Our high school band would try and make a trip to Disney every other year. They would let us march in a parade (I don't know why, we stunk
), but other than that, we would spend the week visiting all the theme parks and having a blast. Now our band was pretty large and required several chaperones, aka parents. My chaperone freshman year was a very nice woman who was a bit on the ditzy side. Her only job was to make sure we were accounted for moving between the hotel and parks. There were four of us in her assigned group.
All was well until the very end of the trip. We were at Magic Kingdom. Everyone wanted to stay for the late-night fireworks show. Our band director said no way, but the collective whining eventually wore him down, so fireworks it was. I'm not much of a Disney fan, though I'll admit, it was pretty magical watching fireworks color the sky around the castle. I remember I was with my assigned group. The directive was: "Don't miss the bus! The moment the show's over, head to parking lot!", and that's exactly what we did. I'd estimate it took us about 10 minutes to work our way there through the crowds.
So imagine my surprise when the dimly lit parking lot was completely empty. No band members, no chaperones, no busses. Well, maybe we were early? That became less and less likely as the minutes ticked on. The park became a ghost town. It was 11 o'clock at night, and we were stranded.
One of the girls I was with began to cry. I told her to shut up and pull it together. We would walk back to the hotel if we had to. How far could it be? There must be a map somewhere! My best friend - one of the four in our group - reminded me that it took us over 15 minutes to get here by bus. I did NOT tell her to shut up. Keep in mind that this is in the 90's, and no one has a cell phone.
I ask the group to wait in the parking lot while I go get help. Surely, someone will notice we're missing. That's when a bus pulls up.
"What are you girls doin' out here?" the driver asks. "It's late!"
"We got left behind by our group," I reply.
"Well
I'll drive you back to your hotel. Get on in!"
Now as an adult, I would tell my 14 year-old self to NOT get on that bus with a strange man, but we did. In fact, I realized my mistake about 5 minutes in and started calculating how I would take down a grown man to defend my companions, one of whom was still crying. My violent machinations were unfounded, however. The bus driver was a nice guy that saved our butts. We arrived back safely at our hotel and checked in with our chaperone.
She didn't even realize we were missing.
I really like this prompt and want to do it.
