Part I : The Journey

( written on the flight to Orlando, Saturday night )

I am writing this 30,000 feet in the air or however high planes go these days. It’s 10:36pm central time (we were supposed to depart at 8:15, thanks weather) and I am surrounded by Disney already. There’s an article about it in the in-flight magazine, for crying out loud. The guy behind me casually mentioned to the guy next to him that he used to work at Epcot. There are so many families, clearly Disney-bound, and it’s all getting me so excited. I want to compliment every little kid on their Disney paraphernalia (and ask the parents if they will be dining with the stars at Hollywood and Vine during their vacation).

Basically I just want to get up and shout to the whole plane, “I’M WORKING IN DISNEY WORLD! HAVE A MAGICAL FLIGHT!”

It’s surreal, to say the least. Despite all this it still hasn’t hit me. It kind of just feels like I’m going on vacation with my dad, like I’ll be back in a few days.

But I won’t. More like a few months. 

Speaking of my dad, he is like a Gold Star Frequent Flyer (I’m sure United has a more professional term for it), so he got upgraded to first class while I ... did not. Granted, I was already sitting in Economy Plus/an exit row, which is really no big deal. But my dad, being the awesome and generous dad he is, switched seats with me. So right now he’s about 11 rows behind me in an exit row, and I am in first class feeling guilty for not eating the meal they served us and passing up the warm chocolate chip cookie. Who knew they still fed you on airlines? It’s swanky. And awesome. But my stomach is all in knots because there’s some hardcore turbulence happening right now so all I can really handle is ginger ale.

I wanted to film take-off, but there’s that rule about all personal electronics being off until 10 minutes after take off blah blah blah and I wasn’t really sure if I could. I also thought about taking a picture of my freaking in flight meal (this is a big deal, okay?) but kind of only realized it once everything was half consumed. Not very appetizing.

This probably won’t get posted for a few days, actually. Thanks to the thunderstorms in both Chicago and Orlando, we’re not going to land until about 2am Eastern Time. And I am still planning on dragging my dad out of bed to get to Islands of Adventure when it opens in order to scope out the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We’ll see how that goes...

Then pre-check in dinner with the roomies, then I’m checking in!

I just don’t even know. So surreal.