This was my first normal day back to life after vacation. It was supposed to be uneventful and calm. Ha! Says who? Today I experienced the daily double of frustration and anger. For today I had to deal with issues with my health insurance company (Aetna) and on the very same day, had to contend with the idiotic Mass Registry of Motor Vehicles. My 16 year old son wanted to apply for his learner's permit since his 16th birthday was yesterday, a Sunday when our beloved RMV is closed.
This morning, after sorting through a pile of unopened vacation mail, I found a claim form from our insurance company. It was curious. There was a very large charge (over $1,100) for some medical supplies that I knew about, and there was a column that listed the "negotiated fee" that Aetna had supposedly negotiated with this medical supply company. The negotiated fee for this order of supplies was listed as #23.50!!! I am quite sure the supplier did not agree to get paid $23.50 for over $1,100 worth of supplies. So, because I expected to get a bill for the balance of the cost of those supplies, I phoned Aetna to get clarification and hopefully correction.
Surprisingly, I reached someone on the other end of the line (after many many menus of options with Mrs. Telephone-Computer Lady) with a strong Indian accent. I was dumbfounded. Had our health insurance company actually outsourced it's American health care plan customer service line to India? That seemed outrageous. I am still not sure if I just got an Indian representative working in an American call center or if I was actually speaking to India.
The rest went as you can imagine it went. I explained the claim situation, he had it on the screen in front of him and I asked him some questions. It was as if we were speaking 2 completely different languages. I would ask a question and he would respond by telling me the limits and details of our coverage. The problem with that was--That Was Not What I Asked Him. It was like he was reading from a script.....a script from a completely different situation. I was getting very frustrated. I asked to speak to a supervisor. He had no illogical rejoinder statement for that so he sputtered and then put me on hold telling me he was going to research my claim. He came back after at least 10 minutes and once again, told me about our plan. ARGH!! Was he trying to piss me off? Was he hoping I would just hang up? If so, he was doing a good job! I again asked him why the supplies were not covered, he mentioned the co pay and deductibles again and then put me on hold a second time...tick tock.... tick tock.......
Since we were forced to take this insurance in April after my husband's company forcibly switched all of us from Blue Cross tho Aetna, we have not had a need to call Aetna up to this time. So, I am not sure if this is the way they handle everything or if I was just the unlucky schmuck to get a Bozo on the line today. When he came back and gave me no answers at all, I did what I never do. I hung up on him. I am usually polite even if I am pissed off, but I was beyond pissed so I just gave up on him.
This afternoon, my plan was to take my son for his learner's permit. In preparation, I looked on the Mass RMV website to find the application he needs to fill out before the test. They allow you to fill it out online and print it out. Great!! I filled it out SS number, Birth date, name, address, driving history, health issues, etc. I got about the 10th and final screen and hit SUBMIT and got an error message that it had "timed out." OK, I went back and filled it out in a fraction of that time and again got that message. I did it 5 more times and every blasted time, it gave me that error message. Obviously that RMV web application works as well as everything else in this state. Meanwhile, my son slept until a teenagery 12 noon today. I looked online to see the wait times at the local RMV and at that point they were about 50 minutes. We decided to go anyway and just wait. However, I forgot one fact. The RMV has closed many branches around us and so this one branch in the area that actually does the permit testing has been extra busy ever since. They also have a parking lot not built at all to handle the overflow. There are no other places to park when they are full, either. You guessed it; we got there and there was not one open parking space. As a matter of fact there were 2 or 3 cars double parked waiting for someone to leave a space!! We opted not to stay and came back about an hour later. It was even worse than before. We will try again tomorrow when they open. We will be one of those losers in line for the opening!!
I fear that this is how our world is going to be from now on. The idiots are running the asylum. In an effort to save money health insurance companies are raising copays and deductibles, not covering a lot of services and supplies and are outsourcing their customer service to India. Great! They must want to go out of business and let our Government run health care. That is where we are headed at this rate.
