Traveling Toward Retirement

I've been saying Daytona, but we are actually staying in Ormond Beach which is about ten miles north. I thought it was cute that there's an Ormond-by-the-Sea which is the same name as the California, Carmel-by-the-Sea. Cute cute. The beaches here allow cars with four wheel drive to go out on them. Pretty cool considering that's not common in California. We watched a parade of Jeeps drive pass the condo and while some were envious, we reminded them that those engines don't always last.  The weather has been a warm 80 and has been perfect for many hours spent on the sand and watching the kids just be kids. Hours and hours of fun in the sun and sand. And then there's the pool. It has a lazy river and multiple water features, including a very popular hot tub. This condo is called The Cove on Ormond Beach and is a part of Diamond Resorts properties and it's been a really great place to stay. We've had space in our one bedroom condo and have really enjoyed the e...

And so the saga continues...remember how I apparently didn't have "reservations" for the park but only had tickets to the park? Well guess what? I wasn't the only one! The other half of our party had the same exact issue and for two days had been trying to squeeze seven more, yes seven more tickets out of the system. No dice. So, we did what any other respecting individual would do, we put on our matching Disney shirts, drove to the park that we didn't have tickets reservations for, parked, lugged all of our strollers and lunches and water bottles to the ticket counter, and begged for help.  And they sent us on the monorail and said, "Good luck, ask the next guy."  So we did. And we explained the snafu all over again and the gentleman said that this has been happening to thousands of people (and we wondered why Disney wasn't doing something more like emailing those of us with no PARK reservation and telling us!). But we sent the positive mojo into t...

We spent some time lingering at the pool today as we were getting ourselves to adjust to the time and the temperature. Half of our party had a timeshare presentation to attend, so the rest of us ordered some pizza to go, grabbed an entire roll of paper towels from the condo, and mapped out the scenic route back to St. Augustine to see the fort Castillo de San Marcos. The scenic route included a drive through Flagler Beach which has a home featured on Beachfront Bargain Hunt Renovation and yes I saw the home and it was super cool for this HGTV fan   So, we've all been told that the United States settlement started out in Jamestown, Virginia, but this city St. Augustine claims to be "the oldest city in America." So how can that be? Well, since we love history, we mapped out the scenic route north and kept telling the kids "just 10 more minutes" as we trudged along the coastal highway. My driving partner and I knew it was only about 10 minutes longer to take this w...

We might have gotten a slow start out the door and may have enjoyed the wonderful ocean view from our condo balcony... And then it started pouring. The clouds had held it in so long that they finally decided that the rain needed to be released and it dumped. We listened to it for awhile before we were made aware that up north, it was clear. So we packed up the rental van with a few extra children from the other families joining us, and made our way one hour north to St. Augustine Beach.  We parked our booties on some smooth sand and watched the kids play in the water and make sandcastles. Sand is messy. It gets everywhere. I have to say, I might prefer the pool. Since we might have arrived quite near lunch time, I headed to a grocery store just across the way and grabbed some deli sandwiches and snacks. Once back at the ocean, the rest of the party realized they needed food and decided to grab some seafood at a local restaurant. We stayed and watched all humans under age 18 enjoy t...

I spent all night worrying about the tickets for Magic Kingdom and kept trolling the app trying to get reservations. Eventually, I decided that we could just get the kids two tickets into the park and we could hang out in Orlando or even go to a less popular park like Epcot. While in line for the Avatar ride, I decide to do just that. Two tickets open. I book the kids and immediately go back and try to get us in as well. Two tickets open. It's weird that four tickets were a no go, but two tickets at a time worked. Thank goodness. So it's set. We can go to Magic Kingdom in a few days with the entire family. I could finally rest my mind and enjoy the day. Avatar is a pretty amazing area of the park. The floating lands above your head seem like they are hovering for real. The designers of this land were simply brilliant. Although the park is at reduced capacity, the lines were still a bit long for our taste. There are no fast passes due to the decrease in capacity, yet some lines ...

DisneyWorld's new requirements for reservations seemed doable when we booked this trip. I purchased tickets online, selected my dates, and saw that the parks we wanted to visit were available. I clicked purchase and thought we were good to go. A month later as we stood at the ticket window, the Disney employee told me that we didn't have a reservation.  Say what? I was shocked. Here we were, standing at the window for Hollywood Studios and the lady says that we don't have park reservations. The confusing part is that if Disney knew that I was coming on this specific date, why didn't I get an email from them that I didn't in fact have a park reservation? To me, this is how Disney needs to improve their system.  But, apparently the parks also have some leeway with their own capacity at the gate and the kind worker made us reservations and we were allowed to enter. They were also able to make us a reservation for the next day at Animal Kingdom, but the big issue was th...