This is hugely long. Some of it may read bluntly… because I had to write it in dot points before I made sentences. And I went over the character limit and had to delete some bits.
TLDR; We had a great time, even though things went askew. I don’t care who you are and how much you think your family eats, the dxdp is too much food unless your sharing it at pretty much every meal.
Arrival evening.
Lost kids luggage. Didn’t get a Gps with the hire car. That was a mistake. Turns out the maps I downloaded for offline use were fine, but google wouldn’t navigate using them because it constantly tried rerouting us. I was driving, but DH is a lousy navigator.
Surprised the kids with our resort- they thought we were staying at ASMu. We were running late for Citricos by the time we checked in at CSR. The lady at CSR hadn’t heard of it (how!?), but told us to go straight there without going to our room. Got lost on the way… dodgy directions from the co-pilot. Food was great. Went back to our room and slept happy dreams of things to come.
Day 1- Christmas Eve
Yep, our first day, about the head to the parks, and THIS is the face the kids are making. The younger made that face in 9 out of 10 pics we took on the trip.
Plan was to rope drop Epcot as we had an 8 am CP breakfast at Akershus- we ended up checking in about 20 minutes late, because 1, I got lost driving due to dodgy directions again, and 2, DH thought turning up to the PARKING LOT at 8am would be accepted as being the same as being at the restaurant at 8 am. Gah. This place is big, you silly man!
The boys didn’t know what to do with themselves when the princesses came around and were just really awkward. We weren’t here for the characters anyway. Actually, the only character interaction we PURPOSEFULLY booked was CP. The food was pretty good. Glad we had our backup fp for frozen. It was an enjoyable first ride.
Hung around Mexico/Norway waiting for the Cabelleros ride to open. Enjoyed finding squirrels (we don’t have them at home… let us be tourists!) and taking pics. Went on the cabelleros ride. Thought the fireworks on the roof were pretty cool.
Then we made our way around world showcase.
Wasn’t super fussed on the circle vision Canada movie. DH refused to watch any more after that. I think we both had some residual airplane related unbalance and we both felt the room tilting during the film.
Loved le cellier. Not sure why the staff there kept asking us what part of the uk we were from?
World showcase turned into a tour of restrooms, and would begin to set a theme for our trip. Turns out large crowds give my ds10 a bit of a nervous bladder. After today, we just understood that DS would need the bathroom after every single ride or attraction. And indeed he did.
Had no plan for dinner and happily skipped it. Candlelight processional was lovely, though there was a big ol’ pole obstructing part of our view. DS10 napped through it.
Left to head to church in Celebration for Christmas service, but by the time we got to the car and we figured out where we were and where we had to go, there was no point in doing so, as everyone would be leaving by the time we arrived. Headed back to hotel and sleep!
Day 2- AKA no one is listening to me and everything bad that happens is all your fault.
Also known as Christmas Day
Very early morning. Did small Christmas unwrapping and such in hotel, then headed to AK.
Late for RD . This would not be the last time.
Headed straight to NRJ- or at least we were supposed to. DH decided the line coming out the door of creature comforts must mean that the coffee was up to his standard (he’d sworn off US coffee half way through our flight because it was awful… go figure) and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to go stand in line for coffee. Fine, bring mine and meet us in the line for NRJ! No. How could I suggest leaving him alone in a foreign place and expect him to ever find me again, with coffee in tact!? My bad. What an awful wife I am.
Eventually, we headed over to NRJ. DH loved it. I thought it was pretty, but no way would I stand in the normal standby line, and probably wouldn’t use a fp for it.
Headed to Tusker house for our ROL breakfast. Food was good. Server was amusing. Boys started warming up to characters and DS10 started getting signatures.
Headed off to KS. Enjoyed it very much. One of the kids somewhere towards the back kept calling out to the driver about those ‘big horn thingies’. It was pretty cute.
Fast passed FOP and WOW WOW WOW. Kind of regret not doing Soarin’ first. Absolutely loved this ride. Funniest part was when DS11 yelled OH CRUMBS! When he got a fright. Dh sounded pretty terrified throughout. He’s not good with heights. I loved every second of it. One of the effects they use on the ride vehicle itself was unexpected and I thought it was a very cool touch to add to the realism of the experience. I want one set up in my living room honestly.
