The vacation

Before this vacation, I had never been to a Disney park. Never. Not even close. So, it was a bit shocking how awesome it was. My cynical side was expecting cheese. I thought that, as an adult, I would easily see through the facade. But those damn Disney folks are amazing. Well worth every penny spent.

But, there is tons of info out there about Disney, so I'm not going to bore you any more with that.

What really shocked me is how close we are to Orlando. It's only about a five hour drive for us for this time of year. I'm sure during peak tourist season it would take longer.

To help defray the costs, we bought into a package deal at one of those timeshare resorts. You know the deal ... you pay a discounted price, they give you a room and two tickets to the local attraction and you have to spend one morning listening to their speil about how awesome their resort is and how you owe it to your kids to buy it.

We didn't buy it. And neither should you. While the rooms are very nice (apartment sized suites, really) they're charging around $28,000 for the timeshare plus a $532 a year maintenance charge. You get to spend one week a year at any of their 1,600 five-star resorts worldwide. Now, that's tempting because we would use it, and man, they are some high-pressure salesmen, but if you do the math, it just doesn't work out.

The payment options they showed us had us putting down nearly $7,000 and making payments of $270 a month for 10 years (and the $532 per year maintenance fee). So, you wind up spending $39,400 over 10 years (monthly payments plus the down payment) and $5,320 in maintenance fees over 10 years for a grand total of $44,720. That's a far cry from that original $28 grand they were selling you. You could spend over $3,000 a year on hotel rooms alone for vacations over the course of 10 years and not pay this off. Crazy, crazy deal. Made crazier by the fact that there are Comfort Inns and similar hotels that offer two-room suites for only $75 a night and less.

That said, it was only 90 minutes long and if you say no enough, they'll eventually leave you alone.

We didn't have the funds to do everything we would have like to (who does?), so we only hit Disney one day and spent the rest of the time relaxing and getting to know Orlando. Fortunately the nearby brush fires weren't having any effect on the area. Pray for rain folks, they really need it.

When all was said and done we had learned that Disney rocks, timeshare suck and had once again confirmed that IHOP is the best. We had long known about IHOP's superiority -- my wife and I met there -- but my 5-year-old summed it up well when she said: "I like them because they fill up your tummy."