After Mark and Robin left, we remained at Cocoa in order to visit with Sara, a Seattle friend who was in the area with her partner, Drake, for a work trip. In addition, a mutual friend of ours, Bethy, had recently moved to the Orlando area. Bethy and her husband Alex drove out to Cocoa and on Friday night we hosted a huge dinner party on the boat – my first time cooking a 3-course meal from scratch for 6 people on the boat. We had a great evening catching up.
Alex and Bethy stayed on the boat with us and the next day we ate pastries for breakfast and then played some mini-golf. I am extremely bad at mini-golf and lost by a large factor. However, we had a great time!
Alex and Bethy are big fans of Disney, so I knew I had a good opportunity to make a trip happen – only 2 years after our failed plans with Matthew only days before the parks shut down for Covid. We would only have one day, so I requested that we go to Hollywood Studios since I wanted to see the Star Wars zone! David is not a fan of crowds (people) or rides, so he decided to stay on the boat for a day of relaxing and video games. Alex, Bethy, and I drove back to Orlando on Saturday night so that we would be close to Disney in the morning. We work up early and started booking rides on the app, then headed to the parks for a fantastic and magical day! The Star Wars zone is incredibly detailed and I can only imagine how it must feel for a super-fan to walk up to the Millenium Falcon – much the same way I felt walking up to Hogwarts, I imagine.
Even though it was Easter Sunday and very busy at the park, Bethy and I had a fantastic morning – we ended up waiting in line for a few rides, and used the app to book fastpass times for other rides in the afternoon, by which time Alex joined us. Bethy was very patient for all my selfie poses!
Just before our reservations in Olgas Cantina for drinks, the sky opened up and it began raining. And I mean torrential downpour! We waited under an umbrella for our reservation to be called and made a mad dash in to the building.
By the time we had finished our drinks, it was close to the park closing time, and luckily the rain had scared most of the people away. I managed to convince Bethy and Alex to ride one more time on the Rise of the Resistance ride, and we had a little fun in the Hall of Stormtroopers.
While I was having a fantastic day, David was having his own version of a fantastic day on the boat sleeping in, playing video games, and working on coding projects. We were reunited later in the evening (our first day apart in over 2 years) and started making our plans for heading out of Cocoa.