AuroraRose22
Figment of my Imagination
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2005
Disney: Day Negative One
Or; Day Get Yourself To The Airport Ahead Of Time Because We All Know You Aren't About To Get Up At 3:00am.
But First; The Backstory.
Greetings, Fellow Disney Fans!
My name is Tiffany.
This is me.
(Shhh...Don't let Disney see the Non-Disney Animated Character dress...it was in the nineties all week, if it was sleeveless, I would have pranced around in a shirt emblazoned with 'Universal' on it. Besides, who doesn't love Toothless?)
(Also, while I have plenty of photos, don't expect a lot to feature me. Both because it was a solo trip so there wasn't anyone else to take candid shots, and because by approximately 9:07am every day the temperature had climbed high enough that I was reduced to a melted puddle of human oozing my way awkwardly through the park, and trust me, no one wants to see that. I can only surmise the above photo must have been taken at 9:06.)
(Also... I may have a problem with parentheses.)
So, I had taken a solo trip last year, and loved it so much, I decided to go again!
Last year I had gone in early September, and ended up with my trip slightly delayed by hurricane Irma.
So, being the optimistic soul that I am, I booked for nearly the exact same time period, hoping that Mother Nature had hurricane'd herself out last year.
She hadn't, but she did spare Florida, and my trip was on.
My flight was scheduled to take off at 8:00am, with boarding at 7:35, and it was a couple hours drive to the airport.
And they recommend you get to the airport a couple hours early.
Which would have required getting up somewhere in the vicinity of 2:30-3:00am.
Or I could go down the night before, stay in a hotel right in the airport, and wake up around 5:00am.
I am not a morning person.
I was being dropped off at the airport, which means multiple people would have to get up ridiculously early.
Yeah, I'll take door number two, thank you! There's a perfectly nice hotel on airport property with a 3:00pm check in time and a Club Level with a lounge with evening food for not that much more than the cost of a regular room.
And hotel rooms are always perfect for a relaxing night of deep uninterrupted sleep, right?
...Right?
There were a couple of weird little glitches along the way.
It took a while to check in because there was only one woman at the desk, and the man in front of me had a $90 charge on his account that he and the desk staff could not seem to figure out the origin of.
Well, there's a reminder to check my bill on the way out.
Eventually the woman called over another coworker to get me checked in while they tried to figure out the phantom fee.
I've stayed at this hotel before, and every time I've ended up with a corner room on the end. They're set up oddly, but they've usually been fairly quiet.
This time I got a room in the middle of the hallway, that overlooked the airport side.
Nice view of the planes, but a lot louder at night.
And that was before whoever was in the connecting room next door either started snoring, or was desperately trying to start a lawnmower. I'm not sure which.
Fortunately, I can just pop my headphones on and listen to music until I fall asleep.
I'm getting ahead of myself though.
When I first got into the room, I wanted to call down to set up a wake up call. Only to find the phone wasn't working. No dial tone. I unplugged and plugged in everything I could find, but still nothing.
So I went down to the main desk, where presumably the $90 problem had been remedied as the desk was now empty.
They sent up someone from engineering who checked out the room and discovered that the phone had been switched with the other phone in the room.
There were two phones, one by the beside table, and the other on a desk across the room.
Apparently they were very particular about their own plugs.
My brain was still stalled on the fact there were two phones, I hadn't even noticed the other one up until that point.
Clearly, I was an impostor in this room.
This room was meant for Important People who needed a regular phone and a Special Black Phone. I figured that one was for calling the Pentagon. Or NASA. This was of course in addition to their own cell phone and laptop.
That's why they didn't work. I needed the secret phone codes, and didn't have them.
I did however, have a laptop, an ipad, a camera, a ipod nano, and an iphone, so I figured maybe I could pass just on sheer volume of electronics, even if they weren't the Right Ones.
(I may have a slight technology obsession problem, now that I'm writing that all down. Add it to the parentheses problem...)
