{"id":415,"date":"2004-01-03T23:59:34","date_gmt":"2004-01-04T04:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/01\/03\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-19T20:48:46","modified_gmt":"2005-10-20T00:48:46","slug":"trip-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/01\/03\/trip-day-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Trip: Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I’d intended (and we all know how much my intentions are worth) to go to bed early on the 2nd. Perhaps 11, perhaps 12, giving me 5 or 6 hours of sleep before 5am, the time when I wanted to get up.<\/p>\n

Naturally, I stayed up until 4:30am and couldn’t fall asleep immediately even then. But I must admit I can’t say this turned out to be a bad thing — I got up around 5:45 and still felt rested; awake. Excitement was doing its job. Which was fortunate, as I had not yet done most of mine from the night before; I was not completely packed, nor had I finished cleaning up the condo as I had wished.<\/p>\n

After last minute indoor rushing and a chilly interlude of car scraping, we departed at around 10 past 6, a few minutes later than I had wished, but still with plenty of time before our 7:40 flight. Outside, the world was small. Visibility was down to about 20 feet, and that with headlights — the fog was heavy and extremely dense. However, we managed to arrive at the airport only 5 minutes behind my mental schedule.<\/p>\n

As we trudged our way into the terminal we were horrified to see a gigantic huge line at one of the ticket counters. It had fully filled the roped off area and was winding back away from the counters. But our luck held — the line was at US Airways, and though it blocked our view of the Delta counter, when we passed the people we discovered an area virtually empty save for the Delta employees manning their station.<\/p>\n

The large bag successfully checked, we moved on to the excitement of the security line. Having been through it twice before just the last week, we were both old pros. My shoes came off, laptop out, coat off, and we went through smoothly. Putting myself together again was a delay, but not a lengthy one. We found a seat at the gate and prepared to wait for boarding. Bob wandered off in search of some food, correctly assuming that we would be getting virtually nothing aboard the airplane.<\/p>\n

Directly after he left, they of course began boarding the plane. I waited anxiously for him to come back, uncertain whether I should go down to the McDonald’s and tell him to come back or just assume he would make it in time — I waited, and he did, though we ended up boarding after several groups ahead of our row had boarded as well.<\/p>\n

Once everyone was on the plane, right on time and in preparation for an on schedule departure, the pilot announced that we would not be taking off immediately; instead we were in the line to be deiced and only then would we be taking off. I felt uneasy — I usually do when I’m in the first leg of a journey with a connection in the middle. We had approximately an hour to catch our next flight in Atlanta, so a little delay was not going to kill us. However, when we finally took off, it was more than a little delay — it was 45 minutes of delay.<\/p>\n

Tired now, I tried to sleep, but was hampered by the fact that in exchange for our lovely exit row leg room, the window seat was non-reclining, having no seat arm on the side nearest the airplane’s hull. So I dozed as well as I could while seated bolt upright and the flight passed quickly. We landed at Atlanta without incident and crawled our way to the gate. We had made up some time on the way (or else the schedule included some buffer time), because even though we had left such a long time after our original departure time, we were only about 15 minutes late in arriving.<\/p>\n

Once in the terminal, Bob and I found that our next flight was amongst the E gates, while we had deplaned at the A’s. So we clutched our carryon baggage and raced to the tram, where we had to travel the entire length of the airport to get to our next gate. We arrived to find them calling my name and already in the process of boarding — but it was nothing dire, they had simply reissued the boarding passes since we picked ours up earlier in the morning. Got onto the plane with minutes to spare. This was a much larger plane, a 777, one with individual screens in the back of each seat, even in the slums of coach where we were seated.<\/p>\n

The screens were operated by a little remote control which was stowed in the arm of each seat, though they had the look of touch screens — something which fooled me at first, as I tried to poke it and get it to change the display. It also fooled the man in the seat next to me (not Bob), who simply could not figure it out. He continued to prod his screen with his finger at intervals for the entire flight. But it seemed that the display was not the only thing which he could not understand — along with our snack, we were given small bottles of lemonade, the tops of which were fastened like most gallons of milk, with a tab you peel off and then a cap that pulls off.<\/p>\n

