We’re home! And I’m sick with a sinus infection AGAIN. I think I’ve come home with a sinus infection from at least 4 of our Orlando trips in the last year. This one is a real bear, it came on Friday night so all day Saturday and Sunday my face HURT. But I’ll get to that later. Let’s start at the beginning. As usual I only have my iphone pics for now, I’ll do another post with photopass and Chase’s photos later.
Monday – Driving to Valdosta
Monday I just took off work and Chase had a halfday. I finished a few last minute things that morning… important stuff like putting a patch on my Bespin Leia travel box:
Then when Chase called to say he was on the road, Kev and I loaded up the car.
Once Chase got home we went and got gas, ran to the bank, and grabbed lunch. Then, onward! Since we were able to get an earlier start this day, we booked our overnight hotel further south – instead of staying in Columbus (exactly halfway, 6 hour drive from Memphis and another 6 to Orlando), we drive on to Valdosta (9 hours from Memphis and another 3 to Orlando). Kevin played his PSP pretty much the whole trip, I listened to podcasts and played a LOT of tsumtsum.
Around 8 or so, Kevin kinda let out an “uuugh” noise and I asked if he was ok. I was being hyper vigilant about him because he’s gotten sick on every single trip we’ve taken him on the past year. He said he was feeling a little dizzy so I told him to turn the PSP off and just sit and relax for a while. He did, and about an hour later he asked if he could keep playing his PSP. I told him maybe just watch a movie on it instead of playing a game, so he picked one of his movie discs and started watching.
We got to Valdosta around 11, got off the interstate, and I told Kevin to pack up his PSP. He did, and we were about a block from the hotel when he suddenly goes, “I’m going to throw up!” I yelled at Chase to pull over and he did, Kevin jumped out of the car and lost it right in the median. As he was finishing up and I was handing him napkins, a car actually pulled up next to us and asked if we were ok, which I thought was nice, LOL.
He was totally fine after that. We’ve always known Kevin can’t read in the car because it makes him sick, but apparently his motion sickness is way worse than it used to be and we hypothesize that maybe that’s what has caused him to be sick every other time — riding crazy stuff, getting motion sickness, getting overheated, and making him puke later in the day.
Anyway we got on to the hotel, he felt fine after that, and went on to bed.
Tuesday – Driving to Orlando/Disney Springs/Magic Kingdom/Hollywood Studios
We were up and out by 7AM and the first order of business was to find some “less-drowsy” dramamine for Kev to take, but of course nowhere had the less drowsy version, only the full on, knock you out, dramamine. We decided to see if maybe the hotel would have some.
I dug out both of my C3 shirts to wear this week. Never wore the Rebel Legion tho!
Got to Disney World only to find it closed.
LOL. We headed straight on to the hotel (Port Orleans French Quarter!!), but since we were there way earlier than we normally get in on a drive, our room wasn’t ready just yet. We headed into the quick service restaurant to eat lunch… and sadly discovered that I apparently liked the stand-in version of Sassagoula Floatworks better than the real version. Both times we stayed at POFQ last year, the restaurant was being renovated so they had a stand-in over to the side. They didn’t have what I liked to eat from the stand-in version in the real version! So that was disappointing and Kevin and I just ended up with cheapie pizza.
But! just as we sat down to eat I got the text our room was ready. So we finished up and headed over to our room to unpack.
We had a corner room again! Yay! We were over in building 7 this time around.
First order of business was to go check out the new Dress Shop in Disney Springs. I’d already heard the Tiki Bird dress I liked best was sold out (obviously everybody liked it best) but figured they’d still have some of everything else. Unfortunately that was not the case š
They only had the Haunted Mansion design and Minnie Mouse left in my size. Not into Minnie and normally I’d be all over a Haunted Mansion dress but I wasn’t crazy about it (if they’d done it in purple instead of grey/black I’d like it better I think). I tried it on but spending $100+ on something I was just “meh” over didn’t seem like a good deal. They still had the Belle dress and the Small World dress I liked – but only in XL-XXL which would’ve been too big. So that was disappointing.
