Thursday March 5th 2026

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, the traffic in Central Florida has really picked up. Several times in the last few days I got caught in enough traffic to increase my travel time by half or more. Today a two hour drive to the Gulf coast took three hours. The return trip took longer because I refused to drive at night in a Florida thunderstorm. I waited it out in a supermarket parking lot for half an hour.

For exercise on Wednesday I went to Disney’s Magic Kingdom. It wasn’t terribly busy, but of course it is never empty. Several attractions were down increasing the wait times at the other ones. My focus was walking and people watching. How can a parent be more obnoxious with a bubble wand than a toddler. The kid pulled the trigger for a second or two near the ground. The adult took the bubble wand away to show the kid how to use it. It seems holding the trigger down while waving the wand at adult levels for multiple minutes is the “right” way. The kid’s bubbles kept the toddler entertained and didn’t disturb everyone else. I think half the soap in the wand landed where I was sitting from the adults efforts. The toddler, by the way, wasn’t paying any attention to the adult’s effort. Observing things like this is half my “fun” people watching in a theme park.

I attempted to coordinate my departure for home with my understanding of traffic patterns. I failed. Rush hour traffic is not over by 7PM particularly when augmented with tourist traffic. I waited until the sun was down between 6:30 and 7 before leaving the Magic Kingdom parking lot. Traffic was stop and go before I got off of Disney property and continued until I was halfway home. This was another instance of turning 45 minutes into an hour and a half.