"Fight Me, CRY-lo Ren!" and Other Tales of Mayhem! May 2016/Grad Trip Report! **NEW 7/5!!!

[princessesandpascal]

Keep your hands, arms, feet, and legs inside at all time, and be sure to watch your kids:
Because this here is the wildest TR in the wilderness!

“Fight Me, CRY-lo Ren!” and Other Tales of Mayhem! A May 2016/Grad Trip Report!
Alternative Titles: “7-out-of-10 Too Much Water” “What Time is it? Mickey Mouse Time!” and “No Crying Until We Get to Frontierland!”

Welcome to our trip report! I am so excited to be back on the Disboards for another trip and am ready to share all the insane memories and hilarious moments from my latest Disney vacation. If you’d like (because I’m notoriously slow at TRs and you might want something to do between chapters), you can read about my last Disney adventure (with my mom!) right here: "All Aboard the Seven Dwarfs Whine Train!” It was a pretty good one, I promise. We had lots of adventures last year, but this year, we had just as many adventures, so let’s meet this year’s travel partners!

First of all, there’s me!

I’m Shannon, I’m 22, and I’m the proud almost-owner of an English undergrad degree. I was the chief planner extraordinaire of this trip, stepping into the role my mom took for all of our past trips! This was my 7th trip to the Most Magical Place on Earth. When I’m not writing about our Disney trips, I’m writing novels for kids, trying to get them published, and chasing a dream career as a professional writer (either for television or books). I’m also an avid TV watcher (currently: Fear the Walking Dead & The 100), a fledgling blogger, and a scrapbooking extraordinaire.

Favourite Park: Magic Kingdom
Top 3 Rides: Haunted Mansion, Dinosaur, Splash Mountain
Character I’m Most Like: Elsa
Favourite Character Encounters of the Trip: Flynn Rider (Parade), Rapunzel, Tiana and Naveen, Joy and Sadness
Favourite Meal of the Trip: Via Napoli
Favourite Disney Treat: School Bread
Top 3 Favourite Disney Movies: Tangled, The Little Mermaid, Big Hero 6


Up next, there’s Cassie!

Cassie is 21 and my best friend in the universe. We’ve been emotionally inseparable since our first year of high school (almost eight years of friendship!), and even though we attended university an hour apart and are physically separated, we’ve grown even closer over the years that we’ve been apart. This is Cassie’s first trip to Disney AND her first time out of the country! She is a recently finished undergrad in pharmacology and human biology, and when she’s not reminiscing over Disney she’s nerding out over something, working her job at an amusement park, or sending me snapchats of her boyfriend’s adorable dog.

Favourite Park: Epcot
Top 3 Rides: Big Thunder Mountain, Star Tours, Spaceship Earth
Character She’'s Most Like: Belle
Favourite Character Encounters of the Trip: Tarzan, Rapunzel and Cinderella, Buzz, Mickey
Favourite Meal of the Trip: Garden Grill
Favourite Disney Treat: Darth Vader Peanut Butter Cupcake
Top 3 Disney Movies: Tangled, The Lion King, Meet the Robinsons

My mom and dad are also both part of the trip a little: but they didn’t accompany us on our adventure. My dad (not a Disney fan, but has been on a trip with Mom and I once) drove us to the airport, and my mom (huge Disney fan, plutopuppy around the DIS, has been my trip partner for the last ten years) was on a cruise to the Caribbean with her sisters pretty much the whole time we were gone. (She was gone from the 29th to the 7th, whereas Cassie and I were gone from the 4th to the 10th.)

This trip has been about six years in the making. We’ve always wanted to go to WDW, and we’re so excited to have this trip. We originally wanted to go for our High School grad, but then ended up planning for our university one instead, especially since we could take the trip without my mom tagging along. We had five and a half days of fun in the sun (and rain!), we stayed at All-Star Movies, and we were on the Disney Dining Plan.

