okay, so i haven’t blogged since running off on our honeymoon after our awesome wedding. i’ve been a bit lazy, getting caught up with work, wading through presents, procrastinating about writing thank yous, realizing i didn’t pay my auto insurance and having it lapse… you know, the usual. and, now i’m sick.
today, i’m keeping my germs to myself so as not to infect anyone else at work. i think i’ve already consumed about a gallon of water and many forms of vitamins, so hopefully good health will be coming my way. i’m also finally getting around to uploading my wedding and honeymoon pictures to flickr (thanks, lauren and mark for taking pictures with my camera!).
and, i figure i should provide some update on the honeymoon. it was pretty awesome, and i couldn’t be happier with the way we planned things. the day after our wedding, we caught a redeye out to orlando via dallas. bernadette definitely made the right call by having us fly first class using miles. pretty great, although i barely slept. the flights were relatively smooth as was the car rental getting us to my timeshare at disneyworld. fortunately, they were nice enough to let us check in at 11am and we were able to relax a bit and realize that we were just starting our honeymoon. i honestly can’t remember really what we did that day, other than just sitting around, napping, and eating. the weather in orlando was kinda crappy, hitting record lows in the low 40s and highs barely in the 60s.
the next day, we decided to go to universal studios instead of one of the disney parks. it’s amazing how many things disney does right and it’s obvious when other parks do the thing wrong. the first point was the ticket line; it look us about 30 mins to get through a line that was only about 20 or 30 deep. we did get our tickets and fortunately, the rest of the park was pretty vacant. the roller coasters were pretty good and i really liked the simpsons ride. we hit the hard rock for dinner and headed back.
the next day, we went to the magic kingdom and did a good job of using fastpasses to get on almost every ride we wanted to go on (somehow, we missed it’s a small world… yeah, that was a close one). we noticed a few people who had bride and groom mickey ears and realized that we had to get those, but alas, they sold out by the end of the day (not sure how disney sells out of anything) and had some lame replacements. we also learned that on splash mountain, you get way wetter in the front than the back. remember that, especially when it’s cold outside.
on our last park-hopping day, we decided to go to disney’s hollywood studios instead of the animal kingdom because we really wanted to ride the aerosmith rollercoaster and the tower of terror. this time, we bought our bride and groom mickey ears early and learned two huge lessons: (1) if it’s your birthday, anniversary, or you just got married like us, go to guest services and get a special pin (more on that later) and (2) you can get a photopass from any disney photographer; when you get your picture taken, they’ll scan your card and you can view and buy your photos online. additionally, those photographers will take your pictures with your camera, so you don’t even have to buy anything from them.
so, walking around with the “just married” pin was pretty cool. almost every employee said “congratulations” to us and there were several small perks that made us feel special. i have a weakness for popcorn and when i bought a box, the lady said, “it’s on me, congratulations!” she was out of water, so i stopped by the next stand and got a water and was given the same response. sure, it saved me $6 or so, but it was still a nice gesture. on one of the rides, the guy didn’t take our fastpass tickets and said, “congratulations,” which allowed us to use it again. very cool.
one final thing that i noticed walking around disneyworld were that there were tons and tons of europeans. it was more normal to see someone wearing a soccer jersey speaking with an english accent that it was to hear an american. we were standing in front of a stand that only sold mcdonald’s fries and someone behind us exclaimed “oh, mcdonald’s chips!” at least some people are benefiting from the weak dollar.
this post is getting super-long and i’ll have to cover jamaica later. the last story revolved around my carelessness. we drove to return the rental car and on the shuttle to the airport, bernadette and i were talking about how much we enjoyed being married. i said something about my ring and held up my hand, only to notice that there was nothing on my finger. uh-oh. i immediately called my timeshare and found the lost and found guy who told me he’d check the room and call me back in 10 mins. so many things were going through my head around getting a cab back to get it and using my clear card to get through the line, etc. i realized how cool it was to have a ring that was blessed by the priest in our ceremony and didn’t want to get a different one. the guy called me back and told me that he found it (whew) and i just needed to email him a ups label to get it to wherever i wanted. i was able to create the label on my iphone, but had no way to email it to him. i broke down and paid the $9 to get online at the airport and took care of the emailing on my laptop. thankfully, problem solved.
jamaica later.
Posted by kellyhirano 
Posted by kellyhirano 