It was here that DH went off plan. We got into a 20 minute line for dinosaur. Yeah… no. An hour and a half later we finally exited. I may not ever ride it again. Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing wrong with the ride, but it wasn’t amazing. And I just couldn’t bear to get stuck in that particular line again like that. Yes, I understand it probably went down, but… I just can’t.
Lunch at Yak and Yeti. May have been Dh’s favourite steak of the trip. Forewarning- the nachos for 2 is actually a lie. 3 of us worked at it and it looked like we hadn’t even tried by the time we were done. This is the point that we realized that the dxdp really was too much food. I know. Everyone told us it’s a lot of food. We’re big eaters and often eat 3 courses so thought we would be fine. We didn’t realise it was the VOLUME people were talking about. Just about every appetizer we had could easily be a filling main. With 3 courses, one meal could easily feed 2-3 adults. Or a small African nation. My youngest son took it upon himself to ask for a child’s menu at every meal from this point forward. He ordered the ribs here… which were about as big as his head!
The rest of the day was spent exploring, and we also did EE (loved it, but DH and the boys quickly took off to find a restroom immediately after getting off. DH was also eyeing off the defibrillator.) tough to be a bug, took a bazillion photos etc.
Yup. The older one is dying and the younger one is resting grumpface again.
Did kali. DH was highly unimpressed with wearing a poncho, not helped by the lady in line behind us
laughing and asking us if we wanted some of her plastic bags to use as well. However, it was getting a bit chilly and we had a jiko res for dinner. He felt like an absolute moron right up until everyone else in our raft got completely drenched. I was then THE ninja, who should be obeyed for being all knowing and ninjarish. That only lasted the rest of the evening.
ROL was gorgeous. Youngest kiddo slept through the whole thing. I discovered what joy handwarmers can bring to my life. Jiko was delightful for dinner.
Day 3- non park day
Up super ridiculous early this morning as I had to catch a cab to AKL for the Sense of Africa tour DH got me to book for my late birthday present. I didn’t trust driving by myself. It was sensational. Group of 11 had breakfast at Boma and some of the cultural reps came out to talk to us about the meaning behind some of the symbols in the restaurant, including believe it or not, the fence that themes the restuarant, gave us a water bottle and a pin, and then we went and fed and helped with training the Okapi (basically petting their necks firmly as a step towards moving them to voluntarily giving blood to vets, and getting them used to random people that don’t wear the same uniforms as their trainers.) They are alllllll about the animals voluntarily participating in everything, including their training and medical care. We also did something very similar with giraffes. We feed the ostrich… because there’s not a lot of point training them. We toured the savannah at AKL, and we helped make feeding toys for the red river hogs. They took tonnes of photos for us and gave us a photopass card to download them all. They were included as part of the tour which was great, because we weren’t allowed to take photos in the backstage areas with the animals.
Got back to discover DH had been trying to call me a bazllion times. He slept through his breakfast adr at CP. Not a huge deal. Except it was the ONLY thing my DS10 asked for- to meet WTP and piglet. And the poor kid somehow thought it was his fault they missed it and bravely said he understood, apologized for making them miss it (!?) and tried to hold back his tears. Dh wasn’t successful with that part either.
So I managed to wrangle a breakfast for the following morning. At this point DH decided he was going to drive to Disney Springs to shop before our lunch at homecomin. And he did the driving for the rest of the trip.
We didn’t make it too much further than the world of Disney and the lego store, really. We went to Homecomin, it was fantastic. I loved the chicken. DS11 was impressed he was ‘finally hearing some music he knows from home’ while we were there. That confused me because we hadn’t been listening to music, and most of the music we listen to comes from the US anyway. Bizarre boy.
After Homecomin’ DH railroaded us into going to the Oakley store. It’s hardly a store. It’s about the size of a disabled bathroom. After half an hour, I took the kids to design a tee because they both really wanted to do that and we were starting to get low on time. We shopped a bit more in whatever store was connected to it while we waited for the shirts. DH still hadn’t turned up so I thought he might have gotten lost or something. Nope. Still in the Oakley store. I had to drag him out because the kids were going to be late to be dropped off at Lilo’s for our date night.
On the way back to the resort to pick up a jacket for one of the kids, DH decides he doesn’t want dinner (shame to cancel at artist point, I was looking forward to it), and that we should go visit MK instead. So we drove to MK, monorailed to poly to drop the kids off (cause they HAD to go on the monorail), and then back to MK.
