amanda_lodden

I did not join the group at Epcot, due to my foot. I *could* have rented a scooter, but they're $70 a day, and it's hot, and I wouldn't be able to do much, and... eh. The fever fully broke this morning, but I still have times when I feel a little hot.

Instead, I puttered around the condo. I tossed in my laundry, ran a load of dishes, and generally picked the place up a little, taking frequent breaks and staying off my foot as much as possible.

But I did get a few reports from Epcot. And to illustrate the differences between the kids, I'm going to give you, as close to verbatim as I can, what each kid told me when I asked for an Epcot report:

Hanna - "We went on Mother Earth and the Mexico ride and Kim Possible. It was pretty fun. There was these villains and this lady who came out and hit them on the head [insert appropriate cartoon motion here to accompany report] and ..."

Nick - "Epcot was fun. That is all."

Later questioning would reveal that "Mother Earth" is actually Spaceship Earth. I'm not sure what the Mexico ride is; I don't think I've been on it. After some reminders of what else they did today, we learned:

Turtle Time with Crush was not popular with the kids-- both thought it was pretty lame. Apparently it's for adults and 5-year-olds, because John and Shane liked it.

Both kids loved Test Track. Nick would not have gotten onto it if Shane hadn't frog-marched ... er, I mean, encouraged him to go on it, but afterwards he counts it among the day's highlights. Hanna is proud that she got up to "628 speed" (I presume she means "miles per hour".)

Both kids HATED The Land. They have hydroponics bays with fish in them (the fish wastes provide nutrients for the plants, and the plants provide sustenance for the fish), and they felt that the fish were seriously overcrowded, to the point that Hanna declared it was "cruel."

Everyone liked Universe of Energy and Soaring. Hanna tattled that "Uncle John was scared at the end [of Soaring]." The Sea with Nemo (or whatever it's called-- it's an aquarium, and the ride goes around the outside and projects images from Finding Nemo on the glass) was also mostly a hit-- Nick called it just "okay", and Hanna liked it because it was "really realistic." (My response? "Uh, you know that most of it is a real aquarium, right?")

Hanna thought Kim Possible was pretty fun, but didn't like it anywhere near as much as Shane and John did. They would have happily done more of the missions, including the long missions, if the kids hadn't been holding them back. Shane called it "a very clever way to make the countries more interesting." Nick declared it to be "retarded." This is where Nick started to seriously wear on John's nerves, because John was enjoying doing the missions, and Nick was whining about them incessantly. Hanna also whined, because her feet were starting to hurt, but the general consensus is that Nick outwhines her. Shane's comment on this is that the kids "do work well together. When they're tired and whiny, they work as a team to make wherever you are miserable so you'll let them go home."

At the end of the day, the kids were the ones who wanted to come back to the condo. So the kids may have more enthusiasm at the start, but the adults have the stamina to go the distance. Hanna said she's no longer part of Team Enthusiasm because it's "too tiring." But then Uncle John pointed out that today he joined Team Enthusiasm, so Hanna rejoined it.

Overall, the trip has been fun, but by this point, all five of us are ready to go home. Everyone's feet hurt, and the adults are all very glad to be childless. (My apologies to Shane's mother, because he says that after this trip, he's in no rush to settle down and have kids, so no grandchildren for her.)

But on the whole, the kids did pretty well. They do look out for each other, though they are loathe to admit it. Nick even told me (when Hanna wasn't around) that he "does care for Hanna" and doesn't want her to get hurt. When Nick and John were roughhousing tonight and John pushed a little too far, it was Hanna who said "Don't hurt him!" We gave each child a budget and told them that once they were out of money, that was it-- we weren't going to buy them any junk. Hanna blew through nearly all her money in the first three days, and I fully expected to have to field a lot of "can I have this?" whining the rest of the week, but she was very good about not even asking us to buy junk for her.

We didn't follow through with our intent to force the kids to try new things EVERY day, because we were tired and it was easier to resort to pizza or McDonald's or whatever. But we did get them to try quite a few new things, and once or twice they even did it voluntarily-- at lunch at Magic Kingdom, Nick picked a Turkey Wrap instead of a cheeseburger, which surprised me. He ended up not liking it and getting the cheeseburger anyway, but our rule was just that he had to try it, not that he had to like it. Getting him the cheeseburger assured him that we weren't going to force him to eat something he hated, and he became more receptive to the idea of trying new things once he understood that he didn't have to make a full commitment to it.

