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My recent series of posts about the trip to Disney World did not get as many comments as I had desired.  This of course is my fault for writing a bad story and posting it on an inappropriate platform.  Anyway, here is a poll so y'all can enjoy clicking or tapping on things.

[Poll #2025287]

Day 14: Drive from Ohio to Ontario

Meijer (Maumee OH, 3:08pm, pronounced /ˈmaɪ.ər/).  Our usual grocery-shopping-in-the-States before driving across the border.  $234.80.  The same candy bars we got for our “up to $5 snack credit" at Disney are being sold here for 82¢.

Kroger (Roseville MI, 4:21pm).  Try to get some lunch here, but their to-go section isn’t all that great.  $22.11 for a submarine sandwich for Wifey and some more groceries we forgot to get at Meijer.

Tim Horton’s (Roseville MI, 4:26pm).  In same shopping plaza as Kroger.  $8.26 for turkey sandwich on ciabbata (for Kid #2) and cinnamin-raisin bagel + cream cheese (for me).

Some convenience store (Dundee MI; no receipt).  We get off the highway for Tim Horton’s, but no one wants a washroom.  There is a Walgreens next door, and Wifey remembers that she hasn’t played the lottery yet on this trip, but the Walgreens has no lottery display.  We head the other way down the street, since there is a Kroger’s sign pointing that way, but we can’t find it.  Finally stop in at a convenience store.  $1 for a scratch-off ticket that wins $1, so it was a “free” play.  $1 for a PowerBall ticket that doesn’t win.

Blue Water Bridge (Port Huron MI – Sarnia ON).  Toll = $3.00.  The border guard seems to know a whole lot about Wilmot ON, considering that he’s never been there.  He asks about the Blue Moon Hotel (which is mainly a restaurant now; I've never been inside).

Tim Horton’s (Strathroy ON, 6:28pm).  Washrooms.  $2.39 for a blueberry muffin and a Boston cream doughnut.  Kid #2 uses a gift card to get another pretzel bagel.
      Here in the Southwest Ontario countryside, the leaves are turning.  It is much cooler than in Florida.

Our house (8:00pm).  We’re home!  Trip complete with no major disasters!
      Our house is much more dimly lit than anything at Disney, giving it a surreal feeling: this is where we *used* to live, a long time ago — but it was only two weeks!

Disney World 2015, day 15: Dog kennel

Wag ’N’ Train.  $299.17 for two weeks at the kennel (using the $50 off coupon we got as a raffle prize on orientation day).  The dog has apparently lost 5% of his body weight and is now trim and more able to use his arthritic leg.  The bathroom scale says all other family members are within 1% of their pre-vacation weights, despite the running-a-marathon-in-a-sauna feeling of Disney World in September.

Disney World 2015, day 17: UPS / High Holiday

Our house (2:05pm).  The boxes from Florida arrive.  Although there was no import duty when going to the States, the Canadian UPS wants $188.77 for their “brokerage” services, thus doubling the shipping cost and making it totally unworthwhile to use UPS instead of Allegiant.  The delivery driver refers to his own employer as “pirates” and suggests that I call UPS headquarters and complain.

Our house.  It’s Erev Yom Kippur.  Kid #2 makes the dinner.  Our fast is uneventful.

Our room.  Kid #1’s attempts to avoid getting sick on this vacation have *mostly* worked, but she seems to be coming down with something now.

UPS store (Celebration FL, 11:09am).  $5.89 for a 12×12×20 box to contain additional stuff to be sent home that does not fit in the 18×18×18 box that we sent down here.  This is our estimated amount of additional space needed (in cubic inches), based on a variety of “test packs” of the old box with various combinations of the items to send home.
      Celebration is an unincorporated city (pop. 7,427) which started life as a Disney company town where they sold timeshares.  It has since been disowned and is now a mostly-separate entity (Disney still provides electricity and telephone services.)  My understanding is that the UPS store does not pay rent to Disney, but it’s hard to tell.

Landscape of Flavors (11:30am).  Skim milk (it’s a “snack”) for Kid #2’s breakfast cereal in our room.

Our room.  Final pack of the two boxes.

UPS store (2:45pm).  $187.83 to mail both boxes back to Canada.  Kid #2 carries the old box (all clothing), which is 46 lbs and awkward; some of the clothing is packed into Vacu-Seal bags and is very dense, while other bits of clothing are just thrown in loosely.  I carry the new box, which is 30 lbs.  I tell UPS that half the new box is new souvenirs and snacks, half Canadian-origin stuff, while the old box is entirely Canadian-origin material.  Estimated shipping time is four business days.
      It’s hard to tell for sure, but I think that the old box (which is overweight) would have cost $95 to have Allegiant fly it up with us, while the new box would have cost $45.  So in total we paid about $48 extra to avoid the checked-baggage hassle and to get $1000 of insurance on the box of clothes.

