WDW: Day One

Owing to the traditionally terrible Spring weather in Maine, we decided to get out as early as possible in the day to enjoy the most of our vacation. This lead to my dragging butt out of bed at 3:30am to get ready to face the day. Thank goodness I had shaved the day before otherwise I might have cut my nose off! The flight from Portland to Dulles was a lot of fun for the girls, who worked on their vacation journals (learning never stops) and generally liked the experience of flying. We had a two or three hour layover at Dulles, which came just in time for a real breakfast. It is no joke that the Dulles airport is quite possibly the worst I have ever seen lacking in good repair and good accommodations. Ick!

We arrived to the grand insanity in Orlando and made quickly for bags and car. We had managed to upgrade, through various "secret codes" and such that Tandy found, to a midsized SUV. My oldest is quite excited about Jeep's so we selected a little white Jeep. It has been a lot of fun to drive. I bought my last car after renting the model in Florida, so I may be in trouble here. We made for the Embassy Suites in Orlando proper and settled in for a relaxing afternoon of room service, swimming and chilling out. I just love the design of this style of Embassy Suites. The rooms facing a common court gives such a sense of space.

The pool at the Embassy Suites made me think about software development right away. Perhaps a sign of my diseased mental state...? The hotel is clearly oriented around business travelers, everywhere you looked there were men and women in business casual attire. I would have expected a straight-forward pool for swimming short laps to cool off after a workout. That seems to be the classic business traveler swimming pool. Instead, the pool was a weird little square with at least one step on all four sides and a depth of no more than three feet. There were no laps happening in that pool. What about this reminded me of software? Well, the hotel was built for business travelers, since the tourist traffic is focused twenty minutes to the south at Disney or on International Drive. There customers were well known in advance, and the common practices and expectations of their customers are equally well known. So why did the make the pool intentionally hard to use for the very people they knew would use it? This sounds like the canonical off-the-mark software development discussion. I guess everyone does it...