Hurricane/Disney/General Update
A lot has happened in the last two weeks or so... so this probably will be not-nearly-as-detailed-as-I'd-like, but oh well.
Hurricane Ike
OK, so the hurricane was interesting. We were very very much blessed to not have any damage to our apartment-- just some trees down in the complex. Thank goodness for living in an apartment complex, too, so that we don't actually have to deal with repairing or picking up anything that the storm did. I was very very worried about my parents before the storm, since their zip code was in the mandatory evacuation zone, but Dad didn't want to leave. (For those who aren't in this area, the main concern was the storm surge and flooding... they were expecting up to 25 feet rises in the water levels, and my parents live only 2 blocks from the bayou and it's not exactly a steep rise to their house.) Mom ended up coming over here because she was scared, but Dad stayed at home... which ended up being OK because they didn't get any major damage either, somehow. We had a few interesting days with Mom here between the storm and us leaving, when we had no power and the roads were too full of debris and flooding for her to go home. It was kind of funny... we had flashlights and batteries and candles and water... but we didn't think about food. We found a Walgreens that was open the day after the storm, and it seemed like it wasn't just us-- just about everyone was buying up as much food as they could get their hands on. Junk food gets old after a while... and *cough* to eat soup, even cold, you need a non-electric can opener. *cough* Houston without power is not fun... because that means no A/C... so you leave the windows open and get horribly sweaty and the house gets humid and you feel like the sticky sweat is never going to leave your body. >.< Also, when there is no power, and there's a curfew, the city gets disturbingly dark. It is NEVER dark outside our windows when there's power... but it was for those few days, and it really creeped me out. It kind of reminded me of the movie I Am Legend, where he would rush home at dusk and seal himself in for the night. Not that there really were any zombies trying to eat us, but it was that level of panicky creepy.
So we were very, very glad when we were able to go up to Johnny's office (which still had things like power and AC) that Sunday, and even more glad when we were able to finagle things to be able to go on our Disney World trip! We ended up leaving Mom at our place, but then she was able to go spend a night with Johnny's Mom since she had power, and then she went home the next day.
Disney World!!!
Getting to Disney World was kind of an adventure. We had had to do a whole lot of juggling, and even then it wasn't enough-- we ended up pulling a lot of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants maneuvers that still have me shocked that we made it in one piece and without anything major going wrong. For starters, we were flying standby with real tickets on a later flight, and even though everyone and their pet hamster was trying to get out of Houston that day, we were able to catch the flight to Dallas and went from there to Orlando no problem. I had gotten us a room for the night in Orlando on hotwire (so as not to use up our nights at Disney) and we were shocked (hotwire doesn't tell you what you just bought til you buy it... until then it's just "hotel room at orlando airport") to find out that we had a suite at the Sheraton... huge suite, kitchenette, 2 big flatscreen TV's, etc. We ate dinner that night in the hotel restaurant (which was really good) then went back to the airport to get our luggage (which had been stuck on the later flight). It was delicious to be able to take a hot shower and sleep in A/C. You have NO IDEA.
So the next day we hopped a ride back to the airport, so that we could take the official Disney transportation to our resort. (At this point I will get less detailed... feel free to look at the huge folder-o-Disney-pics on my Myspace, and/or Facebook, though Facebook is still in-process.) We got to the resort, got our luggage put away since it was too early to get into our room, and went to the Magic Kingdom! First off let me say that the way they do things there is pretty cool now. You get this little credit card thing with your name on it, and it's everything-- it works towards your meal plan, it works as a park ticket, you can charge things to it, it's the key to your hotel, etc. etc. etc. Pretty awesome. You can even use it to get a "fastpass" so that you don't have to wait in line for a ride, you just come back at a preappointed time and you get to skip the greater majority of the line. ^-^ So anyway, I actually got Johnny to accompany me on Small World, and we did a lot of the other stuff in Fantasy Land and American-whatever-town-that-is. Then we went and ate at the Lady and the Tramp restaurant... at this point I have to stop and say OH MY GOODNESS the food was amazing. We had the deluxe dining plan which meant we could eat as much sit-down-meals as we wanted pretty much, and we were able to get a pretty good number of reservations to actually do so, and oh MAN the food is amazing. If you don't have the dining plan these places are easily $40-50 per person before tip, but they're well worth it. Johnny and I have racked up bills at Houston's before, and the food was at least as good as that and often better. The desserts were especially good.
So anyway, after that we went back to the hotel, slept, etc, and then got up and went to Epcot!
