By July, 2008, CP and I needed a serious break from the drudgery of daily life. We were done. It was time to go. The only thing to figure out, then, were the logistics.

Let’s just say that during this period neither CP nor I were flush with cash. We were both in (or had recently dropped out of) grad school, the economy was tanking, and we had for several months been attending to a series of family issues that had sapped us of both energy and funds. In spite of these things, we were determined. The wheels in my head started spinning, and we decided to take a kill-two-birds kind of trip to Florida – we would first visit my mother on Florida’s east coast, and then we would drive to WDW, stay in a DVC studio courtesy of my grandparents, and find ways to have a cheap yet enjoyable vacation.

The plan worked reasonably well, with a few exceptions. First, I had perhaps suffered a bout of amnesia at some point, since I had clearly forgotten in the time following my employment at WDW that August in Florida offers breathtakingly horrible weather conditions. Hot, humid, and stormy – the trifecta. This might not have given us much pause, but I had also never in my adult life been in charge of planning a full trip; thus, I was unfortunately ignorant of the need to get up early to beat both the crowds and the heat. Thus, we spent many mornings sleeping in, and many afternoons in the parks fighting both crowds and ridiculously hot and humid conditions. We also didn’t eat particularly well (save a fantastic meal at the California Grill), both on account of the heat and our desire to keep it a cheap trip.

Our splurge meal of the week...dinner at the California Grill.

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