Most of you were there but...

On Saturday, August 11, 2007 the Hootenanny officially began. At 5:30 am Eastern Time Swell and Sheepie woke with great anticipation for the good times – and long drive – ahead. Around the same time 3:30 am Mountain Time the rest of the clan were on their way to the airport in Edmonton, Alberta.

The plan was for Swell and Sheepie to pick up a few remaining groceries (they already had a trunk full of non-perishables) in Orlando drop them off at the rental home and meet up with the rest of the group at Downtown Disney for shopping and dinner.

By 6:30 pm the whole group would be together and the fun would begin in earnest.

But before that, traveling would have to be done.

Swell and Sheepie left Atlanta around the scheduled time of 6:45 am. After a short drive it was already time to stop for a quick Chick-Fil-A breakfast. The drive was very uneventful and Pam-Pam (our GPS) guided us flawlessly. Traffic slowed dramatically near Arabi, Georgia – what kind of name is Arabi anyway?

We were dismayed to see the aftermath of what seemed to be a very serious single car accident. There was a pick-up truck straddling the central median with its roof completely pushed in from what appeared to be a multiple rollover accident. Having been in a car (1970 VW bus) that slid on its side down the highway after hitting a moose it always bothers me to see accidents. It always brings back bad memories. After making it by the accident (a tow truck was at that point pulling the truck of the median) we resumed to normal freeway speed and made it into Orlando with no further issues.

We weren’t able to access the rental house until 4pm and we arrived in Orlando at 1:30ish so we decided to go and do the remainder of our grocery shopping prior to heading to the house. We found a Costco via Pam-Pam’s vast memory and were soon on our way to the I-4 parking lot. Traffic was not moving… at all.

After about an hour we found the cause of the non-moving traffic. It appeared to by, yet again, a single car roll over accident. Again the car was on the center median and the tow truck was nearby getting ready to pull the car off the road. Strange coincidence.

Shopping done we headed back toward the house with our perishables quickly melting in the oppressive heat of Orlando. It was hot. Soooo hot.

We were listening intently to Pam-Pam for the route to “home”.

Pam-Pam Prepare to exit to the right.
Me OK
Pam-Pam Exit Freeway on the right… Now.
Me What!? There is no exit on the right! Pam-Pam what do I do?
Pam-Pam Recalculating route… exit on the right… now.
Me What!? There is still no exit. Am I supposed to drive through the grass? What are you telling me Pam-Pam?
Pam-Pam Recalculating route you idiot. Stay to the left. I’ve now added 10 extra miles to your trip.

It appears that the map that Pam-Pam uses has two freeway exits on it that don’t exist in real life. So for the rest of the week we would fly past the correct exit saying as we did – I think we should have exited there – only to hear Pam-Pam say “exit now” when there was no exit around. We would then have 10 miles added to our trip. Good times. Good times.

I should mention that we had dinner reservations at the Rainforest Café at Downtown Disney scheduled for 10 pm. We’re not real good planner aheaders. So we didn’t call until somewhere on the route to make a reservation. By that time the only time available was 10pm. I took the reservation but fully expected to go elsewhere.

Pam-Pam eventually took us to our rental home. We pulled into the driveway and had the following conversation.

Swell: “Ummmm… how do we get into the house?”
Sheepie: “Easy. The management company gave us a code. We just need to pull up the code on my computer. Enter it into the keypad and we’ll be in the house putting away the groceries.”
Swell: “Sounds good, but can you explain to me why there are people in the house?”
Sheepie: “No. I actually can’t explain that. I’m going to continue with my plan of finding the code on my computer and entering the house.”
Swell: “Well I’m going to find out who is in the house and why.”

Swell comes back stating three surprising things:
1) We’re not expected until tomorrow
2) They are cleaning the house
3) The house doesn’t look like the pictures

I’m very, very slow and put all the blame on my mother who booked the house. I wouldn’t have been surprised had she booked for the wrong dates. We had a meeting time fast approaching so Swell arranged to have our perishables put in the fridge while the house was being cleaned. The cleaners phoned the home owner and he said we could stay that night but might owe a little bit more money. We left all of our food – perishables in the fridge the rest in the garage – and left for our dinner date.

Every 15 passenger van we passed on our way to Downtown Disney received stares as we scanned the passenger’s faces looking for our family.

At 6:30 pm exactly we saw a bright red van pulling into the parking lot of Downtown Disney. I pulled up alongside it and saw that it was, in fact, filled with the 9 Edmonton members of our Orlando Hootenanny. We all waved at each other with excitement and soon parked our respective vehicles.

We spent the next couple of hours exploring Downtown Disney and when I say Downtown Disney I mean the Lego store as we had three young boys with us. We decided to cancel our 10pm Rainforest Café reservation and head elsewhere as the Edmonton folks had yet to eat since early that morning.

After dinner we pulled up to the house – after missing the exit of course. The van arrived prior to our car and we pulled up to a very confused group of people.

The magic code didn’t work for the door. The house didn’t look like the right house. My father pointed out that the house across the street actually looked like the right house. We all compared the address we had to the address on the house. We were at the right address but the picture included in the rental package looked a lot like the house across the street.

As my mother phoned the management company – no answer – my father and brother walked across the street tried the magic code on that door and presto/chango was granted access.

Three problems arose from this:
1) The house had not been completely cleaned
2) Our food was in the other house
3) I was very confused

After 30 minutes of phone calls we finally got a hold of someone and it turns out that we were given the wrong address and we had, in fact, rented the house to which we were able to gain access. We were given a code for the first house and retrieved our food. Someone soon came to finish cleaning the house (one room was a mess, the rest was fine) and we were happy. The house was everything that was promised to my Mum and matched the photos she had viewed on line.

Our first day in Orlando came to a close and we had an early morning planned so everyone fell into a deep, content sleep.

Upcoming installments:
Three days of Disney in a paragraph (or 2)
Why doesn’t my camera work?
Portofino Bay is NICE
Why can kids ride roller coasters with no fear but freak out in Twister?
Dudley Do-Right ate my keys