The Little Trip That Could - Disney Day 2

Tuesday felt like we were on borrowed time.  Hurricane Idalia was heading toward Florida, and while it was supposed to hit more in the area between Tampa and the panhandle, we were still going to get a lot of rain and maybe a little wind on Wednesday.  The rain was supposed to start moving in later Tuesday afternoon, so I wanted to get an early start.  I started out the morning with a COVID test--finally a full negative--so I could hopefully skip the masks for the rest of the trip, other than maybe the flight home.  Jacob and Craig went to the basketball court first thing in the morning, but their return and morning prep weren't quite as speedy as I was hoping.  I wanted to get to our first park around opening so we could maybe ride one of the popular rides before the lines got long.  But ugh, just like last year, it didn't quite work out that way.  Our grocery delivery hadn't arrived yet so we also had to stop at the snack bar at the resort for some breakfast.  You'd have never known that a hurricane was hours away.  It was a gorgeous morning.  

One of our bummer moments early in the trip was seeing that the resort boat to Disney Springs (which would usually be in view at the right of the picture above) wasn't running.  We weren't sure if it was related to the hurricane, but it felt like last year's basketball court moment all over again seeing that.  We wrapped up a quick breakfast and headed out to our first park, Animal Kingdom.  It was our last park last year, but we decided it was a good one for a potentially rain-shortened day since we managed to finish it early last year and it closes earlier than the rest of the parks, as well.  

It was another scorcher of a day, as Animal Kingdom always seems to be.  But the view of the Tree of Life never gets old.  

Jacob had an odd obsession with The Lion King for a few weeks before we left so I made sure to take this picture!  I can't even count the number of times I heard "Hakuna Matata" over the last month, between him playing it on repeat and then hearing it around the parks and resort numerous times.  Had we had a little more time that day I would have made him sit through the Lion King show at Animal Kingdom as payback.

We only briefly looked at a couple animal exhibits on our way to the safari ride.  The otters were sleeping but we did find these cotton top tamarins and enjoyed seeing the baby hanging out with what we presumed was the mama.

We always love the Kilimanjaro Safari ride, and luckily the wait wasn't super long.  We were trying to avoid buying Genie+ as much as possible and figured we could get away with just buying the Lightning Lane on Avatar Flight of Passage, which was the one big ride we were all excited about.  On the safari I managed to take a good picture of all three boys since one-that-will-not-be-named wouldn't look last year.  

We saw a bunch of animals, but one of my favorites is always this breed of cattle with giant horns.  That was an impressive rack!

There was a baby zebra right up near the truck, and of course as I was taking pictures, the zebra peed.  You can see the stream and the foamy puddle between its feet.  The boys gave me grief for taking the picture, but hey, you don't see that every time!

We also saw a ton of giraffes up close.  

I almost got a picture of a rhino nursing, but it moved its head at the last second.

We also saw pelicans, lots of four-legged deer/antelope-type animals, painted dogs, elephants, gnus, mandrills, lions, and warthogs.  It's always a neat ride and always different.  Usually once we wrap up the safari, we walk through all the other animal exhibits, but Jacob was in a little bit of a rush, so we skipped those for the moment.  Another anticipated family ride was Kali River Rapids, the raft ride.  It was sure hot enough to ride it, so we changed into our wet clothes and shoes as needed and hopped in line.  It wasn't quite as short as last year, but it was still fast enough that we rode it twice in a row.  It's a fun ride, not as drenching as most amusement parks' versions, but it has a rather large drop in the middle that I had never seen on a ride like this prior to riding it last year.

Loading dock at Kali River Rapids

We got modestly wet by the end of our second ride.  Unlike some rides where everyone is drenched, the wetness is usually in patches on this one.  It's pretty tolerable and could likely be managed with a poncho and sandals.  The boys absolutely love using the buttons on the bridge at the end of the ride to douse people in water streams when they get stuck in the unloading line.  I got nailed by one of those pretty good on our second ride!
  

After that ride, we decided we had just enough time to eat lunch before our Flight of Passage Lightning Lane came up.  As we walked toward the restaurant, we passed by Kevin, the bird from Up, which is probably one of my favorite characters to see because he's so unique and moves so interestingly.

 

 

 

We also stopped to see the otters again, and they were a bit more active this time.  I forgot to take pictures, probably because we were distracted by the guy who not-so-tactfully told Jacob and Craig to move so everyone could see.  There was plenty of room, but whatever.  We ate (for the third straight visit) at Pizzafari.  It took forever due to a mistake with our allergy order (Jacob's and Craig's came out pretty quickly but the rest did not), but the food was good and the stint in the air conditioning was even better. 

We headed over to Pandora for our ride.  It really is an impressive area with all of the odd foliage and giant rock formations.  

We were so excited to ride Flight of Passage again.  Last year's ride was pretty hilarious because we didn't know what to expect and the two ride-phobes in our party spent most of the ride freaking out in rather entertaining fashion.  It's a very convincing 3-D simulator ride, where you're riding a banshee creature and soaring down waterfalls, under rock formations, and generally swooping all over.  We felt bad for the dad in our group that didn't fit in the seat, but hopefully his kids were entertained by the other dad (Craig) down the way acting like a crazy person!  He did better knowing what to expect this year, but I definitely think the ride pushes him to his limit!  We opted to skip the other ride in Pandora, Navi River Journey, because the line was perpetually long and we thought it was a little boring last year.  Now that we've seen the movie (one of the first things we did when we got home last year), we might have appreciated it more, but it wasn't worth an hour.

The last full-family ride on the agenda was Dinosaur.  Carter and I rode it last year and thought it was fun (and funny because the girls behind us spent the entire ride freaking out), and we figured Craig and Jacob could handle it.  It was right near the park entrance so it was a reasonably easy sell before they headed out.

It turned out that Jacob wasn't really a fan.  Craig thought it was okay but more different than he expected given that the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, which he rode a few years back, seemed to be a similar format.  They accused us of hiding a "drop" on the ride, but it was a completely controlled small hill, maybe 5-10 feet or so, but I guess being in the dark made everything seem worse.  Jacob just doesn't like being forced to ride rides, so I think that added to his annoyance.  Oh well.  But Carter and I enjoyed it once again!  

