As Luck Would Have It

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The Epcot theme park at Walt Disney World is currently hosting its wildly popular annual Food & Wine Festival, and part of the festival includes a concert series called "Eat to the Beat" (I wrote about this in a previous post). Most concerts take place on Friday/Saturday or Sunday/Monday evenings, and the bands play three sets, at 5:00pm, 6:30pm and 8:00pm. There are more than a dozen bands I have seen or am planning to see at the concert series this year. I get off work at 4, and then it's an hour and a half drive to Disney World, a straight shot down I-75 and then the Florida Turnpike. Because I leave work on time instead of cutting out early, we usually miss the first set of the music, but are able to catch the second and third sets. But this past Friday, it seems the odds were stacked against us. The band we were going to see was Hoobastank, a band that I'm not too terribly familiar with, but love their biggest hit "The Reason." I wanted to experience more of their music. It was pouring down rain the entire drive down. I mean coming down hard. Add in traffic accidents all up and down the interstate and turnpike, and we had a recipe for disaster. Traffic was at a dead standstill almost the entire way. Throw in some road construction (they're widening the turnpike from 4 lanes to 10 lanes in the Orlando area), and we just had no shot of getting to Disney on time to see the band. And to make matters worse, the bad thunderstorms were just sitting over the Orlando area and were expected to continue most of the night. Well, while sitting in stopped traffic, I opened up my maps app on my phone and plugged in directions so that the app could show me the fastest alternative routes to Disney. All the options that came up basically were projecting a 3-hour drive due to weather and traffic. Which means we would miss the concert altogether. So I started looking at the app more closely, and saw some winding little backroads that looked like it could get us there. With nothing to lose, we exited the highway and started our adventure into parts unknown. We went through hidden neighborhoods, winding roads, and rolling hills. Got lost a few times... But as luck would have it, we ended up on a side road that practically dumped us out right at Disney. Just in time to catch the third and final set of Hoobastank. And...as luck would have it....it stopped raining! We hustled into the theme park, made our way back to the amphitheater where the band was playing, and found great seats close to the front of the stage, underneath the covered pavilion portion of the amphitheater, just as the band took the stage. Little did we know that the second set was cancelled due to heavy lightning and storms, but...as luck would have it...the band announced that Disney was going to allow them to play a double set for their third and final act. So we ended up enjoying a great show after all our trouble trying to get there. And I absolutely loved their music! And the rain held off during their final performance of the evening. After the show...as luck would have it...the theme park was practically empty due to the severe thunderstorms, so we were able to walk around and enjoy many of the food samplings of the festival before the evening's fireworks finale started. Of course, as soon as we exited the theme park and got into our car to leave, it started pouring down rain again! But...as luck would have it...we experienced zero traffic our entire drive home. The only issue on the drive home was the heavy rain--which slowed us down a bit--but we still made good time and made it home safely. People say we're crazy for traveling so much back and forth to Disney. but we have annual passes so it doesn't cost anything extra to go down there except for the little bit of gas to get there. And, as you can see from this discussion, we always create some very memorable experiences!