Vacations

Vacations

 Jackie and I are getting ready for next our vacation which had me thinking about other vacations we’ve had over the years. You see I’m not one to be really spontaneous, I am a planner.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan things out to the final detail but it is comforting to have some certainty with regard to our plans.  Jackie is somewhat the opposite of me meaning she could just wing it through the entire vacation.

Last year was the first vacation that we didn’t really plan anything. We kind of decided day by day what we would do and it wasn’t that bad .... it was pretty relaxing  overall. This vacation in February will be the same as far as just having an idea of what we will do a couple of days. January 2012 is taking a lot of planning and though since we are leaving the country. Anyway, I thought I would tell you about a few of our past vacations.

One vacation was in Canada. The one thing drilled into my head from this vacation is I remember the boys buying Canadian flags. Neither boy knew the Canadian National Anthem (O Canada) but that didn’t stop them from making up their own version. For hours or at least it seemed like hours the boys would aggressively wave the flags back and forth and sing at the top of their lungs: “Flag of Canaydia, Flag of Canaydia!” 

On every vacation and at least once while we were out eating one of the boys would secretly tell the server that one of the people in our party was celebrating a birthday. Here the crew from the restaurant would come clapping their hands or giving one of us a big “yahoo.” Sometimes they brought a small treat, goofy hat or glasses and a camera. It was always funny as long you weren’t the one celebrating your birthday. I don’t know if it was more embarrassing being the “birthday boy” or telling the server no one was really celebrating a birthday. Honestly, we finally relented and just played along…it was much easier.

One Florida vacation we decided to go to a place called Gulf World or something like that. This place was kind of a tourist trap and really hokey in a lot of ways.  I know that the boys and I were being pretty ornery. We made fun of pretty much everything and everybody at the park. I'm not sure at what point Jackie had enough but we reach that point. We thought she was going to leave us behind. She didn’t but the three of us behaved pretty much the rest of trip. I think we pushed Jackie over the edge on just about every trip. 

We made a trip to Tennessee over one Thanksgiving Holiday.  We had huge condo with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, huge family room and dining room. The master bathroom had a large garden tub with whirlpool. I don’t know which boy first put shampoo in the tube but we didn’t have a drop of shampoo left in the condo after they were finish. There were bubbles about four feet high, running all over the floor and under the bathroom door.

Thinking back to other vacations I remember a Disney vacation we took with the boys. Michael was probably 12 and Stephen was 10. We bought Disney park hopper passes. Side note: I don’t understand how parents of an infant can even begin to take a kid that age to Disney World. Seriously; a 9 month old in a stroller that will not remember one thing about the trip, come one! Back to the story, 12 and 10 years old were the perfect age for us to make this trip. We all were able to ride the rides together so it made it much more enjoyable.

We took the boys over the part of the park where you can interact with the Disney Characters; have a picture taken and so on. If you have never done this you basically go into a large room that is divided in several small areas with a different Disney Character stationed in each area. You go from area to area having your picture taken with each character…whoopee! The boys were not in to this at all.

Everything was going well until Goofy decided that Stephen “Gloomy Gus” needed cheering up.  Stephen didn’t want to be there and the rest of us didn’t either. We were trying to leave when Goofy decided to try several things to get Stephens attention included jumping in front of him, holding out his hand (paw) for Stephen to give him five and a few other things. Stephen avoided Goofy and even ignored most of his attempts. We encouraged Goofy to back off also.   I suppose Goofy thought he would try something else and he picked Stephen up. Wrong move Goofy! Stephen balled up his fist and clobbered the hell out of Goofy.

Enter the Disney Police/Security guy and the Disney equivalent of Barney Fife.  Barney, who was an ass, threatened us with expulsion from the park and even detention in the “Disney” jail. I will never forget this because he witnessed Stephen avoiding Goofy at every turn. As we left the Character area we felt like criminals but that wasn’t going to ruin our trip.

Let me back up for a little background on the vacation. I had to be in Orlando for a convention the week before this vacation. The day I flew into Orlando was the first day in Disney’s history that the park had to be closed for weather/ hurricane. My flight was the second to last flight allowed to land in Orlando. The next day Florida was effectively closed and tourist were discourage from coming to the state. The following week a tropical storm (which never made landfall) was expected to hit west-central part of Florida and again people were discouraged from coming to central Florida. There were no Tourists in central Florida. We had the place to ourselves. There were no wait times to do anything at Disney, you got in line and right on to the ride.  IT WAS GREAT!

Back to the story and on to Disney’s Tomorrow Land. We rode Space Mountain several times, did a couple of other things and found a show called the Alien Encounter which all of us wanted to see. They closed Alien Encounter several years ago but do you know what the real name of this show actually was? It was called: The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter! It had TERROR in the damn name! This show was scary as hell and we took Stephen and Michael in to see it…what were we thinking?  First thing that happened when you sit down is that a bar comes down over your shoulders which locks you in to the seat. You cannot get out of this seat regardless of how hard you try. This should have been a sign.

The Alien show starts off very slow but then it cuts loose with an alien escaping into the audience, strobe lights flashing, the sound of people dying, people in the audience screaming and an alien flying around the room. This was a great show if you were over 12 but it scared the hell out of Stephen and Michael.

Michael was okay  for a little while but Stephen was in full panic mode and neither Jackie nor I could move out of our seats. The more we tried the tighter the shoulder bars pushed down on us. I look at Jackie who is trying to settle Stephen down when I hear Michael break down and go into panic mode too. It seemed as if the show lasted hours but it was only a few minutes long. The show ended and our boys were bordering on being in shock. As the room empty’s we are trying to calm the boys down with people looking at Jackie and I as if we were the worst parents on earth for taking the boys into this show? I took us probably 20 minutes to calm Stephen down.

The next day we went to Disney MGM studio, now I think it is called Disney Hollywood Studio. Anyway, again we had the park to ourselves and were able to walk onto just about any ride we wanted to. We went on the Tower of Terror and Rock n Roller-coaster several times. I don’t remember the name of the next ride but it was something like the Indiana Jones adventure. Jackie decided she would wait for the boys and I while we went on this ride. Everything starts out okay but about 1 minute into the ride it stop. I didn’t just stop in a way that would make you comfortable, it stopped with the boys and I upside-down suspended in our seats and held in by our shoulder bars. Honestly, we thought it was part of the ride but the cart we were in released, righted itself and started swinging back and forth. The house lights came on as we continued to swing forward and back. Minutes pass before an employee (member of the Disney “cast”) announces that the ride was malfunctioning and they were doing everything they can to fix it. Eventually the cart came to a stop and they manually released our shoulder bars and we left the ride. We had five day park hoppers passes and had only used four days. The next day we went to Cape Kennedy…we had had enough misfortune at Disney World.

I have more vacation stories that I will add at another time…..