On The Meandering Road: December 16, 2015

It was one foggy morning. We decided to eat out for late breakfast at Perkins, not too far from the resort. The service was very slow. There was a guy who would come to a table with kids and make them balloons. Cool!

We were running low on some foods, so we made a stop at Publix. Since we have a 1 pm appointment at the resort we decided not to dillydally and came back to the resort right away after shopping.

When we checked in last Friday we were told that we will be given a $75 Visa gift card if we attend a meeting for club members to get more information. We put in a request to have an interpreter at the meeting. The staff member said that there is no one in the department who knows sign language. We had to explain that there are interpreting agencies in Orlando, FL to contact and to hire an interpreter. Well, apparently they did not know anything, never had to deal with deaf club owners. After explaining how it works the staff member emailed the department. We were assured that it will work out fine and we took her word.

Well, when we checked in at 1 pm we were asked to sit and wait for the agent to come and get us. We had a funny feeling that they were not going to provide an interpreter. We sat down and waited while watching out for an interpreter. Kevin, the agent, came up to us, introduced himself. Before we said "hello" or "how are you?" we asked if there is an interpreter. "Uhh Ohh" came out of Kevin's mouth. He told us that he was going to check with the desk. After few minutes he came back and explained that there is none available because of the holidays and there was not enough interpreters for today. We explained that we were not going to sit with him for an hour and half. He understood our situation and said we could still get the Visa gift card. This is the second time that Diamond Resorts did not make any effort to meet our needs. The first time was in Branson, MO last summer. We will have to write a letter to the headquarters.

We had a free afternoon and we wanted to visit the town of Celebration. It is a very lovely town, has many beautiful homes and a small shopping district. We parked at a community park, took a brief walk by the canal.

We decided at a last minute to visit Disney Springs (formerly known as Downtown Springs). The last time we visited it was 2 years ago and we were surprised to see how much has changed since. New parking garages, new buildings are being added. There is a electronic sign telling motorists which parking level is full or has # of available spaces. Really neat!

We just walked and walked, looked at window displays. Lots of holiday decorations around. We wanted to take a selfie of us with the decorations in the background and used the selfie stick. We did not know at that time that the selfie stick is not allowed on the premises until one worker told us not to use it. We had simple supper at Earl of Sandwich, had roast beef sub that had plenty of slices. We spent about 3 hours there.