Epcot.  Our last day at the parks.  This second visit to Epcot was planned for day 9 but had to be postponed.  The original plan for today had us visiting the the Magic Kingdom yet again, but we’ve been there, done that, got the fridge magnet.
     Attractions visited today: Club Cool, a ferry, Tangierine Café (Wifey and Kid #1, lunch 4:17pm), Katsura Grill (Kid #2 and I, lunch 4:20pm), Karamell-Küche (take-home, 5:14pm), another ferry, Gran Fiesta Tour, ImageWorks (just Wifey, take-home 6:43pm), Northwest Mercantile (except Wifey, souvenirs), Journey into Imagination, and Soarin (Kid #1 and I).  We had hoped to go on Spaceship Earth again, but are just too tired.  There is a cast member at Living with the Land who confirms that it is scheduled to reopen tomorrow, and we have unused park tickets, but the effort required seems excessive (get back here for just one ride, then make our plane flight).
      Club Cool used to be Ice Station Cool which had a dirty-and-wet igloo you walked through to get to the Coke-branded tasting station.  Now you just walk into the station.  I try the pineapple soda, which is as good as I remember, and also the guarana soda which does not sit well in my stomach — maybe I drank it too fast.  Guarana is often used in energy drinks.
      The first ferry takes us to the Moroccan pavillion.  It has a female pilot (who is actually in control of the boat, which is not on a track) and a male “captain” (who just reads his lines to the passengers).
      At Katsura Grill, I note that the waitstaff are all Japanese nationals as expected.  But the cookstaff (actually making the Japanese food) are all Black Americans.  Is Japan trying to show off how racist it is, or is this just Florida (which remains part of the Confederate South)?  Anyway, the food isn’t great.  My dessert is strawberry+adzuki ice cream, which tastes halfway between a fruit and a bean.
      Karamell-Küche is obviously sponsored by Werther’s caramel company of Berlin (although they also offer some fresh-baked stuff).  Wifey spends a snack-credit on a bag of caramels to take home.
      We take a second ferry from Germany towards Mexico (the park layout does not match the geography of the Earth).  We have to wait at the dock for a shift-change.  I note that both old and new crews consist of a female pilot and a male “captain”, so I guess these roles specify required genders for the cast members.
      The Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros is awful.  What it looks like to me is that Mexico stopped sponsoring the pavillion, so Disney took vengeance upon them by replacing El Rio Del Tiempo (which was basically an ad for the Mexico Tourist Board) with a ride in which Donald Duck makes fun of Mexican stereotypes.  Let this be a lesson to you all: this is what will happen to your country if you ever stop giving the benjamins to DisneyCorp!
      At ImageWorks, Wifey gets another box of mints to use up a snack credit.
      It’s a long walk to the Canada pavillion, so Wifey sits on a bench at the Showcase Plaza.  At Northwest Mercantile Trading Post, Kid #1 thinks the selection of products is much like any tourist trap back home; she buys a Mickey-in-Canada pin for $9.54 (says Disney in their final-accounting email; missing receipt).  Kid #2 uses a penny-squishing machine for 50¢ (plus 1¢ for the penny).  The machine embosses an image of the Epcot Canada pavillion, but on the other side you can clearly see that the penny had been minted in Canada in 1968.  “It’s Canadian on both sides,” he says.  We generally think of Kid #2 as the most “normal” member of our family, but is it normal to decide that the best use for your 47-year-old penny, no longer legal tender in its country of origin, is to squish it into a souvenir?
      The cast member who is staffing the Trading Post wears a nametag that says she is from Etobicoke ON, so I ask her if the ‘k’ is pronounced.  “No, it is /ɛ.ˈtoʊ.bɨ.ˌkoʊ/,” she says, clearly annoyed with the number of mispronunciations she hears.  It turns out that this is her second stint at Disney World; for her first stint they gave her a nametag that said “Brampton ON” (where she lives) but this time they are making her wear Etobicoke (where she was born).  Kid #1 says it’s a good thing that our 15-year-old nametags don’t give our places of origin, because we moved to Canada after getting them.  The cast member says she saw someone wearing one of these old nametags at a D23 event.  I tell her that, of the 65,000 cast members at Disney World, she is the first one we’ve run into who has *ever* seen one of these things before.  (I am fairly sure that neither of my children has any idea what D23 is, nor have they ever been to Brampton, nor gotten off the highway when they were passing through what used to be Etobicoke, which was dissolved in 1998 and amalgamated into Toronto.)  Anyway, a pleasant enough conversation with a homie.
      Journey into Imagination stars Eric Idle.  There is a picture of Robin Williams on the wall, but he has no lines.
      At Soarin, I note that the dark splotch does not seem to be in a specific place on the screen, but depends on where I am looking.  Perhaps it is actually a blind spot in my eye and not a defect in the ride?

Everything Pop (at Disney’s Pop Century Resort, dinner 8:45pm).  I haven’t been too pleased with our own resort’s food, so we try the Pop Century resort down the street, but things keep going wrong.  I try to go through the automated entry-lane for the parking lot, but my credential is rejected (apparently this resort restricts the automated entry just for guests staying at Pop Century, not for all current guests like elsewhere).  I have to back up and go through the staffed entry; the cast member’s handheld reader makes a happy noise when scanning my wristband, so he lets me in.  I try to get a tuna sandwich, but the line I select does not move — everyone is getting create-your-own salad.  Finally I get the sandwich and go to a checkout line, but it does not move — the cashier is having an extended conversation in Spanish with some other guests.  When she finally gets to me, she wants to have an extended conversation in English, but my family is sitting on a bench outside the food court so I just wish she’d hurry up.  By the time I finally get the food back to our room, I don’t feel like eating it, so it sits in the fridge until tomorrow morning.

Ink and Paint (9:08pm).  Wifey pays $23.27 for a scarf, plus $2.12 for an Animal Conservation button.

Landscape of Flavors (dinner, 9:15pm).  Create-your-own pasta for Wifey and the kids.

Our room.  Day 4 dose 1 of Kid #2’s ear drops.

Landscape of Flavors (12:12pm).  Lunch.

