Vacation

So last week I was on Vacation.
I went to Florida - specifically Disney World.

I had one of the worst experiences in my life this time down there.
It was COLD. I dont mean 40 degrees and raining cold, that I could have handled.
I mean it was 20 degrees cold.
What the hell? Its Florida its not supposed to get that cold in Orlando.

But anyway we didnt bring mittens for the girls because we didnt think it wasnt going to be that cold. I had hats for them. But they were packed as an afterthought for me on the way down and back. But no gloves or mittens or scarves for them. And all I had was a decorative scarf for me.

To make matters worse the Disney Marathon was going on. Now we knew it would be crowded. We knew there may be some issues. What we didnt know was that all Buses to Epcot were not running because that was where the Start and Finish of the Marathon was.
This caused unending problems for us.

We started the day at 7:50am to get to a 9:15am breakfast reservation.
At this point the Marathon was in full swing. We were informed at the bus stop that the buses werent running but we could take the boat.
We waited for 45 minutes on a dock on the water in freezing temperatures and wind for the boat. We finally got on the boat to the Magic Kingdom where we were supposed to be able to catch the Monorail. The express was NOT running. So picture hundreds of ppl crammed into a little space waiting for 2 monorails to go between the Magic Kingdom and the Ticket/Transportation ctr. We waited for Half an Hour then they finally started running the express monorail. At this point we get on and head over to the ticket and transportation center the girls were so hungry. We had brought no snacks for the girls as it was supposed to be a 10 minute bus ride. There was a woman there who was a spectator for the Marathon who had brought snacks for her family and was nice enough to share some pretzels with the girls. Yes the spectators who were following the marathon were riding the same monorail as the general public.
Finally we make it to the Ticket and transportation center to switch over to the Epcot Monorail. There are thousands of ppl waiting for the Epcot Monorail.
By this point it is 9:15am. And we arent even at the parks yet. We wait in line in the exposed area of the center without gloves and no real pockets for the girls. But they do have their winter coats on. Their little faces were so red and both girls were hungry, cold and impatient and crying. I call to switch our reservations to a later time 10:55am - this was the first thing to go right all morning. After 45 minutes in line we get on the Epcot monorail. We finally make it into the park around 10:00am. Remember this was supposed to take 10 minutes and took over 2 hours.

We had a bit of time so we spent it looking for gloves. The first 3 stores we checked were all sold out of kids gloves. Finally in the World Showcase we found gloves that would fit the little ones in Norway. Since we were there we went ahead and checked in early. We made it through the ordeal. There was a lot of crying involved and everyone was cold cranky and hungry by the time we made it too breakfast but Breakfast was good and the girls got to meet all the Princesses and have their pictures taken with them.

But there is one thing I have learned: No matter how many of my friends are going to be in the Disney Full Marathon, Half marathon or 5k - I am NOT going to disney during marathon weekend again...unless me my daughter or hubby is running in it.