Mail from Disney

Thanks to a camping trip that Girl Scout Fiancée arranged for her troop, I had a weekend (or, at least, a Friday and Saturday) of flying solo. It was a weekend filled with gaming, a journey to our local Oktoberfest, and mediocre-to-bad football (my teams are determined to make me feel sad this year), but on Saturday something magical happened: I received not one, but two pieces of mail from Disney.

Disney mail is almost as good as kitty mail.

The first came when, during a game of Legend of the Five Rings, the doorbell rang, hailing the arrival of our local mail delivery person. I had to sign (two signatures! Apparently they really, really needed to make sure that I received it) for a large envelope from Disney's Fairytale Weddings. Inside was a copy of our contract, plus a small envelope addressed to us from our Wedding Consultant, Dianne. This smaller envelope also contained our Annual Pass vouchers, which we will redeem for our actual Annual Passes when we reach Disney World. That's exciting, but, at the same time, now I have these voucher cards that I have to remember to bring with us to Disney World, otherwise our honeymoon is going to be far, far less exciting. Is it too early to start a packing list for the trip to Florida?

Additionally, I fired up My Disney Experience and was prompted as I did so to link my tickets to my account. I suppose that when Diane sent us our vouchers she must have also flagged us in Disney's system as having tickets, otherwise I have no idea how the system would know that we'd received our vouchers. When prompted to enter the "12-digit ticket number" I was a bit confused, as our Annual Pass vouchers didn't have a 12-digit number. On the back, though, was a barcode with a much longer number, so I tried that....and it worked! I successfully linked our AP vouchers to our accounts, assigning one to Girl Scout Fiancée and one to myself. With that done, it looks like we'll eventually be able to get our MagicBands (the still-in-testing wristband technology that should be fully in place come April) and schedule our FastPasses in advance.

The future is now!

The other piece of mail arrived more conventionally in our mailbox, and contained the Disney trip planning DVD I'd requested. This one I requested through the normal vacation planning website, not through Disney's Fairytale Weddings, and it took all of my willpower not to watch the video without Girl Scout Fiancée. I steeled myself against the temptation, each time thinking about poor Girl Scout Fiancée out in the woods enduring Pacific Northwest cold and surprisingly heavy rain, and managed to make it through most of the weekend without watching it. Today, after watching my beloved Falcons lose to the hated Patriots, I needed a pick-me-up badly, so I cajoled and wheedled until Girl Scout Fiancée acquiesced and allowed me to put in the DVD.

Since this is part of Disney's normal promotional materials, and not something from the wedding department, the DVD was definitely geared more toward families with kids. I knew that we wouldn't be getting a lot of important information out of it, but I wanted to watch it for two reasons, both of which ended up being justified. First, I am insane, and need to see Disney stuff in motion to satiate my anticipation for our upcoming trip. Second, I figured the more general overview might reveal some things that Girl Scout Fiancée is interested in that I hadn't taken into consideration yet. As I mentioned, it was a success on both counts, as I now feel better and also figured out at least three important items for our honeymoon.

Girl Scout Fiancée surprised me by showing a lot of excitement about Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom. I've never been a huge fan of the sit-in-a-round-thing-and-get-wet rides (there was one at Six Flags Over Georgia, which left me nonplussed) and I've ridden Kali River Rapids before without it leaving a huge impression on me. Girl Scout Fiancée, on the other hand, was VERY excited about the possibility of doing this ride, so that's one more thing to mark down for our Animal Kingdom itinerary.

Gotta love a ride that feels the need to spray you with water before you hit the rapids.

I wasn't too surprised when Girl Scout Fiancée got excited seeing the very colorful and splashy Value Resorts in the hotels section of the DVD. They're bright, colorful, and, in Girl Scout Fiancée's own words, "Seem like the most fun." It's true, their décor is definitely more in-your-face and vibrant. I think they're a great option for families, since kids will really get a lot more excited about something like the Value Resorts appearance than they would the more elegant and understated environment of the Deluxe Resorts. I'm glad I've set aside time on our honeymoon to wander around and visit other hotels on our relaxation days, as this will be a good chance for Girl Scout Fiancée to see the other resorts and figure out which ones she likes. That way, when we come back the next time, she'll know which one she likes, and we can plan accordingly.

I was a little surprised when we watched the segments on the water parks wasn't immediately dismissed. I may have underestimated Girl Scout Fiancée's interest in Typhoon Lagoon/Blizzard Beach. I'll need to remain flexible on our days off down there, as heading to one of the water parks might be a good way to spend some of our relaxation days, if we're really feeling like going and doing something. Alternately, if it's really hot, we could hit one up the day after the wedding, after we've said goodbye to our families, if we're not feeling too wiped out from the day before.

You're allowed to just sleep on the tubes, right?

Even though the DVD wasn't really geared toward us, I'm glad I ordered it, because a lot of times Girl Scout Fiancée doesn't know what she's going to be excited about, or uninterested in, until it's right in front of her. I wonder if I should start hunting down some more in-depth videos about Disney World to see what piques her interest elsewhere. Anyone know of a good place to find some videos I can show to Girl Scout Fiancée to help prep her for the trip?

