Hmmm...
That's a bit problematic.
You see, when you go on a solo trip, you don't tend to take many pictures of yourself.
Yep... showing your age. I thought everybody did selfies these days.
I need to make a good first impression.
Something that eloquently and accurately portrays my maturity and proper upbringing and stature.
This should do...
Yep, looks about right.
I didn't want to take too much time off work,
and I especially didn't want to take that much time away from my family.
I have every confidence in my wife, Ruby and my daughters are old enough (14 & 17) that they can take care of themselves, but...
I still want to be there to make things easier for everyone, ya know?
Absolutely. That's what would make it so hard to take a solo trip... no matter how bad I might want to.
I have a conference in Orlando next year. Is it wrong of me to want to... ahem, add a couple of days and hope nobody else wants to tag along?
The next day, some of the low points flights were already gone!
Naturally.
With airmiles points taking care of the park tickets and flights
(plus applicable taxes, fees, gouging and roasting over an open fire)
Ooooh... those fees can be a back breaker. Nice score!
Check
Carrot cake cookie at the Writer's Stop
Nope... but not a carrot cake fan
Take a bus to DHS then the boat to Epcot
Check
Try the onion rings at Prime Time or Flame Tree
Nope
Check
Voices of Liberty at America in Epcot
Check
Nope... and I don't know why not
See above
Pecos Bill's for the burger and fixins bar
Check, Check and Check
I thought she was gone?
Mickey shaped food is always better.
Kaki gori (shave ice) in Japan
Mmmm... check
Cronut at snack booth just before Canada
Missed that one.
Check
Grey Goose slush at France
Check
Check
hold onto your hats. Meet and greet with Anna and Elsa!
Well, you're Canadian. Who better to meet than the ice queen?
I personally know one woman who stood in line for eight hours so her daughter could meet them.
Eight hours!
Eight!
No offense, but that's just crazy.
Yeah. That's not a good enough reason.
I just couldn't do it.
I turned it back.
I just hope that I made someone out there happy. I'll never know.
I'm sure you did make someone happy. Classy move. Even though I was bound and determined to keep my FP+ for A&E that I couldn't book at the same time as the rest of the family just out of spite and frustration. You're a better man that I.
We get to the concert and everyone (well most) is very nice. Very polite. Very... Canadian.
Canadians... metal concert. Hmmm... this just seems like some kind of a social experiment.
I'm old. I can see when something is stupid.
(Oddly enough, it still doesn't prevent me from doing stupid things. Huh.)
I grabbed the garbage and walked it over to the side of the room and out of the way.
That girl looked at me like I was a conquering hero.
Took everything I had not to burst out laughing.
Still would trade it in to be 25 again. 
Ok, being mentally older is a good thing. But physically, I wish I was 25 again. I still try to think I am and then pay for it later.
What. Just because it belongs to Universal and not Disney?
Not anymore... RIP.
Well guess what? I'm way ahead of you! I have my booking confirmation right here.
With my reservation number, thankyouverymuch!
Click <next> which of course is seat selection, I belie...
What's this?
Because I'm traveling to the States, they need my passport?
But... but... I don't have my passport with me!
D'OH!
There. Done. Wasn't so diffi....
"We're sorry, but you may not check in at this time as your flight to the United States is more than 24 hours away."
AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!
You just can't catch a break! But at least you already have your seat reserved. It isn't like you're trying to check in earlier to get a better boarding assignment.
While the first leg of my trip was departing at eight thirty a.m.,
the second leg from Toronto to Orlando wasn't leaving until eight forty four p.m.!
I still had five more hours to wait!!
That's a long layover...
Number of bags?
Zero.
This started my quest to make this the most pain-in-the-butt free and speedy commute possible.
Step one. No checked bags.
I figured I could bring everything I needed for a five night stay in a carry on.
Great plan. If I was flying solo for a week, I'd do the same. So much easier, aside from the fact that you have to babysit your bag at the airport.
I forego my winter parka and gloves in favour of a thin shelled wind breaker.
Ok, I thought this was going to bite you on the return trip. I laughed a little bit when I saw that it didn't even take that long.
But not before (at their request) I wake each of my daughters so we can say goodbye.
I give them hugs or kisses, depending on each girl's ickyness rating of their father and exchange farewells.
I feel rotten, ashamed and selfish and figuratively flagellate myself for going to Disney World without them.
I need to constantly remind myself that I've taken them both on trips to Toronto, Niagara Falls, Vancouver,
West Edmonton Mall, Mall of America (too many times to count), Disney World (twice), Hawaii and Europe.
It was my birthday and darn it! I need to celebrate me!
