Laraine and John: Downtown Disney

The day we finished our cruise, we drove up to a State Park a little north of Palm Beach and a Park Attendant took us out across a bridge in a little golf cart type thing, to a beautiful area, covered with Mango trees. He said Mango trees are protected in FL. If you buy a house or property that has a Mango tree, then you have a Mango tree from then on. It is illegal to prune them, cut them down or remove them. He said he knows of a man who bought some beach-front property that had Mango trees and after some years, they had spread so much, he couldn't see his beach, so he had them removed. He was arrested and is facing a $1.5 million $ fine and possibly prison time.

Anyway, we wore our swim suits this time. I was taking no chances of ruining anything else! The beach and the ocean were absolutely breath-taking there! We spent a few hours gathering seashells, wading in the water and John went out quite a ways, looking for bigger shells. The Gulf Stream runs through there and the water was so nice and warm. We loved it there. I wish all of you could have been there and see that. Florida is a beautiful state. I want to go back there again!

After the beach, we drove up to Orlando and checked into our hotel, had dinner and talked about what to do the next day. Since Disney World and Universal Studios were both almost within walking distance (a long walk!) we were debating which one to go see. The next morning, we asked the waitress which one she would recommend. She said if we didn't care about going on rides, we should consider Downtown Disney. We had never heard of it before. She said it was in Downtown Orlando and free! There is a boat ride that takes people from one end to the other. She said it is free (no admission) and then there are stores, restaurants, etc. We decided to do there.

It was SO cute! It is not affiliated with Disney, however, there is a Mickey's 24 Days of Christmas store that is Disney, but it was a whole town of other stores. One of our favorites was the Lego Store. There are huge characters made from Lego out front. There were Buzz Light Year, Woody, a black dragon, a green Lochness Dragon in a little pond in the middle of the shopping area and all made with Legos. We said Tyson and Cameron would love that. We wished they were there to see it and play with the Lego in their building. There were tables all over with kids making things out of Legos.

We spent a good share of the day there, just looking around at things. We bought a BIG banana split to share and just as we sat down to a table outside, it started to pour and I DO mean POUR!!! It was incredible! People were running for cover and luckily we got inside the ice cream store in time to get two chairs, because pretty soon it was standing-room only and we watched it pour for about 1/2 hour! Then the sun came out and everybody went back to what they had been doing. We had a fun time there and were very tired, so after dinner, we laid on the bed and watched a TV show.

I kept waking up during the night and couldn't figure out why, because I was so tired. About 4 am, I got up to get some milk out of our little refrigerator and turned on the lamp by the bed. As I sat down, I saw a bug on my pillow! Then there were two more of them on the head board! I jumped up off the bed and yelled to John that we had BED BUGS! We called the front desk and they sent a security guard up and he looked at them and cringed. He trapped three of them on the bed under a clear glass and said we needed to take just what we needed for the rest of the night and then we should call the front desk in the morning to have someone meet us before we went back in there.

So...... we had the Executive Housekeeping Administrator meet us and she and another guard verified that they were indeed, bed bugs. She said they check each room monthly unless there is a report like ours. They took all of our clothing, shoes, suitcases, etc. to be laundered and steam cleaned. Then they gave us plastic bags for what we were wearing then, to put them in after we got our other clothing back. Needless to say, it ruined that whole day and that was our last day of vacation.

I Googled Orlando and bed bugs and found that they are very common there because of all the people who come from all over to go to Disney World. Even the Raddison has had reports of them. We are hopeful that we didn't bring any home with us. We didn't bring our suitcases into our bedroom. I guess you can get those little suckers (lol) anywhere that the public sleeps. We had an incident with them a few years ago in Vegas, so I we are going to check the seams on the mattress edges and look under them for dark reddish stains from now on, when we check into a hotel. Good luck and I hope none of you go through that! Just check good them!