Polynesian PTR - Departing tomorrow (I bought a new toy)

[JustCor]

Another day down

Not so Disney updates:
I'm six days away from Disney, and that countdown has been ongoing since booking this trip way back when. As of today, though, another countdown has started. This one is for work. We generally work four 10 hour shifts a week, Monday through Friday. I lined up my day off for Friday to give myself an extra day before departure to get things sorted and in order. I have three more work days left between me and vacation. Included in the remaining three days are two days of call, with my last call day this week starting Thursday night and rolling into Friday morning. Technically, I could be working a little bit in the wee early hours of my first day off. Whatever. I just have to push through as best I can and not go crazy in the meantime.

Actual Disney updates:
Friend number one has backed out officially. Honestly, I had a feeling it would happen that way. I've made a few concessions in my planning to account for them joining me, while lining up ADRs that would work whether or not I'm solo. It's kind of a bummer that they can't go, but I'll manage. Since this Sunday also happens to be the last day before school starts up again, I have a feeling that my other friends will be tapping out as well to get the final bits of planning and shopping done for their kids' first day of school. To be fair, this trip did start off as a solo affair, so I can't be too bummed out, but I had started looking forward to having at least one person joining me. No matter. It's hard to be too disappointed in a trip to Disney.

Not so Disney planning:
Saturday is my last minute day. It'll be the day that I get the boring stuff done and taken care of. Currently on the agenda -

• car wash and vacuum, for good luck
• laundry, laundry, and laundry
• packing
• a quick trip to Publix for room drinks and snacks
• loading up the car

Not fun, but necessary stuff. It's rained a metric butt ton lately, so I haven't don't much to clean my car. It's in need of a good wash and vacuum. I also think it's time to buy a small cooler to stick in the front seat. I keep regretting not having one for each trip, and other trips of similar lengths. Saturday may be a good day to pick one up. I overpack for Disney trips. I always make the assumption that there's going to be a torrential downpour at least once a day, and I'm going to be caught in it. Extra (dry) clothing is always nice to have. It's Florida, and I've needed that extra change of clothes at least once on each Disney vacation so far. The room snacks are just basics. Lots of bottled water, a couple gatorades or sodas, and a juice of some kind. Sometimes, the only thing I want to do is get out of the Florida sun, drink a gallon of water, and lay on a bed to recover. It's cheap enough to pick that stuff up at Publix and just haul it into the room and throw it in the little fridge. Loading up the car the night before feels less stressful than doing it the day of. Even though I'm not on any real kind of schedule, it feels rushed and panicky if I do it the day I leave. I also seem to forget things if I'm loading up the car and then driving. Maybe it's the anticipation to leave that scatters my brains.

Actual Disney planning:
I have a few "paper" plans right now that I haven't committed to MDE. These include potential FP+ selections, possible ADR additions and changes, and ideas on how I might want to approach each day and each park. These plans are somewhat dependent on who and how many people end up coming or not coming. Friday evening may be when I transfer my paper plans to the MDE.

I think that's an update. Six days until Disney. Three days until off. Rockin'.

 

[JustCor]

Short timin'

After a week of ridiculously strange happenings at work, today was a welcome relief. We've been slammed at work lately, especially this week. With the exception of today, we've all been staying late to finish up cases. Today was wonderfully light, allowing us to wrap things up and leave early. In addition to a light case load, one of my coworkers offered to take my call for this evening, freeing me up to start my vacation when I clocked out, rather than having to wait until call ended tomorrow at 6 am. This Disney vacation is already off to a good start.

I've been checking the weather at Disney over the course of the past few days and it's kind of a waste of time. Allow me to give an potential WDW travelers an accurate weather forecast that applies to any travel between May and November: 50% Chance of Rain. And now over to sports with Champ Kind.

As of this moment, my trip is back to being a solo adventure. Some of the people who I thought may end up joining me at various points have all but officially dropped out. The start of school on Monday has them attending to their kids, rather than planning a day at Disney. Fair enough. My plans remain unchanged for now. I briefly flirted with the notion of heading up a day early and trying out a night at a value resort, but there are a few things that I still need to take care of here on Saturday that make it a little bit more of a pain than I feel like dealing with. I'm on vacation mode now, and my tolerance for doing any extra work is considerably low. I have very urgent plans of sleeping in for as long as I absolutely can tomorrow and then saving the universe across a plethora of different video games. This is vitally important work that must be done.

