J Squared and friends Disneyana Dayton 2019 Trip Report

You have a good reason to miss it this year. It would have been fun to reenact the photo bomb picture with Jen and I. lol

you got this!

I'm looking forward to that.

thanks!

The adventure has begun. Actually, it started for me last night. Jen and I originally had a flight out of Charlotte arriving in Akron at 11:30am. With the grounding of the max 8 planes, our flights changed. Jen's changed to arriving on Akron at 9:47am and me at 3:30pm. I called to change my flight. The only option I had was to fly to Charlotte last night and stay over and get on the same flight as Jen. It worked out for the better as we have time to sight see on the way.

I am at the gate waiting for Jen.

More to come later.

Drinks before dinner

Jen and I are at Akron airport. Our flight is delayed 2 hours so we will both miss our connections. I got us a room near the Charlotte airport and we have flights in the morning.

At my gate staring at 2 places for coffee and neither are open. Such torture.

Jen and I are going to write a joint review for you. Just need to get it started. We got lots of pictures.

Jen arrived at our gate in Charlotte just as they started boarding. We had seats a couple of rows apart but the person who was suppose to sit next to me didn't make the flight, so Jen moved back so we can sit together. We arrived in Akron and waited for Memoree and Abby to pick us up.

And we were off... Our first stop was the grave of President Warren G. Harding in Marion OH. It was an impressive memorial. After visiting the memorial, we stopped for lunch at Sansotta's. It's like Subway except with pasta bowls. It was pretty good. Naturally, Jen and I had wine with lunch. After lunch, we went to Wyandot Popcorn Museum. The museum was in an old post office building which also included the town's historical society. The popcorn museum had a lot of old popcorn wagons.

After our sight seeing in Marion was complete, we hit the road again for Waldo. Yes, I believe the question "where's Waldo?" was asked. Our venue in Waldo, Shamrock Vineyards. We arrived and the sign said closed. We decided to take a chance and pulled into the long drive way. The other side of the sign said open. We got to the tasting room and it was locked up tight. The owner came out and opened up just for us. Him and his daughter just got back from the Columbus Zoo. Our timing was perfect.

We did a tasting before finishing our journey to our home for the weekend, The Hope Hotel and Conference Center in Fairborn. We checked into the hotel, dropped our stuff off and went straight to the quarter auction.

When we saw this display at the museum, I had the urge to sing "It's a great big beautiful tomorrow".

I was going to post the picture. I think Mem has it on her phone.

Got it

Saturday morning we met for breakfast at the hotel before early bird entry opened up at 8:30. It was time to start shopping. I bought two new Lula Roe Disney tops, Minnie Steelers ears and a couple of other things. The Lula Roe rep remembered me from last year. I was most looking forward to the speakers. Jim Hill was unable to attend this year.

The first speaker was Alex Maher, Sr. Disney Artist. He designs a lot of the pins. He told us of his lifelong love for Disney and the many times he tried to get in with the company until one day his dream finally came true.

The second speaker was Disney Legend Tom Nabbe. He started at Disneyland when it first opened selling newspapers outside the gate. He personally asked Walt Disney if he can be Tom Sawyer. Walt wasn't sure about it at first. He said ""Why should I put you on the island when I can put a mannequin there? Especially considering the dummy won't be running off for hot dogs every half-hour." He eventually got the part. He worked his way up to management and moved to FL to work at MK and Epcot when they opened. He retired from the Disney company after 48 years.