Chapter One: The Boring Bits
So every single chapter is going to be so image heavy this should basically be a picture book....except this chapter. There's like 6 pictures in this chapter so instead of breaking it up like I do with everything else I'm just going to get through it all in one gigantic swoop. Sorry folks!
Ah, travel day. It's the day everyone loves to hate - you're going TO Disney, but you're not IN Disney yet and it's just like....ugh, waiting.
Okay, so, those of you who've seen my PTR over in the WDW section knows my summer was insane. For those of you who haven't seen it, let me do a quick breakdown for you:
Basically I've been traveling across country, nearly non-stop, for a month. On the 18th of July I drove down from Massachusetts to South Carolina. We came back home the 25th of July and on the 27th I went to Walt Disney World with my aunt. The week of the 1st of August until the 8th was the only time I was home taking care of the cats and dogs while my parents were away, and of COURSE I got sick, lol.
Actually so did Jey!
Thankfully I was okay by the time Saturday the 8th rolled around. See, we had a plan:
1. I would get to Jey's mum's house on the 8th
2. 3 AM on the 9th the two of us would embark out for fuel for both the car and ourselves (aka gas and coffee)
3. We would get to her DBF's house around 4 AM and would switch drivers
4. We'd drive to Boston and pick Jey up by 4:45 AM
5. We'd get to Logan by 5 AM and get through the US line and security and be on our way, preferably with a bathroom break and to get Jey some coffee
Basically numbers 1-4 went the way we wanted them to. Even with me snapping this picture of myself after getting ready:
The drive into Boston so early in the morning was a breeze, and I found out that Jey's mum's DBF and I had been on the same flight home from Orlando to Providence the week before! So we spent the time talking about how the week had been for us, etc. We picked Jey up at her apartment and off we went!
Until we got back to the city proper and tried to get into the tunnel for the airport.
Which was closed.
In case you're unfamiliar with our lovely, old, unimaginably confusing city, there's really only one way to get to the airport - that way. We followed the (ridiculously small) signs that took us on a tour of both the north and south sides of the city before we finally made it with about 40 minutes until our 6:30 flight. We should have been there at 5, but instead we were running into the line to drop off luggage at 5:35!
Oi!
There were a few people around us who were also on our flight and in line so thankfully after about five minutes in line the US agent started pulling us into our own private line and had us go drop off our luggage and check in before everyone else in line. Security did not do that, so that took a little bit. And then I lost my ticket for a minute (it had fluttered out of the bucket after going through the X-ray machine) so we booked it to our gate which was thankfully only about 100 feet away from the security desks.
We were basically the last people on the plane. There were maybe 10 people behind us, probably fewer. But we would have been the last section to board anyway so at least we weren't like Zone 1 and had to try and get through the whole plane.
And the plane was HUGE. I've been on big international flights before (
Virgin Atlantic comes to mind) but this US plane was so long and skinny that I don't think I thought it'd be that big.
We didn't have a non-stop flight. We were stopping in Phoenix. The flight wasn't great - very bumpy - but the pilot apologized and told us whenever we hit turbulence that he was going to try and get us out of it.
I had window seats the entire time because I get nauseated on long plane rides and need to be able to look out the window. I took these pictures of the countryside as we flew over it to send to my mother:
Bad turbulence or not we were in Phoenix an hour early. We had to sit on the runway for about twenty minutes waiting for them to find a gate for us. That was fine with us (probably not the other people on our flight, but us specifically yes!) because we had three hours to kill.
Once in the airport we stopped at Peet's and got some coffee and something small to eat. We didn't want anything too big because we knew we'd be getting lunch once we got to LAX.
Our plane came and it was of the small puddle jumper variety. Jey's mum and I knew that but Jey didn't. She's terrified of flying and we knew that if she knew she'd freak out so when the two of us were buying the plane tickets we decided not to tell her until she absolutely needed to know so she wouldn't have too much of a panic attack. It actually worked out well.
Our flight was, again, bumpy. But again we got in early!
I took another picture from the plane of who knows where. Somewhere in California from the random geotag that it definitely shouldn't have been able to do on airplane mode:
Originally, we were going to take the us from LAX to Anaheim. But once Jey's great aunt AJ found out we were flying in to LAX she offered to take us out to lunch. Initially we were going to go with her to Santa Monica, where she lives, and eat someplace close to her condo, but there was something going on and instead she offered to drive us to our hotel and get us something to eat in Anaheim.
So we did that.
We met up with her in baggage claim and it only took us about a half hour to get to Anaheim. When we go to the Fairfield Inn and I went to check in the woman at the desk told me there was one room available on the ground floor but if we wanted a higher level floor we'd have to wait. We chose the room that was available because we really didn't care...
....and I'm so glad we did!!!
We got a corner room right by the pool (not that we used it). It was 100% the closest room you could get to
Disneyland, and to add to that, it was a character room, which I hadn't asked for! It was a Cars room, and here is my spectacularly bad picture of the room while I was sitting on the bed waiting for everyone to change out of their travel clothes:
It doesn't do the room justice, and I don't like using the word "cute" as a descriptor, but it was a really adorable room. A little boy would have been in heaven. Heck, we are three grown women and we thought it was a pretty great room!
We went down the street to Tony Roma's. I didn't take any pictures of my food because we had non-Disney company but I got a pulled pork sandwich (I have a thing about pulled pork; before asking what I'd get Jey said "you're getting the pork, aren't you?" so I have a bit of a reputation). I really liked mine but Jey's mum and aunt found their ribs to be too small (to be fair, they did share so it WAS less then an average person would get).
After AJ left we headed to Downtown Disney for about an hour:
But we were exhausted after only getting three hours of sleep and traveling all day so we headed back to the hotel around 8, showered, and went to bed around 9:30, only to be awoken by the fireworks....oops! But we went to bed afterwards, to get ready for our first Disney day!
