Weekend of 180’s

Our weekend was planned out, go to Daytona, do the timeshare thing early Saturday morning, go to the Kennedy Space Center, come back Sunday. A nice little trip that shouldn’t cost a lot of dough. None of it happened.

We were on our way up to Daytona on Saturday when we realized that due to traffic we would not get there by 3pm as we were supposed to. So we called the resort to let them know we would be a bit late. Sorry, they are having Black College Reunion week in Daytona, the streets are closed and there are no rooms available, call your agent that booked it. What????????? Ali called the travel agent, they said they just found out about it that morning and had tried to call us. We we didn’t leave until 10 am and there was no message left on the machine, but yea ok, you tried to call us. So now what? They said they would find us another place to stay around Orlando. They called back and redirected us to a place called Celebration World Resort. No additional costs but we still had to sit through their timeshare presentation. We found the place and unloaded, then thought about what our new plan should be. We came up with, let’s go to Universal Saturday after the presentation and then Sunday go to the Kennedy Space Center. So we still had some time to kill on Friday so Ali suggested we go find downtown Disney since we didn’t get to see it the last time we went up to Orlando in December. We stopped at one of those tourist info/ ticket agent places that you see every few hundred yards in the Disney area to ask how to get to DD. While there I asked the lady how much the Universal tickets cost. 58 a piece but hey, if you want to sit through a timeshare presentation, you can get 2 tickets for 45 bucks!! Another one??? Hmmm I thought about it for a second and figured it was worth 60 bucks to me to sit through another sales pitch. So now our Saturday had TWO timeshare pitches on the schedule!

We found our way to Downtown Disney. In typical Disney fashion it was grandiose, beautiful and CROWDED! The first thing Ali saw there was that Cirque del Soliel runs a nightly show there, she loves Cirque del Soleil. She wanted to find out info. They had no ticket prices posted so that was an immediate red flag for me. Then I watched in horror as a gentleman paid over 400 dollars for tickets but I wasn’t sure how many he bought. We eventually found out the tickets started at 70 bucks for the bad seats and went up. OUCH. I was able to negotiate with Ali that the next time we come up we can schedule to go to a show and that dropping 150 bucks out of the gate like this would not be a good way to start our supposed inexpensive weekend. We saw the sights, went into stores and took in a great meal at the Rain Forest Cafe. It was a jungle type atmosphere inside complete with a jungle canopy, animals, fish tanks and even a pretend thunderstorm every half hour. We didn’t get back to the room until around 10:30. We were quite tired and had to be at our first timeshare presentation by 7:15 so we had to hit the sack.

After a restless nights sleep I got up unwillingly at 6am. The first presentation was fine, very similar to the one we attended the last time we were in Orlando. The concept of the timeshare was a good one to us but money and the fact that the resort didn’t allow animals killed the idea for Ali. We collected our voucher for Universal and headed back to Celebration to attend presentation number 2. Again I figured, more of the same, blah blah, blah. Well this plan was different than the others we saw. It was a point system that allowed you a lot more flexibility than the other options we saw. In the other plans, you had a week at the resort that you could use there or you could trade to use for a week at another resort around the country or around the world. (with a small charge for the trade) With this plan, you used the points in the same manner but you also have the option to use the points to pay for other aspects of a trip like car rental and airline miles. That sparked our interest. We saw the model rooms and they were quite nice, not extravagant but brand new, well maintained and clean. Then Ali saw in the information that the resort was pet friendly. That really sparked her interest. The idea that she could bring Nicki with was very appealing to her. That idea although not as exciting to me was a selling point. Finally we got down to the dollars and cents. We opted for a plan where we get point allocations every other year. This allowed us the flexibility to take as much as 2 weeks of vacations every year while keeping the cost down. We were close to making a decision and then had to work out the final price. We negotiated it down to a number where we could simply pay it in full without financing. That was the only way we would do it. Yea, I know, timeshares, they often come with automatic negative feelings. But in our case it should more than pay for itself in 5 years. However there is no way in hell I thought there was anyway I would have signed up for one before Saturday.

