Thank You, Jacksonville!

(Alternate Title: I Survived the Disney Band Trip - Part 1)

As posted earlier, I chaperoned my son's high school band trip to Disney the week following Easter. Let me just say, the kids were GREAT! There was not one behavior issue the entire trip. And that was with almost 300 teens. In fact, we received compliments from the hotel about it being the best group they've ever had stay on their property. Go us!

The trip was filled with sunshine, laughs, and a number of WTF moments. I will try to recount some of the highlights in this post and maybe another few to follow.

Monday morning, I navigated check-in with my son and we waited for our group to arrive in the band room. There were close to 30 adults supervising the trip. We were to inspect everyone's luggage/carry ons/purses as well as to make sure everyone loaded their instrument and marching band uniform onto the correct buses. I nervously checked and double checked that my group of freshmen boys had their pants/jackets/t-shirts/black socks/white gloves/shoes. Apparently, Disney is quite particular about those things if you are to march in one of their parades! You might wonder why we had a 3 hour check-in, as I did. Well, in my group's case, I had to send one kid home who forgot his trumpet. And I guess it takes a while to load up that much luggage, etc. onto 7 charter buses. The DARE officer was there with his drug sniffing dog making random inspections. I had my first WTF moment when I checked one boy's suitcase and found a 15 inch chocolate bunny as well as a Hannah Montana DVD. We're talking high schoolers. Saw another boy walk in all excited holding up a huge Disney coloring book, which he and friends colored in, tore out pages, and hung up in the back of our bus. Weird. When I mentioned my unique finds to another chaperone, he informed me that the only interesting thing he found were tons of Axe cologne. We'd be smelling that frequently in the days to come.

We managed to depart at 11:50 a.m. (10 whole minutes ahead of schedule), with what I can only assume was some mom circling the buses on her motorcycle, waving excitedly. We guessed maybe she was happy to be off on her Harley, without the kids for a week? We settled in for the long ride, me wondering why the seats seemed about the size of coach class airline seats? I had two seats to myself (being a chaperone without my spouse traveling with me), but let me just say, it wasn't a whole lot of room for a 44 hour round trip. My back is still kind of sore. The first surprise came 1.5 hours into the trip, when we were already stopping for lunch! Huh? Well, it was 1:30 p.m. and the kids had been in the school since 9 a.m., so I guess it was reasonable that they were hungry. But I was thinking that this was going to be an awfully long trip if we were stopping that early. After an entire hour break, we hopped back on the bus and were off.

I kid you not, 2-3 hours later, we were just crossing the border into a new state when we stopped AGAIN for a potty break. Egads! That's when our first injuries occurred. One girl got stung by a bee in her ear and a boy hit his head on one of the small TV screens on the bus and managed to be bleeding. Our traveling nurse certainly earned her paycheck on this trip.

Multiple stops and states later, it was about midnight when we made an unplanned stop into a deserted gas station. We're all looking at each other, wondering what was up. Think of the telephone game and realize that all I learned was that 3 lug nuts came off a wheel on another bus and it was no longer drivable. That's when we realized that luggage and kids would have to be farmed out onto the other 6 buses. The chaperones on my bus looked at one another in horror. One of them said he was going to get off the bus and casually remark how FULL our bus already was. I feared having to give up the vacant seat next to me and had a little confab with my son about moving up to the seat next to me. I really didn't want to sleep with some stranger 4 inches from my head. Fortunately, there were other buses less full than ours, and we managed to escape without any extra passengers or baggage.

The next thing I remember, it is 4 a.m. and we are behind a Comfort Inn in South Carolina. I watch, half awake, as our current bus driver gets out and our new driver climbs aboard. That's when the fun started........our new lady driver had a propensity for scratching herself, keeping the window open ( I was freezing and had my beach towel wrapped around myself), eating cheese doodles and craisins, and veering off the road. More on that on the return trip home.

Jacksonville, Florida will never be the same again. Our 7 (minus 1) buses pulled into their local McDonald's and there were 300 stinky, bed headed kids pouring into the place, looking for breakfast. The question of why all buses were pulling into the same place was never answered on the trip. But it was unfortunate for the employees, no doubt. We kept joking that the 'closed' sign would be going up every time we pulled into a parking lot. I wasn't about to stand in that long of a line for a cup of coffee, so I moseyed over to a gas station and found myself a Krispy Kreme fresh donut stand along with the BEST cup of French Vanilla Latte I've ever had in my life! Thank you, Gate Station, Jacksonville, Florida! And so begins my tale of gourmet vacation fare. Stay tuned!