Ink and Paint (12:45pm).  Single-dose DayQuil for $2.45.  Kid #2 is coughing.  Also, get a sandwich-cutter for $6.34 that makes white-bread sandwiches look like Mickey Mouse’s head.  Our kids are too old for such foolishness (and have never attended public school), but we can buy it anyway!

Ink and Paint (12:57pm).  Two Entenmann’s Apple Pies.  Obviously there is no way we can eat up all the “snack” credits during this vacation, so we have to start accumulating snacks that will travel well so we can bring the excess food home.

Our room.  To prepare for today, Wifey spent months making herself a Minnie Mouse costume.  Part of the costume consists of old shoes to which she laboriously applied many coats of yellow paint.  But the shoes feel tight and today’s schedule includes massive quantities of walking and Wifey’s knee is already feeling gimpy from previous days’ exertions, so she decides to be prudent and not wear the special shoes that she worked so hard on.
      Wifey insists that I wear a Haunted Mansion T-shirt.  Kid #2 does not dress up at all.
      Kid #1 wears her Dr. Who outfit.  She also has a Winnie the Pooh fursuit (open-face) that we didn’t bring because obviously it would be too hot for Florida.  But even the tweed jacket for her Who suit seems like too much for the 90° weather, so she leaves that item in our room.
      Kid #1 also brought her Winnie the Pooh doll, but it spends the entire trip in her backpack and no pictures are taken of it at the park, where we had bought it as childless newlyweds in hopes of someday having a baby to give it to.  Well, after a year of fertility treatments, we got our wish!  Considering how many years Pooh spent as her go-everywhere favorite doll, it is in remarkably good shape.

Magic Kingdom Park (3:40pm – 12:00am).  It’s Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party!
      Regular park hours run until 7pm, while special party tickets are for 4pm to midnight.  They have started to accept special tickets but then the revelers are being held in a pen until the stroke of 4.  Since we have excess park tickets because of our skipped days, we decide to “waste” them by entering the park 20 minutes before everyone else in our class.  The ticket collectors find this hard to believe, but they let us do it.  It feels so luxurious to engage in such “conspicuous consumption”; we are spending an entire day’s ticket just to get 20 minutes of extra park time!  But there is nothing else we can do with these nonrefundable nontransferable tickets.  Maybe for our next trip (if there ever is a next trip), we’ll buy park tickets for only half of the hotel days.
      Attractions visited today: Various trick-or-treat spots, Main Street USA photo spot (photo, 3:48pm), Confectionary (take-home, 3:57pm), Crystal Palace (dinner, missing receipt), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Big Top Souvenir (take-home, 8:56pm; actual souvenir, 8:58pm), Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, Astro Orbiter (Kid #1 and I), Tomorrowland Transit Authority, Haunted Mansion, “Monsters’ Dance Party”, “Happy Hallowishes”, a popcorn cart (snack and souvenir, 10:47pm), Big Thunder Mountain (kids only), Aloha Isle (snack, 11:05pm), and Mickey’s “Boo-to-you” Parade (kids and parents on opposite sides).
      At the Main Street USA photo spot, Wifey wants a family photo with Cinderella’s Castle as the backdrop.  I suggest taking two photos with three people each, then stitching the digital photos together back home, but it seems unlikely that this would work well.  A pair of other park guests who are walking by offer to take our family photo for us.  Yay!  So now we need a photo frame.
      At Confectionary, we get 3 additional boxes of shortbread cookies imported from Scotland and shaped like Mickey’s head.  Paying customers would be forking out over a dollar each for small ordinary cookies — but for “free” we’ll take them!
      Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor.  This is totally different.  You see animated characters on a big screen, but clearly there are live comics working behind the scenes at this show who are making up jokes on the fly.  Periodically they shine lights and cameras on individual audience members and put these live video feeds on a big screen with funny captions below them.  Only a small minority of audience members get this treatment.  They point the camera at me with the notation, “What do you get when you cross a human with a chia pet?”  Presumably this refers to my beard, which is a different color from my scalp hair.  Unfortunately I am unable to think of a funny dance to do while the camera is on me.
      The Crystal Palace buffet costs $202.88 for dinner (actual money, not on our meal plan; can’t find receipt so price taken from the final-accounting email sent by Disney after our trip is over).  The food isn’t worth quite that much, but this restaurant includes meet-and-greets with various Winnie the Pooh characters.  Wifey takes photos of our kids with Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, and Pooh; she tries to get them to strike the same poses as on previous trips, but this is physically impossible because the character fursuits are the same size but our kids are now much bigger.
      At The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh exit shop, we find out that Winnie The Pooh® brand honey is no longer offered, so we can’t buy it, so Wifey can’t check off this item in her giant list of “Things to do at Disney World” formed during the two years of planning.  Oh well.
      At Big Top Souvenir, Wifey gets two containers of cheese goldfish and a bag of pretzels.  We have way more dinner-credits than we can use, so she trades one dinner for these three snacks.  Big Top is one of the few in-park stores that offers this conversion feature, which is usually done at the hotel food courts.  Wifey is so focused on the snacks that I have to remind her to get a fridge magnet for our collection!  I say, “If this is the ‘trip of a lifetime’, shouldn’t we buy a fridge magnet?”  This probably sounds rather silly to the store staff.  Anyway, I select a small picture frame surrounded by “Walt Disney World 2015” with both magnet and kickstand features — only $10.60!
      The Monsters’ Dance Party is very loud and has bright lights; guests dance along with cast members who are wearing fursuits.  Wifey and Kid #1 join in, while Kid #2 and I sit it out.
      Astro Orbiter is a kiddie ride.  Kid #1 and I share a vehicle, which was fine ten years ago but quite cramped now.
      As we exit from Haunted Mansion, the “Happy Hallowishes” fireworks display starts up, so we sit to watch.  At one point, half the visible sky is filled with exploding fireworks!  We’ve never seen anything like it.
      At the popcorn stand, Wifey uses a snack credit for bottled water (another luxury, since water fountains are available but bottled water is cold and we might as well use the snack credits).  She gets a souvenir bucket of popcorn for $6.00 (popcorn is a snack, but souvenir buckets aren’t; Kid #1 eats the popcorn).  On one of our previous trips we got souvenir buckets which the kids then used in their sandbox at home — but they are too old for that now.
      At the trick-or-treat spots, cast members give out handfuls of fun-size candy which are not as impressive as the full-size candy bars we can get with our snack credits.  At one spot, the cast member greets me and Kid #2 by name (since we are wearing our 15-year-old nametags).  She greets Wifey as “Minnie” due to her costume.  I don’t remember what she called Kid #1, but it wasn’t “Dr. Who”.  I remark to Kid #1 that Minnie Mouse is a Disney property but Dr. Who is a BBC property, which may explain why the cast member couldn’t refer to it.  On at least two other occasions today, some other guest we passed by uttered the passphrase “bow ties are cool” which is a Dr. Who reference, but Kid #1 didn’t hear them or couldn’t think of a reply.
      At Aloha Isle, I get pineapple juice, which is tasty but isn’t Dole Whip® which is one of the fond-memory foods that Wifey had wanted to eat on this vacation.  But here we are on day 10 and she still hasn’t had any, because we’re never near the Aloha Isle when she’s hungry.  There are definitely some downsides to this eat-all-the-time dining plan; also the excessive heat is suppressing our appetites.  Anyway, Wifey shares some of my pineapple juice while we watch the parade, thinking that the kids are enjoying themselves on Big Thunder Mountain.
      Meanwhile, the stand-by line for Big Thunder is unexpectedly long, so our children get in only one ride and don’t feel like standing in line again, but the parade route cuts off the Big Thunder/Splash Mountain area of the park, so the kids just stand there and watch the parade, then rejoin us after crossing the street becomes possible.
      The “Boo-to-you” Parade is supposed to be one of Disney’s best.  Ho hum.  I guess we’re just not parade people.  This is the first parade in 25 years that we actually sat and watched instead of avoiding at all costs.  It is probably also the last.

