"GET AWAY, SCURVY!!" – A May 2017 Whirlwind Long Weekend TR

[MeghanEmily]

Joining in

aboard!

 

[missangelalexis]

Yay glad you've started, of course I will be reading along!

Your first travel day sounds like it went smoothly!

 

[MamaCoop]

Yayyy!!!!!!! Glad you made it back!!! Can't wait to hear more!

Oh and that sandwich looked sooo good!

 

[vrajewski10513]

This is what our TEENY suitcase looked like.

Wow, that takes skill!!

And for those who are wondering about the big question, Whether my KEEN sandals stood up to Disney days....they...kind of did? Kind of didn't?

On a Disney Shoe Suitability Scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is terrible (stilettos) and 5 is average shoes and 10 is perfect for Disney...these sandals were about a 6. (My Asic sneakers are around a 7.5 and my crocs around an 8. I've yet to find the elusive 10.)

Pros: they had decent support and my feet didn't ache, and it rained off and on our entire first day, so they held up well when they got wet and were almost equally comfortable wet to dry. They dried fully overnight, which was also a plus.
Cons: They still blistered, even in places they weren't originally rubbing where I expected possible blisters. If we'd been taking a slower touring pace (like we're hoping to do this August) they might have been fine, but moving as quickly as we were my feet were all taped up in Moleskin and looked like little mummies by the second day. We stop for nothing.

Fries are absolutely my guilty pleasure.

Thanks for the review!! I may have to bypass the Keens. My Nikes are a solid 8.5 in my book of comfortability, but I do need to start looking for a new pair because mine are getting old

supplemented my fry-supper with a turkey/avocado/tomato sandwich I'd made at home, and it was delightful. Such a good combo, and so much turkey.

So GOOD! The Bacon, Turkey, Avocado sandwich is my favorite at Panera.

 

[MeghanEmily]

Good to see you ladies here!

Yay glad you've started, of course I will be reading along!

Your first travel day sounds like it went smoothly!

Fortunately all our travel on the way there went as easily as we could have hoped The way back...less so, but still not terrible.

Yayyy!!!!!!! Glad you made it back!!! Can't wait to hear more!

Oh and that sandwich looked sooo good!

Love the enthusiasm! You're making me even more excited to report on it! And it was a really tasty sandwich, even on gluten free bread.

So GOOD! The Bacon, Turkey, Avocado sandwich is my favorite at Panera.

Bacon! That's the only thing it needed! Noted for next trip...

 

[afwdwfan]

Oh, also, fun fact: we're Canadian. I do my best to remember to use my American spelling on here, but sometimes I forget. No, we don't say "a-boot." (We say "a-boat.") No, we don't ride our polar bears to work. (That's strictly for weekend entertainment.) But yes, we do subsist on maple syrup. (N's dad owned a sugar bush.) And yes, I do say, "eh?" (Naturally. All the time. No shame.)

Way to own those stereotypes!

And for those who are wondering about the big question, Whether my KEEN sandals stood up to Disney days....they...kind of did? Kind of didn't?

Not what I wanted to hear...

On a Disney Shoe Suitability Scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is terrible (stilettos) and 5 is average shoes and 10 is perfect for Disney...these sandals were about a 6. (My Asic sneakers are around a 7.5 and my crocs around an 8. I've yet to find the elusive 10.)

Not bad... maybe I should go ahead and grab an extra pair of crocs flip flops just to be safe?

Cons: They still blistered, even in places they weren't originally rubbing where I expected possible blisters. If we'd been taking a slower touring pace (like we're hoping to do this August) they might have been fine, but moving as quickly as we were my feet were all taped up in Moleskin and looked like little mummies by the second day. We stop for nothing.

Ouch... I've been wearing my Keens some at home and not noticed any of this. I guess I need to take a good hard brisk walk for a few miles and see what happens.

Thanks for the feedback, I truly appreciate it.

This will take a while.

No kidding.

I hate that screen. I just wish there was a way to delay it to do it when I'm ready to turn it off.

