Accidental Tourist

Travel, You Magnificent Bastard, You Stupid Dick Leave a reply

Orlando International Airport, 7am. I’m foraging for food for my husband near gate 25 at an “upscale” cafe that serves cinnamon rolls. I’m 3 away from being served.

At the head of the line is a well groomed gentleman, plain clothes, nothing to write home about, who had just ordered a coffee and a danish. He’s told the amount for his purchase and quickly digs into his nicely weathered satchel and produces a can of mixed nuts.

He hands the can to the woman. “You will find the money in here,” he says. Straight faced.

She hesitates. She looks at him. He looks at her. The can in his hand doesn’t waiver. She takes the can. She opens the can.

It’s filled with dimes.

As she dumps and counts, the man places his fingertips on his eyebrows and looks downcast.

In my post-Disney, post-vacation depression, I don’t know if this is annoying or awesome.

Disney Day One

Travel 2 Replies

On this day, just after the announcement that Ontario Place will be closing (90% of it anyway), I give to you our first day of travel into the World!

We arrived Orlando at around 11pm, a bit rough around the edges. The flight was ok but going from work to the airport is really an act left for travelling salesmen and the like.

Our car was a Mitsubishi Lancer, which turned out to be a surprisingly fun car to drive. Well, actually I just did the riding in the passenger seat, fiddling with AC and the radio. And what is up with Riannah’s “We Found a Love In a Hopeless Place”? We heard it at least twice every day.

Our check in was marred by some poor unfortunate soul that wasn’t completely “with us” as it were. She had some issues and needed to tell the front desk cast member (who she stole from us as we were waiting in line) all about them. Like how she didn’t like milk and couldn’t contact the airlines and how her room was 3″ smaller than her last stay and how aliens probed her nightly. Okay not as dramatic, but you get the gist. The poor cast member was gracious and after 15 minutes of this, was reduced to “Uh hums” and “Yep!”

We get to our room around 1am – a lovely shoebox at the Pop Century, much like every other shoe boxes in this resort, overlooking the the lake, nearly facing the new construction of the Art of Animation resort. A sneak peek (pic below!) – our first Disney Miracle! We crash for the night but not before having a giggling fit over SharkBoy mentioning that we need to leave a tip for the “mermaid”. I started to laugh hysterically at the thought of a mermaid pushing a blue hotel cart around and taking all day just to clean one room. Funnier at 1am, really.

Our first park was Animal Kingdom. A place where if I were not ride any rides but wander it’s paths with camera in hand, I would still have a 100% satisfying day. We did the Kilimanjaro Safari first which turned out to be a PRO TIP – the animals were much more active in the morning than any other times we’ve experienced it. But of course we did ride nearly all the rides. But by noon we were beat. The late night, early start kicked us in the gut and we left before the park was closed. We could have stayed and re-rode some things but we couldn’t keep our eyes open.

That night, we drove over to Celebration to sap some WiFi from a Starbucks. If you’ve got the chance, go visit this town that Disney Inc. built. I think the board members felt some guilt that EPCOT didn’t turn out like the city that Walt wanted so they built their own community and called it Celebration. It’s like Stepford Wives meets Steven Spielberg meets any subversive alien invasion movie from the 50s. Everyone has gingerbread houses, rocking chairs on the front porch and kids getting A+ in school. Its a bylaw I think.

We checked out The Bohemian Hotel for our next trip back in December. Let me tell you, the website makes it look like a bed and breakfast run by crazy homosexuals when in fact it’s a pretty beautiful hotel. Will definitely look into staying!

Early Morning Sharkboy with Art of Animation in the background
Sneak Peek of the Art of Animation Resort
Ready for our Safari
Da Rhino
Beest!
Elephant in charge
Cheeky Cheetahs
Early Morning Ostrich
House that Meerkats Built
Six Legged Thingamajigger
Sensibly Censored Gorilla Butt
Repose by the falls
Hairy Arms
Work it!
Gruh
Snotty Lizard
Good Morning!
Everest, not really.
Am I not Turtel Enough For you?

In the World

Travel 3 Replies

We’ve been hitting the parks hard.

Last night, after being at EPCOT for 14.5 hours, SharkBoy fell asleep on Spaceship Earth. Thank the Venitians! Or Helen Mirren’s ducet narration.

Awesome trip so far. Only downfall is the lack of wifi at Pop Century. Update needed. Right now I’m sapping signal in the lobby of the Polynesian Resort.

More later!

Upgrade, or Be Deleted

You Stupid Dick 1 Reply

New cardio machines at my gym! A new bank of treadmills and elliptical machines, sweat free and working properly. Our membership dollars at work.

In terms of Wow Factor, I’d say they’re about a 4 out of 10. Nothing new really, same screen, keypads. Better inner workings, though, noticeable like going from an iPhone 4 to 4S. Their resistance gave new life into my calves and ass. Bring it on, long walks in DisneyWorld!

