Save WYSIWYG editor plugin settings, only works after second save

Question

I wish I was able to explain exactly WHY this works, but from the help of another wordpress.stackexcchange question I was able to find the solution.

Adding tinyMCE.triggerSave(); directly after the .submit function forces the content to update. This was taken directly from another thread’s answer:

“tinyMCE textarea is initially unseen by the used serialize function:”

Referrence: wp_editor textarea value not updating

So it is now:

if (blankFieldCheck()) {
  tinyMCE.triggerSave(); <-- new
   $.ajax({
    .... rest of code executed

which seems to have done the trick. I hope someone else finds this useful, as I literally just spent the last 4 hours finding a solution to this.

Whew.