Tarkblog

Saturday.

The morning started early - a little before 5 to be exact.  Actually,
Annie’s morning started that early - I stayed in bed until she was done
showering.  Once we were all finished, we packed up the car with a few last
minute things and headed out the door a little before 6.

50 minutes later we were in downtown Indy and ready to go.  The whole
morning consisted of parts or her pre-run ritual - eating cinnamon toast
crunch, drinking some gatorade, prepping various clothing items into a carry
bag (which was my job to carry), and general being extremely nervous about
the run.

After a brisk walk to military park to use the portapotty, we got her back
in line with a few minutes to spare.  I found Ben, Stef, and Nate standing
by the corral, but they promptly got in line as well.  Then Stef and I spent
the next couple of hours just walking around downtown Indy while we waited
for the runners.  Towards the end of this time, we went near the medical
tents to see what types of injured people we could find - but we didn’t see
a single person.  Last year, the place was like a dehydrated body assembly
line.

After the race we went to Greenwood to eat lunch at Quiznos, and go to my
aunt and uncle’s house.  Annie showered up, then after a little cat nap we
were driven to the airport, waited a bit.  As they were boarding the plane,
the gate attendant asked over the PA system if there were any people
travelling as a party of 2 that would be willing to sit on the exit row.  
Apparently a person and child were seated there now, and that wasn’t
allowed.  I thought about this for a minute.  How could that have happened?  
There’s two ways to get a seat assignment - by a person or by the computer.  
The person method would clearly make sure that a small child wasn’t sitting
in the exit row.  On the internet, when you click on the seat you want to
sit at, it is pretty clear that children cannot sit in certain seats.  This
led me to believe that we had at least one big moron and one little moron on
the plane.

The flight was uneventful.  A little bumpy at first, but that cleared out
once we got clear of the jet stream.  I’ve been on a lot of flights, and I
do have to say though that this pilot gave us the most rapid descent I’ve
ever experienced.  At one point I’m pretty sure he turned the engines down
to idle because we were falling so fast.  I was waiting for a sonic boom,
but I guess we never quite got supersonic.

At the airport, I was told we would be seeing people with mickey hands that
would guide us to where we needed to go for our luggage deal.  I never got
my luggage tags from Disney (nor did a lot of folks coming to DW this week).
  We saw a Disney lady with a sign that said “Disney Magical Express”, so I
thought that was it.  However, it also said “Disney Cruise Line” which most
definitely wasn’t us.  So, we went down to baggage claim and hung out for a
few minutes.  Nobody Disneyish was around.  So, we went back upstairs and
asked, and were told were to go.  We went there and continued to see the
same sets of people like before, however it was all “Disney Cruise Line”
folks.  When I asked again, I was told that it was for BOTH Magical Express
and the Cruise Line.  That made sense I suppose.

We hopped downstairs and found the whole Magical Express area of the
airport.  I got to the front of the line and checked in.  Things got a
little confusing for a bit because our of split hotel stay - the agent
didn’t know how to handle that so she had to get some help and the manager,
who did know what she was doing, used words like “now just delete that
entry” and “you don’t need that information there”.  That’s definitely a
little worrying.

When she realized we didn’t have special tags on our luggage, she pulled out
a big laminated sheet of pictures of various types of luggage to which we
had to identify what ours looked like.  After that, we got on a big bus and
headed out to Disneyworld.

We had to make stops at two hotels before getting to ours.  Once at the
Animal Kingdom Lodge, we checked in and got our room - 4548.  It was, of
course, one of the farthest rooms away from the lobby you could get.  But it
was fun nonetheless.  I’ve always wondered how the room system worked at
Disney.  You can make room requests (king sized bed, smoking/non-smoking,
connecting rooms, close to lobby), but you aren’t guaranteed anything.  I
hear reports of people asking for connecting rooms but not getting them, or
asking for smoking and getting non-smoking.

We got a smoking room, with a connecting door, and a set of bunk beds
(instead of a second queen).  So this room was clearly designed for a
smoker, with kids, in a large party.  We were the exact opposite group of
people who this room was designed for.  I found it amusing.

Also amusing: the completely overwhelming smell of marijuana that filled our
hallway upon walking up towards our room.

Since it was starting to get a little late (7:30), we decided just to
explore the hotel.  We walked back to the lobby to look around, and then
outside to the main savannah overlook.  The AKL is just amazingly beautiful
- African animals all around.  The lobby is a work of art in itself, and the
restaurants had smoked meat smells that filled the air with such a great
aroma.  Our balcony overlooked a small sub-savannah which was a tad
disappointing to me (I’d rather be overlooking the great big savannah since
I paid extra for the view).

We were both pretty hungry, so we went down to Mara (the counter service
food court) and got some grub.  We both got chicken finger baskets, and
Annie got some kind of smoothie.  After dinner and a walk around the pool,
we went back to the room hoping our luggage would be there.  No such luck.  
It’s now 9:30 or so.  So, I called bell services and the guy told me that
they were experiencing long delays with luggage delivery, like 3-4 hours.  
So I waited, until about 10:30.  Now, we were both tired from having been up
so early.  Annie was ready to sleep, and she definitely wanted to take our
her contacts, and all of that stuff was in the luggage. So, I went down to
the front desk to see what I could do.

I actually ended up outside, as during the evening the bell services desk is
also the valet desk.  I asked the lady, and she had me come inside the bell
services area to see if any of my luggage had already arrived.  While doing
so, another truck showed up to deliver some more luggage.  I was excited.  
However, none of our luggage was on that truck.  I asked one of the guys in
the know, and he said that the trucks are supposed to come ever 30 minutes,
but they had been coming every hour or so.  He recommended checking back
again in an hour.  I kept cool about all of it - I was frustrated, but the
people were being very helpful and I knew that the situation was well beyond
their control.

At 11:30 I went back down again, and the same guy told me that no new trucks
had come in yet.  I asked him if he could check and make sure that the
luggage was at least checked into the system and supposedly going to come
here and not the other hotel we were going to be staying at.  He did, and
said the system looked good.  At that point, he called his manager down to
talk with me.  She was extremely nice, and told me that we could go to the
gift shop (which they would open up for me, since it had already closed for
the evening) and get some personal items to get us through the night and
they would comp them for us.  Wonderful!  That’s all I needed for the moment
- some toothbrushes and some contact lens solution.

As we were starting that process, another truck showed up.  I kept my
fingers crossed, and sure enough, our two bags were on it.  I wanted to take
them with me back to the room, but the guys said that they had to process
them into the system first and that they would bring them up right away.  
Right away turned into about 15 minutes, but at least they showed up and I
could go to bed.  At about 10 after midnight.  I was dead tired, and after
brushing me teeth I promptly fell asleep.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 at 8:06 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.