"I'm on vacation!!": More than you ever wanted to know about my Floridian adventures

I've been stalling writing this post for a few reasons: 1) Blogger makes posting a lot of pictures a total bonch and a vacation blog is OBS going to include a gaggle of photos, 2) I've been in a post-vacation depression since before our departing plane was even in the air, 3) Probs no one cares about my vacation.

So, if you don't care to hear about me vacationing it up in Florida, then consider yourself dismissed. Most of you are probably uninterested, unless you were on the trip with me, are one of my parents/grandparents or are a Harry Potter enthusiast. Which reminds me - warning: this post is going to get a lit-tle nerdy. And by a little, I mean a lot. I'll try to make this as interesting as possible.

My body has NO idea what time it is right now. And I'm pretty sure my foot is permanently damaged. But it was totally worth it. (DISCLAIMER: I wrote that sentence exactly one week ago when I first returned from Florida. Yeah, that's how long I've been working on this stupid post.)

Commencing travel log...

Day One, Wednesday night/Thursday - Arrival, confusion and Blizzard Beach (also known as the longest day of my life):
-Shannon, Ronnie and I take the red-eye flight Wednesday night from Las Vegas to meet Shilo, Ashley, Brandon, and Bob in Orlando. We had to switch planes and had a short layover in Atlanta where I left my iPod in the seat-back pocket of our first plane. Of course I didn't realize it until we were boarding our plane to Orlando. I spent the next twenty minutes running around trying to track it down and finally gave up and got on my plane before it left without me. THEN, the lady who scans our boarding passes at the gate comes on the plane, hands me my iPod and walks off. WHAT? Hello, AirTran, best airline ever! Really I should say, Berthalina, best sassy black lady ever who tracked down my iPod and made that other lady deliver it to me. Crisis averted!

-Land in Orlando, get lost in the airport, get un-lost, rent a car, un-rent a car, rent another car, pick up Shilo and drive to our hotel. Eat our second breakfast at this place called Perkins and talk to this guy about getting discount tickets for a water park, which is where things got shady. He "made a call" and then sent us to a nearby two-story gift shop with a giant mermaid sculpture on the storefront to get our discount tickets from some lady at some counter. Which we did. Her instructions on how to use the tickets that require a deposit so we will bring the tickets back to her and that also require a fingerprint to use at the park, made us a little skeptical. This was some shady business. We realized later that they had purchased two-week passes and would basically rent them to different people every day, hence why you have to bring the tickets back at the end of the day. SKETCHY. When we eventually got to the water park and tried to scan our fingerprints, of course they didn't work because we never scanned our fingerprints when we bought these illegal goods! The ticket lady let us in anyway, probably because it was so effing hot and she just wanted us out of her life. I should go back to before we even got to the water park, when we attempted to check into our hotel and they couldn't find our reservation. They couldn't find it because we were at the WRONG hotel. We used their bathroom to change into our bathing suits, went to water park and found our real hotel later.

-The water park, Disney's Blizzard Beach, was an absolute DREAM. I could hardly believe that days before I was in dreary, rainy Utah in a weird jobless isolation, and now I was floating down a lazy river, basking in the sun with my best friends in the world. It didn't even feel like real life. After the lazy river, we rode some water slides, including an extremely high, extremely vertical one that violated me on the way down and injured my backside and one of my sculpted calves. There are no pictures of this outing, because really, who wants to see that?

-After the water park, we went to our actual hotel, which was about 20 billion times nicer than the first place we went. It wasn't a hotel room - it was an apartment. No seriously, it was three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a full-size kitchen, dining room and living room. It was a Floridian palace. We set up camp and I took a shower to clean the body that hadn't seen any sort of personal hygiene in about 24 hours. (I had matted hair and sweater teeth, let's just put it that way.)

Click image to enlarge

-Ashley, Brandon and Bob met us at the hotel after a day at Disney World and we all made preparations to go out to dinner. First obstacle: decide where we're going. Second obstacle: find the keys to one of two rental cars in the group that Ronnie somehow lost. After searching for nearly an hour and finally calling Triple A so we could see if the keys got locked in the trunk, Brandon realized Ronnie's keys were in HIS pocket because as we were getting ready to leave, he saw rental car keys on the counter and just thought they were his. WTF, Bran?

-We drove to a Chinese restaurant that no longer existed and after some more driving ended up at a random hotel where we were going to dine at a place called Everglades that serves alligator. But considering we were opposed to outrageous menu items and astronomical prices, we ditched that idea and went to an adjacent restaurant that had not one single other person eating in it. Good sign or bad sign? We thought maybe it was because it was late, if you consider 8:30 p.m. to be late. Maybe we are just used to Las Vegas hotel restaurants where people eat at all hours, but you'd think there'd be at least one other table of guests. No. The food was decent though and it was a sweet reunion, so it would do.

I wasn't kidding about us being the only ones in the restaurant.

-After dinner, we went shopping to get some provisions for the hotel and then went home to go promptly to bed since the next day would be the fateful day of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My body had not felt the comforts of a bed in about 48 hours, so my bed felt like the most comfortable bed in the world. Which I think it really was, but I can't be sure because I could have been sleeping on an Army cot and it would feel like a cloud compared to an airplane seat.

Day Two, Friday - The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (and the less magical Islands of Adventure park)
-This was it - the day we'd all been waiting for in a nerdy state of excitement. We made our way first thing in the morning to the Universal Studios Islands of Adventure amusement park, which holds The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The magic was palpable.







-We walked into the entrance of Wizarding World which leads you into the wizarding village of Hogsmeade. The place was already buzzing and there was so much to look at it was overwhelming. There was the Hogwarts Express, then Zonkos and Honeydukes, Dervish and Banges, The Three Broomsticks, Hogs Head, Olivanders! It was amazing. We continued walking up the hill toward Hogwarts castle - it was magnificent. The pictures really say more than I ever could. (And brace yourself: there are a crapton of them.)

