Checking in to Port Orleans (Day 4)

When I woke up this morning and found that my phone had been totally drained of juice, rather than charged… I was not amused. My phone is not only my camera, but our personal genie in this country, and we really don’t have anything else. Considering I’m a photo junkie, I took the deadness of my phone quite hard… especially since the sucker seemed to refuse to charge again. Several attempts were made… but it just wouldn’t charge. Our converter plug is a bit old, so we thought it was that, but it wouldn’t even charge on the external battery.

I just had one of those mornings where everything went wrong, and I didn’t start my day in the most pleasant of moods.

But, there was not a lot of time to mourn over phones, because we wanted to go to Universal again today. Repeating our actions from yesterday, we started with the Island of Adventures. This time the spiderman ride was first on our list. Even Daan joined in, but he came out a little greener than we had hoped.

Dr Seuss land was next, where we decided to ride the Cat in the Hat ride. To my disappointment (and Elora’s too) they’ve changed the speed of the ride. It used to be really wild and bumpy, and now it was very mild. It took away some of its charm, if you ask me.

We decided not to linger, because we already noticed it was a lot more crowded than the day before. Weekends generally are. Off to the Hogwards express, and to Universal studios. We didn’t have the luxury of our private cart this time, but it was still an amazing ride.

On the other side, we quickly did a few rides, before the lines got really big. Men in Black, the Simpsons and ET were on our wish list. After that I wanted to see the new Minions ride. Elora was less keen, and when we ended up in an hour long line, she gave me the ‘I told you so look’, several times. We were a bit unfortunate in our part of the line, because someone in front of us had some rather severe gas problems. There were fans that blew the cloud of poisonous smelling gas in our direction, which made the teenage girls in front of me laugh so hard they almost cried. I think they were funnier than the bad smell.

The line was long, and the ride was cute, but I wouldn’t wait for it that long again. Elora loved it, and she kept telling me it was totally worth the wait (my turn to give HER an ‘I told you so’ look *grin*)

Every photo opportunity I lamented I didn’t have a camera. I wasn’t even sure if I could get my phone to work again, so I have to admit I was a bit gutted. Daan suggested we go buy a proper camera.

We left Universal (we were pretty tired anyway) around one o’clock, and drove to a Walmart. Now… we Dutch don’t have Walmarts, so to me it’s a very interesting experience. We found a bunch of cameras, and tried to buy the one we liked… but apparently it wasn’t that simple.

The sales assistant, a droopy eyed gentleman with the charisma of the ‘computer says no’ lady in Little Britain, told us that the camera we wanted, wasn’t available. Nor were the other five we pointed out. The ones he did have, after rummaging around in a little cupboard underneath the display, weren’t IN the actual display. I kept a forced smile on my face, but inside my brain kept screaming each time he opened that damn cupboard to look for cameras that weren’t there: “Bitch, I will cut you!!”

I kept my cool, and we decided to look elsewhere. We ended up in the Florida mall, where decided to have lunch at Five Guys first. We split a hot dog and a hamburger between the three of us, and it was very nice.

We found an electronics store where we bought a nice camera. In the car I put it on the cable, to make sure it would charge in time for us to make it to the hotel. Everything worked… except for the actual camera part. We tried everything, but it just simply didn’t work. After ALL that, the freaking thing didn’t freaking WORK. ARGL!!! So my hopes of taking pictures were gone again.

Daan told me we would go exchange it tomorrow, which I’m gutted about, because I have other things to do than driving up and down to the mall to exchange crap. I rather go do something fun. But… Murphy’s law… and Murphy is a jerk who hates me.

The hotel is absolutely lovely. It seems very quiet, which is something we like. The pool looks stunning, and being the big kid I am, I love the big Marti-Gras statues. They’re very colorful, and everything is just wonderful. The room is very nice too. It’s not big (but so far none of the rooms we’ve had in Disney have been exceptionally big) but it’s just elegant and cozy. The only complaint I have so far, is that we lack storage space. Three drawers is not enough for three Noodles. We made do, but I would have liked some more.

Daan managed to get my phone on a charger, which helped. It took about half an hour for it to actually start charging again, but at least it was finally charging. I really want to use it tomorrow, since the Disney app will remind me of our fast pass plus reservations, and I can check the waiting times online, rather than run back and forth through the park. Modern technology really does make the theme parks very science fictiony!

When all the stuff was unpacked, we got dressed to go to the Cape May Café, for our first Disney Dining. We’re on the dining plan, which is lovely. It means most of our meals are paid for, from now on. I don’t know what it is about the US, but we’re constantly hungry here. That’s why we tend to share meals, so that we don’t just stuff our faces. Elora seriously eats more than we do at the moment. In fact, there are times where we split things 50-50. Elora will have half, and Daan and I will share half. We’re keeping an eye on the hobbit, but I think she’s just spending a lot of energy here, so that’s probably why she’s so hungry.

Anyway, I digress. Cape May was nice. The food was decent (I always enjoy fiddling with the crab legs) and the friendly dinosaur who served us was absolutely lovely… though she had lost the plot just a little. Where I come from people retire with age 67 at the latest, so I’m not quite used to seeing the elderly carry heavy trays with one arm, while running around. I joke around, but I actually have a lot of respect for this. We Dutch are a bunch of pampered princesses.

Other than the food being nice, dinner was quite unremarkable, and I won’t bore you with the details. After dinner we went back home to the hotel, where we took a little stroll around the grounds. I have to admit, we’re horrible parents, because we keep laughing at Elora behind her back. She’s not very elegant with her flip flops, and she likes to gallop like a horse. She has the grace of Donald Duck with Parkinson’s disease, according to Daan –who does the most amazing impression of her. She didn’t hear us, we’re not ‘that’ evil… but we were pretty bad. Elora is lovely, and she’s mostly very well behaved (when she gets tired she can get a bit annoying) but she’s constantly talking. And I mean CONSTANTLY. And she talks mostly complete and utter crap, which just gets under your skins after a while. If I have to hear about her dream pony one more time… I might cry. She can go on for hours about that. I have no place to run from her now, so Daan and I solve our blooming insanity with a good sense of humor.

At 8 pm it was time to put Elora to bed. She sleeps with her eye mask on, which is so funny I can’t even tell you. I read her a story and she went to sleep without fuss.

I’m quickly updating my blog, but the rest of the Noodles are already sleeping. Tomorrow is going to be a LOOOOONG day. We’re heading to the Magic Kingdom (our favourite park)

Universal Studios are awesome, and we love going there… but Disney always kind of feels like ‘home’ for some reason.