Our room.  I apply five drops of ofloxacin to Kid #2’s ear.  This is day 4, dose 2.
      My wife and I will probably never again visit the Magic Kingdom for as long as we live.  Our kids are all grown up now and the expected delay until grandchildren arrive is greater than our remaining life expectancy (although you never know).  I has a sad.  In fact, I have a sad repeatedly over the next several days.  I think my first visit to the park was in 1972; Wifey’s first visit was later that decade.  We just don’t have the money to bop down here without a good reason such as a grandchild or a hefty inheritance.

Our room.  Day 2, dose 1 for Kid #2’s ear drops.  Wait around for Wifey’s college friend, whom we haven’t seen since our previous trip to Disney World ten years ago.

Our room (12:30pm).  Friend arrives.  We spend quite some time in our hotel room with her, catching up on typical old-person topics (who died, who has grandkids, etc.)  My children are polite and make it seem like they actually care about such things.

Landscape of Flavors (lunch, 2:00pm).  We give the friend one of our plenitude of food credits; as of May 2015 it is now permitted to buy food for people who are not on the plan.  We all have lunch together, then split up by gender.

Wifey, Kid #1, and the friend

Big Blue Pool (inside Art of Animation Resort).  Hang out at the swimming pool for more conversation.

Kid #2 and I

Pixel Play Arcade (inside Art of Animation Resort).  Our accommodation includes a coupon for 100 play-points at the arcade, but both of the machines that are supposed to convert the coupon to an access card say they are “empty”.  There is no cast member at the arcade today (it’s Sunday), so we go to the concierge desk; they give us a card with 250 points *and* return the unused coupon.  What a great deal, eh?  But the games are not much fun and half the games we select are “free play” anyway, so we use very few of the play-points before losing interest.  One of the less-uninteresting games is Fruit Ninja, which Kid #2 recognizes as a game that was originally written for the iPad and has been retrofitted for the larger screen of an arcade game.  (Back in my day, the arcade was the initial target-market and then games were retrofitted for personal computers).

Our room.  Use our computers with the hotel Wi-Fi.  This is more fun than the arcade.

Everyone

Our room.  The womenfolk return to the room for more conversation.  The friend leaves around 5:30pm, so she got a five-hour visit for which she drove 2½ hours each way.  Then my family has more computer fun while we wait for it to get darker.

Our room.  It’s Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of Jewish year 5776.  This is at least the third time in the last 25 years that we have celebrated it in a hotel room.  Wifey’s original plan was to eat dinner in the room with rotisserie chicken from a grocery store, an apple, and Winnie the Pooh® brand honey.  But we didn’t get around to buying the chicken or the honey and I forgot to pick up an apple at the hotel food court.  In our room fridge there is a leftover fruit cup that includes three slices of apple (desserts are included in the dinner food-credits, but the Disney dinners are too much food for us).  So we look up the Rosh Hashanah blessings on the Internet and say them while eating the apple slices (Wifey and I share one slice).  Wifey brought along a single birthday candle from Canada, so we stick it in a leftover-dessert cupcake, light it on fire (oh noes!  An open flame in a hotel room!), and wish the world a happy birthday.  Then we blow out the candle and divide up the cupcake.  Happy New Year!