 

[Jennyren]

I have to admit that I read your previous trip report (I'm a sucker for a disney proposal) and have been following along on your wedding PTR as well. I just got married last year (It was destination but not Disney. Though we did part of the honeymoon at Aulani) so it's nice to read through someone's experience from the other side!

I figured I'd speak up this time and let you know I'm following along. So here I am! Sounds like Day 1 went smoothly. Can't wait to hear more!

 

[MeghanEmily]

Not bad... maybe I should go ahead and grab an extra pair of crocs flip flops just to be safe?

Ouch... I've been wearing my Keens some at home and not noticed any of this. I guess I need to take a good hard brisk walk for a few miles and see what happens.

Thanks for the feedback, I truly appreciate it.

If I were you, I might plan to bring one other pair of something forgiving like the crocs flip flops just in case you need to swap them out sometimes. I wear my Keens around home all the time now that the weather is finally improving here, and they don't usually give me any trouble, but at Disney I seriously put them through their paces. I think the first day we walked about 28k steps. I think I also happen to just have really tender feet though—I will even blister a little bit in good running shoes at Disney—so take my review with a grain of salt. I highly recommend the long brisk walk suggestion to get a good idea!

I have to admit that I read your previous trip report (I'm a sucker for a disney proposal) and have been following along on your wedding PTR as well. I just got married last year (It was destination but not Disney. Though we did part of the honeymoon at Aulani) so it's nice to read through someone's experience from the other side!

I figured I'd speak up this time and let you know I'm following along. So here I am! Sounds like Day 1 went smoothly. Can't wait to hear more!

Hello, and !! Thanks so much for chiming in! Destination weddings are so fun (at least so far, being only in the planning process...hopefully it stays fun!) Your honeymoon must have been soo beautiful if you spent it in Hawaii! Nathan would love to go someday. It's one of his bucket list locations.

 

[Jennyren]

Hello, and !! Thanks so much for chiming in! Destination weddings are so fun (at least so far, being only in the planning process...hopefully it stays fun!) Your honeymoon must have been soo beautiful if you spent it in Hawaii! Nathan would love to go someday. It's one of his bucket list locations.

Thanks! We actually got married in Hawaii, on Maui! You really have to make it out there at some point. We had looked at getting married in Disneyland, but since most of our family lives in California, we would have had way too many guests. Having a destination wedding was perfect for me because I felt like I could only control so much, so I couldn't stress out over the little things. Hopefully it's been the same for you, so far. I feel like having this trip before the wedding, where you can take care of some wedding related items not only puts your mind at ease, but ups the excitement factor! Can't wait to hear all about it!

 

[Whit64130]

I'm here and following along for this TR!

On a Disney Shoe Suitability Scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is terrible (stilettos) and 5 is average shoes and 10 is perfect for Disney...these sandals were about a 6. (My Asic sneakers are around a 7.5 and my crocs around an 8. I've yet to find the elusive 10.)

I wondered how these held up! I have been debating on getting a pair or not. Lately I have been sporting my Birkentsock sandals, Asic running show, Run Disney shoes, and some older but reliable Merrell Sandals. I feel if I change up daily then it helps prevent blisters for me. Luckily using this method the past few trips have been blister free!

Can' wait to read more!!

 

[vrajewski10513]

On a Disney Shoe Suitability Scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is terrible (stilettos) and 5 is average shoes and 10 is perfect for Disney...these sandals were about a 6. (My Asic sneakers are around a 7.5 and my crocs around an 8. I've yet to find the elusive 10.)

I wasn't actually eyeing up these guys at Cabelas. I couldn't decide if they would be amazing or aweful. FOR the price I don't want to get them and HATE them. Maybe you have some insite since you have a different kind of Keen..

 

[MeghanEmily]

I'm here and following along for this TR!

Yay! Whitney!