John swears that Hanna is just like Lisa when she was that age. Shane and I both see a lot of John in Nick. Thanks Lisa, for taking on both Mother's Curses for us! ("I hope when you grow up, you have kids JUST LIKE YOU")

Lastly, Hanna saw me starting to type this, and asked if she could read it. I asked her if she also wanted to read the entries for the other days, and brought them up in another window. Her most frequent comment? "You sure write a lot."

98.6 this morning, before medication.

My foot is definitely still the site of an immune-system war-- hot, swollen, stiff. But now it's contained to just my foot, and is leaving the rest of my body alone. The blisters are less yellow and puffy, too.

I gotta say, this last 36 hours has put a definite damper on the trip for me, and I'll be glad to get home. In the meantime, Hanna has been happily playing nursemaid for me.

Today, everyone else is at Epcot, and I'm at the condo taking it easy.

The fever is because the blisters are infected, which explains why they hurt so much more.

John took me to Urgent Care, which I absolutely loved. Unfortunately, the only injectable antibiotic they had is based on penicillin, and I'm allergic. So Urgent Care sent me to the Emergency Room.

I am not impressed with the Emergency Room. They decided to make treating the sprained ankle (from rolling my foot to avoid walking on the blisters) a priority over treating the fever, and it was two and a half hours before they gave me any antibiotics.

But now I have antibiotics, and it's slowly getting better.

When I said that yesterday, Florida won-- apparently I didn't know the half of it. We had a nice quiet evening, and then....

Maybe a little backstory first. Ever since the thunderstorm on Day Two, my sinuses have been draining. It really hadn't been anything more than an annoyance, and seemed not worth blogging about. When I go back to read those entires later, I want to remember the fun and silly stuff, not the "whine, moan, I've got the sniffles" stuff. The only reason the blisters are in there is because I got them last time we were in Orlando too, and I'm hoping that if I write things like that down I might learn from it on future trips.

Still, it seemed odd. I spent the last couple days saying "I *must* be allergic to something here that isn't at home" because I didn't have ANY other symptoms. Zero. Zilch.

Until I went to bed last night. See, I've got the AC set to my comfort temperature, because it's the lowest, and I figure it's easier to use blankets and the like to warm up than it is to try to cool down. When I crawled into bed last night, I was freezing cold. And I thought "oh, the wet rain and then air conditioned movie theater is catching up with me, and now I need to rebalance." So I cuddled up to John The Furnace, and waited.

And waited.

And waited. And *shivered*.

So with much effort, I hauled myself out of the bed and kicked the AC one degree warmer. Not a lot, because I didn't want to overcompensate. Then I went back to bed.

Where I continued to shiver, sometimes wracking my entire body with them. And finally, it began to occur to me that this might not be normal.

I'll skip over the details of the unpleasantness of the night. Suffice to say, the fever didn't break until 6am, and I was up pretty much all night, with just 20 minutes naps now and then. I'm awake now because I was ravenously hungry, and once I'm done with breakfast I'm going back to bed. And probably staying there most of the day.

The plan for today was to get up early and get to Animal Kingdom before it got hot and crowded. We managed the "get up early" part (though not "park opening" early-- we got to the park at 10am, an hour after it opened), but it was already hot and crowded. Animal Kingdom is a smaller park, but much of it is open-air, with air conditioned spaces few and far between. There was quite a lot of crankiness all around; everyone's feet hurt from four days of theme parks, everyone was hot, and everyone was tired despite yesterday's early bedtime. Only Shane retained his bouncy nature.

Team Enthusiasm made a quick detour to pick up FastPasses for the Everest rollercoaster, and then we all met up near the safari. Going there early in the day paid off; not only was there a very short wait, but most of the animals hadn't started hiding from the heat yet-- just the lions were disappointing, and even they had the decency to sleep where they could be seen. Hanna was excited to see the cheetahs, and Nick was ecstatic that there were crocodiles. Both name the safari as a highlight of the entire trip.

