When it comes to types of travellers, there are extremes on either end of the spectrum. The person who schedules every minute of their trip…and those who show up with no plan at all. I’m neither of these.
My travel style falls somewhere in between. I like to plan. Learning about the destination is half the fun for me! I like to know what I’m doing to some extent. I hate showing up to some attraction, only to find they’re closed on that particular day. I hate having to eat at a bad, overpriced restaurant because I was starving and had to stop somewhere. I hate spending half my day on public transportation because the activities I picked aren’t located anywhere near one another. So…I plan for spontaneity. (I see a future blog post on the topic!) A little bit of planning goes a long way in smoothing out my trip and letting me make changes as I go.
Sometimes, though, the universe has other ideas. And, it decided to teach me that lesson in the most planner-friendly vacation destination known to man…Disney World.
Disney is a planner’s dream (or nightmare!). Disney encourages making dining reservations 180 days ahead of time! You can schedule Fast Passes and know exactly what ride you’re going to be on at what time on what day a whole two months before you ever leave for your trip! I saw more than a few people walking around with huge binders containing their vacation schedule down practically to the minute. Yikes!
My Disney trip was already a bit on the light side when it came to planning. I had done a few things in advance. I’d read a lot of blogs. I’d made a couple dining reservations at restaurants I wanted to try. I’d looked into what rides I wanted to experience while I was in the parks. But, really, I was travelling by myself…with a time frame that was simply too short to do much…and only two main goals of the trip—eat myself into a coma at Epcot’s International Food and Wine festival and check out how Disney integrates animals and tourism at their Animal Kingdom park. I figured that so long as I accomplished my main objectives, anything else was a bonus. (Okay, Star Wars ranked right up there too!)
I had a premonition that things were not going to go smoothly a few days before my trip. Just this nagging feeling that refused to go away. I travel quite a bit and never really get travel nerves, so this was an unknown thing for me. Enter the departure day from hell. My Chewy.com shipment was delayed so I didn’t have enough dog food to pack for the dogs…the weekend forecast for Orlando suddenly changed from 80s and sunny to 50s and cloudy…the dogs who usually love going to the boarding facility decided they were having none of it…traffic on my hour long commute into the city was gridlocked…work was insane…a group project in my master’s program practically imploded…and I managed to just barely get to the airport in time for my flight…apparently without my backpack. My backpack that contains my entire life. My laptop…my camera…my phone charger…my battery backup…my passport…my travel documents…my reading book…my school work…and my snacks!
Oops.
After a moment of sheer panic and some quick mental calculations (no, there is no way to go home and get the backpack and still make my flight), I did the only thing I could do. I grabbed my purse (thankfully I had my driver’s license for ID), bag of clothes (at least I didn’t forget that one), disassembled the cell phone charger in my car (very happy that I opted for one that had a detachable USB charging cable)…and made the mad dash for my flight (yeah for TSA pre-check!).
Waiting to board the plane, I continued to beat myself up. I’m not that person. I’m the organized semi-planner. While I wasn’t ever a girlscout (4-H all the way!), I’m the one that’s prepared. For anything. I travel with two IDs in separate bags for crying out loud! (A detail that thankfully made this flight possible.) I’m the one people come to when they’ve forgotten something. I’m not the one that does the forgetting. And then I realized something very important…I’m just human and sometimes shit happens…and it’s not anyone’s fault. Everything in that missing bag was replaceable. And the world would go on without me being fully wired into it for a couple days. Between life, work, and school, I’d been under a huge amount of stress and this was a blessing in disguise. The universe was telling me to unplug for a couple days and just enjoy the moment.
The universe is rarely wrong and sometimes you need to listen to her. Sometimes you just have to let go.
So I embraced the chaos, pulled up my Disney account, and cancelled every advanced dining reservation and Fast Pass I’d made months before.
The simple thought of being free of all responsibility was incredibly liberating. I had no where I needed to be and nothing I needed to do. Just exactly what a vacation is supposed to be. Not the stressful, Instagram worthy, trip of a lifetime events that they seem to have evolved into over the years.
And I survived. More than survived, I had a great time! I learned that my airport offers a book return program…you can return a purchased book after your trip for half your money back. I got to experience just a bit of Disney magic on arrival when an amazing employee happily replaced my Magic Band and upgraded me to a newly refurbished room so I’d have access to a USB charging station. Because I had to make my cell phone battery last all day, I talked to people in line around me instead of working on e-mail and met some incredible individuals. I asked employees for directions and recommendations…and got a lot of insider tips in the process. I committed a whole lot more experiences to memory than Instagram photos. And I don’t regret a thing.
Did I do everything I wanted? Not at all. But I already knew that was impossible given the short time I was going to be at Disney. I prioritized the things I really wanted to do and I didn’t stress about those that I missed out on. They’re a great excuse to come back in the future!
The world went on without me and hardly missed a beat. My clients and school work and e-mails were all still there, waiting for me, when I came back.
So was my backpack…sitting on the couch…right where I’d left it.
