Friday, July 18^th, Day One

Not going into too much detail about the wedding, just about general events before leaving for Disneyworld portion of my trip.

I like to travel first thing in the morning. My mother doesn’t. So the flight is leaving JFK at 11:30. Access a Ride will pick us up at my mothers building about 8:30. It is their experience that sometimes they will do other pickups which may cause us to be late at the airport. I don’t mind. I hate being up and waiting to go someplace when I travel.

We have the van number of the Access a ride vehicle. We see one mini bus enter our parking lot, but it isn’t ours. My mother spots another one heading down the street and she goes to see if it is ours. A bit later it is entering her parking lot. The driver didn’t know where the building number was. I feel silly as he uses the lift to let me enter the mini bus with my luggage. I just lay mine on the floor. My luggage has 4 wheels which means it will move if on the wheels. The driver secures my mothers luggage to empty seats. We are the only drivers passengers for the trip to JFK.

I get a text message from Delta giving me a different terminal and gate number then the boarding pass that was printed just a day before.

So we direct the driver to what I received.

The drive was ok, except for a little slow down on the Belt Parkway around Starret City (whatever they call it now), we make it in plenty of time to the airport.

People are surprised that I am flying since I have taken the train to Disney for the last 10 years. I am not scared of flying, I just prefer taking the train over the plane. But I do have anxieties about going through security and checking my luggage. Like I said, I tend to pack heavy. I place some heavy items like pool shoes in my carry one, my backpack to keep the weight down on my luggage. But if its over weight.. its overweight. I will pay the difference. So we weight in line to check out baggage and we are ok, not overweight. Now part two of my anxiety, security. Its not that I pack banned items, but I have my laptop, tabled and a couple of cameras, but accessories for my smart phone.

They allow my mother to keep her shoes on, but I must take mine off. I have to remove the laptop from my backpack. I also am carrying a digital camera on my waist. I remove the camera and place it in the x-ray bin, but I keep the case on my belt. Mistake one. I remove the case and place it in bin. Now I have to go through the body scanner, my mother doesn’t. The scanner doesn’t like me, starts beeping. It doesn’t help that for a reason I don’t know, my mother hands me my empty camera case. I toss it back to her, but lands at a TSA security agents foot. Another agent sees that my mother handed me something, labeled me contaminated now and have to do the body scanner again. Finally get through this and at the gate waiting for the plane to land and board it.

While waiting I am communicating via Facebook with my Cousin (her brother’s son getting married) and my brother. It is pouring rain in Tampa now. Can’t go to the pool or beach.

my plane pulling into the gate

Since my mother opened a Delta Credit Card, we are preferred flyers and board first. Since seats are assigned, its not a big deal, just so we can place items in the overhead bins. I have lots of tic tacs to help me swallow to keep the pressure out of my ears. I am literally always sucking on one from the moment we moved from the gate till we were at the Tampa gate exiting the plane.

view from the window of the plane before takeoff

For entertainment, I plan to watch something on my smartphone. I do have wired headphones, but I ask about using wireless Bluetooth headphones and ask a stewardess. She looks it up, said she doesn’t see anything about Bluetooth, but mentions items like smartphones should be in Airplane mode. So that negates that. The pilot comes on the planes PA system and tells us from take off to landing, flying time is 2 hours and 17 minutes. I am watching 1776 which is 2 hours and 20 minutes, so this should keep me occupied the whole flight. I start watching the movie after we were pushed back from the gate. I was watching the movies credits after we landed and were going to the gate in Tampa. While on approach to land, looking out the window, it was partially cloudy and it seemed to have stopped raining.

Besides sucking down on tic tacs, they offered cold drinks. I had a diet cola, apple juice. When they offered coffee, I asked for decafe. They had to make that special, it wasn’t something they carry on the rolling cart. The stewardess asked if I wanted milk and sugar with it. I just go yes. Then my mother starts screaming about the sugar part. They offered me sugar substitute instead. No big deal.

The flight was very smooth. I could tell when we were descending, but had no ear problems. While taxing on the ground after landing, I turned off Airplane mode on my smartphone and get some texts from my cousin again and my brother. I responded back we just landed.

Before boarding my flight in NY, my brother who had already landed in Tampa called me about the automated sign in procedure for the shuttle to the hotel. They send you a email with a link in it. Since my mother made the plans, it went to her email account. Weeks earlier for another reason, I downloaded a app on my smartphone so I can view her email. This came in good as I was able to log into her email account, see the email, and sign in. It even showed the location of the shuttle bus. I didn’t understand it at first as the shuttle bus wasn’t moving. Then it was moving to my location. Like the Access a Ride this morning, I had the number of the shuttle bus. Waiting for the shuttle bus, my mother had to use the bathroom, but came out just after the bus arrived. Like Access a Ride, we were the only passengers.