That first few moments, with the tree, and the lights, and the Christmassy jingly music playing like a soundtrack in the movie of our life hit us immediately: magic! We kinda stood there dumbly for a few minutes just taking it in.
I got him to go on Big thunder. He was dying the entire time waiting for some massive drop. Don’t know where he got that idea, but it was pretty hilarious listening to him freaking out. We also walked on small world just before the fireworks, that was pretty cool. We also walked on mine train and buzz around the same time. Then we headed off to pick up the boys, but took a boat this time. On our trip back to MK with the boys, there was no one else on the boat with us, and the driver slowed down for us to just enjoy the moment. It was a lovely evening.
Day… I don’t know. Is it June?
Back to MK today. My family just DO NOT get the concept of rope drop meaning be there BEFORE it opens, not leave the hotel at the time it opens. Knocked out a bunch of stuff from futureland (loved space mountain!) before we went in for our CP breakfast, and the kids quite enjoyed it. Our server was fantastic. He told us as we were seated that the first character was only two tables away and to wait before getting food. While he was getting our drinks, they announced the parade. He came back so apologetic, but we didn’t mind at all. We weren’t in a rush. He kept saying he felt terrible. Next thing you know, he’s piled up a plate of food and delivered it to us. I was naughty and ate a cheese Danish. They were amazing. SO I had another one. And then the carb hangover began and I was fighting to stay awake.
This may have been the only pictures where the youngest kiddo was smiling. And I don’t have them because they’re still in Dh’s phone.
I made a booboo. I accidentally got a fp for peterpan for 9pm and thought it was 9 am. Oops. Frantically scrambled to reorganize fps, and it threw a few things out, but mostly we were on track.
The rest of the day passed by in a bit of a blur really. I was constantly reminding DH to stick to the plan. No sidetracking to the nearest attraction! We’ll do it when the plan says to! Disney must have designed the park with his flittering focus in mind, because he was just about sucked into every trap along the way.
Dh made the executive decision to skip the once upon a time fireworks.
We had dinner at Be our Guest. It was pretty, and I loved sitting nearby one of the windows with falling snow. This turned into the longest dinner EVER. For no apparent reason, it took well over two hours. It took over half an hour between clearing our entrée dishes and the dessert cart being bought over.
We finished up a few more rides and headed back to our resort.
Day… the next.
Today was our Hollywood studios day. Actually succeeded in RD this time around. They were already letting people into the park, but they were being held in the main entrance area still. We were heading straight to toy story this morning. Except Dh went for coffee again. Fine. This time I’m meeting you in the line. Not a chance I’m waiting!
He missed the ride. So then he insisted that I find a fastpass so he could go on it with us. Sigh. I spent pretty much the rest of the day engaged in this pursuit.
Did a meet with starlord and groot because it literally had no line and was going to save us about 20 minutes later in the afternoon.
We did RNR, loved it. It was really fun. Muppets, not so much, but the muppets aren’t my cup of tea. I relate to the two hecklers more than anything. Star tours was up next. Absolutely bored me. I don’t watch the star wars movies, so I had no idea really what was happening. And then it was over super quickly too.
Lunch at HBD was nice, but the lighting was dim, and the place was DUSTY! Of course, I spent the time on my phone trying to modify our fast passes.
Sooo dusty!
Our last fastpass for the afternoon was for TOT. DH got to the entrance and chickened out and convinced DS10 to wait with him. Fine. Just scan your bands and wait for us over there. Good . ok.
Took DS11 on the ride, and it was so worth it for his face. The video is completely priceless
Get out of the ride and the other two are nowhere to be seen. Got a text- they’re in line for the frozen sing a long and they aren’t sure they will make it into the next showing. It’s line is longer than TP predicted. I hurry over and try to get those fastpasses for toy story. Bingo!
