Written In Atlanta waiting for the plane (9/25/2006 at 11:AM or so).

Atlanta Airport is the suck.

Written In hotel room (9/26/2006 at 6:19AM or so).

So we ate some sandwiches at Atlanta...I had some chicken and pesto and Shannon had turkey something or another.

The flight from Atlanta to Orlando was actually only an hour. so it didn't take to long.

We had trouble finding the Disney welcome center, but I really liked how the Orlando air port is designed. But once we did, we were guided to the bus we were to take to our resort.

This is where the fun started.

Written In hotel room (9/26/2006 at 3:32 PM or so).

So check in was relatively painless. The computer crashed once while she was setting us up. No big deal. We had a water facing room, like we asked for and it was all good. We did notice that there was a conference on "Offender Management"

We take the hike out to the room, and by the time we get there, get in the room, we already have a message waiting on the room phone. I'm thinking, hey, maybe it's just a welcome message, since they are trying to be friendly, but no, it's a message from the front desk, telling us that they had forgotten to add our meal plan to our room and we should call and have them either run us out to it, or we should come back. So I call back, I get someone else, I tell them what was going on, and then tell them the second thing I noticed.

Our room had double beds. two. double. beds. Far be it from me to complain about having double beds, however it is our honeymoon and I do like to have Shannon near me when I sleep, so I mention that to them.

They say they don't have any water facing rooms with king sized beds left, but they will get us one with a king size bed.

We head back to the front desk.

We get our new room keys, and head off to our parking lot facing room, with a king sized bed. Of the two things, I'm much happier to have the king sized bed.

After we were settled into our new room, we explored the rest of the resort (couple of swimming pools, buildings, etc).

So we were getting hungry. And it was around 5:PM local time, so we headed down to our Resort's (Coronado) fancy restaurant (Maya Grill). I was expecting something a bit dressed up and fakey, but basically average fare with a bit added to it.

I was a bit surprised by what we got. Not only did they have nice sounding food, but it was actually good. Not great or fantastic, mind you, but I wouldn't complain about going there again. With the Disney dining plan that we had, we were able to basically just give 'em our card, and we're done. fairly easy. But still a little obnoxious. Because to get the full value of the sit down meal, you get a drink (non-alcoholic), appetizer, meal, and dessert. So if you don't get it all, you are losing your own value...which is where I suspect they make their money...considering even I have trouble finishing the whole thing. The presentation was very good, the secondary sauce that we got with the gulf shrimp cocktail was very yummy although the crab appetizer that shannon had (which was basically a crab cake) was ok, nothing worth writing home about. Shannon had chicken and I had filet mignon for dinner, along with fresh (not from a box) mashed potatoes and garnish. Again, very nice presentation.

The desserts were very good too. I had fried cheese cake, which was...well...interesting... I think I had gotten it because of my relatively recent experience with fried foods at the state fair, but all and all it was good. Shannon had this chocolate thing with layers of mouse with a very light and crisp cookie. Also very good.

Another issue with the disney dining, is that it assumes that your server lived up to a 18% gratuity. I am not saying that our server didn't, but if a large number of people have this, where is the incentive to give excellent service?

We decided to head down to Downtown Disney. This is basically an outdoor mall full of disney items (and others) ranging from the cheap to the very expensive. We looked, we bought a few things here and there...I found it kind of boring, since I don't much like shopping and when you see a few items in the same stores, it kinda makes you think that they don't have enough stuff to fit all of their category stores. There where a few other shops (Gherideli) that looked interesting, but were so packed, that we went in, looked, and left. Besides, with the heat, what would be the point of buying the chocolate if it will most likely melt before you get it back to your room.

We headed on to Pleasure Island (part of Downtown disney), and there were several dance clubs and restaurants, and that sort of thing, however, by the time we got there, we were pretty tired (being that it was nearing 10:PM central and we had been up since 2:AM Central, I was on maybe 3 hours of sleep, I think Shannon was on 5 or 6 hours).

So we headed back to the hotel (via disney bus).

We decided to do something that I haven't done in years (due to my fatness). We went swimming. Let me tell you, I love swimming. I've always loved swimming. I'm just a bit self conscious about my rolls of fat. But who cares? I'll never see these people again. It was a great end of the day...cool, the suns not out....oh so nice. We swam around for a little while and then headed back to the room, took showers, and called it a night.

We took 180 pictures the first day.