If you like Disneybounding, Flynn Rider, food, fun, Festival of Fantasy, pixie dust/glitter, Cry-lo (I mean, Kylo) Ren, getting wet on every single ride (even the Mine Train), learning about colours from Phil Dunphy, people thinking you're high school grads when you're actually college grads, puns, purple Magicbands, breaking character, learning how to speak monkey, Deadpool levels of sarcasm, and seeing a newbie’s first trip, then follow along on our journey! This Trip Report will be more fun than teaching Chewbacca how to fist bump and it’ll even make Sadness jump for joy!


So let’s go!

Table of Contents:

Introductions (you're here!)​

 

[longlostprincess]

joining along!

 

[nilla]

If you like Disneybounding, Flynn Rider, food, fun, Festival of Fantasy, pixie dust/glitter, Cry-lo (I mean, Kylo) Ren, getting wet on every single ride (even the Mine Train), learning about colours from Phil Dunphy, people thinking you're high school grads when you're actually college grads, puns, purple Magicbands, breaking character, learning how to speak monkey, Deadpool levels of sarcasm, and seeing a newbie’s first trip, then follow along on our journey!

Yuck. While I absolutely love food, fun, learning about colors from Phil Dunphy, purple MagicBands, and learning how to speak monkey, I do NOT like Kylo Ren. The guy's a jerk. Trust me. Or watch the documentary called "The Force Awakens" and see for yourself. Since you specifically made these conditions an "and" condition instead of an "or", I guess I'm not allowed to follow along?

Well, that's just sad. But have fun writing this Trip Report anyway.

 

[AllysonL]

If you like Disneybounding, Flynn Rider, food, fun, Festival of Fantasy, pixie dust/glitter, Cry-lo (I mean, Kylo) Ren, getting wet on every single ride (even the Mine Train), learning about colours from Phil Dunphy, people thinking you're high school grads when you're actually college grads, puns, purple Magicbands, breaking character, learning how to speak monkey, Deadpool levels of sarcasm, and seeing a newbie’s first trip, then follow along on our journey!

I like all of these things!! (Except at 35, no one will think I'm a HS graduate - I graduated college 9 years ago today! Yikes!). I read your last TR and looking forward to following this one as well!

 

[princessesandpascal]

joining along!

Thanks for following along!

Yuck. While I absolutely love food, fun, learning about colors from Phil Dunphy, purple MagicBands, and learning how to speak monkey, I do NOT like Kylo Ren. The guy's a jerk. Trust me. Or watch the documentary called "The Force Awakens" and see for yourself. Since you specifically made these conditions an "and" condition instead of an "or", I guess I'm not allowed to follow along?

Well, that's just sad. But have fun writing this Trip Report anyway.

I guess I can make one exception... Thanks for coming on board again!

(Kylo Ren is a lot less awful when you realize how he's really just a very whiny man who throws tantrums. Hence, Cry-lo Ren. And the Twitter account for Emo Kylo Ren helps too. )

I like all of these things!! (Except at 35, no one will think I'm a HS graduate - I graduated college 9 years ago today! Yikes!). I read your last TR and looking forward to following this one as well!

Thanks for following along!

 

[mmeb144]

Or watch the documentary called "The Force Awakens" and see for yourself.

Well, Nilla, I didn't think that "The Force Awakens" was a documentary. I needed a laugh.

Although, from the last time my family "watched" it, you would swear that we were watching a documentary. No one actually looked at the tv, we were all doing different things between looking up at the movie. I suppose I'll have to watch the extras before my DH will let me watch Deadpool. Sigh.

I'm looking forward to this trip report. I've stayed at All Star Movies and loved it. I love being at the theme parks, even if it's warm enough to melt park maps on the pavement.

 

[nilla]

I guess I can make one exception...

Fair enough. I'm in!

 

[princessesandpascal]

Chapter 1: The One Where We Sit in The Food Court For Two Hours
May 4, 2016 - Day One

Technically, our trip started a couple days before we actually left. Here’s the condensed version: Mom left for her cruise on April 29th, and while she was gone, I got my own Disney stuff prepared, which included watching The Force Awakens for the first time. (I’m a really new Star Wars fan, for what it’s worth.) On Monday, May 2nd, Cassie made the trip up to our house and we finished getting ready, ran a couple last minute errands for things she and I both forgot. We watched Inside Out (my first time seeing it: cried like a little baby twice) and Tangled, and did our Disney nails up. We definitely were too excited to sleep.

And, finally, on May 4th, our Disney Vacation began at 4:00 in the morning.

(This was my second alarm, naturally.)

This is pretty normal for us, as morning flights give you more time in the park later in the day, but 4:00 AM is a pretty difficult time to deal with after you were awake until 11:30 the night before watching Tangled. You know, normal Disney stuff. We also nearly overslept, waking up with my second alarm, not my first. Great start!

Cassie and I reluctantly rolled ourselves out of bed, thankful to each have our own beds in Disney rather than sharing mine, as I, apparently, like to roll myself in the comforter like a burrito and subconsciously steal the blanket from her. (Something I've done since the beginning of our friendship. Blanket theft.) We packed up our last couple things, said goodbye to my pathetic little dog, and at 5:00 AM, sharp, we were packing up the car to head to the airport, and left immediately after. VACATION TIME!

I live around an hour from Pearson airport in Toronto, so we left a little earlier than usual to beat any morning Toronto traffic. Our flight wasn’t until 8:40, but we arrived at the airport at 6.

Dad dropped us off, we said goodbye, and then hurried into the airport to figure out what the actual heck was going on. You see, this was my first flight without one of my parents, and Cassie’s first flight since she was pretty little, so both of us were a little unfamiliar and a lot freaked out. By some strange miracle and with the help of some really friendly airport people at Pearson, we ended up getting through customs and security both in about a half hour. We had literally arrived at 6am because everyone had said we would be facing crazy lines for check-in/customs/bag drop/security, but at this point we were just out of security with two hours to kill before our flight.


This is the face of RELIEF.

So we wandered through the terminal, looking for a Tim Hortons, because we embrace being complete stereotypes of our country.

And we found the Tims RIGHT ACROSS FROM OUR GATE. PRAISE.

After getting some breakfast, we continued wandering through the terminal, hanging out, exploring a little, avoiding restricted areas… the usual things. We decided to finally just head to our gate to sit down and wait for the flight after realizing there wasn’t much to see in our part of the terminal. We’d been checking the weather in Orlando like crazy, since we were forecasted to have varying levels of rain which included a major thunderstorm system moving through right around when we were in the air. So naturally, we sat down and started refreshing the Weather Network app.

We flew Air Canada Rouge (which all Canadians know is the cheap version of Air Canada), and found the plane to be pretty aesthetically pleasing. Not as aesthetically pleasing as, you know, a Magical Express bus, but we’d take it.

Our flight ended up being delayed because a crew member was running late, which made a few people at the gate annoyed and antsy. Of course, until we realized the late crew member was the pilot. KIND OF AN IMPORTANT PERSON TO HAVE ON BOARD. EVERYONE CHILL.

Regardless, we boarded the plane only a little behind schedule, and were taking off about 20 minutes late. The flight crew announced the tailwinds worked in our favour, and we’d be there ahead of schedule. (Ended up landing at 11:30: not long after we were originally supposed to.) We ended up sharing our flight with a bunch of members of Team Canada for the Invictus Games, which was really a cool experience! Really friendly and wonderful people. One man sat across the aisle from us and he was absolutely wonderful!

Cassie was a little unsure about flying at first.

On the flight, we used their entertainment system (that you accessed via your own device, rather than seatback TVs, which was about as glitchy as you could imagine it’d be) to watch the first two episodes of Friends (they only had the first two, for some reason), and then we watched most of Aladdin.

Counting in the time it took to get the thing to work, that took up all of our flight time! And other than a brief bout of turbulence as we flew over the system that was in the South, as well as a screaming toddler, the flight was a very smooth one. Cassie was pretty darn happy with her flight experience! And I was happy that when she went to the washroom once, I got to lean over and get some airplane aesthetic pictures.

The landing was relatively smooth, despite worries we'd be landing in a thunderstorm. The really bad system blew through and we were landing in just some light rain! And of course, one of the best parts was coming. The Fake Monorail! (Or, the Fauxnorail, if you watch as much See Ya Reel Soon as I do. Which is a lot.)

Cassie was VERY thrilled to see her first palm trees in person.

We made our way down to level one, since we were already on the B side of the terminal, and soon enough we were seeing signs for the DME desk!

We scanned in our confirmation booklet (because we didn’t have our Magic Bands yet!) and headed into bus line #8 for the All-Star Resorts and Coronado Springs!

To our surprise, we didn’t even stop in the line before walking right outside and directly onto a Magical Express bus! (I was excited that we got an actual Disney bus this time.)

We found a couple seats together toward the back of the bus, and then set off almost immediately for our resort! (Not entirely. All-Star Movies was the last drop-off location. We were in for a long ride.)

Passing under the gates was super exciting, but I got no pictures because by this point, we were caught in a torrential downpour. And we were at the back of the bus. And I wasn’t sitting at the window. (Because I’d done the Magical Express before, and I’m a GOOD FRIEND.)

We stopped at Coronado first, and we loved the look of it. I took a couple photos for Mom, to lure her into staying there in the future. Very casually, of course.

We headed off to the All-Stars next, and saw the Studios and Blizzard Beach out the window, which I attempted to point out to Cassie, but ended up pointing to right as we passed it. And after stopping at the other resorts, we arrived at Movies!

We headed right into the check-in line to get our MagicBands, and were quickly approached by a CM named Shely with a tablet who helped us get our stuff together. She took us to the other side of the lobby to the little desk there, where someone brought us our MagicBands and we connected them to our individual credit cards for charging during the trip. Shely was really great for our first CM of the trip and left us in high spirits for the day!

Unfortunately, our room wasn’t ready yet, and it was only around 12:30 at the time. So with our Magic Bands on, we immediately headed over for something to eat and to wait for our room to be ready. We were off to the World Premiere Food Court!

We walked into the main dining area and immediately had no clue how the dining plan worked. Cassie got a burger, a Mickey rice crispy treat, and a Powerade, while I got chicken nuggets, a sugar cookie with M&Ms, and a bottle of water. We also picked up our refillable mugs: red for Cassie and purple for me.

We picked out a booth in the corner of the room and settled in to eat and wait! We didn’t want to leave our stuff with Bell services, so we opted to wait it out in the food court for the next couple of hours. The food was alright, I guess. Cassie’s burger was good, she said, but my chicken nuggets were awful. One of them was just pure gristle and after that I kind of lost my appetite. As you do when you bite into a chicken nugget and are rewarded with the opening of the gates to you-know-where.

We ended up spending about an hour and a half in the food court, eating lunch, writing in our trip journals, and watching the weather like hawks. We also put on our fancy Graduation buttons (we actually wrote out each other's buttons, so this is Cassie's handwriting. Despite the fact that her button looked like a six year old wrote on it, I promise I actually have really nice handwriting. You'll see hers in future pictures.) I ended up getting one of the new buttons, while Cassie got the old one with the balloons.

(It's blurry because Snapchat. Hence the graduation caps, which unfortunately weren't actually part of the button.)

Finally, at around 2:30, we got the email! We were in Fantasia Building 8 and our room was ready! Our requests were second floor, close to transportation, and we could see the building from the food court, which was a good sign. We bundled up in our rain gear and headed out to see our room!

We were in the Jack-in-the-Box building, up on the second floor, and as we walked around the corner from the stairs, right around the corner from the ice machine! It was honestly the best room location I’ve had at a Disney resort. We were so close to the stairs and to the main building, it was away from the pool so it was quiet. We loved it!


We naturally walked in the room and flopped down on the beds, flipped on Stacey, and started unpacking our carry-ons. Do you really think I’d remember to take a room picture after waiting for our room in the ASMo food court for over an hour? I was lucky I still had my sanity. (Not that there's anything wrong with hanging out in the food court, but we were more than a little antsy. And we couldn't explore while we waited because of the pouring rain outside. Bummer.)

Anyways, we changed clothes quickly enough, got the decorations in the window, and then headed downstairs to take a bus to our first park of the trip… the Magic Kingdom!

Up Next: The One Where We Immediately Get Drenched! (The Beginning of our Magic Kingdom Night)​

 

[mmeb144]

Awww, man! That sucks about the chicken gristle. Usually the nuggets are a good go-to when you don't know what to get.

 

[longlostprincess]

ah i love the 'getting there travel' updates plus your room window decoration is so cute, looking forward to hearing more!

 

[AllysonL]

Great update!! Can't wait to read some more

 

[princessesandpascal]

Awww, man! That sucks about the chicken gristle. Usually the nuggets are a good go-to when you don't know what to get.

I'm not even sure if that's what was going on, but it was the only word I could think of to describe it other than "gross"! I ended up having the nuggets with fish at Columbia Harbor later in the trip and they were better there, thankfully.

ah i love the 'getting there travel' updates plus your room window decoration is so cute, looking forward to hearing more!

Thank you! We made it last year, but it only survived two trips, as a bunch of the letters fell off and disappeared toward the end of the week!

 

[nilla]

Great start to the trip! I love the theming at the All Stars resorts, so I'm looking forward to the resort photos.

 

[Catvondita]

Cute start. following

 

[MarieLightning]

Yaaay, fellow Canucks! Looking forward to following along with this

I'm looking forward to hearing the stories behind the alternate TR titles. But I really love 'Cry-Lo'. It is a nice touch. My wife is trying to think up the most outrageous question she can ask him when we meet him in August - I think she's gonna get us thrown out so he can have a temper tantrum after she asks him

 

[dmlovullo]

Joining in on your adventures!

So we wandered through the terminal, looking for a Tim Hortons, because we embrace being complete stereotypes of our country.

And we found the Tims RIGHT ACROSS FROM OUR GATE. PRAISE.

YAY!! I am from Buffalo, NY and we love our Tims here too! Sadly, we do not have one in the airport. Really strange.

We’d been checking the weather in Orlando like crazy, since we were forecasted to have varying levels of rain which included a major thunderstorm system moving through right around when we were in the air. So naturally, we sat down and started refreshing the Weather Network app.

We were leaving the day you arrived! Was a very wet day in WDW! But, during the day MK was very nice and quiet and we got on everything one last time!

(Or, the Fauxnorail, if you watch as much See Ya Reel Soon as I do. Which is a lot.)

Love "See Ya Reel Soon"!! They have inspired our own Channel to share our adventures.

 

[mindylee847]

Very excited to follow your report! I think I quietly stalked your last one but here I am!!

I love your window decorations. They are too perfect. And what you said about your nuggets... That's one of the reasons I became vegetarian, lol! Looking forward to reading more!

 

[princessesandpascal]

Great start to the trip! I love the theming at the All Stars resorts, so I'm looking forward to the resort photos.

I did take a few photos of Fantasia: we didn't get around the resort as much as we had hoped. It was more a place to crash than anything for us but I will of course share all the photos I did get!

Cute start. following

Thanks for following!

Yaaay, fellow Canucks! Looking forward to following along with this

I'm looking forward to hearing the stories behind the alternate TR titles. But I really love 'Cry-Lo'. It is a nice touch. My wife is trying to think up the most outrageous question she can ask him when we meet him in August - I think she's gonna get us thrown out so he can have a temper tantrum after she asks him

Welcome aboard! Yay Canada!

I don't want to spoil our whole Kylo meet, but it ended in him silently pointing me to the door and demanding I say goodbye to the people I will never see again!

