Monthly Archives: March 2023

Today is our last day at the resort. We got up and made our way down to the Presidential Club on the 17th floor to grad coffee for Nikki and Hot Chocolate for me. We then made breakfast and slowly got around to getting ready for our day resort hopping. We drove to Disney Spring Orange Garage and then walked around the corner to the Bus Station took the bus to the Polynesian Resort. We wandered around there for about 30 minutes exploring the amenities and then hopped on the monorail to see the Grand Floridian Resort. We explored that for almost an hour and watch an artist hand painting large eggs for easter.

We then hopped the monorail again and got off at the transportation hub and changed monorails to ride over to Epcot and rode the monorail through the park to see their shrub sculptures of disney characters and their flower beds. We stayed on the monorail and took it back to the transportation hub and hopped back on the resort monorail line and rode the monorail back to the Polynesian. We then took the bus back to Disney Springs and decided to go to Sickies Garage for some burgers. I would highly recommend them for a delicious burger. They are located on 192 west of I-4.

We then made it back to the resort and started to pack up bags and helped Mom and Dad load their car with heavy stuff to take home before we were leaving in the early morning.

Today is Stephanie’s final day and she will be heading back to Columbus to pick up Marcus’ Camry to drive home. Just before she came down on the 7th she bought a 2012 Toyota Highlander on the 6th, but since that only gets 18 Miles Per Gallon she drove Marcus’ car and he has been driving hers up there for the week.

We had breakfast and Mom left for another Chiropractor appointment to readjust her adjustment from yesterday. She got back and we facetimed with Marcus who had the insurance adjuster and the contractor, VanDam & Krusinga Insurance Restoration, over to discuss the plan for restoring their house after a tree went through their roof in the ice storm.

After the facetime call, it was time to take Stephanie to the airport to fly back to Columbus. Nikki and I took her to the airport and then did some exploring. We went to Disney Springs and took a. bus to see the Animal Kingdom Lodge.

We then came back to meet my parents and went to dinner here at the resort. Dinner was good until a blackbird swooped down next to mom and started stealing french fries from her plate.

After dinner Niiki, myself, Mom and Dad played some cards before calling it a night early around 9:00.

Nikki and I started the day returning a pair of reading glasses we bought yesterday at CVS. It wasn’t until we got back that I realised one of the nose pads on the glasses were missing. We returned the glasses with no issues and made it back to Condo around 7:30. The forecast looks like rain, so we were not sure what to plan for the day.

There were several people parked in the handicap spaces yesterday that were not handicapped and Mom and Dad ended up parking their SUV with handicap plates a 1/4 mile away or more at the main building the night before. Nikki and I came back from CVS and took pictures of the car plates illegally parked and reported them to Mom who reported them to the front desk.

We played some cards in the afternoon before Mom had to be to her chiropractor appointment. We took her to her appointment and picked up a few more groceries before she was ready to be picked up again. She called me and ended up waiting a few minutes before we picked her up and headed out for an early dinner. We were all hungry as we only really at some snacks for lunch while playing cards. We drove out to Rock and Brew where we had a nice dinner and then headed back to the condo.

We stopped by the main building as we drove around for a couple of days and the debris from Monday was mostly off their SUV, like the big pieces some other smaller pieces were stuck to the hood and roof and were difficult to pick off even with a fingernail. They wrote up a security report to have it on record and offered to try to wash her car to see if that would help. I ended up taking the car to Tower 1 and they hooked up a hose and the maintenance manager rinsed her car off. Some of it came off, but about half of it was stubborn and refused to come off. Francisco, the maintenance manager requested a power washer and then he power washed their car. Most of it came off then and once the stucco was wet I could flick it with a thumbnail and easily get it off. We spent close to an hour washing her car and were offered free ice creams for our trouble!

