Davis Family Blog

(03/12/10) The last day. We had planned to go to Disney’s Hollywood Studios since we had only done a couple rides there, but the weather is not cooperating. Its pouring rain yet again, and the thought of having to check out of the hotel, going to the park in the rain, and then maybe trying to find a restroom to change into dry clothes, or suffering an eight-hour journey in wet clothes – yuck!!

I called the front desk and they offered to let us stay in the rooms until 1pm, or I could stay until 3pm at 1/2 the rack rate. So – $128 for two hours – and I’m tempted. While Jeanne and I discuss this, they call back and tell us we can stay until 3pm for nothing – - I love DisneyWorld.

So, we’re watching TV and letting the time go by until 3pm, then its off to the airport.

We get to the airport to find that our flight has been delayed by 3 hours.  We took advantage of the time to have a very nice relaxing dinner at Macaroni Grill, and to buy and begin reading some books.  The flight home seemed to take forever.  When we landed, Greg’s suitcase somehow got mis-routed to Manchester, NH and we won’t get in back until after he’s already left for college. 

It poured rain and was extremely windy all the way home.  It was a fight just to keep the Tahoe on the road.  Arrived home exhausted a bit after 3AM. 

As always, we have several very fond memories from this trip as well as enough adversity to make the trip very memorable. Its always interesting to see which of the stories or events fade into nothingness, and which crystalizes into legend as time goes by and as the kids tell the stories over and over.

Once again I am so proud of my children and wife. Never complaining, always keeping everything in perspective, and finding humor at every possible turn.   They are patient and resilient travelers, and lots of fun to be with.

Our last full day and its raining cats and dogs. The kids are watching TV where they’ve been broadcasting tornado warnings for north of Orlando. I’m thinking that this is good news since we still aren’t sure about Ty. Will he continue to have trouble keeping things down? Is he becoming dehydrated and do we need to get him to the hospital. We take the morning very slowly.

At noon everything seems to brighten up. Ty has been keeping things in their place, and the rain has stopped even though the forecast is poor. We decide to head to EPCOT.

We get FastPass’s for Soarin and then head to TurtleTalk and then to Energy. When we come out of Energy its a deluge. I’ve never seen it rain so hard – and we’re walking through it without raingear. The water on the ground goes over the tops of our shoes – and I thought Kali River Rapids was uncomfortable.

Now we’re getting cold. We try a couple stores to try to find dry sweatshirts, but we didn’t find anything.

We went to the steak house at the Canadian pavilion, Le Cellier, and had the best steak I’ve had in very long time. It was absolutely wonderful. We highly recommend this restaurant, and I suspect this will be on our itinerary for all future trips.

After dinner it had stopped raining, but we were too cold and wet to wait for the fireworks. We went back to the hotel for another early evening. Jeanne took the sweatshirts to the laundry area near the pool, so at least they won’t be as heavy for the trip home on Friday.

(03/10/10) We are at the half-way point in our trip and we head to Disney Hollywood Studios. We enter the gate, and Ty needs to go to the men’s room. I go with him, and can hear him vomiting violently. He seems to feel okay, so we head into the park, but in no time he’s in the bathroom two more times. So, without going on any rides we call it a day and head back to the hotel.

In early afternoon we go to the pool, and Ty seems to be much better. Barb and Frank, who live here in Orlando, come and visit us by the pool and we have a nice visit together. Jeanne was in Barb and Frank’s wedding and it was terrific to catch up with them again. At about 4pm we decided to head back to the Studios.

Frank works for Disney in their Magic Express division. He’s a manager at the airport ensuring that all the luggage is being properly handled by the different crews. As an employee, he and Barb are able to get into the park. So they came with us. Frank also was looking forward to going on Tower of Terror with the kids.

We no sooner left the hotel room and Ty started vomiting on the grass. It was pretty clear that he would not be able to go with Frank on the “Turkey Tower” (Ty started calling the turkey tower when he was 4 years old, and it stuck).

The kids got to do Rock-n-Rollercoaster, and went with Frank on Turkey Tower, and we did the Great Movie Ride (good grief that ride isn’t aging well – they really need to redo it).

We then went to Hollywood and Vine for dinner. Its a very nice buffet. The last time we went with the full family it was jam packed, but this time it was empty. We highly recommend it – great food.

