We left Fairfield about 1PM on the 27th of October to go to Des Moines to catch our flight. The flight was at 6:15 AM on Friday the 28th so we spent the night at Carol's so we could get there on time. We had no trouble finding her house. Carol was actually on vacation in Palm Springs with a friend but Shannon agreed to meet us and we were going out to eat.. Chris and Owen came to and we went to Macaroni Grill. The food was good . Owen was very entertaining and kept us in stitches the whole time. He is very smart for his age and cute as a button. He hadn't had a nap that day but was very good anyway. This is a picture of us waiting at the Des Monies airport. We called a cab and he got us there in good time. No problems checking in. Had a cup of coffee and an egg mcmuffin for breakfast and before you knew it we were on our way. Connie, unknownst to me, took two, yes I said two Dramamine before the flight. We had smooth flights both going and coming home. We had to change planes in Memphis. Our plane landed at gate A 2 and the next one took off from Gate B 43. It was as far away as you could possibly get. We really had to hustle to get there. We were the last ones to board and had only been in our seats 2 minutes when they closed the door and got ready for take off. (Close call) We got to Fort Lauderdale about 11:45 their time and went to pick up the rental car. Toni ( the attendant at Alamo) talked Connie into an upgrade to a full size car. I tried to tell her the economy would be fine. Anyway we got to drive a new Hyundai Sonata. Hated that car! The driver's head touched the top of the car and the passenger sat on the ground. Never did figure out how to fix that!
I made Connie drive from the airport to the motel (this was before I knew she had had 2 Dramamine). Cindy and Shane had lent us their Garmon. We named her Becky. She was a great help. We got to the hotel with out much fanfare and went to the Welcome Center as instructed in our paperwork. Now we find out why the trip was suppose to be so cheap. We had to go listen to a Time Share talk in West Palm Beach the next day. We went to our room and it was pretty nice as you can see. Neither of us had slept very well the night before thinking we would over sleep and miss the plane. So we ate lunch at the hotel and decided to rest a while. Lunch was nothing to write home about but filling. We went back to the room and the Dramamine kicked in. Connie was pretty much out of it. Then it started to rain so we just rested, watched a little tv (some of us with our eyes closed) and ate supper at the hotel too. It rained all night long. Hard! They got four inches that night. But we slept pretty good and were ready to begin the fun adventure. End of Day 1.  |
| Erik and Capt Hook. Both pirates |
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| Jelly fish |
Then came the sales pitch. Because we were first time buyers, because I was a nurse, because they really wanted to make a sale they kept lowering the price. We tried to be nice and tell them we weren't interested but they were very persistent. They kept at us and kept at us we were both getting kind of upset. It was actually making me sick to my stomach. Finally Connie said no and we wanted to go so they got our paperwork and we went back to the motel. Thought we would never escape! We had to turn in some papers at the Welcome Center to get our cruise which we did and they asked us if we wanted to do a short 60 minute presentation the next morning and get VIP passes to get on the ship without standing in line. I remember the lines when Cindy and I went on our cruise so I thought it would be a good idea. The lady assured us it was not a time share presentation. We decide to do some shopping and got directions to the Galleria mall. Looked very simple on paper but somehow we got going the wrong way. So we turned around and programed Becky and finally found the place. Didn't buy anything (very expensive) but grabbed a bite for lunch and when we came out it had poured down rain while we were in there and the parking garage was flooded. finally skirted around the worst and got back to the car and headed back to the hotel. It rained on us on the way back. Big surprise! Had supper at the hotel and to bed. Ready for some fun tomorrow on the ship.
