It’s Over: Christmas/New Year’s/Family Vacation. And I’m Avoiding Disney World For A Few Years

We’ve returned. Yes, there’s nothing like spending New Year’s Eve evening flying into LAX with a bunch of crazy people who smell like Frenchmen in the summertime and then driving through Wendy’s at midnight (we were freakin’ starving!) and the fast-food worker yells “Happy New Year’s” in Spanish and then asks what kind of sauce do you want with those $.99 chicken nuggets (did I mention he had 3 teeth?) It sure feels good to be back in L.A.
Oh yeah, and some famous basketball player was flying with us on the plane. I don’t know what his name was (I don’t watch sports, remember…although I did enjoy G.L.O.W. in the 80’s.)

I hope everybody survived Christmas and New Years. Overall we did have fun out at Disney World. Although it was challenging at times with 3 families and 5 kids – though the kids weren’t the ones who had all the drama - we have a controlling brother-in-law who practically needs to give bathroom permission to his wife, which was really annoying to my wife and I (he grew up in a farm in Ohio, I don’t know…maybe in 1870) and a father-in-law who brought along his new lady-friend (who’s 73 but looks not a day over 85. He's 62) and they shared the same room and bed (thankfully the kids didn’t ask questions) Oh the joys! And the weather was really weird- when we first got there it was all ‘hot and humid’ (we didn’t pack for that- so we went shopping), and then it rained like a mo-fo for a day or two (went shopping again), and then it got really cold (just what we packed for.) And just before we left, it got really nice. I’m not sure how you Florida people put up with that craziness.

Interesting things I learned:

*Never go to Disney World between Christmas and New Years. I’m not sure what we were thinking; several parks got “full” on some days (not a good thing.) Everybody said Thanksgiving is much better time or even the week before Christmas.
* Stay in a Disney hotel. Most of the time we were in a vacation rental house, the other days we stayed at Disney hotels (Wilderness Lodge and Port Orleans-Riverside) it’s easy to get around with those resort buses and the parks stay open late just for hotel guests (up to 3 a.m.) so you can actually go on rides.
*My daughter’s favorite ride? Can you believe it was walking up and down steps!? There must be something about those steps that’s better than the ones here in California.
* Really “large” (a nice way of saying ‘fat’) people in those electric scooters are annoying. I can’t tell you how many times they tried to run us over while honking with those annoying whining, hissing horns. I saw about 12 of them getting up to buy ice cream and turkey legs a few times. We don’t have nearly as many of those out here.
* I can survive without touching a computer for 10 days (I never thought that could ever happen unless I fell in a hole) Although that has some drawbacks -I didn’t know Saddam was hung, and Ford and James Brown died. So it was like being cut off from the world.
*Go to the Kennedy Space center. It was only an hour away and now I’m pretty sure that the moon landing wasn’t “faked” on a soundstage like that crazy professor in college claimed.
*That Expedition Everest ride was pretty cool.
* Stores in Orlando didn’t have Nintendo Wii’s either (yes, I checked)

Does anybody make New Year’s resolutions? I was thinking about it today, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to scream when I see the new credit card bill.