We have a friend from college who moved to the Orlando area shortly after getting married. We haven't seen him in about 8 years and got in touch while we were down here to get together for dinner. We emailed back and forth and agreed to meet Friday (yesterday) at 6:30pm at Earl of Sandwich in Downtown Disney. Here's the problem, Dave and I don't have a car while we're down in Orlando and his parents would be taking the car and going down to Tampa on Friday. We asked at the front desk at the resort we are staying if there was a shuttle and yes, there was but it was $18 per person and ran at very limited times. The recommended taking a cab, which was the fastest way, but costs $22 per direction. (You have got to be kidding me!!!). We are within walking distance of the public bus so we decided to look to see if there was a way to take the public bus, which would only cost us $2 per person per direction. Dave researched it and yep, we would be taking the bus.
The funny thing is, whenever we travel we always look up public transportation and ALWAYS take it. It's easy and cheap. We NEVER take the bus at home. NEVER!
Anyway, we left the house somewhere between 3:30 and 3:45pm yesterday afternoon. We were at the bus stop when we decided we were thirsty and went inside the convenience store to get some beverages. When we waited for the bus for another 30 minutes, we were certain we missed the first bus. This was our first mistake. After getting off at the first stop (in total we would be riding three buses), we had to figure out where the correct bus stop was for us to get on. We turned in circles for a while until we spotted it across the street. Again there we waited another half hour. In all that turning in circles, I'm sure we missed a bus. Mistake #2. The third bus we would catch was actually inside of Disney property at the Magic Kingdom. There were several people waiting for the #50 bus when we arrive there. We waited nearly an HOUR for the #50. Every time a bus would come up and it wasn't a #50, the people would get restless and a bit snippy with the bus drivers. Dave and I were quickly discovering, perhaps Disney was not the happiest place on earth. :) Finally at 6:20pm we got our bus and were heading to Downtown Disney.
We finally got to Downtown Disney three hours after we left home. We were a whopping 10-15 minutes late and we were speed walking to meet our friends. But, when we got to the restaurant our friends weren't there. We waited for another hour and a half until 8:00pm and they never showed up. Worst, they don't have a cell phone so we had no way to connect with them. We called their house three times and got their answering machine each time. So, we went ahead and ate and then got dessert afterwards. And two super cute pictures...
We missed our return bus, but luckily Dave's parents came and got us from Downtown Disney. We didn't hear from our friend until this morning when he told us that his kids were sick and his phone and email were out until 10pm. Sure sounds like something out of "You've Got Mail", huh?
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