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Pretty good month for me, to be honest. I’ve done a little bit of traveling, done a little bit of reading, done a little bit of exercise. I’m pretty much just going to go over the Disney trip in this post though. Might make another one soon about the end of Egghead in One Piece, which has been insane.
This was the coolest thing of August. I took a week off of work and went to Disney World in Florida with a bunch of friends. Three of the people going had birthdays within a week of our trip, and a different three people had never been to Disney before. It was a really good time.
Traveling to Florida
Traveling was the roughest part of the whole experience. Firstly, there was a hurricane/tropical storm (Debbie) right in our path that we were all a little concerned about. My family would’ve preferred I hadn’t gone at all. Second, we weren’t sure what car to take. It was between my friend’s Chevy Volt (hybrid sedan) and their F-150 lightning (full electric truck). We went back and forth for a bit, but we decided on taking the Volt. Even though it wasn’t as comfy, we figured having the ability to use gas would be easier to get around with. Also stopping in a storm and having to charge for 30-40 minutes with the truck would be a little cumbersome. We also figured if the storm knocked out electricity, the gas stations would be up quicker than the EV chargers and we wouldn’t be as easily stranded. The Volt had different plans for us though.
We left at about 6:30am and had to stop for gas. We got about 20 minutes away from where our friend lived, filled up, and then the Volt wouldn’t start again. It wasn’t wanting to switch from the electric mode to the gas mode, which is an issue they just had fixed on this same car. We were stranded at the gas pump. We called up support and eventually just decided we’d have to have it towed. So my mom came and picked the 3/4 of us up, while Kai waited with the volt, and took us back to the house so we could get the F-150 and then go back for Kai. It was about 8:30am before we actually made it out of our county and were officially on the road. Which, sounds like a pain (and kind of was in the moment), but was actually a blessing. If we had broke down in Florida then we’d have been totally screwed without a car, and they’d have to get it towed all the way back to North Carolina. Which could’ve taken a whole day off of our Disney plans. But, once we were on the road everything was good. On the way home we found out the Volt’s issue actually totaled it. It’d be like $6000-$8000 to fix, and they’d already spent $1.5k like 2 weeks before for maintenance and to (supposedly) fix that issue. So it really worked out that we didn’t take it.
In the charge we had to stop and charge several times, but that gave us time to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. We ran into a few bad spots of weather from the storm, but overall it wasn’t horrible. We stopped at 3 different Buc-ees gas stations, which only 1 of us had ever been to 1 before. We stopped at 1 in South Carolina, and then 2 in Florida. We would’ve hit the one in Georgia, but that was in the middle of the state and would’ve made our trip at least 4 hours longer. For those who don’t know, Buc-ees are these very huge, clean (very very clean), stores basically with gas pumps. It’s kind of odd to call them gas stations because they are so much more. I got a pulled pork sandwich, like 3 burritos, energy drinks/soda, and some mints across all our trips to give you an idea of what I mean. I wish I had gotten a hat or something, but I’m sure I’ll go back again. They have so much more stuff that I should’ve looked at, but we were already running way behind.
After leaving at 6:30am on Monday morning, we got to our Airbnb at 12:30am on Tuesday. What would’ve been an 8-10 hour gas car ride, turned into an 18 hour EV drive. Nothing we could’ve done though, weather and EVs were not on our side. It really could’ve been a lot worse, we got lucky in a lot of ways. But, at the time I was annoyed I hadn’t taken a 12 hour train ride for $80 like I had looked into. I seriously considered taking one home and ditching my friends, but that ended up back firing because the trains home weren’t running the day we were meant to leave. I’m glad I didn’t though, the car ride conversations were great. I got to hang out with our buddy Carson more than I really had before which was cool. A huge shout out to Kai though, he drove the whole trip, all 18 hours by himself.
The Airbnb was pretty nice. It was Disney themed to an extent, they had wifi, showers, a really comfy couch, and it was in a decent neighborhood. We ended up walking about 15-20 minutes away to a Walmart one day for lunch, and it was kinda in the middle of a lot of cool stuff.
Disney
Disney was super fun. I’d been one time in 2018 for my cousins 20th birthday. We flew down (also during a hurricane, which is a story for another post) and spent a week at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios (I think). Since it had been 6 years since my last visit a lot of stuff had changed and was a really good time. Our tickets this time didn’t include Magic Kingdom so we went to Hollywood Studios, Epcot and Animal Kingdom. I wish we had gone to Magic Kingdom because that’s like the Disney park and it has a lot of cool iconic rides, but all the others were really good. The weather was great for the most part, there was some torrential rain when we were leaving Animal Kingdom on the last day, but 99% of the time it was sunny and warm.
