"Journey to a New World"

It wasn't as easy as we originally planned but overall, we think it worked out better than planned! It all started on Thursday afternoon when we noticed there were 11 seats left on the Red Eye and we were counting 9, 10 & 11. Quick action... change to 6:15pm which meant Crystal leaving work early to go home and pack, Felicity staying at work (thanks to her great thinking and bringing her suitcase) and Christi picking up Crystal once she was done packing to race for the 4:30 bus to get to the airport.

A few hiccups, Felicity forgetting her WJ pass on the bus (quick run to grab it from the bus driver before he drove away) and wearing her big down coat to the airport (quick fix with a drop at airside arrivals). Went for a quick bite and a couple of drinks at Milestone's then to the boarding lounge.



This is proper hydration before a race, right?

 We head through security with barely a hiccup, and headed down to our gate, hoping we wouldn't have any seat issues. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, we received our boarding passes....hurray!

 
We board the stuffed plane and are seated like ducklings all in a row...24, 25 and 26B.  We have a lengthy delay, our TVs don't work, and Christi gets her ear talked off by Chatty Charlie until she fakes sleeping, but we're in seats and on our way to Toronto!  Now, with the last minute change to our flight, we were looking at a 10 hour layover in YYZ and all our calls to nearby hotels were coming back with regretful no vacancies, so we were getting worried...a princess doesn't sleep on cold marble airport floors if they can help it.

Luckily, Crystal is well connected and she called a friend who not only offered us a place to stay, but also picked us up and booked us a fancy town car back to the airport in the morning. We didn't get much time there, but we all gave the Casa St Clair full marks on Trip Advisor!

Our dashing footman picked us up promptly and we were whisked to the airport in sweet comfy leather. Our driver pulled some impressive and questionable manouvers, including uturns, triple lane changes, and edging through 4 lanes of traffic to make left turns and all with a smile and a dapper black hat. He gets us there so fast, we have time for breakfast pizzas at Wolfgang Puck Express before heading through another completely painless security check AND customs check. YAY!

Airport woes..

Well the countdown is almost over and the real thing is almost here. Just a couple of last minute ‘minor’ things like.. well, booking flights, paying for flights, etc. Seems simple enough... Call the Call Centre, and book the flights.. check! Catch the 11:30 shuttle to go to the airport to pay for said tickets.. uh.. well .. here’s how THAT went.

Princesses Crystal and Felic came to my desk with 8 minutes to spare. We then jumped on the shuttle and we were starting the journey.. so to speak. We got to the airport and the Disney magic seemed to start as there was no line. After asking a wonderful WJ ambassador to take our photo we were quickly ushered to Eric who was more than happy to hear our story .. the whole story. Another photo op of the three of us and our separate payment methods… ooooh this is were it got more than a little sticky.

Eric was efficient in our first payment, then mayhem. The quote for the day is now.. “How many CSA’s does it take to check three princesses in on one PNR?” The answer.. 4, almost 5 but the fifth was dealing with the line up that started after we started our payment process. Luckily, number 4 Jeremy was able to sort us out and we were on our way to get lunch at Chachi’s!

We ordered quick and Felic suggested we head down as it was getting close to pick up time. Uh.. yeah.. we watched the bus go by as we hit the bottom of the escalator. Crystal with her lightening speed called the driver and we asked him to wait. With Felic running down the escalator at this point and the bus waiting for us at Tim’s, we sprinted down the concourse and hopped on the bus with apologetic faces. Our only worry now is how tired we were after our 200m sprint .. our next run will be 20.8km longer!! It's just gotta get easier from here!!

1 MORE SLEEP!!!!

Well it has come to the final hour. We leave tomorrow night! One more sleep at home in our beds (if we even can with constant nausea from the excitement) and we are off on the Red Eye tomorrow night!

