I got to talk to several ladies of advancing age, having lunch and trying to relive their old stamping ground in the hotel. They seemed ’sporty’ (that’s a bad joke for those of you that have seen Intermission).

Since this is a blog that is meant to be about visits to places and what they’re like, I’m going to do the Hotel first and the camera second. Decor is interesting and particular in style as it should be in a Boutique Hotel, service is friendly and personal and the rooms are as good as I’ve seen, I had to look twice (and behind) a fireplace in the bedroom to see if it was electric or gas. It was electric, but they’ve moved on from a red bulb under a semi tranparent plastic mold of coal in yer grannys front room, I’ll get a pic of one later.

If you’re looking for a hotel with a pool and a gym, you wont want to stay there, you’d be better looking at other Donnybrook hotels. The building is an old row of nicely restored georgian houses, made to house the well heeled in centuries gone by. The hotels website says that it does have Free Internet, but I didn’t try it out to test the speed. I did however get this walk through of their drawing room, lobby and bar at about 3pm:

Hampton Hotel Donnybrook

I had the cod and chips in the bar, nice pice of fish, would recommend a stop off when the traffics too bad to check out the bar and the fish. They showed me the suite, it had a double walk in shower and two toilets. I didn’t ask how much it was a night, I knew it wasn’t for me .

For those interested in reliving the glory days of the 70’s club scene, They tell me they’re going to do a history section on the old Sachs place and the infamous club that was in it on their website). Get ready for sepia tone images of dancing at the crossroads (of Anglesea road )

Now, onto the camera: Disappointed. I had images of movie camera quality with my 14-24mm f2.8 Nikon zoom, and while the youtube encoding doesn’t give it full justice, it also hides some of the problems with it.

The are black bands that go up the screen, reminiscent of the old days pre-satellite when the fog would come in and S4C would go a bit funny, and panning too quickly looks like it drops frames. I used a fast SD card as the shop recommended, but I’m sorry: it went back to the shop.

Never mind: looks like redone are doing a nikon mount from that space alien 4K movie camera they make.

Don’t think we’ll be seeing them in Lidl anytime soon. I’m drooling.

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Well done Walt, you were a marketing genius, because the trip, even in cool weather and with very short queues is actually more akin to Christian purgatory, more on that in this post on what I understand the employees of Disney refer to as ‘Mousewitz’.

Onto the hotel: the cheap and not so cheerful All-Star movie resort. We managed to find a room for $49+Tax, due to the slump in demand for Dantesque torments in this global slowdown. We were greeted by the camp guards at the gate, and our papers were found to be in order, so we progressed to the guest processing hall.

Thankfully quiet, the vast hall with queue cordons, hinted at a better times (for the mouse, not the guest) and checkin was effected with a modicum of inefficiency in about 15minutes for four adults and four children.

We walked past the enormouse so called ‘food’ court where our morning and evening rations of sugar, fat and caffeine would be distributed, and onto our room. The room we got was housed in a block which Herbie had apparently crashed into in a desperate failed escape attempt.

The room was smelly, worn and small, with a traditional American TV upon which I couldn’t watch the election results without getting a headache and with closed captions that couldn’t be removed. Yuk.

The beds were surprisingly large, but not in a good way: What they lacked in width they made up for in height. They had neglected to supply the cot sides to keep the children from falling, adding to my rising irritation. The pillows needed to be replaced with towels from the bathroom, because they were crappy.

The shower was weak, the hairdryer would only run for 20 seconds at a time. I could keep bitching but I think you get the picture.

Rising bright and early (the clock hadn’t been changed to reflect the end of summer time and fooled me), I went over to the so called food court, to begin the process of poisoning myself. Enroute I met some groundsmen and asked for an update on who had won the election (I had forgone the excitement of watching the removal of the GOP from high office to avoid a migraine). Their pallid forlorn expressions and glum ‘Well I guess Obama’ let me know they had a sneaker for the Palin good looks and a firm hand on the tiller.

The fact that the eight year run of ‘Hail to the Chimp’ was finally over lifted my spirits high enough that I was able to go on.

One vile, intestine halting, overpriced breakfast later (stay away from the mouse shaped waffles) it was time to move onto the park, and we hopped on the bus to the Magic Kingdom. The memory of the staff in the food court stayed with me. What did the Mouse do to them to make them so miserable? Were they free to leave? Then it struck me: they were probably getting the same food at a discount and eating it every day! I hear he doesn’t pay well and had probably made his own little poverty trap:

1, Work for Disney for, say, a summer
2. Eat the food
3. Become absolutely miserable
4. Fail interviews for better jobs
5. See point 1

In the evening we tried to get a recommendation for a good restaurant outside Mousewitz. Blank looks and referral to the Food Court. I rest my case.

And onto the magic kingdom…

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