At Epcot we went and ate around the world. A really cool experience if you get to try it. There’s a lot of good food. It’s not necessarily the most authentic thing I believe. You can tell it’s kind of Americanized, or they don’t use the best ingredients. It’s a good time though. I bought a straw hat from the Japanese section and was wearing it for the rest of the day. I wish I had both something Ghibli related now that I’m home. They have pretty deep ties to each other, so there was a huge section of Ghibli stuff. In Germany I was getting a bratwurst and met a German man who liked One Piece and was caught up with the manga! He recognized the hat and asked me if I was a fan, and we talked for a second. I kinda fibbed to him because I thought chapter 1123 was coming out that week, but I was mistaken and it came out the next week.
We didn’t have a lot of time for anything else besides Disney and 1 rest day. We did go to an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet that included lobster one night. It was $80 and you could get as many lobsters and crab as you wanted. They also had all you can eat sushi. I was sort of excited because I’d never tried real crab or lobster, but the process of cracking them and eating them really turned me off of the whole thing. I like watching them get cracked, but I didn’t want to do it myself or eat them. They’re giant bugs that live in the water. Creepy. Everything else was decent though, they had more besides just seafood. I love sushi, but I’m not a huge fan of shellfish or fried fish, so my plate was high with barbecue and sushi. My friends also had me try part of an oyster which wasn’t bad. It just creeps me out. Those things are hell-bent on staying closed, why did we as humans decide to open them and eat them. Super strange.
Everyone took pictures and videos, and our friend Carson is going to edit it all together and upload it to Youtube. I’ll post a link once it’s ready. His channel is here.
Traveling home
Friday was the day we designated for Animal Kingdom because we knew we were leaving and that’s the park we didn’t mind leaving early. The last ride we rode was the one for the Avatar movie, which we waited in line for like 2.5 hours. As soon as we got off of it, it started POURING rain. I’m not sure we saw more rain anywhere else. All the way to the entrance of the park it poured. My feet were totally soaked. We actually got separated from our other car of friends. Which was mostly fine because they were going to drop off 1 person in northern Florida, and continue driving to Illinois. In our truck, from Animal Kingdom we were going to be going straight to the airport to drop off our friend who lives in Minnesota, and we were gonna take the original 4 of us back to North Carolina. His flight was at about 6pm and he was checking the whole day to make sure his flight wasn’t gonna get canceled or delayed or anything. Ten minutes away from the terminal he got a notification it had been delayed 3 hours. We debated not dropping him off so we could do one more thing and meet back up with the other car for a real goodbye. The McDonald’s in Orlando is actually the biggest one in the world and they sell a lot of unique food, and that’s what we were planning on. But looking at the map and traffic it would’ve taken 3 hours to drive there and back, and we’d need a charge, so we decided it wasn’t worth it. We dropped him off at the airport and then met the other car about an hour north of Orlando. They had made the stop at the McDonald’s and kindly bought us some pizzas. The pizzas were really surprising. They definitely weren’t my preferred style, but the quality beat my expectations. I was expecting the smaller pizzas you’d get at like Pizza hut for finishing a book. But they were more like legit pizzas, they were thin and crispy, and the sauce was decent. I give them like a 6.5/10. If I have the chance to go I’ll probably try some of their pasta.
After that we finally began the trek home. On the way down to Orlando, and all the 4 days that we were in Orlando we never had issues finding a charger. On the way home, Northern Florida turned out to be impossible to find a charger in. We stopped off at a Wawa (another gas station that people rave about, it was fine, but it wasn’t a Buc-ees) to charge. Kai, who was driving stayed behind to hook up the charger, but had issues because this one required you to download an app. We fussed around and finally figured out that these chargers were for people who used FPL (Florida Power and Light) as their utility provider, and also subscribed to their EV program. There was no way to just put our card in and pay to charge. This was super annoying and kinda scary because we couldn’t find a non-FPL charger close enough where we would make it with the charge we had. We were close to an apartment building, but it was also right next to a gas station which was super misleading. They have a monopoly of fast chargers in Northern Florida too it seemed. FPL sucks basically. We decided to chance it and went on to Georgia and found a charger right at the state line, thank goodness. We had like 10 miles left or something ridiculous. We pressed on and on and Kai drove most of the night. He took a break from about 3am to 6am so he could sleep and Josh drove because he had been sleeping. I made it home at about 8am, so this time the trip only took about 14 hours.
Conclusion
Long trips in EVs isn’t easy, it’s still probably better to take a gas vehicle, but it is possible to use one. You just have to plan for the charging stops, and then to be safe double that time. Disney is always a good time with the boys though, I’d do it all again for sure. I highly recommend taking a trip to Disney with a bunch of friends.