I'm running out of steam. I mean, after 105 days on the road, it's not surprising, but today was definitely indicative of it. I had about 6 stops planned between Savannah and here in Disney World, but could only work up the energy to go to 3 of them.
I left Savannah about half an hour later than planned (are you seeing a trend? I am). I did have a couple of stops to make on the way out of town (mainly at CVS in order to pick up a couple random items). So by the time I hit my first scheduled stop, I was already an hour behind schedule. First stop was a chocolate factory/store in Jacksonville - Peterbrooke Chocolatier. I picked up a couple items and then drove over to Beach Road Chicken Dinners, also in Jacksonville. Seriously good fried chicken there. I got also got a half an order of fried gizzards, since I liked them so much at Joe's Gizzard City up in Michigan. These were ok - much chewier than the ones in Michigan. I think they need to be boiled more before frying.
Next stop was another chocolate factory. I could have waited around another half an hour in order to go on a tour, but, seriously, how many times do I need to learn how chocolate is made from cacao plants? I think I'm pretty familiar now. I did buy some butter creams though. I had a winery, the Oldest House Museum, and another winery planned (and at this point, I was back on schedule, so I could have fit them in), but I just couldn't work up the energy or desire to go to any of them. I just wanted to get to my destination. So I kept driving.
However, I did decide to drive down A1A rather than I-95 for what I expected to be a more scenic route. I guess it was. But it wasn't anything like the Pacific Coast Highway. For much of it, I couldn't even see the ocean - it was blocked by houses or a bluff or trees. And then there were the resort towns that I drove through. Eh.
I turned off of A1A onto I-4 towards Orlando. About halfway along that route, torrential downpour. I was pretty impressed with the other drivers though. Everyone slowed down to an appropriate speed, most everyone had their lights on, and a number of people even had on their blinkers - made it much easier to follow the lights of the car in front of me when I couldn't see the lane lines.
So I made it to Walt Disney World without much incident. I checked into my hotel and got settled. And, good god, I had so many questions. I never have questions when checking into my hotel. But there are so many options here and so much logistics, and as simple as Disney likes to think that their processes are, they're a little dated. I mean, I still haven't been able to get a bus route map. I don't think one actually exists. For a planner like me, I don't like to leave transportation details like that up to "figure it out when I need it." So I ended up walking around everywhere and asking all sorts of questions. I also drove over to the Magic Kingdom entrance in order to pick up my actual ticket that I had bought online and was at will call. Didn't want to leave that until the morning. But I think I have it all figured out at this point.
I came to Disney World twice as a kid - once when I was 8 and once when I was 10 (I think), but I haven't been here since. And, obviously, at that age, I wasn't involved in the logistics of our trip. So this is the first time I've had to deal with that. Also, when I was a kid, we stayed at the Polynesian Resort, which is serviced directly by the Monorail. I remember using the Monorail to get basically everywhere. I always wanted to stay at the Contemporary Resort if I ever came back, but, in researching for this trip, it was just too expensive, especially for me staying there by myself. So I ended up staying at the Dolphin, which is on the Disney property, and you get all the benefits of staying at a Disney resort, but it's run by Starwood Hotels. It has a conference center and isn't as "Disney" as the rest of the resorts - I like that - not quite as many children running around everywhere. However, the transportation is a little more complicated. There's a water taxi over to Epcot or Hollywood Studios (although I'm not going to Hollywood Studios while I'm here), and to get to Downtown Disney or the Magic Kingdom, there's a bus, which as I already stated, I can't get the details on. However, I did find out that the $15/day that I'm paying to park my car includes unlimited in and out and parking at any resort, park, or anywhere else within Disney World - I just have to show my room key and there's no additional fee.
One other major point of logistics that I haven't mentioned yet is that I have friends that flew in this evening from Austin and are joining me here at Disney World. They're actually the guys that are wine-sitting for me for the summer. So they flew in from Austin tonight and we originally had plans to meet up for dinner, but their flight was delayed and I was hungry, so we skipped dinner and will just meet up in the morning. They're not staying at the same hotel as I am, but we're planning on spending much of the day together tomorrow. Oh, and it's going to be a seriously long day. Breakfast at 6:30, gates to the Magic Kingdom open at 8, and we're planning on going all day until about 10PM. LONG day. I'm using the same program that I used at Disneyland in order to organize my day and all the attractions I'm planning on hitting. Which brings me to another point. Tomorrow is my birthday. I know this seems like a non-sequitor, but I'll connect it, just give me a second. In Disneyland, I was using my iPhone in order to track my progress against my plan for the day, but I found that was draining the battery, so I switched to my iPad partway through the day and used my iPhone just for email/facebook/etc. Well, I do plan on starting with the plan on my iPad tomorrow, but I've found that my iPhone battery has been dying even quicker recently, so I'm worried it won't last through the day, even if I'm not using it for ride tracking. Add to that that it is typical for facebook to explode on your birthday with notifications every 5 minutes of someone posting on your wall, there's no way it's going to make it. So, for one day only, I'm going to turn off facebook notifications (you thought I was going to say I was going to turn off my phone, didn't you? That's too far for me.). I will do my best not to check facebook every chance I get and so I won't be responding to any birthday messages until late in the day - maybe even not until Friday, depending on how hard I crash tomorrow night.
Oh, on a similar note, I probably won't post on here tomorrow night. After 16 hours in the park, I imagine that writing a blog post is going to be next to impossible. Happy birthday to me!!
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