Let me first say that Epcot is awesome and the part of the park that actually has the ball in it is kind of lame. "Future World" or whatever they call it is OK, but not nearly as neat as World Showcase. We did all the attractions there, though. Even got stuck inside the ball ride for a few minutes... we got to watch the guy pounding papyrus for way too long... and we got to play with robots and such. The "test track" and a few other things they had hyped up on the in-room tv's and stuff were lame, though. Very contrived and the kind of thing that 7 year olds would think were cool but we were just like "meh." We ate lunch at the Mexican pavillion, which was amazing, and then finished Future World and started on the Showcase. We only got as far as Japan, though, before we had to backtrack to Morocco for our dinner reservation (with bellydancers!) After that we steaked out a spot along the water to watch the fireworks, and after that we went home. Sadly we never finished world showcase, but there wasn't much of that that we really wanted to see left anyway. And another trip to Japan would've been bad for our wallets. We had been -so good- in not getting suckered in by all the hokey gift shops, and then in one effort Disney got us. How dare they sell Anime paraphenilia AND pretty kimonos in one store? At least we both have stuff to wear to the next Con now...
ANYWAY...
Day 3 took us back to the Magic Kingdom. My mom had been sick during all the hurricane stuff, which had gotten passed on to Johnny, so by day 3 he had a hideous sinus infection. :( So we skipped our character breakfast with Winnie the Pooh, slept in, and then went to the park. We had lunch at some relatively forgettable place in Main Street USA, then tackled the rest of the Magic Kingdom. I was a little scared for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, since they changed it to be all "movie." (That's so lame... "The ride inspired the movie and now the movie's inspired the ride!" Come on, like that's even fair.) But the changes they made were so obvious and dumb that they're easily ignorable. All they did was add a few new animatronics (which stand out horribly since the others are still the old original ones) and add some dialogue about Jack Sparrow over the other dialogue. But it's still the same ride, and they still want the redhead, so that's good. In the evening, we watched the show they do in front of the castle, which made me sad since they obviously have a Milleficent costume but she wasn't anywhere signing autographs or taking pictures (sniff!)... and neither was Captain Hook. Double sniff. We then were able to snag a bench in a little water-fountain-pavillion-thing which was great since the only thing between it and the parade route were bushes, and people weren't allowed to stand in front of us since it was a corner that the floats might hit. So I got some awesome video of the "Spectromagic" parade. We didn't stay for the fireworks, though, because Johnny had been using all his strength to make it even that long, so I took him home and we ordered pizza.
Never underestimate the pizza at Disney world. Apparently ordering one pizza each was a bad idea. We had enough to feed a family of 8, and it apparently came with salad and breadsticks and cheesecake and chocolate cake. *facepalm*
Our last day we went to Hollywood Studios, which I hadn't really known about before we got there but which was really pretty awesome. We had planned to just spend the morning there, but we ended up doing the whole day. It was really neat... there was a Pixar area, a Muppet area, and lots of movie-themed stuff and "behind the scenes" stuff... which I really shouldn't geek out about given the fact that I already know how they do this stuff and it doesn't amaze me, but I still get happy over such things. Another thing that made the area neat? The Villain store. Disney merchandise is sorely lacking in villain stuff. Sorry, kids, but Snow White and Cinderella only go so far. I heart Milleficent, and the Evil Queen, and Ursula, and Captain Hook, etc. The Villain store didn't have nearly as much as I wanted there to be, it was mostly full of Jack Skellington stuff, which was all over the parks because of the Halloween theme they do this time of year (Jess, you so missed out, it was ridiculous the amount of Halloween merch they had.), but I was able to get a Milleficent t-shirt. I had to fight the urge toward the villain playset of action figures, but I managed... and now I kind of regret it. :( The rides in Hollywood are cool too. The Aerosmith roller coaster was terrifyingly fast and went upside-down, much to my dismay and Johnny's delight. (I enjoy roller coasters but that doesn't mean they don't scare me to death.) We ended up going back to the hotel early after this park too... we'd thought about staying to see Fantasmic, but it was just another Mickey-is-Jesus-show, as Disney tends to do, and we decided to skip the packed throng that is the bus line at closing time, and get some packing done to leave the next morning.
General Update
So we got home in one piece, once again shocking given our fly-by-night travelling plans, and were very very glad to have electricity. I'm still a little disoriented by everything, it's been an insane last two weeks, but that's OK. Mom and Dad are coming by this morning to hang out and do laundry, since they're still without power. Johnny and I are walking in the evenings now... so hopefully I can get back on the fitness bandwagon and not regain all the weight I lost this spring/summer.