If the cost of insurance keeps rising and we get less and less coverage for our money all of the insurers will all go out of business and our incredibly inefficient and corrupt government will take over our health care! Old people--you will not get those knee and hip replacements, those open heart surgeries, that Chemotherapy anymore. That will not be cost effective. Middle aged women--you will not get your annual mammograms, pap smears, and if you get cancer good luck getting any cutting edge drugs to treat it. Men? Well, actually since things are still predominantly run by men, Viagra is probably here to stay for now. No worries. But, if you have a preemie baby, forget all that costly care in an incubator for a month or 2. You will be told to take the baby home and hope for the best. And my son who has had Juvenile Diabetes for over 12 years will probably be told that insulin pump supplies are too expensive so he will have to go back to injections 6-10 times a day. We will all pay dearly if the government gets more involved in our health care. Look at the mess they already have with Medicare!
As for the RMV, it is bad, it has always been bad and it will always be bad. I don't see it getting better ever. They have no reason to improve. We all have to get a license, we all have to register our vehicles; they have a captive audience and we are stuck with them!
Back to me...how much frustration can a person be expected to take in one day? The RMV and a Health Insurance kerfuffle are about all I can take. I think I need a Calgon bath and a martini...and although I do take baths, I do not drink, well, hardly ever. I may have to make an exception today! Cheers!!
Monday, August 9, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
On The Precipice.......
This time of year, and this year in particular, I feel as if I am on the precipice of a new time. My youngest child is about to start driving -God help us all! :); my older son will be starting at a new college, I am going to ramp up my job search, and the summer is coming to an end.
School buses will be running again, the alarm clock will be cajoling me out of bed at 6 AM once again. Ugh! At least I have kept up with going to the gym since I joined. I am proud of that. As a matter of fact, I don't think I would have made it trudging around the Disney parks if I hadn't gone to the gym for a month to increase my cardio strength and would not have been able to lug that luggage as easily if I had not used resistance machines.
Watching one's child learn to drive is as nerve wracking as it gets. I have been through it once and I am not looking forward to a repeat performance. It is not that I don't have faith in my sons abilities to learn to be good drivers. I do. It is that they have to share the road with a host of knuckleheads and idiots and that is what worries me more. If they were going to be on the road alone I would have few worries. Nowadays, drivers are so distracted that each and every time you go out driving it is like playing a video game; things jump out at you, people cut you off, people stray into your oncoming lane, people end up off the road altogether if they have been texting, etc. ....only in this game, you don't get to restart your life if an accident occurs. I know once again, I am just going to have to suck it up and hope for the best.
There has not been much good news on the jobs front lately. Most businesses have been hunkering down hoping to ride out the recession and remain intact. Not too many are adding to their staff. So, it is a tough job seeking market out there. I will find something at some point, I know, but it may not be the ideal situation. I will have to accept that fact before I start looking.
We went through the College Freshman year with my older son last year; he went to a large state University out of our home state; this year he has transferred to a different school and will be commuting to it from home. This will present him with a host of new challenges, I am sure. All will be fine, but as a family, will have to help him through the adjustment period yet again. I hope it sticks this time!
Finally, on the slow HOT ending to summer....this year it will be a more than welcome sight to see the calendar turn to September. That will mean cooler, drier air is around the corner. This has been one brutally hot and humid summer. It has been atypically hot and humid for almost the whole summer. It has been far less enjoyable than usual. I hope next summer is more tolerable. I can deal with 80, even 90 degrees if it is not humid. That humidity makes you want to sit down and do a whole lot of nothing. My lovely garden for which I had such high hopes at the beginning of the season fizzled mid July due to not enough rain and way too much hot sun. My favorite shrub in all of my garden (Lace Cap Hydrangea) actually died a slow and agonizing death due to a fungus brought on by uneven watering conditions. That was hard to watch. I finally cut it all back today. I could not stand that drama for one more day. There were a mere 3 live branches left and they were not looking very well. I decided to put both of us out of our misery and give it a dignified burial in the compost pile.
So as one chapter of our lives starts to fade, (the summer, the childhood of my 16 year old, the unemployment of Ivy) another more interesting one begins. I am an eternal optimist; I do believe that old saying that when a door closes a window opens. My younger son will drive and I will survive watching him learn to do so. I may even get a night's sleep once in a while even if he is out with the car (yeah, right!!). I will find a decent job and start the work cycle once again. Maybe I will even get a boss that is human this time and not a troll. The fall will come and we will rejoice in the changing leaves (all the while cursing the raking and blowing of them). All good things will come to an end and then other good things will take their place. Such is life.