Sidenote: Guess how much fun those would all be later, going through airport security.
Answer: Not very much.
This is what happens when you're left to your own devices in a hotel room for an entire afternoon and evening without a firm game plan in mind. You start to daydream up weird scenarios.
...You do, right?
It's not just me?
At 6:00pm they started serving food in the Lounge.
I recognize it's hotel food. I wasn't expecting a grand spread.
But it was still a weird conglomeration of random food, to my admittedly chain-restaurant accustomed palate.
Here we have a choice of white rice, kielbasa, peppers and onions, cheese and stale crackers, raw celery and peppers, a fruit salad, and cheesecake.
It all tasted like it had been sitting on a warming plate.
...Probably because it had all been sitting on a warming plate.
None of it was bad, exactly, it just sort of seemed like somebody hadn't gotten groceries in a couple weeks and was like, "Well, just grab whatever's in the fridge, we'll make it work."
Or maybe my palate just isn't refined enough. I would have been happy with a Big Mac.
(Full disclosure: There was a Dunkin' Donuts in the airport. I may have followed up my odd little dinner with an iced coffee and a chocolate doughnut...)
Then it was back to the room to channel surf and play with my laptop until bedtime, where hopefully I would be awoken by a wake up call from one of the magic phones.
I set my own alarm on my phone just in case.
____________________________________________________
Linking Forward:
1. Disney Day One Part One; In which My Trip Begins, I have yet another peculiar hotel experience, and I realize I may have a plane curse on me.
2. Disney Day One Part Two: In which I make it to Florida, Discover the blandest but most photogenic food in Disney, and have a non-room check debacle.
3. Disney Day Two: In which I find the prettiest cupcake in Disney, get a behind the scenes look at Disney flora, and transport myself back to the nineties through the power of music.
4. Disney Day Three: In which I eat more dessert than a human should ever consume...and then skip the whole reason for the party. ...Yep.
5. Disney Day Four: In which I consider offering fellow tourists to the lions on Safari and I meet a very friendly lizard.
Or; Day Get Yourself To The Airport Ahead Of Time Because We All Know You Aren't About To Get Up At 3:00am.
But First; The Backstory.
Greetings, Fellow Disney Fans!
My name is Tiffany.
This is me.
(Shhh...Don't let Disney see the Non-Disney Animated Character dress...it was in the nineties all week, if it was sleeveless, I would have pranced around in a shirt emblazoned with 'Universal' on it. Besides, who doesn't love Toothless?)
(Also, while I have plenty of photos, don't expect a lot to feature me. Both because it was a solo trip so there wasn't anyone else to take candid shots, and because by approximately 9:07am every day the temperature had climbed high enough that I was reduced to a melted puddle of human oozing my way awkwardly through the park, and trust me, no one wants to see that. I can only surmise the above photo must have been taken at 9:06.)
(Also... I may have a problem with parentheses.)
So, I had taken a solo trip last year, and loved it so much, I decided to go again!
Last year I had gone in early September, and ended up with my trip slightly delayed by hurricane Irma.
So, being the optimistic soul that I am, I booked for nearly the exact same time period, hoping that Mother Nature had hurricane'd herself out last year.
She hadn't, but she did spare Florida, and my trip was on.
My flight was scheduled to take off at 8:00am, with boarding at 7:35, and it was a couple hours drive to the airport.
And they recommend you get to the airport a couple hours early.
Which would have required getting up somewhere in the vicinity of 2:30-3:00am.
Or I could go down the night before, stay in a hotel right in the airport, and wake up around 5:00am.
I am not a morning person.
I was being dropped off at the airport, which means multiple people would have to get up ridiculously early.
Yeah, I'll take door number two, thank you! There's a perfectly nice hotel on airport property with a 3:00pm check in time and a Club Level with a lounge with evening food for not that much more than the cost of a regular room.
And hotel rooms are always perfect for a relaxing night of deep uninterrupted sleep, right?
