Okay, it seems like it’s time for another flashback trip report. This one will be similar to our upcoming trip because it was also a PChef incentive trip to Disney, back in 2005. I started writing this trip report from just the pictures and was having a lot of trouble. But then I was very fortunate to find my folder of receipts from this trip! I have gone through the dates and times on the receipts, and like the FBI tracking the cross-country trip of a love-starved diaper-wearing female astronaut, I have pieced together our whereabouts and it has brought a few more stories to mind! So I’ve had to go back through what I had written and re-write, correct, add, and embellish.
This is what our schedule looked like:
Sat. June 18 Drive most of the way (turned out to be Darien, GA)
Sun. June 19 Arrive Sheraton Vistana
Mon. June 20 Sea World
Tue. June 21 Magic Kingdom
Wed. June 22 Timeshare tour / Epcot
Thu. June 23 Check-in POR, Animal Kingdom
Fri. June 24 MGM
Sat. June 25 Magic Kingdom / PChef event at MGM in evening
Sun. June 26 Check-out POR / Drive to DSiL’s home
For this trip we drove down
, which means interstate 95 most of the way. Where I-95 is 4 or 5 lanes in each direction, or even 3, it flows nicely. But when it goes to 2 lanes, it can come to a crawl, and we did fairly often. You can be in a completely rural area, with nothing around, no commerce, no merging traffic, no accident to cause rubbernecking, but traffic will just come to a crawl. I don’t understand why there are any portions of I-95 that are only 2 lanes. It’s the main artery along the east coast! Okay, rant over. I can see I’m getting myself all worked up. Maybe that’s why we fly now.
Anyway, with this trip, we got 3 park days courtesy of PChef, and we added a couple on at the beginning. To go along with the park days, we also had lodging provided by PChef at Port Orleans Riverside. A while before the trip, while we were pondering a few extra days, I received a promotional mailing from the Sheraton Vistana, an offsite timeshare place, that would rent us a 2 bedroom suite for a few days at a pretty low price in exchange for us taking a tour of their timeshare offerings one morning. We decided to try it.
On the first day of the drive we planned to drive as far as we could get, hopefully somewhere well over halfway, before stopping to get a hotel room. I didn’t make a reservation because I had no telling where we’d get. I think I did research possible hotels we could stay at along I-95 in southern South Carolina and Georgia. It turns out we made it to Darien Georgia, which put a good chunk of geography behind us. I wanted to get most of the driving done on the first day, so we wouldn’t be completely whooped when we pulled in to Disney. Plus, Florida is such a big state. You hit the state line and you’re thinking “Yeah, we’re here!”
But then you still have hours and hours to drive.
Going through my receipts I came across one from this first travel day that stirred quite a memory. It was for Sonic, at 6:45 pm. This story would not have made it into this trip report had I not run across that receipt. I remember the story vividly but I didn’t remember that it took place on this trip. Here goes. After driving all day and sitting through several traffic jams we were in South Carolina and finally making good time, but the kids were getting hungry, starving for dinner. I wanted to at least get to Georgia before we stopped for the night, but I had to do my parental duty and feed these kids so I took an exit and pulled into a Sonic. As you probably know, you eat your food in your car at one of these places. We put in our order and the kids were out stretching their legs on the sidewalk and Judy went to get our food. I was sitting in the driver’s seat with the windows down, but somewhere, somehow, a button got bumped and the doors locked. Judy came back with our food, saw the doors were locked, so she reached through the open window and opened the door from inside. Immediately, the alarm system on our Honda Odyssey van went off.
The horn was repeatedly honking and the lights were flashing. Trouble was,
we didn’t know that we had an alarm system on our Honda Odyssey van! Naturally, I was mad at Judy for foolishly setting off the alarm system that neither of us knew we had. I grabbed the owners manual out of the glove box and started to frantically look through it to find out how to turn the dumb thing off. It was no help.
Of course, we had other Sonic customers parked right beside us on both sides and across the sidewalk on the other side. Everyone was looking at us
, imploring us to turn the infernal racket off. I tried turning the car on. It started, but did nothing to stop the alarm. I yelled at the kids to get in the car because we’re getting out of here. I backed out of our parking spot and drove all the way around the Sonic, with the horn blaring and the lights flashing, got back on the road and back on I-95. The alarm continued to go off as we drove down I-95 and finally shut off after 5 or 10 minutes. We all breathed a sigh of relief and were glad to have that incident behind us. Then an hour later we pulled into a Hampton Inn in Darien Georgia to see if they had any vacancies. I pulled up to the portico and Judy and the kids got out. Then I shut off the van and the alarm started again!
Somehow Judy had the idea to try her key fob and hit the lock/unlock button. Ahhh, silence. She brilliantly figured out how to silence the car alarm we didn’t know we had.
Link to next chapter
so I enjoy it. Although I don't watch nearly as much as I used to.
Who can resist strudels and all their glorious effects!
Ready for more trip reports!
As to the banter that followd, 
Couldn't tell you anything she's cooked though.
