MichaelandChrissy.com

I was talking with my Cousin Dave about our family trip to Orlando recently, and he asked what the “Fast Pass” was.  I had just assumed that everybody knew what that was, but he was interested in taking his family to Disney and hadn’t yet heard of the concept.  The Fast Pass is Disney’s way of keeping you out of long-ass lines in their theme parks.

The idea is that instead of sitting in a roller coaster line for an hour, you can scan your entry ticket in return for a Fast Pass.  This allows you to come back in an hour and bypass the line altogether.  Go eat for an hour, or see a show!  Or, like Cassie and I did, go sit in line for another ride for an hour.  Used in conjunction with “Kid Swap“, you can go on a lot of rides very quickly.

Kid Swap let’s families stick together in lines for roller coasters even if one member isn’t tall enough to get on the ride.  The idea is to alleviate the need for a family to split up and sit in line twice.  For example, we all got in line to ride the “Kraken” at Sea World.  I rode once with Cassie while Chrissy held onto Aiden, then I got to ride again with Chrissy while Cassie watched Aiden.

In effect, I got to ride every roller coaster twice.  In most cases, I rode once with Chrissy and then again with Cassie.  Some motion rides, like “Wild Arctic” at Sea World, are very different depending on where you sit.  The first time I rode it, I sat in the “tame” front row seat, but then got tossed around like a rag doll in the back row the second time around!

Cassie and I even rode Space Mountain twice.  We tried to Kid Swap in the regular line, but they said that Cassie and I would have to first go alone and then get Fast Passes for our other party members.  Chrissy decided that she didn’t want to go, so Cassie and I went again instead.  The first time was an excruciating ninety minute wait, but we were in and out the second time within five minutes!  And luckily, our Fast Passes for another ride were due once we got off!

Despair, Inc. has created an online tool that lets you build custom candy hearts to share with friends and loved ones.  I’ve seen a lot of funny ones on Flickr, but there are some sweet ones too.  Always the romantic, I made one for Chrissy for Valentine’s Day.  This saying is unique to us; I tried to get it engraved on her wedding band, but it was too long (almost too long for three hearts, too!).

Chrissy and I had a very nice Valentine’s Day in Orlando.  I spent Saturday morning in AUTM seminars, but I met up with Chrissy, Aiden and Cassie at the Magic Kingdom by lunchtime.  We had reservations for dinner at Hawk’s Landing Steakhouse at our resort.  Our meal and the service was fantastic!  I felt like I had died and gone to Meat Heaven.  Disney and steak make for a great V-Day!

I’m involved with a group called iBridge that posts intellectual property on their web site for licensing purposes.  UChicagoTech posts about a hundred technologies there, with plans to send more soon.  The iBridge people co-sponsored an outing to “Blue Man Group” at Universal Studios Orlando during the AUTM annual meeting, and a few members of our staff got an invitation.

I brought Chrissy along with me on Friday night.  Before the show, iBridge hosted a dinner at “Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville” to commemorate the company’s birthday.  After we ate, Chrissy and I split off from the group to do a little shopping at Universal Studios CityWalk before heading over to Blue Man Group.  They cram a lot of shops and restaurants in there!

Chrissy and I saw Blue Man Group once in Vegas about five years ago, and it was the same show this time, but I still thought it was great.  I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.  Chrissy doesn’t relate so much to this style of humor though, and that, coupled with her full day at the Magic Kingdom earlier with Cassie and Aiden, put her to sleep.  It was way past her bedtime anyway.

Not sure how anyone could sleep at a Blue Man Group show.  It was pretty rowdy in there.  Unlike most theme parks in Orlando, Universal Studios serves alcohol.  Lots of alcohol.  Like, vendors in the crowd with platters full of Vodka shots.  I think that most of the audience was pretty well lit by the time the show started.  It made for a very interesting experience!

We took Aiden on vacation with us to Disney World this week.  We’ve taken Aiden to Botcon once before, but this was his first time on an airplane.  He was very excited to fly on the plane, and our first full day in Orlando was lots of fun.  We spent Monday at Sea World on a guided VIP tour, and Chrissy planned to spend the rest of the week at the Disney parks.

To start things off, Chrissy booked us a character breakfast at “Hollywood Studios” for Tuesday morning.  We got to enter the park a little early to head straight to the 50’s style diner near the entrance.  There were characters from “Little Einsteins” and “JoJo’s Circus” milling around the tables as people munched on mouse-shaped waffles.

Eventually, a Little Einstein character with a big giant head came up behind Aiden.  Aiden just freaked completely out, yelling and pushing him away.  A consummate professional, Little Einstein goes into crisis mode, backing up and trying to calm Aiden by showing him that Mommy and Daddy like him.  Mommy gives him a big kiss and Daddy shakes his hand, so he must be OK, right?

Aiden warmed up to the concept by the end of the breakfast.  By the time the lion from JoJo’s Circus came around (we didn’t know his name, so we dubbed him “Circus”), Aiden was all set with the high-fives and hugs that Disney characters are more accustomed to.  So we hope that the rest of the week will be free of giant-head-induced toddler aneurysms.

The national interest rate is lower than it has been in thirty years, so Chrissy and I decided to refinance our mortgage at a lower rate.  We initially bought our house with a thirty year fixed-rate mortgage at 6.5% interest.  We figured that we could get a better rate now and get out of paying private mortgage insurance (PMI).  This isn’t our first try at refinancing.  Our first attempt, back in June of 2008, was a debacle.

Chrissy signed up for “Lending Tree” on the web, and it was a terrible experience.  Lending Tree promises that lenders will all compete for your loan so that you get the best deal.  That would be fine, if Lending Tree juggled the lenders’ proposals for you.  Instead, Lending Tree hands out your contact information to dozens of hard-sell telemarketers.  In effect, Lending Tree throws you to the wolves.

We got phone calls from mortgage lenders for weeks, and the plans that they offered were terrible.  They tried to tack on points and fees, and I would argue, and they would belittle me for disagreeing with them!  I pitted a few of them against each other, but that didn’t pan out either.  They got mean when we didn’t accept their plans and treated us pretty rudely.  Soon, we just gave up and told them all to stop calling.

Then a few months later, we settled on refinancing with our existing mortgage bank, Chase.  Chase sent out a home appraiser to let us know how much our home was worth.  It wasn’t a satisfying number.  The bottom had already fallen out of the housing market, and we were hit hard.  They appraised us at just $6000 more than we paid, despite the massive updates that we had made since moving in.

Chase told us that because our home had a low loan to value ratio (we got scammed by their appraiser!), we would not be able to stop paying for mortgage insurance.  Well, that was the whole point of refinancing!  The rates were still averaging at 5.8% at the time, and the slight decrease that we would get didn’t warrant paying all of the closing costs for refinancing, not without getting out of the PMI.

So we waited.  And eventually, the entire economy (not just the housing market) tanked.  The nation’s loss was our gain!  Chrissy’s mom recommended a local mortgage company, “Lake Mortgage“, that offered to bring us down to 4.75% on a fifteen year fixed-rate loan.  This would then bring our monthly mortgage payments down by $100 and get us out of the monthly PMI payments, which made us very happy.

The closing costs will be about the same as a regular mortgage payment, but we won’t have a mortgage payment for that month, so we’ll be even.  I’m pretty glad that we held out now, given the really low rates that are appearing.  Plus, we tend to pay more towards the principal of the loan every month, so there’s a good chance that we’ll own our home outright within ten or twelve years!