Bob got up at a normal time this morning (8:00) and met his dad to go over to MGM. They rode Tower of Terror and the rollercoaster, and Barb, Irene, and I met them at noon at the Brown Derby. I had kind of a convoluted journey to get there: I wanted to get some breakfast, and thought I'd go up to the food court in the main building. I went to the bus stop, and the sign said that to get to the main building, just get on any of the attraction buses.

So I did--I got on the Magic Kingdom bus--but I wasn't really thinking about it, and as he pulled away from the bus stop and out of the resort area, I realized that we were the last interior stop, and the next stop would be the Magic Kingdom. I could have stayed on and just made the round trip, but I went ahead and got off at the Magic Kingdom, then took the monorail to the Transportation and Ticket center, then caught a bus to MGM. And I never did get any breakfast.

We had a nice lunch, though, then Bob's mom and dad and Barb went to see the Walt Disney presentation before Barb took off for the airport, and I came back to the hotel with Bob so he could change his shirt and go off to play golf this afternoon. I thought I'd just hang around the hotel and maybe write a little, or maybe sit out by the pool and read. It's a nice, warm, partly-cloudy day. Pretty perfect weather.

Later:

I had an interesting experience this afternoon. I went out to the pool and read for a couple of hours--it was lovely, a really nice, relaxing afternoon. When I got back to the room I heard a weird, high-pitched noise, and thought, what the heck is that?

As I opened the door, I realized that the noise was coming from our room. I rushed in, tried to quickly determine what it was, and figured out that it was the smoke detector. Fortunately, nothing appeared to be on fire. I punched zero on the phone, got the operator, said, "The smoke detector is going off in my room, Room 7592," and she said, "Hold please, let me transfer you to the front desk. Oh -- is anything on fire?" I said no, not that I could tell, and she sent me to the front desk, who said, "Hold please, I'll transfer you to housekeeping."

So on the third try, I got someone who actually said they'd send someone over, and he got there within about five minutes. I was timing it so I'd know how long it had been when I had to call back the second time . . .

Interesting that the hotel operator has no procedure for handling what could potentially be an emergency. I wonder what she would have done if I had said that there was a fire--probably told me to call 911.

I went out on the sidewalk to wait, thinking both that I could direct whoever came to the right room, and also that if there actually was a fire--maybe inside the wall or something--I shouldn't stay in the room. I also briefly thought about taking the things out that we had stored in the safe, but decided it was more important to get myself out. Of course, Bob said I should have repacked the suitcases, gotten the stuff out of the safe, and hauled it all out to the lawn . . .