We go to Disney every year. This was the best trip we’ve had in years. Teresa set up all the plans. She made the reservations and every time she asked what we were planning to do for the day I told her it was up to her. So she essentially ran the entire show and it was the best time the three of us have had in a long, long time.
We normally stay at the “All-Star” resorts. They are the cheapest Disney property like the purples in Monopoly. (More like the light-blues, Disney doesn’t have purple properties…) We always figured that a hotel room is a hotel room and why pay $300 when you can pay $89? We like staying “on property” so we can take advantage of the busses and monorails. That way we don’t have to worry about parking, driving or drinking too much.
This time we decided to try something new. I was tired of the same old resorts and wanted to try a step up. We booked at the Port Orleans resort and I will never go back to the All-Stars. The rooms were beautiful! Fancy headboards, ceiling fans, huge beveled framed mirrors, old fashioned sinks and tiled bathroom floors, there was a curtain separating the bathroom and sink area from the bedroom (but a real door between the tub/toilet and sink areas). It just felt like an old hotel in the French-Quarter. The room was right in front of the pool and behind the river. I sat and watched the river flow by and Becca loved the pool because it had a water slide in it. The iron balconies and gates really transported me back to New Orleans. I used to love walking down the allies and looking at the real attractions like people and buildings, Bourbon Street is for boring tourists!
Our building was directly across from the pool and in front of the main lobby but you barely noticed it because of the trees and scenery they put around there. It was nice because after a long day, we didn’t have a long walk to the room but it never felt like we were at the main entrance. The other cool thing was that Port Orleans has its own busses and with the six stops available at the resort, “French-Quarter” was always the first drop off so we never had to sit on the bus for long.
We arrived Friday night and checked in to the room. Then we went down to Downtown Disney for a while. Teresa had made an appointment for Becca at the “Bibbity-Bobbity-Boutique”. It’s a salon where they dress up little girls like princesses and let them have fun with makeup and hair and stuff. I was afraid Becca would be too old for it but there were girls much older than her in there having fun. Becca tried to play it off like she was just doing it for Mommy but you could tell she liked being pampered. The telling part was the fact that she slept in her hair so she could wear it to the park the next day. She had fun. We walked around and visited the shops. I fell in love with some more artwork but I’m still hesitant to drop $400 on anything that just sits on the wall. Especially since I know that as soon as I open that door, there are literally dozens of pieces I’d like to have.
We avoided the “Goofy Candy Company” this time. That’s the place with the customized candy apples that made us so sick last time. I have to learn moderation. They say you can put anything on these apples so I try to fit EVERYTHING on them. I really need to unlearn my hoarding and gluttony behaviors.
We walked by the House of Blues and I just wanted to cry. “Mastodon” was playing that night and I wasn’t going to see them but worse was the cruel trick they played on me later in the week. We were leaving Tuesday night and one of my favorite bands would be playing there Wednesday night. “Dimmu Borgir” and “Unearthed” were going to be there and I had to be back at work in Pensacola. So as I type this up on Thursday morning while I sit here and wait for Sprint and Harris to get their shit together, I realize it would have been so easy to blow off work and hit the show. And I could have gotten away with it if it weren’t for my pesky conscious!
We got back to the hotel and there was a musician playing in the area between the lobby and the bar. I got Teresa a Hurricane and we sat and watched this guy play everything from the guitar, to the sax to the steel drums. He was a lot of fun.
The parks were fun. We got to ride all of our favorites and see all of the new upgrades like the “Pirates of the Carribean” additions (they are mild additions and don’t take anything away from the classic ride). I got everyone to the park early on Saturday morning to see the “rope-drop” opening of the park only to find that they don’t really do that any more. They hold you just beyond the entrance turnstyles and there’s no rope. I had hear that they let everyone in to Main Street and that there are ropes at the spokes leading from the main hub, “Tomorrowland”, “Adventureland” and so on… I had never gotten there as they open before and I really wanted to see it once. Boy was I disappointed. Once again, I built something up in my head, imagined it perfect and when real life isn’t as exciting as it is in my head, I get all glum. Well, we were on the front row of the mob waiting in to get in and that would be cool enough. There were a lot of Disney people coming and going and one of them approached us. We were asked if we would like to take a survey and of course we said yes. We were led in to the park and sat down in front of a computer where it asked why we came to Disney, where we were from, where we were staying, how important this or that was to our vacation… After we were done taking the survey, the guy said we could wander Main Street until the park opened, just don’t go past the hub. Aside from ten or twenty other survey takers, we had the place to ourselves! It was kind of spooky. We made our way up to the hub, got Becca’s annual picture with the statue and enjoyed the place without people pushing or shoving. There were indeed ropes across the spokes leading into the various lands. Becca looked down Main Street and said, “Here they come!” It was a mob of people flowing into the park, most of them running toward “Space Mountain” and “Splash Mountain”. The welcome message played over the loud speakers and I got my rope drop. We headed into “Fantasyland” because that’s where the lines get ridiculous later in the day. Teresa has wanted to ride “Peter Pan” for the last three trips but the line is always two freaking hours long! We were the second people on the ride. We hit “Peter Pan”, “Snow White” and “Small World” before there was even any semblance of a line. We abandoned “Fantasyland” to the children and soccer moms and headed off to the thrill rides. Still with relatively short lines, we rode “Thunder” and “Splash” and decided to take a second run on “Splash” because it is Teresa’s favorite. Becca decided to do the “I’m scared” trick and she wasn’t happy that we made her go a second time. Later on she punished us by making us hit “Small World” a second time. I tried to explain to her, NO ONE hits this ride twice. Most people never hit it a second time in their life! We always hit it once a trip but twice!? She was just getting back at us for “Splash”.