This is when Shilo decided she didn't like Ashley and Ronnie's allegiance to Slytherin and a joke turned into a legitimate tackle.

Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, the debate rages.

It was really all about the Butterbeer.

-We rode the rides, shopped in the shops, ate lunch and drank Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, and soaked in the magicalness of it all. Then we went and explored the rest of the Islands of Adventure park. It felt instantly not as cool as soon as we stepped out of Hogsmeade, but we rode some rides and walked around before making our way back to Harry Potter to buy crap and finish the day.

Please pay specific attention to the outfit behind us.

Her ensemble is totally photobombing us!

-Olivander's wand shop. Let's talk about it. You have to wait in line to get in and they only let in about 20 people at a time. They have an actor playing Olivander himself and it looks just like the shop from the movies. Olivander picks one lucky person to come up to his desk and he proceeds to try and find them a wand. But, as we know, the wand chooses the wizard. Well, Olivander chose ME. That's right. It was kind of embarrassing since I am in fact 25 years old and in graduate school, but duh exciting. When Olivander finally gave me the right wand, a glowing light shone on me and a fan blew on me. It was pretty amazing. Then I had to buy the wand that chose me for $29.99.



-As the park was about to close, we left The Wizarding World of Harry Potter reluctantly and made our way to the Universal City Walk for dinner and a movie. We ate at NBA City or something like that, of which I was skeptical since the food at the similar ESPN Zone is terrible. But the food was actually really good and we had a cool waiter even though I'm pretty sure he was mocking me when he asked me if my wand had chosen me. Say something I don't like, DWIGHT. I will not hesitate to stupefy you. After dinner we went and the new X-Men: First Class movie which was special since we were at Universal Studios, and had just left Islands of Adventure which has an entire X-Men section. Also, the movie was great and the guys were hot.



-At this point Brandon and I are both convinced we've broken our foot.


Day Three, Saturday: Sun, shopping, driving, Del Taco, VOGUE (hang on to every last second together slash dread the following day of going home)
-Saturday morning the girls made our way to the pool and relaxed until it was so hot I thought my face was searing in the sun. It was a dream.

-Bob had to leave early, so we took him to the airport and then made an excursion to a somewhat distant Del Taco because Ashley, Brandon and Shilo don't have Del Taco in New York and Virginia. Personally, I have Del Taco down the street from my apartment, but I'm never opposed to going there. We won't discuss the fact that we ran across a much closer establishment on our way back to the hotel.

-There was an outlet mall down the street from our hotel so of course we had to stop by. It was incredibly hot and at this point I couldn't go 90 seconds without complaining about my foot, but we got some great finds regardless.

-VOGUE night! In way of explanation, Vogue Night is when we get dressed up and do a photo shoot. Whaaaa???? Don't judge - it's totally awesome. The only thing you should be feeling right now is pure jealousy. I would post the products of said photoshoot, but I think Shannon would want me to wait until she edits them and presents them properly. Plus posting my pictures is ruining my life, so I'm over it.

Day Four, Sunday - Downtown Disney, leave, cry, live in an airport (depression sets in, as does my PMS):
-We had to check out of our delicious hotel and say goodbye to Ashley and Brandon in the morning, but Shi, Shan, Ron and I still had a few hours before we had to be at the airport. So we went to get a little taste of Disney. We walked around Downtown Disney and had lunch while our Chocolate Frogs became chocolate soup in the trunk of our rental car.








-Made our way to the airport where we said goodbye to Shilo and I hated my life because my bags were so effing heavy. (If the people that lug bags FOR A LIVING have to put a "Use Caution When Lifting" tag on your bag, there's a problem. Also, if you get cuts and bruises on your shoulder from carrying a bag, also a problem.) I was super pissed in the Orlando airport because my foot was obviously broken and my bags were heavy and I was sad and we were leaving and I hate flying. It was not the way to cap off an amazing trip, but it is what it is.




-We had a five-hour layover in Atlanta on the way home, which was less than ideal, but it wasn't really that bad to be honest. Being with other people makes it much more bearable, mainly because I can make then watch my bags while I eat and go to the bathroom instead of schlepping them around the concourse.

-I secretly cried a little when I had to say goodbye to Ashley and then again when I said goodbye to Shilo. Living across the country from your best friends is really a downer.

Some amazing quotes nobody knew I was secretly recording:

"You can sleep when you're dead!" -repeatedly by all to whoever was complaining about being tired.

Shilo: You have to think of the humidity as a warm hug.
Ashley: Or hot butt.

Ashley: This is our first adult vacation together.
Brittany: And we're going to Harry Potter Land.
Ashley: I know.

Shilo: I can't think of a scenario where I would find it necessary to slap someone. I mean, I'm sure I would do it if the time came, but I don't know if it would.

Brittany: I flew to Florida for a Butterbeer.

Shannon: That girl had a t-shirt that said, 'Nevil would have done it in four books.'
Brittany: That's sacrilege. And also, no he wouldn't.

"My foot is broken." - repeatedly by Brittany and Brandon

"I'm on vacation!" -repeatedly by all

"Where's Bob?" -repeatedly by all

UPDATE: Quotes I originally forgot that need to be added even though nobody will probably ever read this post again:

"I want to put it on and act like it never happened." - Brittany

Brittany: I'm saving up for a breast reduction.
Shilo: And Ashley's saving up for a chin.




My favorite part of this whole thing was doing whatever I wanted and saying, "I'm on vacation!" as the justification. I think that was everyone's favorite part, really.

It was, in a word, magical.

Now I'm exhausted. PUBLISH.