Have you ever wished for the perfect summer vacation? One filled with magical kingdoms and endless possibilities. I had such a dream and this is my tale that I share with you now. So Sit back and relax and journey with me to the land of make believe. Let your mind escape to a place where cute elephants fly and damsels in distress get rescued by the handsome prince. Where a wooden boy can become alive and a fish named Nemo can find his way back home.
The summer of 2009 was to be my pinnacle of enjoyment before I entered my senior year in high school. I was very excited about the prospect of going on vacation with my parents and 8 year old brother. The highlight being a three day pass to Disney World in beautiful Orlando Florida! Since I only lived 90 minutes away in Tampa, there was no need for boring car games that make you sick. My parents were very excited about the trip to Disney and my brother was overjoyed to say the least. So after all the months of preplanning the budget for a trip of this magnitude, we finally left in the wee hours of the morning to beat the traffic rush into Orlando. The minivan was filled with luggage and our faithful canine companion Pepsi. We took our dog with us because we would miss him during our vacation and the Days Inn accepted dogs, so we were content to say the least.
I slept for most of the drive to Orlando. I4 is very boring and I didn’t miss much, so the extra rest was a blessing because we would have a busy week ahead of us. We arrived at the Days Inn motel with a smile on our face and not a care to be told. My dad retrieved the card key and went to our room. It would have been a perfect start if not for the fact that the key failed to open the door to our room. After watching my proud papa attempt to open the door for the 100th time, my mom and I decided to go to the office and get help. A maintenance employee finally arrived and basically took off the door to let us in. He was not upset and this led us to believe that this has happened before. So we took our own tour of the facility and it was an eye opening experience.
As we explored our new residence we noticed that the wood floors were busted and the carpet was missing in many areas surrounding the building. The Ice machines were there only for looks because none of them gave us ice! And the pool area had a Tikki Bar that was left over from Hurricane Katrina. My father joked that “this was the motel from the hood” but I could tell that he was annoyed. My mom laughed it off and said “she couldn’t wait to tan by the pool in her new Bikini”. My brother was too wired to notice or care. He just wanted to see Mickey Mouse and I don’t blame him for not being upset. We finally decided to go to sleep, and maybe we would wake up in the motel that resembled the one in the website. The next day we woke up to pouring rain and that was the forecast for the entire week. We put our happy face on and took the shuttle to Disney. Now we were a sight to behold, all smiling and looking like the perfect vacation family.
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