A Mickey Mouse Vacation

Well, we made it. No security hassle (well, I was searched at the security checkpoint, but they were so professional and nice, it didn’t bother me — there’s a lesson there, folks), easy flight on Frontier to Orlando, got a good deal on a town car to whisk us directly to the Port Orleans (Riverside) resort at Walt Disney World. All’s good.

We’re in Aligator Bayou, rather than Magnolia Bend this time around. Which means that the individual clusters of rooms are smaller, and there’s lots of trees, rather than lots of manacured lots amidst Georgian architecture. The rooms are exactly the same.

It was strangely good to be back at Port Orleans. Despite being closed for part of this past year because of the travel downturn, it’s pretty much the same as it was. The flume for the big water wheel is under reconstruction, so that’s not working. And, alas, one of the food court vendors is no longer selling fried chicken, which was a staple of our stay last time. Dammit.

Our room is significantly closer to the lodge than it was last year, and closer to the bus stop, too. That’s nice.

Kitten’s in a trundle bed this year — her “little bed.” Though it’s been a bit of a chore to get her to go asleep while we’re there in the room, it’s not been nearly as bad as we’d (I’d) feared. Part of it may be that she’s running a little under the weather, part of it is certainly that she’s been running around like a lunatic for the past three days.

Part of our goal on this trip is to get most if not all of our Christmas shopping done. November and December both have been extraordinarily busy, and we’ve been wildly remiss. We’ve made a dent in it, but we need to sit back and figure out who we have and what we’ve gotten for them; last year we had a bit of a time in California figuring out some of who was getting what.

Went to the Magic Kingdom yesterday. Well, some of it. We got into the park around 10:30a, and left around 2:30p for Kitten to take a nap. That was the plan we had ahead of time. We figured we could do that, then hop back to the park for evening fun. Alas, under winter hours, the parks all close around 6 or 7, except for the ones that close then reopen for something special (like the MK). Margie says EPCOT is different, but we probably won’t make it back there tonight because … well, see below.

Most of the time we were at the MK, we were in Fantasyland, for obvious toddler-oriented reasons. Katherine loved the Dumbo ride (“Go higher!” “I will, dear, I was just watching your Daddy get busted for taking pictures from atop that retaining wall.”), thought the Snow White ride was scary, got tickled by Donald Duck, enjoyed the Winnie-the-Pooh ride, enjoyed Small World, enjoyed the Peter Pan ride (though it was a little dark and scary, too), and was totally indifferent to getting her picture taken with Princess Ariel in Ariel’s grotto (the biggest waste of time in the park). She thought the Haunted Mansion was scary, too, but not too badly so.

She is finally getting the hang of carousels, and enjoys them immensely.

She failed, alas, to pull the sword from the anvil stone, and thus is not rightwise Queen of England. Just as well.

After dinner back at the ranch, we took the boat down to Downtown Disney and went shopping. Katherine got to ride the carousel there, too, before everyone went home and crashed.

Today we got up early to go to the Princess Breakfast at EPCOT — excuse me, it’s just Epcot now, since the idea of modeling an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow turned out to be just too damned uncommercial for the Disney suits and too damned boring for the public. Anyway, the breakfast was at Norway, in the World Showcase, so we caught the early bus (the park didn’t open until 9, and the World Showcase until 11, but the breakfast kicked off at 8:30), trekked the length of the park, and got all parked at our tables just in time for a decently yummy breakfast and a meeting with the princesses (see below). Then …

… oh, did I mention it was raining?

Yeah, we stepped out of the hotel this morning to head for the bus, and it was a moderately heavy drizzle, or light rain. And while it sometimes mostly subsided, and rarely got heavier than that, it was pretty constant. All the way to … well, this evening.

And the rain, rain, rain
Came down, down, down
In rushing, rising, rivulets.

It made navigating Epcot a lot more entertaining, in the way that isn’t. Given that we really didn’t pack for rain, we did okay. I have an umbrella in my briefcase, and a photographer’s vest. Margie has a coat that will shed rain, and an emergency zoo rain poncho. And Margie has a wide-brimmed hat, and so do I (though the crown on mine is mesh, since I bought it more for sun protection). And we picked up a couple of umbrellas at China, which helped, too.

But, still. Rain. Bleah.

Headed back to the barn about 2:30 again, after an excellent lunch in Italy (the best restaurant in Epcot, for my money). Kitten crashed, I went and recovered our purchases from yesterday at the gift shop here at the lodge.

(Disney does everything it can to make sure that buying things is as painless as it can be until you actually sign the final tab. You can charge everything to your room at any of the parks, and anything you buy can be shipped back the next day to your Disney resort. Insidialicious.)

Oh, and found out about rental cars. We need to rent one later in the week both for me to go into the office on Friday for a half day (which is both legitimate and a good way to expense my air fare) and for another special trip I’ll mention later. And then it turned out that Margie needed the car as of tomorrow, since her meetings tomorrow and Wednesday start at 8, and the famed Disney bus system doesn’t really kick off until then.

Our reason for being here is Margie’s conference — the IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) soiree, and it’s being held at the Swan and Dolphin, two huge, but non-Disney, hotels here at WDW. Transportation from here to there is, she discovered yesterday when she went to register, tricky and time-consuming.

So I know that there’s a National rental car agency here in the park. Fine.

I can’t get there from here. No busses run there. The desk recommends calling a cab.

Aha! I look in the Disney info, and National actually has a shuttle service. Cool.

I call.

They have no cars.

They have no cars.

They will probably have cars tomorrow. In fact, I’m encouraged to simply call in the morning, rather than making a reservation.

Margie’s suspicion: a lot of folks, faced with rain, decided to rent a car and go someplace in the area (e.g., Cape Canaveral), rather than go to one of the parks. Feh.

So, I don’t know what Margie’s going to do, but I know what I’m doing tomorrow morning.

Ah, well. It’s still been fun, and should be moreso as the week wears on.