I wondered how these held up! I have been debating on getting a pair or not. Lately I have been sporting my Birkentsock sandals, Asic running show, Run Disney shoes, and some older but reliable Merrell Sandals. I feel if I change up daily then it helps prevent blisters for me. Luckily using this method the past few trips have been blister free!

Yeah, I'll definitely be taking a few different pairs for the next trip! I think I need to be training my feet for the trip too, because I always manage to get a blister like the very first day! haha I'm going to try my best to make August the blister free trip!

 

[MeghanEmily]

I wasn't actually eyeing up these guys at Cabelas. I couldn't decide if they would be amazing or aweful. FOR the price I don't want to get them and HATE them. Maybe you have some insite since you have a different kind of Keen..

Hmmm.... I could definitely see these going either way like you thought. They certainly look cool! Haha. Maybe if you ended up getting them you could try them walking around indoors for a while or on the treadmill or something and return them if they didn't feel right? That's what I did with a pair of runners I bought earlier in the year.

 

[shannie102]

excited to follow along and for the disneymoon PTR- Congratulations!!!

 

[MeghanEmily]

"Loosen Up Those Tense Areas...STRETCH!"
Travel Day 2 - Part 1

Welcome to "leg" two of the trip!

Man, I SLAY myself!

Morning came, and we hit the road, but with a pit stop first...I had to visit my grandma! My grandmother and I are really close, and she was responsible for helping us to afford this trip by gifting us the free nights she'd earned at her timeshare and a voucher to go toward the cost of our flights, so I really wanted to make sure I saw her and thanked her in person before we left. While we were there, she went with us to the neighbors' place....who just happen to be my aunt and uncle...to see the two new baby foals they'd just had born in the last couple of weeks. They were so precious and leggy and fun!

I didn't take any photos, so I just stole this one from my aunt's Facebook page:

We crossed the border with no trouble and popped over to our international mailbox to pick up some things I'd ordered for this trip and for the wedding. (We picked them up on this trip so we wouldn't have to pay duty on them! You can bring much more back without duty if you're over for 24-48 hours!) Included in this haul were a few tank tops I'd bought from Hot Topic with the intention of trying them on and returning any that didn't fit to the Hot Topic store in Bangor when we arrived.

At this point I'd say that it was getting HOT. To compare, this is the weather forecast for Bangor and for Orlando on Thursday.

Bangor was basically the same temperature as Florida. This is NOT the norm in May (or really, ever.) And this is in Celsius (#Canadian) so just think of these temperatures as 89.6F and 91.4F. (And you'll also notice the "feels like" temp in Bangor was actually significantly higher than Florida. 38C is 100.4F. Jeepers creepers!)

Driving down through Maine toward Bangor I quickly got bored and started snacking. N and I had started to bug each other, so I broke the tension by asking him if he wanted a million dollar grape. So kind of me to share such treasure. #savorthegrapes

On the way we hit a rest stop to pee and so I could try on my tank tops.

And I made sure to stretch as directed:

Loosen up those tense areas...STRETCH!
#NeckSideBend

While we were sorting garbage in the car and whatnot, tiny bugs were attacking it, and we ended up killing little blackflies while we were driving all the rest of the way there.​

 

[MeghanEmily]

#LuxurySedan
Travel Day 2 - Part 2

Just in case you were curious. There was more snacking. No diets on vacation.

Once we arrived in Bangor, we killed some time at the mall. I hit Hot Topic, and then we did the Starbucks thing, where I encouraged N to try some decadent girly dark mint frozen delight, and where I found some all natural peanut butter cups I could eat.

The mall there used to feel so big to me when I was little and lived in a really small town. Now that I live in a slightly less small city that has bigger malls, it feels kinda dinky and cute. But it does have a Claire's...and I took great joy in asking N to pose there with this:

We also found a touch screen vitamin water machine, which was very exciting.

N found the advertising for the XXX flavor to be quite suggestive!

After that we had an important stop to make: Home Depot.

