December 29, 2008 – Getting Ready for New Year’s

Pics of "Fear Factor Live" and Rachel and Paige in front of the Amityville "Jaws" exhibit!

Paige arrived on Christmas late afternoon. Rachel, Chris and I explored the Caribbean Village at Disney World and got checked into the hotel. Since we didn’t get to celebrate Paige’s 16th birthday with her, we decided to take her to Al Capone’s Dinner Theatre. This was a cabaret type show with singing, dancing, comedy and lots of Italian food to eat. We even embarrassed Paige by telling the dinner theatre that it was her birthday and she received an “honorable mention” before the show.

On Dec. 26, we got up early and after a hearty breakfast of MacDonald’s (ok, not hearty but good!) we went onto Universal Studios. It was a blast! We shot lasers at Aliens on the “Men In Black” Ride, took a wild ride through the “The Mummy”, saw how a disaster movie was filmed, survived a Twister, saw Shrek in 4-D and had a great experience at “The Terminator”. We even saw a live version of Fear Factor, including the part where 4 unlucky contestants drank a puree of roaches, worms and other assorted bugs - Y-U-C-K!!!! Universal was really crowded so we missed a couple of rides since the day was winding down and we (meaning Chris and me) were tired. We drove back the 3 hours to the boat and got settled in after picking up a couple of pizzas.

The last few days have been spent by the pool and the girls have enjoyed working out in the gym on the third flood of the yacht club. Paige has even been practicing her driving with her Dad since her Christmas present will be a car – yet to be purchased. That will have to wait until we are back home and can devote some time to finding just the right one.

The girls leave tomorrow and the boat will get a good scrub, all tanks filled, provisioning done and laundry caught up before we give up the car. After that, we’ll look for a good 3 days weather window to depart here, head to W. Palm and then over to West End Bahamas!
Our communications will be limited to Skype and email since our cellular phones don’t work there. We miss all of you and wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!