Except Dh and DS10 DIDN’T scan their bands. I grabbed the fps for me and DS11, with the hopes of getting them to scan their bands and then snag their’s. Too far away to go now he says. Fine. I got another fp for muppets (I think) and send them off to scan. They come back and said the fp line was too long. I’m now at the point where I stop talking because I have no more words left to explain to him why he can’t do toy story. They stopped letting people in to frozen two groups in front of us. Gave up on that and sent DH and DS10 BACK to muppets to scan their bands, and headed to the next attraction on our list- Indiana jones. We had a lovely large wait in there, with plenty of time for me to discover that all the fp for toy story were taken. Turns out @mickeymathmagic was hoarding them 
So I spent the entire indy show trying to even find overlapping fps. I eventually managed to get a bunch that all overlapped with a 10 minute window. Yikes. It would mean missing the little mermaid, but by this point, I don’t care.
We did get on toy story, and Dh then couldn’t understand why he wanted to do it so badly. Sigh.
I really enjoyed it though.
My memories of this day were a bit vague, mostly obscured by being on my phone the whole time, so I probably missed a few things. As much as it sounds awful, I still did have a great time.
We headed off to Fantasmic, and despite having the dining package, couldn’t find a seat for ages. CMs kept sending us to different sections because they were all full, even though we showed up more than half an hour early. Eventually one told us she might have to split us up. We ended up sitting 2 on one row and 2 directly behind them on the next row, after a monster effort in getting some people to squish over. The show was quite cute.
Dinner at the 50s prime time was great. Uncle George was hilarious. My boys were a bit taken aback but had no idea why this guy just didn’t seem to give a damn about customer service. He did take my youngest to the kitchen to show grandma his clean plate though. And remarked it was so clean he’d just let the dog lick it and put it straight back in the cabinet. I think the lady at the table next to us just about fell off her chair when she heard him say that. Hopefully she didn’t think he was serious!
One of the girls out the front was from Australia and the kids enjoyed talking with her about the college program. Both aspire to go work at Disney in the college program now. It’s around this point that I’ve decided that if someone offered me a job to be a princess… I could handle that. It’s tough work, but someone’s gotta do it.
Day… after the half way point and not happy about it!
Back to epcot to knock out futureworld.
Hey, we did RD properly this time!
We were at the front of the pack for spaceship earth. The kids loved it. I set my expectations too high and it didn’t quite hit the mark- but I also made sure I didn’t have spoilers before the trip, so I could have avoided that! The kids at one point also turned around to thank me…. Sorry guys. A linguist is a bit different to a Phoenician… but good try.
Headed over to soarin’, really enjoyed it. I want one of these set up in my living room next to my FOP set up. We also did test track. It was about this time that we realized the fog just wasn’t burning off like it normally does. Test track was freezing. We did the figment ride.
Oh my, why? That is all I have to say on the matter.
DH and DS 10 went back to the hotel to grab DHs jacket. Dh normally sweats in even the coldest weather, but the windchill today was off the wall.
Headed over to the land, did the lion king (I napped through it actually), livin with the land, checked out the tanks and then had lunch at coral reef. Coral reef was lovely, but I had some sneaky carbs during lunch and I started to have difficulty keeping my eyes open. Due to the freezing, and the sleepy, we canned the rest of the plans for the day and went back to the hotel. I slept, Dh eventually slept, and the boys played with their light sabers outside until it rained on them. We headed back to WS for dinner at Spice Road Table and to watch illuminations.
The CMs at SRT were really awesome about getting us a table where we could see the fireworks, and even moved us about 15 minutes before they started to a better seat, right at the window so I didn’t freeze to death outside. They seated us quite early (I told them I was happy to wait so I could get a seat with a view of illuminations). They also didn’t care at all about how long we took and knew we wanted to stay for the fireworks. Unfortunately, the one other group inside the restaurant where we were decided to be incredibly noisy and I couldn’t hear any of the music/whatever was being said. Again, purposefully avoided spoilers so I kinda missed the point. I’m going to have to youtube it now… which just isn’t the same. Dh also positioned his camera in front of me so I couldn’t see much of what was happening on the globe. The youngest kiddo slept through it again.
The next day closer to the end of our trip….
Back to AK today.
Forget about RD. It just isn’t happening.
We had a FP for flight of passage straight away. The pre show was completely different this time, and the ride was slightly different than the first time. I think it was shorter I would have enjoyed finding a way to bring it home with me.
Another rush over to KS, and a primeval whirl later (strangely more enjoyable than I was expecting from the look of it!), and we were just about ready for lunch at Tiffins.