Disney Transport (Lake Buena Vista FL).  We take a bus to Downtown Disney, which is in the middle of being rethemed as “Disney Springs” so many of the parking lots are closed for reconstruction.  Hey, it’s another ride!

Wolfgang Puck’s Express (Downtown Disney, 7:18pm).  I wasn’t too impressed with Chef Puck when we ate at one of his cafeterias in Boston.  This one is considerably upscale from that, but still there is much to complain about.  My chicken soup tastes sweet.  My brownie tastes like gooey sugar syrup with chocolate flavor (but other family members enjoy theirs).  The receipt makes it look like we paid $74.87 for family dinner, but actually the cost was covered by our dining plan.  Bottled juice is available, but only fountain drinks are on the plan, unlike at Disney-branded restaurants.  The cashier keeps asking us to list our “meals” first (eventually we figure out that she means “entrées”).
      After dinner, we split up by gender again.

Kid #2 and I

Sassagoula Steamboat Co.  Take a ferry across Lake Buena Vista to Downtown Disney’s “West Side”.  The captain says the name of the ferry company, as if it were an attraction, and the name is displayed on the dock but doesn’t appear on the Downtown Disney map, so I’m calling it a ”group” (like the popcorn carts) rather than an “attraction” (with name shown here in purple).  Walt Disney Corp. owns everything in sight, so the distinction is sort of arbitrary.  The Sassagoula River flows into Lake Buena Vista.

DisneyQuest (8:15pm).  We have a coupon for a day’s admission to this five-story building full of arcades, restaurants, and a few rides.  We just go on the rides and are done in an hour.  Attractions visited today: Invasion ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, Buzz Lightyear’s AstroBlaster, Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride, and Pirates of the Caribbean Battle for Buccaneer Gold.
      DisneyQuest is scheduled to be closed next year, so this is our only chance to go on these rides.  AstroBlaster is the main one that I would want to go on again.  It’s sort of like bumper-cars but for two-man crews.  I steered (which was difficult) while Kid #2 loaded the “cannon” and lobbed “asteroids” at the other vehicles.  When hit, a vehicle would spin around and then return to the control of its occupants.  Fun!

Sassagoula Steamboat Co.  Ferry back to the “Marketplace” side of Downtown Disney.

Disney Transport.  Bus back to our resort.  The bus driver asks the men to give up their seats for women and children, who must surely be tired from all their shopping.  No one moves.  Kid #2 (who is nearly a man) and I try to get some standing females to take our seats, but none of them will accept the offer.  “Don’t be silly,” says one.  “I’m a teacher and I stand all day.”  So we sit back down.  “The bus driver was making a joke,” I tell her.

Wifey and Kid #1

Mickey’s Pantry (8:00pm).  Two packages of shortbread cookies, paid for with snack-credits.

Goofy’s Candy Co. (8:15pm).  A box of animal crackers and a bag of plain M&Ms, to use up two more snack-credits.

Little Miss Matched (8:22pm).  $9.94 for three deliberately-mismatched but color-coördinated socks, to be given to a homeschooler girl we know who likes to wear that sort of thing.

World of Disney (9:07pm).  $8.47 for a silicone pancake mold shaped like Mickey’s head.  Also, a box of mints that we’ll give to some homeschooling friends (snack credit).

Ghiradelli (9:17pm).  Shared hot fudge brownie sundae for $11.66.  The receipt comes with a “10% off” coupon, but there are no Ghiradelli stores in Canada.  Perhaps we can use it in Boston.

Tren-D (9:39pm).  $6.34 for a Minnie Mouse rhinestone headband, to be given to yet another homeschooler girl we know.

Disney Transport.  Ride the bus back to Art of Animation Resort.

Everyone

Our room.  The guys return only shortly before the gals, even though we did less stuff, because of our additional travel time on the ferry.  Also, day 2 dose 2 goes into Kid #2’s ear.

TD/Allianz Insurance (via telephone; 10:15am - 10:45am).  Kid #2 still can’t hear much with his right ear, so I call the insurance company to find out which clinic around here will work with them.  They call Lake Buena Vista CentraCare, confirm that it is willing to direct-bill them, and then fax over a pre-authorization form for us.  The insurance company says that the clinic is expecting us and we should proceed there immediately.