He managed to untwist the tab, but the cap was simply beyond his comprehension. He kept trying to unscrew it, turning it around and around. And, naturally, since it was not screwed on, it never came off, it just kept spinning. After a minute or so he finally managed to apply enough upward pressure that the top popped off in spite of his efforts.<\/p>\n

Orlando<\/b><\/p>\n

The Orlando airport was as expected, an airport. But we were finally done with planes for the day, and I felt cheerful because of this. We went down to the baggage claim to collect our bag, me voicing my concern that our bag might not have managed to transfer flights with us — we had run to the gate, but had our bag been as fast?<\/p>\n

Sure enough, after all of the luggage for our flight had come through, our bag was not to be found. We were not the only ones in this predicament; as we stood in line at the luggage office, three other groups of travelers from our original flight were trying to find out where their bags had so far gotten to. We were all told that the bags would be arriving on the next flight from Atlanta, which would be arriving in about an hour.<\/p>\n

Bob and I reflected that in that case, we needn’t have rushed to catch our own connection, since we could just have caught the same one our bags did and wasted exactly the same amount of time! We spent the hour getting some lunch at the overpriced airport food court, then came down to get our bag from the arriving Atlanta flight.<\/p>\n

Happily, it was there, and we left to find ourselves a shuttle to Disney World, having lost only about two hours in the Great Luggage Snafu.<\/p>\n

Pop Century<\/b><\/p>\n

We stayed at Disney’s Pop Century resort, which is their very newest value resort. As I understand it, they built a good portion of it a year or two ago, but then did not have enough demand to actually open it — until December of 2003. It had been open approximately three weeks when we arrived (the half we were in — there are another ~5500 rooms planned and under construction yet) so everything was shiny and new. Pop Century’s theme is pop culture, and the culture is divided up by decades. Each building is decorated on the exterior with extremely large representations of popular items from that decade. The decades currently open are the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. We were assigned to the 70s, and our building had giant 8-track tapes at each end, while the exterior walls were hung with large mood rings and platform shoes.<\/p>\n

We dropped off our things in our room and headed off — it was 4pm already and we were supposed to meet Michelle, Ken and FL!Julie in Downtown Disney at 4:30. Since we’d decided against renting a car for the week, we were dependant upon the Disney internal bus system, so we found the stop for Downtown Disney and began to wait. The bus was long in coming. Eventually, I looked into my bag and discovered that I was still carrying the first volume of the Hikaru no Go manga. I turned to Bob and said “I’m going to start reading this, and it will make the bus come.”<\/p>\n

Sure enough, my magic powers were proved. I got no further than Hikaru making fun of Akari for not recognizing a Go board when the Downtown Disney bus rolled up to the stop. We got on and arrived at the Marketplace only about 10 minutes late — but by that point it didn’t matter, as we’d also heard from Michelle that they were running late themselves. We arranged to meet at the McDonald’s.<\/p>\n

Killing Time<\/b><\/p>\n

We found ourselves with still practically two hours to kill before we were supposed to be at Medieval Times for our meal. I found myself regretting a little that I hadn’t gone for the earlier show, but it surely would have been tempting fate if I had. So we spent some time wandering up and down in Downtown Disney, going into the shops and looking at the things for sale. Of great interest to us were the candy shop (need I say more?) and the memoribilia shop, which, we discovered, had several items from the Harry Potter movies, including a quidditch sweater — which we were able to examine up close and without the robe blocking part of the view.<\/p>\n

After a while, though, we had about exhausted our ability to stare at things we were never going to be able to purchase, so we all piled into Michelle’s car and headed off toward Medieval Times. FL!Julie used to live nearby, and she also told Michelle that the gas would be less expensive out in that direction, so plans were made also to go to a gas station.
(Random: As we were walking to the car, a guy in the group ahead of us was pimping Engrish.com<\/a> to his friends.)<\/p>\n

