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Hey Now, You're an All-Star

I have such a backlog things to write about that I kind of wish I'd brought my laptop with me on vacation and blogged daily. Instead I'm playing vacation catch-up, still uploading photos from the Beaner's and my trip to Disney World and Al's and my trip to Annapolis, and I haven't even begun the writing yet. Well, I guess technically I have now.

I have lots of favorite photos and stories from the trip, but this photo is perhaps my favorite of all:

It's a self-portrait taken just after we arrived at our hotel—Disney's All-Star Movies Resort—on Tuesday morning, June 9. I've stayed at Movies before by myself (in 1999?), and at Sports three times (once with Sandra, once with Al on our honeymoon, and last year when we took the Beaner to Disney for the first time). I like the budget All-Star resorts, which offer a full measure of Disney whimsy for a very reasonable price, but they're starting to show their age a bit, and the housekeeping has gotten more and more spotty each time we've stayed. Example: At around 5pm on our second day (i.e., after our first night's stay), we returned to our room to find that the housekeeper had made my bed with the extra pillow in the center, making it look like it was pregnant. And it looked like she'd been interrupted in the process, because the coverlet was pulled up and tucked in on one side, but not the other.

The Beaner had just spotted the bottle of spray cleaner and the travel-size bottle of shampoo (I'd *thought* there was usually shampoo in the room in addition to soap!) on top of the TV when there was a knock at the door. It was the housekeeping supervisor, who'd come to make sure that our room had been serviced, because the housekeeper hadn't punched it in. "Um, sort of," I said. She looked at me quizzically, so I waved an arm toward the bed. I knew her first thought was, "ok, so you pulled the covers down...," so I explained that we'd just returned to find the bed like this. "And I suppose you'll want your spray cleaner back," I said. She was very friendly and apologetic, and said that she'd speak with the housekeeper. I told her it wasn't a big deal, and we wouldn't have mentioned it if she hadn't asked.

I didn't think much of it until our last day, when we finally got pool towels in our room (we'd been going to the front desk to request them)—but no hand towels or washcloths. We also got a new liner bag for the ice bucket, plus two mosquitoes floating in the melted water from the day before... and cups. Every day, we got a new stack of cups. It was the one thing we could absolutely count on, even though I don't think we used a single cup during our whole stay. There were so many of them that we were constantly knocking them off the sink.

I'm thinking that a room-cleaning checklist is probably in order (and I say this knowing very well that there must be one): Shampoo, check. Soap, check. Bath, pool, and hand towels, check. Washcloths, check. Ice bucket emptied, used liner discarded, new liner provided, check. Mildew removed from around robe hook, check. Bed that doesn't look like it swallowed a watermelon, check. And so on.

Remind me to tell you about the really great parts of the All-Star Movies resort in the next post, including the pool, the front desk staff, and the wonderfully helpful food court manager, Erick.