CentraCare (Lake Buena Vista FL, 11:00am - 2:30pm).  They received the fax and are expecting us, but still there are hours of waiting during which people who arrive after us are seen first; later I learn that you are supposed to go to their website and make an “appointment” (even though it is an urgent-care clinic) in order to obtain a “significantly” reduced wait-time.
      Of course, the first thing to do is fill out medical-history forms.  The most bizarrely-American item on the forms is the requirement that the patient must identify his “race” and whether he is “hispanic”.  Kid #2 has no idea what his race is (the concept is not much used in Canada).  I tell him that I generally say my race is either “White” or “Other” (because “Jewish” used to be a separate race, but was combined with “White” in the 1930s for political reasons; when I hear “White race” I think of what Sarah Palin calls “real Americans”, who are not my people and have no common ancestry with me in the last 1,000 years); Kid #2 writes ”White” on the form.  There is another Canadian seeking medical care at the clinic, who loudly complains about the absurdity of the race question.  “Everyone’s the same in Canada,” she says.  I elect not to mention to her the situation of the Québécois (or the Aboriginals, for that matter — Canada gives them special ID cards which exempt them from sales tax, but that really doesn’t compensate them for the crap they put up with).
      A person’s declared race is of little medical value.  For example, about 10% of black people have G6PD deficiency which causes certain drugs to be unsuitable for them, but most Blacks don’t have this problem and some Whites do (especially Jews and other Mediterranean people).  Anyway, there is absolutely no medical reason to ask for the race of the guarantor who will be paying for the service!  But yes, the form wants to know my race, too.  I think this is because of US government regulations requiring medical practitioners to collect such data and which obligate them, for patients who refuse to participate in this inanity, to use their own prejudices to guess which race the person providing the money seems to be a member of.
      Another bizarrely-American feature of this medical clinic is the inspirational quote that is painted on the wall over the restroom doors.  It says something like, “Faith in Christ improves wellness of mind, body, and spirit”.  Later I learn that CentraCare is part of Florida Hospital, which is owned by Adventist Health System, which is an arm of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
      The city of Lake Buena Vista is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation, so Florida Hospital must be paying them rent in order to run a business here.  While we were waiting, someone came in claiming to be a Disney employee; he was refused treatment and was told that he must go to DisneyCorp’s own medical facilities.  Lake Buena Vista is basically the implementation of Walt’s EPCOT concept for the corporatist ”city of tomorrow“, where your citizenship class determines which medical facilities you may use.  (In Ontario, anyone can be treated anywhere, although you’ll usually get quicker service in a clinic than at an emergency room and more personalized service if you set up a continuing relationship with a physician’s private practice.)
      * * * * *
      Eventually a doctor examines Kid #2 for (just about) two minutes.  Based on her bedside manner, I think she is a pediatrician.  Kid #2 is 17 years old, which now makes him an ”adult” as far as Canadian healthcare is concerned, but in the American system he is still a “child” and must be seen by a kid-doctor rather than an ear-doctor.  She says his earwax is impacted, prescribes an irrigation of both ear canals using diluted H₂O₂, announces that the clinic will provide this service, then leaves.  After some more waiting, a nurse(?) comes in and performs the procedure, which is effective in restoring Kid #2’s hearing.  Then more waiting.  Then the doctor returns for another few minutes to examine the cleaned ear canals.  The right one is red, so she prescribes ofloxacin drops twice a day for five days.  More waiting.  An orderly(?) announces that the clinic will sell us this medication for $27.  I agree to pay.  More waiting.  The orderly comes back to say that this particular CentraCare clinic is out of stock on that medication; he gives me an ℞ scrip and suggests I drive down the street to Walgreens to get the drug.
      And then, a wondrous thing happens: we are let out of the building without having to pay anything!  Thank you, TD Canada Trust bank, for selling us this foreign-travel health insurance that ACTUALLY WORKS!  The insurance cost $80 for two weeks’ coverage of four people; Allianz said on the phone that the estimated cost of an exam for “ear infection” is about $250.

Landscape of Flavors (1:50pm).  Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Wifey and Kid #1 eat lunch in the cafeteria.

Walgreens pharmacy (Lake Buena Vista FL, 2:35pm - 2:45pm).  The pharmacist says that the drug costs $113!  I don’t know why the price is so different, nor whether Allianz would reimburse me so much.  The antibiotic treatment doesn’t seem so important now that the canal is clean, so I decide to put this problem off until tomorrow.

Art of Animation parking lot (2:55pm).  Our first FastPass™ of the day is scheduled for 3:55pm (already rejiggered from 2:50pm because there’s no way we can make that), so the plan is for Wifey and Kid #1 to take the bus to Epcot if we don’t get back to the hotel by 2:55pm.  The bus shows up at the same time we do, so the womenfolk skip the bus and hitch a ride in our rental car to the amusement park.

Epcot®.  The Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow, brought to you by various corporate sponsors who control which facts each ride may present.  Attractions visited today: Electric Umbrella (lunch, 3:34pm; snack, 4:11pm), Spaceship Earth, Ellen’s Energy Adventure, Mission: SPACE (except Wifey), Test Track (except Wifey), The Seas with Nemo & Friends, Sunshine Seasons (dinner, 7:56pm), Soarin (Kid #1 & I), and The Circle of Life (Wifey & Kid #2).
      Kid #2 and I catch up on lunch at the Electric Umbrella, since we didn’t have time after the medical stuff.  I get a bottle of water for Wifey to use up another snack credit.
      Spaceship Earth is now sponsored by Siemens instead of AT&T; the dioramas have been completely redone to emphasize “communication technology” instead of “connecting people across the world”.
      Ellen’s Energy Adventure has not been redone in 20 years (perhaps because Exxon stopped sponsoring it in 2004); it is now quite dated.  Bill Nye has aged considerably since this presentation was recorded.  He is the co-star with Ms. DeGeneres and his career is currently doing very well (with multiple honorary doctorates received in recent years), so why doesn’t he get billing?  The emphasis on compact fluorescent lightbulbs and wind power as “the future” now seems ridiculous.
      The Seas is a new ride.  It is similar to It’s a Small World, except with an undersea theme rather than toys/Christmas, and is sponsored by Disney’s Finding Nemo rather than Mattel.
      Of the restaurants on our dining plan, Sunshine Seasons seems to have the best selection so far.  My dinner is tuna salad on a croissant, strawberry shortcake, and orange juice (my throat is scratchy).
      Soarin is new.  It is a motion-simulator ride in front of an iMAX-type giant movie screen, where you pretend to be flying with the birds.  On our way out of this ride, I remark to Kid #1 that there was a dirt-spot on the screen that was visible when a pale color was displayed there; some random other park guest walking by says, “Oh, you noticed that, too?”
      The park is open an extra two hours tonight, for Disney resort guests only, but we are too tired to utilize this feature and go back to our hotel at the regular closing time.  Six hours of amusement is enough!  Wifey’s schedule had called for us to visit Club Cool, Journey Into Imagination, Turtle Talk, and Innoventions, but we decide to put those off until our next visit to Epcot later in this vacation.

