Saturday, September 5th
9:30 AM - in the car and ready for our whirlwind 5-day trip to Disneyland to celebrate their 60th Anniversary! No hurry to get to Seatac for our 2:55 pm flight into Ontario airport but better safe than sorry, so we are giving ourselves lots of time and are planning to have a relaxing lunch. We have no idea just HOW relaxing the lunch is going to be......
On the way to Seattle I get a message saying our flight is going to be delayed, now leaving at 3:26 PM. Now we have even more time to relax.
12:15 PM - we arrive at Seatac with lots of time to spare. Little traffic on the I-5 today. We park in the best spot in the house, get through security in about 30 seconds, and head towards the gates where we are expecting to have lunch. In this day and age of Nexus and TSA pre-check travelling is really so easy for us, but it's still a relief once all the checks are over. You never know what's going to happen.
As we walk towards the restaurant area my eagle-eyed wife spots a place called "Vino Volo". A wine bar in an airport and we just happen to have a couple hours before our flight? YES PLEASE!!!!!!
For you wine lovers I will have a full tasting report in the wine blog once we get home, but it was a terrific experience. We had tastes of 7 different wines including 3 big Washington reds, 3 Oregon Pinots and a Gruner Veltliner from Washington, and all were lovely. We also enjoyed a very nice charcuterie plate, and bought a bottle of one of the Oregon Pinots ($55) and our entire bill including tip was only $140! What an absolutely fabulous way to start the trip. And we discovered that they are a chain in many airports, including YVR, so when we fly from YVR to Florida in March we have an excuse to go early!! Well now that I think about it our flight leaves at 6AM so that might not work out so well.
2:30 PM - we get to the gate a few minutes before we start boarding. No first class seats available on this flight but we did upgrade to "preferred seating" (exit row) so we will be boarding before the general boarding call.
2:55 PM - boarding begins.
2:55:45 PM - notsofast. The pilot calls through to stop the boarding. Turns out there is a problem with a circuit breaker and maintenance is in the cockpit. Going to be about a half hour until they have any kind of timeframe for us.
3:40 PM - electrical problem is fixed and we board. It sucks losing an hour of our vacation but we can't complain much at this point, sitting next to us is a young Army Private who is going home for the first time in 9 months and only has 36 hours to visit with his family. Due to one of his co-workers being 6 hours late to relieve him he has already missed one flight and is now delayed another hour. Poor guy is hardly going to have any time to visit.
And the news just gets worse, as right after we pull away from the gate, the pilot sees another unrelated electrical problem and brings us back to the gate. After a couple minutes of waiting we are told they have another plane for us, thank God, so we de-plane and take a long walk and shuttle ride to another part of the airport to get on a plane that actually works. We hope.
We have dinner reservations at Catal for 730, which ain't going to happen, so I call and change them to 8:30. The Army Private is less than pleased, I see him start a text with "MOTHER FU****", but he didn't use the asterisks.
The plane does take off and we have an uneventful flight. They area buying the first drink for everyone due to the inconvenience. We actually get two since we apparantly get a feed cocktail anyway for the upgraded seats. Tracey has Bailey's and I have a reasonably decent Sauvignon Blanc. Hey, for airplane wine, it's not bad at all.
7:55 PM - we finally land in Ontario and our driver is waiting for us. He was aware that the flight had been delayed but had been at the airport for hours anyway. Poor guy. Anyway we get our luggage and he escorts us to his car, a nice Mercedes. I joke that this brand new Mercedes was the best he could do? My wife rolls her eyes and pints out to me that it's actually a Cadillac. Duh. What can I say, from time to time I catch the dumb.
8:45 PM - after a very comfortable ride we arrive at the Grand Californian Hotel, perhaps our favourite place on the planet. We have a regular room this time, which is unusual for us, we always pay extra for a view of Downtown Disney. My thinking is that if you are willing to pay the absurd prices to stay here, you might as well pay absurd+$100 and get the great view too. We are here at the wrong weekend for that though, as there is a Disney Marathon going on this weekend and it is one of the busiest weekends of the year so we are actually pretty damn lucky we got a room at all. The hotel is totally sold out.
The advantage of arriving close to 9PM is that there is nobody else checking in so we are done in minutes, take our stuff to the room and head to Catal for our late dinner reservations. It's somewhat busy considering the time of night, but we get lucky and get seated at the best table in the joint, right against the railing overlooking Downtown Disney. Someone below us is performing the Beatles classic "Something". Minutes later, the fireworks start and we have a great view. This day started great and is ending great.
The food here is always excellent, in fact the last time we were here Tracey had a risotto dish that was the best we had ever tasted. In fact we ate here twice that trip and the second time we BOTH ordered the risotto....so you can imagine our disappointment when the mushroom risotto that Tracey ordered was probably the WORST risotto we have ever had! It was so bad she sent it back and we never do that. They were happy to replace it without any trouble however and her replacement dish, a carbonara pasta, was excellent, as was my prime rib. Both dishes went nicely with the bottle of wine we ordered, a 2005 Tempranillo/Graciano blend from the Rioja region of Spain. It was a good bottle but not that special.
After dinner we head to World of Disney and do a little shopping before heading up to the room to unpack and hit the sack. It's been a long day and we both went head first into a large wall right as we got up to the room. We are both asleep within minutes of getting into bed. We know this trip is going to be fun but we have a lot to cram into a few days do we are going to be hitting it HARD, especially for a couple of old people!!!!
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