Happily Ever After: Epcot

I had planned a group event for Saturday - Celebrating Around the World. The goal was to get a drink or a snack from every country in Epcot's World Showcase. I sent out a newsletter to our guests before the wedding informing them of our various events, and indicated that we would meet up at 12:00 in the Mexico pavilion.

FAIL.

We were two hours late. Anyone who has been to Disney knows that you rely heavily on bus transportation and that oftentimes, it can take much longer than it should to get to your destination. I was a nervous wreck about people being late on the wedding day, so we hired outside transportation for that day. For all the other group events, I stressed to our guests to allow plenty of travel time in order to arrive on time. And who ended up being late to practically everything? Me.

Saturday's epic late-ness was not the fault of Disney transportation. It was completely, 100% our fault.

Let me explain:

We thought were were being smart when we decided to stay at a resort where none of our guests were staying. It was our "honeymoon" and we figured we would not want to be bothered once the wedding was over. This ended up being so not true. Our resort (Old Key West) was right next to where my parents, siblings, & John's best friend were staying (Saratoga Springs) and we were all connected through a boat line to Downtown Disney. Little did we know, it would take HOURS to go between our two resorts. This became a huge pain in the ass - Friday night after dinner it took 2 hours to get back to our hotel room. We also began to realize that we would not be spending that much time alone on this trip - we had our family and friends here with us in our favorite place in the world, and we wanted to take advantage of that.

So, staying by ourselves in a resort away from everyone else was starting to seem like a really bad idea.

We had to do some wedding errands with my parents that morning, so we got up early to bring some items to Port Orleans resort where all of our other guests were staying. Luckily, my parents had their van, so this took much less time than we'd anticipated. During the car ride over, John had suggested stopping at the concierge desk at Saratoga to see if there was any possibility they could transfer us to that resort.

Once back at Saratoga, we got in line in the lobby to talk to one of the check-in people. There just happened to be a cast member walking around the lobby trying to help guests with unusual requests. John and I went up to her and explained our predicament: we are in Disney for our wedding but we are spending all of our time on the buses going back and forth between our guest's resorts and it sucks - we were wondering if we could possibly transfer to a room at Saratoga so we could be close to our family.

This is when we realized for the first time that weekend that Disney was without a doubt a great decision for our wedding location. Not only did this cast member really care about our happiness, she was so excited for us and our wedding and wanted to make sure we had the best trip ever. She then spent the next TWO HOURS finding us a room that was not only at Saratoga, but a two-minute walk from my parents room. This was a huge feat when you consider how incredibly large and spread-out this resort is.

Now, some people might think we are weird for wanting to be so close to my parents on our honeymoon - but John's best friend was staying in my parents villa, along with both of my siblings and their two friends. Those are the people we knew we'd be spending a ton of time with once the rest of the wedding guests headed home, so it made a lot of sense. My only concern was that our rooms not be visible to each other - since I was staying with my parents the night before the wedding, I didn't want any chances that John could see us outside taking photos the morning of the wedding. This cast member achieved all of this and more.

By now, it is 12:00 and I have texted my sister and one of my bridesmaids letting them know we would be REALLY late to Epcot. Remember Epcot? That's what we were supposed to be doing today. There were 15 or so wedding guests in Epcot waiting for us to start our event. So, I put my sister in charge and told her we'd be there as soon as we could.

We still had to check OUT of Old Key West, check IN to Saratoga, and move all of our stuff over. John and I looked at each other - how the heck are we going to do all of this and still get to Epcot?!

Thank goodness my parents drove down! We used their van to book it over to Old Key West, where my mom, dad, John & his friend started packing up our villa. I was on the phone with concierge explaining that Saratoga had moved us over there and could we please check out ASAP? They were a little out of the loop so I had to stay on hold for a little bit while they called over to Saratoga to make sure I was not some crazy bridezilla. Finally, we loaded up my parents van and booked it back to Saratoga.

We went to go check in and had the nicest cast member ever (aside from Jill, the amazing wonder woman who was able to find us a room in a sold-out resort). He was so excited when he found out we were getting married in two days and gave us all sorts of cool "happily ever after" pins to wear. Then, the magic happened.


We always buy a dining plan when we go to Disney. It makes life so much simpler and it saves us a lot of money. They had to transfer our dining plan from one resort to another, no big deal. But this super-awesome-amazing cast member gave us a whole week's worth of the dining plan for FREE! Instead of having 2 snacks, 2 quick service meals, and 2 table service meals every day, we had 3 of each! This was almost $500 worth of free food. We were so excited about this because it meant we could get meals and snacks for some of our guests who had traveled so far for our day.

SO. We are finally checked in to Saratoga and decided we would just drop our luggage off and head strait to Epcot because at this point we are an hour and a half late for our event. Luckily we got on a bus right away and made it to Epcot by about 2pm. Two. Hours. Late.

By the time we walked into the park, made our way over to World Showcase, and found my siblings near the America pavilion, we realized just how hot it was - REALLY hot. My sister had been trying to contain all of our guests to one group, but people drifted off wanting to do their own thing, and she was exhausted after trying to keep up with everyone. We decided to go see a show inside the America Pavilion to give everyone a chance to cool off. At this point the "group event" died off and my siblings went to do their own thing. A couple aunts and uncles went to see some other stuff in the park. The eight of us that were left went in to see the show which was great as it always is, and it gave everyone a chance to calm down, sit down, and cool off.

After the show, my grandparents decided to find a shady spot to sit down for a while, and the rest of us went off in search of some slushie drinks. We found them in France, and paid $10 for each of the tiny slushies, but they were just what we needed at that point.

After our slushies, we split up even more. My parents went off to find my grandparents and siblings, and John & I went off with our friends to try to do a few more countries despite the heat. We walked through the shops and found a secluded air conditioned Japanese art gallery where we sat for a half hour waiting for our dinner reservations.

We had reservations for Via Napoli, a newer restaurant in the Italy pavilion. They specialize in pizza which is the meal John would pick if he had to pick one meal to eat for the rest of his life. Clearly, we had to eat here.


We each got individual pizzas that we could barely eat after the appetizer platter we'd ordered. On top of our drinks and the desserts that came with the dining plan. Needless to say, we were stuffed when we finally left (a trend that continued throughout the entire week). We were getting close to the time when the fireworks show Illuminations started, so we decided to head out of the parks. As we left, we passed by the venue for our VIP dessert party the night of the wedding, which was so much better than I'd been imagining in my head. It made me even more excited for our wedding day and the awesome ending we had planned for our guests.


Finally, we were back into our (new) villa and began unpacking for the second time in two days. We were both looking forward to the next day...our rehearsal, rehearsal brunch, and an afternoon by the pool with all of our guests. Little did John know, I had a sneaky surprise planned for him the next day...