Disney's Princess Half Weekend Recap Part 1: Pre-Race

We did a lot of amazing stuff in Orlando last weekend, and took a lot of photos, so I'm going to break this "race recap" into three parts: pre-race, race, and post-race.  In our first installment: our pre-race adventures on Friday and Saturday.

Friday
Diane and I were scheduled to have a very, very long travel day on Wednesday: leave Boston at 10 am, layover in New York, arrive in Orlando around 5:30 pm, and then wait for Heidi's flight to arrive at 9:30 pm.  I woke up early, planning to meet Diane at the T at 8 am, and was about to start getting ready to go when I got a gchat from Diane alerting me that our flight had been cancelled.  At first this seemed like bad news, but then Diane talked the nice ticket agent into re-booking us on a JetBlue direct flight that left Boston at 1:30 pm and arrived in Orlando at the same time.  Score!  Of course, that didn't change the fact that we were going to have to wait for Heidi.  So we had to find ways to amuse ourselves:

Look what was waiting for us just down the hall from our gate!

Diane is a fan of margaritas and chips

Maybe this is why we are such good friends

Round 2?

Yes, please!

Appetizer platter = dinner of champions

After margaritas and our very healthy dinner, we wanted to catch up on our very important email correspondence.  We figured that we could do this AND pick up boys if we sat on the floor to use the outlets across from the men's room.

We are very important people

Where can we meet guys?  I know, they all have to use the bathroom!

Finally, it was time to relocate to Heidi's gate to wait for her flight.  We made her a sign to make sure she could pick us out of the crowd.

Welcome to Orlando, Major Doctor!

Once Heidi arrived, it was time to hit baggage claim and pick up our rental car.

So many red suitcases!

Heidi was very excited about our black Dodge Avenger

About 12 hours after leaving my apartment, we finally arrived at the hotel.  Where we discovered that our reservation had been cancelled and the hotel hadn't felt the need to notify us of this development.  After some strong negotiating on Diane's part, the receptionist magically found a free room that was available for all three nights of our stay.  Hooray for having beds!

Saturday
We got an early-ish start to the day so we could buy our Disney park passes and go to the race expo before heading to Universal Studios for the majority of the day.  Success!

Packet pick-up!

Princess Jessica is in Corral A?!

Have I mentioned that I love race expos?

I especially love buying things at race expos.  Bright pink headband FTW!

After the expo, it was off to Universal Studios.  We went straight for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

All aboard the Hogwarts Express!

Apparently Hogsmeade is actually quite warm in the winter

We had a great time exploring Hogsmeade and the Hogwarts castle, and LOVED the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride.  It almost felt like I was really playing quidditch!  After the ride, we stopped at Three Broomsticks for an authentic wizard lunch.  I'd heard bad things about the butterbeer, but I loved it!

Shepherd's Pie

Roasted chicken

Butterbeer!

After Harry Potter, we checked out the rest of the park.  The X-Men version of the tea cup ride was a big hit.

Accelatron!

Then it was off to the main Universal Studios park:

Hello, world!

We went to the Shrek 4D show, which was just ok, but waiting in line I saw advertisements for the not-yet-open Despicable Me ride, and had to take pictures of the Minions for Katie.

I didn't even intentionally have the shark eating this poor guy's head

MINIONS!

Our favorite attractions at the Universal Studios side of the park were Disaster, where you get to be an "extra" in a scene for a disaster movie, and the Simpsons Ride, which was a pretty amazing roller coaster simulator.

Disaster!

After Universal, we drove back to Epcot so that we could have a pre-race pasta dinner in Italy.  We chose, Via Napoli, and it was amazing.  We shared a house salad, a delicious pizza, and an order of zeppole di ricotta for dessert.  I even spotted one of my favorite bloggers, Meals and Miles, a few tables over!

Do the plates mean our pizza is coming soon?

Prosciutto and arugula pizza -- yumm  

After dinner, we wanted to get back to the hotel as quickly as possible to get some sleep before the race.  Unfortunately, we had managed to park almost as far as possible from the entrance to the park.  Oops.  We got back to the hotel to find that their convenience store had JUST closed.  How would I get my pre-race strawberry frosted Pop Tarts?!  Disaster was averted when I found a vending machine that sold Pop Tarts.  Phew!  Somehow we still made it to bed by 10:30 pm, giving us time for 5 hours of sleep before our very early Sunday morning wake up.

I'll be back tomorrow with Part 2 of my recap -- the actual race!