The Planning Kit

Two weeks have passed since the last major step in the wedding process for us. The last big milestone was signing and returning the contract for our wedding, along with the initial deposit. This morning when I got in my car I saw that I had missed a phone call; as it turns out, this was our assigned Wedding Coordinator, Danny, calling me to inform me that he had just finished e-mailing us our planning kit. It's a shame I didn't get to talk to Danny at that time, as he sounds like a very nice guy. In his message, he suggested that we set up a time in a few weeks to have a phone call between the three of us, not only he could take time to answer our questions, but also to begin building a rapport between us so that, in the coming months, there would be a degree of trust between us. That really impressed me, as so often, when dealing with someone who almost certainly does this kind of thing for dozens of couples at a time, you end up just another customer out of many, and there is never any real relationship built. The fact that he mentioned, right out of the gate, building up a relationship with us said to me that he was interested in doing more than just the bare minimum of what is required. I like that.

I'm sure it will be all trust falls and conga lines from here on out.

The planning kit is actually pretty simple and straightforward. The file is a PDF that includes a listing of all of the floral choices, ceremony decor options, photography options, cake choices and enhancements, beverage choices, transportation options, music selections, entertainment enhancements, and other basic information that we need to decide upon before the wedding. Since we are having an Escape wedding, the options under each category (even the pay-extra upgrades) are pretty light, but we knew that going into it.

This was, however, the first time we've been able to see actual details on the options available to us, as most websites that talk about Disney weddings don't give much more information than what is in the above paragraph. For example, we didn't know that there were seven bouquet accents available as upgrades. We didn't know that the photography options and upgrades came in packages, some of which include crazy high-quality albums with your name and wedding date embossed on them. We didn't know exactly what cake options were available to us, or that neither yellow nor green (our wedding colors) are available on any of the cakes. Seeing it all in one place made me realize that even with a package deal, we have a lot of decisions to make.

Normally, I love making choices.

So, we have our packet, and we're supposed to go over it and start coming up with some questions for when we start working more closely with Danny. Already, though, I can tell we might have some choppy waters ahead. Girl Scout Fiancée is not thrilled with the bouquet options, which again we have only just now seen for the first time, based not only on the colors of flowers available, as well as the styles. Likewise, the limited options on the wedding cakes may prove to be a pain point for us as well, since not only are our wedding colors nowhere to be found in our options, but the decorative styles on the cakes aren't doing anything for Girl Scout Fiancée. I think Girl Scout Fiancée was a little distraught at this, since we have such limited options.

Yet I don't think it's time to panic. On the cake issue, people order custom cakes all the time in Disney World, and not just people getting married; I've seen plenty of photos of elaborate cakes made for Disney resort guests celebrating all kinds of things. I feel fairly certain that we can get a cake that makes us happy, even if we have to work directly with one of the bakeries to make it and pay for it out of pocket. Similarly, if we aren't getting what we want out of the Disney florist, we can seek out an outside vendor for our flowers. Sure, that increases the cost, but I would rather pay a little more out of pocket to get something that will make Girl Scout Fiancée than have us looking back on our wedding with any regrets.

No regrets.

If anyone else out there had an Escape wedding and went above and beyond the basic options listed for things like flowers and wedding cake, please let us know. How did it work out for you? How did you get the process started in getting more than what the basic package offers?

Yet Another Startling Food Discovery

Because I cannot stop myself from reading Disney food blogs and forums, today I came across a post about the best pizza delivery options in Walt Disney World. Usually, when my family ordered pizza, it was from the pizza window at the Boardwalk. There's not really much of a reason to order pizza, though, unless something went wrong; unless one of us was sick or otherwise not feeling well, we always went out for food. So, in thinking of food options at Disney World for our wedding/honeymoon, pizza delivery wasn't even a blip on my radar. That is, until I discovered that there's a Giordano's in Lake Buena Vista.

My initial reaction.

For the uninitiated, Giordano's is a chain of pizza places found in Chicago that serves a delicious variety of Chicago-style pizzas. I first had Giordano's when I visited Chicago in college for a fraternity formal; I wanted to see the city, and my date (who had been to Chicago many times before) recommended Giordano's. From that moment, I was hooked. Every time I've been back to Chicago since then (which, admittedly, is only four times), I've made sure to eat there (as well as Cafe Ba Ba Reeba, in case anyone is looking for a good tapas place in Chicago). A lot of Chicago locals will probably tell you that the chain isn't as good as [insert independently owned and operated Chicago-style pizza place here], but I don't care. It's exactly the kind of thing I like.