It was quite lovely. The food was great too. We spent much of the afternoon trying to wrangle extra fastpasses, but they just didn’t exist. We happily spent the afternoon on the self guided animal trails. I took (quite literally) over 300 photos of the one okapi eating a leaf.
We went to see the tigers, but the cubs had gone into hiding again, though we did see the big one. Everyone crowded around it so we couldn’t really get near it. We moved to another area so we could see it, and people shoved in front of us. By then, their 3 little ones were having tanties and I thought it was better just to forget the tiger.
We headed over to the Gorillas… and I felt sorry for them. They kept trying to hide from everyone that was crowded around, but everywhere they went would expose them to another crowd. Just
made me feel sad for them.
Dh decided to cancel dinner at rainforest café in favour of heading back to the resort and going to the Maya grill. Our server here seemed extremely nervous for some reason. The live guitar guy was sensational though!
Weird photopass fail:
No idea what was meant to be in that.
Almost last day. New Year’s Eve
Back to MK
Again, no rope drop. By now DH is actually fighting me about this. It seems he purposefully made it difficult to make it every other day because he just didn’t want to. Sigh. We did discuss and agree on the plan before we left. Oh well.
Today is pretty cool! Like freezing. The temperature just didn’t quite get high enough, but it wasn’t as bad as the epcot day. I also don’t remember too much about this day, except splash mountain. Why?
Because we had a fastpass for it, but got there early. 20 minute line, 25 minutes until fp opens up… no brainer right? Wrong.
Remember our escapade with dinosaur last week? 1 hour and 20 minutes in that first line! Nearly missed our fp! And then we discovered there was another one! So we grabbed it. And Dh started talking about poses because the oldest kid’s face was hilarious. We then got another fp for it.
And then we wandered around. A lot. Mainly because we got there so late, all the lines were now well over an hour long and DH refused to stand in line for more than 20 minutes for anything. So we didn’t do much!
We did do the jingle cruise. I didn’t hear pretty much anything the CM said (other than something about water) because a group of NINETEEN got on the boat and talked the entire time. I just felt sorry for the CM by the end of it.
Lunch at the skipper canteen was decent. Nothing amazing, but out server was friendly in a really cheerful, genuine kind of way.
Roamed around so DH could take pictures for most of the afternoon. Went to set up the for the early fireworks, but DH wouldn’t go anywhere near the front of the castle. Because everyone gets those shots. We ended up over the bridge to the left of the castle. Of course, there was a tree blocking a lot of the fireworks and they didn’t look right because they were the fantasy in the sky fireworks, which looked VERY different when I watched them from the Disney blog.
Went to CRT for dinner. It was nice… but a bit weird. A lady old enough to be my grandmother kept calling me princess and giving me gaudy trinkets. This was another one of those meals that took quite a while. We copped the princess procession twice. DS11 was highly embarrassed to find Ariel remembered him from our breakfast on the first day.
After this we pretty much headed home, quite cold.
Where disaster awaited! This is where everything really unhinged.
We changed our plans from staying late to leaving early in order to pack so we could have a longer day in the park on our last day. Discovered Dh hasn’t been doing the laundry because he was getting distracted by taking photos of landscapes and squirrels. How dare I suggest taking unlaundered clothing home. All plans for parks are now more or less cancelled for tomorrow in order to get our laundry and packing sorted out.
Last Day… New years day.
Cancelled breakfast at Boma. Had it at the pepper market instead. It was ok. Actually it would have been quite good if I wasn’t expecting to be at Boma instead. But it definitely was not Boma
Sent DH to deal with laundry. I started trying to pack our fragile souvenirs into our carry ons and redistribute stuff into other bags.
Went to Sanaa for lunch, and it is freezing and miserably windy, with some slight rain. There are no animals to be seen, the weather was too miserable for them. I did enjoy the tree décor in the restaurant though. Dh tells me he left our laundry in the dryer. …… Again, I have no words.
This lunch took over two hours… for no real reason. It was super quiet in there. It took over half an hour for our appetizers to arrive (and our drinks hadn’t yet!) and the server was making jokes about having to catch the lambs… and then our plates disappeared and it took forever for our entrees to come. We skipped dessert. It just took forever, and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with confiscated laundry or some other disaster because DH left them in the dryer for hours on end.
