Sunday, January 27, 2013

Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend - Travelling & Getting settled

I've sat on writing a race report for a couple of weeks for a couple of reasons.

  1. Sometimes I'm lazy.
  2. It's taken me this long to figure out how I feel about the race.
Hang in there, and you'll see what I mean.  But first, travel day.

Our trip started out inauspiciously.  On Thursday afternoon, we drove from Toronto to the Buffalo airport to fly with JetBlue to Orlando.  As soon as we arrived at the airport (and we were pretty early to begin with) we discovered that our flight was DELAYED. 

It wasn't long before we were given meal vouchers, which is always a bad sign.  You know if they start throwing free food at you, you're going to be a while.

The delay ended up being just over 3 hours - which I chirped about on Facebook.  Almost instantly, my runner friend Penny came to the rescue with a link for the JetBlue Passenger Bill of Rights.  A quick perusal softened the blow of the delay, because we learned that we were entitled to a $75 credit for our troubles.  They weren't making announcements to this effect, so I went to the desk, and made sure they had my information on file so that we would receive our credits (they initially had no idea what I was talking about, so I showed them their Bill of Rights on my phone).

So, thanks Penny!

When the plane finally did arrive, the DirectTV wasn't working.  They gave us all free headphones and free movies for the flight, and I followed up afterwards to get an additional $15 credit, again, thanks to their Bill of Rights.

Again, thanks Penny!
I was sporting my runDisney Coast to Coast challenge bag, and my Pacebook Running Club logo.
Our 9:00pm arrival time in Orlando turned into a 9:00pm departure time from Buffalo.  Yes, we were leaving when we were supposed to be arriving.

Uneventful flight for me (although Greg had to sit next to a very chatty dude who also spent a lot of time yelling across him to his mother in law across the aisle, and my sister sat in front of his seat-kicking son.  I was lucky).  Watched Perfect Pitch.  Just ok.

We picked up our rental car from Hertz, using their Jetsons-inspired video booth customer service kiosk and grabbed our teeny-tiny car.  Oh, so teeny.

Here's where I got surprised.  We needed to grab something for me to have for breakfast the next morning before the runDisney meet up, since I would be up and about before anything at our resort was open, so we headed to the nearest Target/Wal-Mart.

They were CLOSED!!

Granted it was midnight, but still.  This is America!  Isn't everything always open in America? *sputter-sputter-outrage*

After some quick googling, we made our way to the overpriced, but conveniently open, Goodings.  Bing-bam-boom, cereal-yogurt-milk-coffee-bananas-eggs-bread-peanut butter (Really?  THAT much?  What are we?  Back in Canada?), let's gooooo!

There was a surprisingly long line at check-in for such a late hour (especially since I did online check-in) but we got our room requests honoured (ground floor, close to transportation) and hustled to get settled.  Also at the front desk was my Dolotech SparkleSkirt which I had arranged with Leah to have delivered to the resort so I could wear it for the runDisney Meet Up.  We had a travelling trunk show scheduled in our room the next morning at 10am so my sister and I could try on some more styles, but I wanted one to wear to the run!

We hustled over to our one bedroom unit (hello Jacuzzi tub!) and had to do serious battle with the sofa-bed before it would agree to come out of hiding and behave like a flat surface, but we got there...

It was an imperfect day of travel, but, much like the sofa-bed - we got there.  And that's all that matters.

Now I just had a few short hours to get some sleep before I had to be ready for the runDisney Marathon Weekend Meet Up, which I wrote about here.

Up next - the HALF MARATHON race report - aka, the Shambles Run.




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