School buses will be running again, the alarm clock will be cajoling me out of bed at 6 AM once again. Ugh! At least I have kept up with going to the gym since I joined. I am proud of that. As a matter of fact, I don't think I would have made it trudging around the Disney parks if I hadn't gone to the gym for a month to increase my cardio strength and would not have been able to lug that luggage as easily if I had not used resistance machines.
Watching one's child learn to drive is as nerve wracking as it gets. I have been through it once and I am not looking forward to a repeat performance. It is not that I don't have faith in my sons abilities to learn to be good drivers. I do. It is that they have to share the road with a host of knuckleheads and idiots and that is what worries me more. If they were going to be on the road alone I would have few worries. Nowadays, drivers are so distracted that each and every time you go out driving it is like playing a video game; things jump out at you, people cut you off, people stray into your oncoming lane, people end up off the road altogether if they have been texting, etc. ....only in this game, you don't get to restart your life if an accident occurs. I know once again, I am just going to have to suck it up and hope for the best.
There has not been much good news on the jobs front lately. Most businesses have been hunkering down hoping to ride out the recession and remain intact. Not too many are adding to their staff. So, it is a tough job seeking market out there. I will find something at some point, I know, but it may not be the ideal situation. I will have to accept that fact before I start looking.
We went through the College Freshman year with my older son last year; he went to a large state University out of our home state; this year he has transferred to a different school and will be commuting to it from home. This will present him with a host of new challenges, I am sure. All will be fine, but as a family, will have to help him through the adjustment period yet again. I hope it sticks this time!
Finally, on the slow HOT ending to summer....this year it will be a more than welcome sight to see the calendar turn to September. That will mean cooler, drier air is around the corner. This has been one brutally hot and humid summer. It has been atypically hot and humid for almost the whole summer. It has been far less enjoyable than usual. I hope next summer is more tolerable. I can deal with 80, even 90 degrees if it is not humid. That humidity makes you want to sit down and do a whole lot of nothing. My lovely garden for which I had such high hopes at the beginning of the season fizzled mid July due to not enough rain and way too much hot sun. My favorite shrub in all of my garden (Lace Cap Hydrangea) actually died a slow and agonizing death due to a fungus brought on by uneven watering conditions. That was hard to watch. I finally cut it all back today. I could not stand that drama for one more day. There were a mere 3 live branches left and they were not looking very well. I decided to put both of us out of our misery and give it a dignified burial in the compost pile.
So as one chapter of our lives starts to fade, (the summer, the childhood of my 16 year old, the unemployment of Ivy) another more interesting one begins. I am an eternal optimist; I do believe that old saying that when a door closes a window opens. My younger son will drive and I will survive watching him learn to do so. I may even get a night's sleep once in a while even if he is out with the car (yeah, right!!). I will find a decent job and start the work cycle once again. Maybe I will even get a boss that is human this time and not a troll. The fall will come and we will rejoice in the changing leaves (all the while cursing the raking and blowing of them). All good things will come to an end and then other good things will take their place. Such is life.
Friday, August 6, 2010
The Magical World of Disney
I am back from an 8 day adventure at Walt Disney World. I am tired, I am "out of it," and most likely broke after I get our credit card statement. I will share several observations about my vacation, vacationing with teenage sons and Disneyworld policies in general for those of you brave enough to attempt this with your own family.
For the most part our vacation was fun, exhausting, expensive, and it was good to get away.
I discovered something about myself while we were vacationing. I discovered that I am, in fact, a total and complete news hound. I don't mean I watch the news at night. No, I have taken news watching to a whole other level. I get up in the morning, check my Yahoo and Fox news sites to see headlines, I check Huffington Post to see what people are blogging about. Then I flip on the TV to see what the news shows are talking about and lastly, I listen to talk radio in the afternoon while preparing dinner to see what the local talking heads are tossing around that day. I didn't realize how fixated I was on news until I spent over a week without doing any of those news seeking activities. It was not a total news blackout, the hotel delivered USA Today to our room every day (we didn't ask for it, it just appeared outside the door every day) but I didn't read most of it. I did catch the major headlines about the oil spill and the awful massacre in CT. Other than that, I did not delve into anything newsworthy. As I have blogged before, the news these days is predominantly negative, and if you read or listen to it a lot, you will start to feel more negative and stressed. I decided that I do need to have a news blackout once in a while to decompress. But not today!! I have not seen any good headlines for a week so I am scouring them now.