Back outside, the big boys took off for the resort, and I took a couple pictures of Dinoland U.S.A. since it probably won't be there next time we go.  It's supposed to get replaced with Zootopia and Moana in the coming years, which is probably a good thing because it's felt a bit lacking since they took out the Primeval Whirl coaster a few years back.

Figured we'd try, but couldn't find the angle for the middle of the belly!

Carter and I took off to ride Expedition Everest.  The line wasn't too long, and we got about halfway through before there was an announcement that they were having technical difficulties and needed to close the ride.  Well, crap.  We decided to leave the line and go check out all the animal exhibits we skipped earlier.  We saw the komodo dragon, which Carter had a nice chat about with the cast member in that section since he did a report on them last year.  He even pulled out a skeleton for us to see.  We saw these guys, which I believe are okapi.

We saw this pretty yellow bird...

...and we just caught a glimpse of the gorilla baby riding on its mom's back.

Zoom in and you can see them upper left of center

We saw the giant bats.  We could barely see one with its wings open like we saw last time, but this one was creepy on its own.  They're so big!

While we were in the one bird aviary, we were getting dive bombed by a flock of birds!  They were sitting in one spot and started darting across the way right at head level.  It was slightly terrifying!  After we dodged all of them and got to a safe spot, we saw this giant blue bird.  I believe it's a crested pigeon.

When we finished up the trails, Expedition Everest was still listed as closed but we headed back that way anyway.  The complicating factor was that the rain was coming within an hour or so, and we wanted to wrap things up and get back to the resort before that started.  It had been a generally decent day--hot and sunny in the morning, and then a bit cloudy in the afternoon, which made the heat a little more tolerable.  It didn't exactly make for pretty pictures, but that was a small price to pay for a little more relief. 

I should note here that my big challenge for this trip was to get different pictures than last year.  Yes, I still wanted to get enough pictures to remember everything, but I didn't want a whole set of duplicate pictures a year apart, or to end up with too few pictures by avoiding what I knew I captured last year.  I forced myself to think about the pictures I was taking and how I might change them up--new angles, different times of day, etc.  The cloudy and wet weather probably helped differentiate them, too.  I'm sure I still have some dupes, but I think I did a pretty decent job trying to find new spots and different details.  I still felt like a lot of the best shots got covered last year, but I did get a couple great moments this year and overall I appreciated the challenge of forcing myself to get creative because it made me look around a bit more and notice things I hadn't before.  I loved this pic of Everest.

We had little choice at this point but to wait it out and see if we could fit it in before the rain came.  I didn't want to miss it since it's probably one of the most thrilling, traditional thrill rides in all of Disney World.  It's super fun--a nice hill, a backward part, cute effects with the Yeti--so it broke my heart to think about skipping it.  While we waited, we caught some boats of characters in the lagoon in the middle of the park.  The kites we saw last year were probably more photogenic, but at least we had something to pass the time.

Finally, we noticed they were testing the ride--I might have never been so relieved to hear a ride running!  Then the crowd started getting a little more bunched up in front of the entrance so we were hopeful something was happening, and they soon announced that Lightning Lanes could start going in.  Then they opened the main queue, and we found a good spot where we flowed in quickly...so quickly we ended up on the first ride!  It took a few more test runs while we stood in our loading lane, which was a little nervewracking worrying that maybe they opened prematurely.  But then we saw the test rider come back and it was our turn!  I noticed the super ominous clouds in the distance as we went up the lift hill and felt so grateful we were officially on the ride!  We loved it as usual and were so happy to have gotten it in before the rain!

The must-do photo!

We decided to wander through more animal trails on our way out.  We saw the kangaroos...

...snapped a selfie with the tree...

...and saw this lemur grooming itself.

As we wandered through, the breeze was picking up.  I tried to capture the sound of bamboo clacking in the wind, but I don't think it was particularly effective.  As we were waiting for the coaster, Craig sent a picture of him and Jacob with Chip and Dale at the resort.

Carter was a little jealous so he wanted a picture with Simba and Pumba as we headed out of the park, since Jacob was a big Lion King fan and missed it.  Next best thing, I guess?

On our way out, we captured pic #1 in our Disney 100 series.

We hopped on a bus and started back toward the resort.  We had an interesting drive past the ESPN Wide World of Sports and a few of the resorts.  The sky was so dark and you could tell the wind was picking up.  All of a sudden we came around a corner and I noticed the haze of rain in the distance, and almost immediately it hit us--hard.  Whipping wind and hard rain.  There were three older South African folks near us on the bus who asked if the Florida weather always changes this quickly, as it doesn't do that at home.  I said that this was part of a hurricane so it's usually not quite this bad, but yes, Florida weather change on a dime and can be a little crazy.  I couldn't help but smirk as the bus music played "I Can See Clearly Now, The Rain is Gone" as we drove, since the rain had just arrived and probably wouldn't be going anywhere for a bit!  We put on our sandals and ponchos in preparation for walking from the bus stop to our villa, and we definitely needed them!  This was the view from our patio once we got back:

 

Despite the forecast originally being rainy for the rest of the night, it stopped long enough for us to grab some dinner at Port Orleans.  We got beignets afterward, too!  Jacob ate his on the spot but the rest of us were too full and took ours to go.  It made for a good birthday breakfast for me a couple days later!  

As we wandered outside a bit afterward, I took the opportunity to grab a picture I saw someone else post somewhere, where you use the doubloons on the outside of the entrance as Mickey ears!  Carter did it later, too.
 

I also happened to catch this shot with the evening sky, which looks like a fake background!

We also saw the alligator band on the path to the pool!

Since the weather seemed to hold off for a bit, we decided to do a pool night while we still could.  The boys got in a few minutes of basketball first, though...

The pool was peaceful and very comfortable in the evening air.  The slide was a little extra exciting in the dark, and my sore, park-weary legs and feet appreciated a quick hot tub soak as well. 

We stayed right until closing time, at which point we realized that no buses would be running to get us back to the room because we needed a park bus and they were all closed!  So, that was the first time we tried walking back, and it was honestly more doable than I thought--less than 15 minutes.  Every step counts when you're hitting five-digit step counts daily, but my wet sandals were actually pretty amazing and cushioned the one irritated spot I already had on my baby toe.

