Disney Vero Beach Resort: retirement "home" & evacuation

Dianna, Doug and I had a wonderful adventure slipping away out of North Dakota on an early morning Allegiant flight to Florida. I've never flown on Allegiant before, and I was ecstatic about the good extra inch of leg room between my knee and the seat in front of me. Such joy! Such bliss! Almost made me forget that the seats don't recline and you have to pay extra for a drink of water. And now, you also pay extra for carry-on luggage. (Hint* You can fit lots of stuff in the 15 or so pockets of a photographer's vest. And fill your water bottle from the fountain after passing through security.) Speaking of security, you can score a nice little head-pat ("good girl! good girl!") if you leave a bobby pin in your hair.

The beach was perfect! And for further lazy, pleasant, diversion, at the Disney Resort at Vero Beach, we watched someone create giant bubbles:

Or stared at the palm trees. . .

Or just watched the Atlantic Ocean do its little ocean things. . . .

We thought about hanging out in one of these cabanas on the beach, until we found out that Disney charges for use of it's cabanas and lounge chairs.  Bummer! We decided to save the $30 or so by just sitting on a towel.

. . . or wandering back to the pool, where the chairs were free.

We only spent one night at the resort, and even managed to head into the city of Vero Beach after dinner to catch a movie, Cabin in the Woods.

The movie gave all three of us nightmares! I'll not tell you who had which nightmare, but one of us dreamed about eating zombies, one of us dreamed that she/he was a murderer who got away with it by passing off the murders as an art project, and one of us could not remember his/her dream.

The next morning, after checking out of our room, we spent a few more hours relaxing at the resort. As Dianna pointed out, Vero Beach, as a Disney resort, is totally unlike other Disney resorts.  The average age of the population seems to be around 65 years old. It all has the feel of a very expensive retirement community, rather than the usual lively Disney atmosphere.

We even got to play shuffle board!

One "activity" that we did not expect was the evacuation.  I myself got hustled out of the shower room next to the pool where I was drying my hair.  I thought it was strange, the loud shrill noise and the blinking lights; I thought maybe, once again, I was managing to blow out a hotel's electrical system with a hair dryer. But then some guy pounded on the door, asking if anyone was in there, that this was not a drill, and I needed to evacuate.

Disney employees take evacuation very seriously! They moved everyone rapidly through a tunnel and across the street because of a fire in their kitchen.

The fire was apparently resolved fairly quickly, we managed to be reunited with each other and our "stuff" and head on down to our next stop on our trip:  Miami.