pogma

Well, at the end of a week in Disney we got tired of hearing “Have a magical day”, had very sore feet and legs, and were sunburned. We did have fun though, despite the heat and all the happy helpful people that we encountered.

When we lived in Japan we went to Tokyo Disney once, and to Universal Studios Japan several times. At Tokyo Disney, even though we went in the off-season on a school day, the wait times for most rides were over 60 minutes. At Universal Studios Japan (unless you purchase their “Express Pass Booklet” which allows you to go into a faster queue) we have seen wait times of 180 minutes for popular rides. We also went to Disney Paris a couple of times in January, snow and freezing rain tend to keep the visitor numbers down, so we did not have to wait at all for most rides. My expectations for Florida’s Disney world were wait times similar to Japan. I was very pleasantly surprised. The longest wait times we saw were 60 minutes, and for those rides that did have longer wait times, we got the “Fast Pass” and went back to them.

The flights were fine and we were able to get to the “All Star Music Resort” on the Disney coach fairly easily. Little did we realize that escape from Disney would be impossible for the next 7 days. This had us paying $14 for a six-pack of beer, and $2 for a bottle of water for the week. The $10 a day extra for a fridge in the room and $9.95 a day for internet access also made me feel that we were being gouged.

The food was better than I had expected. I had thought that we would be eating burgers and fries for a week, but there were delicious alternatives - the kids meals all came with a choice of 2 sides, Jessica usually chose carrot sticks to go along with her fries, and there were delicious salads available too.

Jessica loved the rides, especially the scarier, faster ones. Space Mountain 5 times, Thunder Mountain 4 times, Splash Mountain 3 times, Everest adventure 3 times, Tower of Terror 4 times, Fast Track twice and Mission: Space. Unfortunately she did not quite make the 48 inch height requirement for some of the water slides at Typhoon Lagoon.

I am glad to be back at work - now I do not have to walk miles every day in 90+ F temperatures Hopefully we can avoid theme parks for a couple of years.

Wow! I surprised myself. I didn’t really believe that I could give up smoking for more than a day or two,
having been a smoker most of my life. I smoked for 22 years, which I figure means I had about 200,000 cigarettes,
spent nearly U.S. $20,000 and shortened my life.

We’ll see if I can continue, I still spend a large amount of time thinking about smoking, but am able to concentrate
for more than 5 minutes at a time again (I couldn’t for a while, just kept thinking about how much I wanted to smoke).