Inconveniencing others

So, last year I went to Orlando with the missus, my brother and his girlfriend. Set aside a day for shopping and did just that. Having saved up like a stallion before we left, we splurged quite a bit.

Not showing off there, I'm painting the picture of having more than just a few bags. Fortunately for us the bus to pick us up was right outside where we went shopping and would drop us right at our hotel. Happy days. Hmm, not quite. The bus obviously had to make a few stops but we figured, even with rush hour, it's a 20 minute ride tops.

Did not account for what would happen when the bus arrived at Aquatica (the new-ish water park by Seaworld). OK, some people are going to get on here. But what's this, it's a bloke in a wheelchair?? An elderly bloke in a wheelchair, what I presume was his daughter and two chubby kids. Ok, the bus has disabled access. It may take a while here because the disabled access is right in the middle of the bus. Luckily for us we get a driver who is clearly unfamiliar with the very concept of using the functions to activate the disability lift and so on. Very, very unfamiliar. The whole process of the driver trying to work it out took 20 minutes. Meanwhile, the kids are eating family size bags of Funyuns. I'm wondering where they're going that could justify such a palaver. They eventually get on board and ready to go after 45, painstaking, laborious minutes.

Am I sounding like too much of a grouch here? No empathy for the disabled? Well, that might be the case. But I'm pretty sure that the woman (who seemed to be in charge of this little operation) goes around with only one aim, to inconvenience as many people as possible. It took an hour and a half of being sat on that bus to complete a short journey. The bus fare was $1.25, so times that by 3 for the guy in the wheelchair and one of the kids who was above child age, makes it about $4.75. Add the cost of a big bag of Funyuns for the lazy kid, probably about $6.

To top it off, they got off the stop before the one we were due to get off at (yes, it really is true), in an immature strop I decided to get off and walk the remaining 300 yards instead of waiting another 20 minutes. Found out price of a taxi from our hotel (approximately where they got off) to Sea World. About $5.

They paid a dollar more and made a bus journey 4 times as long as it would have been for us because they were so thoughtless. I almost felt like getting off the bus when the driver was pottering about at the start and offering to pay for a taxi before I realised that money wasn't the issue (well, taking the huge bag of Funyuns into the cost, and I don't know how important they were). It wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact they could have been driven by a cab to the door of their hotel for the same price and at much less convenience to not only us but themselves as well! Instead, they chose to get off at a random stop not even near a hotel to fully well and truly annoy those who just wanted to get from A to B without any fuss.

Any doubts I would have had regarding their desire to disrupt people were well and truly forgotten when we were sat in a fast food restaurant grabbing a quick bite when who should walk and roll in but the inconvenience family. And get this. Rather than just park the bloke up at a table, they rolled him through the small queuing area that was railed off. Fun for them while they deliberated what form of chicken they wanted. And boy, did they deliberate. Not fun, however for the people stood behind who clearly just wanted to order but were unable to do to the insurmountable obstacle in front of them, both physically and in the realms of political correctness. The wheelchair was a weapon.

Still, wasn't our problem then.

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