spring break, well more like marathon Part I

Last week was my spring break from work so we pulled the kids out of school and headed down to a week at Florida/Disney because the weather was suppose to be warm and the crowds were suppose to be minimal. (if the crowds were minimal while we were there I hate to see the busy time!)

the kids excited to be going to Disney World

We left Friday night after work and dinner.  The drive in Virginia was stressful because it was rainy and even worse through North Carolina because it was so foggy.  At times visibility was only a quarter of a mile so it was pretty slow going since we couldn't see a thing, but we made it to South Carolina which was my goal.   After driving 4.5 hours we stopped in Florence.  We had successfully made a dent in our 12.5 hour trip.  (Next time I want to fly, 12 hours or 2 days in the car is rough) We found a hotel and crashed for the night.  The next morning we got up and continued our southern trek stopping for lunch in Georgia and stopping to playing on the beach near St. Augustine.  St. Augustine was beautiful, but very crowded so we headed down to Butler Beach to play:

getting his energy out

they ran and ran

and ran some more

dark clouds kept blowing over

the beach was beautiful

 The weather on Saturday while we were at the beach was perfect, it was mostly sunny with an occasional dark clouds passing by and temperatures in the 80's.  I couldn't have asked for a nicer day.  We were amazed at how beautiful it was, we had gone from rain and temps in the 40's to sunny and 80, heavenly.  We finally got the kids back in the car and headed down to Orlando.  We had purchased a package from Sea World that was a hotel and ticket combination where the kids' tickets were free and so we headed to International Drive where our hotel was located.  International Drive was like Myrtle Beach, it was tacky, busy, and loud.  My mom was a bit worried about what kind of hotel we were staying and her faith that I found a decent place to stay fizzled when we pulled in to the hotel.  The hotel was the CoCo Key Resort and Water Park and it is as loud as International Drive is.

the picture doesn't quite capture how bright and borderline tacky the place was

 Unfortunately when we arrived a little after 6 pm our room wasn't ready.  To compensate us they gave us passes for the water park.  The kids were overjoyed and immediately got their bathing suits on.  The water park was outside though it had a roof so it felt like it was inside, but regardless it was very loud, there were oodles of kids, and the water was cold, so the kids lasted about 10 minutes, water park passes wasn't much in compensation.  Oh and I forgot to mention, the water park closed at 7 so they kids only have 40 minutes to play, but it didn't end up mattering since they were really too little to fully enjoy it.
The resort had a Pizza Hut in it so we didn't have to go anywhere for dinner which was great, because we didn't want to have to fight the traffic out front again.   Our rooms were finally ready at 7:30.  I was a little bit worried that our rooms weren't going to be very nice and more concerned that it was going to be loud all night long and we wouldn't get any sleep since all of the rooms opened into either the swimming pool or the water park where music was blaring, but by 10 pm everything had quieted down and it was like any other hotel.  We got the kids showered and settled in for the night.  Despite looking tacky on the outside the rooms were really nice and clean, basically nothing like the exterior, proving you can't judge a book by its cover or in this case a hotel room by its common areas.  We had an adjoining room with my mother and the rooms adjoined in the bathroom sink area in the back so it was like having a really long hotel room instead of two hotel rooms with a door on one side.
After setting up a movie for the kids my mom watched them while Jeff and I walked down International Drive, it was weird we felt like we were in Myrtle Beach or even Virginia Beach, but we were in central Florida with no beach in sight.  We people watched for awhile and then headed in, thankful that the rest of the week we were going to be staying at a Disney resort whose downside was it was considered to be "too quiet" by some guests, basically the polar opposite of where we were then.