Thursday morning, my alarm came far too early. We’d been up late trying to pack and sort things. Robby and I looked all over the garage for the air mattress, and weren’t able to find it, so we started clearing off the bunk bed in the office, only to find out the reason we couldn’t find it was because Mom had put it and a bunch of blankets in the office. It was under the blankets so we didn’t see it. Whoops! I had not one, not two, but three different instances of waking up thinking I had broken one of my new nails in my sleep, and I had to go bother Robby to help me open my soda can in the morning because I was afraid to. With my parents in the guest room, Malcolm downstairs, and my brother in the office, we had a full house!
Fiona, our husky, was loving all our house guests. She’d already gone for a walk before my alarm even went off!
I stole this from my Dad’s Facebook.
Our friends were set to start arriving to carpool to Fort Wilderness by noon, and everyone was assembled before 1:00 pm. Time was sort of a blur for a lot of this day. The hardest part wasn’t actually coordinating people, it was getting all our suit cases into the cars, and still having room for the people. We wound up deciding to have Melanie drive a load of suit cases over in her car, and then have her bring her car back to our house, with someone following her to pick her up. We had three more cars meeting us the next morning that could haul things or people, so really just getting to Fort Wilderness was our big obstacle.
I swear I don’t usually overpack this bad, but trying to get all our wedding supplies onto a cruise ship was hard! Jay and I also had bags for our Disney staycation after the cruise.
As an added bonus, my Dad and Malcolm had to disconnect our washer and dryer and pull them out, so our friend Tess could come over and paint the laundry closet while we were at Hoop-Dee-Doo. Tess has actually painted part of our house before. She helped me paint the stairs last fall. The painting wasn’t the problem, it was the being able to disconnect and reconnect the washer and dryer, and take the shelf down. With a little assistance from Gary, it all got done.
I swear I had told Lacey the hairstyle I had picked out for the Welcome Party, but she didn’t remember me mentioning it and, of the two of us, she’s probably right. So, I pulled up a picture, and she had it figured out in less than fifteen minutes. Not surprising, since she has spent the bulk of our friendship trying to keep my hair from looking stupid.
We put my brother and Gary in the car with Malcolm and my Dad, since my Dad and Malcolm were the only ones not familiar with Disney property. Jay, Mom, Morgan, and I took the backroads in, and were actually the last ones there. That never happens!
Check in was a breeze, despite me stressing over the fact that we had more cars than we were technically supposed to have. We had two cabins and three cars, but thankfully no one said anything.
There were twelve of us staying overnight in the cabins. We had four people coming to Hoop-Dee-Doo who weren’t staying in the cabin, and one of those four wasn’t actually coming on the cruise. Our friend Caitlin wasn’t able to make the cruise, but she asked if she could still come to Hoop-Dee-Doo, and of course I said yes. Honestly, I should start taking Caitlin everywhere. She’s always so excited about everything, and it’s just infectious! Then we had our friends Scott and Patrick meeting us, but not coming to Hoop-Dee-Doo. Originally Patrick was coming to Hoop-Dee-Doo, but when we added Malcolm, they wouldn’t let us add another person to our reservation without going down to Category 2 seating. Jay really wanted to stick with Category 1, since his parents had never seen the show, so I asked Patrick if I could refund his money and he skip Hoop-Dee-Doo, and he let me.
You know, trying to explain all this now, it’s no wonder I spent the last four months being a stressed-out mess.
So, in the first cabin we had Jay, Lacey, Mom, Dad, Malcolm, and me. We put Mom and Dad on the sleeper sofa. We took the queen bed, Lacey took the top bunk, and Malcolm took the bottom bunk. In the second cabin we had Michael, Abby, Robby, Morgan, Melanie, and Gary. I assume Michael and Abby took the pull-out bed, and Melanie and Morgan split the queen, and Robby took the top bunk, but I haven’t actually asked anyone about that. That’s what I would have done anyway.
It worked out so we had plenty of time for Melanie and Abby to run Melanie’s car back to the house, and Caitlin called me from Wilderness Lodge, saying she had gotten lost and people there were telling her just to take the boat over.
“Do not take the boat!”
I sent her my location over text so she could GPS and drive to that. Jay had gone to the front of the resort to meet his parents, so I had him wait for her while he was up there.
Jay didn’t know this, but I needed Caitlin and her car to take home the surprise cake from Hoop-Dee-Doo. The only person who knew about this besides Caitlin and me was my Mom, because she helped me order it, and Scott, because he was going to help get the cake back to the fridge, at Hoop Dee Doo.
Jay and his parents arrived, and I was extremely anxious about our parents meeting for the first time, but it all went smoothly. We hung out for a little bit in the cabin before it was time to head out for Hoop-Dee-Doo, and Melanie helped me hand out “I’m celebrating Jay & Chelsea’s Wedding” buttons, before we headed over to the bus stop.