As I settled in for the night, I finally checked out some hurricane coverage.  It was surreal that we'd had a fun day and surprisingly pleasant night and yet a hurricane would be hitting imminently.  It wouldn't be bad by us--quite rainy and a bit breezy--but knowing people on the other side of the state, just hours away, were bracing for the worst, was hard.  I felt a bit selfish that I'd been so preoccupied with our trip that I was forgetting there were people who were truly going to be affected by this, to a far greater degree than a crappy vacation day.  To be fair, it hadn't been a really bad storm up until that day, but it really strengthened over those last 24 hours due to a historically hot Gulf of Mexico to some seriously bad winds and higher storm surge than they initially expected. When I went to sleep, I knew we'd wake up to a whole new situation, but we'd figure it out, somehow.

The Little Trip That Could - Disney Day 1

The whole COVID thing threw such a wrench into this trip and it felt endlessly frustrating at the beginning.  I was finally out of quarantine on Sunday.  I took a test that morning since I was feeling pretty good, and at first I thought it was negative, but by the end there was a super faint line that you could only see in really good lighting.  But it was close.  Now that I was free from my bedroom, I had a lot of catching up to do, albeit in a mask.  I spent most of the day running around the house packing things up and trying to fit everything in carry-on bags.  I almost never close the Move ring on my watch unless I work out or do things outside the house, and I did it pretty easily.  I did go out to Five Below, Target, and Walmart on a quest to find a better backpack for the parks, and Walmart came up huge with an $11 backpack that was the exact size, weight, and setup I was looking for.  It even had extra straps for water bottles so I didn't have to worry about them falling out of the mesh pouches.  No joke, it was the hero of the trip. 

Our flight was out of Buffalo, so we drove to my parents' house around dinner time.  We argued pretty much the entire way there, mostly about which parks to do which days and how to have more resort time for Jacob.  Me being sick made those conversations hard to have in advance.  I was in a terrible mood because this whole trip just felt impossible and ill-advised for multiple reasons.  Not only was I dealing with COVID and being masked, but there was also a hurricane approaching Florida.  It wouldn't be a direct hit, but it looked pretty sure that we'd get a lot of rain for a part of the trip.  We were so limited on time that it seemed like one park day was destined to be ruined, and any preplanning I had done was pretty much pointless.  No matter what I did, I couldn't snap out of the funk or feel any of the anticipation or magic that I usually feel.  When we got to my parents', I ate dinner in a separate room, masked when we were chatting, and settled in for the night pretty early since we had to leave for the airport around 5:30.  I slept on an air mattress in the basement to stay separate and did not sleep well at all.  It wasn't the mattress's fault--my brain just wouldn't shut up.  I thought about all the things I probably forgot to do or pack before we left and worried about the trip in general.  It was so frustrating.  I was awake when my alarm went off at 4:30 and it was still so crushing to be up that early.

Our flight was around 8am and I decided that despite the painful wakeup, I still sort of like super early flights better.  The airport is quieter, the darkness outside is calming, and I always like a good sunrise takeoff.  But this was the next best thing, and I couldn't complain since we had a direct flight that would still get us there by 11am.  We made it through security and on the plane uneventfully, although I was sort of dying having to be in a mask.  I would have masked on the plane anyway, but after days of straight mask wearing my ears hurt and my face felt permanently dented.  It was also hard to do much of anything without sweating.  On the bright side, we were flying Jet Blue and had screens, so I took the opportunity to watch a movie I've wanted to see and knew no one would watch it with me, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.  I loved the book as a tween and just re-read it around when the movie came out earlier this year.  The movie was cute and brought back a lot of memories.  I thought they did a nice job on it.  It was a nice diversion for a couple hours, but I was still in a funk on the plane.  Usually just being in an airport is enough to perk me up, but I was still just feeling zero joy and not excited at all.

Just getting out of the airport and to the resort proved to be a challenge.  We were in a different terminal than our previous trips so our planned early lunch option didn't work out as expected.  There was a Chick-fil-A in our terminal, so we figured we could just go there.  The line was long and Jacob got grumpy pretty quickly, probably because he didn't really realize that we couldn't just go find the Firehouse Subs we'd seen last time.  This ended up being the first time I decided we should have rented a car.  It would have been easier to not worry about getting to the shuttle and just go out to find somewhere to eat.  We got our food to go, and headed toward ground transportation.  Well, there was an escalator on the way, and Carter was already having trouble wrangling his suitcase.  Somehow he fell.  Luckily he saved his drink from going all over, but a few minutes later we realized he was bleeding from three cuts on his knee from the edge of the escalator step, like he was slashed by a claw.  Ugh.  Then we got a little turned around trying to find our spot, Carter continued to have suitcase challenges, and everyone just got agitated as we tried to sort everything out.  We struggled to find the shuttle (different spot than last time) and had to wait when we got there, though it was just enough time to wolf down our food.  We ended up being the last stop of probably six, so the ride took forever.  That was the second moment I wished I had a car.  We still got to the resort in the early afternoon, so not all bad.  

Then we had a little disagreement about how to start our time.  Initially we didn't have a room so we thought about grabbing our suits and going right to the pool (or Jacob right to the basketball court, which was confirmed to be open this time), but thankfully we got assigned one pretty quickly.  But we still had to figure out what we were doing, and we settled on Carter and me going to the room first with the bags while the big boys played basketball.  It was hot and it just felt like a lot to figure out because we were staying farther from the hospitality house than in the past.  Eventually we figured out the shuttle situation (park shuttles to get back to the hospitality house, Disney Springs shuttle to get back to our room, and near the end we just started walking half the time anyway) and things got easier.

I will say that it's nice when you stay at the same resort because it's a bit of a homecoming.  You know the lay of the land and even your room looks nearly identical from trip to trip.  It just feels homey and familiar.  I can see why people love it.  But it still felt too soon to be back in a lot of ways.  Not that I don't enjoy it, but it's still a lot to wrangle and I think I probably needed to miss it a little more for full effect.  This was the view from our villa.  The golf course was in the distance.

