I’m writing this blog post more than 6 months after, and I still can’t believe this happened to me.
I work on the marketing team at Holiday Inn Club Vacations, and every February, we have the Sales & Marketing Awards, or SMAs, to celebrate our hard work from the previous year.
We all fly into Orlando from across the country and get together at Hard Rock Café at Universal Orlando. There’s a theme every year, and the company goes all out—decorations, costumes, food, drinks, and entertainment. This year’s theme was Mardi Gras, and the headliners were none other than Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone of *NSYNC.
But before I get into it, let’s back up. The party was on a Thursday, and Sean and I flew down the weekend before. I was going to be working in the office all week, so we wanted the weekend to relax by the pool before the whirlwind got started. And of course… it was in the 50s and rainy all weekend.
Sean and I actually have a theory that Florida is in the 60s and rainy all the time, and their whole “sunny and warm” brand is just a marketing ploy to get people to visit. I swear the last 5 times we’ve been down, it has been cold and rainy.
We went to brunch on Saturday at the Tick Tok Diner (easily one of my new favorite places in Kissimmee) and got bottomless mimosas.
That evening, we had dinner reservations at House of Blues in Disney Springs, which was so good. (Plus, I made Sean go to T-REX, the LEGO Store, and World of Disney with me, so it was a win all-around.) This all led up to the main event of the evening: Cirque du Soleil!
Cirque du Soleil partnered with Disney on a show called Drawn to Life, which celebrates Disney Imagineers through acrobatics. I’ve wanted to go for a while (it was on my 101 in 1001 list to go to a Cirque du Soleil show, and I knew the one in Orlando would be the best opportunity for me), so we finally prioritized it for my birthday weekend!
I loved it. It wasn’t quite the full Cirque du Soleil show that I was hoping for (I wished there were aerial silks!) but it was still so magical. I’m so glad we went, even if it was a bit cold and rainy outside.
Since our original plans for Sunday were to hang out at the pool, we decided to go to EPCOT; we figured no one else would want to go to EPCOT when it was cold and rainy.
Narrator: everyone else also went to EPCOT thinking no one else would go when it was cold and rainy.
While it was super crowded, we had a blast. We did what any childless 30-something does at EPCOT: eat and drink around the world. Of course, we didn’t do the “normal” drink-around-the-world, where you start in either Mexico or Canada, because we headed straight for France and got pastries and coffee for breakfast. Then we went on Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure (which was cute but made me a little nauseous), and bounced around all over the park for the rest of the day, going in no specific order.
It was such a fun day. In addition to drinking and eating our way through the park, we found an amazing mug of Ed from The Lion King (in the America section, for some reason??) that happens to look exactly like Stanley. I literally almost spit my beer out when Sean pointed to it.
After our visit to America, we jetted over to Mission: SPACE, which was… an experience. It’s regarded as one of the most intense rides at Disney World. There are two paths you can take: Mars or Earth. Mars is intense, while Earth is slightly gentler. Naturally, Sean insisted we go on the Mars path.
Let me tell you… if the ride had gone on a single second longer, I would have vomited. As soon as our feet were on solid ground, Sean said the same thing, and then we noticed a poor woman wearing protective gear whose job was clearly just to clean up the vomit after each ride.
I will not be going on that one again. 😂 (But in happy news, I did get an awesome NASA hat in the gift shop!)
Oh, and I saw the 1989 Kelce / Swift coat of arms in England! I had seen references to it online but totally forgot until I saw it on top of a mantel.
We ended the day with a quick ride on Spaceship Earth, AKA the big geodesic dome that EPCOT is known for. I remember loving this ride when my family went to Disney World when I was five, so much that I made my parents go on it again so I could ride once with each of them. And let me say, mom and dad… I’m so sorry. That ride is awful. 😂
Monday through Wednesday were a blur of work, happy hours, dinner with my in-laws, and a second visit to T-REX for a sad volcano cake and the skin of a giant axolotl stuffed animal that I got to bring home.
(Have I mentioned how much I love T-REX? It’s like Rainforest Café if it was all prehistoric animals and dinosaurs, and instead of a rainforest scene, your dinner is randomly interrupted by the meteor strike that killed them all. It’s wild.)
Then came the day we were all waiting for: the SMAs. Sean and I got dressed up in our finest Mardi Gras gear and caught a Lyft with my coworker Matt to Universal Studios for the party.
We met up with the rest of my team and hung out outside for a bit, since we knew Chris and Joey wouldn’t be on for a while. (There were other performers, but we weren’t nearly as excited about them, and we wanted to socialize a bit more instead.)
Then, we got a Teams message from our boss, Simon—it was a selfie of him with Joey Fatone. Amanda and I immediately responded asking where he was and ran to meet him. Thankfully, Joey was still there and was happy to take photos with us.
(Indcluding that photo a second time because how could I not, IT’S A PHOTO OF ME AND JOEY FATONE.)
While we were chatting, I mentioned to him that I loved the movie On the Line growing up, and whenever I hear the song Pour Some Sugar on Me, I still picture his character pouring sugar all over himself while singing it at karaoke. He laughed and said it was one of the dumbest movies ever, but they had a blast making it. And of course, out of all five of them, they chose Lance Bass as the one to star in a romantic comedy. 😂
After the shock wore off, we headed over to our favorite mid-SMAs-hangout, the Red Coconut Club, which is done up for Mardi Gras every February. In what is now an annual tradition, we paid the DJ $20 to play exclusively 90s boy bands and girl groups, and it was just as magical the second time around.
Speaking of magical, we headed back to the Hard Rock Café with plenty of time to catch Chris and Joey perform. I loved it. They performed some of the best *NSYNC songs, included Tearin’ Up My Heart, Pop, It’s Gonna Be Me, and, of course, Bye, Bye, Bye.
Once the performance was over, we headed back to the resort, slept in, and packed up for our return trip home. Let me say, it was the wildest birthday week I think I’ve ever experienced, but it was an absolute blast.
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