Working on getting the photos from Katherine's karate tourney up at our site reminded me how woefully behind I am on getting pictures posted -- the previous upload was for KOA last summer, and those were the only 2006 pics I'd posted (aside from frequent phone pics here).

I did, just because it caught my eye, go through our Walt Disney World photos from last May and got them cleaned up and posted. I really should do the rest ... in my copious free time ...

Filed under :: Travel - WDW 06
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (0) · Pings (0) · TR/G

I'd had no idea that our trip to WDW coincided with this year's "Gay Days". Remarkably enough, we weren't forced witnesses to sodomite debauchery, Katherine wasn't stolen by Lesbian Gypsies, I didn't see anyone parading around in leather, and we managed to have a great time.

Well, there was one brief moment where it touched our lives. While Margie and I were on the shuttle bus from Downtown Disney to Port Orleans after dropping off the car Thursday night, we had the ill fortune to be sitting opposite some folks whose dress and accents -- ah, well far be it from me to stereotype, of course, but it's a shame the lights were off in the bus and we couldn't confirm the crimson color of their necks.

This particular crew was comparing notes on the evening, and one fellow, sitting down next to his sunburned girlfriend, started railing against and joking about the gays they'd seen seen at one of the clubs at Pleasure Island. Insert various tasteless (male) gay jokes here (in front of the various kids on the bus.)

The most amusing part was that, while there was an implication in most of the conversation that the guy and his gal had to flee the club before he was sexually assaulted by the Evil Homosexuals, he also explicitly stated at one point that he'd been escorted out by security because of "a drinking problem."

Such paragons of righteousness ...

(via BoingBoing and DisneyBlog)

Filed under :: Gay Stuff :: Travel - WDW 06
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (0) · Pings (0) · TR/G

I have 211 e-mails to deal with this morning, post-being-away, including 27 from my boss, so posting may be a bit light ...

I do have about half the "daily" entries finished for the WDW 06 stuff, but haven't posted them. I'm also having odd problems getting the "Travel - WDW 06" category to come up, which is really annoying.

Filed under :: Blogging :: Job Jollies :: Travel - WDW 06
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (0) · Pings (0) · TR/G

A summary of our experience, with observations, using Disney's Magical Express service.

The idea of the service is twofold. For people coming to Walt Disney World, it's meant to be a tremendous time-saver and convenience. For Disney, it's meant to encourage people to stay at the park and to stay at the park. Overall, it seems to be successful in both goals.

The way it works is this. You contact the DME office when you're making your reservations to stay at a Walt Disney World resort, to sign up for the DME service (which is, at this point, free). You let them know what flight you're going to be on, and where you'll be staying. Well ahead of your flight (you have to have done this within 30 days of your trip), you get a package through the mail, explaining the whole thing, and some bright-colored luggage tags for your checked luggage (they send many more tags than you'll need).

When you check your bags at your departure airport to Orlando, you make sure the checked bags have the tags on them. When they arrive at MCO (Orlando), they get whisked off by Disney package gnomes, shipped to your resort, and taken to your room, usually within a few hours of your having checked in. Meantime, you've taken a special Disney bus to your resort, checked in, and are all relaxed, not having had to hoist your bags from baggage claim, lugged them to a rental car pickup or shuttle service, etc.

On the way back, it's even slicker. If you are flying with one of several large carriers out of MCO, you can check in your baggage and get your boarding pass at the resort, You get a time when a bus is leaving for the airport, and that's your ride back. In the meantime, you can check your carry-on in at the luggage service for your resort and spend the rest of the day (until your bus trip) doing whatever your want, even after checkout.

Even if you're not on the list of carriers, you can still check your bags to go back to MCO on the bus, and simply pick them up on the other end.

And here's how it worked for us:

1. Though they say the packages will come "several weeks" before the trip, ours were more like 2-3 weeks.

2. Checked in with our bags at DIA with the yellow DME stickers on them without any problem.

3. On arrival at MCO, walked down to the baggage claim area as instructed. A very friendly lady directed us to the DME area, which was over a dozen carousels and down a level.