All of this action on Saturday and we still didn’t even go to Universal yet. On the way to the park I was already feeling some buyer’s remorse, I think it is pretty normal to feel that way after dropping large amounts of money but still I was feeling rather down. The park was full, not packed but full. When we got there we had a decision to make. Universal has this thing call the Express pass. It is a ticket you buy in addition to the regular admission that fast tracks you on all of the ride lines. It is like Disney’s Fast Pass except you can use it on EVERY ride but only 1 time. However Disney’s setup is free, Universal’s pass costs and additional 31 DOLLARS PER TICKET. Well we decided since we got the tickets at a discount we would splurge and get the express passes. In retrospect, a wise move. We waited no longer than 15 minutes for any ride, while the “regular” people waited an hour or more. It helped us get through the park much quicker. My favorite rides were the Hulk Roller Coaster and the Spider Man simulation ride. the funniest moment of the day was when we rode the Jurrasic Park water ride, we were seated behind a man who was visibly drunk and his family. Before the ride started the attendant told the man he had to take off his hat. He drunkenly whipped it off his head and in the process forgot his expensive sunglasses were up there as well. The glasses flew into the water. The guy just shrugged his shoulders, smiled and slurred “Oh well 150 bucks, no big deal…”

By late afternoon I was feeling pretty crappy. The combination of the timeshare purchase weighing on my head, some nausea from the rides and the unrelenting hoardes of people were pulling down my mood considerably. We were going to head out but decided to walk over to NBA city and the Hard Rock. In NBA city they had hand prints of many famous players, it was fun to compare hand sizes. Kobe had one of the biggest hands there, my hand looked childlike in comparison. Surprisingly, my hand was almost the exact same size as Grant Hill’s. Inside they had some basetball games of skill, including shooting things, dribbling things and even a machine to test your vertical. I was tempted to test my vert but shyed away when I saw it was 6 bucks and knowing that if I wasn’t loose my vert would suck anyway.

Then we hit the Hard Rock, it was awesome inside, with a huge pink cadillac spinning above the bar. We weren’t going to eat anything but then decided to plop down at the bar anyway. I had a couple beers and we both ordered salads. It relaxed me a bit. The alcohol alleviated some of my ill will and we checked out a few more areas of the park until we left at about 7:30. I enjoyed Universal much more than the Magic Kingdom because it is much more geared towards adults. However I still got real sick of the crowds real fast. I asked the bartender at the Hard Rock when the slowest times are. He said May, September, November and early December, mark that down. I also don’t like the feeling when I go to the parks that I am hemmoraging money. Everything is sooooo expensive it’s just ridiculous. At the end of the day I am afraid to look in my wallet to assess the damages.

We got back to the room at a reasonable hour and relaxed. I had another restless night’s sleep. We packed up and had a very quick 3 hour trip door to door. My mom stayed at our place to watch the animals so that made it very easy for us. She was surprised about our timeshare news but I didn’t expect anything less. All of the pictures from the weekend are here. Some funny stuff in there. Also some more vette stuff is up. Our recent spending habits has made me declare a moratorium on any and all unnecessary spending. The vette will remain in it’s present state for awhile.

Some observations from the weekend:

Kids are fat. I saw countless young girls with big rolls of fat spilling out from their belly shirts and tons of young men of the same rotund build. I think more kids are fat than not anymore, a disaster in the making.

You can average 80 mph between here and Orlando with little worry of being pulled over for speeding because cars are passing you.

The average amount of time the initial excitement from entering an amusement park mutates into annoyance with the entire scene is roughly 2 hours

The idea of self service lockers where they ID you by a scan of your fingerprint sucks and does not work

Old people(like me)can’t go on rides continuously without feeling sick…….