I’m going to stop tonight’s efforts by closing up that long first evening. There’s not much else to write about.
We arrived in Orlando around 1 a.m., long after everything had closed, and trekked a long, long way to baggage claim. Margie went off to find the shuttle folks, Mears, she’d contacted by phone, only to find out that they had closed down long beforehand, the scum. She did find some different folks, Transtar, who were quick to offer their service, and for cheaper. Since Mears seems to do 90% of the WDW business, I find myself obligated to suggest the good folks at Transtar. They did right by us.
The trip away from Orlando International — which Florida conveniently built as a tollway — passes you by an endless array of very elaborate billboards, all pointing to various amusement parks and resorts. Sea World. Universal Studios. Busch Gardens. And, of course, the grand-daddy of them all, Walt Disney World.
Oh, yeah. We also drove past this huge, rather ugly/modernistic church along I-4. The sign said it was the home to the Mary, Queen of the Universe Shrine. The Catholics like doing things in a big way.
The shuttle driver indicated that last week had been really dead, but things were beginning to pick up some.
We arrived at the resort — the Port Orleans Riverport (Formerly Dixie Landings) at 2 a.m. Only to discover that (a) the area of the resort we had been ostensibly booked into, we weren’t, and, more importantly, (b) they had no cribs available. Given that Squiggy was screaming her lungs out at this point (she’s sacked out on the plane, and we’d carried her off in her car seat, still asleep, all the way to the shuttle. She woke up en route, and finally decided she’d had about enough of this), Margie expressed her displeasure with the turn of events.
The bell hop took us and our ton o’ luggage off to our room on a long, golf-cart-like shuttle. It did the job quite nicely, and he described a bit about the resort, which I will do later on, too.
We got into our room. Quaint. Nice. Clean. Vaguely Southern, I suppose. Aside from no crib, the biggest problem is that there’s no desk, and the only table is across the room from the one phone (which is also the one place that has a data port — a/k/a second line — to plug into).
We’re busy unpacking, when the door knocks. Voila, someone’s found a crib. Margie’s magic works again.
We eventually get ready for bed, set Squiggy down in the crib, where she starts to scream bloody murder. Ah, but unlike our church retreat the previous weekend (which I never got ’round to blogging), we’re in a hotel room. Which means her noise is not very audible beyond these four walls. Aha. We feign sleep, just as we would at home where she wouldn’t see us. She can still see us, but it is 3 in the morning, and she’s pretty tired, too. After about 10 nerve-wracking minutes, she eventually quiets down and goes to sleep.
As do we.
More on the morrow on the morrow.