Another discovery made on our Disney vacation was that the word "complimentary" is almost nonexistent in the Disney vernacular (save for that free USA Today paper!!) As my husband put it, "if they could figure out a way to charge you for the air you breathe while at Disney, they would." The $2.50 bottle of water, the $3.75 ice cream bar, the $10.00 burger and fries all fell into this category. The prices on snacks, Tylenol, bandaids, pins (pin trading is big business at Disney World) all are out of sight.
We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. It was beautiful and a great place to stay. Animal Kingdom Lodge (Jambo House) has 3 restaurants; one is Mara, a cafeteria style, low key, lower priced food court. The next is a buffet style restaurant, Boma, very nice, very good food, fairly high prices for a buffet ($26pp for breakfast buffet, $34 pp for dinner buffet) and the third was a lot dressier and fancier so we opted out of visiting that one. The cafeteria style place, Mara, not only had breakfast and lunch/dinner food, they also had sections for those people who opted to "grab and go". You could get a pint of milk for $1.50, a candy bar for $2.00, a cupcake, $3,49, a bottled water for $2.75, ! When I think of how much I would pay for those same items at home it really ticked me off. You could get the same size Snickers bar for .50 cents at home and pay .35 cents for an equivalent sized water bottle. Why do these places feel they need to keep ripping you off endlessly? It is not only a Disney thing to do, but they seem to do it so well! Feeling ripped off puts a slight damper on the "Disney Magic."
One more observation about the way Disney does business is how it handles transportation issues. DisneyWorld provides shuttle bus transportation to and from any of it's parks and resorts for anyone staying onsite. Some of the resorts have other transportation options such as the monorail or boats in addition to the buses.
That being said, this was one of the hottest months they have had in Florida in years and we were lucky enough to be vacationing in it. The air temp. was in the mid 90's with a saturated heat index that put the real temperature feel up to about 115 degrees. It was HOT. On those days that we had spent the early morning and mid day at a park, we were totally ready to go back to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for some R & R just to cool off and regroup. We would trudge in the blazing hot sun out the park exit and over to our Animal Kingdom Lodge bus stop and hope our bus was either right there or just around the corner waiting to pick us up. On several occasions, those plans were sent way off kilter however by a vacationer also heading to the Animal Kingdom Lodge who was either in a wheelchair or on a scooter.
I have NO PROBLEM with someone that has a legitimate reason for riding in a wheelchair or scooter. If you are disabled due to illness, injury, accident, or surgery, by all means, ride on the bus in your wheelchair or scooter. I will be happy to let you go first, etc. But there were a few occasions where someone arrived at our bus stop that happened to weigh about 400 pounds and was riding on a scooter; simply unable to walk due to their sheer size. I had no patience for those people. When any person was in a scooter or wheelchair waiting for a Disney bus, it meant that when the bus arrived and let riding passengers disembark, the bus driver then had to get out, let down a ramp, help the scooter or wheelchair bound person up into the bus, and secure their scooter with straps. This process took anywhere from 5-10 minutes depending on the bus driver's expertise in this area. Some were very obviously better and more efficient at it than others. Meanwhile, the rest of us weary park goers were forced to stand outside in the swelter waiting to get on the air conditioned bus. This happened over and over again. I simply had patience for the people who seemed to have a legitimate reason for being in a chair, and no patience for those who had eaten themselves into the position of holding up the rest of us.
The system for transporting disabled persons at Disneyworld needs to be reviewed. Disney should possibly have a special bus that is adapted to handle several chairs and scooters and transport these visitors and their aides separately. It would be more efficient to do it this way and it would inconvenience the masses a lot less. Maybe if the weather had not been so unbearably hot, I would not have even noticed this situation, but my brain would be frying while watching a "jumbo" person roll up the bus ramp and make the rest of us wait in the heat while they got secured into the bus. This happened many times over the course of a week. I noticed the frustration on the faces of the other riders as well.