(By the time we went back to Disney Springs friday, even those things were pretty much gone and they’d removed all the dresses from the mannequins.)
After that it was off to Magic Kingdom where we got to experience the new security set-up. Having it at TTC was so much easier.
And there were Celebration posters in the TTC and in front of MK!
We didn’t do much that afternoon. It was crowded and hot. We rode pirates and that was kinda it.
We headed back to the hotel for a little nap and my package with my new trading cards in it had arrived at the hotel!
Yesssss finally I have some trading cards that DON’T have my full name splashed all over the front that I can hand out at events.
Then we headed to DHS for dinner.
Again we mostly just wandered around and didn’t really do anything. We ate at Backlot Express, looked in some stores, Kevin attempted to trade with the jawas but they weren’t interested.
I went oldschool with my shirt choice that evening:
It’s actually the only 501st shirt I have besides the C3 design. I still don’t have a MidSouth Garrison shirt. Or a Corellian Base shirt. Just this one old Southern Outpost shirt from 2004-2005?
We headed back to the hotel pretty early because it had been a long day. I got our costumes for Saturday ironed and everything else unpacked and we called it an early night.
Wednesday – Universal Studios
Universal day!!! Kevin hadn’t been in probably 20 years so we were excited for him to see the Harry Potter stuff!
As soon as we got in we were asked to take part in a marketing thing to watch a new show. We agreed because it sounded interesting and we’d each get $25 for doing it. I also figured Kevin wouldn’t have a problem because he definitely has opinions about tv. But he had some trouble with what some of the terms meant (Ie, “what does ‘cheesy’ mean?”) and I helped him as much as possible but in the end, Chase and I got done before him and had to leave so they could bring other people in. We stood around waiting on Kevin to come out but he was taking forever… because he had nobody to ask what certain things meant. Chase had to go back in and help him get finished and got scolded by one of the monitors. But Kevin FINALLY finished… it took an hour and a half out of our morning but we got $75 for it and that was dinner, so it was worth it.
We headed over into Springfield for lunch…
And then to Diagon Alley!! At lunch I gave Kevin his interactive wand.
We got ice cream first and then did Gringotts. Kevin and I tried to find places for him to do his interactive wand but every spot had a line. Even when we stood in the lines to do it, as soon as we got to the front, the “helper” wizard would disappear somewhere and we couldn’t get the “spell” to work. We never did manage to get any of the spots to work, which was disappointing to me but Kevin still like his wand.
We rode the train over to Islands next – this was the longest line we stood in all week.
We didn’t stay in Hogsmeade long, tho – Chase was hot and feeling weird so we passed on through to go find a regular food stand that didn’t have a line a mile long (like every spot in Hogsmeade). We went on through to Jurassic Park and met the Raptor which is something I’ve wanted to do for ages!!
We blew her a kiss and she didn’t care for it!
Over in the Cartoon area we met Betty Boop…
She was so sweet when Kevin asked for a hug at the end!
Then we met Cap over in the Marvel area…
After that we left IOA and walked back through CityWalk to the front of Universal again. We stopped at the Chocolate Emporium place for a snack. While there I discovered Kevin does a decent Shrek impression:
Chocolate:
Then we were hungry so we headed on to the Leaky Cauldron for dinner.
It was goooood I’d been looking forward to eating here again for 2 years!!
Then we headed over to see if we could ride the new Jimmy Fallon ride. Since it’s really new (I think it hadn’t even been open a week at that point?) they were still working out the kinks and the whole “virtual queue” thing wasn’t really working and we were just crammed in a room with a gazillion other people and it was impossible to look at the late show Exhibits. When we were called up to the lounge area it was so jam packed there was no way you could even get near one of the couches much less find a place to sit. One of the employees apologized and said they knew they didn’t have it down yet. But the ride itself was fun.
