Well, about that Dodge Ram we saw yesterday pulling that big load, we’ve come to the conclusion that southern people just really know how to use their trucks. We’ve now seen many more Dodge Rams pulling similar, if not HEAVIER, loads, and we’ve seen many that are muddy and obviously used for sporting and 4×4′ing. Back home we’d never see new trucks like that used in this way, in fact you’d hardly ever even see anything put in the box for fear of SCRATCHING it =).
When we first started the trip and hit our first hotel, John and I tried sleeping in a bed together, but it was hard for a variety of reasons. For one, we are used to a king sized bed at home and the beds in the hotels we are staying at are only doubles. Also, when we try to put the kids together in the other bed, they either fight over the blankets, fight over who has the most room in the bed, fight over whose body is touching whose body, or fool around and don’t go to sleep. So ever since, we have been separating them, and each of us have been sleeping with one kid. Well, the only problem is that John and I are now fighting over who gets to sleep with Kelsey, which is kind of amusing and I’d thought I’d share why in pictures. Here are pictures I took an hour or so after they were both asleep last night. This is kelsey sleeping:
and here’s Jorden:
You see? And Jorden kicks you all night and groans like you should get the heck outta his bed and out of his space! So you basically get no sleep.
We woke up early as usualy, had some cereal and protein bars for breaky, got some gas at the gas station next door where I got ID’d last night. (Forgot about that: last night I went next door to the hotel to grab John a six pack of beer while he took a shower so he could have a six pack while he watched the baseball game, and I got ID’d. Guess I don’t look 21 yet! Well, I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess.)
As we came into Louisiana the sun was coming up and it looked neat with the low fog that was covering the ground.
Right away we thought it was really cool how the highway in Louisianna was all on stilts above the marshlands, or I guess you would call it the Bayou? It was a much more interesting drive through here than it was through New Mexico and Texas, that’s for sure. The kids were still more interested in the computer though.
We were in New Orleans by 11am, and without too much trouble we were able to find the French Quarter.
We parked the van,through the laptop in a backpack with the camera and our passports (just in case, better safe than sorry) and walked towards the Quarter and Bourbon Street. Right away we were in awe of the area, and the kids pointed out that it actually looked a lot like Belize City when we were there a little over a year ago. Some of the same architecture. We walked around for about an hour and a half, bought some beads and a mask for Kelsey, and then headed back to the car. We couldn’t stay to long as we were already behind schedule. Here’s some pics:
Jorden really liked both these signs:
The kids also saw a few other signs displayed that we really would have rather they NOT have seen, but we weren’t able to distract their attention quickly enough! We didn’t know that they displayed such graphic pictures for some of the “live shows” (if you know what I mean *wink* *wink* ) so openly on the windows along the street…eek. So we had to field a few questions back in the car about THAT. Another lesson on the road! =)
We left New Orleans and grabbed some lunch at a drive thru, then headed to Mississsippi.
It was uneventful, and within an hour or two we were through Mississippi and into Alabama.
Alabama was also short lived, with just one stop for gas and the RESTroom. We were surprised at this stop to find the shopkeeper smoking away in the store. Back home it’s totally against the law to smoke inside any public facility, or within a few feet of the entrance/exit doors as well. You basically HAVE to smoke outside, except for inside some bars and restaurants, depending on your municipality. But it’s very rare to find a smoking section in a restaurant at all, and NEVER would you find it inside a store. Kinda funny.
We passed by lots of state troopers on the highway through Alabama, so we were very careful to do the speed limit! Going through Mobile we saw a big battleship in the harbour which Jorden thought was really cool.
We went through a big tunnel too, but I can’t remember if it was in Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida!
We thought these bridges on the water going through Alabama, Florida and Louisiana were really amazing. The scenery going through these three states was awesome and really enjoyable for us.
It wasn’t so enjoyable when we reached Florida though, coming into Pensacola where there was construction on the bridge and we sat in traffic for an hour or two. ARGH! We hate traffic. Oh well, we can’t fight it, so we just listened to the radio and lived with it. Looks like the bridge was out.
Just before this we had seen alot of downed trees from what we assumed was resulting from hurricane damage. It looked like they had just cleared alot of them off of the highway, thankfully.
Well, we were hoping to reach Talahassee today, so that we would only have a few hours in the morning to reach Orlando, get a bit of shopping done and then check into our hotel for our first reservations. But with the traffic delays, we didn’t make it that far. I’m not actually sure where we are, but the hotel clerk says it’s about another hour to Talahasee, so not too far. Tommorrow we’ll finally reach our first destination!! Yay!
