Spring Break Orlando

We spent five days within a mile of Mickey and Minnie but did not see either of them or their friends. Instead, we laid poolside and got a chance to see some of our own friends. Here are some of the highlights.

Visiting the Hillary's

We drove our rental Chevy Malibu southwest to Valrico to visit Corrie, Phil, and (unknown girl name). They have a beautiful house with a pool and vegetable/fruit garden in the backyard (they actually grow rosemary, corn, peppers, tomatoes, pineapple, and lowquats - we hadn't even heard of them before). They also ransack the grapefruit tree whose branches hang over into their yard. Phil displayed his culinary abilities with a surf and turf menu that made us want to spend more time (meals) with them. We had a great time catching up with them.

The Convergence

Anytime you're in Orlando, you have to do something Disney. Since we're lazy (just wanted to lay out poolside all day) and cheap (the amusement parks were too expensive - a theme in most of our blog entries), we chose Downtown Disney Monday evening.

Sensory overload hit us as we entered the west end of Downtown Disney. Next door to Planet Hollywood and across the street from the House of Blues, a four-story Virgin Records store hung a three-story poster of the Backstreet Boys on one wall (there's only four of them now - not five. They should be called the Backstreet Men and they look more and more like the Village People every time we see them (isn't one of them gay?)).

We caught our bearings going through Pleasure Island, past the Crabhouse and the Lego's superstore just in time to see, amidst a crowd of thousands, a tall, black man pushing a stroller. This is not uncomon or noteworthy in itself except that this guy was famous. It was C.C. Sabathia, the 6'8" 2007 Cy Young Award winning pitcher for the Cleveland Indians. Since Chad suffers from ES3 (excessive star struck syndrome, or embarrassing star struck syndrome) he was paralyzed. We don't even like major league baseball that much, but this was the world's greatest pitcher (currently) walking 10 feet away from us.
After telling Kath who it was (she thought his name was C.C. Sobania - she's a big baseball fan, too), Chad had two decisions to make. First, does he go up to and talk to him (Carlson's have an shameful history of doing this - just ask Tom Izzo - and Chad probably would have told him he liked the JaMarcus Russell jersey he was wearing, even though Chad hates the Raiders and doesn't think Russell will last very long in the league) or does he take a picture of the major leaguer. He chose the latter, leaving another decision: use the camera phone in his pocket or lunge for our digital camera. While fumbling around for both, a voice hit us that changed everything.

"Hey, I know you guys," came a voice from behind us. It was female, ruling out Sabathia (nuts), but it could've been his wife. Surprisingly, it was not. "From Camp Sunshine," the voice continued, as we turned around. Chad knew it was Donna Klapp but couldn't think of her name. So we introduced ourselves and she did the same. We talked about how nice the weather was compared to Michigan and then Chad asked if she was down on vacation (she was obviously with her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchild).

"Well, my husband (Craig) died last week, and so they're taking me around. Did you hear about Craig?" We had just talked about their family and how unfortunate Craig's death was, but we didn't know it happened last week. How do you respond to someone who's husband died prematurely, abnormally, immediately, and unforeseen-ly just last week.

We just stood there doing our best to console this friend (we didn't do a very good job) that we, in all honesty didn't know all that well outside of a few summer camp experiences. We gracefully (awkwardly) changed the subject to the fact that Donna's son-in-law works with Kathi's mom, and Donna graciously went along with our diversion. A few more moments of small talk and we parted ways. C.C. Sabathia was also long gone. Disappointed at our inability to show appropriate compassion, we took a minute to note that our paths will probably never again cross with a woman we know on vacation who's husband died last week and a Cy Young award winning pitcher, and certainly not both of those at the same time.

The Sales Pitch

Before going into detail with this story, we want to offer the disclaimer that we have nothing against time-share vacations. In fact, they seem like a very affordable way to take vacations. And we had a wonderful time on this vacation. Let us tell you about the lowlight.

In order to reduce the already astonishingly low price of our time-share trial week, we signed up to attend a two-hour sales pitch from Vacation Villages, Inc. Just for sitting through their self-proclaimed "not high pressure" sales pitch, we would receive a $100 Visa gift card(we're Dutch, so it seemed like a good thing to do).

John, a later middle-aged man surrounded by an aura of "used car salesman," greeted us shortly after our 8:30am appointment time. After exchanging pleasantries (John asking us where we were from and judging how capable we were of buying a time-share) John introduced us to our "tour guide" Carol. Carol must have been a relative of John's because she, too, had "desperate salesperson" in her DNA. She was very kind and personable, but her gaudy, gold-sequined blazer belied her true intentions of our "tour."

Carol took us to her BMW (other guides drove Hummers, Lexuses, and Mercedes-Benzes) to begin the tour. The car had nothing on Kathi's '94 Grand Am in the interior (no GPS, no voice-activated music or cellphone - what kind of a Beamer is that?!?), but it did have the blue and white logo on the hood. And as we were starting to find out, image is everything in this game.

On the short Beamer ride we found out that Carol is a retired trauma nurse with a husband of 43 years that is the contract negotiator for Venus and Serena Williams (a contract negotiator does what everyone thinks an agent does, but doesn't get any of the credit for it) and three grandsons - one studying aeronautics, one a budding artist, and one a can't-miss major league baseball prospect. Despite all this good fortune, Carol feels the need to spend her twilight years working on commission to convince us that we need to buy a small cookie-cutter condominium that we can only use one week a year.

Carol took us to the standard rah-rah session to start our tour. A ditsy ex-ballerina hyped up on three pots of coffee showed us and twenty others a powerpoint on how great time sharing is because it is "time shared" (with family, etc.). Throughout the presentation, our hostess/cheerleader used us as examples to the group (like contestants in the Price is Right). The cheerleader made it very clear throughout her yelling, clapping, and cartwheels that she thought a) because Kathi is an accountant she runs our family (true) and that 2) since I am a kinesiology student I study people's hands (untrue).

During the presentation, Carol noticed our lack of enthusiasm for Team Time-Share and began to tone her's down, as well. This is a psychological tool known as "mirroring," for which someone mirrors another person's body language and verbal language to establish a more intimate (fake) connection (see Andy Bernard from the Office). The 60-year old Carol started using words like "cool", "awesome", and "sweet" to mirror us as she got to know us better.

While taking us through an "awesome" unit, Carol continually reassured us that she knew we weren't going to buy a unit now because Chad is still a student. However, Carol was using another psychological tool called "reverse psychology" on us (see Michael Scott from the Office) because she really wanted us to buy (like that was ever in doubt).

Carol took us to the "Commitment Building" and gave us her best shpiel on why we should buy, writing down numbers, key words, and cute memory devices like making two circles above the O in Orlando to signify Mickey Mouse. After her shtick we had a huge communication breakdown. Carol interpreted our "NO" answer to mean, "We're still undecided and want more info."

So, much to our surprise, she brought back John, our used car salesman/greeter (John doubled as the "closer" of the sale). John gave us the exact same shpiel Carol had (even with the Mickey ears). We gave the exact same answer (NO), and John had the exact same misinterpretation. Confused, he asked if the price was too high or if we weren't interested. We said the latter, much to John's dismay, and as he briskly got up to leave, asked Kathi if she'd take a unit if she could get it for free. Like any sane person, Kathi answered in the affirmative. So for dramatic effect, John tapped me on the shoulder as he was walking away and said, "that sounds like she's interested to me." For greater dramatic effect I should have hung John by his clip-on necktie to the ceiling fan for making a stupid comment like that.

They finally got the message and were through with us (after 2 hours 40 minutes). After dealing with slicked-back hair and blazers, we met Elizabeth Taylor-on-crack for our exit interview. She tried unsuccessfully to cut the price for us one-quarter of the original, and told us that we could go to the parking lot and wait for a shuttle van to take us back to our car (apparently the Beamer ride back was only for people who buy). The 10 minute wait for the shuttle was more than enough for us to conclude that we'll never buy a time share from Carol or John.