1 Day and Counting...

When Disney announced their Give A Day-Get A Day promotion for 2010, where guests can volunteer at venues across the country for a free day at a Disney park, The Wife and I knew we had to get in on this.  We signed up and found there were opportunities of all kinds around here.  We signed up to usher for an event at the Scera theater, and discovered we did so none too soon, since just a few days later Disney announced their limit of one million volunteers and free passes had been reached and the promotion was over.  (Personally, I feel that if they were smart, they would extend the promotion and increase the number of tickets given away, since they will surely make their money back when those visitors come with their families and friends and stay longer than their free day, not to mention food and souvenir sales, as well as good old fashioned good feeling toward a corporation for a really nice handout.)  I still kind of worried that we hadn't signed up in time, and maybe our Scera representative wasn't informed that tickets were no longer available, but a short email later, we redeemed our passes, and sure enough, we now have free passes to Disneyland with our names printed nice and big along the top!

Not bad for an hour or our time on a weeknight welcoming visitors to see a community youth production of Les Misérables at the Scera!  Additionally, there is an ongoing promotion at my new job that qualifies employees for discounts on certain restaurants, movie theaters, hotels, flights and, yes, theme parks.  I was able to get a couple of passes for another day for a notable discount as well!  So now, almost nine months since our last visit, we are thrilled to be heading to sunny California for a much-needed and fairly inexpensive two-day Disney vacation!  (We'll also have time to do some shopping and visit the beach.)  It's made me so excited I had to illustrate it thusly:

It may seem silly, but we've seriously been pining for Disneyland for the last several months, and rearranging planned trips for the last several weeks, so the time has finally come.  And, since 101.9 has been completely reworked, I guess I won't have the option of stressing through their occasional Disney trivia/theme park pass giveaways (which I have done twice, calling 50 times, three times a day for 2-3 weeks, to no avail--I tell you, no one wanted those passes more than I did).  We decided it's less expensive and kind of fun to drive, so tomorrow morning early we'll be heading through southern Utah.  It's still been almost a decade since I lived and worked and grew to love Walt Disney World, but for the time being, I'm perfectly satisfied to visit the Mothership of Disney parks, and it's never been more of an enjoyable trip as it is with The Wife.

California, here we come!