If everything were to go according to plan, in 298 days, my wife and I, along with my brother and his wife, would be arriving in Walt Disney World. The purpose of our trip – twofold. Firstly, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World on October 1st. Secondly, and more importantly, to celebrate mine and Isabelle’s 10th wedding anniversary on October 1st.

Of course, our long-gestating plan may not play out as intended thanks to this lovely pandemic that we are still dealing with.

We hatched this plan while on our 1st wedding anniversary. While waiting in line for something at EPCOT on our anniversary, we noticed that the Magic Kingdom had opened on October 1st, 1971. A quick calculation made us realize that our 10th anniversary and their 50th fell on the same year. We could not have planned a more synchronistic happening. Shortly after arriving back home, we were chatting with my brother and his wife and thus came about the idea of doing a joint Disney World trip.

You see, both of our couples are die-hard Disney fans. Between the two couples, we’ve been to Disney World more than a dozen times in the past 10 years. (Stephen and Laura have gone so often, that the number is possibly higher) But we have never been there together. The timing just never worked out. We talked about it and agreed that we would plan this epic triple anniversary trip (my brother and his wife were married on October 13th the year after us). The plan was to arrive on September 30th and leave on October 14th. Two weeks at Disney World, bookended by our anniversaries.

We had even gone so far as to start saving for this trip about 8 years ago. Isabelle and I decided to each put $20 in a bank account on our pay weeks. This way, we would have a very healthy pot with which to treat ourselves on this anniversary trip.

I’m no longer certain that we will be able to partake in this trip as intended. While there are still nearly 300 days until our anniversary, we would still need to not only book the trip, but also get tickets and reservations to the park for those days. COVID complicates everything. As it stands, the Canada/US border is closed. And while there seems to be hope for a vaccine coming in the near future, before it is rolled out and the world returns to normal, time may not be on our side.

So all I’ll do is continue to hope and pray. If anyone out there has any direct line to whatever higher power you believe in, I would appreciate putting a word in for us. Maybe I’ll have been good enough this year that Santa will deliver the ultimate Christmas present. To follow through with a statement in a previous blog post, I’m going to let go of any expectations, but hold on to hope that things will work in our favour.

Who knows, maybe Tinkerbell will sprinkle a little of that Disney magic on us and COVID will be a non-issue in the near future. One can only hope.