Ryan comes to visit!

So, just as I had recovered from the lack of sleep and energy from my parents visit, Ryan comes to visit. I worked all week after my parents left. Thursday night I worked until 12:15, getting home around 1:30 and then the next morning I was on the bus at 7:22am. I was meeting him at the hotel he was going to be staying at while he was here, All Star Music. I actually had never seen the All Stars so it was interesting to see. While I was checking him in, since I had booked it for him with my cast member discount, he snuck up behind me and scared the bejeezus out of me. It was so good to see him! I had missed him a lot since we really had only just begun our relationship before we left. We have been doing really well with the long distance relationship thing, but I definitely missed him a lot.

Just as soon as he arrived, we were off to the parks. We were doing 4 parks in 2 days which was a challenge and we were pretty exhausted at the end of each day!

First, we went to Animal Kingdom since there is not that much to do there we decided to hit that first. We rode the safari, Expedition Everest (which he hadn't rode before), and we saw The Festival of the Lion King, which is one of the best shows in Disney. I got calls from people and texts all day given it was my birthday. One particular call from my friend Mary got me tearing up. I was pretty homesick on my birthday missing all of my friends from school that I had celebrated my birthday with for 4 years and now I am not with them. I think I just realized that college was over and that it will never be the same again. Ryan was amazing, as usual, and actually expected that I would get a little emotional missing home on my birthday.

Anyway, I put my smile back on when the show began and then we headed over to Magic Kingdom. I have to say we were Magic Kingdom masters! Even though the park was busy we rode every ride in the park that was worth riding. We fast passed rides that had long waits and while we waited for our fast pass time we waited in the shorter lines like Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. It was crazy. I couldn't believe how well we did. We even got to ride Space Mountain twice because this lady handed us our fast passes. We were going to go to a nice dinner, but all the restaurants were overbooked. So we went to Cosmic Rays and it ended up being a better deal because we got a great view of the castle!

The next day we had planned on doing the other 2 parks. We started at Hollywood Studios and got fast passes for Rockin' Roller Coaster even though the wait time was only like 30 minutes. The park was pretty slow actually. I think because a lot of people were either at Magic Kingdom or the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot. We rode Tower of Terror, of course, and the Great Movie Ride. I found out that he had never seen the Beauty and the Beast show or the new stunt show Lights, Motors, Action. So we did both of those and in between did the Backlot Tour that I had not even done since I got here.

After all this we headed over to Epcot. We were planning on meeting my friend Courtney who has the same birthday as me and whose boyfriend was also visiting and my friend Sarah. While we waited for them to arrive we went and did Turtle Talk with Crush which is so much fun! The kids get to talk to Crush and ask him turtle questions. One kid asked Crush what he eats and Crush said vegetation and then Crush asked the kid what he likes to eat to which he responded with "Fish." It made for a very funny moment for Crush where he said "Fish are Friends, not food, man!" It was really funny.

We met up with Sarah and we rode Spaceship Earth, the ride inside of the big ball, which I also don't ever remember riding. Eventually, we met up with Courtney and her boyfriend and we walked around the food and wine festival. There was a fight that broke out near Mexico where there was beer flying. It felt like I was back in college again. People were yelling that this is a family place, but it didn't change much. I heard that this happens quite a bit with the amount of drinking people do in Epcot, but it was crazy to witness. Hard to believe this would happen in Disney.

It was crazy busy in Epcot, much busier than the previous weekend when my parents were here. So we walked around the world and then decided to get dinner off property. We went to Olive Garden, which is funny because we always used to go there for people's birthdays back at ISU. So, it all came full circle.

The next morning Ryan met me for breakfast at Panera, which is around the corner from my apartment, and then he headed back to Tampa to spend time with grandmother who lives there. I miss him more now than I did before, but he is hoping to come back in November some time pending my work schedule!

I am a really lucky girl! For my birthday present he got me the pictures we took from the Photopass Photographers and a picture frame, since before this trip there was only one picture of us together! I had some taken with my camera too so I would have them in electronic form too!