Friday, April 22, 2005
Day 1 - Yak-O-Rama
The day finally arrived. All the anticipation, all the planning, all the scrimping and saving was all for April 9-17. It's been four years since we've all taken a vacation together like this.
Our flight was at 10:55 a.m. from Portland International Airport. Our first leg was from Portland to Denver. Let me say that Frontier Airlines does a pretty nice job. First of all, you have your own personal TV in the headrest of the seat in front of you. Costs $5 per TV, per leg, but they have Direct TV, so at least you have a choice of 30-some odd channels. You also have your choice of three mainstream movies at $5 each. Better than going to the theater. The only drawback to Frontier is that their planes, although they're new, are extremely small. We're talking 20 rows of seats. What this means is that they bounce around in the air with the slightest bit of turbulence. Everything was going along swimmingly UNTIL we made our descent into Denver. We started bouncing around like stripper with a set of DDs on a trampoline. Garrett was totally freaking out. My stepdad, who was sitting in between both boys, was being real attentive to Garrett to make sure he didn't have a heart attack. The problem was that nobody was paying attention to Reesey (who wasn't freaking out, but wasn't saying anything either). I looked over at Reese just in time to see him hork up all three bags of Fritos he just ate into his lap. Just fucking great. Here we had both boys looking very nice this morning and my little Mozilla is now bespeckled in corn chips. We didn't pack a change of clothes either. We land without further incident. We have a 45 minute layover and our gate turns out to be right next door to the one we landed at. I leave Kim, the boys and my mom at the gate (with Reesey draped in my stepdad's pull-over jacket, sans pants) and go literally running down the corridor in search of pants for him. I'll cut to the chase and say that there were no kids pants anywhere. As a last ditch effort, I ran into a news shop right by our gate. Turns out they have kids clothes, but only up to size 4T. I bought Reese a sweatsuit and when we put it on him, it looked like he was wearing his little brother's clothes. Oh well. What are you gonna do? I mean, so what if my kid now looks like he should be riding the short bus? We take off from Denver (just in the nick of time, I might add - a freak snowstorm hit a couple hours after we left and they shut the airport down for the rest of the day) and land in Orlando without further incident.
After retrieving our luggage and standing in the world's longest rental car line, we load up and head off to the Shades of Green Hotel at Walt Disney World. We arrive at 10:00 p.m., just in time to see the fireworks go off over Cinderella's Castle. Very cool stuff. That's one thing I love about Disney, everyday is magical for the people that are there. Even though it's the same stuff day after day, it's new for those arriving, and it's special. We get checked into our room and are all STARVING. Off to the hotel sports bar for wings and beer at 11:00 p.m. We meet up with my dad, his girlfriend, and my brother. We have a great time. Dad even pays. I love it when they feel obligated. Then it's off to bed.
All in all, our first day was a solid C. Highs and lows all around, but in the end everyone was happy to finally be on vacation.
Monday - "Tired But Happy At Magic Kingdom"
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Our flight was at 10:55 a.m. from Portland International Airport. Our first leg was from Portland to Denver. Let me say that Frontier Airlines does a pretty nice job. First of all, you have your own personal TV in the headrest of the seat in front of you. Costs $5 per TV, per leg, but they have Direct TV, so at least you have a choice of 30-some odd channels. You also have your choice of three mainstream movies at $5 each. Better than going to the theater. The only drawback to Frontier is that their planes, although they're new, are extremely small. We're talking 20 rows of seats. What this means is that they bounce around in the air with the slightest bit of turbulence. Everything was going along swimmingly UNTIL we made our descent into Denver. We started bouncing around like stripper with a set of DDs on a trampoline. Garrett was totally freaking out. My stepdad, who was sitting in between both boys, was being real attentive to Garrett to make sure he didn't have a heart attack. The problem was that nobody was paying attention to Reesey (who wasn't freaking out, but wasn't saying anything either). I looked over at Reese just in time to see him hork up all three bags of Fritos he just ate into his lap. Just fucking great. Here we had both boys looking very nice this morning and my little Mozilla is now bespeckled in corn chips. We didn't pack a change of clothes either. We land without further incident. We have a 45 minute layover and our gate turns out to be right next door to the one we landed at. I leave Kim, the boys and my mom at the gate (with Reesey draped in my stepdad's pull-over jacket, sans pants) and go literally running down the corridor in search of pants for him. I'll cut to the chase and say that there were no kids pants anywhere. As a last ditch effort, I ran into a news shop right by our gate. Turns out they have kids clothes, but only up to size 4T. I bought Reese a sweatsuit and when we put it on him, it looked like he was wearing his little brother's clothes. Oh well. What are you gonna do? I mean, so what if my kid now looks like he should be riding the short bus? We take off from Denver (just in the nick of time, I might add - a freak snowstorm hit a couple hours after we left and they shut the airport down for the rest of the day) and land in Orlando without further incident.
After retrieving our luggage and standing in the world's longest rental car line, we load up and head off to the Shades of Green Hotel at Walt Disney World. We arrive at 10:00 p.m., just in time to see the fireworks go off over Cinderella's Castle. Very cool stuff. That's one thing I love about Disney, everyday is magical for the people that are there. Even though it's the same stuff day after day, it's new for those arriving, and it's special. We get checked into our room and are all STARVING. Off to the hotel sports bar for wings and beer at 11:00 p.m. We meet up with my dad, his girlfriend, and my brother. We have a great time. Dad even pays. I love it when they feel obligated. Then it's off to bed.
All in all, our first day was a solid C. Highs and lows all around, but in the end everyone was happy to finally be on vacation.
Monday - "Tired But Happy At Magic Kingdom"
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