Going to Disney is never a relaxing vacation, well, maybe it is if you don't go with kids. We took our 16 and 20 year olds with us. It seems, all they cared to do was find the biggest thrill rides. Really, that is all they cared about. They did not want to see animals, they cared not about the countries of Epcot, and really were not concerned with characters, shows, or exhibitions. All they wanted to do for the whole time is get jostled, spun, shot into the air, and twisted around. And believe me at their age, I was a lot more concerned with those things too.
I decided to "go along to get along" for the first few days. I rode on Expedition Everest in the Animal Kingdom with my men. Oh boy! I am not a thrill ride lover, or even liker. I am not in any way thrill seeking by nature. I love to stay on Terra firma. Flying in a plane to Florida was enough thrill ride for me. I hate flying, I hate feeling any G forces, I have a fear of heights, and don't like going fast. Are you getting the picture I don't usually do thrill rides? I did it for them. I really hated it!! I was screaming and cowering the whole time and got a stiff neck to boot from the G forces that push your head toward your knees. I can't imagine how anyone finds this fun! But they sure did!! I also rode Splash Mountain, a lot tamer, Thunder Mountain Railroad-not as tame, but G forces were only side to side so easier on a middle aged body, Tower of Terror-I was not loving that free fall, and Space Mountain. You might wonder why on earth I would ride Space Mountain after going on Everest? I had ridden Space Mountain with my brother as a teenager and made it through unscathed so figured I would be ok. It was not as bad as Everest, but I was not loving that one either. My boys were amazed I went on any of those rides at all. They did a lot of the rides more than once. They rode Everest 3 times. They even rode on Rockin Rollercoaster. I drew the line there. I refuse to go upside down for any reason. Period. That was their favorite ride of all. They were talking about that one all day and laughing at the expressions on their faces in the photo they take of you mid ride.
My conclusion: if you want to go to Disney and relax, don't take kids. If you want to experience the shows, the cultural diversity of Epcot, the beauty of the grounds, the rides that try to educate rather than thrill, don't go with teenage boys!
By far, one of my most favorite rides was in the Land pavilion, Living with the Land. It really looked lame at first but I had read in a guidebook it was worth seeing. It was really cool and I would have liked to have ridden that one again. It was an exhibition about alternate forms of farming and gardening. It was fascinating. My kids even liked it although they would not admit it.
Having taken our boys to Disney when they were 5 and 9 we had a totally different experience this time. We didn't have to worry about nap times, strollers, scary rides, scary characters wandering the park and stopping to say hi while your child freaks out. We were able to find out via text where they were in the line, and find out what the wait time was for the rides (via Disney text) before we arrived at the parks.
Something I found to be disappointing was that it seemed like with the exception of Epcot World Showcase, all of the stores and shops in the parks and in Downtown Disney had pretty much the same merchandise. There were pins, t shirts, kitchen stuff, clothing, Christmas ornaments and toys all with Disney characters on them. It felt like 11 years ago there was a much more diverse variety of souvenirs. Downtown Disney to me felt like a waste as far as shopping. Other than a couple of independent stores that sold cigars, legos, candy, and magic supplies, most of the retail stores were Disney themed merchandise. Boring!! And worse, it felt like a whole lot of shameless self promotion on the part of Disney. Also, everywhere you turned they were trying to get you to consider Disney Vacation Club. There was a DVC kiosk at every turn. Sorry!! I am not going to think about booking my next vacation while I am still on this one. It is like asking a Mom who is in the midst of giving birth when she will have her next baby!! A little less self promotion, a little more variety in merchandise would be a nice change.
All in all, it was great to get away, the boys had a blast, and best of all they are old enough to remember it this time! I remember it too and will remember it over again when that credit card statement appears in my inbox in a few days. Sigh!
For the most part our vacation was fun, exhausting, expensive, and it was good to get away.
