Pre-Trip Part I: The History of the Trip
Trip Start
Jul 21, 2006
1
29
Trip End
Aug 13, 2006
Brooklyn,
New York,
United States
Monday, July 17, 2006
I thought it would be fun to do a road trip to the major cities along the east coast. I looked up different travel routes, hotels and attractions, and came up with a good plan. We would spend three weeks visiting Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC and Williamsburg, before ending the trip with a week in Virgina Beach. Everything sounded great until I realized that my parent's really aren't road trip people. I knew that they wouldn't want to spend the vacation driving up and down the east coast; they wanted to relax. So I went back to the drawing board. I then decided that a tour of Pennsylvania would be fun. We would still have to do some driving but it wouldn't be too bad. We would spend a week each in Philadelphia, Lancaster and the Poconos and it would be a good mix of thrills, culture and relaxation. We would also get to revisit a favorite destination while getting to know some new ones. What could be better? Then mom and dad said that there was nothing to do in the Poconos. While I like horseback riding, hiking, rafting and just enjoying nature, no one else is into it. So there went the "Tour of Pennsylvania" idea, and back to the drawing board I went. Again.
I then thought that it would be great to do three separate week-long vacations. We could go to Lake George, Boston and Niagara Falls. Mom and dad grew up going to Lake George and Mike and I grew to love the place on our two trips back in the mid-nineties. When it came to Boston, we had a trip planned to the city three years ago that was cancelled. The trip had been all researched and planned so I felt as if we had unfinished business. I had to finally experience everything that I had looked up and looked forward to. Niagara Falls was also a destination in which I had always wanted to visit. It's one of those places that everyone has to see and experience at one point or another, so why not now? Everything sounded great...
...Except for the hotel situation. All sharing a room and two beds was fine when Mike and I were younger but now it's just crowded and annoying. Even with a cot, it's a pain sharing one bathroom and being cooped up in one room. After having a huge condo to live in last summer, going back to staying in a hotel just didn't sound appealing. Plus, all of the nice hotels in Boston and Lake George were expensive so it was almost impossible to get two rooms. To make matters worse, there weren't any nice pet-friendly hotels in Niagara Falls, there were just dumpy motels. No thanks. So we kind of put all vacation plans on hold and waited to see what would happen.
At the end of August Mike and I had a dentist appointment and mom and dad came with us. Mom and dad have been going to this dentist since before they were even married and we're very friendly with Ann-Marie, the hygienist. She had been following the plans for our 2005 trip to Orlando and asked us about it as soon as we walked in the door. Then I got my teeth cleaned, and when I was done Michael went in. While he was getting his teeth cleaned I sat with mom and dad in the waiting room and we talked about vacations. I casually brought up how hard it was to find a good place to go next year, specifically because of hotels. Our only options were to spend around $2000 for a nice hotel in one destination or to spend $4000 renting a house for a week. It's not cheap traveling with a dog. I then said that it really didn't make much sense to spend all that money for a week when we could spend $2000 again renting a house in Orlando for two weeks. I expected mom and dad to yell at me to stop preaching the rewards of traveling to Orlando, but they actually agreed! They thought it was a good idea. What?! Dad said it would be fun and pretty cheap to go back to Orlando for two weeks. Mom just looked at him and said, "No, three weeks." I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but it sounded good to me!
I spent the next few weeks looking for homes to rent. A lot of them were expensive or didn't accept pets, but there were also a lot that looked good. Thanks to the abundance of condos and vacation homes in Orlando, the tough competition really drives down the prices. I was able to get creative with our search and really look for a place that we'd enjoy. We decided that this year we wanted to rent an actual home with a private pool instead of a condo. Sounds good. I found a few nice ones but most of them had pools that backed up to fences or other homes. What kind of atmosphere is that? I wanted a nice view, so I kept looking and eventually found a nice home in the Crescent Lakes resort. It had three bedrooms and two bathroom, a newly installed jacuzzi, and a huge pool that was steps away from a lake. It provided a gorgeous view, and best of all, it would only cost us $1990 for the three weeks that we wanted. I instantly loved it. The owners lived in England so when dad went to work the following Monday he called them directly. We got all the information we needed and everything sounded good. We booked the home over the phone and then filled out a booking form that we had printed off of the home's website. We shipped it off to England along with our security deposit and before we knew it we were set.
The next few months proved to be very hectic. Our plans changed even more than they did for last year's trip. My Aunt Stacy, Alan and cousin Alison were going to meet us down there for a week or so, but then they decided not to come. Then my Uncle Marc, Aunt Tanya and cousin Zach got themselves into a predicament... they were supposed to go to the Bahamas in December but no one could watch their cats so my Uncle Marc stayed home while my Aunt Tanya and Zach went with Aunt Tanya's mom Marie, her twin sister Andrea and her husband Nick, and their kids Nicole, Andrew and Maria. Then Uncle Marc, Aunt Tanya and Zach were supposed to go to fort Lauderdale in February, but Zach got sick and they had to cancel. They still had plane tickets so they decided to switch things around and use them to meet us down in Orlando for a few days. Everything sounded great until Uncle Marc got a new job and lost some vacation time so they had to cancel their trip to Orlando. We all felt bad, but what can you do? Maybe next time!
