OhioStateBuckeye
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2007
Or, for my underwater readers...
My name is Rachel and this is ...possibly....my new pre-trip report.
You might have noticed the hesitation.
Let me go back and explain...
Myself, my boyfriend Brian, and our good friend Emily had a truly epic trip planned for Seattle starting on March 11.
Just FYI, that's Blue the raptor in the photo, not Emily.
So anyway....Seattle.
I can already see people nodding in understanding. Yep, Seattle. What timing.
In case you're reading this years after I've posted, or have been living under a rock, Seattle seems to be the epicenter for COVID-19 in the US.
They are now up to 23
Right around the beginning of March vendors, artists and celebrities who had been scheduled to attend Emerald City began to drop out. We read the writing on the wall and had a big discussion about the trip. In the end, we decided that canceling was the responsible thing to do. Which ended up working out anyway, because a day after we made our choice the convention ended up canceling the con.
Most of the refunds went very smoothly. The convention refunded our ticket cost and any autographs and pictures we'd pre-purchased. Goodbye Natalia Tena and Matt Smith autos. Our after hour Retro Replay Live tickets were refunded. Our downtown hotel was canceled no problem.
I had to pay a $25 cancellation for a National Parks hotel we'd booked in Olympia National Park. But that was ok, I like the National Parks, they can have my $25 'donation'.
One of our flights was booked with Southwest, which of course always let's you change/cancel with no penalties.
Our other flight was sadly booked with Alaksa Air, who point blank refused to give us a refund or a future voucher. I'd understand that most of the time, but the flight is headed into a city that has canceled college classes/school, most companies are asking people to work from home and you've had the most deaths out of any US city. But let's just fly into that city, it's fine.
So we got off pretty lucky with most of our activities/plans and refunds.
But still...
It was a pretty crushing decision. I started a new job as Project Lead for my company, we do advisory work with the federal government. It's been a pretty rocky start and I was so, so looking forward to a break.
We were all feeling pretty sorry for ourselves and tried to think of alternatives. We were looking at lists of conventions and saw Mega Con in Orlando. Then we're all like....why don't we just try for Mega Con and also do WDW?!
Actual depiction of my reaction below.
We quickly decided on the dates of April 17-24. That would let us catch Sa
turday and Sunday of Mega Con. Using our friends CM passes, we could also do parks after the convention on Saturday and Sunday nights. Then we'd have Mon-Thurs to go to the parks the rest of the week, then our friend Emily would leave Thursday and we'd leave Friday.
Our spirits were definitely lifted!! But now it was time to get a plan together quickly and see what we could savage in terms, of airfare, hotels, fastpasses and dining reservations.
But seriously??
I just hope this trip actually happens. CORVID-19 has already shut down one of our trips.
Fingers crossed.
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