequently introduced objects y and z, and then went back to the beginning of the alphabet and went through every other letter a couple of times. Now, at the end of the week, we not only have no room for these sundry objects in our hotel room, we have no room for them in our suitcases. And this is after having shipped a lot of things back home.

We also have a fairly large quantity of things we think we shouldn't throw away but that we can't imagine a practical purpose for outside of Florida. We have six broken or nearly broken severed-head-of-Mickey personal fans. We have four soda bottle straps (for carrying a soda around one's neck while leaving the hands free to carry other recently-purchased things.) We have a gigantic round souvenir cup shaped like the Epcot golf ball. We have six souvenir coffee mugs. We paid money for them, but we don't need them. Still, they're coming with us.

Finding room in our bags for all of these things takes well over an hour. In the end, we don't completely succeed; the hat I bought at the beginning of the week that I was so proud of having found is going to go on the airplane on my head; there's simply no other place for it.

10:30 A.M.

We concede defeat. We're packed, but not only do we now have to be at the Garden Grille in fifteen minutes, we're going to have to be able to get out of there fast enough to get back to the room, check out, and head to the airport for an early afternoon flight. Deb is horrified that her final meal is going to be breakfast at Port Royale, but there's not much we can do about it. So we check our luggage with a bellhop, and head across the bridge for our food.

11:00 A.M.

We have too much money left.

At the very beginning of our trip-- in fact, while it was still in the planning stage-- we convinced all of our traveling companions to go Disney Dining Style, as we had the previous year. This means all the food money gets lumped together in a kitty, and for the entire week each time one of us ate, we tabbed it to Dining ledger. Evidently, we didn't eat in enough expensive restaurants, because we now have over $175.00 left.

The hotel is very accommodating in resolving this problem. Bobo goes to the maitre d' at the only decent restaurant at the Carribbean Beach (the Captain's Table) and explains that we wish to spend this money, as we know we aren't getting it back. The restaurant kindly gives her their entire wine list, which she brings to the table.

So Papop, Bobo, the head of B.J., and Deb, sort out which bottles they're going to purchase. I stay out of it entirely-- frankly, I'll drink anything-- and take the kids to the arcade instead to use up the remaining cash from my wallet.

The bottles are subsequently loaded into a bag Papop buys for just this purpose, where they will be taken with us on board the airplane. Disney can't ship bottles of liquor, evidently.

12:30 P.M.

It's time for us to go. We say our goodbyes to Bobo and the head of B.J. Honeycutt, (they're taking a later flight,) then drive to the Custom House, pick up our luggage, drive to the drop-off spot for the car, unload our luggage, take a shuttle, with luggage, to the airport, check in our luggage, take a monorail from the check-in counter at the airport to the actual airport terminal, wait in the SouthWest Air cattle call line for our boarding pass, get on the plane, and go home.

Okay, all of that took a lot longer than it sounded. On past vacations, I've been able to provide you with cute little undeniably authentic details about the traveling portion of our vacations, but I don't have much for you here, because nothing horrible happens. This is because we have Papop with us. He seems to have a better grasp of how long it takes to do things than we do. Some day, I may inherit this skill, but I doubt it.

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This brings me to the ignominious end of yet another year in Disney World. We learned a lot this year. For example, we learned that four vacationers per trip is a good number to maintain, and in the future I think we'll go out of our way to keep that maximum intact. It's not even that things went terribly wrong. It was Twain, or perhaps Disraeli, who defined a committee as a creature with "twelve legs and no brain." Our whole vacation went a long way toward proving that point.

We did enjoy ourselves. But I'm starting to question my own memory a bit. Selective amnesia tends to set in fairly quickly-- in some cases it set in on the same day-- allowing me to forget JUST how hot it was, EXACTLY how badly my feet hurt, and precisely how MUCH money I spent. (Although my credit card company is very good about reminding me on the last point.) My father is on record as saying he'd just as soon take a vacation where he does nothing but sit around for a week. (This amuses my mother to no end. "He used to ALWAYS want to go places and do things for vacation," she says.) Every year I find myself leaning toward that ideal, but only after I've proven to myself that having fun is a great deal of work.

So, on to the lessons I hope you've taken away from this year's account:

-- Don't go in August (having said this for three years, it's now attained the status of 'Greatest Hit'.)

-- Don't bring a lot of relatives with you, even if you like them.

-- Don't cast obscure sitcom characters if you can't pay them, even though they could clearly use the exposure.

-- Don't assume that just because the line is long, the ride is any good.

-- Don't write about watching other women in something your wife is planning to read.

-- Don't expect an "Internal" bus any time soon.

I'm sure there are more lessons to be gleaned, but that's about all I can come up with.

This is my third vacation account, and every year, at the end, I think I have either a) described Disney so well that I'll have nothing to write about next year or, b) we're now too poor to even think about going again next year. As I write this, I consider both a) and b) to be perfectly true, which can only mean you'll be hearing from me again next year.

Maybe we'll go in July. It can't be much hotter than August, right?

© 2000, Gene Doucette