May Madness: Taking Emily to Disney World, Part 2

August 20, Wednesday

This morning, Emily walked over to the hotel and came up to my room. I wasn't quite ready yet so she went to go get breakfast and I met her down there. We got an Uber to Hollywood Studios. Emily and I both got stopped at security. We even remembered to hold out our umbrellas this time. The lady checking my bag suggested it was maybe my little circle clip that was doing it but I took that out later and that didn't help so who knows.

We got into the park and went straight to Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway to use our first lightning lane. Then we were able to immediately get another lightning lane for Rock n Roller Coaster. The other nice thing is that I was able to modify a couple of the Lightning lanes to make them earlier. I was able to modify Tower of Terror to much earlier. It was originally at around 3 PM and I got it to 11:20 AM. And then I was able to immediately modify Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, which worked out great because we could go straight to that after Mickey and Minnie.

We had fun on Rock 'n' Roller Coaster! I hadn't been on that in a very long time.

After that, we had a little time before Tower of Terror so we went to the villain show. That started at 11:10 AM.

That was cute. It was about 20 minutes long and then we headed to Tower of Terror and rode that.

Emily and I both commented that that ride is a lot shorter than Guardians of the Galaxy at California Adventure. By then, it was close to noon and we decided to see if we could get into our reservation for 50s Prime Time Café early. She checked us in and we still had to wait about 20 minutes.

Cute decor at the Prime Time Cafe

We sat and relaxed in the AC and enjoyed our meal. We got onion rings for an appetizer. Emily got the salmon meal and I got the sampler that has a little bit of meatloaf, chicken, and pot roast with mashed potatoes and green beans. The bummer was that they accidentally brought her the Caesar salad with salmon. They only charged her for the salad and I pointed it out and he said it was OK. It was nice and relaxing.

We finished right at 1:30 PM and that was the time for the next Frozen show. But we decided to take it easy and I made a lightning lane reservation for the next one that starts at 2:30 PM.

We talked to Michael on the phone for a little bit and then we headed over to the Frozen show. That was about 30 minutes.

It was kind of fun at the end when they dumped fake snow on us.

From there, we went to Star Tours. I had gotten us a lightning lane for it, but the standby line was only five minutes so that was pretty much unnecessary. It was just me and Emily and another family of four in the whole ride. Next, we headed over to Toy Story Land to ride Toy Story Mania.

Buzz Lightyear sighting

We had a lot of fun on Toy Story Mania. I was beating Emily for most of the game and then she did awesome on the last round and she beat me. She was pretty happy about that. After that, we went to Alien Swirling Saucers. As we got on the ride, it started raining. We got out our umbrellas and walked over to find a place that was covered so we could figure out what to do. We got out our ponchos and put them on and decided to go ahead and leave. I had already done everything I wanted to do and so did Emily and I didn't want to bother with Slinky Dog Dash so we headed out. After about two minutes, it stopped raining. We were cooking in our ponchos so we took those off. Next, we walked over to the Skyliner. We had talked about possibly doing that today and since we finished everything we wanted to do that worked out perfectly.

It was sprinkling a little bit. We switched at Caribbean Beach resort and then went to Epcot. We walked over to the Boardwalk. I really wanted to try the Cake Bake shop. It was seriously overpriced just like I had heard on social media. But I couldn't help myself and I got the cookie dough cake slice. It was $22 so that was ridiculous.

Emily wanted ice cream so she went next-door to the boardwalk ice cream shop. Her ice cream cone was only $6.50 so that was nice. We sat outside and ate our food. The sun came out so we set up our umbrellas to shade us. Then we walked over to the lobby of the Boardwalk hotel. It was gorgeous, of course. We walked over to where you catch the shuttle and took the one to the Magic Kingdom. It dropped us off at security, so we bypassed the ferry and monorail. We had to go through security again and of course I got stuck but this time Emily didn't. I'm so annoyed that they stop me every time. Anyway, we took the monorail to the TTC, the ticketing and transportation center. Then we got off and switched to the Epcot monorail. That was fun because when it got to Epcot, it drove around the Epcot ball and then dropped us off.

