Breakfast with Amber

January 2021: Tetts' Disney Pandemic Funtime

But before we move back onto campus, you didn't think I was going to forget about winter break, did you? Again, I remember the January half of winter break more than December because that's when we went to Disney World like we do. At this point, Disney World was open again, but COVID was going to make it much different. For one thing, they were limiting the number of reservations they would accept. We were still able to get one, though, probably because so few people wanted to go. That's how we begin the emptiest Disney trip we have ever been on.

We drove for this trip, either because airlines still had their own restrictions, we were uncomfortable with going on a plane while there was still a global pandemic going on, or a combination of both. The important part was that we packed up our van and hit the road early in the morning on January 9. Mom posted a picture every time we passed a state border with a time stamp on it, so now I know we entered Louisiana at 10:03 am, Mississippi at 2:43 pm, Alabama sometime before 4:34 pm (I'm guessing based on a picture she took at a Buc-Ee's in Loxley, AL at 4:34 pm), and Florida at 4:58 pm. I remember competing in the fishing tourney and doing some villager hunting in Animal Crossing: New Horizons as we crossed the bridge into Mississippi. I had saved up 50 Nook Miles Tickets and found no success. However, I did find Norma three times.

Villager hunts aside, we stopped for dinner at a restaurant in Defuniak Springs, Florida. We ate in our car instead of the dining room. I got a tough steak that I had to cut with a flimsy plastic knife, and I was hesitant to cut fewer and therefore bigger bites because I choked on a bite of steak when I was 14. I must have gotten the whole thing eaten somehow. We spent the night at the Tallahassee Best Western, where we stayed in room 212 (212 is a motto at my high school).

We hit the road again the next day and made it to the Animal Kingdom Lodge in time for lunch. However, our room was not ready in time for lunch, so we ordered lunch from the pool bar and ate while we waited.

We stayed in a one-bedroom suite at Jambo House within Animal Kingdom Lodge. As the parents, Mom and Dad got the bedroom while I got the pullout couch. Animal Kingdom Lodge is an African themed resort with beautiful views, mainly of the savannah on the inside edge of the resort where you can see real animals and sometimes the people who feed them.

Animals aside, the first park we visited was EPCOT. This was Pandemic Disney, so masks were required, and they made announcements over the intercom every 15 minutes reminding us of that. That meant I could finally sport my new Persona 5 mask that I got for Christmas. That morning, we decided to hit up Living with the Land in the Land pavilion, where we noticed Plexiglas dividers between each of the rows in the boats. They didn't block our view of the plants, though. We also went on Journey Into Imagination, where I bought myself some new ears at the gift shop.

Around lunchtime, we decided to eat at the Yorkshire County Fish Shoppe in the UK pavilion, which was where I had fish and chips for the first time, and they were amazing. While we were eating, we noticed a horse-drawn trolley of princesses passing by. That must have been the pandemic-friendly version of a parade. After that, we went walking around World Showcase (emphasis on "walking"). It was the International Festival of the Arts while we were there, so there were giant paintings around World Showcase with people edited out of them so you could stand in front of it and take a picture. The only one that has survived is one of me and Dad standing in front of the crossing of the Delaware.

After that, we made it back to Future World and went on Test Track. We were the only ones in our car, and my hair in the picture was probably the most windswept I have ever seen it. We also went on Mission Space, and this was probably the first time I had gone on the orange team. The last time I went in 2019, I discovered that they had made the green team even tamer, and I realized that while I don't like my thrill rides too thrilling, I also have my limit going in the opposite direction. Orange team it is.