It was Monday, October 3rd, 2005, and we had learned about the Disney Weddings only the night before.  I was at work when my mom called, and I started telling her of our Disney wedding plans.  I was lamenting that now my engagement plans were out the window, and I didn’t know how I was going to propose.  I threw out ideas like just driving to Atlantic City for the weekend, and my mom countered with just going to a nice restaurant.  I remember saying, “I know I’ve gotta scale it down now, but I can’t go from going to Belize to just going to dinner – next thing you know, I’ll be at the kitchen table!”  Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with a proposal at a nice restaurant – but I just wasn’t ready to re-adjust my sites to that degree.  I said, “it’s definitely gotta be on a trip somewhere…” – I hesitated, then proceeded with – “… well… we are going to Disney in a week and a half…”

Did I mention we love Disney?  We try to go at least once a year – often overachieving our goal.  When friends or family mention they are going to Disney, we usually find ourselves accompanying them as well – basically any excuse to go we’ll jump on.  Additionally, my parents are huge Disney fans (hence all the great childhood memories of Disney).  So it should be no surprise that when my parents planned to go to Disney for a couple days with some of their friends in mid-October 2005, we didn’t hesitate to join them.  For the most part, Christina and I planned to do our own thing, but it’d be nice to meet-up for the occasional ride or dinner.

Now somehow, this trip had turned into so much more.  From the moment I realized that I was going to propose, until the time I actually did would be exactly 9 days – and I still needed a ring!

Perhaps my mom’s favorite non-holiday event of the year is the annual girl’s early Christmas shopping day.  This consists of my mom, sister-in-law, and then-girlfriend, soon-to-be fiancée, Christina spending the better part of the day doing lunch and… well… shopping for Christmas gifts.  My mom had two sons and never had a chance to go shopping with daughters, and so relishes this special annual outing.  That year, by pure luck, that was slotted for October 8th – the Saturday before our soon to be engagement trip.  That date was particularly fortuitous because my soon-to-be fiancée wouldn’t be around and also of importance, my brother and father would be. I could bring them shopping with me for a ring.  I often find when something is meant to be, things somehow just work.  That was precisely the case here.

As the idea of getting engaged wasn’t foreign to my girlfriend and me, we had discussed what types of rings she liked at great length in the past, and I had taken copious notes.  I knew when the day came that I wanted to buy a ring, I wouldn’t want to ask questions that would make her suspicious that I was shopping.  My father, brother, and I arrived at a jewelry store owned by a family friend and began my quest.  Before long, I found exactly what I was looking for!  But it was in a book… and had to be ordered…  BUT!  It should be in by Tuesday.  Seeing as how we had to be on a plane at 7am on Wednesday, it seemed tight… very tight… but doable.  Thankfully everything went smoothly, and by Tuesday afternoon, I had the most perfect engagement ring!

As I waited for the ring, I planned how I would propose – I considered doing it at dinner in the castle at the Magic Kingdom, or on Main Street, or by the wishing well behind the castle.  When the right idea finally crossed my mind – there was no mistaking it.  I now had my plan, the ring, and everything was falling into place.

Finally, the day arrived – Wed, October 12th.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt paranoia like the paranoia of having an engagement ring in my carry on luggage.  At one point, when my wife went rummaging through my bag for a cough drop, I nearly died.  I was concerned about it making it through the x-ray machine without being questioned – after all, it was in a big ring box in my bag.  Every moment of carrying that ring felt like I had an immense unbearable secret.

When we arrived at our hotel, our first time staying at the Wilderness Lodge,  the room wasn’t ready yet.  I snuck the ring from my luggage into my pocket, dropped our bags at bag check, and off to the park we went.  I insisted we head straight to the Magic Kingdom – my plan coming to fruition.  I led us straight to Frontier Land.  I fought to keep a steady pace even though my adrenaline was screaming for me to run.  As we approached the back of the park at a casual panic, Splash Mountain came into view, and I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and said, “let’s make Splash Mountain the first ride of the trip!  I REALLY wanna ride that!”  My wife shrugged and said, “OK.”  We walked past the front of the ride where you can watch the flumes plummeting into the water below, and as we rounded the bend finally saw the line… it was long… about a 130-minute wait.  My 130-minutes-until-fiancée looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and asked, “are you sure you wanna wait on that?”  I responded with an uncharacteristic, “yeah – I’d just really like that to be our first ride this trip.”  To my shock, Christina responded with an uncharacteristic, “OK.”

To really grasp the gravity of the conversation that just took place, one would need to consider the facts that 1) We had ridden Splash Mountain tons of times in the past – on one particularly eventful trip, we managed to ride it 14 times in a row with no wait. (and by the 14th consecutive ride on Splash Mountain, one starts to get creative)  2) We are proud of all the ways we’ve learned to outsmart the crowd, 3) Fastpass did exist at the time, and we opted to wait instead of using it.