We ended up back at the pool once we settled in.  The big pool is lovely and the slide is great.  It was super hot and the pool was almost too warm.  But it was still better than our pool at home!  I tried to soak up the time while the weather was still decent.  We did get rained on a little while at the pool, but it was super tolerable and never got that bad.  We did a lot of slide runs and just hung out in the water for a while.

This is the sauna.  It's always such a pretty sight at night when the light comes on.

When we wrapped up our pool time, we grabbed some Dole Whip.  The resort's key lime twist is so good!

After we changed and got settled, we headed out to Disney Springs for dinner.  The weather was still a little iffy, but we didn't get much more than sprinkles at any point that first day, which already beat last year's trip where it rained something of significance every day!  The good news is that with more clouds and less sun, the heat was manageable.  I was still sweating like a pig, but it was better than full sun!

We ate at Art Smith's Homecomin', where we had a great meal last year.  We could eat on the patio, which was easier with me still technically needing to mask.  We went to the Lego store as usual so the boys could build their usual minifigures, and also hit up the gluten-free bakery to get some extra treats for Jacob.  

I also got him to recreate this photo from our trip 10 years ago, more easily than I expected!

Crazy the difference 10 years can make!  He's just about as tall as her now...and who knew Cinderella was about six feet tall?!  

We took the bus back to the resort that night and the sky was quite pretty.

As we were hanging out in the room that night, we noticed that there was a frog on the door to the patio!  It was funny because 10 years ago we were welcomed to our villa with a giant frog on a patio chair, and this time we had one on our door!  There are lizards everywhere, but even one of my big Disney fan friends said she had never seen one, let alone two!

And so ended Day 1.  I was in a slightly better mood by then since we'd had a good, full, successful first day, but the hurricane still had me questioning everything.  We were supposed to start getting rain by late afternoon the next day, and then it would rain for a while.  Jacob was annoyed that we would ruin a resort day with rain.  While I understand his thinking--it's easier to do things in a park in rain than when you're stuck at the resort where almost everything was outside--I was still hesitant to commit to a park day spent entirely in ponchos hoping the rides stayed open.  So, that was a constant battle at the beginning of the trip.  I was endlessly annoyed that I had four weather apps on my phone (out of desperation for some sort of consensus), and nothing agreed other than some form of rain Tuesday night through most of Wednesday.  The rest of the weekdays were complete mysteries, but at least our last day and a half looked promising!  But it was hard to figure out when the hurricane rain was going to stop or how much it would be as it tapered.  It made it impossible to plan anything!  But first, we were going to fit in one good day, as much as we could!

Thoughts from Quarantine

Quarantine has been an odd experience.  I guess it's interesting to be on this end after five rounds of it (well, actually four since we didn't do full-on quarantine for Jacob's Christmas infection) on the other side, but yeah, it's not great.

I mean, on the bright side, I haven't had to cook since Tuesday, I found time to update my family reunion family tree, and I've watched far more movies than I have ever seen in a three-day span.  It came in a little handy since there were some movies I was supposed to watch leading up to Disney, and I did well blowing through them: Tron, Tron 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, Encanto, Moana.  I've thrown in a couple fun ones, too.  I'd been waiting to watch Ticket to Paradise for a while and finally got that one, and I hadn't seen Invincible or 10 Things I Hate About You in a while.  What else is there to do in my room for hours on end, right?  It was nice at times, sure, because a lot of these had been on my list for a while and I never slow down enough to focus for that long.  But in reality, there were other things I would have preferred to be doing after a while.

In theory it was nice to have a free pass to not do all the things I'm usually responsible for.  But even for a mom who rarely gets to do things like this alone, it gets old.  I'm sort of annoyed we're spending so much money on eating out, and I'm getting a little sick of it...which isn't good since we have another whole week of that ahead of us.  The boys have insisted they're keeping the house running downstairs and yet every time I go down there I notice crumbs on the counter or table, dishes stacked high in the sink, and things left untouched.  We got a new fridge delivered yesterday, which ended up being a huge debacle.  Between getting ice and putting everything into every cooler we owned, to cleaning out the fridge (admittedly, it was gross), to the whole process of disconnecting the old one and realizing there was an issue connecting the new one, getting in an emergency plumber, removing all the shrink wrap and taped-in shelves, and finally restocking the fridge and managing emptying of the coolers, it was such a process, and I ended up doing a lot of it myself, partly for safety and partly because I was the only one with the attention to detail to do it.  And when I came down the next morning, Craig had taken care of most of the coolers and ice, but there was still all the papers and stuff all over the counter.  The boys would get annoyed with me every time I came down for something, but usually I needed to and each time there was something I felt compelled to clean up.  It's not that they weren't doing anything, I'm sure, but what they were doing barely scratched the surface of the things they're used to me doing and probably didn't even think about having to do.  It was a weird week so I can't entirely blame them, but clearly we need to work on seeing an issue and doing something about it.  Anyway, I tried to chip away whenever I went downstairs.  Otherwise I'd have a million things to do Sunday when I'm released from isolation.  

Speaking of which, packing is extremely hard and is going to end up very last minute.  I got my clothes together and I have lists ready to go, but there is so much I need to do out in the house (and maybe out in public).  I ended up going outside today so I could unmask for a bit and do trimming around the yard that needed to be done before we left, and even take a walk to just be a little more active.  But there's still more that I need to do last minute.  Plant watering (and maybe setting up some extra watering, just in case), dish washing, maybe some last minute laundry for Carter, wash sheets so our bed is clean for both of us when we get back, and just run freely around the house to gather up all the randomness that needs to come with us, like our fans, charging cables, cooling towels, band-aids, etc.  It's going to be a lot.

As a whole this experience has been more mentally challenging than physically challenging.  I only had about 24 hours of more intense sickness, and even that was just "bad cold" level...or even more just "normal cold and bad headache".  It's improved relatively quickly and I'm hopeful that will be it.  But this whole time it's been in the back of my mind--from the rib/lung pain I had the first night until now--whether something more serious could come out of this.  I've known too many people with lasting effects of COVID and it's been my biggest fear all along.  From fatigue to heart stuff to the taste thing (obviously smell is already a done deal) to brain fog, any of it has worried me in some way.  I keep waiting for something to happen, and thankfully it has not yet so I'm hoping I'm in the clear.  But it's still a worry.  And in the meantime I've had to worry about the rest of my family getting sick, which thankfully hasn't happened and hopefully won't.  Of course, then I read about how school districts are already closing less than a month into the school year due to absences from respiratory illnesses like COVID, RSV, and flu, so clearly things are circulating.