More changes were made when it came to our tickets. As much as I love Disney, I didn't know if I wanted to go back to the Disney parks. We had just been there and the only new attraction was Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom. Aside from Soarin' and the World Showcase at Epcot, there weren't any attractions that I was dying to experience again. So we decided to skip Disney. Then I felt bad about skipping Disney since I really do absolutely love it, so we added Disney back into the mix. Then the ticket prices went way up at the start of the new year and I again decided that I didn't care enough about going to spend all that money. So we won't be going to the Disney parks this trip. Will I miss them? Eh. I'll definitely miss Epcot, and maybe Animal Kingdom, but everything else I could do without.
With Disney out of the equation, we decided to again get Annual Passes to Universal Studios. We couldn't get the Power Passes like we had the year before since all weekdays in the summer were now blackout dates. So we decided to upgrade to the Preferred Pass. Only one problem... I had lost mom, dad and Mike's passes. I still had mine, though, and by looking at the barcode number on mine I was able to figure out what their numbers were. So we were all set for Universal until I found out that Costco was running a great deal. For $85 we could get a five month pass to the parks. Awesome! We were going to go with these passes until one of my dad's friends got back from Universal and said that NBC employees no longer got free parking. What?! We were planning on being at Universal a lot and without the free parking it would have cost us a fortune. We compared the price of parking for the number of days we would be at Universal with the price difference between the Costco passes and the upgrade to the Preferred Annual Passes. We realized that the cost of parking would be more than the upgrade so mom, Mike and I got Costco passes while dad got an Annual Pass for the free parking perk. Perfect!
We then thought of what else we wanted to do. We had hated Sea World the year before so that was out. I love animals and the whole idea and atmosphere of Africa so why not try Busch Gardens? We loved the Busch Gardens in Williamsburg when we went a few years ago, and the Travel Channel special on the park had been great. We were going to get one day passes until I again found a pretty good deal. Busch Gardens was allowing people to buy a one day pass and then come back as many times as they wanted within the next seven days. Sounds good. We bought four tickets with plans of visiting the park twice within a week.
Next came the resorts. I love resorts... I really do. Hotels are just ridiculously fun and really set the mood for a vacation and there are few resorts and hotels that I love more than the Orlando hotels! I definitely wanted to make it a priority to visit as many Disney and Universal resorts as possible. I looked at our schedule and was able to fit in a visit to every single Disney and Universal resort, except for the Disney Value resorts. I'm really excited about taking in the atmosphere at each resort since they're all so unique! We still had some extra time on our hands so I started looking into some other attractions. When mom and dad went to AAA a few weeks ago they got a bunch of guidebooks and brochures on other things to do in Orlando and reading them gave me a lot of good ideas. I wanted to do something cultural... something that would make me think. So we added a visit to the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of Decorative Design to the mix, as well as the Orlando Science Center. Both sound very interesting and like a lot of fun.
So, with our plans set, I went about making our priority seatings... and what a task that was! There are an unbelievable amount of restaurants in the Orlando area, specifically in the Disney and Universal resorts. I picked and chose and changed and added and dropped tons of different priority seatings until I came up with a final list. Unlike last year, everyone is really excited about the restaurants I chose. Mom and dad celebrated their 20th Anniversary this past May, so I made sure to mention that on all of our reservations. Hopefully they get some good surprises.
Everything was set and ready to go until we encountered one small problem last weekend. When we sent in our full payment of $1990 to the owners of the vacation home we're staying in we were told that three weeks before we were set to arrive the management company would contact us with the key code needed to get into the home. The house has a small lock box near the front door with a set of keys inside to be used to get into the home. Then the keys were to be put back into the box while we used two sets of keys located inside the home for the duration of our stay. Sounds good. However, three weeks came and went. Then two weeks came and went. And we still hadn't heard anything...
Last Friday dad called the manager of the home and was told that he no longer manages, or has anything to do with, the home. What?! Mom woke me up really early to tell me this and I was in a panic. I called dad to see what was going on and he really had no idea. I was fuming. We were seven days away from leaving and we still had no way to get into the vacation home. Thoughts of being duped and having had our $2000 stolen kept running through our minds... how would we get our money back? How would we find a new home to stay in on time? I was a nervous wreck.
I searched online for instructions on calling England and I called the owners myself. I spoke to the wife of the man we had been dealing with and she said that the manager of the home left the company and hadn't bothered to tell anyone. She assured me that we had nothing to worry about and that someone from the management company would be calling us soon. I was still nervous, but I relaxed and tried not to worry about it. Two hours later a nice man from Eden Vacation Rentals called and said that he just e-mailed me all the information we would need. Finally. Whew. I went online and found exactly what he had promised. Thanks guy from Eden Vacation Rentals! We got the lock box code, the name of the new manager of the home, directions to the resort, and some other random information. We finally had everything we needed.
With everything set in place, all that's left to do is wait. And pack. I still can't believe that we're going on this trip. I hope this week goes by quickly!