[My HOTTEST DAY *EVER* at Disney World!  97°F *before* factoring in humidity!  Ontario, Ohio, Florida — doesn’t make a difference, it’s been over 90 every day of this trip.  And Hollywood Studios is the hottest of the parks because its many tall buildings and excessive quantities of asphalt create an “urban canyon” effect.]

Ink and Paint (inside Art of Animation Resort, 9:55am).  $12.40 for Imodium and Benadryl at the gift shop, for Wifey and Kid #1.  The cashier expresses her condolances.

Our room.  My family is out of shape and yesterday involved much more walking than our usual, and in very high temperatures.  So we start our day late and end early, which once again requires rejiggering all our FastPass™ appointment times.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  Attractions visited today: The Great Movie Ride, Star Tours, Muppet★Vision 3D, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, ABC Commissary (lunch, 2:56pm), Toy Story Midway Mania, and Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (only Kid #2 and I).
      Midway Mania is new.  Unlike most Disney rides, it has no storyline; you just shoot at virtual targets while wearing 3D glasses and sitting in a rotating vehicle that’s moving along a serpentine track.  Kid #2 gets the most points in our vehicle.
      Our children are too old to enjoy the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground, so Wifey takes a photo of them standing on either side of a giant ant.  Some other kid decided to sit on top of the ant during the photo, so I guess we’ll have to try out our PhotoShop skills when we get home.  I take a photo of Kid #1 going down a giant leaf-slide because we have a photo of her doing that back in 2001.
      Kid #1 used to like Tower of Terror, but she decided to skip it for this trip.  Kid #2 has never been on it, so I take him.  He doesn’t like being yanked violently downward in total darkness with nothing to hold on to but a seatbelt, so we ride only once even though the standby line is short.
      At the ABC Commissary, they are showing America’s Funniest Home Videos from 1994, so the children having pratfalls in the videos are now all grown up.  ABC had required video submitters to relinquish all rights without any compensation except for each show’s winner, so when Disney bought ABC in 1996 they gained the legal right to display these videos for the amusement of park guests, even if the people in the videos hate Disney and would never have agreed to having their pratfalls (some of them painful) commoditized like this.  As Billy Joel sang, “I’ll get put in the back, in the discount rack, like another can of beans”.
      Wifey has never seen the “Fantasmic” fireworks/laser show.  But it doesn’t start until 30 minutes after the park closes, and it’s very hot and we just want to get out of here.  So she still hasn’t seen it, and this is our only scheduled day at Hollywood Studios.

Landscape of Flavors (8:17pm).  Dinner at our resort.  Kid #2 announces that his pizza is not sitting well in his stomach, so I tell him he can just go back to our room.  Wifey then quickly finishes up her dinner and walks after him to check whether her 17-year-old son made it back to our building or is retching in the bushes someplace (actually his stomach settled down after he left the cafeteria).  Kid #1 and I finish our dinners and then rejoin the others in our room.

Our room.  Kid #2’s right ear still doesn’t hear well.  I give him a pseudoephedrine tablet, but it doesn’t help.  We decide that we are trying too hard on this vacation and need to take the day off tomorrow, which is forecast to be (surprise!) yet another scorcher.

Staybridge Suites (10:49am).  We did place the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door.  Standard check-out is 11am, plus we asked for late-checkout at noon.  So why is Housekeeping knocking on our door?  “They told me you were out” says the housekeeper.  We’ve had similar problems at other hotels, which are run by early birds who believe that only lip-service should be given to night owls.
      Months ago we pre-paid $177.84 for this one-night stay.  Final bill is $200.07 because apparently they forgot to include the 7% state tax and 7% city tax (although the 3% county tax was included?).  I find it hard to believe that they just couldn’t figure out how to make their computers pre-calculate the bill properly, so perhaps this is greed masquarading as incompetance.

Barnes & Noble Bookstores (Maumee OH, 3:13pm).  In the same “Fallen Timbers Mall” as the hotel.  Pay $47.06 for three paperback “classics” for Kid #2 to read during his last year of homeschool (before matriculating to the chef school that has already accepted him a year in advance), plus two books for Wifey to read on the plane.  Really, we’re just killing time from our late-checkout at 12pm until our 3:30 drive to the airport.  But this is just too boring, so we leave early.  Then we run into a poorly-marked detour.  Good thing that Kid #1 has a smartphone with built-in GPS, pre-downloaded maps for Ohio, and software for on-the-fly route recalculation!

Toledo Express Airport TSA screening station (Swanton OH).  As usual for this airport (according to Yelp), there is no line at the screening station — but one immediately forms behind us!  I get patted down repeatedly because of little bits of stuff (such as a quarter buried deep in a pocket).  The guy doing the pat-downs is clearly annoyed with having to do so many of them on me, but he maintains a polite demeanor at all times, as Yelp had predicted (“surprisingly-polite TSA agents”).  Maybe they’re glad to have a job at a smaller airport?