By the time we reached Pioneer Hall, our friend Zym was waiting for us. He’d gone over to the box office at my request, and while they had given him table numbers, he didn’t know how many sat at each table. So, I went over there, and begged the nice lady to tell me how many were at each table so I could figure out where people were sitting. Three tables of four, and one table of three. NOW WHY COULDN’T WE ADD ONE MORE PERSON?
Oh well.
I had made cute little place cards that looked like washboards, but I decided I wouldn’t have time to set them all out, so I just handed them to people as I told them who they were sitting with. Jay, Morgan, and his parents would take one end of the table, my parents, Malcolm, and Caitlin would take the other, with the rest of us dispersed in between. Jay and I actually wound up sitting with several people between us, but it didn’t bother me. (It apparently bothered other people. Oh well.) I was eager to catch up with friends I haven’t seen in a while, and I wanted him to get some quality time with his parents. We managed to put most of the first timers facing the stage, figuring those of us who had seen it before could turn around.
Honestly, the worst part of Jay and I not sitting together was he usually cuts the meat off the ribs for me. Thankfully Michael noticed I was struggling and came to the rescue.
Every time I go to Hoop-Dee-Doo and the show starts, I always expect the animal heads on the wall to start talking like it’s the Country Bear Jamboree. This time was no exception.
I have a full report on the show in another article so I’m not going to detail the whole show, just hit the highlights. There were many. This was one of the best Hoop-Dee-Doo performances I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. This was probably my ninth or tenth time going to Hoop-Dee-Doo.
Our first highlight came when Claire came rushing up to Jay’s Dad and practically got in his lap.
“YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE COMING TOMORROW!”
I think every cell phone at that table came out in a heartbeat.
The next highlight came when they were looking for people celebrating an anniversary or a honeymoon, so of course Zym and Lacey tell Johnny Ringo that Jay and I are about to get married. He pauses and says, “Wait, who’s getting married?”
“Him and her!” Zym says, pointing at me sitting next to him, and Jay who’s at the other end of the table.
“Oh, that’s a great way to start a marriage!” says Johnny. So of course, they made us get up and dance.
My favorite part of the night came when Dolly and Six Bits got into their contest of putting one side of the room against the other. Dolly always picks some older gentleman out of the crowd to come make a big fuss over, and wouldn’t you know, she picked Malcolm!
I don’t know who was laughing harder, me or my Dad.
Sadly, our table had gotten a little too much attention so when it came time to pick audience participants for the big spectacle, our table got skipped entirely. One day I’ll get to see Jay get dragged on stage to be the Wilderness Scout! At least Malcolm got more chance in the spotlight!
The surprise cake Mom and I ordered came out a little bit before dessert. Our waitress, Gloria, brought it to the table so we could take pictures before taking it back to the kitchen to be cut. I thought that was pretty cool, instead of letting us see it after it had been cut or making us try to cut it at the table.
The original plan for after the show was Scott, Robby, and Patrick would be waiting for us with my car to run the cake back to the cabin while the rest of us got in line for the boat to the Magic Kingdom. I get a text from Scott saying, “No car and a lot of can do attitude”. It hadn’t occurred to me that the car keys were in the cabin Robby didn’t have access to. Whoops! So, Scott and Robby set off on bus with the cake leftovers, and the chocolate Duffy which was really the most important part, and said they’d meet us at Magic Kingdom.
We took a quick group photo and off we went for the boats! Jay’s parents headed back to their car because they were going to visit his brother before heading to the port in the morning.
Then there was a kerfuffle that resulted in us missing our Splash Mountain Fastpasses. The only reason I’m disappointed about that was I was going to try to cram twelve of us into a Splash Mountain log (twelve is the maximum you can fit, three per row), and get the picture to put in a cool Splash Mountain frame I have. (Hindsight: Now I’m more disappointed because no way can I ever get this picture now.)
We did make our Space Mountain Fastpasses, so at least that’s something! I had everyone in my train “Wonder Woman”. My brother and Scott caught up to us as we left Tomorrowland and headed towards the castle. The park wasn’t crowded so getting a decent fireworks spot was a breeze.
This was my Dad, Malcolm, and Gary’s first time seeing the Happily Ever After fireworks, and it was my first time seeing them with most of these people. Somehow Morgan and I wound up arm in arm doing a duet along with the show.
Since it was an 8:00 pm park close and an 8:00 pm fireworks night, getting out of the park took a while. We got in line for the boats back to Fort Wilderness, it took three dispatches before we were onboard and it was standing room only. Not a big deal for us, but they kept telling us to move to the back of the boat and our way was blocked by strollers. Oh well.
We made it back to the campground and made our way to the bus. Caitlin came back by the cabin to pick up the cake, then our people who weren’t staying overnight headed out.
That’s the end of Day Two! Come back next week for the start of Day Three! You can also read Gary’s take on the Welcome Party over on his blog Coasting with Culture.
