Driving to Orlando

It was a cold and wet December day in Atlanta as we picked up our rental car, a 1990 Ford Taurus, from Hertz at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport. We had always planned to rent a car for the trip down to Florida, but it had become a necessity after an auto accident a few days before Christmas had left Janie's car totalled. We stopped at Janie's father's house along the way and then started the slow and treacherous journey to Florida around 8 p.m. A deep fog had settled over South Georgia, reducing visibility to almost zero, which meant our expected nine-hour drive turned into more like 12 hours. We reached a rest stop outside of Orlando around seven in the morning and planned to pull over there and catch some sleep before heading to our hotel later in the day. But neither of us felt like sleeping, so we decided to head to Disney-MGM Studios for the day.

Disney-MGM Studios

After parking our rental car for the low, low rate of just $4 per day, we bought our tickets and headed into MGM Studios for the first time. The park had opened just the year previous. At the time, the "E-ticket" attraction was the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, so that was where we headed first. After that, we rode Star Tours. Next came the Backstage Studio Tour, our first trip into Catastrophe Canyon, and the ride around the movie set where they showed the house from the Golden Girls and other TV shows.

We ate lunch at one of the counter-service places, then did the Animation Tour with a "Back to Neverland" presentation with Robin Williams and Walter Cronkite. Our last stop was the Great Movie Ride, which was a 60 minute wait in the Florida heat. We were exhausted and thirsty after that so we walked back to our car.

The Peabody Hotel

Since J. R. was a guest of the Georgia Tech Athletic Association, we were staying at the team hotel, the Peabody Orlando. So we drove up I-4, got off onto International Drive and went in search of the hotel. Janie pointed out at one point that there was a hotel with a duck for its logo, and we soon learned that was the Peabody. We checked in and picked up our passes and other information and headed to our room. The Alumni Association had provided us with a gym bag, a T-shirt and some other goodies, which was nice.

Pirates' Cove

We napped for a little while, but being college students, we didn't need much sleep, so we headed out to find something to eat and then played a round of miniature golf at Pirate's Cove. The group in front of us was also from Tech, including one of the student managers for the football team.