October 29th
Got up early again, turns out we were in Bonifay. It was an uneventful drive throught Florida to Orlando, except for the toll-booth attendant on the Florida Turnpike that smelled so badly of booze when he said good day to John when John paid him the $2.50 that we could smell it in our car for a good ten minutes afterward even with the windows down! We had a good laugh about that.
Jorden was driving us NUTS by this point with the “are we there yet?! Are we there yet?!” every 15 seconds, he was way too excited.
With a few quick turns, we were at our first hotel for our Orlando stay, the Best Western Universal Inn. It was nothing spectacular, but it was free with our Air Miles, so no complaints. We’ll be spending our first four nights here, then we move to another hotel for four nights, and then to our timeshare unit for a week. It’s supposed to have Wi-Fi here, but for some reason I can’t pick up anything on my laptop. I have a new laptop with built in wireless (g), and maybe I just don’t have it configured correctly, but I just haven’t had time to bother, so I just dialed up again.
We got to our hotel around noon and a room wasn’t quite ready, so we went and did some shopping at Walmart. We bought a bunch of snacks and stuff for Disney, brita waterbottles and juice crystals for in the parks (sorry, refuse to get jacked for $3 US for a bottle of water or juice, so we bring our own!), some shorts and things for the kids. While in the store, an African-American lady stopped me to comment on my hair braids. She was quite impressed, and went on for awhile giving me compliments on how good it looked on me, and I was flattered and a little embarassed! She was a really nice woman, and she was a hair dresser and does extension braids all the time, and she said that I was the “first white girl” she had ever seen with hair done in braided extensions. We laughed, and she asked if I was getting stared at a lot around here and I mentioned that I had noticed a few more looks than I was used to. She said it was because “only black women do their hair like that down here!” and we had another good laugh. A very neat lady, I thanked her and we were on our way back to our hotel.
They had a room ready for us, so we unpacked everything and must have looked like lunatics walking in with all that stuff on the cart for only 4 days! But we wanted to just go through everything again and organize it, so we just brought everything in. After we organized for a bit, we decided to go down to Downtown Disney and pick up our Will-Call tickets that we had ordered online.
We grabbed our tickets at customer service, and asked about a Special Assistance pass for Jorden in case we needed one. In case you don’t know us well, Jorden was born with a congenital heart defect, has had open heart surgery, and will have it again next year when we return home to Canada. He does well most of the time, but he does tend to tire easily from extended physical activity. When we were in Disneyland last summer, we did okay without the pass for the first two days as we don’t like to use it unless we really need it because we don’t like to take advantage of the ‘system’, you know? And we also don’t want Jorden to always have it in his mind that he NEEDS assistance. But last time on the third or fourth day Jorden didn’t even want to go back to the park because he was just so tired and didn’t want to stand in lines, so we got the pass and it basically enables us to not have to stand in the lines for most of the rides and shows. So we’ll see how he does for the first few days and if he even ends up needing it or not. We try to make it without, and will only get one if he really gets worn out and way too tired to go any further.
We decided to splurge and have dinner at the Rainforest Cafe and the kids were really impressed. They just loved it here! It’s just like being inside a tropical rainforest and every 22 minutes a thunderstorm comes. It was worth it as the kids really enjoyed it.
After dinner we played lego for awhile by the lego store,
then we went back to the hotel and had a swim. The kids then did some of their lessons and went to bed early, excited about their first day tomorrow at Disney. Tomorrow we’ll do Magic Kingdom first, and maybe Epcot at night for the fireworks display. Halloween we will be going to Universal, but I think the kids may get too scared and we may end up leaving with crying children, we’ll have to wait and see!
October 30th
Well, surprisingly enough, everyone woke up early again today even though we could now sleep in. Guess we’re used to it now! We made the kids do some of their lesson first thing while I got some things together for the park, like water bottles, juice crystals, snacks, peanuts, almonds, fruit, sunscreen, camera and threw it all into a small backpack. I’m super cheap when it comes to the parks, so I bring most of our food in if we’re going to spend the whole day there and not return to our hotel at all, and then we’ll just eat one meal there, usually dinner. So I’ll bring in meal replacement bars, almonds, protein shakes in a can, etc. all in my pack and we’ll eat those during the day, and then just have dinner in the park. What can I say, I’m not independantly wealthy, can’t eat all our meals in the parks! =) And I’ve never heard any complaints from the kids.
