On The Road Again...

For the first time ever, the night before our Disney vacation I slept like a baby. That normally never happens. I usually lie awake making mental lists of all the things I forgot to pack or of the bills I need to remember to pay. The only thing that I can figure is that the “Skittles” worked. Whatever the reason I woke up feeling pretty rested and EXCITED!

The kid’s winter break ended the same day as we were scheduled to leave, so the first order of business was to get them up and on the bus. That task completed I worked on getting the princess fed and ready for her play date with Auntie.

Sonny had loaded up most of the luggage on Wed night and opted to go to work for part of the day. That left me to run the last minute errands—bank, electric bill, water bill, etc. No big! I am leaving for WDW today!

Stopped to grab a quick bite to eat at McDonald’s and happily informed all who would listen that I was on my way to WDW today. I am sure that I was annoying the H&*$ out of everyone I met, but I was having fun. That’s all that matters right?!

It wasn’t long before I got a call from LJ and Brianne that they had completed their errands and were headed to my house.

Small aside—My IL’s went to WDW with us last May and fell more in love than ever. So for the last few months my MIL has been teasing that if something should happen to Brianne before the trip, she would happily take her place.

This almost came in the play when they were putting their stuff in the SUV. Brianne slipped but managed to catch herself just before falling backwards out of the back of the Excursion. That would have been a horrible end to all these months of planning.

When we went to pick Sonny up at work we had a bit of fun with his bosses and the Excursion.

Once we got on the road about 1 pm I popped in the WDW planning DVD. Looking back I wish that we had stepped it up a bit and left sooner, but what can you do? I confess that in all of the planning I did for this trip, it never crossed my mind to order the planning DVD for LJ and Brianne. Don’t worry I flogged myself.

The ride was uneventful. We talked, read, watched a movie, listened to XM, ate plenty of snacks and slept.

We did make it to the Florida welcome center in time to get our OJ. LJ and Brianne, the poor dears, had never gotten their free sample of juice!

After our juice the guys decided they needed massages in the chairs. The FL welcome center has hit a gold mine with this idea.

Our plan had been to drive at least to Ocala the first night, but Sonny started getting tired around Lake City. We started looking for a room for the night and the first place we spotted that looked really nice was a Country Inn & Suites. The rate quoted for the night was a reasonable $89, so I gave the clerk my information. When she asked for a credit card, I requested to pay for the room in cash. The hotel clerk informed me that the room had to be secured with a credit card because of the duvets.

Hotel clerk lady say what?

She went on to explain that the rooms had recently gone through a renovation. Several guests in the past had damaged the new duvets, so they were required to get a credit card deposit of $100. After checkout the housekeeper would survey the duvet and if it was acceptable the front desk would authorize a refund that would take 3-5 days to hit my card.

I’d like to think that I was classy and gracious as I told her no thanks and walked out. Brianne agreed that it seemed an unfair policy and she didn’t want to stay either.

It took us several hotels before we found a vacancy, but finally scored an AAA rate at the Jameson Inn. The room was nice and clean, so we settled in for the night.