As the weekend went on the lines got longer and the people got ruder. Something to be expected while in Disney over Memorial Day weekend. We ended up in Epcot just about every day. It is my favorite place in the parks and I could just sit there all day. We hit Germany, Morocco and the UK for meals and Teresa got a few of her margaritas from Mexico. While waiting for dinner in the UK pavilion, we saw Alan Thicke shopping in one of the stores. He had a young kid with him as well as a Disney employee escorting him everywhere. I took Becca out of the store (so she wouldn’t stare when I told her) and asked her if she ever watched “Growing Pains” and told her it was the dad. We went back in and she thought it was cool to see someone from the TV world standing right in front of her. Becca and I sat in with the drummers in the African pavilion and as usual, Becca got upset that she couldn’t keep up with Daddy. I kept trying to encourage her but she just got so frustrated. The workshop is run by a large African man and his wife. She is an excellent dancer and I’d love to see her dance in an atmosphere outside of Disney where she could really let loose. She kept trying to get Becca into the groove and we all had a lot of fun. Between drumming they tell tribal stories. A few years back I remember them telling about how man tamed animals and how woman tamed man. This time it was about man’s discovery of music. We sat and talked with them after the workshop was over and he invited me to play with him if I was going to be around the rest of the weekend. Poor Teresa stood there watching with nothing to do. There was also a lot of live music around Epcot. (No Dimmu Borgir, but) Gary Puckett played the main stage in front of the America pavilion. I had to stop and watch “Off Kilter” at the Canada pavilion. I was looking forward to seeing them and I was really hoping to catch one of their performances. I also got to see “Muzickanten” while we ate dinner in Germany. There was a sitar player, drummer and a belly dancer in Morocco when we sat down but by the time we finished ordering lunch, they had finished their set. Becca and Teresa got some beautiful Henna work done on their wrists by a Moroccan woman. I bought a DIY henna kit for home but I don’t know how well that will turn out. I also bought a lot of alcohol. Aside from all the beer I drank in the different countries, I bought a bottle of “Apfelkorn” from Germany and a bottle of “Linie” from Norway. I’m really trying to become an alcoholic.
I really could have spent all four days entirely within Epcot. But luckily for Teresa and Becca, we had the “park-hopper” tickets that let us spend the morning in one park, have lunch in another and watch the fireworks in yet another… We can come and go as we please. We went over to the Disney Studios and had fun there. We rode the “Tower of Terror” a few times and Becca loved it. She still played the “scaredy cat” game but she had a lot of fun. The Aerosmith rollercoaster was fun and she enjoyed that a lot more than Tower. We had lunch at one of our favorite spots, the “50′s Prime Time Diner”. When you go in they take your name and the lobby looks like a living room from the 50′s. The servers are all wearing 1950′s clothing and talk like you are their little brother, even if they are younger than you. After waiting about five minutes, they announce that “Mom is ready for the Morgan kids. Hey Morgan kids, lunch is ready!” The lady sat us at a kitchen table and told us that she’s our big sister Susan and that Mom wanted her to baby sit us today. At one end of the table was an oversized TV that played clips from “I Married Joan”, “Dick Van Dyke Show”, “Car 54″ and all the rest. The dessert menu was on a Viewmaster but you couldn’t order dessert unless you finished all of your lunch. Teresa and Becca had the fried chicken but I played along and had the meatloaf. It was incredible. I also had a peanut-butter and jelly milkshake. Before you gag, it was pretty damn good. I don’t think I’ll ever order it again because it was pretty weird, but it was good! If you got caught with your elbows on the table, the entire restaurant knew about it. After I finished, she took my plate to the table next to us and told them that their plate better be as empty as this one or they wouldn’t be allowed to play outside this afternoon. It was a lot of fun.
Tuesday we ended up spending the entire day in the two water parks, “Blizzard Beach” and “Typhoon Lagoon”. Blizzard Beach was nice but the lines were long and aside from the one really big slide (130′ drop and they made me get on it while they refused to try it!) it was almost the same as Typhoon Lagoon yet Typhoon seemed quieter and more friendly. Blizzard was more popular but Typhoon was our favorite. It kind of felt like the old “River Country” water park they used to have. Teresa was dying to get into the wave pool and we ended up spending a most of our time in it. We tried a lot of the other slides and rides but that wave pool was their favorite. It is just part of the game, if you want to slide down a five story water slide, you have to walk up five stories of steps. There’s a lot of walking and climbing going on in those damn water parks… I didn’t tell them until we left for the day that the wave pool made me motion sick and that I had a splitting headache. They were smiling and having so much fun that I was willing to stay in that pool just to see the both of them so happy. It drops an eight to ten foot wave every 90 seconds! That was bearable but for a little while it was making “Bobbing” waves like a giant ship had just passed by and we were caught in it’s gigantic wake. Ten minutes at a time of bobbing up and down in five foot seas… I was sick! But that was only for an hour or so. The other three hours of wave pool time was spent riding and dodging the giant “surfing” waves. I was sooo happy to get out of there but I did have a lot of fun with Teresa and Becca.
We returned to Port Orleans to say good bye to Disney and to get our car. It really is a beautiful hotel, I look forward to staying there every time now. I tried to drive home. I got as far as Lake Mary and Teresa wanted Red Lobster for dinner. We ate and I was suddenly overcome with all the heat, walking and bobbing up and down we did that day. Teresa drove home and the next morning I headed out here to Pensacola for work. I’m stuck out here over the weekend and that’s probably a good thing. I’ll put my feet up, relax and just read my books. After a vacation like that, I need a vacation.
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