Several years ago, Girl Scout Fiancée and I went back to my Ancestral Homeland (Tennessee) for my brother's wedding around Christmas time. A few days before Christmas, we drove from Tennessee all the way to her family's home in Pennsylvania, spent a few days through Christmas there, and then, in an attempt to let us unwind after a couple of weeks of travel and family visits, took the train all the way from Harrisburg, PA to Seattle, WA, with stops in Pittsburgh and Chicago along the way. Chicago is the eastern endpoint for the Empire Builder, a train route I've taken half-a-dozen times with coworkers headed to our big annual convention, so we had a few hours to kill in Chicago. I took Girl Scout Fiancée to the Willis Tower, we walked around the snowy streets of Chicago, and, of course, I coerced her into going to Giordano's.

Girl Scout Fiancée and I at Giordano's in Chicago. I'm the one with the goatee.

We both really enjoyed the meal, and our few brief hours in Chicago is one of those memories I'm going to carry around for a long time. Bringing it back to wedding and honeymoon planning, we've been talking about just getting room service on the night of our wedding, since we'll be super busy taking photos and won't have time for a real, sit-down meal. Now I'm thinking I need to find a way to get Giordano's delivered to our hotel room so it's hot and fresh, allowing us a few bites of a delicious pizza before we head off to our Epcot dessert party. Room service is all fine, well, and good, but this is Giordano's, which already has some personal significance to the two of us.

It was a valiant effort, but the pizza defeated us.

There is, perhaps, one great pitfall in this plan. Giordano's pizza has the sauce on top, and can get a little messy. Do I really want us to risk a red-sauce pizza while we're in our wedding costumes?

Flower & Garden & Food Kiosks

The 2014 Epcot Flower & Garden festival will just be drawing to a close during out honeymoon in Disney World, and it appears as though we'll be able to catch the tail end of something I've only seen once during all of my trips to Disney World. While I'm sure that Girl Scout Fiancée will enjoy strolling through all of the beautiful flowers and checking out Epcot at what some would call its loveliest, I've recently learned of another reason to look forward to this special event: food.

Get these flowers out of the way, I have food to find.

Food is a big deal in Seattle, Portland, and the rest of the Pacific Northwest. One of our favorite things about living in Seattle is the variety of food we get to sample, and the quantity of high-caliber restaurants to choose from on any given night. Of course, the trendy thing to do for food is to find a food truck (restaurants that are so hip that a single location cannot even pin them down!) and chow down on food that is invariably bad for you and occasionally better quality that anything we would eat at a traditional sit-down restaurant. Food trucks are so hip that Girl Scout Fiancée and I, being not-hipsters-but-still-not-hip, are even having one cater our Seattle reception.

It just so happens that Disney, for this year's Flower & Garden Festival, decided to add some special food options in a similar vein to those that appear during the fall's Food & Wine Festival. It seems as though someone at Disney World realized that special, limited-time food is a big deal to the travel-savvy, and decided to bring it back in a different season. This year's kiosks were apparently a big hit, because they have already been confirmed for next year's Flower & Garden Festival. I, for one, am completely fine with that. Of course, it's only a matter of time before there are special kiosks out for some summer and winter festivals, and then you'll only have a few, sad weeks where there is no special food each year.

Bauernmarkt: for all of your Jack Bauer needs.

This new information, while filling me with excitement at the prospects of something really fun and different for our Disney honeymoon, is also wreaking havoc with my well-laid plans. Now our Epcot days are going to be filled with strife, as delicious food kiosks struggle against the amazing restaurants in the World Showcase. I've already been struggling to try and figure out how to eat at all of the restaurants that made my short list, and now I'm tempted to simply cut out an entire sit-down dinner in favor of just snacking our way across Epcot at the various pavilions. Looks like Biergarten or Coral Reef might be on the chopping block.

A Few More Groom's Clothing Options

Tonight Girl Scout Fiancée and I spent some time looking at suits, and wedding photos of people in the lighter gray suits, to try and come up with some ideas for what I should be looking for. We have both agreed that a lighter suit will be better, and in looking at Jos. A Bank's website there are a number of 100% cotton or cotton-wool blends that will probably breathe nicely, keeping me from overheating in the Florida late spring/early summer weather. One look that I'm starting to grow rather fond of is the gray suit pants-vest combo with no jacket and the sleeves rolled up. It's a little more casual looking, but without the jacket it's definitely going to be a lot cooler.

This suit actually comes with a 5 o'clock shadow.

I'm still thinking a light green shirt would look nice under a gray suit, something sort of muted and not a blazing bright color. I like the look of the light gray suit, a light colored shirt, and a slightly darker tie. Of course, if I buy a three-piece suit, I can always leave the decision of whether to wear the jacket or the vest until the day of the wedding, depending on what the weather is like. Girl Scout Fiancée has also declared that whatever suit I choose, I need to go with the modern fit/trim fit cut, instead of classic fit. I think I've found just the tie to go with it, too.

Hidden Mickeys. Booyah.

At this point, the toughest part is going to be finding shoes that have some color to them (like the saddle shoes I've posted about before) that looks good with the green shirt and tie. Any opinions on the vest-only look for a modern groom in a late spring Disney World/Florida wedding?