That may sound ridiculous, but as I mentioned, N is a spray paint artist. Just the week previous, he'd found out that he would have the opportunity to paint at a comic convention in Orlando the week after our trip. This would be his first US show, and he didn't yet have a US supplier for his paint or the boards he paints on. He buys his boards at hardware stores and has them cut to 16"x20," and there's a specific process he has to go through with the person cutting it to make sure it's done properly and he gets the right number of "canvases" for his money. After quite an ordeal at Home Depot, and some major stress, he finally had his order sorted out to pick up the following week when he returned to make his second journey to Florida. (More on this craziness at the end of the TR.)

By this time we were getting pretty hungry. I'd been hoping to eat at the Texas Roadhouse, but I'd forgotten they only do lunch on weekends, so instead we went to the Olive Garden. We both got pasta dishes (mine being gluten free.)

The gluten free one is the yellow one that looks like it must be made of corn...because it is. But it was decent, and it didn't make me sick. When travelling, that counts as a major score.

N was frantically trying to sort all the details for his show the following week on such short notice before he could really start doing vacation this weekend, and I worried that this would be the only view of him I'd have for the whole trip:

I thought it was neat that they had a little tablet at the table that sorted your food options for you based on allergies. This was new since the last time I'd been.

After lunch, we bummed around Target for a while, finding nothing we needed, and then gave in and made the trek to the airport...four hours early.

Once we arrived, I browsed the gift shops and N played some Pokemon Go. I took this picture of a giant giraffe guarding the gift shop:

N's supper was purchased for later (because there's not much inside security at Bangor) and then we went through. It was a little more eventful than usual because N had a tablet in his bag, and it has a case on it which includes a detachable keyboard. When he went through the TSA person said to remove laptops, and N said he had a tablet and asked if he should take it out. They said "No, ONLY laptops." Ok, point taken. So he didn't. Then, of course, his bag kept being put back through the machine...then it was taken over to be manually inspected with the bomb wand thingy, and N was rushed over and questioned in a very serious manner. Then the TSA person (different guy) reamed him out for having a laptop in his bag. N explained that it was a tablet and he'd asked whether to take it out, but the TSA person just angrily told him that it had a keyboard, so it was a laptop. And then that it was a Surface Pro, which was considered a laptop. Moral of the story is: when in doubt, take it out.

After assuring we weren't a threat to anyone's safety, we were allowed through security and continued to wait. While there, I went to the washroom and encountered a lady sitting on the tile floor, pulling all of her clothing out of her ginormous backpack and stuffing various articles down her shirt and into her bra, etc. She was already wearing about 5 layers. I assume she needed to make her backpack fit in the luggage sizer. Otherwise, I'm baffled by her sense of style.

Boredom set in, and silly selfies started to happen.

N nibbled on his supper, and I ate a quinoa salad I'd prepared at home before we left, and the rest of the diamond-encrusted grapes. Then we finally got to board.

Our flight was uneventful and nearly on time. The guy giving announcements on the plane was cracking jokes left, right, and center, and it made for an entertaining flight. He even made a joke during the safety info about how if the masks fell from the ceiling that they would "charge for oxygen by the minute...since this is Allegiant, after all." I was like, dude, no kidding! That's why we only packed one carry-on! They charge you for everything. They didn't even offer free soda.

When we landed safely at Orlando Sanford, and after I'd forced N into a sleepy picture with this guy...

...we went to get our rental car from Alamo...only to find that they wouldn't let me put N on the contract as the driver. N didn't have a working credit card because his card didn't have a travel alert on it and had thus been declined earlier that day in Maine. My card was fully functional and had the rental car already paid for on it, but since N didn't also have a credit card to use, they wouldn't let him drive. That meant I had to drive...and pay the $75+tax fee for young drivers that went along with it. We also added the full gas tank option so we wouldn't have to find a gas station on the way back to the airport, even though we knew it would have saved us money not to. And alongside that we had to pay a bunch of other "hidden" fees I was prepared for...which made our bill that night for a car we'd ALREADY PAID FOR: $176.