After that we left! We were exhausted, and our feet hurt! We found a Walgreens nearby to stop and pick up some snacks for later that night. Kevin said “Oshio!” and I found clam chowder in the parking lot.
Thursday – Hollywood Studios/Epcot
We got up early to get to DHS for rope drop. We headed straight in to meet BB8!
I forgot to pack Kevin’s Luke X-Wing pilot shirt š So he wore his “I’m Luke Skywalker” shirt to go with my disneybound Leia instead.
We took one spin on the Great Movie Ride for Kevin:
Then we headed to Epcot for the rest of the afternoon, to eat lunch at the Flower & Garden booths.
Also it was this day that made me question my “move” and “stand” goals on my Apple watch because we walked all around DHS in the morning and then completely around World Showcase Lagoon and I never met either goal! If I can’t meet the goal at Disney World I certainly can’t ever meet the goal at home sitting at a desk at work!
Before we started around the world Kevin met Baymax:
At the Japan booth one of the CMs made a paper crane for us:
We stopped in America so I could get the beef brisket burnt ends hash I liked so much from last year – unfortunately it was a little too “burnt” this year and wasn’t quite as good. But we sat in the shade for a while. Watched the Carrie Fisher tribute from Celebration that made me cry!
And Kevin got abducted by aliens:
Stopped in Norway for a troll horn and some school bread:
Chase met some fellow vikings:
Then we headed back to the hotel and we had another package!! Chase got me the Elhoffer Padme shrug!!
So I wore that to dinner.
Ok so we have never used uber or lyft or anything like that. We wanted to use it Saturday for getting to the con center, so we decided to do a test run first and had an uber pick us up at POFQ to take us to Beach Club for dinner. Worked fine! Yay!
A couple of Beach Club’s decorated Easter Eggs:
We had a few minutes to kill so we wandered around the gift store and then to the arcade.
Dinner was Beaches and Cream which was just as good as last time. Kevin still had quite a bit of milkshake left when we asked for the ticket so we asked for a to-go cup… before the waitress could even leave the table he downed the rest of it!
Kevin played a few more games in the arcade before we uber-ed back to the hotel.
Friday – Magic Kingdom/Epcot
Friday was an early morning because we had 8AM breakfast reservations!
First we discovered that Kevin had blown out a pair of shorts:
He said he must have an “acidic butt.”
Then our GPS took us a TOTALLY kooky way but it did take us back in through the other WDW sign so I was able to get a proper, non-construction photo of it:
Yeah our GPS took us in a giant circle, 10 minute longer circle. I don’t know if it was confused by construction or what but we followed it because we had plenty of time thankfully. Got to Boardwalk with still a good 20 minutes before our reservation.
Kevin said this car in the parking lot at Boardwalk looked like “The Fast and the Furious” so I said the car was fast, Kevin had to be the “furious”:
We really liked the new “Bon Voyage” breakfast at Trattoria al Forno. The pastries were SO GOOD:
And I made Kevin get the kid’s drink so I could get the glowing Pascal clip-on:
Kevin had the Tower of Pancakes:
Chase and I both had the Royale Breakfast which was steak, potatoes and an egg thingie.
Flynn came by first. My smoulder needs work:
Rapunzel was next and she was adorable:
Then Prince Eric came by:
Then Ariel!
Kevin had to show Ariel that we had dinglehoppers on the table. She was really funny, too. Told Kevin to make sure to wash his feet!
Then we went over to Magic Kingdom for a while. We got a pass for Peter Pan, then saw Philharmagic to kill some time. I found a new ear hat!
Then we went over to Memento Mori and Kevin finally got one of those transforming ghoul pictures. We had it sent back to the hotel so we didn’t get to see it til late Saturday.
Then we went back to ride Peter Pan and while we were in line I stumbled across the livefeed of the Last Jedi panel. Chase and I ended up watching the new trailer live over the feed while riding Peter Pan’s flight – it started just as we sat down in our boat and ended up just as we were getting out. LMAO.