After the safari, Team Enthusiasm went off to Expedition Everest to use their FastPasses, while Team Lazy meandered around and complained of the heat. John had a brilliant idea and popped into one of the nice restaurants to make lunch reservations. Shane was happy with the choice, and the kids were less thrilled-- John picked an asian restaurant, and the kids profess to not like Chinese food. They were promptly told to suck it up. We had a bit of time to kill before our reservation time, so we went to see the show It's Tough To Be A Bug. Then it was off to lunch. In the spirit of tormenting them... er, I mean, encouraging them to try new things, I ordered three different entrees for myself and the kids, and made them try some of each. Neither one cared for my salmon, though I have to say that it was the blandest salmon I'd ever had and I didn't care that much for it either.

Both kids had been asking if we could just skip the rest of the park and go back to the condo. The air conditioned bug show and an air conditioned lunch helped them chill out a little (no pun intended), so we decided to check out one more ride, Dinosaur, which is also indoors and air conditioned. Sadly, when we got there, the ride had a 35 minute wait time, and the kids refused to wait that long. John, the kids and I ended up heading back to the car and the condo while Shane went off to do some souveiner shopping. Total time spent at Animal Kingdom: about 4 hours.

After a good long soak in the pool, everyone was considerably more pleasant to deal with. John wanted to see Green Lantern, which opened today, so we went to dinner at Shoney's and then off to the movie theater at Downtown Disney. Shane decidely did NOT want to see Green Lantern but hadn't yet seen Pirates of the Caribbean 4, so we picked showtimes that coincided. The kids and I promptly jumped ship and went for PotC, leaving John to see GL by himself.

While we were driving to the theater, the sky was pretty dark, and just before we turned into the parking lot the first fat raindrop fell. And then another and another, so that by the time we parked, it was flat-out pouring. We waited in the car til the rain let up... and it didn't. Eventually it slowed a little, and we declared that to be our best chance to go. By the time we got across the parking lot to the theater, the rain had picked up again and we were soaked. We sent John to get tickets while the four of us huddled under an overhang, wet and cold. Then we raced through the raindrops again to get to the theater entrance.

All of us headed to the restrooms whether we needed to go or not-- the thought was to use the hand dryers to dry ourselves off a bit. This theater uses the new air-blade dryers, and while those are awesome for drying your hands, they really suck for drying out your shirt or hair or pants or shoes. The end result was "still soaking, but with a single dry stripe somewhere."

We split up, the four of us heading to our movie while John hung out and waited for his to start 10 minutes later. We enjoyed ours very much. John got to watch the previews, and then his projector broke. The theater gave everyone free passes, and most people just went to the next showing... but that was 2 hours later, and John didn't want to go to that showing and leave the rest of us hanging around for 2 hours. It would have been especially difficult to coordinate, seeing as how both my phone and John's were so low on battery that they were threatening to turn off.

Tomorrow's plan is to just take the day off. We'll rest and recharge, and hopefully that will make Sunday much more pleasant. We've still got Epcot to go, and that's a really big park. It would be intolerable with today's cranky attitudes.

Yesterday's blisters and stiffness resulted in a change of plans for today. John was least interested in the Universal Studios trip (for Harry Potter, which the kids specifically asked for), and also so stiff that he was limping. We decided to make today the Universal Studios day, and let John stay home. I popped my blisters, stuck a bandage over them, wrapped my ankle up because I noticed that I still rolled my foot over to the side to avoid walking on the blistered area, and off we went. Once again, Team Enthusiasm blazed the trail, with Nick and I following much later. So late, in fact, that we had lunch with John before heading out.

Yesterday's thunderstorm did not reduce the temperature today, so we were back to 98 degree heat with 9000% humidity. Even just going to lunch made us wilt, and Nick and I discussed the possibility of skipping it entirely and staying home. Alas, he had called his mother that morning, who told him to take pictures at the Harry Potter exhibit at Universal. This would prove to be our undoing.

We got to the park, and headed for the Universal Studios side. I grabbed a map, and folded it in half so that I was only looking at the side with Harry Potter, and Nick and I set off, plotting a course towards Hogwart's. We passed Shrek, and decided to give it a try, and I mentally complained about the accuracy of the map, because it didn't show several of the side roads, and I couldn't find Shrek on it. I also tried to call Shane so that we could meet up. I got his voicemail, which has been pretty standard for this trip, but he always calls me back when he's out of the ride or line or whatever, so I was not worried.