Today has been especially hard to stay focused as the day began with us trying on our new shirts to wear on the plane (See blog post previous to this one), booking our standby flights and receiving the most amazing surprise from our Ops Support Team!! They gave us each a care package filled with running themed goodies!!!! It was so thoughtful and really made our day!

Best surprise ever!

Not sure which camera to look at!

OMG PRESENTS!!!

Very happy Princesses

Best 'fit for a Princess' care packages ever!!

Outfits for the plane!!

We decided we wanted to wear matching shirts and tiaras to wear on the plane to Orlando so we came up with this idea… A race bib with our employee IDs on them and a pink princess crown over the corner.

I sent it to my very good friend Jeff who always saves the day for me when I need something like this. I sent him this drawing of what we had in mind and this is the finished product! Thank you Jeff!!

Costume update…

Well the trip to Edmonton turned successful with finding a great running tank for my costume. Then I spent my Saturday night at my sister’s place ‘costuming’ and was able to talk her into using any ‘crafty’ like skills she might have ever acquired to assist me with completing this last minute costume change. The belt she created was simply amazing!!

Well it does seem like the pixie dust was falling last night and the stars aligned again so I was able to find the last remaining items to complete my costume… the perfect shirt for over my running shirt, dye to dye it the perfect colour and the “skill” to ensure the whole thing came together perfectly.. and it did!! It took a couple of hours, but I’m totally happy with the outcome.

It was awesome having enough of the costume completed to run this morning and as Princess Felic mentioned.. we both were able to run with no major “malfunctions” and came away from our morning run knowing what needed tweeking and our dignity in tack. Thank goodness we have the treadmills at work and our ‘regulars’ at the gym so we were able to do a test run without the questioning eyes of a whole gym watching us!

2 and a half more sleeps!!!

Test, Test!

This morning Christi and I did a practice run in our dresses (alas, Crystal was trapped in a tower by an evil witch. OK...she had to work late last night. But I bet she had to sweep chimneys or something while she was there). Since we live in Calgary and average temperatures right now are around -10C and our outfits are designed for the 20-30C we'll be running in at Disneyworld, we had to run inside.
We met at 6am at our work gym and spent about 10 minutes prancing and preening in front of the mirrors and giggling...it was the first time we'd seen each other in our princess gear and if we do say so ourselves, we looked fantastic!  When we were finished adjusting tiaras and bows, we headed out and hopped on adjacent treadmills. Before we even started moving, we had a few comments from other people at the gym who were feeling underdressed.  We smiled and did our best princess waves and we were off (well, not off, we were running in place).

We each ran 3K and figured that would be a good test of any outfit fails.  Christi's new top stayed up and didn't run (it was freshly dyed) but she wanted to ruch up the skirt a bit, and I realized immediately that the collar I had pinned on was going to have to be sewn into place. And it took less than 10 minutes before we had both worked up a bit of a sweat. Both valuable lessons that will be easy to fix, and other than that, it was fantastic!  We looked great and felt great, no chafing!  We especially liked running with the satiny skirts swishing around, and considered running in poufy skirts from now on! And even if we felt a bit silly, we brought smiles to everyone else at the (surprisingly busy considering the snow and time) gym.
We tried to get a picture, but we had a camera snafu, so no visual documentation of our awesomeness. So I'll leave you with these instead...click on the link for more lessons!

Lessons from a Disney Princess


if you don’t like how things are going, it’s totally cool to run away.



...especially if you don’t want a man to see you without makeup.

Pifff, I'd never leave a shoe that pretty behind!

4.5 Sleeps to go!

That's right...since we take the red eye flight on Thursday, I don't think it actually counts as a full night's sleep. We got a few more pictures from our practice half last week thanks to our Running Room buddies!

This is what the start looked like! Too bad we missed it!

Crowns still shiny on the home stretch!

A perfect princess wave, well done!

Princesses and our Ladies-in-Waiting! Thanks Jen and Cherie!

So much to do before we go...mostly deciding what shoes to pack and which parks to go to!