Then we got some ice cream, went and rode the peoplemover, and said goodbye to Magic Kingdom for a while. Off to Epcot to end the night!
We hung around the UK pavilion for a while, watched Quickstep perform, and then it was time to check-in for dinner at Rose and Crown. (If we aren’t coming back for over a year we had to do our old fav on this trip.) As usual they were running behind and warned us we probably wouldn’t get seated until 10-20 minutes after our reservation time, which we expected (been like that the last few times we’ve been there), and didn’t mind (because the only reservation we could get was a little early so getting seated a little later was fine with us.
But then they seated us like 5 minutes after they gave us the buzzer, before it was even our reservation time LOL
We had a really great server who was a lot of fun and Chase and I had the pub burger again. Kevin had fish and chips. We were happy.
I got a rum Dole Whip on the way out and then we said goodbye to Epcot for a while.
Saturday – Celebration/Disney Springs
We’d been watching the organizational snafus with Celebration all week, wondering how we should approach Saturday. After Thursday’s madness we were thinking maybe we needed to be up at 4AM, head on over and get in line. I could take my costume in a garment bag and just wear a tanktop and shorts until I could get inside so I wouldn’t sweat all over it. We bought a little handheld fan in case we had to stand outside in line for hours.
Then everything kinda evened out and we decided to stick with our original plan, which was to leave around 9:30 to get there around 10. So we didn’t have to get up super early. We went over and had breakfast at the hotel…
And then got into costume and called for an uber.
SO EXCITED to finally have this costume finished!!
There was a little bit of a line to get in but we were through the doors in like 2 minutes, so no sweaty-standing-outside thankfully.
As I mentioned at the top of my post I had a sinus infection come on Friday night. I’m prone to them (get them multiple times a year) and my only major symptom is teeth pain. This one came on on the left side of my face and was super painful and none of my meds were working. Ended up getting some Afrin in the hotel store Friday night and while that helped with some of the pain my face still hurt, so all day Saturday smiling, talking, eating were all difficult! I can tell my smile looks weird and stiff in every photo because it hurt to bend my mouth like that, especially as the day wore on and my medicine was wearing off š
BUT I wasn’t going to let any of that stop me!!
Ran into @littlegummyfish right away!
And later @rschinks!
Kinda hung around the 501st shoot for a bit hoping to run into MSG folks:
And we did find Leah in her Boushh!
Went through the 501st room and Kevin had to do this photo-op:
Then we headed on into the exhibit hall and wandered around for a long time. Then breaktime, found a place to sit and had some lunch. Or, at least, Kevin and Chase had lunch. I didn’t want to eat in my costume!
About 2 weeks before we left for the trip, I realized we probably should have reversed and come down Friday, done the con Saturday, and then the 2-3 days of parks. But by that point it was too late to change our dinner reservations so we didn’t bother. But now I wish we had, because by Saturday we were all already exhausted. Kevin was trying to sit down everywhere all the time because he was so tired and I wasn’t much better.
Found Derek, Joe and Danielle!
Kevin and I in the Falcon set with BB8:
Found Jason!
Got more pics on Chase’s camera of course. So I’ll have to do more in a part 2.
We walked around the exhibit floor a little more, picked up the print we bought. I had wanted to go by the Slave Leia shoot just to say hi to a few people but it was a madhouse so we left. Then I wanted to see the costume contest so we went looking for the line. Got told brusquely we needed to have a wristband for it. Figured oh well and then walked away and then heard them calling for the line for the “cosplay panel” so we thought maybe the person we asked misunderstood and thought we were looking for the cosplay panel so we asked again to clarify, and got yelled at. WTF? Which reminds me I got barked at coming through security because I was helping Kevin. “One person at a time!” I just kept helping kevin remove stuff from his pockets and telling him how to hold his arms out and I think at that point the guy realized what was going on and didn’t say anything else. But you don’t have to be a jerk to start out with?