   On getting downstairs, we checked in at a counter, confirmed the bags we had checked, when we were leaving, where we were going, etc., and were given our bus passes. We were then directed over to a queue area where folks lined up for each resort. There were busses outside loading all the time, and clearly they were trying to group folks onto them most efficiently. We waited about 15 minutes here.

   (Note: My folks and Jim & Ginger, who arrived later in the evening, and on a delayed flight, found this step a bit more problematic. The waits were longer, for one thing, and it seemed a bit more confused.)

4. We were escorted to a nice bus and were on our way. It took about 40-odd minutes to get to the park, along which route we were regaled by a Disney video about DME, about the parks, about etc. This kept us entertained on an otherwise not-terribly-interesting or attractive ride from MCO to WDW.

5. We hopped off the bus, went in, and registered. We went up to our rooms and relaxed a bit. We did have our critical stuff on carry-on, including some swim suits, which we made use of to go swimming.

   When we got back to the room, our bags had automagically appeared, and we got them unpacked and were all set.

   (Note: Getting in later, the 'rents faced a bit more awkwardness with this stage. Even after registering and going to the local Yahoo Bob show, etc., the bags had not appeared in the room. They called the luggage service, where a gent said they had not arrived yet. When they escalated up to find out what was going on, the manager determined that they had, indeed, arrived, and they were bellhopped up to the rooms forthwith.)

6. Even though my folks and us were on different flights, an hour apart, we wanted to go back on the same bus. We called the main DME number and arranged it, though they did it by sort of spoofing the bus reservation system as to which flight back the 'rents were on, which is flexible but troublesome.

7. About mid-week, we started getting calls in the late evening from the local DME folks saying that they didn't have hour return flight info, and we needed to contact them at this toll-free number to provide it to them. And, since it was late by the time we were getting back to the hotel, we'd have to call the DME mothership in the morning, and we'd do so, and, yes, they had our info, no problem, we're set.

   Ultimately, it seems United having changed flight numbers was probably what was doing it. Our flight number changed, so the at-resort DME folks (who have a live setup) couldn't find the number we'd given them, but the mothership DME folks (who had the computer records) could see we'd given them a number.

   Didn't cause any real problems, just annoyance.

8. The day before we were to leave, we received an envelope that should have had confirmation of our flights and our scheduled departure time. Instead, it told us that we still didn't have a confirmed flight time, etc. Margie called again, and confirmed that we did, and that we were scheduled for the 3 p.m. bus.

9. When all rolled around on check-out day, we had our check luggage and our carry-on luggage. The latter we checked in with luggage service at the resort to be picked up when we returned from a morning park visit. The former we took with us to a ticket counter at the Port Orleans (where we were staying) lobby, and checked in much the same as if we'd been at the airport. They took our bags (baggage tagged and noted with the time of our flight so that they could have it shipped there on the right truck), and gave us bording passes, and we were set.

10. We were back to the lobby of the hotel by 2:20 p.m. or so, and hung out, drank some sodas, did last-second shopping. A bit before 3, a Disney Cruise Lines bus pulled up at the end of the port cocher, where the "Disney's Magical Express" sandwich sign was. We assumed the Disney Cruises was sharing the same bus loading zone as the Disney's Magical Express (just as they have desks right next to each other in the registration area; the "land/sea cruise" thing is very popular). A DME bus pulled up behind it for a few minutes, but didn't open its doors, then moved on.

    Around 3, Margie went out and checked -- and found out that the DC bus was serving as the DME bus, and there was a sign to that effect -- at the front of the bus, which wasn't visible from the lobby. Swell.

    We hustled out, checked in our carry-on baggage to be stowed below, and hopped on the bus.

11. Watched another "you don't have to let the magic end now" video on the way back, which was diverting, even if I am not planning on another Disney vacation in the near future (let alone a Disney Vacation Club timeshare kinda thing). We got let out at MCO just under two hours before our flight -- which, since we didn't need to check in anything or even get boarding passes, was quite nice.