I am three days away from a trip to Disney. I am at once incredibly happy and tremendously relieved that the time is almost here. I do wish I would have been able to pull together at least one other person to join me on this trip, but such is life. I'll probably update one or two or three more times before I leave, but there are people to save and various incarnations of bad guys that must be purged from the many virtual worlds.

 

[JustCor]

Is this real life?

I'm just about a day and a half away from Disney, and all of a sudden this doesn't feel real. I've been a few times previously and have never had this kind of surreal feeling. Part of it may be attributed to staying at Poly. I have a feeling that I'm building up this resort to something that could never meet my now ridiculous expectations. I kind of think I had that problem with my brief stay at AKL last time out. I left that resort with a fair amount of disappointment. At some point before going to AKL, I had built up this image of opulence from the notion of going to a 'deluxe' resort for the first time. I hope that I've managed to readjust my expectations for this trip. AKL was an important lesson.

FP+

I've added a few FP+ selections, again. I'm pretty happy with them so far.

Sunday: Magic Kingdom
Space Mountain
Big Thunder Mountain
Peter Pan's Flight

I love the Mountains. They're a lot of fun. I've never been on Peter Pan. I have absolutely no idea what to expect. I kind of like it that way.

Monday: Epcot
Soarin'
Spaceship Earth
Mission: Space

I have a confession to make. I've only been on one ride at Epcot, and it was Nemo. Epcot is my food location 99.999% of the time. I have an ADR at Biergarten for lunch, so I'll be using these ADRs to fill some time before and after. I know next to nothing about any of these rides. I can live with that.

Tuesday: DHS
Tower of Terror
Rockin' Rollercoaster
Star Tours

I'm trying, again, to do anything at DHS. I have a breakfast at The Wave on this day, and these FP+ selections come later in the day.

Winding down kind of thoughts

I'm liking my food picks. They've stayed pretty solid in my head. Kona is iffy for dinner and I may cancel it tomorrow before the 24 hours is up, but I also kind of like the idea of keeping it. I'm looking forward to Biergarten. I know the community style seating is going to be a thing with me, but I can't continue to be an antisocial being, especially if I'm doing solo trips to WDW. Besides, I love German food. I don't want to pass up something because I'm socially moronic. My breakfast selections are what I'm really looking forward to. Boma is just going to be icing on the cake; a nice way to finish off a wonderful stay at Disney World. I truly enjoyed it last time, and have thought many times about how much I was really looking forward to going again. I had to fight the urge to load up every day with a Boma breakfast.

My DHS day is still questionable. Something about that park just doesn't mesh very well with me. I want so much to like it, but I keep failing. I still may change it. I don't have any time scheduled at Animal Kingdom, but I could easily move things around and swap out my DHS day for an AK day, though I'm kind of set on giving DHS a fair shake. I'll figure out a way to sneak out to AK if only to do the Safari ride.

MK and Epcot always serve me well. I always eat just a little too much at Epcot and seem to really enjoy the rides that don't tend to have long wait times at MK. I'm kind of bummed that POTC is closed for refurbs. I haven't been on it, ever. It'll have to wait for another trip.

I'm a day and a half away from my trip. I'm truly stoked!

 

[JustCor]

I bought a thing

I love gadgets. I love watches. This seemed inevitable. The Mickey watch face (he dances!) is completely appropriate. I've loaded up all of my ADRs and FP+ selections into my calendar and put alarms on all of them. I'm looking forward to see if this kind of setup is as intuitive and easy to use for plans as I think it will be. I have the alarms set to go off at 2 hours before the first event of the day, and then one hour prior to each following selection. I may add an alarm at 15 minutes prior, but I'll wait and see how the first ones work out.

It'd be great if they eventually could combine the function of the Magic Band in with the Apple Watch. I believe they're both using NFC technology, but I'm not sure if they're compatible. The guy at the Apple Store swears they're making an app that's coming out soon to do just that, but I've not really heard anything that supports that claim. I hope he's right. I know that WDW is set up to take Apple Pay, and I've been a fairly regular user of that, so we'll see how it's handled at Disney and whether or not it's easier than using the Magic Band to pay for things.

So, I think I'm Disney ready now. All I've got left is time.

 

[princess Maxwell]

Did you come alone.hope you got a good price at the Poly,you know after you checked in probably could changed room location,I don't know if I could looked at that view all week.Unless I paid moderate prices.