Day 3: Chapter 6- A Tiny Meltdown with a Good Ending
I don’t have a ton of pictures from the rest of the day, so this update will finish off all of day 2, and it will be pretty word-heavy. Sorry in advance.
After Men in Black, my notes say we had a frozen butterbeer. I have no recollection of this nor any pictures, but I know we did have one at some point, so this must have been it. And I guess it makes sense because we were right next to Diagon Alley, so it would have been easy to pop in and grab one! I’m sure it was delicious and refreshing in the heat.
Our next stop had to be something that everyone could ride to avoid any more preschooler tears. Luckily, we hadn’t done Minion Mayhem yet, and guess who is a huge Minion fan?
Yep, this guy!! All of the kids LOVED this ride. I think it’s an adorable ride but it makes me really sick, so I usually end up taking my glasses off halfway through. I loved riding this with the kids because it was totally worth riding to sit and watch their faces the whole time. Afterwards, Becca completely freaked out over the dance party. She loves to dance and she loves to look at herself in a mirror/watch herself on video (humble much?), so combining the two was heaven for her. Instead of having minions out to meet, we got to meet Gru! That was fun.
From here we went not very far and rode Transformers. As expected, Bethany and Greg loved this and Becca claimed she did not, but she rode it without complaint and just closed her eyes if she got scared. Works for me. I’m sure she will love it next time we go.
Next the big boys went and rode Rip Ride Rock It while the rest of us waited. Thanks to Express Pass, this isn’t so bad. The kids talked to an awkward team member while we waited.
By this time it was getting close to dinner time, so we headed over to Islands of Adventure. On the way to our dining destination, the other adults squeezed in one more ride on Hulk. I sat with the kids and witnessed an older woman (at least 70 years old), with a walker, wearing a bikini, shuffling around Superhero Island. It was…interesting?
Finally it was dinner time, and we were headed to the Three Broomsticks! Ben and I had eaten here once before for breakfast and had a not-so-great experience where we were charged nearly $18 for the tiniest, saddest breakfast platter that you have ever seen. But we wanted our kids to see the theming and there was one more butterbeer incarnation that we needed to try, so we gave it a shot.
Sorry, I have no pictures. But I will say this was the most pathetic meal we had the whole time. I got the Cornish pasties and salad and they were so small that I was still hungry when we were done. And they tasted like nothing. I think Ben may have gotten a salad with chicken, and the kids…maybe chicken nuggets or something. I honestly don’t know, because our day took a bit of a turn here. At some point during dinner, I noticed that Becca was holding her park ticket in her hand. (We all wore lanyards with our tickets, room key and express pass) I told her to put it back in her lanyard, and she says that her express pass is gone. Well, I have to admit that I didn’t react to this very calmly. I was angry that she was playing with the lanyard and that she had taken the papers out at all, and that I had already told her several times that day to not mess with it. She denied having any idea when it had gotten lost. We were mad because we had plans for more rides, and needed the express pass. Anyway, it was a little tense and stressful and we just didn’t really enjoy this dinner. Oh well. Oh, but we DID try the Potted Butterbeer, and it was good. Like butterbeer pudding, and you get to keep the cute little glass jar.
After dinner our friends, who were moving over to Disney that night, left to spend a few hours at Magic Kingdom.
The rest of us headed over to the guest services kiosk in Jurassic Island to see what we could do about the ticket situation. Thankfully, they were able to issue Becca a temporary Express Pass that would work through the rest of the night. She would just have to get a replacement before going back to the parks the next day.
With that situation all settled, we decided to take a deep breath and redeem our evening. Since it was just us and the kids, we headed over to explore Seuss Island! I really love this area. It is so bright and colorful and just really well themed. First we rode the High in the Sky Trolley.
I was sure the kids would love this, and I was right. Also, I love the team member costumes for this ride!
We got the Sneetches track this time, but the kids thought it was cool that there are two different possibilities.
Next, we rode the Cat in the Hat. In my family you can’t go wrong with a cute dark ride, so it was a good time.
Then we did One Fish, Two Fish, which was a pretty hilarious adventure because Greg was in charge of flying our fish and he ended up getting us both completely soaked.
We ended the night on the carousel, which is always a hit with my kidlets.
That brought us to park closing. On the way out we realized that we didn’t have any leftover granola bars or anything else in our room for breakfast, so we stopped in one of the shops and bought one of the giant Lard Lad donuts. Considering it would feed all five of us, we figured that $5 was a great value!
As we were walking out of the park Ben and I discussed that we were both still hungry after our not-so-filling dinner. I told them to continue onto Hard Rock and start getting ready for bed, and I ran over to City Walk and grabbed an Italian Sandwich and fries from Bread Box. I brought it back to the room and we snacked and then crashed. It had been a very hot, very full, and very fun day. We needed some sleep so we could do it all again tomorrow!
Day 2 Step Count: 23,996