12. Bags were waiting for us at the carousel in Denver. Easy peasy.

Overall? I'd highly recommend the service. There are a few hiccups -- but remember all the balls they're juggling in the air: airlines, bus lines, shipping folks, ticketing folks, loca/resortl DME people, central headquarters DME people. There are a lot of places for sand to slip into the gears, especially since not everyone involved is actually Disney. For most people, in most situations, it will work quite nicely.

If, however, you have a travel profile that doesn't fit into the norm, you might need to monitor the situation more carefully. For example, when we were checking in to leave, we were right behind a woman whose husband was traveling on from there, on a DME-agreeement airline for an international business trip to Singapore, whereas she was flying back home on a non-DME airline. Common sense would have had her reading the FAQ carefully, calling and checking in with the DME people every few days, double-checking to be sure she, and they, understood what needed to happen, and overall taking a bit of responsibility to avoid being surprised. Instead, she just sort of assumed that something designed to automagically accomodate 90% of the people would work without intervention for something a few sigmas away from norm. Caveat traveller.

Filed under :: Travel - WDW 06
Link · Print · Edit · Pings (3) · TR/G

... I should go through the 1,095 e-mail messages I have. Even granted that several hundred of them will be spam ...

Filed under :: Blogging :: Travel - WDW 06
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (1) · Pings (0) · TR/G

The final hours ...

1. After the late night previously, we hadn't gotten any packing done. Margie and I slept later (until 8:45a) than expected, then swung into action.

   Margie is our main packer -- she's the one who can warp space (if not mass) to fit things into a variety of suitcases. She took care of that packing, whilst I flitted about like a bee, tackling small items and clumps and groups, and cleaning things on the periphery (e.g., gathering up the bathroom articles). It works for us, and we were done by 10 a.m., which is when the bellhop was supposed to come and gather up our luggage.

   I've written elsewhere of how the whole Disney's Magical Express setup worked on the way out. We also had the Express Check-out, so we didn't need to actually go to the desk or anything. Indeed, the only minor hiccup for the day was that, as of the Express Check-out, our door cards could no longer be used to charge things.

2. Having gotten our luggage dealt with and boarding passes obtained, we hopped on the bus for Animal Kingdom, that having been the one place we had unfinished business.

   Once there, we headed over for Dino Land, USA. One of Katherine's favorite parts of the park (indeed, of all WDW) is the Boneyard, half of which is a massive complex of ladders and platforms and slides (a giant Play Place, essentially), the other half of which is a huge sandbox for excavating fossils from. This was what she'd missed doing.

   So we let my folks watch her there (heh heh heh), while Margie and I hustled over to Expedition Everest.

   The line said 70 minutes. That was about right. It was well worth the wait, though, since the queue is a wonderfully rich set of a Tibetan temple segueing to an expedition shop thence to a Yeti museum. Gorgeous. It will be even better when the trees grow up and the line doesn't loop through a large, unbearably sunny area.

   Think of Disneyland's Matterhorn, done on a Thunder Mountain-style train, on steroids and with modern sensibilities. I've heard disappointment over how short a ride it is, but it seemed just fine to me. I won't spoil it, but it's probably the best Disney roller coaster to date, from both an action and an environmental/magic standpoint. Well done, and it should be a big boost for Animal Kingdom.

   The biggest disappointment was the gift shop after the ride. The EE swag was uniformly cheesy. But, then, I wasn't all that thrilled with the current generation of WDW t-shirts and mugs overall this time, so perhaps that's not a surprise.

3. We wandered back over to Dino-Land. Katherine had been having a blast, and running the 'rents ragged. Somewhere while we'd been away, she'd talked them into going over to the "carnival" part of the area, and had "won" a red and green stuffed frog at the water-balloon sideshow game. She named it Christmas, and was inseparable from it for a number of days.

4. We all headed back over to Africa so that Katherine could get a hair wrap. Then, before we could go, Katherine pouted that she hadn't been on a ride, so we dashed back to Dino-Land and hopped on the Triceratop Spin (Dumbo as Dinosaurs).

   Then off to the busses and Port Orleans.

5. Had a bit of time to kill before the bus arrived, so we changed into the shirts we'd held aside (those of us who had), and did a bit of pick-up shopping at the general store.
   
