Orlando’s airport is pretty big, thanks to WDW’s development of the area. The WDW site was originally chosen because it was on a main highway, with the assumption being that there would be a lot of automobile traffic with East Coast folk all driving in. Nowdays that’s probably still true, but the number one accent one hears is unquestionably British, and there’s no question that people are flying in from all over creation. A monorail takes you from the gate to the main terminal, which is a nice albeit accidental theme park touch: you get your first ride before you even leave the airport. We availed ourselves of what they call Disney’s Magical Express. You would probably call it glorified bus service, but it is pretty nifty. When you check in your bags at your home airport, that’s the last you see of them until they turn up in your room a couple of hours after you check in. WDW picks ‘em up and delivers ‘em, and you don’t have to think about it. Just make sure you have the bear [sic] necessities of life with you in your carry-on, and you’re in like Flynn.
The bus area at the airport was virtually empty aside from the three of us (my cousin traveled down on our flight) and about eight thousand WDW employees wishing there were more than just the three of us. This leads, of course, to pretty quick service, and we were on a bus and on our way, as they say, momentarily. (Am I the only person in the world who mourns the loss of the correct meaning of that word?) It’s about a half hour ride to the Disney property, and they play an orientation video to fill up the time. (I was thinking that maybe I’d try an orientation video for Bump this year, that people could watch on the bus as they drive in…) When they run out of information they screen an old Donald Duck cartoon. The Disneyfication has begun. Resistance is futile.
We stayed at the French Quarter at Riverside, one of their so-called moderate hotels. A few amenities, perfectly nice rooms, a Mardi Gras theme. One treat unique to Riverside is a boat to Downtown Disney, which we caught after we got freshened up. You pass things like the famous Mickey-shaped golf sand trap as you toodle along, and I noticed that the captain of our vessel did a lot of tooting along to boot, and I can just imagine getting up on the tee box and beginning my backstroke on the fourteenth hole and just as I’m about to punch it out 300 yards straight down the middle there’s this blast of TTTTOOOOOOOOTTTTT and I’m dribbling off 3 yards in reverse. There are pluses and minuses to ubiquitous theming.
Pleasure Island, which is in the middle of the Downtown Disney shopping area, was once a themed destination of its own, with a comedy club and the amazing Adventurers’ Club and various music venues. You paid one price to get in, then you roamed around with a drink in your hand until midnight, when, every day, they celebrated New Year’s Eve with a fireworks display for those guests who were still sober enough to be able to see anything that far up in the air. Now it’s in the process of re-grooving, probably for not much of anything other than more restaurants. Anyhow, we met up at the Paradiso 37 (or maybe it was 57—whatever), which is sort of Caribbean themed (because there’s 37 or 57 Caribbean islands?). The fancy drinks began with a nice passion fruit caipirinha. We were all there except for O’C, who had preemptively wandered off. In fact, he had been visiting Soddie that day before joining us, young Skywalker touching base with Obi-Wan or however you want to look at it. He kept us informed of his progress, as is his wont: O’C is nothing if not wedded to his iPhone (which, of course, is what the Scalias of life are most afraid of with things like Prop 8, but that’s another story entirely). It started raining, and by the time he showed up at our table, he was slightly drenched. But we were all met! The festivities began with a nice dinner, especially the cheesy corn thingies. After which, Kt and O’C and I went to the shop to buy the mandatory new cap while the others drifted back to the rooms (which, as it turned out, were contiguous, a nice touch from our travel agent).
If you don’t believe that the starting gun had been fired, and the games begun, consider this. At some point on his journey from Soddie to DiDeAd, as O’C texted us his every move, I received the following text from him, quoted in its entirety: “I am turning the corner.”
I’ve been waiting for him to turn the corner for years now.
2 comments:
Sitting in my Wake hotel room while my debater fires blocks at me I find:
O’C is nothing if not wedded to his iPhone (which, of course, is what the Scalias of life are most afraid of with things like Prop 8, but that’s another story entirely).
LMAO, momentarily. Thank you.
I just laughed out loud, literally, at the exact same comment!
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