The Point of No Return

Late last week, we finally received a very important e-mail from Diane, our Wedding Consultant at Disney's Fairytale Weddings: the contracts. Though nothing takes the magic and charm out of a wedding like page upon page of legalese, signing the contracts is an important step for a number of reasons. Of course, it locks in your date, venue, and wedding package, and in turn you agree to abide by the rules they have for the wedding packages. There are twelve pages to the contract, but it's not too impenetrable (though I may be biased, having read many a contract of my own during my days as a freelance game designer), and they all more or less boil down to this: Here's your package, this is what you're signing up for, this is what you get, and you can't try and get it for less. There's not much more to say on the topic, but I figured anyone going through the process might like to know that it was at this point where we received, reviewed, and put ink to paper on the contract.

So, Girl Scout Fiancée and I signed the letter of agreement, and I sent it back to Diane via FedEx. It seems that, once she receives it, it will then be another two weeks before we are handed off to a wedding coordinator. At this point, there's kind of a lot of hurry up and wait going on, but this far out that's to be expected. Included with the letter of agreement was the authorization to charge the deposit, so we are now committed financially to the wedding!

Wedding and Honeymoon Inspiration Boards

Today Girl Scout Fiancée introduced me to something called an Inspiration Board or Mood Board. Apparently, this is a collage of images that brides use to summarize, in a single picture, the colors and thematic elements of the wedding. Girl Scout Fiancée wanted to put one together, but all she had to work with was Microsoft Word, so tonight she enlisted my assistance to create a higher-resolution one using Photoshop, with which I am marginally proficient.

You would think this would be a rather simple thing, but then you would be wrong in thinking that, and we don't want you, dear reader, to be thinking wrong thoughts. You see, the first barrier we had to the creation of her Inspiration Board was communicating to me the board's purpose. I'll admit, I'm still a little hazy on the details, and it kind of sounds like something brides did before the advent of Pinterest, or Facebook photo albums, and yet it has stuck around despite these wonderful modern technologies. Still, once she had adequately communicated her needs to me (a process that required her to show me examples, a fair amount of yelling, and no less than three separate shadow puppet shows), we set to patching together the various images she had collected. I will confide in you that I did get to feel like a real MANLY MAN when I impressed her with some Google Image Search tricks; let that be a condemnation of the state of modern manhood, if nothing else.

Pinterest, beware, your true competition is here.

When we were done, Girl Scout Fiancée was pleased, but asked me why I didn't put any images of groom's things on the Inspiration Board. Three answers came to mind immediately: first, she was supposed to tell me what to put on this board; second, that's what this blog is for; third, I should just make my own groom's Inspiration Board. However, since my main responsibility is the honeymoon, I should put together a honeymoon inspiration board. So, after an hour or so of image gathering and Photoshop sorcery, here's what I came up with.

Lifestyle change, prepare to meet your doom.

Then, I went and got a snack, and decided to take a second crack at it. Of course, the tough part about creating a honeymoon Inspiration Board is that most of what's exciting to me about the honeymoon is me introducing Girl Scout Fiancée to Disney World, so I really need a bunch of photos of her looking excited. So, instead, I tried to pick some of the rides, activities, and (I hope you're sitting down for this) meals that I'm jazzed about. Here's the final result.

I couldn't avoid putting at least one beer on here.

In the end, I'm pretty sure the whole Inspiration Board thing is something that falls firmly into the domain of the primary wedding planner, in this case the bride, who wants to envision how a whole event is going to tie together. Since the honeymoon is going to be a non-stop celebration, who cares what it looks like, as long as we're enjoying our first weeks of marriage together?

So, what do you think, dear reader: are Inspiration Boards a bride-only thing, or is there any good that can come out of a groom making one?

Questions for Comments

Thanks to the efforts of Girl Scout Fiancée, this blog has actually been getting some hits from other Disney wedding website visitors. Though I grudgingly allowed her to spread the link around a little (I'm not really trying to publicize its existence until we get through the wedding and people can get the whole picture of the process), nevertheless there are folks visiting that I don't know personally.

At Girl Scout Fiancée's suggestion, I'm going to start putting a question at the bottom of each of my posts, and invite anyone reading it to contribute their own answer in the comments of the post. Maybe that way we'll get some more opinions and anecdotes from other people who have gone through the same process!

PhotoPass+

Photography comes as a part of the Escape wedding package, but I think it's also going to be equally important to make sure we capture a lot of the moments from the first two weeks of our marriage, aka the honeymoon. However, if there's one thing I know I don't want to do, it's lug a camera around the parks; I'm already nervous about taking my iPhone on Splash Mountain (yes, I think about these kinds of things while trying to fall asleep at night), much less a decent digital camera. Yet, I know some of the most candid and memorable photos that will ever exist of us as a couple will come from Disney World on our honeymoon.

Otherwise, we'd miss out on my Space Mountain Face™

When my parents recently took my brother and my sister-in-law down to Disney World, they tried out the Photopass+ service. In my youth, we always kind of shrugged off the Disney photographers there in the parks, especially the ones where you took a photo and then they actually superimposed your family onto a much cleaner, less crowded background. I really didn't like that; it's just fake. That's not a real memory, it's something manufactured. Yeah, it's cleaner, and the Bodunkus Family from Arkansas isn't in the background of your picture picking their noses, but I think I'd rather have something weird and wacky in the background than have something visibly fake.