It's been hard being isolated from everyone and unable to talk about the trip or just communicate at length about almost everything.  I'm looked at accusingly whenever I come downstairs for any reason.  I know why, but it's still not fun.  It's just not realistic for me to stay in a room for five days.  Maybe they were closer to being able to do that when they were isolating, but again, there are too many things around the house that I need to sort of be involved with.  And I wasn't exactly being waited on hand and foot so I still needed to bring back dishes or refill water.  We also didn't have the smoothest initial discussion on how I would isolate, which led to all sorts of weirdness and spaces switching purposes midweek.  Like, I couldn't go into my bedroom entirely because work station was downstairs, and I couldn't use the basement for work or the bathroom because they wanted that space, but later they had second thoughts and sent me down there to use the bathroom and work, which made that space off-limits for them even though I was only using the parts of it with closed doors.  It's all just been odd and awkward.  The release from isolation will be helpful, but it will only bring a bit more relief if I can test negative and worry less about masking.

None of this is how I wanted to lead into this trip.  I wanted this to be a fun week and it was clearly not.  I wanted to be organized and ahead of the game, and I'm not.  I wanted to be excited, and between COVID and the weather, I'm definitely not.  We put a lot of eggs in this basket and it's not looking promising at the moment.  I want to be all laid back and just go with the flow, but that's not how Disney vacations are for me because I'm not spending thousands to sit in a hotel room, or even by a pool, and hang out.  I can do that for a lot less elsewhere.  This just isn't what I wanted and it all just feels a little doomed right now.  On the other hand, I had a realization on my walk tonight.  I was sort of pondering with God what on earth I'm supposed to be learning from this situation.  I'm still annoyed that my leap of faith was squashed so forcefully and I'm just frustrated at the thought that my lesson is to not do fun things when you have the chance, or to always err on the side of caution.  That's already such a battle for me so I don't know why that would be reinforced.  But I had the thought that maybe God is telling me that a) there's no sense worrying about things so much ahead because they're either going to happen or not, and since you don't have that much control, there's no sense wasting the worry until it happens (which, obviously COVID did); and b) you can have this terrible thing pop up that stands to ruin everything and actually have it not ruin everything.  Whether that is actually the case remains to be seen with both COVID and the weather.  Maybe a weather situation would actually be a fun experience, and I need to try to find the positives in something like that if it happens, but I still worry there will be a sense of loss either way.  I hope I can hop on here in a week or so and be like, "it was the best ever", but I can't say I'm confident right now.  Hopefully the magic takes over and it's all good...but we'll see.  Praying for a negative test in the morning and a smooth trip to follow...

About Tuesday...

At the end of my last post I lamented Tuesday.  Why?  Well...during the day it became apparent that the cold I assumed I caught from Carter was sticking in there.  I felt mostly fine, but just had congestion and a runny nose, just like he had.  My stomach was a little off, but that can happen with me from time to time, though it doesn't usually last all day like it did.  But as a whole I felt fine and it seemed to be following what Carter was dealing with over the weekend, albeit with a rumbly stomach and a couple bathroom trips around each meal.  We went to Carter's baseball night and my parents actually came in to see him play.  They were going to come in last week when they were south of Rochester at their friends' lake cottage, but they were a bit tired after a hike at Stony Brook so they went home.  But Tuesday was a lovely night so they made the drive out on the more scenic northern route to see him play.  It was nice to see them and catch up, and Carter had a couple good plays, so they enjoyed it.

I was getting a little more tired by the end of the game, and my nose was running a bit more (again, just like Carter where it would spontaneously run out of the blue).  Jacob had training so he and Craig left separately, and Carter and I went home.  As I sat in my chair, all of a sudden I started getting chills.  It wasn't quite teeth-chattering bad, but it was uncomfortable and lasted a while.  I didn't have a fever, though.  I texted Craig and pondered whether I should send him for a COVID test on their way home.  In the end he grabbed a few and I headed toward bed early and took a test with me.  Much to my agony, the test line showed up almost immediately, even quicker and darker than the control line.  Noooooooooo.  Why now?!  I avoided COVID (for the most part) for three and a half years and I get it now, a week ahead of our trip to Disney?  Seriously?!  

Of course this set off some panic throughout the house, from wondering what this meant for the trip and also how we were going to keep me quarantined.  Jacob was beside himself, and I felt soooo guilty.  I can't even describe the feeling of sadness and anger and dread.  It took me forever to go to sleep and my heart rate was elevated all night--nothing dangerous, but something akin to what my walking heart rate normally is, but it happened while I was trying to lay down and relax.  I wasn't sure if it was stress or COVID.  Plus I had this strange pain under my left ribs that hurt most when I tried to take a deep breath.  I was irrationally worried it was a blood clot in my lung (because COVID does weird stuff), or maybe a COVID lung issue in general.  Fortunately that went away by morning, but it tortured me most of the night.  I woke up from what little sleep I had around 5:30am with a splitting headache, so I took some medicine and tried to go back to sleep.  I maybe got in a little more rest after that, but had to get up and do some work in the morning because I had a lot to wrap up before vacation and I didn't really have the choice to not do it.  So as long as I could feel functional, I needed to work.  I made it through about half the morning and took a nap, and then worked again after lunch until about 3:30 when I was almost done with the biggest thing I needed to do, and felt like I needed another nap, which lasted until about 5pm.  I just felt generally crappy.  The headache was really hard to work through.  I was a little achy and tired, and still congested.  