It was a bit of a ride from the airport to the hotel. We drove by Tropicana Field where the Tampa Rays play. Some parts of the highway looked like it was almost sea level. I can almost imagine any slight storm could overwhelm the road. I am glad no storms were forecasted. It did rain briefly for a couple of times while riding to the hotel.

The hotel has a ramp to the main entrance which is on the second floor. I tipped the driver and he left us off by the side ramp. This didn’t please my mother. Once inside there are some steps down to the lobby where we check in. That doesn’t make sense?? I carry the luggage down and we wait online to check in. We check in, but our rooms are not ready yet. So we check our luggage and explore the hotel for familiar faces. They also issue wrist bands that identify us as resort guests so we can use things like the pool. I saw they give my mother two. After leaving the desk, I ask for mine, but she has no idea of what I am talking about. So I go back to the desk and get one. My mother didn’t realize she placed two on her hands. Oh well.

For guests of the wedding party, they had a hospitality room stocked with snacks and soda. I didn’t have anything to eat since a pop tart for breakfast, so I ate some junk food for lunch.

It was after 3 and nothing about our room being ready yet. They were supposed to text my phone. So we went back to the desk and inquired. The rooms we were assigned weren’t ready yet, but they moved us to another room that was on the same floor.

our room number

They also contacted luggage services to delivery our luggage to our room. The room was ok. We faced the front of the hotel.

our room

The beds were very high off the ground. Years ago, I got a new bed myself which is high off the ground, which my mother didn’t like, so I knew she didn’t like this.

Meanwhile my Aunt and Uncle (my mothers sister, and grandmother of the groom) got in contact with us, so we visited them in their room. My aunt complained about the high bed so they got her what looks like a exercise board as a wide step to help her up into the bed. So my mother got on the phone and ordered one for her.

Later on in the hospitality suite, a bunch of people decided to have food delivered, pizza, salad, and chicken wings. I think it was $12 a person. Since I seemed the only person out of my traveling party who wasn’t interested in this, I was out voted. So I paid for my mother and myself. The salad was ok, caser salad. It was the square type of pizza, again ok, nothing to speak of. And the chicken wings. Again, just filing, nothing worthwhile to be doing on vacation. Went up to bed, been a long day.

Saturday, July 19^th, Day 2

We did some exploring of the hotel and the beach.

After reading that last sign, I decided I wasn’t going into the ocean. J

We were trying to figure out our options for lunch. The restaurants in the hotel didn’t interest my mother or I. So we went to the concierge desk to see if they have any suggestions. At the concierge they had a menu for a place that was called the Sea Turtle. They seemed to have a normal menu with prices. It’s a bit of a walk, but they should have some sort of bus service cruising up and down Gulf Blvd, the main strip. After speaking with my brother and sister in law, they also agreed to try this place, and we set up a meeting time.

We didn’t see any transportation passing us while we walked. It sprinkled a couple of times, but nothing major. I was able to keep up at first, but soon fell behind. The service at the restaurant was ok, but they made a mistake. I ordered a side dish of cole slaw. They gave me fries instead. I didn’t mind. The waitress brought out my brothers food on the second trip from the kitchen, see he ordered fries, but got cole slaw. They mixed up the sides between me and him. Instead of giving him a plate of fries, they only offered to switch the sides between us. But since I already started to eat the fries, it didn’t seem right. So he had my cole slaw, I had his fries.

On the way back, it started to rain, not a simple downpour, but a prolonged day long rain, with heavy periods of rain. We sort of hung out in a Walgreens on the way back to the resort. Still no transportation in sight. Finally, looking at radar images on our smartphones, this wasn’t going to blow over soon, so we just walked in the rain, getting wet. It’s a hot day anyway.

By the time we made it back to the hotel, it more or less stopped raining. We rested for a bit. I tried to iron out some wrinkles from my suit, got dressed and went to the ceremony.

The only thing worth commenting on, for a personal level, the cocktail hour. I don’t know if it was wearing shoes, standing, or combination of the both, but my bad leg muscle started to ache. Started to hurt. Later that night, I measured the circumference of the bad muscle and compared it to the good one. Usually it is only a inch larger, but it swelled up to two inches. Tomorrow is Disney.