Or Girl Scout Fiancée's Splash Mountain Face™

This time around, my Mom decided to use Photopass+ and she had nothing but positive things to say about it. Apparently, the Disney in-park photography has come a long way, and they've really made it easy to grab all the memories you want from the park. According to the research I've done, it works like this: before your trip, Disney sends you a Photopass card that you bring with you on vacation. In the parks, they have Photopass photographers scattered throughout the parks, and when you see one they will take your photo and add the photos to your card. Whenever you ride a ride that features a photo opportunity (like the above Space and Splash Mountains, Tower of Terror, Rock 'n Rollercoaster, etc.) instead of buying a print they swipe your card and put the photo on the CD for you. The best part is that if you ride the ride multiple times, you can add the photo from each time riding it to your card. Additionally, if you go to a character meal, they have photographers that take your photos with the characters for you, hopefully ensuring a nice, clean shot. When you get home, you can download or order a CD full of your photos, and have them in digital form.

Of course, I'm sure we'll still bring along Girl Scout Fiancée's digital camera, for those random moments, but the real appeal for me is the ability to get all of the ride photos, all of the character dining photos, and also the occasional random inside the park photo taken for us. Possibly more exciting for Girl Scout Fiancée is that the Photopass+ CD also comes with a bunch of stock photos on it, which will be perfect for decorating our wedding/honeymoon album, guestbook for the Seattle party, and so forth. Now, we just have to remember two things: to order the Photopass+ package far enough in advance to take advantage of the discounted rate (it's $50 cheaper if you order it more than 14 days before your trip), and flag down every Photopass photographer we see while in the parks.

Have you had any experiences with Photopass+? What did you think? How was the quality of the photos you received?

Chasing Mary Poppins

Let's set the Wayback machine for the summer of 2009, Sherman, to my road trip down the West Coast with Girl Scout Fiancée and two of our friends. It was during that trip that we visited Disneyland, and, as documented in the post about our decision to have a wedding in Disney World, where I witnessed her heartbreaking capacity for childlike wonder. This story is not about that, however. This story is about one of the funniest things I have ever seen Girl Scout Fiancée do, and something that we still laugh about to this day. It's one of my favorite Disney memories, and definitely one of the two most memorable moments from our time in Disneyland.

We were near Sleeping Beauty's castle, crossing over into a new part of the park, when all of a sudden Girl Scout Fiancée's eyes go wide, and she belts out an exclamation that startles the other three of us. "Mary Poppins!" she shouts, her hand pointing off in the distance. It may not be well known to you, dear reader, but Mary Poppins is one of Girl Scout Fiancée's favorite movies; we've even been to see the musical when it came to the Paramount theater here in Seattle. All of a sudden, she takes off like a shot away from us. Yet, she isn't really running; with capri pants and sandals on, plus a purse around her shoulder, she couldn't really get up to a full-tilt sprint. Instead, Girl Scout Fiancée dashes away in this sort of strange stiff-kneed, bent-armed trot down the hill; she looks like nothing more than C-3P0 running after the Millennium Falcon.

Notice the teeny, tiny little steps he takes, even while running.

I don't mean she looks like a sexy, girlish C-3PO, either. I mean, full-on, Anthony Daniels in a sweltering metal suit, C-3PO run. Down the hill she goes, and it's only as she gets about 100 feet away from us before we can finally see what she has seen: a Cast Member in costume as Mary Poppins is crossing, unescorted, through the park and is headed toward a "Cast Members Only" door. Girl Scout Fiancée trots the whole way down the hill, and it suddenly becomes very apparent that she and Mary Poppins will reach that door simultaneously. We see Mary Poppins speed up, then slip through the Cast Members Only door and close it behind her just before Girl Scout Fiancée reaches her.

Sexy droids really cause me a lot of confusion.

A few moments later, Girl Scout Fiancée returns to us dejected and tells us the rest of the story. All she wanted was to have her photo taken with Mary Poppins, and that's why she took off at a run. The whole way, Mary Poppins was not looking at her (despite her frantic shouts!), except at the very last moment. As Mary Poppins opened the Cast Members Only door, she stepped partially inside, then turned and looked right in Girl Scout Fiancée's face before shutting the door in it. According to GSF, it was a look that was clearly intended to say, "I can see and hear you, a 25 year old woman chasing an employee dressed as Mary Poppins, and despite that fact I will not stop to see what you want."

I understood exactly why things went down the way they did. The Cast Member couldn't stop to chat with or have her photo taken with Girl Scout Fiancée; she had obviously just ended a shift signing autographs or making some other kind of appearance, and was headed backstage to rest or even leave work. If she stopped for GSF, she would have had to have stopped for anyone else, and ran the risk of never making it backstage as she is continually swamped by people approaching her. Though it left Girl Scout Fiancée a little grumpy that she didn't get her photo taken with Mary Poppins, we all knew that we couldn't fault the Cast Member for just doing something she was likely instructed to do.