I spent the night in my room and watched a couple movies (including one I needed to see before Disney), and actually finally got a decent night of sleep.  I think I slept until about 7:30 without more than some rollover wakeups.  But when I woke up the headache had retreated to just a bit below the surface.  My energy level felt better, and even the congestion wasn't as bad.  I think my drainage has moved into my throat a little because I have little coughing fits and more throat clearing right now.  But as a whole I felt a lot better today.  I had a little return of the congestion, but that seemed to lay off again too.  I'm hoping the progress continues, but COVID isn't always a linear recovery, so we'll see.  I think I can be functional by the time we go, but whether I will have "Disney energy" remains to be seen.  Adrenaline will help, but I may have to be a bit more careful and selective about what we do.  At least it might keep me closer to my family's energy level, which I think was sort of the case when Craig and I went when I was pregnant--I was just down enough energy that I didn't run him as ragged as I normally would have, which likely kept us both on the same page more easily.  

As a whole, I hate feeling like I'm poisonous to my family.  The thought that my breath or touch could get them sick is hard.  I usually get the evil eye every time I come out of whatever room I'm quarantining in, even though everyone is masked.  I'm the last one in the family to have to go through this, and in some ways it's easier and in some ways it's harder.  I never liked seeing them suffer, so being the one in this position now just feels like it was my turn.  On the other hand, I guess I don't mind some solo, guilt-free down time.  The fact I watched two movies two nights in a row is a little mind-blowing and pretty much something I can't remember ever doing.  But I hate that this is happening now.  How did I avoid it for so long and end up with this extra-crappy timing?  

So, the main fear right now is whether anyone else is going to get it.  We have the odd record here of no one ever catching it within our house, five times running.  Every time someone has been sick, no one else has caught it even though there was ample opportunity each time.  I worry so much that this will be the time that's not the case, and probably JUST in time to mess up our trip even more.  We tested Carter immediately that first night and he was negative.  But he was with me in the car twice that night, I slept next to Craig Monday night, and I sat at the dinner table with everyone Tuesday, so it's possible everyone could have been exposed.  I guess we'll probably know by Saturday or so if anyone's going to get it.  At that point we'd probably have to cancel our trip, but we're hoping that's not the case.  Everyone has been masking around the house since I got my positive test, even though I'm masking and we're keeping distance for the most part.  It's hard in our house since we only have one full bath and just a half downstairs.  But we determined it was easier for me to sleep in our room and use the downstairs bathroom.  For whatever reason the boys all slept in the basement the first night as everyone was decompressing from the bad news, and in the living room the next night.  I don't know why the kids aren't sleeping in their rooms, but whatever--I guess everyone is a little discombobulated.  Working has been a challenge as my workspace is in the dining room and I had work that needed my big screen.  I did work those few hours in the afternoon there yesterday, about 15-20 feet away from everyone else, but the boys decided they should give up the basement so I could move down to my desk in the basement office for the rest of the week because they felt safer that way.  It's still hard to have me be the quarantined one because I'm the main cook and house manager, and no one is serving me quite like I served everyone else when they were quarantined.  I have to go to the kitchen because no one is picking up my dishes or bringing me snacks.  We ordered out dinner the last two nights.  I'd probably have felt good enough to cook today but the boys are pretty skittish about me being around or touching anything, so I guess we'll keep eating out.

My other personal fear, assuming we go, is that I'm dreading having to wear a mask in Florida.  It wouldn't be the whole time, as my 10 days will end mid-trip, but with the heat there (and possibly being a bit lower energy as it is), I'm just not sure how I will do it.  I sit and sweat in my 75 degree room wearing a mask, so 100 is going to be much harder.  I'm actually hoping I can test negative before we go so I can be a bit more selective about when I mask.  I was going to wear one on the plane anyway, but sharing and sleeping in essentially one big space is not ideal (around a larger corner, but still), and I'd feel better about that if I'm testing negative.  The heat will be horrible so hopefully outside I can mostly be unmasked, but inside I will probably need to do it for a bit, especially if a space is too tight.  It's super frustrating but I suppose it's a small price to pay for still being able to go.  

I'm still pondering how I got it.  Obviously in retrospect the Cedar Point trip seems stupid now.  If I could go back in time I'd probably buy the passes and try to go in September.  I'm mad at myself.  But we went to Darien Lake a bunch this summer and nothing happened, so why should this really have been any different?  Yet it's odd to me that I got it and Carter didn't since we spent the entire weekend together.  We were in the same lines and spaces, so why me and not him?  He last had COVID in October so maybe he had enough just antibodies left that it helped him?  The other theory is that he actually had it first but was barely affected and then gave it to me.  That would make sense that our colds were similar, but it's amazing to me that he would have already tested negative Tuesday, so soon after.  But I don't know where he would have gotten it since he wasn't that out and about last week.  We thought he actually caught a slight cold that Jacob had, so maybe Jacob had COVID from basketball stuff?  If that was the case, it's possible he wasn't too affected because he last had it in March and would have still had decent antibodies.  But if he had it, Craig would have likely caught it.  He had sniffles last week, too, but nothing along these lines.  So, who knows.  We may never know.

Psychologically, this has been a frustrating experience for me.  I was nervous about going on the Cedar Point trip, but I felt like that was more my anxiety talking than anything.  My brain often goes to the worst case scenario, and then I need to walk it back a bit and figure out what's actually logical.  We'd been to Darien Lake three times this summer and nothing like this happened.  Most of the trip would be outdoors.  I felt like Craig and Jacob actually had more of a risk given they'd be inside and with a lot of people all weekend in Canada.  Heck, we sat in dozens of basketball games all winter, Jacob and I toured the midwest in the spring, and we went to Disney last year when COVID was still a thing (ha, the irony) and barely took precautions but didn't get it.  Why should this trip be any different?  I prayed about it and eventually decided to just trust God that he would protect us.  So, to say I am disappointed would be an understatement.  It's not often that I get mad at God.  Disappointed, confused, frustrated, yes...but mad doesn't happen very often.  But I'll be honest, I did feel a little anger that He let this happen.  Maybe that's unfair, but it just felt like a complete betrayal.  I know that's not what it is, but it was a little soul-crushing to have this happen when I purposely tried to not live in fear.  I felt like I was stepping out in faith to keep a promise to my kid and give him a great experience.  Then the exact one big fear I had came to be almost immediately.  It's not great for my anxiety or my mental state to live with that, because it will only reinforce those hesitations next time and, again, that's not how I want to live.  I don't want to let fear drive everything because I always have to work so hard against it anyway.  I just can't understand why this happened this way.  Part of me is like, if we don't end up going, is God saving us from something else?  I did see there could be a tropical disturbance headed toward Florida next week (though hopefully more along the west coast/panhandle area), so maybe if we end up not going it was for a bigger reason.  I don't know.  I overthink things.  But it was disheartening that I tried to get out of my anxious, fearful hesitancy and initially it seemed perfect...until it wasn't and it totally bit me in the butt.

