A three day weekend filled with ups and downs. This was Ali’s birthday weekend. She is 30 this year so we needed to do something out of the ordinary. A few months ago I got a fax at work for government employees about a special weekend package. At the time I did not realize it was a timeshare promotion, that was explained to me later. For a reduced rate we got 2 nights at a hotel and 2, one day passes to the parks. (somehow I interpreted this as 2 one day passes for 2 days, more later on that)
Check in wasn’t until 4pm so we were in no rush to leave Friday morning. We didn’t pull out until around 1. An average speed of tween 80 and 85 got us there in just about 3 hours, good time. When we checked in we were directed to the “special” guest relations office. At this office we had to present ID, a credit card and had to sign a form that said we were married, made at least 50k between us and that we weren’t lying about it. No big deal. We got directed to our hotel, a nice, new Country Inn suites. Our room was fine, right across from the game and exercise room and was on the first floor.
After we unloaded we/I came up with a gameplan. Within the first half hour we went to the exercise room for a quick 20 or 25 minute workout. Yea odd I guess, but I figured it was the only time I would get during the weekend so I went with it. Afterwards we went out to eat at Outback. A very nice dinner and we were back to the hotel by 9. I got to catch Christmas Vacation for the second time this season. Love the movie, never tire of it. During it they advertised that Saturday night they were showing Xmas Vacation II!!! Wow I never knew there was a second one! More on that later. We hit bed to prepare for our big day tomorrow.
Our timeshare presentation was early, 8am. We knew nothing really about timeshares except that normally when you hear people talk about them it is in a negative manner. We sat down and prepared for the hard sell. We didn’t realize it was a one on one thing, we assumed it was a group thing. Nope, our sales rep summoned us. He was actually quite nice, no hard sell, and the facilities were new and impressive. His pitch was a good one, good enough that we actually tossed the idea around a bit. But when we asked for a few minutes to talk it over ourselves we tossed around the numbers and realized it would be ludicrous for us to jump into something like that right now. We don’t vacation much, we are trying to knock off long term debt not add to it and the holidays were not the time to throw done a big downpayment on a timeshare. We informed our sales rep of our decision, he came back with some other lower cost alternatives but we respectfully declined. He was a good guy. We got our card stamped and headed down to get our tickets. The ticket clerk said what park do you want your tickets to? I said MGM and Magic Kingdom. He gave me a puzzled look. He said you want one ticket for MGM and one for Magic Kingdom? I said no, one set of tickets for Magic Kingdom and one set for MGM. Wrong! Somehow, someway I totally misread what we were supposed to get. On our paper it says in black and white, you get 2 free one day passes to any Disney park. I managed to get it in my head that we were getting 2 sets of one day passes. My bad, oh well. We quickly decided to use the passes for Magic Kingdom. At least that meant I could get home on Sunday to watch the Eagles.
We were ready to hit the park, but boy was it cold. The forecast high was only 55. I had on a t-shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a sweatshirt. Ali was layered up as well. Once we got to the park it was painfully clear we were underdressed. Our first stop was the gift shop where we found Ali a knit hat and gloves. I said I didn’t need any additional covering. The park was decorated for Christmas, very pretty. Our idea that the park wouldn’t be that full since the kids JUST got out for xmas break quickly evaporated. The park was packed, armies of couples pushing strollers rolled down the crowded walkways. A loosely organized mob scene.
Our morale was still high, hey we were in Disney at xmas, who cares if it is in the 40’s and it’s packed? We went to hit our first ride, Buzz Lightyear spinning adventure thingy. The line was huge so we decided to take advantage of “Fast Pass”. Fast Pass is a system Disney has to make waiting in line easier. You go to a ride, get a fast pass that basically says come back in an hour or two and you can get in the fast line, minimizing your wait time. But there is a catch, you can only have one fast pass at a time, meaning you can’t go to all the popular rides, get your fast passes and then come back to get in all the quick lines. Instead you get your fast pass and then you have an hour or two to kill so you wind up going and standing in a different line. Don’t get me wrong, without fast pass you would be standing in long lines for EVERY ride instead of every other ride but I wish they let you load up on the fast passes, it would make it much better. It didn’t take very long for us to realize that with only one park to visit, we picked the wrong one. The rides were generally tame and on the boring side for adults. The best ride was Space Mountain and that is a million years old. Everything else was unmemorable. The Haunted Mansion didn’t even get a scream out of Ali so you know it was lame. In total we rode maybe 6 or 7 rides. The cool weather really sucked some of the fun out of the entire process. We spent a lot of time hopping into the gift shops just to take some of the chill off. It might of made it into the 50’s for about an hour out of the day. Speaking of the gift shops, I have never seen so much as Ali terms it, “Crappity crap” You know, the kind of stuff you buy for yourself or someone else that is basically stuff you’ll never use, costs a bunch and is more or less a waste of money. It is staggering all of the different Disney related products they have for sale. We broke down and got mom some Mickey Mouse wine glasses but at least we know she will use those.
Around 5:30 we both agreed we had our fill. We were cold and worn out from doing battle with the Disney mob all day. We hopped the tram and both agreed MGM was where we should have went. We piled into the car and threw the heat on full blast. Even though we didn’t have a great time in Disney, it wasn’t through any fault of the park itself. The park is immaculate, the attention to detail is amazing and any employees we interacted with were courteous and helpful. We went back to the room, cleaned up and then went to Olive Garden for a good dinner.
We got back to the hotel in time to catch the last half of Christmas Vacation II. It took all of 45 seconds to realize this was a horrible attempt to cash in on the good name of it’s predecessor. Mind you I missed the first hour but here is what I gathered. Somehow Randy Quaid got marooned on a desert island for xmas. The only characters from the original that are in this atrocity are Quaid, the women from SNL that played his wife, their dog Snot and the girl that played Chevy’s daughter in one of the flicks. (not the xmas one) This is a recent production so Randy Quaid is now a fat, saggy looking old man trying to reenact his role from 20 years ago. Words can’t really describe how bad this movie was. It may be the worst xmas movie I have ever seen. Way worse than Emmet Otter Jugband’s Xmas, the prior leader in the pack of bad xmas specials. If you ever get a chance to see Xmas Vacation II, just watch 5 minutes of it to see how bad it is, I can’t believe National Lampoon would allow their name to be put on it.
Sunday morning we popped up, well rested, ate our continental breakfast and rolled out. A record setting 2 hours and 45 minutes to our exit later, we were home. We got home about 12:15, just in time for the Eagles! Nope, they don’t play till 4:15! Argh I should have checked the schedule. So we used the down time to unpack , get things in order and survey the damage that was done by the dog. Nicki followed up her present destroying session by chewing the remote to the big screen tv to bits. We are still missing 1 AA battery that we are hoping she didn’t swallow. She will be spending much more time in her crate when we are away until she earns my trust again.
4:15 rolled around so it was game time. The Eagles didn’t play a very strong game and got beat in the end on a bad interception. I am disappointed but after their horrid start I can’t complain that they just blew getting the best record in the NFC by one game. Unfortunately, this loss probably will throw a wrench into any possibilities of a Super Bowl appearance but hopefully they can prove me wrong once again. The wearing Eagles garb good luck charm thing finally failed. If they find a way to lose to the Redskins next week we have some big problems.
Long recap……sorry.
Let it snow, let it snow…..