According to Girl Scout Fiancée, this was the look she got from Mary Poppins.

Still, I know Girl Scout Fiancée was disappointed, and that's why I'm going to try for us to have breakfast at 1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian; I've heard that Mary Poppins is one of the characters that comes by during breakfast, and that's likely our best chance to see her and finally get that photo taken, nearly five years after Girl Scout Fiancée did what eventually came to be known as her "C-3PO run" among our group of friends, through Disneyland.

An All Animal Kingdom Day

The Animal Kingdom park is an interesting element in my honeymoon planning. It's the park that you can do the fastest, and it closes earliest, of all of the parks, meaning it's not really a full-day experience, and it's unlikely to be a park we return to on one of our subsequent park days. However, there is a lot to see...once. I've been thinking a lot about how I want this day of our honeymoon to go, and here's what I'm thinking.

First, I know that we're going to want to do Wild Africa Trek, and we're going to want to do it early in the morning. That way, we get done by late morning/midday and have the entire afternoon for the rest of the park. Given that we'll have walked on the tour of the savannah, I'm guessing that we won't need to ride Kilimanjaro Safaris, eliminating one of the biggest time consumers at the park. When we get done with the trek, I imagine we'll want to hit up a few rides and attractions in the vicinity before heading over to Flame Tree BBQ, which, in my admittedly limited experience, is one of the best restaurants in the entire park, even if it is just counter service. Living in the Pacific Northwest, the fare at places like Yak & Yeti is far less exotic for us than it would have been when we were living in Tennessee (Teriyaki take out places are more common than Starbucks in the Seattle area, and that is not an exaggeration in the slightest), so I think a quick counter lunch is best.

This dish is available at teriyaki joints situated every 100 feet in Seattle.

After that, we'll have the whole afternoon to see the rest of the park, and I'm genuinely unconcerned about getting everything in that we want to see. By the time we leave the park in the afternoon, I feel like we'll be done with Animal Kingdom for the trip. Originally, I'd thought that, at this point, we'd want to head back to our hotel, relax a bit, and maybe walk in the International Gateway entrance to Epcot and hit up somewhere like the Biergarten or Via Napoli for dinner.

However, one restaurant that has kind of flown under the radar for me, up until now, is Jiko. I've actually never been in the Animal Kingdom lodge at all before, and I've been hearing nothing but good reviews of Jiko. There's a part of me that loves the thematic cohesion of a day at Animal Kingdom followed by dinner at Jiko, but that's going to make it a bit harder to hit all the places I want to try out at Epcot over the course of the trip. Still, I think Jiko sounds like a great place to eat, not only for the rave food reviews, but because I've never been there before. It would be a new experience for both of us, and something I want to make sure of on our honeymoon is that we forge some new memories for the both of us, instead of just hitting all the highlights of things I've done before. The other option is to go to Jiko for dinner on the day after our wedding, after we've parted ways with our wedding guests, but I'm kind of thinking that someplace more convenient to reach, like Kouzzina or the Yachtsman Steakhouse, would be better for our post-wedding relaxation day.

Jiko, you had me at "steak with macaroni and cheese."

Speaking with the Wedding Consultant

This morning I was at work, standing and chatting with a coworker about our experience at PAX when I felt the old, familiar buzzing in my pants. It was my cell phone (get your mind out of the gutter!) informing me that I had missed a call. When I clicked over to see who had called, I instantly felt a lump form in my stomach: it was from a 407 number, which I knew to be the area code for Orlando. Unfortunately, it takes a moment for voice mail notifications to appear, so I stared at my phone for what seemed like minutes until the alert came up. Listening to the voice mail, it confirmed my fear: I'd missed the call from our Wedding Consultant.

I feel like I need a wall like this to plan this wedding.

This was my biggest concern with planning the Disney World wedding coming to life. The time difference between Seattle and Orlando is going to make planning things difficult, and often I cannot stop to answer my cell phone while at work due to being in a meeting. I then spent the next two hours attempting to get our wedding consultant on the phone, but unfortunately for Girl Scout Fiancée and I it seemed as though our Wedding Consultant was busy on the other line. Finally, right in the middle of my lunch break, I managed to get through to Diane.

Knowing how busy the Wedding Consultants must be, I wanted to make sure we got everything squared away as efficiently as possible. First, though, I used the trick of three-way-calling to bring Girl Scout Fiancée in on the phone call so she could hear and contribute to the conversation. Diane started by congratulating us (both me when I first called, and Girl Scout Fiancée when she got on the line), and her enthusiasm really came through on the phone. No matter how much concern I have over planning from this far away, so far my experiences with the Disney staff have always left me feeling like, at the very least, they really care about helping you have the best experience possible.

A Cast Member will break a man's legs for you, as long as you're a resort guest.

