rss
Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites

Thursday, February 18, 2010

We were off to such a great start

I suck at packing. And leaving the house on time. And lots of other things too, but not all of those are relevant right now. Our goal was to get out of here in time to get to the airport to leave for Disney/FL in plenty of time to check bags, park the car, get through security (with a laptop, a CPAP, 4 pairs of shoes, coats, scarves, etc. this takes a while) and eat lunch before our flight.

Amazingly enough I succeeded. I even managed to keep my checked bag under max weight 49.5lb to be exact! Everything looked to be going so well. The flight was even looking to be on time. Possibly even arriving in Orlando early. We load onto the plane and wait. And wait some more. And they announce that we are waiting for some passengers from a connecting flight. Since I think missing a connecting flight would suck, I have a lot of sympathy, but even still, I am watching my schedule for dinner slip away.

Why do I care so much about my dinner plans? I spent entirely too long getting reservations for us at Disney's Kouzzina by Cat Cora. This was to be the first time we were seeing my sister in law in years, and would be meeting her fiance. Special, important, reunion. And we should have had plenty of time. I allotted for the hour and half of taking a bus from our hotel (Coronado Springs), to Downtown Disney, and then taking another bus to the Boardwalk where the restaurant was located.

The plane takes off late. We arrive late. We manage to meet my SIL & fiace on the Magical Express. Indy has even stopped crying about her ear hurting. We are all hungry, and starting to run late. But I have hope. We did online check-in so this should move quickly. We get up there and get our Keys to the World. And I find out that my room request has been ignored (I could not have been farther from El Centro) and to boot we are far from bus stops, and I did not have the Water View I paid for. Ok well, they can't seem to do anything about the room. I breath through as they give me a credit for the lack of water view and run to drop off our stuff in our rooms.

At this point it is clear we are never going to make the res. if we take the bus. So I call the front desk for a taxi. No problem they say, and connect me to they taxi company. We request a minivan since there are 6 of us, and give them our room number and building and are told the driver will call when he arrives (it is raining so waiting outside not ideal). Ten minutes go by. A half hour goes by. No taxi or phone call. I call the taxi back. The guy picked up the wrong family, they are sending someone now. Ok, dinner reservation is NOW. Wait some more. Phone rings, and it is the dispatcher. Taxi can't find us. Where are we in the lobby. Uh dispatcher? We are not in the main lobby that is why I gave you our room and building number. Well, apparently taxi can't pick us up at our room and we are so far from the lobby we would have to take a bus so we just decided to do that. And then take the second bus. We are now an hour late for our reservation.

All the while I am frantically on the phone with Dining Reservations trying to make sure we will be able to eat when we get there because we have not had food since before noon and it is now around 8:30pm. We make it to Kouzzina. The place is PACKED. We are starving and the wait is almost an hour. At some point I just started to apologize. It was my job to plan, organize and make sure things ran smoothly. To keep people fed and happy. I am full of fail. Bear decides we are not going to torture ourselves with the buses any more than necessary, so I call Hertz and not only are they able to start our reservation days early, but they will pick him up at the hotel. YAY HERTZ!!!

I check with the hostess about how much longer till we are seated - could be 10 minutes could be a half hour. The kids look translucent they are so hungry. She goes and gets them some warm bread to eat while we wait, and amazingly our table is ready. I do have to say that if it had not been nine hours since the last time we had eaten I would not have minded the wait.

The food was wonderful. Everyone was happy with everything. If I can find it I will post what we all ate, but sadly, in my exhausted state I did not take pictures of the food, and well, that seemed to have held true the rest of the trip. We did eventually make it back to the hotel and to bed, stuffed, cold and moist from the rain. I was up and down all night nervous I would sleep through our wake-up call, and hopeful our next day would be filled with Disney Magic.

No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails