Okay.  As I already stated, I was in Orlando this week for a training conference for an imaging/document management vendor.  The conference was extremely well done, including the company renting out Marvel Island at Universal Islands of Adventure and providing 0–minute wait times on the Incredible Hulk, an open bar, and 4 star catered food.  For some, the mathematical combination of those three things = an oral subtraction of the products of the latter two.  And that are gross.

So, on to the point.  The Disney Swan and Dolphin resorts.  The location of my conference this week and VSLive! Orlando.  Here’s what you need to know:

Disney charges you for every-fucking-thing.  They make enough money in parking alone at the 4 parks to cover operations of the parks for a day, but yet they still charge you for every-fucking-thing.  Let me break it down:

• $10.95 per day for internet access.  Short cord, doesn’t reach the bed.  Not even wireless.
• $7 per day to park your car there.  And if you pull up to the front they will do everything they can to talk you into valet parking.  And they want to take your bags.  And otherwise try to work you for cash.
• $8 bucks a day “Resort Tax”.  I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s in addition to the $10.21 a day “Room Tax” and the $0.43 a day mystery item merely labeled “Taxes”.
• If you would like to maintain your newly minted workout routine, you will pay $8 per guest per day to work out in the hotel gym.  Or, you will work out in your room on a modified routine.
• The coup de gras:  included in the room charge is 50 cents a day for “complimentary” USA Today delivery that I stumbled over on my way out the door each morning and didn’t read.  Express checkout assumes consent to this fact, but if you would like to wait at the checkout desk you can dispute it and receive a credit for that 50 cents a day.

nothing is free in the Magic Kingdom

• About the hotel(s):  Room service is available 24/7.  That’s a bonus.  Good menu too.  But, back on charges, there’s a $3 “eating in your room you antisocial fuck” charge, and a 20% service fee.  Oh yeah, and the guy wants a tip too.
• The elevators are in fact succeptible to the “express mode” hack.  Push your floor button and “Door Close” simultaneously and you go express to that floor (provided no floors are selected on the panel between you and there).  I can’t say absolutely 100% that this works, but we tested *multiple* times under *multiple* conditions, and I feel pretty good about it.
• If you walk from the Swan/Dolphin to the Boardwalk, you will wish you had taken the boat.
• If you think the boardwalk near the Swan/Dolphin is some magical entrance to Paradise Island/Downtown Disney, you are mistaken.
• If you look forlorn enough when you ask the resort charter bus driver if he is the bus to Downtown Disney, and give him a ten, he will turn an empty charter bus into a taxi for you.
• Kimono’s on the first floor of the Swan has good sushi and at least 2 hot waitresses.  And the prices are actually comparable with other sushi places so you don’t get screwed.
• There is at least one super-hot blonde named…well I won’t tell you her name but it starts with an “S” that works somewhere in the Swan.

Okay, that’s all the important stuff you need to know about your accommodations for VSLive! Orlando.  Who’s going?  I’m there, so let’s get a beer.  Let me know.