   We'd gotten all of these "get a free Disney pin from your resort store" coupons, so Katherine turned in a couple and I did, too. They were for bus pins (woo-hoo). I traded one of mine for an interesting, rather different-looking Cheshire Cat pin from one of the folks at the store. It turned out to be a 1991 EuroDisneyland pin, which was kind of cool. No idea if it's valuable.

   (A bit of research indicates it's not all that valuable, but it was part of a gift set given to Imagineers at EuroDisneyland (Disneyland Paris) after the opening, which explains the "Bravo, les Imagineers!" message on the back.)

6. The bus ride (once we got on) was uneventful -- another movie, another ride. Katherine sat in the back of the bus, which was her favorite location all week. We had plenty of time at the airport to have a bite at the Macaroni Grill, we went through security pretty quickly (we've seen a nice evolution in the efficiency of the security lines at MCO over the years), and headed for the gate.

   And waited, as the Denver flight ended up being delayed an hour. Worked out okay, since we ended up taking off only ten minutes earlier than my folks, so it was some additional time with them.

7. Uneventful flight. Eschewed the snack boxes for some of the gorp that Margie had mixed for the trip (and which we hadn't really made us of), and rather than doing all these trip logs, I slacked off and read.

   Reached home that evening, had a chance to relax, and then hit the sack. House was in fine shape (thanks, Doyce and Jackie), and it was great to be home.

For the record, from the time I got off the plane in MCO to the time I got back on, I walked 68.7 miles, according to my pedometer. Which is not shabby at all (and helped justify some of the massive dinners we ate, if not the ice cream sandwiches).

Lessons Learned?

1. A group of seven travels a bit more slowly than a group of three, but not that much more slowly. And it provides some flexibility. But it does seem to cause some problems getting seated at restaurants.
2. The mantra "I am not responsible for other folks having a good time" remains an important one for such trips. Not that you want to be inconsiderate or uncaring, but if you second-guess yourself into only doing what you think everyone else will want to do, you will probably be miserable. Trust others enough to seek their fun.
3. Breakfast is not necessary, though it's nice. Taking a break back at the lodge was nice on the days we did it, but it did cut substantially into our days.
4. Our respective parents are very cool, and it was fun spending the week with them.
5. Orlando in late May/early June is bloody hot and humid. The parks are set up with lots of fans and shade trees and air conditioning and squirters, but it was still bloody hot and humid. Not sure what to do about it, now that Kitten's in Real School, but ...
6. ... we'll be back.

Actually posted 6 June, but backdated to the actual day it covers.

Filed under :: Health :: Travel - WDW 06
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (0) · Pings (0) · TR/G

In no particular order:

1. We're home! Huzzah! Yes, it's warm. No, it's not nearly as warm as it was in Orlando -- especially with the humidity (or, here, lack thereof) factored in.

2. Many thanks to Doyce and Jackie for tag-teaming the housesitting.

3. I remain bemused by the order by which airblogging posts things, which order bears only a passing resemblance to the order I forwarded pictures in.

4. I was a slug and read on the plane, rather than doing my elaborate series of blog posts on the week's activities. I do have notes, however. With luck, I'll actually start getting started on that tomorrow, along with re-ordering and appropriately labeling and formatting and categorizing the photo posts.

5. Any time my wife decides to get out of the stats biz, she would make a kick-ass travel consultant. She was a huge reason the whole trip was successful.

6. We had much fun, net net. Glad we did it. Glad we're home.

Filed under :: Blogging :: Travel - WDW 06 :: Weather
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (0) · Pings (0) · TR/G

this post enabled by airblogging.com.

Filed under :: Travel - WDW 06
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (0) · Pings (0) · TR/G

this post enabled by airblogging.com.

Filed under :: Travel - WDW 06
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (1) · Pings (0) · TR/G

UPDATE: Actually, her hair's kinda fine for a hair wrap. So we got a clip-on. Yay!

Hair wraps are available at most locations -- but the places at the parks seem to be less busy than those at the resorts.

this post enabled by airblogging.com.

Filed under :: Parenting :: Travel - WDW 06
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (0) · Pings (0) · TR/G