It doesn't work. I still feel like a cad.
You're a good dad. Again, I'd love a solo trip, but I'd have a lot of trouble with this.
Did I mention that I traded in my nice warm coat and gloves for a thin windbreaker?
The walk to the terminal is long.
And cold.
Quite cold.
Fairly cold.
Flipping cold!
I almost didn't make it.
Um... Why didn't you wear a heavier coat and let Ruby take it with her?
Hello, Pizza Hotline? Yeah, I'm looking at one of your ads right now and your pizza sure looks good!
Could I get a medium ham and mushroom delivered? Great. How long? Twenty minutes? Perfect, I've got an hour to kill anyway.
My address? Well I'm not at home, could you deliver it to the Winnipeg airport? Gate seven. Thanks."
I'd love to see them try to get it through security without a boarding pass.
I wonder how many people have done that?
And I wonder if they have some deal with TSA where they can run it through the xray machine and you can grab it there?
Doesn't it look cold out there?
Try it with just a wind breaker.
Nah. Of course you wouldn't. Nobody's that stupid!
A Canadian wouldn't need anything more than a windbreaker...
And, finally, getting on the plane, which makes it all real.
I hung my head in shame. Who was I to put on such airs? I was no better than they, perhaps worse.
But I'm still getting on the plane before them!!!! 
So did you make eye contact to taunt them as they boarded or did you avoid eye contact?
(Wait... So then it's not really free, is it. I don't care... it feels free.)
It just makes that cost you paid for the prime seat more reasonable. I mean by the time you take the what the airline charges everyone else for the food away, you really only paid about $40 for that seat location.
I was starting to feel hungry, by now (free = hungry. it's a rule.) and a sandwich would hit the spot.
If there is free food, you'd be a fool to not be hungry.
That's.... two hours, twenty nine minutes.
Surely that's close enough for a sandwich right?
Don't call me Shirley and no, apparently not.
Figures.
I had almost nine hours to kill before my next flight.
Yep... long layover.
I won't go into details of our visit.
Suffice to say that it was wonderful, full of laughs and banter and over far too quickly.
She even made me some delicious pancakes for lunch!
(Much, much better than the Lite-Bite)
But I'm glad you found a good way to fill that time. Sounds like it worked out great and I'm glad you got some quality family time in there.
A veritable oasis for ignoring your fellow traveller!
Ah... the luxuries of modern travel.
The flight was scheduled for departure at eight forty four p.m.
I think around nine I figured out that we wouldn't be leaving quite on time.
All of a sudden, I hear my name being called.
"Would WestJet passenger pkondz please report to the gate agent."
Uh, oh. Wha'd I do now?
Remember when I couldn't tell for sure if my passport number had an 'O' or a 'Q'?
Yeah. It was neither. I'd read the wrong number.
Uh oh...
Odd that this hadn't come up when I went through U.S. border control...
They were so impressed by the fact that you looked so little like a terrorist that they decided to just ignore the details.
After de-icing, we were airborne at five after ten.
One hour and twenty minutes late.
Yuck... better late than never though.
Turkey and provolone sandwich*, Pringles sour cream & onion chips and Sprite.
Usually I'll have Coke, but I didn't want the caffeine to keep me up.
Big day tomorrow, ya know.
*Smoked turkey breast, provolone cheese, paprika mayonnaise, sun-dried tomato torta
Actually looks pretty good. As far as "free" airline food goes, anyway.
Total elapsed time from the time the plane's wheels touched down to pulling out of the airport on DME?
Twenty three minutes.
Nice! You'd have probably doubled that if you had checked bags.
Well, maybe not. I guess DME could get them, but don't they stop getting luggage after like 10pm or something?
The thing I was looking forward to was my green magic band.
Why green?
Look at my avatar.
The other thing I got was a Birthday button.
Nice!
I made the mistake of telling the booking agent that I was using my birthday money to pay for this trip.
But I certainly did not want people telling me "Happy Birthday!" months after the fact!
Come on man! Whether it is your birthday or not, it is a birthday trip! Wear that button with pride! Take an extra dessert if they offer it! Enjoy the magic!
The dotted line is the path I had to follow to/from the busses since the pass-through was closed.
Note it takes me by the DSA.
It didn’t bother me, but I wonder how many glares the smokers got?
Or how many complaints Disney got?
Yeah, seems a little bit frustrating. I know they had construction going, but you'd think they might move the DSA to accommodate this.
Oh, well. Pretend you see trees.
I think we all get the picture, despite there being no actual picture.
The first thing I noticed was that there was no tub.
I was in an accessible room.