As I was huffing along, Mr Breaky McBreaker got on the machine beside me. I know this guy has snapped a couple cup holders on the old-style machines due to his inability to understand that putting all your upper body weight on the keypad and resting your arms across the top of the machine will NOT help you lose weight or do anything positive for his back. No, he’s actually broken a couple machines that way.

The new machines befuddled him. He asked me: “How… What are these things for?”

He was referring to the two very LARGE toggles at the bottom of the keypad. Both looking like light switches neither in the ON or OFF position, with arrows pointing up and down.

“One is for increasing or decreasing the height of your step and the other for speed… resistance,” I offer.

Instantly he starts running at a million miles per hour like a captain off a cruise ship.

He fiddles with the buttons and looks back towards me, face like a question mark.

“How do you make it work?”

I show him on mine, toggling the resistance and height up and down as demonstration. He keeps at the impossible breakneck speed and gets into his slouchy position, both arms lazily across the top of the touch panel.

“Better not rest there, they’re only held on there by a couple screws!” I suggest. Not much of a lie but I’m more pissed that he thinks going so fast and hunching over almost at a 90 degree angle is anyway a good work out. I want the machine to snap and watch him take a tumble but then again, they are new machines and my money went into them.

“I don’t like it.”

“Upgrade or die,” I say, misquoting from Dr Who.

Anatomy of a Vacation

Personal Bits, Travel, You Stupid Dick 6 Replies

Or… Refusing to Give The Fat Man Any More Attention

Okay so in the last week I’ve written nothing. I’m no going to force anything or apologize so you’ll just get this:

That’s right. We’re headed back next week to enter the bubble. We’ve been scrambling here at Dead Robot Heavy Industries to get ourselves prepared.

Last week the final cheque from Da’s estate came in and with it sitting in my hands I made a vow that I would not spend it on rent or food or any other items that we may use ordinarily – ESPECIALLY with a strike looming. Even more so, in fact. I truly don’t want any of Rob Fucking Ford’s machinations to affect or effect me. He’ll not get this money. No, a semi-evil corporation in Florida will.

So off to the internet! I spent days scouring for the best/cheapest time to travel and finally found that the last two weeks in January are extremely cheap for rooms/flights. After Feb 7th, prices jump up into that somewhat uncomfortable area. Finding a deal on WestJet Vacations (no this isn’t a paid post… I wish it was though! Hi WestJet Vacations SEO bot! Hi!) I had very little time to convince SharkBoy that we wanted …no… NEEDED to go back to Walt Disney World before this deal disappeared into the ether.

I knew that getting him into Vacation Mode would be difficult, simply because he was in Stress Mode due to Rob Fucking Ford. I had to move delicately. I start by small short emails to his work – three lines of text, like a carefully crafted Haiku:

Pop Century: Jan 24 to 31
Room, flight and park tickets: $1705
Car Rental: $80

Understandably he responds with strike news. But he asks about prices for Gay Days in May. The price I find for that weekend are painful. He tells me not to torture myself and stop looking.

I don’t give up easily and I keep it up. A few days later, while watching TV, I hand over my iPad with the booking on WestJet Vacations (Hi! How you like me now, WJV??) in it’s final stages. $1705 all in. Taxes too. He growls. Later, I hear the printer going in the office and he comes into the bedroom and tosses freshly printed booking inquiry sheets. The price at the bottom is $2350.

“See? You’re wrong. Expensive.”

“Oh bitch, it’s on,” I think and take him step by step into my plan:

  • We leave on the night of the 24th, so we’re only spending 4 vacation days and a weekend. Magic!
  • Since we only have 6 full days in the park we can skimp and only do base tickets. As you know, we’re pretty hard core. We know which park is open early/late and know exactly which one to hit for each day, with one extra day for repeats and the last day back at Magic Kingdom (a tradition).
  • Ditto on the food plan – they’d charge us for our “flying days”, one of which gets to WDW at 11pm, so PASS, thank you very much.
  • Rental8 dot com has some pretty cheap cars if you don’t mind slightly less polished service or cars.

I show him my iPad again after all this. I can see in his eyes I almost have him. I hit him with the a fore mentioned reasoning of “This money will not go towards the strike!” And the walls start to crumble. I say that we are exactly right in between our last vacation and our upcoming December vacation (give or take a month) so the timing is utterly right. He sits and starts looking into Extra Magic Hours (resort guests get in early or stay later at the parks) and certain dining reservations. I know we’re truly going when he maps out what day equals what park (Updated from the comments…):

  • Wednesday: Animal Kingdom
  • Thursday: Hollywood Studios
  • Friday: EPCOT
  • Saturday: Magic Kingdom
  • Sunday: Hollywood Studios (This may get replaced with a day by the pool and Magic Kingdom late. It’s on the fly)
  • Monday: Magic Kingdom for our hats

Before he changes his mind I pull down our change boxes and show him that we have already enough coin to be rolled for the cost of the rental car.