The funny thing is, we haven’t been to a Celebration since C3 in 2005… part of that is just that it never worked out for us to go to another, but a part of it was the fact that we hated the way C3 was run so much that I told Ash that we would NEVER go back to a con run by that same organization ever again. It was awful, we couldn’t get in to anything, we waited outside in the pouring rain in costume for hours, got told wrong information over and over again…. but we figured 12 years was plenty of time for them to work the kinks out and it’s a different company running them now and I hadn’t heard anything bad about other ones that I can recall. And then we finally go back to Celebration and it’s a giant organizational mess. It’s not like I don’t expect lines – but I do expect organized lines and not to be treated like cattle, or yelled at. I’m glad they saw the problems from Thursday and tried to adjust, but it’s so crazy that we went straight from one crazy disorganized Celebration in 2005 to another crazy disorganized Celebration in 2017.
All that being said we did have a really good time despite the con staff and disorganized nature and line after line after line. We saw lots of neat costumes and stuff in the exhibit hall.
We did quickly realize that one day was not near enough time to see everybody we wanted to see. We really didn’t want to “do” much – there were no panels we wanted to see, we mostly just wanted to walk through the exhibit floor, see our friends, see costumes. But one day wasn’t enough for that. I missed seeing so many people I wanted to. I wish we’d done 2 days, maybe friday and saturday. Maybe next time it comes back around to orlando we’ll split our trip, stay 2 nights by the con center and do 2 of the con days, then move over to Disney for a couple of park days. Live & learn.
We called for an uber and headed back to the hotel, Chase took a few pics of me (should have them tonight!) and we got changed, jumped on the boat and headed to Disney Springs for dinner.
(Here’s the awkward “my face hurts” smile.)
Also Chase wore his Han gunbelt and lost a part of it probably in the uber. Gonna have to try to find a replacement which makes me super sad š
We had planned on doing Blaze Pizza for dinner, but Polite Pig opened a few days before so we decided to try that instead.
It was SUPER good!! I had a brisket sandwich with beer cheese fondue and mac and cheese and it was sooooo yummy.
Then we stopped in at Lego for Chase, and made a turn through Uniqlo and D-Living, then headed back to the hotel because I could barely keep my eyes open!
We stopped by the hotel gift shop on the way to our room to get Kevin’s transforming photo:
COOL!!
As we were walking back we noticed they were setting up the screen to show Moana in the open grassy area. Kevin wanted to go back and watch it so I told him if he could remember how to go back to the room on his own he could because we were too tired for it. I walked him back down to the screen with a towel to sit on and sat with him for a minute and the weather was so nice and the grass was cool and it wasn’t a big crowd… I ended up staying. Chase came back down for a while, too. We watched about a half hour of it before we told Kevin we had to call it a night, we had a long drive ahead of us the next day. But it was really nice while we were there.
Sunday – Driving Home
We got up at 5am, loaded the car and hit the road!! Chase was THE BEST and let me sleep for freaking 4 hours in the car since I was still dealing with the sinus infection crap (and still am). And then he kept driving on through Birmingham!! I felt bad about making him do the lion’s share of driving, but it was nice to just rest. I did drive a bit through AL-MS.
Dropped Kevin off at his house then grabbed quick dinner and headed home to see our crazy cat.
As usual she was happy to see us but stayed away from us after the initial excitement LOL
I have all the photos here and I’ll be adding some more tonight from Chase’s camera. Also our photopass photos! And I’ll make another photo post tomorrow too.
In the meantime that’s kinda it for us for a bit. While I’m still planning on doing a couple of Dragoncon days, and our local cons, we are buckling down to start look at buying a new house sometime soon… hopefully. Just in the beginning stages, but no Disney for a while, time to be adults… which I’m totally ok with because we are bursting at the seams in our current house, I’m ready for a new adventure…