Then we got an Uber. He dropped off Emily at Flamingo Crossings and then he dropped me off at the hotel. I came up to my room to cool off and get ready for bed.

August 21, Thursday

I'm so glad I've had this time in Disney World with Emily! It was very hard to say goodbye to her today. She left her apartment at 8 AM and got to the hotel at 8:20 AM. We had a prayer and I finished up packing. She went to get some breakfast and I met her down there. I dropped off my bags at the front desk for them to watch and had some breakfast. She ordered the Uber today and we got to Animal Kingdom by about 9:30 AM.

We went straight to Flight of Passage on the lightning lane. It was wonderful! Then we went over to Na'vi River Journey.

Pandora

We wanted to go on the Safari next but from what Emily saw it was a 70 minute wait. I really wanted to eat something so we went to Zuri's Sweet Shop in Africa and I got a caramel butter bar, a sugar cookie to share with Emily, and Emily got a frozen lemonade. I was pretty excited about that caramel butter bar because that's the same one I got in Epcot and it was delicious! We sat down and relaxed and enjoyed that. I looked on the app and it said that the Safari only had a 15 minute wait and so Emily said, "We need to go!" So we did. We got right on that ride and it was fantastic. We got to see the hippos and rhinos and elephants and everything and, of course, the giraffes, but no lions. There was a giraffe walking right down the path where we were supposed to drive so that was kind of cute.

After we got off the Safari, we went down the whole gorilla walk. We got to see the gorilla lounging in the corner.

Then we headed over to Yak and Yeti quick service to get some food. Emily was super hot and tired and not feeling great and I was pretty worn out myself. I was pretty disappointed in the Yak and Yeti food. The portions were tiny and my chicken fried rice only had one tiny little piece of chicken.

Tree of Life

After that, we took the wildlife express train to Rafiki's Planet Watch. By the time we got back from that, it was 2:20 PM. We had already decided that we had done everything we wanted to do today. So we headed out to the front and I got went to the photo counter and they found the Guardians of the Galaxy picture for me. I called an Uber. I needed it to take me to the hotel to get my suitcase and then to the airport and so I finally figured out how to do that. We walked over and my Uber was almost there. She said maybe an Uber would be easier for her to get to Magic Kingdom and I told her that's what she definitely should do so that was good but by then the car pulled up. So, our goodbye was kind of rushed. It was so hard knowing I'm not going to see her for a while. We hugged a couple times and cried and said our goodbyes and I got in the car and left and she waved goodbye to me as we pulled away. She got on the Uber shortly after I did so that was good. He drove me to the hotel and I got my suitcase quickly and then by the time I got to the airport it was about 3:45 PM. My flight was at 5:51 PM so that was plenty of time. I went through security and came over to the sitting area near the gates. I decided to chill here for a little bit and then get some food and go to my gate. I got the food and walked over to the gate thinking I would eat it on the plane, but because of the bad rain storm and thunder and lightning, we were delayed. It's kind of a long story but basically the flight was supposed to leave at 5:51 PM. I texted Michael and the boys at 6:17 PM that I was on the plane. We finally took off at 7:53 PM. The pilot came on and said he had more bad news that we couldn't land in Phoenix because of the lightning there and we would have to be diverted. So that was a bummer. Then he said we would be diverted to the Mesa Gateway airport. I thought that's what we were doing. He didn't say anything else and the next thing I know we landed and he said we didn't land at Mesa Gateway, we landed in Phoenix. So that made a lot more sense because I didn't recognize any of the roads as we were landing. I was so relieved that we didn't get diverted because I think that even if we landed at Mesa Gateway and refueled like he said we were going to, I don't think they would've let me off the plane. So I was thrilled that we landed in Phoenix because Michael was already there to pick me up anyway. I quickly got to the car and he drove me home! I think it was close to 11 PM when we got home and Jonny was already in bed so we had a prayer with Daniel and I got ready for bed.

Emily went to Magic Kingdom after she dropped me off at the airport. She had a blast!