...Right?
There were a couple of weird little glitches along the way.
It took a while to check in because there was only one woman at the desk, and the man in front of me had a $90 charge on his account that he and the desk staff could not seem to figure out the origin of.
Well, there's a reminder to check my bill on the way out.
Eventually the woman called over another coworker to get me checked in while they tried to figure out the phantom fee.
I've stayed at this hotel before, and every time I've ended up with a corner room on the end. They're set up oddly, but they've usually been fairly quiet.
This time I got a room in the middle of the hallway, that overlooked the airport side.
Nice view of the planes, but a lot louder at night.
And that was before whoever was in the connecting room next door either started snoring, or was desperately trying to start a lawnmower. I'm not sure which.
Fortunately, I can just pop my headphones on and listen to music until I fall asleep.
I'm getting ahead of myself though.
When I first got into the room, I wanted to call down to set up a wake up call. Only to find the phone wasn't working. No dial tone. I unplugged and plugged in everything I could find, but still nothing.
So I went down to the main desk, where presumably the $90 problem had been remedied as the desk was now empty.
They sent up someone from engineering who checked out the room and discovered that the phone had been switched with the other phone in the room.
There were two phones, one by the beside table, and the other on a desk across the room.
Apparently they were very particular about their own plugs.
My brain was still stalled on the fact there were two phones, I hadn't even noticed the other one up until that point.
Clearly, I was an impostor in this room.
This room was meant for Important People who needed a regular phone and a Special Black Phone. I figured that one was for calling the Pentagon. Or NASA. This was of course in addition to their own cell phone and laptop.
That's why they didn't work. I needed the secret phone codes, and didn't have them.
I did however, have a laptop, an ipad, a camera, a ipod nano, and an iphone, so I figured maybe I could pass just on sheer volume of electronics, even if they weren't the Right Ones.
(I may have a slight technology obsession problem, now that I'm writing that all down. Add it to the parentheses problem...)
Sidenote: Guess how much fun those would all be later, going through airport security.
Answer: Not very much.
This is what happens when you're left to your own devices in a hotel room for an entire afternoon and evening without a firm game plan in mind. You start to daydream up weird scenarios.
...You do, right?
It's not just me?
At 6:00pm they started serving food in the Lounge.
I recognize it's hotel food. I wasn't expecting a grand spread.
But it was still a weird conglomeration of random food, to my admittedly chain-restaurant accustomed palate.
Here we have a choice of white rice, kielbasa, peppers and onions, cheese and stale crackers, raw celery and peppers, a fruit salad, and cheesecake.
It all tasted like it had been sitting on a warming plate.
...Probably because it had all been sitting on a warming plate.
None of it was bad, exactly, it just sort of seemed like somebody hadn't gotten groceries in a couple weeks and was like, "Well, just grab whatever's in the fridge, we'll make it work."
Or maybe my palate just isn't refined enough. I would have been happy with a Big Mac.
(Full disclosure: There was a Dunkin' Donuts in the airport. I may have followed up my odd little dinner with an iced coffee and a chocolate doughnut...)
Then it was back to the room to channel surf and play with my laptop until bedtime, where hopefully I would be awoken by a wake up call from one of the magic phones.
I set my own alarm on my phone just in case.
____________________________________________________
Linking Forward:
1. Disney Day One Part One; In which My Trip Begins, I have yet another peculiar hotel experience, and I realize I may have a plane curse on me.
2. Disney Day One Part Two: In which I make it to Florida, Discover the blandest but most photogenic food in Disney, and have a non-room check debacle.
3. Disney Day Two: In which I find the prettiest cupcake in Disney, get a behind the scenes look at Disney flora, and transport myself back to the nineties through the power of music.
4. Disney Day Three: In which I eat more dessert than a human should ever consume...and then skip the whole reason for the party. ...Yep.
5. Disney Day Four: In which I consider offering fellow tourists to the lions on Safari and I meet a very friendly lizard.
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