I discovered something about myself while we were vacationing. I discovered that I am, in fact, a total and complete news hound. I don't mean I watch the news at night. No, I have taken news watching to a whole other level. I get up in the morning, check my Yahoo and Fox news sites to see headlines, I check Huffington Post to see what people are blogging about. Then I flip on the TV to see what the news shows are talking about and lastly, I listen to talk radio in the afternoon while preparing dinner to see what the local talking heads are tossing around that day. I didn't realize how fixated I was on news until I spent over a week without doing any of those news seeking activities. It was not a total news blackout, the hotel delivered USA Today to our room every day (we didn't ask for it, it just appeared outside the door every day) but I didn't read most of it. I did catch the major headlines about the oil spill and the awful massacre in CT. Other than that, I did not delve into anything newsworthy. As I have blogged before, the news these days is predominantly negative, and if you read or listen to it a lot, you will start to feel more negative and stressed. I decided that I do need to have a news blackout once in a while to decompress. But not today!! I have not seen any good headlines for a week so I am scouring them now.
Another discovery made on our Disney vacation was that the word "complimentary" is almost nonexistent in the Disney vernacular (save for that free USA Today paper!!) As my husband put it, "if they could figure out a way to charge you for the air you breathe while at Disney, they would." The $2.50 bottle of water, the $3.75 ice cream bar, the $10.00 burger and fries all fell into this category. The prices on snacks, Tylenol, bandaids, pins (pin trading is big business at Disney World) all are out of sight.
We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. It was beautiful and a great place to stay. Animal Kingdom Lodge (Jambo House) has 3 restaurants; one is Mara, a cafeteria style, low key, lower priced food court. The next is a buffet style restaurant, Boma, very nice, very good food, fairly high prices for a buffet ($26pp for breakfast buffet, $34 pp for dinner buffet) and the third was a lot dressier and fancier so we opted out of visiting that one. The cafeteria style place, Mara, not only had breakfast and lunch/dinner food, they also had sections for those people who opted to "grab and go". You could get a pint of milk for $1.50, a candy bar for $2.00, a cupcake, $3,49, a bottled water for $2.75, ! When I think of how much I would pay for those same items at home it really ticked me off. You could get the same size Snickers bar for .50 cents at home and pay .35 cents for an equivalent sized water bottle. Why do these places feel they need to keep ripping you off endlessly? It is not only a Disney thing to do, but they seem to do it so well! Feeling ripped off puts a slight damper on the "Disney Magic."
One more observation about the way Disney does business is how it handles transportation issues. DisneyWorld provides shuttle bus transportation to and from any of it's parks and resorts for anyone staying onsite. Some of the resorts have other transportation options such as the monorail or boats in addition to the buses.
That being said, this was one of the hottest months they have had in Florida in years and we were lucky enough to be vacationing in it. The air temp. was in the mid 90's with a saturated heat index that put the real temperature feel up to about 115 degrees. It was HOT. On those days that we had spent the early morning and mid day at a park, we were totally ready to go back to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for some R & R just to cool off and regroup. We would trudge in the blazing hot sun out the park exit and over to our Animal Kingdom Lodge bus stop and hope our bus was either right there or just around the corner waiting to pick us up. On several occasions, those plans were sent way off kilter however by a vacationer also heading to the Animal Kingdom Lodge who was either in a wheelchair or on a scooter.
I have NO PROBLEM with someone that has a legitimate reason for riding in a wheelchair or scooter. If you are disabled due to illness, injury, accident, or surgery, by all means, ride on the bus in your wheelchair or scooter. I will be happy to let you go first, etc. But there were a few occasions where someone arrived at our bus stop that happened to weigh about 400 pounds and was riding on a scooter; simply unable to walk due to their sheer size. I had no patience for those people. When any person was in a scooter or wheelchair waiting for a Disney bus, it meant that when the bus arrived and let riding passengers disembark, the bus driver then had to get out, let down a ramp, help the scooter or wheelchair bound person up into the bus, and secure their scooter with straps. This process took anywhere from 5-10 minutes depending on the bus driver's expertise in this area. Some were very obviously better and more efficient at it than others. Meanwhile, the rest of us weary park goers were forced to stand outside in the swelter waiting to get on the air conditioned bus. This happened over and over again. I simply had patience for the people who seemed to have a legitimate reason for being in a chair, and no patience for those who had eaten themselves into the position of holding up the rest of us.