Hurricane Ike
OK, so the hurricane was interesting. We were very very much blessed to not have any damage to our apartment-- just some trees down in the complex. Thank goodness for living in an apartment complex, too, so that we don't actually have to deal with repairing or picking up anything that the storm did. I was very very worried about my parents before the storm, since their zip code was in the mandatory evacuation zone, but Dad didn't want to leave. (For those who aren't in this area, the main concern was the storm surge and flooding... they were expecting up to 25 feet rises in the water levels, and my parents live only 2 blocks from the bayou and it's not exactly a steep rise to their house.) Mom ended up coming over here because she was scared, but Dad stayed at home... which ended up being OK because they didn't get any major damage either, somehow. We had a few interesting days with Mom here between the storm and us leaving, when we had no power and the roads were too full of debris and flooding for her to go home. It was kind of funny... we had flashlights and batteries and candles and water... but we didn't think about food. We found a Walgreens that was open the day after the storm, and it seemed like it wasn't just us-- just about everyone was buying up as much food as they could get their hands on. Junk food gets old after a while... and *cough* to eat soup, even cold, you need a non-electric can opener. *cough* Houston without power is not fun... because that means no A/C... so you leave the windows open and get horribly sweaty and the house gets humid and you feel like the sticky sweat is never going to leave your body. >.< Also, when there is no power, and there's a curfew, the city gets disturbingly dark. It is NEVER dark outside our windows when there's power... but it was for those few days, and it really creeped me out. It kind of reminded me of the movie I Am Legend, where he would rush home at dusk and seal himself in for the night. Not that there really were any zombies trying to eat us, but it was that level of panicky creepy.
So we were very, very glad when we were able to go up to Johnny's office (which still had things like power and AC) that Sunday, and even more glad when we were able to finagle things to be able to go on our Disney World trip! We ended up leaving Mom at our place, but then she was able to go spend a night with Johnny's Mom since she had power, and then she went home the next day.
Disney World!!!
Getting to Disney World was kind of an adventure. We had had to do a whole lot of juggling, and even then it wasn't enough-- we ended up pulling a lot of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants maneuvers that still have me shocked that we made it in one piece and without anything major going wrong. For starters, we were flying standby with real tickets on a later flight, and even though everyone and their pet hamster was trying to get out of Houston that day, we were able to catch the flight to Dallas and went from there to Orlando no problem. I had gotten us a room for the night in Orlando on hotwire (so as not to use up our nights at Disney) and we were shocked (hotwire doesn't tell you what you just bought til you buy it... until then it's just "hotel room at orlando airport") to find out that we had a suite at the Sheraton... huge suite, kitchenette, 2 big flatscreen TV's, etc. We ate dinner that night in the hotel restaurant (which was really good) then went back to the airport to get our luggage (which had been stuck on the later flight). It was delicious to be able to take a hot shower and sleep in A/C. You have NO IDEA.
So the next day we hopped a ride back to the airport, so that we could take the official Disney transportation to our resort. (At this point I will get less detailed... feel free to look at the huge folder-o-Disney-pics on my Myspace, and/or Facebook, though Facebook is still in-process.) We got to the resort, got our luggage put away since it was too early to get into our room, and went to the Magic Kingdom! First off let me say that the way they do things there is pretty cool now. You get this little credit card thing with your name on it, and it's everything-- it works towards your meal plan, it works as a park ticket, you can charge things to it, it's the key to your hotel, etc. etc. etc. Pretty awesome. You can even use it to get a "fastpass" so that you don't have to wait in line for a ride, you just come back at a preappointed time and you get to skip the greater majority of the line. ^-^ So anyway, I actually got Johnny to accompany me on Small World, and we did a lot of the other stuff in Fantasy Land and American-whatever-town-that-is. Then we went and ate at the Lady and the Tramp restaurant... at this point I have to stop and say OH MY GOODNESS the food was amazing. We had the deluxe dining plan which meant we could eat as much sit-down-meals as we wanted pretty much, and we were able to get a pretty good number of reservations to actually do so, and oh MAN the food is amazing. If you don't have the dining plan these places are easily $40-50 per person before tip, but they're well worth it. Johnny and I have racked up bills at Houston's before, and the food was at least as good as that and often better. The desserts were especially good.
So anyway, after that we went back to the hotel, slept, etc, and then got up and went to Epcot!