Subway (at Toledo airport; 4:50pm).  Four subs for $29.50.

Toledo Express Airport vending (5:00pm).  I pay $2.00 for 20oz of Dr. Pepper (the American version, which tastes much stronger than the Canadian).

Allegiant Airlines flight 795 (Swanton OH, 5:50pm – Sanford FL, 8:00pm).  Took off five minutes early, arrived ten minutes early.  Unexpectedly, our row of seats is frontmost (the online diagram had implied that there would be another row in front of us) so our family’s collection of laptops needs to be stored in overhead bins during take-off and landing.  The seats do not offer 120 VAC power (or any power) and my battery is getting elderly, so I don’t use my laptop much.
      Despite all the complaints online about how Allegiant nickles-and-dimes you to death, we complete the flight without incurring any additional charges (in part because we had brought along our own food and drink, which the airline explicitly allows).
      The guy sitting next to me coughs all the way through the flight.  My wife and children are on the other side of the aisle.  Kid #1 is nearest to me (hence two seats plus an aisle from the cougher); she wears a mask over her mouth and nose.  The rest of us brave the germs.  Hopefully the airplane’s generally vertical top-down airflow should keep the cougher’s germs to himself.  According to Wikipedia, a rhinovirus infection will show symptoms within four days 95% of the time, so after day 6 of this trip we can stop worrying.

Orlando-Sanford International Airport (Sanford FL).  This airport is quite a bit larger than Toledo, although still much smaller than the main airport in Orlando proper.  From the plane we walk down an extra-long jetway, then down a remarkably long corridor with fire-doors every few feet, on and on, until finally we arrive at the departure waiting area for “Gate 6”.  Then the usual long corridor to the TSA screening area; I am disappointed to see a dozen X-ray machines, rather than the 2 in Toledo, which suggests that the trip home will not be quite as nice as getting here.  Then the usual long walk to the baggage-claim area (we did not check any bags), then outside and repeatedly crossing streets full of traffic to get to the rental car area.

Alamo Rent-A-Car (at Sanford Airport, 8:30pm).  Alamo is the cheapest — for a reason!  It is much further away from the plane terminal than all the other rental companies, requiring large quantities of additional walking.  The desk clerk was very aggressive in his upselling, trying to suggest some nefarious reason why the credit-card company told me to decline all insurance when renting a car with their card.  Eventually I got him to admit that Florida requires $10,000 liability insurance, which is included in the basic rental — but of course no sensible person would go driving with less than a million in insurance — for $40/day extra, which would double the total cost for the rental!  I suspect it would be rather difficult for someone to sue me for a million bucks for scaring their horse with my motorcar, considering that I don’t even live in this country.  Eventually I got the clerk to let me have the car, with only a return-with-empty-tank upgrade but otherwise as pre-ordered.  Sheesh!  Maybe I should try a different car company when/if I ever fly again.
      The car is a new Chrysler 200.  This is a problem.  The user-interface for cars changed about five years ago; now they have a “Start” button, like Microsoft Windows, instead of a keyed ignition.  We spend some time in the parking lot, trying to figure out how to operate the thing.  Once again I feel like Rip Van Winkle, waking up in the 21ˢᵗ century to realize that some technology arrived a long time ago and changed everyone else’s life but did not impact mine.  I used to be “with it”, but now I’m an “oldster”.

FL-417: the Central Florida GreeneWay.  About $5 in highway tolls.

Disney’s Art of Animation Resort (Lake Buena Vista FL).  It’s late at night on Labor Day, but there is a massive line at check-in!  It used to be that Disney was deserted this time of year, but then they started including free food and advertising it heavily.  We receive wristbands which allow our every movement to be tracked as we move around the parks; they also act as room keys, park tickets, credit cards, etc.

Landscape of Flavors (inside Art of Animation’s main building, 10:10pm).  We proceed to the cafeteria to collect our free refillable soda-pop mugs (supposedly a $19 value) and a few snacks.  Our dining plan gets us two free meals and a free snack for every night of our stay, but there’s no way we can eat that much.
      Before the trip, Wifey had watched the online message boards, waiting for the free-food announcement.  On the big day, she stayed up late, but no announcement.  Next morning she got up early, then spent 1½ hours on hold in order to get one of the few free-food slots allocated to the Art of Animation resort.  Success!  But how much was it really worth?  We decide to keep track of our food receipts so we can calculate how much value our family obtained from her effort.

Our room (in building “Lion King 10” at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort).  We’re finally here!  After only two years of wondering whether it would ever happen.

Over the next two weeks, this journal will be taken over by a travelogue of my recent trip to the Walter E. Disney memorial World of amusement parks.  You might want to remove me from your default feed if you don't want to see stuff like

• OMG IT'S SO HOT!!!
• I am old.  The 21st century is a strange place.
• Disney's corporatist hegemony creates a class-bound society in which racism and fun are used to hypnotize the proletariat and blah blah blah.
• This trip is basically my retirement party as a breeder.  My offspring are all grown up now (despite the anecdotes I tell in this travelogue).
• The SEARING HEAT it BURNS!!!
• The best-laid schemes of mice and men can be depended on to gang aft agley (that's Scottish, you know).
• Living in Canada makes me feel superior to those poor Yanks who don't realize how bad they have it.
• Some amusement rides are enjoyable.

I would especially recommend avoiding this journal for the next two weeks if you have issues with breeding, since a trip to Disney World with children is unavoidably a very child-oriented experience.