The problem is, in the meantime I'm too scared to pack anything.  I don't want to get ahead of myself only to do that sad unpacking that comes with a disappointing last-minute change in plans.  Maybe by Saturday I'll feel confident enough to do it, but I just can't yet.  I probably need to get my lists all organized in the meantime so when I try to do it, I'm ready.  I really wanted to try to get a new backpack to wear in the parks to spare my shoulders the agony of my drawstrings, but I can't do it until Sunday so that may not happen.  I never did have a chance to figure out if Jacob needs any school supplies, nor have I been able to get him to try on any of his new pants.  I'm just all out of sorts now and clearly not willing to tempt fate again by packing early.  Oh, and we're getting a new fridge tomorrow and supposedly I'm not allowed to help with emptying it or being around for the delivery.  I might need to call our plumber, too, because the delivery people may not be able to hook up the water line, so that's going to be a little challenging as well when I'm literally quarantined and bringing him into a COVID house.  That might have to wait until we're home.  This is just a mess of epic proportions right now.  And it's all my fault.  Sigh.  What was supposed to be a fun week of anticipation (even if it was stressful) is just awful, and our trip may follow right along.  WHY?!

We did what?! - Cedar Point, Part 2

When I left off, it was mid-afternoon on Saturday and we were running out of things to ride that didn't involve an hour wait.  After we rode Blue Streak, we needed to figure out how to kill time until dinner, when lines would start decreasing ever so gradually.  We decided to head to Cedar Downs, which is one of my all-time favorite non-coaster rides.  It's like a merry-go-round but it's fast and is more like a horse race!  The horses move back and forth on tracks so each group of four horses are constantly trying to move ahead of each other.  There's even the audio of a horse race in the background.  It's so much better than a typical carousel!  It's such a sweet, classic ride.

 

 

 
We did some preliminary shopping at the awesome Peanuts store across the way, which definitely got us thinking about souvenirs.  We missed out on one at Kennywood and we didn't get much at Disney either, so I didn't feel as bad getting something at Cedar Point.  All I had room for at the moment was a little baseball Snoopy from a Lego-ish knock-off company for Craig, and a set of five pins all featuring Snoopy playing a sport.  They were trading pins (small round button-style) that were five for $6 and we couldn't resist - we got soccer, basketball, baseball, hockey, and even lacrosse!  They're adorable.  Bigger things would wait for when we were walking to the car!

We ventured over to the Boardwalk after that.  It's a brand new section that's been evolving in recent years but just got a full makeover.  It is, appropriately, right up against the beach.

 

The area has definitely evolved over the years.  I remember there being an old bobsled coaster (later enclosed with a futuristic theme) and the Space Spiral observation tower once upon a time, and then later they moved the ferris wheel there and added another coaster, which I never got to ride (that's okay, I've been on a similar one).  That came down a couple years ago to make room for this whole new concept - a very old school midway of fun flat rides, the ferris wheel, and a wild mouse coaster.  It's so happy and colorful and just beautifully done.

We wandered through to consider our options, also taking a detour into another Snoopy-themed kiddie section.

We decided to go on the ferris wheel so I could get some daytime pictures, and then we'd go eat some dinner, so back to the Boardwalk we went.

This is reminiscent of an old Cedar Point entrance sign that is still beloved.

It was a bit of a hot wait, especially because it's a giant wheel and it takes forever to load all the cars, but the line moved consistently and the views from the ferris wheel were amazing.

GateKeeper is the one that goes over the front entrance.  We were excited to ride it later!

So much color!

The view above the whole park never disappoints.  Coasters and fun as far as the eye can see!

 The lake was gorgeous, too.  I tried to take a video, although we weren't high enough to get the full effect:

We took a little walk around the new Grand Pavilion which has some fancy food options, and then walked back out to the main midway to find dinner food.  We ended up having walking tacos because I had just told Carter about them not too long ago and he had been wanting one.  It was a pretty perfect meal, actually--just filling enough.  We walked to the back of the park to check on Maverick again, but discovered that the line for Steel Vengeance was shorter again.  Still 30-45 minutes, but better than the 60-90 it had been most of the day.  We definitely wanted another ride, so we hopped back in line!  This time we were further back on the train, but it was still so much fun (getting pulled down the hill is so much faster!) and we were thrilled to get another ride.  At that point we decided we had no choice but to hop in line for Maverick.  It was one of our last couple big ones and we figured that even the full hour line would leave us plenty of time for late-night riding again like the previous night.  The line seemed pretty endless, and most of it was within an open air wooden structure, which was just a little less comfortable in the COVID era than I would have liked.  Carter already had a little cold that started sometime on Friday (he was a trooper), which I seemed to have acquired by Monday, but I was pretty sure his wasn't COVID because he didn't really go anywhere last week and he was more likely to have caught the sniffles that Jacob already had.  It was definitely a little over an hour, but slowly but surely we made it up to the platform.  

Maverick (the red coaster I had a picture of in my last post) is relatively newer.  It's a launched coaster that's fast, twisty, and generally crazy.  I had no idea what to expect, and while it was worth the wait, I feel like I probably need to ride it again in daylight.  Night is tough when you can't see what's coming and brace yourself.  It had a lot of direction changes that felt a bit whippy, but it sure was exciting!  It launched up the lift hill quite quickly, and also had another launch near the end where the train came into an area under the station and unexpectedly shot back out.  It was pretty crazy but Carter loved it.  My sore legs from Magnum did not appreciate how the restraint was hitting me, so that was a little unpleasant, but I'm so happy we got to ride it.  This was a view from near the end of the queue, looking toward Steel Vengeance.

See all those people in the bottom left?  They had a solid hour wait ahead of them.

We swung back around en route to the Boardwalk and got another walk-on ride on Gemini...and won this time!  Carter was thrilled!  Everything else we needed to ride was on the Boardwalk, so we headed toward Wild Mouse and GateKeeper to see which one was most feasible.  We also wanted to ride WindSeeker, the high swings that are actually higher than Darien Lake's!  

