We left Vancouver Airport at 7:30AM with me, my wife, and two kids, ages 5 and 7 months with a carseat and our own buggy in tow – thanks whomever I read the suggestion from.  Having the buggy made getting through everything at the airport a little faster as we had to keep on going through side gates!   Big thumbs up to Alaska Airlines who went out of their way to provide us with a free seat for our carseat.  We originally planned to have the 7 month old as a lap passenger, but after reading the Alaska Airlines website, if there is a seat available they will provide you with one free of charge.  On the flight to LAX, the flight was almost full, but they blocked out a seat specifically for the car seat.

Arrived at LAX at 10:30AM and had some initial problems with Xpress Shuttle, and wasn’t overly happy with the service.  They had sent a town car to pick us up, but when the driver got there, he indicated that he would be unable to take us and that he was calling for a van to pick us up.  He then got into his car and drove away.  I had to call after about 20 minutes to find out what was going on.  The van rolled up about 10 minutes later and we arrived at the hotel – the Clarion at about 11:15AM.

Upon entering the hotel we thought we had made an ok decision as the lobby is quite nice.  We were upgraded to a suite for an additional $25 a night and thought we had made a good decision once again.  We got up to the suite, which had a north view (the hotel is south of the park beside the convention center), so we could see the rock wolf head of the Wild Raft ride.  The room itself was an ok size with two queen beds and a sofa, a microwave and a refrigerator that were made in the 1980’s.  While the bathroom was clean it was in desperate need of an upgrade, tile grout seemed to be used as filler in some spots.  Basically your typical cheap two star hotel room.  There was a kitchen type sink that had some signs of rust and seemed to be in need of a snake to get whatever it was that was blocking the sink out of the system.  On our last day we did notice that there were a large number of new beds being delivered, but if I owned the hotel, I would put some money into updating the rooms’ décor before replacing the beds.  I don’t know if there’s a place for Good Neighbor hotel reports, but if there’s not, there should be.

Having visited Downtown Disney in Florida, my wife and I decided against visiting the park and doing our shopping early.  We purchased some tickets for the ART - $3 for adults, kids free, and headed for Downtown Disney.  Upon arriving to Downtown Disney we noticed that there seemed to be a very large influx of people for a Monday in October.  We made some purchases at Libby Lu, The Candy Store, and some other shops.  We then headed for Taquito Joes for some late lunch, early dinner.  We talked with our waiter who said that everything was busier then expected and that they were very short staffed.  Our meal was less than expected and although we weren’t surprised due to be shorted staffed, we were disappointed when we mentioned it to our waiter and he just shrugged it off.