Duffbert's Random Musings

1 - This year's Lotusphere was the first time that I went to Orlando without visiting Epcot. I had never been to Disney World prior to 1993, but that year I was there twice: for Lotusphere in December, and for another (unrelated to technology) convention earlier in the year. I visited Epcot for a day on both trips, and there is so much there that I decided then and there that if the next Lotusphere was also in Orlando, I would schedule a dinner reservation at one of the restaurants there for any clients or business associates who cared to join me there. Of course Lotusphere did return to Orlando in 1995, and I followed through on my plan, and I repeated it every year. I also started to bring my family every year. It was actually not anything that I saw in the parks that convinced me to do that. It was the scene in the lobby of the Yacht & Beach club on the day after Lotusphere finished. They ran some training classes that day, and I had cashed in one of the vouchers I got when I joined the Lotus BP program and took one of the classes. When the class finished, I was waiting for a friend to make his way to the Yacht & Beach lobby from his room so we could go out for dinner, and while I was waiting I saw a tidal wave of kids rush by... and saw that Beauty and the Beast characters had just come into the lobby. Seeing that made me realize that I just had to bring my family the next time. The kids have gotten older now, however. They're still young enough to enjoy Disney, but taking them out of school for a week -- or even a part of a week -- is now something that we just don't feel right about. They miss too much, and we don't want to do anything to reinforce any feelings they have about being able to skip out of school just for fun. So, this year we made the decision that there would not be a family trip to Lotusphere, and I made the decision not to stay for a few extra days to see the parks... so a tradition for me came to an end. Perhaps I'll restart it again. Perhaps not.

-rich