Diane then confirmed our target date (April 30th), location (Sea Breeze Point at the Boardwalk), and time (late afternoon), which presumably she had from the notes left by the representative we spoke to last week. She also asked, without prompting, whether we had anything we wanted to do for our guests after the wedding, and we told her we wanted to do an Illuminations dessert party in Epcot. Interestingly, she told me at the time that the option available for Escape weddings was the Canada Overlook, where we had been looking at photos of UK Lochside. Canada Overlook is fine (they're right next to each other, after all), though I have some concerns about the trees restricting our view of the fireworks, but some photos that I've seen online dispelled those concerns for me. I know Disney wouldn't even have a spot for a dessert party that had a bad view, but it did offer a mild surprise when I'd been expecting us to have some degree of choice in the matter. Still, Escape weddings are more limited, and I'm just as happy with Canada Overlook as I would be with Lochside, I think. We were also informed that we would need to arrange to travel backstage to Epcot in order for Girl Scout Fiancée to enter the park in her wedding dress, which we had been expecting, and were told that our other guests would be able to meet a Cast Member to be escorted to the dessert party.

With the dates and times for our wedding and dessert party in hand, Diane told us the next step would be for her to confirm that those spots were available, and that it could take a day or so for her to receive that confirmation from another department. In the meantime, she told us to expect another e-mail from her asking for certain information that would go on our wedding contract. A few hours later, I received that very e-mail as promised, and promptly turned it back around. The questions asked were mostly about how names and addresses were to appear on contracts, and also some basic contact information questions, the confirmation number for our hotel reservations, and some basic questions about who can make decisions about the wedding (in this case, only Girl Scout Fiancée and I).

"Please write the name of your soul on line four." "Why?" "No reason."

Diane then informed us that the next step would be for us to receive the contracts via e-mail. We'll then need to print them out, sign them, and send them (including our deposit) back to her. Once the contract and deposit has been received, Diane will then hand us off to our actual wedding coordinator, who will be helping us make all of the actual decisions about the wedding proper. Still, we've got a reservation down on our wedding site and dessert party site for the exact times we want, and that's a big step in the right direction.

The one question I have, that I don't yet have an answer for because I didn't send it until after their office closed (again, yay time difference) involves our hotel reservations. Right now, we have a reservation with a small AAA discount, but I'm aware that annual passholders and people having their weddings at Disney World are often eligible for some pretty nice discounts on hotels. I'm a little concerned about what's going to happen when/if I need to re-book our resort stay to take advantage of a better discount, but we'll see what they say.

My Kingdom for an ADR

Trying to plan out the restaurants we want to enjoy during our honeymoon has been one great ongoing puzzle. I think the big challenge with it being Girl Scout Fiancée's first trip to Disney World is going to be balancing trying to get in as many great experiences as possible without wearing ourselves down to exhaustion. As I have been planning out the honeymoon, I've been trying to find the right pacing for the trip; I don't want to put too many fancy dining experiences all in a row, and I want to make sure that the really nice dinners where we'll want to dress up come on days where we have had all day to relax.

This is what my brain looks like while trying to plan restaurant outings.

The key to making this happen is the Advanced Dining Reservation. Not only have I recently learned that you can book ADRs online, I've also discovered that, for those staying on the Disney property, you can book your ADRs for the first ten days of your trip starting at 6 AM, 180 days from the first day of your reservation (as opposed to 180 days from each day of your reservation). I found a great post on the DIS forums that gives some solid instructions for booking your ADRs for the first ten days of your stay.

Here's our problem: the first five days of our stay are the lead up to the wedding, the wedding, and a day to recuperate from the wedding and say goodbye to our guests. That means I'll only be able to book ADRs for the first 5 days of the honeymoon once our window opens, meaning the last 5 days are going to be only bookable 180 days from each day. This is going to make it really hard to get in some of the restaurants I want us to hit, because I don't want to just cram all of the hard-to-get reservations in to the first five days.

The tigers at Animal Kingdom, impersonating Girl Scout Fiancée and I by day five.

The trickiest piece of the puzzle is juggling the California Grille, Be Our Guest, Cinderella's Royal Table, and the Wishes dessert party. I don't want to have dinner at California Grille until after we've already been to the Magic Kingdom, so Girl Scout Fiancée gets to see the fireworks in the park first. Likewise, I've heard Cinderella's Royal Table is nice during the fireworks, but I'd been thinking up to this point of doing an early dinner at Be Our Guest, followed by the Wishes dessert party fireworks viewing, on our first night there, then doing Cinderella's Royal Table the day we come back to the park, and California Grille on one of our relaxation days. Since all three of those are tough-to-get reservations, I'm not certain we'll be able to do all three, because I certainly don't want to cram them all into the first three days of the honeymoon.

UPDATE: Rather than fret by myself about this, I decided to ask some of the fine folks one one of the larger Disney message boards. Turns out, the reservation window moves forward as each day passes, meaning that I can book for the first ten days exactly 180 days before our check-in date, and then one additional day each subsequent day after that. This means about a week of being up at 3 AM (yay, living on the West Coast) to make reservations, but perhaps I can arrange it so I won't need to do that more than once or twice.