In the end, we booked it and are rarin’ to go. “Pull up 2, 5 and 7!” as they say at Test Track!

Admittedly I am feeling a twang of guilt for not saving the money, but I never wanted it in the first place – I’d rather not have it sitting around making me feel bad for not spending/saving it. I think this is right and I’m excited.

And so is SharkBoy – I just got this email:

Me: on our duplicate park days, I’m only bringing my small camera – compact and ready for action, not my Big Betty.

SharkBoy: Well, you be NoCameraBetty if you want, I’m not going to miss an opportunity, I’ll carry my big betté and you’ll be all blee blee blee bloo bloo bloo blee blee blee and I’ll be all click click click ooooo aaaaaaa click click click ooooo aaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaa click ooooo click aaaaaaa

MapleCon

Distractions, Hobbies, Travel Leave a reply

It’s true what they say about kids being coddled these days.

When I was 16 my parents let me and an 18 year old friend of mine, travel to Ottawa on our own to attend MapleCon, my first science fiction/comic book convention. I had saved up my share of the hotel room and somehow convinced my mom to put a deposit down on said hotel room. I guess I was a trustworthy kid back then.

If I were to be 16 today and ask my parents that, I wonder if I would be allowed to go. I doubt it.

Ah MapleCon… You never forget your first ‘Con. Ottawa and surrounding area’s only gathering of nerds. I can still remember the poster of Captain Canuck advancing out of frame in your grey and white tights. Here’s a MapleCon 5  program as example of how cut and paste and typed everything was back then before computers. I can’t tell you how fantastic it was (is!) to discover that there were (are!) thousands of other dorks like you out in the world when you walk through the door of any con. Dorks that will stay up all night just to sit through a VHS showing of Dark Star or A Boy and his Dog with a room full of other dorks.

I didn’t have a ton of spending money so my convention floor purchase had to be just right. I think I scoured the entire room twice for the right thing to bring home when suddenly I found it: a 1979 12″ Alien doll (action figure!) with glow in the dark skull through green plastic cowling. And snapping jaws!

We didn’t act like wild, untamed beasts while away. Somehow I knew that if my parents got wind of bad behaviour I’d not have this opportunity again. Also, I was too stupid to do stupid things. We didn’t drink or trash our hotel room or do anything illegal. Our biggest crime was staying up all night at the Con hotel, playing Dungeons and Dragons. I remember on the way back to the hotel, in front of a huge line of people waiting for a bus, my friend went into a demonic southern preacher style rant and pretended to “heal” my soul by slapping my forehead so hard that I fell to my knees – much to the amusement of the bus crowd.

Don’t worry. I got him back. Years later when I lived in England, he visited me in London. While showing him the town we were waiting on the back platform of a double decker bus and I somehow managed to tell him that we were at the stop and he could just jump off. Even though we were still probably travelling at a rate greater than a brisk walk. The result was his feet flying out from under him and his body doing a perfect roll/crumple in front of a busy shop. Ha!

Anyway, the point of this story is that I was the darling child of my parents because I didn’t trash the hotel room or get drunk or do drugs (the opportunity certainly was presented) and that kids today are trustworthy, you just have to trust that you’ve taught them well and trust them.

Friday Fun Link O Rama

Distractions 1 Reply

Okay I had to read 4 different articles to grok this but… it seems scientists have punched a hole into time to cloak things. I bet the producers of Terra Nova are busy re-writing their show.

Yes I know it’s way past Xmas but I want one of these.

Via BoingBoing via SuperPunch via… this made me larf without needing to read any caption:

“Too old for this, I am.” – This (plus the coloured burgers from Burger King) is making me really NOT want to see Star Wars Episode I in the theatre. But the one consolation is that they rift on the “I hope you like PAIN” youtube video, and SharkBoy will find it amusing…

Battlestar Galactica on my Gameboy Advance

Sad to see the seen-from-space Hidden Mickey (scroll down…) over at Hollywood Studios destroyed? No worries! There’s one at Animal Kingdom!

View Larger Map

So it looks like SharkBoy will be out on the picket lines in 2-3 weeks AND it might be a long one since both parties are stubborn, immovable forces. If any of you wish to help with our rent, my PayPal account is deadrobot at rocketmail com le dot. The last time this happened (right after a big Disney vacation – owch) I was equally mad at the unions and the city. Now I’m furious with just the city, for obvious reasons.

And in Disney planning news: I’m trying to convince SharkBoy that we should stay at this “gay-as-Liberace” hotel in Celebration.