Still in line for Shrek, I checked the time on my phone and realized that I had a missed call from Shane.
We ended up doing that all day-- I'd text him with information, and he'd leave me voicemail. I use Google Voice for voicemail, which transcribes the messages so that I don't have to call in the check them (and in fact, CAN'T call in to check them). On the emails, I can play the mp3 of the voicemail. On my phone, I just get the transcribed bit as a text. Unfortunately, GV can't handle the astonishing amount of background noise and overloaded-cell-network static, so what I got was the world's most frustrating game of Telephone ever. Later, Shane reported that he got my texts out of order, so it was pretty frustrating for him too.

Eventually, the horridness of the map coupled with garbled texts from Shane saying we were in the "long park" led me to realize that I'd screwed up and taken Nick to the wrong park-- Harry Potter is in Islands of Adventure. I apologized to Nick and told him that since I had made the mistake, I would pay for a ticket upgrade to let us hop between the parks so that he could still see HP. We made our way over to Guest Services, where I explained that I'd brought us to the wrong park. The woman behind the desk sighed at me, and I hastily added that I realized it was MY mistake and I was willing to pay for the upgrade to fix it. She scanned the ticket, saw our entry time, looked at the clock, and commented that we had been there for about an hour. I nodded and explained that we went on Shrek, and that was my clue that we were in the wrong place because I couldn't find Shrek on the map. She took the old tickets, gave us new ones without charging us, and walked us to the exit gate.

Still unable to get a hold of Shane, Nick and I went into Islands of Adventures and started making our way towards the Harry Potter area. None of the rides on the way held any appeal, so we didn't go on any of them, but we went into a LOT of gift shops-- it was the only place we could find with any air conditioning. So we hopped from gift shop to gift shop, trying to keep ourselves cool. Once we got to Harry Potter, we looked around and realized that the place was packed, all the rides were either outside or had three-hour-long lines, and we were tired and hot and sick of the idea of walking around in the heat. We took a few pictures for Lisa, wandered around Honeydukes where Nick got some Bernie Botts Every Flavor Beans, and Nick decided that he wanted the pool more than he wanted anything to do with the park and the heat and the walking. Were it not for the pictures he promised to Lisa, he probably wouldn't have gone at all, so I would just like to say: Lisa, you better enjoy those damned pictures. I can live with the waste of ticket costs (since we had pre-purchased them they were going to cost me the same amount whether we went or not), but for your pictures I had to walk around in the heat again, and I have blisters on my blisters now.

Dinner tonight was pizza because it meant we didn't have to go outside. John spent the day doing laundry and badgering the condo rental people til they sent someone out to fix the Internet connection, so the 'net connection is better now.

As I said before, Team Enthusiasm went off to the Magic Kingdom to see the opening ceremonies while Team Lazy slept in and dawdled. Shane cemented his place as Hanna's Favoritist Person Ever!* by taking her on Big Thunder Railroad and Splash Mountain and several trips through Space Mountain before we got there. We met up for lunch, then John surprised everyone by saying that he'd go with Hanna on Space Mountain. Afterward, he said that going right after lunch was a bad idea. I broke one of my theme park "Don't Buy Junk" rules and purchased the picture of the two of them on the ride, because I figure it's never going to happen again.

We split up briefly to take the kids to Stitch's Great Escape, which is not one of Shane's favorite rides so he went on... something else. It's hard enough for me to remember what we did, much less what he did. Then we spent a fair amount of time trying to catch up with each other, during which Hanna rode anything we'd let her get on (the tea cups and the carousel, both of which had short lines) while Shane and I texted and called each other, trying to find each other.

The park was packed, and we wandered around quite a lot, checking out the lines for some of the rides we really wanted to go on and deciding to try again later in the hopes that some of the smaller children would tire out and force their parents to go back to their hotel. Salvation came in the form of a thunderstorm, which shut down 3/4 of the rides and encouraged a bunch of people to head over to a different park with more indoor attractions. Of course, that meant that the rides in the Magic Kingdom that WERE open were a complete zoo. We ended up riding out the storm in Mickey's Philharmagic, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed, so that worked out nicely. The storm also took the temperatures down a notch, from the high 90s to the high 80s/low 90s.