EDIT (2009): now we only do the Disney Dining Package way, which gives us meals in the park all pre-paid, no stress, no hassle!
Two years ago when we came to Walt Disney World I borrowed a couple of books from the library about the parks and learned all the ins and outs about how to get the most out of the parks and see and do everything even during crowded times. I still remembered most of it, so I felt like we’d do pretty well, and we did.
We had a continental breaky at our hotel which was pretty good, toast, four different kinds of bagels, four different cold cereals, oatmeal, fresh fruit, juices, coffee, pastries, muffins. We had breakfast, then headed out for Disney. We decided to park at Epcot since we’d watch the fireworks there tonight and leave from there. We then took the monorail over to Magic Kingdom.
First thing was a photo in front of the castle:
then I got a closer one of the castle:
We used our past experience of the park and knowing what places get busy first, and headed for Fantasyland first. We rode all the rides there right away with no waits at all. Then we headed over to Tomorrowland for the Buzz Lightyear ride.
We wanted to do the Alien Encounter, but it was gone and replaced with another ride called Stitch’s something-or-other that was previewing, but had a huge line so we bypassed it. We also bypassed Space Mountain because last time we rode it in Disneyland it hurt with all the jerkiness, and none of us really liked it that much, even though John and the kids really like coasters, which I don’t like so much. I’m not a huge coaster or scary ride person, I don’t like that out-of-control feeling really at all, but John gets some kind of weird pleasure out of dragging me on the coasters and making me get all freaked out. I think the kids like it too. As a matter of fact, it just may be a conspiracy between the three of them, because they all laugh at me when I scream my head off on the rides, like on Splash Mountain, and they laughed last year after they made me go on the Rockin’ Roller Coaster and I freaked right out.
We then went to Toontown.
Toontown was a bit boring for them (they’re so grown up now, right?) and they wanted out of there. So we only rode the Barnstormer once, and then took a quick peek in Minnie’s house, and then headed off towards Pirates of the Caribbean. Here’s Kelsey and I in Minnie’s house:
After Pirates, we sat and had some snacks, then we rode Splash Mountain and got soaked. Then we did Thunder Mountain Railway, which I didn’t even scream on once, I was so proud of myself. I must be getting used to them! Then we went over to the Haunted Mansion, then back to the Tiki Room, and the Jungle Cruise.
Here’s what we do with the kids when they misbehave:
After that we went back to Tomorrowland and did the little tram thingy, then we had basically done everything in the park. We rode the train around to Main Street to watch the parade. The kids still loved the parade, and still waved at the characters.
After the parade, we got on the monorail to go to Epcot. We asked if the kids could ride with the driver, knowing that this service was available. The attendant said yes, and the kids jumped for joy. The driver carriage is cool as it is almost all window, the kids liked feeling VIP up there in the front.
At Epcot we had a lot of time before the fireworks, so we first did Test Track. After that, the kids and John did Mission Space. I can’t do simulator rides as I get motion sick easily and these type of rides make me very sick, so I waited at the exit. Afterward John said it was amazing, just as if you were taking off in a space shuttle, but he said it definately would have made me sick.
EDIT (2009): Later we found out that someone died on this ride and some others (including kids) got very ill. We found out it was due to the g-forces and people with heart issues! The ride now has warnings, and in subsequent visits we do not let Jorden ride this ride any longer.
We then did the Honey I shrunk the Audience movie, and some of the other Innovention pavillions, then the Spaceship Earth. We had something to eat at one of the little burger places. We then had a little more time so we decided to go to the Mexico pavillion and ride El Rio del Tiempo. I love that pavillion! Then we rode Maelstrom at the Norway pavillion which is another neat little ride that the kids like.
We then went back and grabbed a seat for the fireworks a half hour early so that we’d have a good vantage point. We fooled around there with the kids for awhile, and then talked to some other people about our journey and how far we had come. They may be checking out this website now, hello to you if you are!
The fireworks (Illuminations) at Epcot are absolutely amazing. We really enjoyed them. Afterward, we made our way back to the car, a little more slowly for Jorden, he was pretty tired but it was a long day for EVERONE. We were back at our hotel by 10, and the kids went right to bed.
Tomorrow is Halloween at Universal, hopefully we didn’t waste our money and the kids will actually stay and not want to leave crying and screaming!!