28 Days of Orlando

**Daniel Ramsey** · 01-01-2004, 23:05

My trip from Wasilla (just north of Anchorage, Alaska) to Orlando starts tomorrow night, I have booked a 3 bedroom villa through Orlando Villas many months ago for four weeks in January. I wanted cooler temps, less crowds and to coincide with my seasonal job as a plant maintenance supervisor.
My 9 year old son and myself are flying Alaska Airlines departing 1:30am 1/3 saturday morning and scheduled to arrive at Orlando around 5pm the same day, we have reserved a Pontiac Grand Am 4 door intermediate car from Alamo. The last trip to Orlando was in 2001, we rented a home from Families First in the Thousand Oaks subdivision off of Loughman Rd south of WDW, then I found out the available homes or 'villas' that are available on Johns website, its about time there was a better way to inquire about the homes available and after doing some research and prioritizing our needs John himself had a nice affordable home, many others were inviting but our needs are simple and its just me and my son for the first two weeks and then my wife will join us as her job can only release her for two weeks after my arrival. Besides I need at least 4-5 days to acclimate myself to the warmer temps, the pollen and ozone. Last trip the air got me terribly stuffed up for days, in Alaska there is NO ozone or smog, non-existant pollen and its very dry most of the year.

I will try to post as often as I can our adventure, the villa has already a PC and soon high speed internet access.

**Amirah** · 02-01-2004, 02:53

Lucky you Daniel! Enjoy!!!!!!

**Daniel Ramsey** · 04-01-2004, 17:54

Security was slowing things down pretty good in Anchorage and thus it was after midnite when we were able to get past the checkpoint but the DVD rental kiosk was closed by then so I didn't have a movie to look at, getting out of Seattle also had our flight delayed over an hour with us already boarded due to security issues. The weird thing is the terminal has like a Berlin Wall running through it with the Inmotion rental kiosk on the other side and a line that looked like at least an hours wait, so no DVD player again. Luckily on this leg a passenger next to me had just recieved a new portable DVD player in addition to his Toshiba laptop (almost identical to my dead one!) so I was able to watch "Bad Boys II" from my movie kit (we brought along about 48 DVDs)

Renting the car was no big issue though the Pontiac Grand Am was already take,families and kids were running and grabbing any car available that looked sleek or fancy, one kid actually ran up to our selected car as we were standing next to it, I had to yell at him to give us our keyes back, we had rightfully claimed it and it was ours! LOL. I found instead a dark silver Chrysler Sebring with only 540 miles on it, not a bad small family car and sporty looking, plenty of power to it.

Finding the villa at night was a challenge, someday soon everybody will have GPS navigators in the cars, it would be a definate plus if there was an illuminated house number, my apology to our neighbors, the alarm system was accidentally set off by my son, he has to poke and push buttons any new place he adventure into. Definately a nice house though I should have looked closer, there is a large shower and the second bathroom has a tub mut the master does not, I prefer a long hot soak in a large tub. BUT the pool we found out was so warm it replaces a hottub. We put the pool cover back on a little while ago to keep the heating costs down.

Now we need to pick up a few more household supplies and stuff and its off hopefully to a day at Universal Studios.

**Daniel Ramsey** · 05-01-2004, 05:46

Today was a scouting expedition, first we bought the 5 park Orlando Flex ticket at a Publix then we first went to Sea World, then around 3 we hopped over to cruise Island of Adventure. I duped my son into thinking Dr. Doom wasn't a scary ride (heh heh heh) I wish I had a tape recorder....And Spiderman is everything its claimed to be, it blows Disney right out of the water!

Tomorrow its off to see the rest of Universal.

**Daniel Ramsey** · 08-01-2004, 12:19

Wednesday started as a cold windy day, its even cold to me and I'm from Alaska, we went to Universal first thing and got in line for Jimmy Neutron, most everybody had caps, gloves and even down jackets on, it was weird seeing a down jacket in Florida, me I just had a t-shirt and a short sleeved shirt on, it eventually warmed up to the mid 50's, people were even braving the river raft rides, not a lot but a few and almost all had ponchos on.

We then scooted over to IOA and toured around Jurassic Park and saw the Sinbad show overat Lost Continent, my chicken 9 year old son refuses to ride Dueling Dragons, rode the Pteranadon Flyers, its so hard thinking about folks waiting in line 30 minutes or more for an 80 second ride, another weird thing in life I suppose, also almost all the guests or at least a 75% of them are from South America, I hear Portuguese spoken all the time. They don't seem very happy and look tense all the time. You notice that when you are in a line for a half hour or so.

I think I'm going back over to IOA again tomorrow, I really like the MIB and Back to the Future rides plus we need to see a lot of stuff we skipped over last time. Now is a good slow time with the holidays over, schools in session and the temps cooler. And I think I may bring my light leather bomber jacket in case it rains.

**blott** · 08-01-2004, 19:26

Sounds as if you're enjoying yourself Daniel! I don't think it's going to rain today as it looks pretty cloudless in Crescent Lakes at the moment and the sun is shining but it has gone a bit chilly again as the higher temperatures we've had just recently are a bit unusual. Still, let's hope the temperature goes back up again to 80 before long!

**Carla** · 09-01-2004, 23:48

Sorry, but you get no sympathy here re the weather!! My weather bug says 71 degrees in Central Florida!! Not bad for January eh???

Have a great vacation.