Orlando vacation ~ Day 2

Our home timeshare unit at Carriage Hills in Barrie, Ontario is a two bedroom that can be divided into a one bedroom and a studio. Our studio is very complete with a decent fridge and cooking surface but unfortunately this is not usually the case.

We exchanged once into The Hammocks Resort at Marathon in the Florida Keys and their “studio” was just a regular hotel room with a microwave. The dishes and cutlery were in a milk crate on the bed and we had to do the dishes in the bathroom sink. We were not happy!

The studio at Celebrity Resort – Orlando, where we are staying for the week, is much better than that but sill not up to the standards of our home unit. The one bedroom we have been upgraded to, however is very nice. This is an older resort but well kept. When it was first built I imagine it was quite spectacular.

The Timeshare Bribe

You are under no obligation to attend a sales presentation when you stay at a timeshare resort but they will always offer you a bribe to do so. This being Orlando, the bribe was for discounted attraction tickets and also included breakfast. Since we had not yet had an opportunity to get any groceries the free breakfast was an irresistible incentive.

I guess the decision to attend a presentation or not depends on how you value your time. The offer was for a $200 discount on tickets we were going to buy anyway and the old style high pressure sales presentations are very rare these days. Generally you spend a pleasant 90 minutes chatting with a resort representative and, in our case, since we are writing a book about vacation ownership it was a chance to gather more information.

We chose the 2 Day Touch of Magic pass for 2 which gave us admission to two major and one minor Disney theme areas. The regular price of the ticket is $404 but we paid $196. This does not include parking which costs another $14 a day.

How can a young family with a couple of kids afford a vacation here? The 5 day Park Hopper pass for four costs $1,132, plus parking, plus food. And the exit of every ride is a gift shop selling overpriced junk. Sure glad all our kids are grown – although it is great to see their faces when they see the Magic Kingdom for the first time.

Off To Costco

We were in no particular rush to see the Mouse and needed to get some groceries for the week. So, it was off to Costco. Other than the new North Eleuthera Shopping Center, there is nothing much larger than a US convenience store on our island so, for us, shopping at Costco is an event in itself. We tried to stick closely to our shopping list so we will not have to throw stuff away at the end of the week.

We tried, but this was Costco. The new 1.5 terabyte hard drive was such a good deal and Vicky always needs wants new shoes. That shirt would look good and only $15 for three LED flashlights – you can’t turn that down.

So we went a little overboard but not nearly as bad as we used to. Probably the thought that we will be leaving for our new adventure soon and have to pare our possessions down to what will fit in a couple of suitcases.

Avatar in Imax 3D

We are both huge science fiction fans and have been looking forward to the opportunity to see the new James Cameron film, Avatar. Fortunately it was still playing for a few more days at the Regal Pointe Imax 3D theater on International Drive in Orlando.

Wow!

The trailer can’t come close to the experience of seeing this movie in Imax 3D

We were totally blown away by Avatar. There is so much hyperbole and hype about most everything these days so it is difficult to express just how good this movie experience is. The story is simple and easy to follow but beautifully told. James Cameron has taken the time (2 hr 40 min) to let you get to know and care about the characters. Just about every scene includes a special effects of some sort but they are so seamless you accept them as part of the world the film creates.

This is another triumph by the Weta Digital group that did the effects for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Update March 8  – Weta Digital won the 2010 Oscar for best visual effects

As a regular widescreen movie this would be one of the greats, but in 3D you become part of the actions. Thankfully there aren’t any cheap 3D tricks with objects thrust out at the audience, the 3D effect is simply used to make you feel a part of the action.

When you add Imax to this mix with its five story screen the immersive effect is further enhanced and for 2-1/2 hours you are transported to another world.

Do we recommend this move? You bethca! Don’t miss it and if you have opportunity to see it in an Imax theater, it is truly a life-changing experience.

North Eleuthera Airport (ELH)

Orlando vacation ~ Day one

Now that we have decided to spend the next few years traveling around Europe and blogging about our adventures, we thought it might be a good idea to get in a few practice runs.

One of the rules of living in the Bahamas is that you can only stay for six months at a time. You can get a homeowners card that allows you to stay longer but we have never bothered. Anyway, since we had to leave because our six months was up, we decided to have a mini-vacation in Orlando.

Part of what we plan to do on our adventures is travel as cheaply as possible and document everything we spend. We want to show that it is possible to travel a lot in your retirement years without spending a fortune.

We’ll talk more about timeshare later but for now know that we exchanged into a resort in Orlando where we plan to spend a week. Timeshare (now they call it vacation ownership) can be a great way to save money but one of the downsides is actually getting to the resort.

American Airlines Special

American Airlines currently runs a $69 one way special (plus taxes – total $396.40 return for two) from Eleuthera to Miami on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. This is way better than the $704 we normally pay to fly into Fort Lauderdale with the other carriers that service the island. The only problem is we keep a car in storage close to the Fort Lauderdale Airport so now we have to get from Miami to Fort Lauderdale.

We figured a taxi was out of the question as it would have eaten up any savings on the airfare. We checked for limo and shuttle services between airports but it was still more than we wanted to pay. The best price we found was at shuttlediscount.com but it was still going to cost almost $80 for both of us.

Then we remembered the Tri-Rail system that runs parallel to I95 from Miami to West Palm and beyond. A quick check online at http://www.tri-rail.com and we discovered the trip from Miami Airport to Fort Lauderdale Airport was just $1.90 each for seniors and that included a free shuttle bus from arrivals at the airport to the train station. Add a $15 (including tip) taxi ride from the station to our storage unit and we had a pretty sweet deal.

Air travel is increasingly becoming a royal pain in the ass even from a one room terminal like North Eleuthera. We still had to arrive two hours before the flight and sit and wait for the plane to arrive.

We arrived at the North Eleuthera Airport at 11:30am for a 1:30pm flight to Miami. The flight was more or less on time, which is rare for here, but we got into the wrong line up at customs. The guy ahead of us was interviewed for a long time and finally got hauled away. Of course this meant we missed the train we had planned to catch and had to wait another hour at the station. We finally got to our car in Fort Lauderdale at about 5:30pm ready for the 3-4 hour drive to Orlando. After reconnecting the battery it started immediately (I love my Jeep) and we were off.

Hard To Beat Denny’s

Before getting on the highway we stopped at Denny’s for the first food we had had since breakfast. It’s tough to beat their senior specials – huge salad, grilled Talapia, two sides and coffee for just $20 including tip.

We had printed out our Google maps to the resort before we left home but somehow they didn’t seem to match the reality of the street we were on when we eventually made it to Orlando. Anyway after a couple of stops to ask directions we got to the Celebrity Resort – Orlando around 11:30pm just 12 hours after leaving home. We were looking forward to crawling into bed for a well deserved rest but the days adventures were not over yet.

Because we booked on short notice the only unit available for exchange was a studio which can often mean very limited cooking facilities. When we got to our assigned unit we quickly discovered, as we had feared, that it was small and only had a microwave and bar fridge. Worst of all it had not been cleaned since the previous guests. Needless to say, after traveling all day, we were not happy.

The resort staff were very apologetic and immediately offered us an upgrade to a one-bedroom unit which we gratefully accepted.

So it worked out well and we got a beautiful unit with a full kitchen just across from the pool. It was a long day but we are here and looking forward to our first vacation in several years.