As it turned out, the gas was not appreciably less expensive, but eventually we found a Texaco and turned in. As we were turning in, we saw several police cars go screaming down the road in the direction from which we had come. As Michelle was pumping the gas, we saw three more go by. As we drove back toward the castle, they were joined by a fire engine and an ambulance. We passed the scene of the accident on our way back; a minivan and another car were completely demolished. People were standing on the sidewalk in front of a Krystal (digression: I had never heard of the chain Krystal, but apparently it is very similar to White Castle.) and watching the carnage. We, however, did not stop. We went back to the castle and after allowing ourselves to be talked into purchasing a royalty upgrade, we entered Medieval Times wearing our yellow paper crowns.<\/p>\n

We were very early, even earlier than their recommended arrival time, and there was little to do before the dinner show was to begin. After strolling around the area and surveying the cheap (and not so cheap) souvenirs for sale, snarking about the mall rat Princess and taking a few pictures, we retired into the bar and claimed a booth for our non-purchasing selves. And there we sat and waited while more time passed.<\/p>\n

Eventually it was time to go in. Yellow was the first group called, and thank goodness for that. We were seated on long benches with long tables in front of us. Not uncomfortable or even too crowded, but difficult to enter and exit easily should you need to go to the bathroom or leave for some other reason after everyone was seated.<\/p>\n

The show began right on time and our serving girl began passing out the food as well. (Just to get this out of the way: vegetable soup — good, though a wee bit underspiced; garlic bread — good, but it seemed anachronistic to me; giant pile of chicken — good, but too many bones and nearly too much chicken! It was a lot; rib — good, but only one :( ; potato halves — mine were pretty bland. These were the least tasty part of the meal and could have used a lot more spice; apple puff pastry — very good, much better than store bought tarts; pepsi — uh, it was pepsi. It wasn’t flat.) She was much slower than the other servers and we were often somewhat behind the people sitting in other sections across the arena.<\/p>\n

I was starving by the time the food started coming, and I ate every single thing that we were served. (I had had 4 small graham crackers and some water so far.) When we left, I was completely stuffed, mostly as a result of the giant pile of chicken. Aside from the food, there was a show to watch while we were eating — an exhibition of jousting, horsemanship and bad acting. The knight to which we were assigned (the yellow one) was quite bishy, though unfortunately the requirements of the plot (such as it was) did not have him win or be a bad guy. He was just a knight.<\/p>\n

The show was not bad, nor was the food, though, as the others decided and I agreed, it was not worth the $60+ per person that it ended up costing. We could have gone to a much nicer restaurant for a great deal less. But we went for the experience, and I can’t say I really regret it — I’ve always wanted to go to one of these things, and now that I have, I don’t have to keep wondering what they’re like.<\/p>\n

I did make one slight miscalculation: I knew, on an abstract level, that the show would involve horses. Even when we entered the arena it didn’t even occur to me that I was in for a bad time of it. The space was large; the horses had hardly been up in the stands; there was ventilation, though obviously not enough. The strong horsey smell that pervaded the place might have tipped me off. But it did not. And so I was caught by surprise around about the time the chicken was served by a throbbing headache and the discovery that my throat had swelled up to the point where I could hardly croak, much less speak.<\/p>\n

Knowing that as soon as we left I would start to recover, I endured the discomfort until the end of the show, but it was with vast relief that I stepped outside and we headed back to Disney. Michelle dropped us off at the Pop Century and we went in to take showers and go to bed, since we were to be ready at 8:00 for them to come by and pick us up.<\/p>\n

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I’d intended (and we all know how much my intentions are worth) to go to bed early on the 2nd. Perhaps 11, perhaps 12, giving me 5 or 6 hours of sleep before 5am, the time when I wanted to get up. Naturally, I stayed up until 4:30am and couldn’t fall asleep immediately even then. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}