Rooms… with a view?

Soon enough a Super Shuttle van arrives for us, and we load in and head to our hotel for the week, the Sheraton Park Anaheim, which is just south of Disneyland on Harbor Boulevard.

I’ve scrolled through this entire route using Google street view, but nothing beats being here! We love seeing the mountains around us, the palm trees, even the smog! I’m finding myself snapping pictures of road signs, and even just driving down Katella Boulevard. But hey, we’re here! It’s natural to get excited.

I’m still looking for a celebrity, though.

We roll into the hotel just after 2:00, unload the suitcases and head for the front desk. No sign of my parents – they theoretically arrived in the area couple of days ago, but were going to take in the Reagan Library in Simi Valley yesterday and the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda this morning before meeting us here this afternoon.

I’m not expecting to be able to check in. The check-in time at the Sheraton Park Anaheim is officially 4:00, but I figure it won’t hurt to ask, and if not we’ll store our bags and go register for the barbershop convention. But to my surprise, the cheerful front desk clerk doesn’t have any problem checking us in now. Yay!

She asks if we have any room preferences. This catches me a bit off guard – “Um, non-smoking, I guess, but isn’t the entire hotel non-smoking?” The clerk confirms that it is, but then prompts me with “Higher? Lower?”

AH! The lights go on – I do indeed have preferences for this! I eagerly request “Disneyland side, as high as possible!” Not a problem, she says. She finds a couple of rooms that connect on the 7th floor, but they aren’t ready yet. I tell her that connecting rooms are not necessary, just as long as they’re on the same floor. (We always say this and still always manage to get put in adjoining rooms. It’s uncanny.)

She looks again and finds two rooms (adjoining, naturally) on the tenth floor, facing Disneyland!! Woohoo!! This could very well be amazing! Fireworks from our balcony, every night? Woohoo!! Even better, the rooms are on the west side, closest to the Hilton Anaheim next door, which is the headquarters for the convention.

Our keys are issued – custom plastic card keys with the Barbershop Harmony Society’s Anaheim convention logo on it, which is nice surprise. The key cards will also serve as our bus passes for the convention.

The only minor glitch is that only one room is ready now. It shouldn’t be a big deal, though - we figure we can just all hang out in one room until the other one is ready.