Congratulations to Matt and Vanessa. They got married this past weekend. I’ve known these two since freshman year in college. I’m happy to see them starting down another road in their life together.
matt and vanessa cutting the cake
Ben was in Orlando for a convention last week. I met up with him in Orlando before we headed to the wedding in Tampa. His convention was at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort. This wasn’t one of my favorite convention resorts. I liked the Gaylord Palms better. I pulled up to the front of the hotel, hoping i could check in and drop off my bags there, but the valet guy directed me to self parking. The self parking here was very far from the resort rooms, although it was right next to the convention area. I, in my prego state, did not appreciate having to park in East Bum, wheel my luggage through the convention area (it was extremely hot in Orlando, so I hiked my way inside, maybe it wouldve been faster to go around the outside) through the throngs of insurance people drunk at convention, go up an escalator, push through the bar area where people were spilling out into the walkway, and then take an elevator up to my floor. The only thing I really liked about the hotel was the view from our room. Other than that, the room was mediocre and the water pressure sucked. The sink in the bathroom wasn’t designed well. The sink was set far back and the counter was curved outwards. I know it would be a hassle for anyone my height to have to stand on tippy toes to reach the faucet, plus my belly size, I was quite uncomfortable brushing my teeth and washing my face.
(Click for more pictures from the wedding)
Ben and I
Off to the wedding stuff. The wedding was small and intimate. The wedding dress was beautiful! Vanessa’s mom made it…she’s awesome. I did get teary-eyed during the ceremony and during the toasts at reception. 
We also went to Disney this weekend. We had to get a Disney breakfast and Disney burger, but we never made it to the Disney burger.
The “food court” area of the Polynesian Resort kind of sucks. You go to a touch screen, put in your order, and a receipt prints out for you to take to the register and pay. Once you wait in the slow line to pay (there always seems to be a slow Disney employee at the registers), you then get a buzzer and wait for your food. Your food isn’t prepared until you pay, not when you use the touch screens. So essentially Disney is wasting paper and creating an extra step that does nothing to the end result. When you give the receipt to the cashier, the cashier uses their touch screen register to input what is on the receipt. Maybe if they wanted those receipts to be useful, they could put a barcode on it so that all they would have to do is scan it and have the order on their monitor already.
Instead of getting a Disney burger, we went for a buffet. Well first, I didn’t know about any buffets for lunch, just dinner. So, we called 407-wdw-dine (yes, I have this number memorized…even though I seem to forget my parents’ house number all the time) and they were very helpful in helping us find a buffet that had food we were craving. We settled on Tusker House at Animal Kingdom. They had pretty much the same type of food as Boma, except without the long wait and no chance at a reservation. We would most definitely go to Tusker House again.
All in all, it was a jam-packed weekend with a lot of driving and a lot of fun!