Got back and eventually got everything packed, with a few items that went missing and never showing up (my glove that disappeared off the bed before I ever got to wear it, Ds11’s new sunglasses- he is heartbroken over this ‘waste’, DS10’s autograph book (thankfully he’s not overly sentimental as he was the only one collecting them!) and strangely, the padlock off my suitcase). Laid out our clothes for the morning, and headed off to Narcoosees for dinner.
Except it is drizzly and FREEZING. My teeth were chattering so loudly in the walk from the car park to the restaurant that other people were looking at me strangely. We saw kids in their speedo’s in the pool. Nuts! It was super super SUPER cold this night!
Dinner was lovely. DH went out to film the happily ever after fireworks, but ended up taking photos and gave up from the cold. Our server ended up bringing out a special anniversary dessert and some champagne for us just before we left. It was the only recognition we’d had while we were there (weren’t looking for it!) about it and it was a nice surprise.
Then we froze our butts off and building hopped back towards our car, and accidentally found ourselves in a gift shop, and thought we’d use the last of our snack credits and convert our last few dining credits. This is where things got weird. I was carrying a pouch with all our receipts with me and had to go through all of them to check what went wrong. We didn’t get charged 2 credits for ANY of our signature meals. So we ended up with like 45 snack credits to use because we had a TONNE of ts credits left over, instead of about 6.
So the entire family back home and my friends at work all got bags of lollies for souvenirs! Multiple bags of lollies. We managed to shove them all into our bags and carry on. This would later be awful, because TSA at LA made us take out ALL food items. Ugh.
Next morning – 2nd Jan
Woke up at 3 am to head back to the airport. I’m feeling a bit sniffly and headachey, but just put it down to being cold.
Got through there with no difficulties and waited around for our flight. Ds10 and I managed to steal a few minutes to nap uncomfortably. Got an email from our airline saying that my membership level had been upgraded. Yay! I got to board a bit earlier than most of the others in economy. Got to LA no problems…
Then LA was just a huge problem.
We needed to check in for our next flight, because it was with a different carrier, we weren’t given boarding passes when we checked in for the first one. We tried to ask the staff where to go, but they said to ask the airline staff. We tried asking the airline staff, but they said they were closed for another two hours. We didn’t even know if we were in the right terminal. There was also nowhere to sit, with ALL of our luggage, which had to be rechecked. We went to another terminal and bought a ridiculously expensive lunch at planet Hollywood so we could sit down for an hour or so. Headed through the terminal and found that our airline wasn’t to be found in there. Headed back to the original terminal and found someone to talk to us. Yay, right terminal! But no, we just check our bags here. Our flight is actually in a different terminal. Which after much searching, we are informed by a lovely security guard, doesn’t actually exist. So we bump around a bit until we can get someone from our airline to look up where we need to be and head off in the right direction. When we finally get there, we are relieved to sit down for a few minutes. I am so glad we ended up with a 8 hour layover. It took us 5 hours from landing to get to this point. UGH. Some minor delays, and we’re ready to board just after 8pm local.
So not long later, we start boarding for our longest flight (16 hours). By now, I realise I have a full blown sinus infection and am very cranky and miserable about it. Fortunately, I brought a whole chemist full of helpful items in my carryon for just such an emergency.
Landed in Melbourne at 7am local. 1 hour and 35 minutes to get bags, drop bags, clear customs, clear security and get to our gate. No problem! Oh but it was!
Delay getting our bags dropped. Monster lines at bag drop. They call our flight and DH gets them to move us into a shorter line. Lady couldn’t understand why our bags were already checked and tried to delete something… eventually got help. By the time she is done, our flight is boarding. I ask for directions to our gate. We rush and get through a relatively empty security line, only for EVERYONE to get swabbed for bombs, including inside our bags. Get allllllll the way to the end of the terminal to find our gate…… empty. What?
A lone guy from the airline is hanging around nearby an otherwise abandoned area and realizes our gate had been changed… Ugh. Turns out, our new gate was alllllll the way at the very, very, end of the opposite end of the terminal. And we had to go through security on that side. He pushed us through to the front of the line though, because it was SUPER busy. We copped some eye rolls from the cabin crew as we rushed onto the plane, but managed to get into our seats and on our way home making the plane depart later than it was scheduled to.
So now I have an enormous hangover caused by the 18 months of anticipation and build up and planning that went into this trip, and knowing I won’t be going back for another 8 years. Eep.
That’s a long time.