So if you read my PTR you may recall that this was going to be a budget trip for us. You may also notice that I've stopped tracking the trip costs since then. Having this extra charge slapped on so early in the trip kind of became a "screw it!" moment for us, and I stopped working so hard to beat the bank. We didn't do anything extravagant after that, but if we wanted a snack we bought it. If we didn't want to split quick service, we each got our own thing. The rental car put us over the edge.

We went out to get our car, only to find that they had already given away ALL of the economy cars since it was late at night. Even though we'd already booked and paid for one. In fact, they didn't have anything left that was smaller than a pick-up truck or a large SUV. Then they found something else: the smallest thing they could offer us was a Ford Explorer...okay, I could drive that. So we got in. It smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. I have a brain condition and am highly chemically sensitive, so I would have been ill the whole trip in that. We were getting really angry, and a manager-type heard me borderline-yelling about the issue, and said, "Don't worry, I have something smaller that won't smell like smoke." He led us over to the "Best in Class" row and put us in our zippy little Infiniti. N and I couldn't figure out how to classify it, not really a car, not really an SUV, etc., so he jokingly called it our "luxury sedan" and it stuck. It had a moon roof, leather interior, temperature control on the AC that you could adjust differently for each side of the car. It was beautiful. And we got it for "economy" price. (Which, I think was totally karma for having to pay such a ridiculous young driver fee!) Here are photos I took later in the trip when it was light out:

Equipped with our "luxury sedan," we made a late night Walmart stop on the way to Kissimmee for some water, cereal, PB sandwich supplies, etc. ($21. Probably would have been double that at home!), and made the hour-long drive to Orange Lake. By the time we got to bed that night it was 1:03am, which felt like 2:03am our time, and we were wiped out. I was beginning to question the "Whirlwind Trip" idea, but we were both excited for morning to come...

...Alright! I swear on my Disney Dooney that the fun Disney stuff is coming in the next update. Thanks for hanging in there!​

 

[Raeven]

I took great joy in asking N to pose there with this:

I took a picture of my sister in one of those a couple months ago

The gluten free one is the yellow one that looks like it must be made of corn...because it is. But it was decent, and it didn't make me sick. When travelling, that counts as a major score.

I think most gluten free pasta tastes the same as regular pasta. I don't know if we've ever had a corn one though.

...we went to get our rental car from Alamo...only to find that they wouldn't let me put N on the contract as the driver. N didn't have a working credit card because his card didn't have a travel alert on it and had thus been declined earlier that day in Maine. My card was fully functional and had the rental car already paid for on it, but since N didn't also have a credit card to use, they wouldn't let him drive. That meant I had to drive...and pay the $75+tax fee for young drivers that went along with it. We also added the full gas tank option so we wouldn't have to find a gas station on the way back to the airport, even though we knew it would have saved us money not to. And alongside that we had to pay a bunch of other "hidden" fees I was prepared for...which made our bill that night for a car we'd ALREADY PAID FOR: $176.

We actually ended up canceling our rental partially because of all the "hidden fees" it just ended up not being worth it.

 

[MeghanEmily]

I think most gluten free pasta tastes the same as regular pasta. I don't know if we've ever had a corn one though.

Sometimes I can't even tell the difference anymore. Sometimes if it's particularly good gf pasta I have to get Nathan to try a bite of mine to make sure it actually is gluten free.

We actually ended up canceling our rental partially because of all the "hidden fees" it just ended up not being worth it.

Agree! Had we not been both flying into Sanford and staying offsite, it never would have been worth it for us. Next time we're driving so we'll have a car anyway (as long as mine doesn't die before then!) but whenever we go next I won't be renting a car again.

 

[vamassey1]

I'm here but I'll have to go back and get caught up.

 

[missangelalexis]

So nice that you could stop and see your grandma!

As a lover of peach flavored candies, those ones you were eating look so good!

At least you were able to kill some time at the mall before heading to the airport!

That really stinks about the rental car, I'm sorry!

I'm sure you guys were tired! But fun times to come!