Let me first say that Epcot is awesome and the part of the park that actually has the ball in it is kind of lame. "Future World" or whatever they call it is OK, but not nearly as neat as World Showcase. We did all the attractions there, though. Even got stuck inside the ball ride for a few minutes... we got to watch the guy pounding papyrus for way too long... and we got to play with robots and such. The "test track" and a few other things they had hyped up on the in-room tv's and stuff were lame, though. Very contrived and the kind of thing that 7 year olds would think were cool but we were just like "meh." We ate lunch at the Mexican pavillion, which was amazing, and then finished Future World and started on the Showcase. We only got as far as Japan, though, before we had to backtrack to Morocco for our dinner reservation (with bellydancers!) After that we steaked out a spot along the water to watch the fireworks, and after that we went home. Sadly we never finished world showcase, but there wasn't much of that that we really wanted to see left anyway. And another trip to Japan would've been bad for our wallets. We had been -so good- in not getting suckered in by all the hokey gift shops, and then in one effort Disney got us. How dare they sell Anime paraphenilia AND pretty kimonos in one store? At least we both have stuff to wear to the next Con now...
ANYWAY...
Day 3 took us back to the Magic Kingdom. My mom had been sick during all the hurricane stuff, which had gotten passed on to Johnny, so by day 3 he had a hideous sinus infection. :( So we skipped our character breakfast with Winnie the Pooh, slept in, and then went to the park. We had lunch at some relatively forgettable place in Main Street USA, then tackled the rest of the Magic Kingdom. I was a little scared for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, since they changed it to be all "movie." (That's so lame... "The ride inspired the movie and now the movie's inspired the ride!" Come on, like that's even fair.) But the changes they made were so obvious and dumb that they're easily ignorable. All they did was add a few new animatronics (which stand out horribly since the others are still the old original ones) and add some dialogue about Jack Sparrow over the other dialogue. But it's still the same ride, and they still want the redhead, so that's good. In the evening, we watched the show they do in front of the castle, which made me sad since they obviously have a Milleficent costume but she wasn't anywhere signing autographs or taking pictures (sniff!)... and neither was Captain Hook. Double sniff. We then were able to snag a bench in a little water-fountain-pavillion-thing which was great since the only thing between it and the parade route were bushes, and people weren't allowed to stand in front of us since it was a corner that the floats might hit. So I got some awesome video of the "Spectromagic" parade. We didn't stay for the fireworks, though, because Johnny had been using all his strength to make it even that long, so I took him home and we ordered pizza.
Never underestimate the pizza at Disney world. Apparently ordering one pizza each was a bad idea. We had enough to feed a family of 8, and it apparently came with salad and breadsticks and cheesecake and chocolate cake. *facepalm*
Our last day we went to Hollywood Studios, which I hadn't really known about before we got there but which was really pretty awesome. We had planned to just spend the morning there, but we ended up doing the whole day. It was really neat... there was a Pixar area, a Muppet area, and lots of movie-themed stuff and "behind the scenes" stuff... which I really shouldn't geek out about given the fact that I already know how they do this stuff and it doesn't amaze me, but I still get happy over such things. Another thing that made the area neat? The Villain store. Disney merchandise is sorely lacking in villain stuff. Sorry, kids, but Snow White and Cinderella only go so far. I heart Milleficent, and the Evil Queen, and Ursula, and Captain Hook, etc. The Villain store didn't have nearly as much as I wanted there to be, it was mostly full of Jack Skellington stuff, which was all over the parks because of the Halloween theme they do this time of year (Jess, you so missed out, it was ridiculous the amount of Halloween merch they had.), but I was able to get a Milleficent t-shirt. I had to fight the urge toward the villain playset of action figures, but I managed... and now I kind of regret it. :( The rides in Hollywood are cool too. The Aerosmith roller coaster was terrifyingly fast and went upside-down, much to my dismay and Johnny's delight. (I enjoy roller coasters but that doesn't mean they don't scare me to death.) We ended up going back to the hotel early after this park too... we'd thought about staying to see Fantasmic, but it was just another Mickey-is-Jesus-show, as Disney tends to do, and we decided to skip the packed throng that is the bus line at closing time, and get some packing done to leave the next morning.
General Update
So we got home in one piece, once again shocking given our fly-by-night travelling plans, and were very very glad to have electricity. I'm still a little disoriented by everything, it's been an insane last two weeks, but that's OK. Mom and Dad are coming by this morning to hang out and do laundry, since they're still without power. Johnny and I are walking in the evenings now... so hopefully I can get back on the fitness bandwagon and not regain all the weight I lost this spring/summer.