Brae's friend picked us up to go to the airport on Tuesday morning. After a few rushed goodbyes with our landlady who also likes HP, we were on our way! We even, miraculously, remembered to call the bank on our way to the airport to have them mark Brae's account since he'd be out of state and spending what would probably total hundreds of dollars. We didn't want any mishaps with his card not working and being penniless or anything. We had previously decided to just pay for everything together, so I'd transferred my half to his account so we wouldn't be trying to make sure we paid equal shares the entire time.
Brae and I generally have issues traveling. Everything that can go wrong usually does. For example, when we went to Chicago for the HP exhibit, our train broke down and we missed the last bus to the museum. We had to stay in Chicago two extra days, stay with a relative since we couldn't afford our hotel that long, buy new bus tickets home, and get new tickets to the exhibit for another day. When we went to a friend's wedding recently, our car broke down on the way home. The list goes on. It was surprising, then, that everything went according to plan this trip. It honestly made me a little terrified that check in and security went fine at the airport that morning. Especially since it was only the second time ever I was not pulled aside for extra screening. I kept waiting for something horrible to happen while we ate breakfast in the airport, but nothing super exciting happened except us seeing a group of girls in HP-themed shirts. Brae wanted to ask them if they were going to LeakyCon, but I remembered how last year we'd seen a fewpeople in the Cincinnati airport that were in HP clothing who weren't going to Infinitus. I reminded him that not every HP fan was going to LeakyCon, but he asked anyway. Imagine my surprise that not only that group of three girls, but the next four that we saw in HP shirts were all going to LeakyCon. Around the time we started realizing that a good number of people on our plane would be going to LeakyCon, four others came up to ask if we were going to LeakyCon since I was wearing a Beauxbatons shirt and hat and Brae had a Slytherin scarf tied to his carry-on bag. The grand total of LeakyCon-goers on our Cincinnati to Orlando flight was 12; that totally beats the four on our flight to Infinitus last year!
One of the girls from Cincinnati, Ashley, was traveling alone and asked if we wanted to split a cab from the airport. She was staying at Royal Pacific, so we agreed, since it was on the way to Portofino Bay where we were staying. She turned out to be pretty darn awesome and a major help to us throughout the weekend!
There were a few misunderstandings at check-in when we got to Portofino Bay, but we worked them out and checked our bags at the desk until our room was ready before heading out to the park! Unfortunately, I left my camera in my bag and wasn't able to take pictures or film my AccioLeakyCon video in the park that day, but we still had oodles of fun after we picked up our park tickets at Royal Pacific and took the water taxi back to Islands of Adventure.
Since it had been about six hours since we'd eaten in the airport, our first stop was at Mythos for lunch...which was AMAZING! Then we hit the Poseidon's Fury, Incredible Hulk Coaster, and The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman (when Brae got a mysterious phone call from a number we didn't recognize that he couldn't hear in line and turned out to be important later).
After that, it was time to do a bit of quick shopping in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Mainly we just wanted to grab a few quick things and go back to the hotel and collapse since the park was going to close fairly soon anyway. We ran into Honeydukes first after grabbing some butterbeer (we still didn't get to try to the regular butterbeer because we were still too hot to consider consuming anything that wasn't frozen). The park had kind of cleared out after a bit of rain, so we went straight into Honeydukes and stocked up on chocolate frogs (we still didn't get Rowena and now have two Helgas, a Godric, and a Salazar), peppermint toads, ton tongue toffee, chocolate cauldrons, pink coconut ice, chocoballs, and stringmints. I was just considering buying my cauldron cake when were at checkout when it happened. Remember the phone call Brae had made that morning to his bank to have them make a note that he would be in Orlando for the next few days? Yeah, that didn't work out according to plan. After his card was declined at Honeydukes, we had them put aside our basket of stuff so he could call the bank. Though they'd said they made a note of his travel that morning, that didn't turn out to be the case (or someone didn't bother checking it). They said they'd tried to call him about an hour ago (hence the mysterious phone call when we were in line for the Spiderman ride). We got that worked out, but I forgot to get a cauldron cake (and didn't end up getting one at a later time which is devastating).
We made our way back to the hotel and retrieved our bags from the concierge so I get my camera to make my AccioLeakyCon video which involved heading off to the lobby to find free internet and wandering around to find a spot that didn't have huge families that were incapable of using indoor voices so that I could be heard on camera. Luckily I wasn't the only one talking to my computer out there or I would have been very self-conscious since this was the first time I'd vlogged outside my home.
After we uploaded the video and returned to the room, I showered and we attempted to wrap the package for the winner of the contest we held here a few months ago. I was so tired, I didn't want to deal with the fact that the paper had ripped in my suitcase, so it ended up looking like Hagrid had wrapped it, and I left out two items which we had to tie to the top.
For those that are interested, the package included some homemade ton tongue taffy (not toffee, don't ask!), a Ravenclaw bookmark, a sticker that says “Better here than Privet Drive”, a personalized Hogwarts acceptance letter, the royal blue pygmy puff I showed you guys a while ago in my video announcing the contest, some homemade U-No-Poo, a Quibbler reporter's notebook, and some HP gift tags.
Then we ordered room service (Mmm! Turkey burgers!) and met our first roommate to arrive, Catherine, in the lobby around midnight and pretty much all passed out since our exhaustion had caused slap-happiness and we probably completely scared Catherine!
Look for our posts on days 2-6!
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