Well. Ive got some good news. And some bad news.
But first, I think I've got our tentative schedule laid out!!
Thursday: We have our southwest flights picked out. I need to work on Thursday, so Brian will pick me up downtown at work and we'll head straight to the airport for a 5:25 pm flight. We'll arrive in Orlando around 7:30. We are taking the Magical Express so that doesn't leave a lot of time for parks once we arrive. I think we'll just do some night swimming at Beach Club and maybe check out Beaches and Cream for a late dinner.
Friday: up super early to be in line at DHS for SWW. I think we'll just FP+ TSMM, TOT and maybe ST. I'm not really going to worry on going on anything besides those since this day is for SW. I have a late lunch ADR for Sci fi so we can have a sit down cool off break, but I really need to see the schedule of events so I'm sure that time works. We will finish off our day with the special SW fireworks.
Saturday: since we are at Beach Club, I thought this would be a good Epcot day to see all the Flower and Garden festival things. We might have a mid day swimming break. Then I scheduled a 9:30 Ohana ADR. MK has EMH until 11 pm this day, but I don't want to exhaust ourselves so I think we'll just go to Ohana or maybe cancel that and do more night swimming.
Sunday: early morning back to DHS to finish up anything we missed. Then we will head to AK at some point, it is open until 8 pm and on those days the park usually clears out at some point and you can ride anything with little to no wait at the end of the day. Then we have a Cali Grill 9 pm ADR for Stephanie's bday, then we'll head into MK which is open until 1 am!!! This should be a super fun (but long) day.
Monday: This should be all day at MK. We also check out of Beach Club on this day and move to All Star Sports.
Tuesday: departure day, so we'll just do anything we feel we missed.
I feel so weird only having 3 ADRs, but I think we will like it.
OK. Time for good news/bad news.
I think I'm just being a big baby about the bad news...maybe. But we'll go with the good first.
Brian lived in California for a good portion of his life (along with Texas, Dominican Republic and Chicago). He was in the boy scouts in California where they did actual things you would think Boy Scouts would do, like backpacking trips. My western PA girl scout troup just did spaghetti dinners and sold cookies.
Anyway, Brian has always been really into backpacking and camping and we've managed to incorporate a little of that into previous DL California trips. We decided we needed to make it to northern California so we could see Yosemite and some redwoods (we always buy a redwood at the Living with the Land souvenir place and it always dies
)
Anyway anyway...we decided that we are taking a trip to northern California in early June. May 29th through June 10 to be exact.
Brian wanted to do a lot of backpacking in Yosemite. I have no problem with this...except I was a little worried about the bathroom situation. Even though I am from western PA, I have never gone to the bathroom in anything except a toilet...
So I told Brian that if I was going to have to backpack and have the possibility of having no toilet, then we were sure as hell doing a few days in
Disneyland. Weird as that argument sounds, I won
We don't like to pay the extra fees to return a rental car to a different location, so we fixed that problem by planning a circuitous road trip route around California.
We will fly into LAX (or whichever LA airport we can find the best deal) and then we will begin a road trip up the pretty ocean route, making stops in Santa Barbara, Solvang and many other places. We are planning to camp in Pinnacle, then head to Monterey for that next day for a day at the aquarium. Then we'll spend 2 days in San Francisco doing things like the Asian Art Museum, the Disney museum, Alcatraz and walking the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we'll head to Yosemite for many days, then head south to King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. After that we spend 2 and a half days in Disneyland and then fly home.
I am very excited about that trip because I love Disney, road trips and nature. It also means that we get to be in 2 Disney parks within a few weeks of each other.
And now...for the bad news.
I think everyone has heard that Disney announced their 24 hour party. Which happens to fall on Friday. I leave WDW Tuesday...
I am seriously upset about this. I've wanted to go to a 24 hour event ever since they started it. And now I'm missing it by a few days. And Brian's sister rearranged her and her mom's trip so that they will be able to attend. And she keeps texting me every day about plans for the 24 hour event. Which is fine, really, she doesn't have anyone else to be excited with to the level I'm excited about Disney, but it makes me awfully sad that I'm just missing it.
Yeah, told you I'm being a baby. But I'm really bummed about it.
I can't really rearrange my WDW trip or dates. To explain, I am a contract attorney, so I only work when there are projects or jobs for me. I don't get paid vacations. I have a project right now, but these projects can last years or the cases can be settled tomorrow with no warning to us. So I have no idea what my work schedule will be like in May. The only way we are going on the California trip so close to the WDW one is that I will miss very few work hours for WDW. I'll have my 40 hours for the week when we leave for WDW on Thursday, and we'll return Tuesday so I can still get almost 35 hours in. So you can imagine if we stay for the 24 hour event...I'd miss that whole week. And then be missing another week for California...so yeah, my boss and my bank account wouldn't be too pleased about that.
I know it sounds very babyish, to be crying about not being able to take an even looooonger vacation because I have another one coming up so soon....but ugh I just really wanted to do a 24 hour event and it's killing me to hear all of Stephanie's plans about it.
)
. My daughter's name is Mara, after Mara Jade. She's a twin and we had my in laws convinced we were naming them Luke and Leia 
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