April 2nd, Part 1
I think I woke up around 6am, popped out onto the verandah to see if we were docked. We were, indeed!
Rob showered, then I showered, popped out again, the Carnival ship had now arrived.
Rob was about 10 minutes away from heading down to breakfast, he had to be there by 7am since we were the early seating. I asked Kira one final time if she wanted to go with him. She kind of hummed and hawed until I mentioned that Dean would be happy to see her one last time. The thought of having one more meal with him, stirred her awake and 10 minutes later, she was ready to go.
I told Rob to tell Dean thanks for getting my kid out of bed this morning (it makes it easier to pack up and check our room one final time when no one else is in there) and to tell him one last goodbye for me.
Rob got his chocolate croissants one last time, he was happy!
They had a good last meal with Dean and Ronny and then said goodbye.
It was just after 8am when I had us all packed and ready to go. I didn't hear any announcements for luggage tags so I wasn't sure if we could even get off the ship yet. I put the TV on so I could hear them call them but I never heard a single tag called. Okay, this is just cruel, taunting me with "tomorrow" on the ship.
We were ready so we figured we would just try and see if we could disembark now. There were TONS of people, just waiting around, for breakfast I guess. I asked the CM if they had called all the tags and he just mumbled something that sounded like yes.
As we got closer the Guest Services, I could see that all of the luggage tags were on the screen, not sure if they had actually called them but we were allowed to leave.
Sadness.
Look at all those luggage carts just waiting for new bags.
It's been so long since we've been to this terminal, they had decorated it up, I loved it!
We found our bags, breezed through customs and then back out to reality again.
We walked over to the garage, got in our van and off we went! Man, that was super convenient!
Kira was already studying for her Psych midterm, she was running out of time.
As we drove closer to Orlando, we hit some pretty dense fog.
I brought the last of my US quarters so we made sure to use them at all of the tolls.
Just as we were nearing the airport, I had found a radio station with some good tunes playing. It was 80's stuff, which we obviously love. When the commercials came on, I would flip to another station so we didn't really notice for awhile that, in between the songs, they said they were doing Top 40 songs. It was kind of odd since we had heard at least two 80's songs by then.
I thought to myself, maybe I heard the song wrong, maybe this was a new song that just sampled part of the old song, that seems to happen a lot lately, so I kind of brushed it off.
Then a familiar voice came on, stating this next one was number 11 on the charts, or somewhere close to that anyway, and then they played Culture Club's Do You Really Want To Hurt Me.
I shook my head, like WHAT?! I looked over at Rob and he also had a confused look on his face. I said to him "You heard that too, right?"
I recognized the voice instantly, it was Casey Kaysum and I was fairly sure he died awhile ago.
We waited for one more song, another 80's hit and then I said "Okay, what year did we disembark into? Did the fog transfer us back into the 80's? Good Lord, I hope not!"
Check it out....
I had gotten a notification on my phone at 7:30am that our room was ready! Wow! I did not expect that! In fact, it changed our plans since we were going to stop off at the Keke's for breakfast in Hunter's Creek to kill some time. Instead, we drove straight to the JW Marriott Bonnet Creek. I had booked this hotel about a week before we left, found a great last-minute rate and it was in the perfect location for us.
It was a gorgeous hotel, very swanky joint !
Rob pulled into the valet while I ran in to grab our room keys.
Back to the van and then we parked in the garage. You had to take an elevator from the garage to the very large main floor lobby area and then walk down to get another elevator to the guest rooms.
Check out the swankiness.
The room was gorgeous, very fancy but our view was lackluster. Oh well, for the rate I got, I was happy. This sucker is normally about $500+ USD per night and I did not pay anywhere near that so I didn't care about our view.
For a luxury resort, they sure used a cheap hair dryer.
Once I got photos and videos and we sanitized everything, it was time to head to breakfast. Not Keke's though.