The Road to Wrestlemania 34

First, let me say I'm a longtime wrestling fan. By longtime, I mean that. As a young child in the late 80s and early 90s, my father would rent WWF pay-per-view tapes from Blockbuster. Later I moved onto the Attitude Era as a teen and here I am 20 years later, still a fan. I've introduced my older children to it as well and now we sit together and watch RAW, Smackdown and the pay-per-views(can we even call them that anymore?). This year, we watched our first Wrestlemania together. During that weekend, which happened to be my birthday weekend, I decided that that's what I want for my birthday next year, Wrestlemania. A quick look showed me that it was announced in January that WM 34 would be held in New Orleans. Sold. It's a city on my bucket list. Luckily, my husband is pretty accommodating when it comes to my travel desires, and knowing that Wrestlemania is my holy grail and I've been begging to go to NOLA, he quickly approved.

Now we've got a few trips planned between now and next April, namely 3 trips to Walt Disney World. Disney is our place.

80% of our trips are to Disney. Sometimes it's me solo for a 1/2 marathon, other times it's as a family. We always talk about branching out more but it never happens. We've got a Disney trip planned for next February, just my husband and me for the Princess 1/2 marathon, and my mom is keeping our kids. I told him my mom couldn't keep the kids for both Disney and New Orleans and I figured he'd gladly ditch Disney and opt for NOLA, even though he's not a huge wrestling fan. Wrong. His response? "But I just love Disney." So there we have it, the 42 year old grown man would rather go to Walt Disney World.

Luckily my oldest son, who will be 13, is a fan and is more than happy to come along with me. I'm actually more excited to take him, because he's a fan, I know he can handle the entire weekend after he managed all 4 days of DragonCon last year(you'll hear more about that later, because we are going again this year), which comes close to WM weekend in the amount of people and the activity level. I also love giving my kids these experiences because I know when they grow up(*sob*), it's these memories they'll keep. They won't remember the game systems or the toys or the material stuff, but they'll remember the shows and the trips and the experiences.

So given that I love to travel, I'm slightly obsessive and I am actually a travel agent, I got to work quickly on planning our long New Orleans weekend. The good news is part of it falls during Spring Break so my son doesn't have to miss much school. I found a great forum with a running thread on WM travel details. But I need all I can get. I still had and have so many questions. I need a step by step guide to every detail. So that's where this new blog came into play. Maybe at this point next year, right after WM is over(*sob* again), a first timer will come looking for the ins and outs and here this will be.