It’s finally MAY!

These past few months, as mentioned before, have been extremely quiet in terms of travel. We’ve been looking forward to this quick weekend getaway for almost half a year now, and it’s finally here!! When we’d planned this trip, we knew that if we made it to the last weekend of April/first weekend of May, we’ll have accomplished the following:

• Almost finish grad school (me)! Even though I have one more week of finals left, the end feels so near… finally
  • Along with that, finish my monster thesis.
• Get into grad school (M). M will be attending MIT in the fall!
• Know where we’ll live for the next five years. We’ll be moving to Boston in a few short months, eek
• Start the summer of traveling! May will be busy with graduations and work trips, but we’re excited to go to Italy/Barcelona in June, and then pack up our apartment, drop off in our new home in Boston, and then hop around Southeast Asia (or wherever, we haven’t quite decided yet) for a month or so.
• Two years of domestic partnership! We’re pretty excited to start the next phase in our lives 🙂

I’d never been SO HAPPY to go somewhere, even though it was only for a weekend + 1 day. The stress of balancing a full-time financial services job, being a full -time graduate student in a different state, attempting to participate in a few non-profits on the side, and not sacrifice too much of my social life finally caught up to me. Not to say I’ve quite recovered yet, but it was so great to turn off (both of) my Blackberries for a few days and romp around the happiest place on earth.

Thanks for following and looking forward to updating y’all with our upcoming adventures (finally!)

Day 1: Magic Kingdom

We’d booked JetBlue tickets months before, so we only paid $169 round trip for weekend tickets. I chose to save my JetBlue points for a trip that needed more expensive tickets. The first two nights I booked a cheaper Best Western hotel in Disney Springs (still a Disney-affiliated hotel, just not a resort) since I knew we’d be tired after our Friday night plane ride and our first day at Magic Kingdom. We ended up spending 7 AM – 11 PM on Saturday at Magic Kingdom, and experienced everything we wanted to (except maybe the Astro Orbiter). I’d bought my tickets for Magic Kingdom and Epcot through my corporate discount a few months ago so we were able to save on park fees. Disney-area hotels are surprisingly not expensive either: we paid $61 each for two nights. Transportation to and from the parks are included – and you can bring in whatever food you want to the parks! We only brought our water bottle, since we love indulging in the overpriced, Mickey-shaped food.

Day 2: Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon and Disney Springs

We’d been talking about going to a water park for the past four or so years…and we finally did it! What a great choice too- super relaxing and not too crowded; we barely had to wait in lines for the rides. While we were sad they closed the shark reef, the new Crush n Gusher slides were AWESOME! One of the body slides was super scary because it was basically a straight 50 foot plunge, and I already hate roller coasters…but happy to say I braved it a few times. We rode everything else once or twice-the raft rides were fun, but more family-oriented.

In my opinion you can skip Disney Springs….it’s just a glorified strip mall with a lot of food. Great if you don’t live in NYC.

Day 3: EPCOT and the Polynesian Villas

For a special treat, I got us a reservation at Disney’s Polynesian Villas. Rooms start at $700 a NIGHT (lol); I ordered the room through David’s Vacation Club and was able to get at least a 50% discount. The Polynesian is a deluxe resort and felt like mini-Hawaii, and is a perfect extension of Magic Kingdom itself.

When we came back from Epcot, we decided to stay and watch Moana under the stars. We were able to see the fireworks over Magic Kingdom as well as the Electrical Water Pageant. Literally the most magical night of our lives!

Day 4

Our flights ended up getting delayed….so thanks to JetBlue’s awesome customer service we were able to rebook our flights free of charge AND get a hotel credit fee. We stayed at Disney’s POP Century Resort – one of the cheapest Disney resorts. Not awful, but definitely not the Polynesian.