Even though he didn’t eat anything, Ty wasn’t feeling well. Always thinking ahead, mom had fortunately brought a plastic bag since Ty wasn’t able to make it to the bathroom.

That was the end of the evening. We said our goodbyes to Barb and Frank and headed back for an early night. Ty was sick much of the night as well, and we had visions of repeating our visit to the Celebration Hospital with him just like in 2004.

(03/09/10) We went to Animal Kingdom today. We started with our absolute favorite, the Lion King show.  I have no idea how they are able to put on such an energetic show with such high quality singing, dancing, and acrobatics seven times a day, seven days a week.  It is awesome, and gives me the goose-bumps everytime.

We then went on the Kilimanjaro Safari.  A good number of animals were out and the guide was funny.   From there most of the crew went on Expedition Everest.  Who would have guessed that Jeanne would be a rollercoaster fan.  She was just as excited as Ty. 

Before going on the trip, Mark promised Martha that he would take her on any ride she wanted to go on.  She picked the Kali River Rapids – my least favorite ride.  There is nothing more uncomfortable than walking through the rest of the day in wet clothes.  But a promise is a promise.  At one point I offered her $150 to let me off the hook, but apparantly the price of a bribe is larger these days.  Fortunately for me, all the water volume fell on Margrette.  I’ve never seen such a pitiful look of shock and cold miserableness – - why do we call this fun?

We had lunch in Pizzafaria, as usual, but were disappointed this year.  They must have changed their recipes, because it wasn’t very good.  Our original plan was for an early dinner at Yak & Yetti within the Animal Kingdom park, but we ran out of things to do and left the park early.  One of the problems is that none of us really like animals all that much – not even Ty, so we don’t do any of the walking tours. 

Anyway, we headed over to EPCOT.  Jeanne stopped at guest relations and canceled our Yak & Yetti reservations in favor of reservations in the sushi restaurant at Japan.  We did Test Track, and Mission to Mars – Dad, Kelsey, Greg and Martha did the intense Orange mission and the rest of the crew did the less intense Green mission. 

Dinner at Japan was excellent.  Some of the best sushi we’ve ever had.  After dinner some of the family went on the Norway boat ride, and then we staked a spot in front of Norway to watch the fabulous Illumination fireworks show. 

Ty started to complain of a stomache ache.  Uh-ohh.  The tone of our trip is about to change.

We started out heading for Magic Kingdom, but the buses were packed so we changed our direction to EPCOT. At EPCOT we got Martha to do the Orange challenge on Mission Mars, and had a great time on TestTrack. Greg did his thing – yelling and getting everyone in the car very engaged in the trip – the kid next to me was so excited and had so much fun that I think he was going to bounce all the way through the rest of his day. Great job, Greg!

We then headed to Magic Kingdom. True to the indication from the full buses, the park was very crowded. We did a number of great rides, and worked our own magic in balancing Fastpasses with Standby. At 5:30 we headed to the Polynesian resort for dinner. Unfortunately, there was a delay with the monorails and we didn’t arrive at the resort until 6:30. We were still able to eat, but missed our opportunity to go back to the park for the fireworks. Here’s something I didn’t know – The Ohana restaurant in the Polynesian resort has a spectacular view of the castle in Magic Kingdom, and during the fireworks they dim the lights and play the fireworks soundtrack perfectly synchronized to the fireworks. It was awesome!!

Ohana serves meat that’s been cooked on skewers over a bed of charcoal. Martha couldn’t figure out why her meat had a hole in it. I think it would be great to tease her with this when we go camping – “Martha – why does your hotdog have a hole in it?”

On the bus ride back to the Carribean Beach, Greg fell onto Dad’s lap and immediate started saying “I want a pony, and a rocketship”, just as if he were sitting on Santa’s lap. The rest of the people on the bus roared with laughter. His timing and delivery was perfect.

I couldn’t be prouder of the kids. Kelsey and Greg are full-fledged adults, and Ty is very well behaved with more excitement and more of a sense of wonderment than we ever remember from any of the other kids. What a blessing!

Dad is have a more difficult time with his arthritis than expected. I’ve had to skip a couple rides that would be difficult on my kneess, and standing still for any amount of time can bring so much pain that it gives me a headache too.

We are having a terrific time as always, with new adventures and plenty of laugther.