The system for transporting disabled persons at Disneyworld needs to be reviewed. Disney should possibly have a special bus that is adapted to handle several chairs and scooters and transport these visitors and their aides separately. It would be more efficient to do it this way and it would inconvenience the masses a lot less. Maybe if the weather had not been so unbearably hot, I would not have even noticed this situation, but my brain would be frying while watching a "jumbo" person roll up the bus ramp and make the rest of us wait in the heat while they got secured into the bus. This happened many times over the course of a week. I noticed the frustration on the faces of the other riders as well.
Going to Disney is never a relaxing vacation, well, maybe it is if you don't go with kids. We took our 16 and 20 year olds with us. It seems, all they cared to do was find the biggest thrill rides. Really, that is all they cared about. They did not want to see animals, they cared not about the countries of Epcot, and really were not concerned with characters, shows, or exhibitions. All they wanted to do for the whole time is get jostled, spun, shot into the air, and twisted around. And believe me at their age, I was a lot more concerned with those things too.
I decided to "go along to get along" for the first few days. I rode on Expedition Everest in the Animal Kingdom with my men. Oh boy! I am not a thrill ride lover, or even liker. I am not in any way thrill seeking by nature. I love to stay on Terra firma. Flying in a plane to Florida was enough thrill ride for me. I hate flying, I hate feeling any G forces, I have a fear of heights, and don't like going fast. Are you getting the picture I don't usually do thrill rides? I did it for them. I really hated it!! I was screaming and cowering the whole time and got a stiff neck to boot from the G forces that push your head toward your knees. I can't imagine how anyone finds this fun! But they sure did!! I also rode Splash Mountain, a lot tamer, Thunder Mountain Railroad-not as tame, but G forces were only side to side so easier on a middle aged body, Tower of Terror-I was not loving that free fall, and Space Mountain. You might wonder why on earth I would ride Space Mountain after going on Everest? I had ridden Space Mountain with my brother as a teenager and made it through unscathed so figured I would be ok. It was not as bad as Everest, but I was not loving that one either. My boys were amazed I went on any of those rides at all. They did a lot of the rides more than once. They rode Everest 3 times. They even rode on Rockin Rollercoaster. I drew the line there. I refuse to go upside down for any reason. Period. That was their favorite ride of all. They were talking about that one all day and laughing at the expressions on their faces in the photo they take of you mid ride.
My conclusion: if you want to go to Disney and relax, don't take kids. If you want to experience the shows, the cultural diversity of Epcot, the beauty of the grounds, the rides that try to educate rather than thrill, don't go with teenage boys!
By far, one of my most favorite rides was in the Land pavilion, Living with the Land. It really looked lame at first but I had read in a guidebook it was worth seeing. It was really cool and I would have liked to have ridden that one again. It was an exhibition about alternate forms of farming and gardening. It was fascinating. My kids even liked it although they would not admit it.
Having taken our boys to Disney when they were 5 and 9 we had a totally different experience this time. We didn't have to worry about nap times, strollers, scary rides, scary characters wandering the park and stopping to say hi while your child freaks out. We were able to find out via text where they were in the line, and find out what the wait time was for the rides (via Disney text) before we arrived at the parks.
Something I found to be disappointing was that it seemed like with the exception of Epcot World Showcase, all of the stores and shops in the parks and in Downtown Disney had pretty much the same merchandise. There were pins, t shirts, kitchen stuff, clothing, Christmas ornaments and toys all with Disney characters on them. It felt like 11 years ago there was a much more diverse variety of souvenirs. Downtown Disney to me felt like a waste as far as shopping. Other than a couple of independent stores that sold cigars, legos, candy, and magic supplies, most of the retail stores were Disney themed merchandise. Boring!! And worse, it felt like a whole lot of shameless self promotion on the part of Disney. Also, everywhere you turned they were trying to get you to consider Disney Vacation Club. There was a DVC kiosk at every turn. Sorry!! I am not going to think about booking my next vacation while I am still on this one. It is like asking a Mom who is in the midst of giving birth when she will have her next baby!! A little less self promotion, a little more variety in merchandise would be a nice change.
All in all, it was great to get away, the boys had a blast, and best of all they are old enough to remember it this time! I remember it too and will remember it over again when that credit card statement appears in my inbox in a few days. Sigh!
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