Hmmm... perhaps they'd read my European TR.
(I wound up in a wheelchair at the end of that one.)
At this point it could've been a dungeon.
I didn't care.
I was in Disney!!!!!
Exactly!
And my first big surprise! (of two)
Is the first surprise that there are actually more than 2?
Plus, there'll be bonus points awarded on a totally random basis.
(i.e. I'm lazy and if I forget, or don't wanna... oh well.)
I want random points!!!
You know, because I usually suck at TR games. I'm getting shut out over at Roni's. At least give me something so I'm not a complete loser.
After being up for so long the day before and only getting five hours of sleep,
you'd think that I might have some difficulty waking up this early.
Heck no! It's Disney!
After I showered, I pulled back the shower curtain and there was water all over the floor of the bathroom.
(Can you still call it a bathroom when there's no bath?)
I felt like I'd been a bad houseguest.
Yeah... we had one of these at Pop once. By the end of the trip I just didn't even worry about closing the shower curtain.
So... I left five bucks.
Feel free to do whatever you want to do.
That's what I did.
I'd have done the same.
Oh. I got dressed, too. 
Well, we assumed that much. Otherwise, I don't think you'd make it past security.
I do believe that while your transportation experience may vary from ride to ride,
the biggest impact will be from your own attitude and/or familiarity with busses.
Agreed.
Winnipeg's transit system is.... how shall I put this?
In the kindest possible light, Winnipeg's transit system sucks.
Sucks, huge.
Coming from a Canadian, that's saying something.
I do know that when I arrived, I had almost an hour to kill
Wow... should have slept longer.
Wow! This rope drop thing is really becoming a thing!
Becoming? Heck, I thought it always had been a thing.
You like to sashay, don't you?
Shortly before nine o'clock, they let us in and, I'm ashamed to admit,
given all the research I'd done, I was THAT GUY.
You know the one.
You got there early, you scoped out all the possible entries.
You picked the one where there was only one person in front of you...
And he doesn't know how to use his magic band and finger print.
DS picked it up faster than that. I guess it is the age/technology thing again.
Yeah. No.
I booked it as fast as I could over to Expedition Everest!
That's what I'm talkin' about!
I noticed a lost looking family talking to the CM. Looks like they had a fast pass for 9:10ish.
She was trying to tell them to just get in the regular line, it would be faster.
Ouch... yeah, clearly not Disney veterans.
I love the look on the little girl's face in the foreground, bottom right.
Doesn't that look just epitomize what Disney's all about?
And doesn't that lady in the first seat epitomize the look of ninety percent
of all parents of small children at Disney?
Or the look of someone who had a late night followed by an early morning on day 5 of their trip.
Anyone ever notice the buildings in the top left corner?
I mean, it's obvious.. but I always just think "mountains".
Not buildings.
Um.... no. I haven't! Is this one of those "never before see" pictures you're talking about?
Yes. I admit it.
I was tired.
I'd been running around quite a bit,
so can you blame me for what happened when I finally got a chance to sit down???
That one usually lulls me to sleep too.
Actually, there were only two rides I wanted to do in Animal Kingdom.
Sounds about right.
My show didn't start until 11:00 so I had time to kill.
Wow. That's never happened before!
That beauty of traveling solo.
We set off and I resolved not to take pictures, since everyone's seen tons of animal pictures from the Safari.
What else are you going to do on that ride?
I took this picture thinking that I'd gotten a really rare photo...
Only to see almost the exact same photo just the other day on someone else's TR,
taken on a different day.
Your hippo pictures are better though.
I'd like to see you try to walk those dogs.
Didn't they know that I'd paid a lot of money to be there?
Didn't they know I'd come a long way and spent a lot of time getting there???
Sheesh!
Stupid tourists!
Wow. In this day and age when everybody has a camera,
I was truly surprised, and pleased, that there are still people out there
willing to pause for a second so someone can take a picture.
I usually try to wait if I see someone taking a picture. But a lot of the time in the world, I'm walking around oblivious to things like that and probably inadvertently photobomb a lot of people.
It's a sight that strikes fear into a grown man's heart.
I was that grown man, but what I saw had me quaking in my shoes like a little boy.
I'm sure you've already figured out what IT was.
Oh, Gawd! The horror! The inhumanity! The depravity.
For the love of all that is good, run!!!!!!!!
So? Where am I off to?
Which show is it?
Based on the order of photos and the direction your walking, Nemo is the logical choice. I'm always wrong though. So I'll just stick with Nemo anyway.
Welcome to the TR!
(belated)
I'd like to get closer to it if possible... and I'm not sure if you can.
