This little weekend getaway was fighting me every step of the way.
Sammi and Jason were supposed to drive over from Tampa Friday so we could go to the Flower and Garden Festival at Epcot. I'd bought the tickets and made the park reservations months ago.
Julie who was planning to go with us was only able to make a Sunday park reservation thanks to the 35% capacity limits filling up the reservation system.
Two days before, Sammi and Jason had to quarantine thanks to a coworker's exposure.
I won't get to see them until October now.
And I have no one who can go to the parks with me on Saturday.
It hasn't really rained in months.
This weekend?
You guessed it.
But without a break from work since early December, I was going, come hell and high water.
Julie took her lunch break to come get me from the airport. She and Bill are working from home but weren't going to be free until after 5, so my initial plan was to get a Lyft over to Disney Springs to see if I could
1) get on the Gideon's virtual waitlist (more on that later)
2) go to Guest Services to find out if I could take my three person park reservation and reassign one spot to Julie.
3) Meet Julie and Bill afterwards for dinner.
But when I looked up the Lyft (all of 14 miles away) it was going to cost me $40! Wha???
Turns out, the rental industry is getting severely squeezed. They sold off a ton of their fleet a year ago to stay afloat. Now that travel demands are up, they are 100% booked. And they can't get new cars into the fleet thanks to the chip shortage worldwide. So people are in constant need of ride shares. Ride sharing companies are severely squeezed because many of their drivers quit during COVID.
And thus, what would normally have been a $15 fare is now $40.
So, I waited until Julie and Bill were done with work.
The main wrinkle there is that Gideon's virtual waitlist.
Gideon's is a local, super fresh, amazing yummy cookie place that doesn't even ship their daily baked cookies anywhere. They opened their flagship store at Disney Springs about a week after I was there in December. The waitlist stretched 10 hours. You could show up at 11:00 in the morning, put yourself on their waitlist, and not get a text to return until 9 that night.
It's died down a bit over the past few months, but I still wasn't sure we'd make it in time.
We added ourselves to the list at 5:52 with an expected wait time of 3 1/2 hours.
From there, we went to Guest Services and the cast member was happy to help me get Julie one of my park reservation assignments. Whew. I won't have to spend Saturday alone wandering around the parks.
We ate dinner, went by Amorette's bakery to see the pretty cakes, and got in line to go into the World of Disney store.
By that time?
We still had nearly two hours to kill.
I think Julie's app said we walked around 4 miles this evening. Watched the sunset.
And finally just pulled up on a park bench away from everyone and had a soda while we waited.
(the view from our park bench)
Finally, at 9:18, we got the text to return.
But that doesn't mean we get to go IN.
Now we've qualified to stand in the line to get in!
It was nearly 10:00 by the time we were given entrance to the sacred cookies.
But, c'mon.
What other place can you get gigantic (each one a half pound) fresh baked cookies in a place that looks like Edward Gorey's version of Hogwarts?
(Those last two slices of cake in the display were bought while we were inside.)
We ended up buying the last three of the April specialty cookie, Stuart's Cookie:
Celebrate the flavors of Florida with our Orange Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookie. This recipe was brought to our doorstep by the Florida “Orange Boy,” Stuart Valencia, whose legend dates back over 100 years. Our vanilla bean Cookie dough is fused with orange and mixed with our favorite Dark Chocolates. To add that extra crunch, the exterior is covered in South Florida Pecan Pralines and a very special Candied Orange Peel
There's a limit of six cookies per order, so I got two each of the Stuart's cookie, the Peanut Butter Crunch, and the Pistachio Toffee Chocolate.
You also get the month's character card (Stuart Valencia for the orange theme)
Like Charlie Bucket with his Wonka bar, I cut off just a little sliver to enjoy!
Up next: Day 2, Hollywood Studios and Epcot on the hottest day of the year thus far, right before the cold front and the rains got started that afternoon.
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