How we acquired Silly Bandz, became psychics, visited Baltimore instead of Atlanta, and got home six hours too late

I know this post is woefully overdue, but honestly, it's taken Eric and I this long to get over the trauma that was our departure from Orlando.

I should start by saying that apparently Florida loves me and my family and friends, because every time I visit and try to leave, Florida makes it very hard. For instance, once I went to Palm Beach with my friend Kate. On our return flight, we boarded the aircraft, spent four hours on the tarmac without air-conditioning, a long-haired chihuahua named Pedro--traveling with the girl sitting next to me--found a home on my lap, a high school choir started singing the national anthem out of tune, a lady receiving chemotherapy nearly threw up on Kate, we all disembarked, and a half an hour later we were told the flight was canceled.

All this due to storms in New York, which my mother, sitting under an umbrella by her friend's pool, said were nowhere to be found.

Kate made it onto another flight; I did not. So with nothing left to do alone in Palm Beach during the off season, I rented a car, entered "Walt Disney World" into the GPS, and drove three hours surrounded by swampland and trucks, in the company of a good country music station, to ride Space Mountain.

In the meantime, Kate's new flight was cancelled, so she rented a car and headed up to Orlando as well, but her luggage was stuck on the other flight, so I zoomed on over to downtown Disney, where I purchased a Tink toothbrush, a Mickey t-shirt, and some Disney-fied nightgown for my friend. Then I headed to a hotel, the cheapest one on the property, assuming since it was the off-season, that they would have rooms.

No rooms.

I tried another.

No rooms.

At the third, I was told that all of Disney was sold out.

It was nearly midnight.

Finally, a security guard at the Caribbean Beach took pity on me, called someone who must have been very important, and secured a room for me and Kate at the Coronado Springs.

Kate arrived shortly thereafter--whatever lead I had was lost in the hotel search. It was about midnight at this point, and we went to bed, setting the alarm for 7, so we could be at the park by 8, because we were going to ride Space Mountain.

8am rolls around, and the park is packed, with everyone wearing pink shirts. Curious about this, I went up to one person who said, "It's Gay Day!" Turned out Kate and I had inadvertently crashed Gay Day at Disney, so we wound up riding Space Mountain with three gay guys and a transgendered chick before watching a parade standing next to the real life cowboys from Brokeback Mountain.

We both got on flights that evening.

If this story is not enough to convince you that I don't have a narcissistic complex, and that Florida really does love me and my friends and family, consider this: last March when my parents, Eric, and I went to Disney, we boarded the plane four times before the flight was canceled.

We were subsequently stuck in Orlando another three days.

Which brings us, after a long diversion, to this trip.

So there Eric and I are, running about 10 minutes late for our flight, trying to find our itinerary to check-in. The line is incredible. We learn the flight is 20 minutes delayed and think, "Great, now it doesn't matter that we're a little behind!" So we check-in and go to a security line that is even more incredible, spanning the entire terminal. We make it through security, go to the terminal, board the plane and....

Deplane due to storms in Atlanta (our layover destination). We're told we can wait an hour or get on another flight. I turn to Eric and say, "Nothing good ever comes of waiting here. Let's take the new flight."

So they put us on a new flight to Baltimore, which is overbooked. We volunteer to get bumped and are psyched about getting another day in Orlando--we'll go have dinner at an African restaurant we like, we'll go to a waterpark....we are psyched.

While we wait for the plane to board, Eric strikes up a conversation with Max, a young boy who was sitting on the floor with his mom on his way back from Disney World. He offers each of us a T-Rex Silly Band, which is a rubber band bracelet in the shape of a dinosaur. We tried to return his generous gift, but his mother told us that Max was learning to share, so we didn't want to stop that conditioning, right? We explained to Max that we were sharing our seats with people who needed them.

He looked at us blankly.

Then he said to guess his name. His mother mouthed it to us without him seeing, and he declared us psychics.

At that point, he boarded the plane, and we were left pretty much alone.

"Danielle and Eric," the guy at the front desk called. We were psyched--this was our moment! Another free hotel and 800 dollars in vouchers! Particularly great because this trip had been booked with vouchers from when Eric tried to go home after visiting me a year ago and all of Air Tran's computers were down. So this was just the gift that kept on giving.

Except that they didn't need us. And that was sad. In fact, we didn't even have seats next to each other anymore. Things only got worse from there: the flight was rocky, there was nothing to eat in the Baltimore airport terminal, we couldn't get on an earlier flight to Boston and were stuck waiting four hours, we had a wretched, awful dinner that still makes both of us feel vaguely sick, and we didn't get home until midnight, disgruntled and with Silly Bandz wrapped around our wrists.

The lesson: Florida definitely wanted us to stay!