Making My Mark on My Outfit

I've been thinking a lot about how I want to handle my wedding attire, and one thing that keeps popping into my mind is that I want to use my outfit to really say something about me. The problem is, I don't really have a style or a look that is uniquely me. So, I know I want to go classy and clean for my suit, shirt, and tie, because when in doubt, go classic. Instead, I think I want to find small touches to modify to reflect who I am. Since my own interests are a hodgepodge that range from the geeky to the quintessentially traditional masculine, I guess I'm just going to have to have a variety of small touches in place around my outfit to reflect those. I'm kind of thinking of these like Hidden Mickeys, except they'll be Hidden Things Rodney Likes. The goal, though, is to make them small and subtle so that I don't look like I was hit by a fashion tornado right before the wedding.

First, the one I know I'll be doing: my fraternity badge. It's something important to me, and it pins just above the pocket on the left side of my dress shirt. Depending on what kind of suit cut I have, it probably won't be very visible in our wedding photos. I've worn it every time I put on a suit for the last 13 years, though, so I'm not about to stop now.

Robot Hoooooooooouuuse!

Next, I'm looking at some Green Lantern cufflinks. These have the advantage of being green, so they'll look just like any other part of my wedding attire. Only I will know that they are the ancient symbol of the Green Lantern Corps, protectors of the galaxy and oh my God I am a nerd. Still, they'll be a great representation of my love of comics.

In brightest day, in blackest night, no wrist shall be exposed to sunlight...

The tough one is how I'm going to represent my alma mater, the University of Tennessee. Complete fashion disaster that I am, I know that Volunteer orange is not going to mix well with the green and yellow in the rest of my outfit, so I need something that will be subtle to the point of invisibility. That's why I've been looking at these tie bars, since it's likely that such a clip would be hidden by my jacket.

It may clash with the rest of the outfit, but my blood runs orange.

I would be remiss if I didn't have something to represent my career and my true hobby, Dungeons & Dragons. Of course, D&D is neither subtle nor something that easily translates into formalwear. While I doubt Girl Scout Fiancée would be thrilled for me to show up in chainmail, I have definitely got her approval for this sweet set of d20 dress socks. Yet another Hidden Thing Rodney Likes, lurking safely under the shelter of a well-tailored suit.

All natural 20's, baby.

Girl Scout Fiancée has also been very excited (perhaps suspiciously so; I am beginning to suspect she may be intentionally setting me up to look like a hipster) about my ideas for a saddle shoe, and she did some digging to come up with an option in yellow.

I'm about 85% certain Goofy wore these shoes in a cartoon.

The only thing I haven't managed to work in is my love of classic video games. I wonder what the odds are that I can get an 8-bit Mega Man embroidered on the breast of my dress shirt...

Home, Home on the Range

August is always the busiest month of the year for me (really, the whole summer season is, because it's convention season), but today I got up early, dropped Air Force Tom off at the light rail station so he could head up to PAX, and took advantage of a day off from work to hit the driving range. The Guru and I headed up to the deserted upper level of the range and secured two of the stalls with the newer mats in them, the ones that have the guidelines that show you where to set up. We each got a large bucket, and set to practicing.

Seconds before we were thrown off the range for pretending our clubs are lightsabers.

It'd been a while since I'd been on the driving range, and I've discovered something mildly disconcerting: I'm worse on the driving range than I am out on the course. I think it has to be psychological, because the driving range should offer perfect conditions. Yet I struggled to hit nearly as well as I do out on the course, and I wonder if a lot of it has to do with my mind rejecting theoretical play in favor of actual play. I also think there's a part of me that really struggles to let my club strike the mat (something our instructor told us that a good golf swing does), where out on the course I have no problem driving down through the ball because I know the grass can absorb the impact without harming my club.

I also got the Guru to record a few of my swings with the driver, which is still giving me problems. The above was one of my better shots, and I'm now trying to analyze all of my shots to see just what I was doing right, and what I was doing wrong on the bad swings.

I'm actually really starting to get concerned that I'm not going to be good enough to acquit myself well on the course at Disney World, and since I'm likely to get placed with other golfers (I doubt very seriously I'll be able to field a foursome with our wedding guests) I'm really worried about being That Guy. I guess in my head I just imagine that anyone who is playing golf at Disney World is going to be really, really good, and I want to at least be able to keep up. With it already into September, am I going to improve enough over the next eight months to be able to do that? Am I worrying over nothing? I feel like playing golf at Disney World is kind of like being allowed to taking batting practice at Turner Field alongside the other professional baseball players.

After the range, the Guru and I hit the putting green, because Oh My God We Need to Practice Putting. I think I just need more practice, because I wasn't too far off each time. The real highlight of our time on the putting green is when, from out of nowhere, I hear the Guru say, "Huh. Apparently, I have Lady Balls." As you can imagine, this left me somewhat confused, so I required him to clarify.

And thus a new nickname was born.