We ended up leaving their car there as we figured it was going to full for parking since it was after 7:00 at that point. We got a lift back to the condo only to realize we left our groceries, including eggs, in the back of the SUV. Nikki and I walked back to the main building and drove her car to Tower 6 and luckily were able to find a handicap spot in the tower 6 parking garage. It’s a little further away, but it close enough for one of us to retrieve it fairly quickly. We ended up playing cards with a break to watch the fireworks the rest of the night and for the 2nd night in a row we didn’t get to bed until after midnight.

We didn’t make breakfast this morning and instead went to Disney Springs and took the water taxi to Port Orleans and had beignets and lunch. Although we were disappointed they no longer have Stephanie’s favorite the Po’ Boy shrimp sandwich.

Later in the day we drove over to Merritt Island on the east coast and drove through the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. It was a very interesting and we enjoyed the two hour trek in the car around the gravel roads of the park.

After visiting the refuge we went and visited Marcus Hamilton’s Grandfather, who Stephanie stayed with a couple of days until Nikki and I made it to Florida on Saturday. We had a quick Jimmy John’s dinner while listening to his life stories and then went out and watched the night launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 Dragon launch of CRS-27 and the recovery of the booster out at sea. Although our iPhone cameras could not capture the spectacular display, I found a video of the same launch that better captures what we witnessed. The 2:35 mark of the video shows the separation of the rocket boosters.

We got back to the Condo around 10:00 and then very unusual for Nikki and I we stayed up with Stephanie, Mom and Dad and continued talking and telling stories until shortly after midnight.

Stephanie took Ryan to the airport to catch her flight that was scheduled for 10:!5 this morning. Stephanie bought Crumbl cookies on her way back and cut them up and shared them with everyone. They were delicious.

We had a few thunderstorms roll through. Mom, Dad and Stephanie were outside int he hot tub when one of them came through, but they were able to get out and back into tower 6 without any issues.

Stephanie, Nikki and I went to the Florida Catus Inc. and Nikki and Stephanie picked out some cacti to bring home. Stephanie bought 3 Desert Rose which are expected to flower. On our way there we ran into another thunderstorm and has to use the hazard lights due to such low visibility. Luckily all the storms only last about 10-15 minutes.

Dad was feeling better and not getting the shocks in his heels and was feeling much better.

Mom got a call from the front desk requesting we move their SUV from the handicap parking close to the building as they were going to close that area off due to construction. When I went to move the car there was a bunch of debris, like stucco pieces, some as big as marbles all over their car. I ended parking in the handicap spaces in the parking garage for the night.

Mom made dinner with sausage, shrimp and corn and it was wonderful. Afterwards we played cards until it was dark and then watched fireworks, which were much better than Saturday’s fireworks before sitting around and chatting for a short period of time before bed.

We arrived in Orlando after a long drive and picking up Stephanie and Ryan at the airport car rental near the Orlando airport on our way to my parents condo. Stephanie and Ryan arrived earlier and had rented a car up until we picked them up. We showed up at Bonnet Creek and my parents had the absolute best condo on the entire property. The view from the 19th floor was amazing.

We ended up going to Disney Springs with Stephanie and Ryan to shop for a swimsuit for Nikki. We ended up taking our time and enjoying the shops. Later that evening we watched fireworks from Universal Studios and Epcot from the balcony.

I was awoken at 2:00am with from a water alarm in the basement that triggers an alert to my phone. At first I thought it was an amber alert and didn’t check. Another alarm was sent to my phone around 6:00am, so I had to call Jonny to check the basement for flooding. Luckily the water barely made it out of the sump and there was no flooding damage. Jonny did send me a picture from our house that morning as we did get a couple inches of snow.

Sunday we ended up just hanging out and enjoying the weather after Nikki and I got up early to beat the crowds and grocery shop at the local Publix. The weather was very warm with a high of 85, but it was breezy and Nikki and I didn’t expose ourselves to too much sun the first day. We made steaks, mashed potatos and salad for dinner and it was delicious. Afterwards we went for some ice cream at Scoops located here on the resort property. We then had our picture taken as Ryan was leaving the next morning to go back to Cincinnati.