Most of today was wandering around and backtracking, catching up on rides that had really long lines the first time we passed them. John got tired around 3pm, which was unfortunate for him because we kept him going until 8pm. We made the kids go on a bunch of things that they didn't really care for, but that we liked and considered "classics"-- Country Bear Jamboree, It's A Small World, Snow White's Scary Ride (which is due to be closed soon for the Fantasyland renovation, and which is not at all scary), and the train around the park. Nick liked the Haunted Mansion but Hanna felt it was too slow and not scary. Pirates of the Caribbean went over well with both kids. I insisted on the Jungle Cruise, which was what finally did John in. I had forgotten that the line winds around and you can never really tell how much more you've got to go-- you think you're almost there, and then all of a sudden the line goes off to the side and you discover that you've still got a whole room full of line-maze left. Add to that the part where we didn't even get into the line until 6:45pm, and then didn't get onto the ride until 7:20pm, and you have one cranky John.

The restaurant in the park that I wanted to eat at turned out to be reservation-only, so we split up again and Shane went off to shoot a few videos that he wanted to get but couldn't with Hanna towing him around, while the rest of us went to dinner at Perkins and a quick stop at the grocery store because 5 people eat Cheerios much faster than 2. Cranky Johns do lead to well-behaved children, though-- he didn't yell or snap at them, but they got the idea that they had pushed him past his limits, and started being polite to each other.

John dropped into bed immediately upon arriving at the condo. I soaked my feet in the pool (even during the storm). I have a huge blister across my left foot, just under the big toe, and another small one on the 4th toe. This will make tomorrow's activities... interesting. I tried suggesting that we foist the kids off on Shane while we stay home, and Shane countered with Animal Kingdom because it's a smaller park so it should be a shorter day. I suspect this means that he does not want to be stuck with the kids alone. I can't say that I blame him. I have no idea how John and I would have survived without Shane. Right now, he's my Favoritist Person Ever too.

While we were at dinner, another big storm blew in-- enough that I do not have Internet access, and am just typing into Notepad for later cut-and-pasting. The outside temperature seems to have dropped again because of it, so tomorrow has a chance of being pleasant. Here's hoping.


* Though both kids have been quick to add that John and I are really awesome too, because we
arranged this trip.

On Day Two, we unleashed our secret weapon, a bubbling burst of energy and enthusiasm to match Hanna's: Shane.

Despite spending all of Monday claiming that they had no idea who Shane was,
as soon as the kids saw him they remembered him and latched onto him with an
intesity that left John and I trailing behind, following them around Disney's
Hollywood Studios like lost puppies.

Which is fine, because part of the reason we invited Shane along was to help us
keep up with the kids. Shane also has a lot of Disney experience, which came in
handy when it came to picking attractions. Neither of the kids wanted to bother
with the Muppet 3D show, but Shane insisted, and even Nick later admitted that it
was pretty cool.

A threat of thunderstorm cut the 1:30pm Lights, Motors, Action! stunt show short, to Nick's
dismay. We went to lunch afterward, and Nick bemoaned not getting to see the second half of
the show. Hanna, on the other hand, had been suggesting that we could go to Tower of Terror
anytime, you know, perhaps now would be great, no really, she really really really wanted
to ride the Tower of Terror, could we go there Right Now(tm)? We made plans to split up: Shane
would take Hanna on the Tower of Terror, while John, Nick and I went to the 4:30pm showing
of LMA! so Nick could see the second half (which he deemed Totally Worth Going Back For).

After walking around the park half the day in 96 degree weather, the three of us in the Not
Tower of Terror group were all red (and I swear, I made everyone slather on sunscreen), and I
was beginning to be worried about heat stroke. We had discussed at lunch the possibility of taking a mid-day
break to go back to the condo and swim, so I called Shane to co-ordinate. By that point, Hanna
had been on Tower of Terror three times in a row, and wanted no part of leaving. Shane has his own
rental car, and agreed to feed her, so the rest of us trekked back to the condo to cool off. We ended
up not going back to the park, because Nick didn't want to get out of the pool and neither John nor I
felt inclined to drag him back out into the heat and humidity if he didn't want to go.