 

We got to ride GateKeeper pretty quickly, which was amazing.  I've never been on a wing coaster before, where you sit to the side of the track, but it was so smooth and swoopy!  I'm so glad we got to ride it because it was down for most of the day on Sunday--in fact, we only saw it running when we walked out of the park!  We went over to Wild Mouse to knock that one off the list, but it was down so we went over to WindSeeker and rode that.  What a gorgeous view!  I had some fun playing around with my phone camera to capture some of the pretty lights in that area.  WindSeeker looked so cool, as did the ferris wheel.  These are just the stills, but I played around with long exposure and boomerang-type effects, which was sort of fun!

 

We made one last stop at Wild Mouse on the way out as they were testing and it looked like it was going to reopen.  Just as we got there, the entrance attendant got a call that they were reopening ONLY for the people who were already in line, the ones that stayed there during the entire down period.  Boo.  Well, I guess that confirmed we had to come back the next day!  And at least we knew our first target, without a doubt.

We had a relatively uneventful night after that--other than that one alarm (fire door?) going off again right before we went to bed.  I slept much better, though.  We decided that we were going to skip the hotel breakfast in the morning because it wasn't that great and we did see a super fun looking Dunkin' en route--it had a giant moose on top!

 

 

It was connected to a gas station where they had a "Mickey Moose" mascot. 

We got an absolutely picture-perfect donut (I literally took a picture but will spare you) and ate our breakfast on the way.  We made our way right to the Wild Mouse.  Once again, it was down.  Ugh.  It's notoriously bad with reliability, which is unfortunate for a brand new ride.  For the record, I spent most of the weekend feeling a little like we were in a game of Roller Coaster Tycoon.  With the park's app showing wait times and when coasters were down, it reminded me of the game.  We even came across puke in one ride queue, which is something that always happens in the game and necessitates a handyman to clean it up.  At one point on Sunday there were a ton of rides down and all I could picture was all the mechanics being dispatched and trying to fix everything!  Luckily, just a few minutes after we got there, the ride reopened and we got in a very short line!  We hit it perfectly.  

Most of the cars are mice and one is the cheese they're chasing.  We got to sit in the cheese car!  The ride was pretty "wild" but it was a lot of fun.  I probably prefer a similar spinning wild mouse at Seabreeze because it has bigger hills, but this was a great ride!

We once again found ourselves in this odd spot where all the lines were getting longer, and it was made worse by all the breakdowns I mentioned earlier.  At one point, GateKeeper, Millennium Force, Wild Mouse, Snake River Falls, Raptor, and a few smaller rides were all down at the same time.  It was incredibly frustrating because we wanted another ride on Millennium Force and would have loved another on GateKeeper, and Carter really wanted to ride Snake River Falls, but they just weren't opening.  In the meantime, we did Cedar Downs again and then did the Cadillac Cars, where Carter was my chauffeur!  The ride was cute because they had a bunch of old-style billboards for car stuff that made punny references to various rides, right down to their format or manufacturer name.  For example, one that referenced Steel Vengeance mentioned that it didn't have a "Mean Streak", which was its former name, or the Valravn one mentions something about Immelman, which is the official name of a type of dive loop element of the coaster.  It was really cute!

We were getting pretty frustrated by this point and started setting a deadline for when we needed to give up and leave.  I decided we should ride the train back to the rear of the park to get us closer to Snake River Falls, the big drop water ride, in the event it reopened soon.

View of Maverick's drop from the train

The train was a nice little ride and I sort of wished we would have done the full loop because one section has some funny skeleton scenery, but this was where we needed to be!  Luckily, right around the time we happened to check Snake River Falls, the line was reopening!  We changed into our suits quickly and got in line.  I was actually wearing my new Disney "wet" sandals that day (my feet needed a sneaker break) and Carter changed into his, and it turned out they performed wonderfully as we both wore them for the last couple hours we were there!  That was nice to test them out.  I feel a lot better about that aspect of our Disney trip now, although I will say that the rest of the weekend was a stark reminder of what we're heading into, between the tired feet, battle against sunburn, the pain of my backpack straps, and the heat (which was only really bad on Sunday, but nowhere near Florida).  I'm a little nervous but hopefully adrenaline gets us through again!  Anyway, Snake River Falls got us SO wet.  I didn't want to pay for yet another locker so I did what I could to keep our bag dry.  I didn't actually succeed with the bag itself, but the stuff was only moderately damp, so it wasn't a complete fail.  There was just a dump of water at the end that completely drenched us!  We changed back out of our suits right away, and when we came out of the changing rooms, I checked my phone and by some miracle, Millennium Force had just reopened and the wait was only about a half hour!  We booked it, though I did grab this pic along the way...how could I not?

Once again, I think the line was longer than advertised, but that was fine.  It was the last thing we were doing and we knew it was worth it.  It was a hot wait at times, as lines are usually only about half to two-thirds shaded, but it went quickly enough.  I wanted to catch a couple pictures and some video while we were there in daylight to capture how close the train comes to the queue and how fast it is when it passes. 

Sometimes it feels a little "blink and you missed it" so here's the photo.

It was a great ride to go out on.  It's so neat in daylight to see the water and whole park from there.  Since our photos after ride #1 were dark, we grabbed a new one.

We wrapped up with some shopping--Carter got a fun Snoopy building set and a keychain, and I got this neat metal model of the park skyline that I will have to very carefully put together one of these days.  We ordered lunch from Steak 'n' Shake, a place Carter has never eaten, and set off to pick that up and get on the road.  We had a five hour drive ahead of us, after all.  Oh, and we stopped at an Aldi quick because they have cheap wine in the Ohio stores and I wanted to try some of it!  The ride was long and pretty cloudy once we hit PA, but overall it still strikes me as better than five hours the other way on the Thruway, for some reason.  We got home around 9:30 after a Mighty Taco dinner stop, and that was it.  Time to unpack and prepare for a busy week ahead!

It really felt like a miracle trip.  We accomplished so much and had such a fantastic time.  It would have been perfect, if only the Tuesday after didn't have to happen...