Chapter One: The Adventure Begins!
My original plan for the 15th was to sleep as much as I could to prepare for the flight and the week I was about to embark on. We all know sleeping in Disney is not an option! I was going to originally going to use the 14th to pack, but I ended up working a half day and running errands in the afternoon, so that got shot through.
I had to pack a few extra things so I spent most of the morning dealing with how to pack those and keeping my suitcase under weight. I had wanted to do that the night before but my friend Liz and her DBF had asked me to go out to dinner with them then go hear Liz’s brothers in law play live and I couldn't say no to such a perfectly relaxing start to my vacation.
Also my car had been egged by some awesome human the night before, so I had to go and deal with THAT mess, which ate up even more of my time.
I was weirdly nervous about this day. It’s not the first time i’ve traveled by myself. I’m a born and raised New England girl, but I spent about a year and a half traveling from Boston to the U.K. And Ireland because I was living there full time. I think it was just the fact that my bag may have been overweight since I'm usually such a light packer. This trip, I wasn't sure where I would be sleeping at any given point, so I packed my camp pad just in case.
But soon I was ready to go! Of course I had to take the obligatory "I'm going to Disney" selfie I take before any trip!
I had never flown out of Worcester before. It’s the smallest of the New England airports that I’ve been to, but not the smallest airport I’ve ever been to. There are four gates instead of the two that Kerry Airport has (now THAT would be the smallest airport I've ever flown out of!). But I wasn’t sure how to gauge how busy it’d be, so my parents and I left my house around 2:40. They were nice enough to hang around after their normal Saturday morning errands to bring me to the airport before heading to their house.
It takes about a half an hour to get from my house to the airport, so I was pulling my bag out of my dad’s car at about 3:11. I walked into the airport and there was nobody at the JetBlue desk, so I easily dropped off my bag (under 50 lbs - phew!) and headed up to the security gate. It was super busy, guys.
In all seriousness, when I left the JetBlue desk, they informed me that security wasn't even open yet so I had headed into the restroom, and by the time I had gone upstairs there was a grand total of three people in front of me in the security line (technically five, but the couple I went passed has stepped aside to pull up their boarding passes on their phones). I was even chosen for additional screening and it still only took three minutes to go through security in total.
Once through I popped into the little market that they have in the terminal. My normal pre-flight routine no matter where I go is to get coffee at Dunkin', Starbucks, or the minuscule times I'm lucky enough to have a Peet's or Costa nearby, but there was seriously just this one store. So I ended up getting this:
A smoked turkey sandwich, diet coke, and pringles. I barely ever drink soda anymore, but I needed some sort of caffeine to get me through the day.
Around 3:45 I got a text saying that my flight would be delayed by about five minutes. No big deal - I just had to figure out what to do with myself for the extra hour I had to kill - I’m so used to big airports like Logan, Heathrow or LAX that I wasn’t prepared for the lack of hustle and bustle. I ended up texting my friends and reading the book I had brought with me.
Also, can I just say that the employees at the airport were all super nice? Like I didn’t expect so many smiles! I’m always super friendly and polite with people who work in airlines because it’s gotta be a hard job (or, really, with anyone - I try to have that general attitude whenever I deal with people), but it’s still nice to see! Honestly, major kudos to everyone at ORH!
We boarded by about 5:10, and it was a super speedy loading. I was the first one in for the second round of general seating, and by the time I got to my seat the flight attendants were announcing that everyone was on the plane. I had a row to myself, which was great because I was able to stretch out and relax. It was freaky to see the city I grew up in from the air let me tell you! All of you people who live in big cities and fly out of them may know what I mean!
I spent the time on the plane listening to The Nerdist podcast, an old episode of Ask Me Another, and reading. Super exciting, I know. I did take some plane pictures, because they're my favorite things:
I made it to the airport around 8:00. I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me and we continued it throughout the monorail to the main terminal and at baggage. She was local and assumed I was too but we had a great chat about the area and work, etc., and our bags showed up at about the same time which was great coincidence.
I headed over to the elevator and took it back up to the third floor. I was staying at the Hyatt for the night (something I never would have thought of it not for reading chunkymonkey’s latest WDW trip report!), so I headed through the main lobby and up the escalator to…
...a seriously long, slow moving line.
At least their lobby is pretty to look at
It looked like one guest was having a problem so that was tangling up the manager and one of the women at the front desk, because once he was settled the manager came over to talk to us all and the line started to move quickly. It took maybe ten minutes, where I was texting my friends from home and my parents to let them know I was in Florida safely as well as talking to J about when they were going to pick me up in the morning. But I was easily through the line and hopped into the elevator.
I was on the 7th floor of the hotel. The girl at the desk gave me the option of being closer to the elevators for a speedy departure in the morning but I told her wherever was easiest for her to put me was fine. As it was, I ended up being about midway down the first hallway, fairly close to the elevators.
When I went in I was a moderately good Dis-er and took a couple of pictures of the room.
Notice that there is a cot in my room as well as the King Bed. Had I been traveling with children, this would have been super helpful. As it was, it was super helpful for me anyway as I could just plop my suitcase on top of it and it was at a perfect height for me to reach in without having to place it on the floor. Major plus as my back had been bothering me for a few weeks.
I was particularly amused by the fact that my room had a balcony overlooking the lobby.
It felt a little like I was staying in a mall, but once I closed the door and the curtains I couldn't hear anything downstairs, which was great.
I showered and rearranged my things, making sure to pull out my chargers and charge all my electronics to get ready for the next day. Then I pulled out my Diet Coke bottle of wine and the last of my pringles from dinner and settled into the giant king bed to watch Ms. Fisher’s Mysteries.
Oh, yeah, you read that right. I had bought one of those small Moda boxes of wine to have on my first night of vacation, but when I brought it home I dropped it and had to put the wine into another container to save it.
I went to bed around 10:30, with my alarm set for 7:30. Through J, E had told me she would be at the airport to pick me up the next morning at 10:30 at the latest. I knew she couldn't give me a full answer until the morning because she couldn't plan on the kiddos so I figured I’d get up early enough that I knew I would have the time to get ready and be out of the room with time to spare.
I fell asleep watching Full House reruns and smelling Lush (it was wafting in from the main lobby - I wasn't complaining!). It was around 11 by the time I actually fell asleep.
And then at 1, I woke up again. The TV had switched from Full House to Fresh Prince. Apparently when I hit the "sleep" button on the TV it hadn't worked.
This isn't actually a huge issue, but I'm a creature of habit. There are certain shows I watch because I've seen them so many times they can act as white noise. When I'm in a Disney hotel, it's one of the loop channels like Stacey. At home, my main shows are the Simpsons, Big Bang Theory, or Friends, but Full House works just as well.
Fresh Prince? Not so much. By 1:30 I realized I was actively listening to the tv and not sleeping so I had to get up, turn the TV off, find my iPad, and started Friends up quietly on Netflix. THEN I managed to fall asleep for real.
So much for a good night's sleep, huh?
Just copy the image address, click on the icon that looks like a photo of mountains, and paste the url, that's what I do!
