Our trip started on the 27th of December, after having dropped stuff off at a friend's apartment, at 4:30pm at Revelli Hall with music rehearsal followed by dinner provided for us before our first marching rehearsal. This rehearsal took place at an indoor football field called the "Oosterbaan Field House". The show that we were bringing with us to Orlando Fl, was our Broadway show consisting of "Wicked Fanfare/Springtime for Hitler/You can't stop the Beat" from Wicked, The Producers, and Hairspray respectively. The middle tune was "Dancing Queen" from Mamma Mia. We closed with "Defying Gravity" from Wicked. This rehearsal lasted until 10:30 at night.

The next morning, at 7:30, we started our second rehearsal in Ann Arbor. This rehearsal was spent learning how to parade march. It was interesting getting a line of people 12 persons across to turn from facing one direction to facing 90 degrees to their left.

Finally, at 10:00 we were able to load instruments. Luckily mine already had a name tag on it so I didn't have to wait in line for one of those. However, when we returned at 11:30 with our luggage, both my bookbag and my dufflebag needed to be tagged. Once everything was on the truck, we were free to have lunch. After lunch we boarded the busses for our flight from Detroit to Orlando. Our plane departed from its own special hanger away from the main airport. This meant that security was just three people sitting at a table checking names and ID's against a pre-printed list, and three of the security arches with a few guards behind it. So within 2 minutes, I was completely through security and ready to board the plane. For the plane ride, we were told to wear dress clothes and that our only carry on, was our band hat and whatever we could fit inside of it.

Saturday the 29th started with a 6am breakfast at the hotel. It wasn't much, and what it was seemed 'mass produced'. It wasn't until later that we found out that just to add a piece of fruit for everybody would be on the order of several hundred extra dollars. (there are over 300 of us: band, staff, directors, bus drivers, and our equipment truck driver Steve) Nonetheless, we finished breakfast and boarded the bus for a 7:30 rehearsal at Cypress Creek High School. When we arrived, the director and our drum major walked out onto the practice field, and you could see exactly where they walked because of the dew on the ground and the bit of fog in the air. This pre-game rehearsal was fairly easy to tell where we went wrong for the first few bits because our feet made new imprints in the dew. Our last chance for a drink came at 9 at the end of the rehearsal. Then it was boarding the busses for our trip to downtown where we had the parade. So, after changing en route (very interesting with a moving bus in traffic), we unloaded, grabbed our instruments and stood by to warm up. 11:00 rolls around and it is time for the parade to start. We soon realized that with the 80 degree heat and the 90 some percent humidity in the bright sunlight, it was going to be a long parade, despite it's two mile length. After the parade was over, those who had participated in the Rose Bowl Parade the year prior agreed that the Rose Bowl Parade was easier despite being 5 miles, because it wasn't as hot and humid. And they stopped to get water. That little detail was oversighted for this trip unfortunately.

After the parade, we got onto the bus and out of our uniforms as quickly as possible without breaking them. They then passed out 8oz water bottles; our bus managed to down 5 cases of 24 in about 10 minutes. Bear in mind that there are only 48 people on this bus but that there are 4 other busses as well.

After this parade, we were granted 4 hours of rest before the busses would be headed over to Downtown Disney. It was set up that once there, there would be 2 hours without a bus, but then every hour there would be a bus shuttling back to the hotel with two busses at midnight. So, while a fair number of people went to see the Cirque du Soleil show "La Nouba" (because our last home game show included the song "Jardin Chinois" from "La Nouba"), a few of us went and had dinner at Downtown Disney. It wasn't much because price was a little restrictive, but the fried cheese sticks and a Sprite felt good at the end of the day.