Team Enthusiasm, on the other hand, was so busy riding the rides and seeing the sights that
they missed the 9pm Fantasmic fireworks show and decided to stay for the 10:30pm show, despite
it being well past Hanna's bedtime. (Shane reports that she was fine, so apparently
excitement trumps overtiredness.)

Day Three begins with Shane and Hanna getting up early to go see the Magic Kingdom's opening
ceremonies, with the rest of us waving goodbye from our cozy beds. We're following along two
hours later, right after I finish typing. Which I have.

The internet here is lousy. I can't say I approve. Then again, we're supposed to be on vacation and not on the net all the time. (I picked this condo in part because it said it had wireless internet, so I'm still going to be miffed about the lack, even if were ARE on vacation.)

Still: I can't guarantee that there will be any trip reports past Day One until after we get home.

Hanna bounced off the walls pretty much the entire time way here. At one point, I reached over and nudged John, because she was quite literally bouncing in her airplane seat.

Best exchange of the day went like this:

Hanna: We've landed!
Me: No, not yet.
Hanna: Yes we have, look! (*points out window*) We're on the ground.
Me: Nope, not quite.
Hanna: We are! We're on the ground
Me: Nope, not quite.
[cue the plane making that unmistakable jolt that indicates the wheels have touched the pavement and friction has gotten involved]
Hanna: *turns to me, wide-eyed, as if to ask "WTH was that!?*
Me: NOW we're on the ground.

Since we couldn't check in to the condo until 4pm, and the plane landed at 9:45am (actually, we landed 20 minutes early), we grabbed some lunch and then spent the bulk of the day at DisneyQuest. Nick was largely unimpressed, though he enjoyed a few of the rides. Hanna declared the place to be "a goldmine" and was difficult to contain. We ended up splitting up-- at the very first ride, which Hanna dragged me on to, and Nick and John wandered off. We found them two hours later, chilling out in the food/lounge area 3 floors up.

By far her favorite ride was Cyberspace Mountain, where you design your own rollercoaster, then get into a simulator and ride the coaster you designed. She took it easy for the first coaster, making a 2-out-of-5 "scary" points coaster. But when we went to get into the simulator, the safety bar wouldn't go over my belly, and she ended up riding it alone while I watched on the monitor. She popped out with a smile from ear to ear and said "I wanna do it again!" Without my limits holding her back, she designed a 4-point ride, and the in-simulator video of her riding that was so funny that I sprung for the DVD of it. (At one point, she tried to put her arms up like at the top of a big hill, but she only got them up a couple inches before she was grabbing desperately at the handles. Yes mom, the harness is over-the-shoulder and would have held her in even without her grabbing the handles.)

The condo check-in took longer than it should have, mostly because we also got our Disney and Universal tickets from them, and I messed up on 12-year-old Nick's tickets-- I still think of him as a kid, but both parks have a cut-off age of 9 years old for child tickets, and Nick needs an adult pass. So there was a lot of re-doing things.

We got here, there was some basic unpacking, and then we all hit the pool, because it's bloody well hot here (99 today. Oy.) It took about 10 minutes for the kids to start trying to drown each other, which I understand is normal (and possibly a record amount of restraint), but was a definite reminder of Why We Don't Have Kids Of Our Own.

We deemed that during this trip, the kids *will* try new things-- part of the point of taking them places is to expose them to new things. Lunch was cuban sandwiches, which they both liked, and I got a fried stuffed potato (omg good!) and mariquitas (plantain chips) for everyone to try. But by dinner time, we were all tired and hungry and wet from the pool, so we went for the old standby of pizza. Then there was whining, because Nick was tired and wanted to go back to the condo right then, but Hanna was wired and wanted to go back to DisneyQuest right then, and I had already declared that while we were out getting pizza were were damned well going to stop at the grocery store and procure breakfast foods and pop. Eventually I got tired of the whining and sent John and Nick to the grocery store while Hanna and I paid the bill and boxed up the leftovers. (The pizza place was chosen for its proximity to the grocery store, so all the boys had to do was walk across the parking lot.) After grocery unloading, John and Nick chilled out at the condo while Hanna and I went back for an extra hour at DisneyQuest, which she deemed nowhere near as cool when there were long lines.

Now the kids are in bed, John has already passed out, and I'm just waiting up to make sure that Shane gets here safely, because dear God do we need an extra adult.