People get engaged every day at Disney World. People get married every day at Disney World actually-they host weddings 365 days a year. What does not happen every day is being involved in one of these proposals. A while back, I planned and helped execute a fellow skipper’s proposal to his longtime girlfriend at the Magic Kingdom.
I had known Brian for a couple years, and met Jess a handful of times. Jay and Brian were really good friends, and as soon as he told Jay he was planning on proposing Jay offered to help. When I heard what they were up to I stepped in and started planning (taking over). Buzz Lightyear is their favorite character, Space Ranger Spin is their favorite ride, and she’s the Jessie to his Buzz. Jay wanted to get Buzz Lightyear himself involved, but it turns out characters can’t actually be involved in a proposal without a lot of money we didn’t have. So I came up with a way around that: we would have Buzz send them from his meeting place to the ride where we would use the ride photos to pop the question.
I went into Adobe Photoshop and mocked up a legacy style (the old paper ones) Fastpass for the Buzz Lightyear ride. I told Brian he had to pick a proposal date and stick with it before I finalized the design. Getting it printed turned out to be much harder than actually making it. I wound up with 20 postcard-size Fastpasses because it was the most cost effective method I found.
I cut two pieces of poster board in half to make four signs. My roommate at the time, Kirsten, had much better hand writing than me so she lettered out the words “Will you marry me?” over the four signs. I painted “Will” and “Marry” in green, and “You” and “Me?” in purple. This actually wound up being more time consuming than I thought because the movie I put on for background noise was way more interesting than I expected. I further enlisted Kirsten to come meet us at the park to hold one of the signs in addition to myself, Lacey and another friend.
Jay, Brian and I headed to Magic Kingdom early Wednesday, March 2nd. Jess was getting off work later that afternoon but we had prep work to do. Lacey and Kirsten were going to be meeting us later, and we were going to head to Buzz Lightyear as soon as our fourth was off work.
We went to Buzz’s meet and greet, and I spoke to the character attendant there. I explained our plan to her and gave her two of the Fastpasses, and asked her to make sure she could recognize Jay and Brian. They would be coming back later and we needed Buzz to give them the Fastpass. Then I had to find someone who worked Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin and explain I needed to be able to get a group of seven people onto the ride at a moment’s notice. The cast member called a manager over and she issued us two anytime Fastpasses that were good for up to five people. Our final stop was the ride exit and gift shop where you can purchase your photos. I explained to the two cast members there what we were up to and asked if they would be able to pull the photos up on the screens in front of their registers, and they said it shouldn’t be a problem.
If only everything had gone to plan.
Jay and Brian stopped by Storybook Circus to get two Buzz Lightyear ear hats that they embroidered with the date, then went to meet Jess when she got off work. Jay wanted to stay with us but I insisted he stay with them to help coordinate things. Lacey, Kirsten and I were about to ride Pirates of the Caribbean to kill some time when we found out our fourth wasn’t coming, and they were getting in line to meet Buzz right then! We sprinted across the park and headed into the ride. I had hoped to encounter someone who looked friendly who might want to help us make some magic but no such luck, so Kirsten volunteered to hold two signs. We hopped on board and were too frantic to even really shoot at anything, we just sat there holding our signs up because we didn’t want something to happen and we somehow miss the photo.
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This was back before I had free Photopass downloads.
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We rushed to the preview wall and snapped photos of the reference numbers for our photos and went to where we had spoken to the cast members earlier. Bad luck struck again, and the girl that we talked to was nowhere to be found. So I started to explain the situation to the girl who was there, and then found myself having to write it down because she was deaf. She was super helpful and understanding! She brought out another cast member and the two of them pulled up the photos for us on the monitors as Jay gave me live updates on their progress. They were already on the ride! So we waited for what felt like twenty minutes for them to finish their four minute ride in a general state of stress and panic. They finally appeared around the corner and I waved to the two cast members and they pulled the two pieces of paper covering the photos away. (We didn’t want the wrong couple to see the photos!) Jess wanders by, completely oblivious and Jay goes, “Hey Jess, what’s that?” She still missed it until Brian physically turned her to see the screens, and then dropped down on one knee with the ring. I don’t think he even had to say a word.
The cast members printed copies of the two photos of us with the signs for them and we headed back out into the park. Jess and Brian decided to go tell Buzz that she said yes. Kirsten, Lacey and I were all still calming down from the nervousness and Jay was laughing at us, so we all hopped on the People Mover for a chance to catch our breath. We were cruising around Tomorrowland and we got stopped right over Buzz’s meet and greet as Brian and Jess were with him. I have never believed in Fate more than that moment. I managed to get it on video and tacked it onto the proposal when I uploaded it.
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Talk about Galatic Heroes.
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