(I may have curtsied at him and called him Cry-lo to his face. More to come.)

Joining in on your adventures!

YAY!! I am from Buffalo, NY and we love our Tims here too! Sadly, we do not have one in the airport. Really strange.

We were leaving the day you arrived! Was a very wet day in WDW! But, during the day MK was very nice and quiet and we got on everything one last time!

Love "See Ya Reel Soon"!! They have inspired our own Channel to share our adventures.

It was so not busy as you guys will all see in the chapter I am finishing up! It was awesome!

Joe and Ashley are the best! We got lots of red cards this trip and tweeted them our joy!

Very excited to follow your report! I think I quietly stalked your last one but here I am!!

I love your window decorations. They are too perfect. And what you said about your nuggets... That's one of the reasons I became vegetarian, lol! Looking forward to reading more!

So glad to have you along for the ride!

I honestly consider going vegetarian in times like that!

 

[princessesandpascal]

Chapter Two: The One Where We Get Soaked by Many Things
May 4, 2016 - Day One

Where the last chapter left off, we were headed to the bus stop to go to the Magic Kingdom! We walked right out of the lobby and right onto a waiting bus to the MK, so our timing could not have been any better.

We made a little small talk with the family sitting next to us, whose son was really excited when he saw the monorail (the mom told me that he had autism, and we talked a little about my cousin who is six months younger than me and who is also on the spectrum). And then we pulled around the corner and Cassie got her first glimpse of the castle.

I don’t have a photo but there was EXCITEMENT.

We got off the bus and went through security (they were screening everyone that day, since not a ton of people were arriving), and then tapped our bands into the park for the first time for the trip! It wasn’t raining just yet, but we knew it would later on. We were determined to get as much done before the rain as we could!

We had a Fastpass for Winnie-the-Pooh, so we made our way into the park and up Main Street. Cassie was blown away by the theming of Main Street and kept going “I didn’t know it was going to look like this!” I think her experience with smaller theme parks made that her expectation, so the first moments of a Disney park were really exciting for her.

We stopped for some Photopass pictures on our way, and ended up having a fantastic little session with a new trainee, Chris, along with the two cast members training her. They played around with our buttons and with an umbrella one of the training CMs had, and they’re some of my favourite Photopass pictures I’ve ever had!

We hurried over to Winnie the Pooh next for the first ride of the trip. We ended up making the Fastpasses so that Cassie’s first Disney ride in 2016 was also my first Disney ride back in 2006. It was super cute and such a great way to kick off the trip.

After Pooh, we had our second Fastpass for Splash Mountain, so we hurried over there. We got a couple photos by the tower on our way:

The skies were turning a pretty ominous shade of grey, and we didn’t want to lose our Fastpass. We tapped in and walked all the way up: and were seated in the front row.

There’s a little something we had forgotten when we’d gotten in line for Splash at around 4:30 after it had rained for the majority of the early afternoon. The water had caused the levels in the ride to raise to alarming heights. And when we went over the first little drop, the water cascaded over the side of the boat and completely filled the seat.

By the end of the ride, we were soaking wet from head to toe. (The raincoat did NOT help.)

At that point, we had no idea what we wanted to do next, given that we were absolutely drenched in water in places you wouldn’t think you could get drenched in on Splash Mountain, Cassie wasn’t super excited to ever set foot in one of those logs again, and, to top it all off, it had begun to rain (just a light mist).
Any chances of being dry for the rest of the night were OFF THE TABLE.

This was where we started quoting a review of the video game Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, where someone rated it 7/10 because there was too much water (in terms of Pokemon and areas to travel). Hence the alternate title, 7/10 Too Much Water. We ended up quoting that a lot to say 7/10 Too Much ____. Including 7/10 Too Much Backwards on Everest.)
​

(This was post-soaking. For some reason, it looks like my braid is dry, but I can assure you that it definitely was not.)

Under the theory that if Splash was the wash cycle, Big Thunder Mountain was the spin cycle, we decided to hit that next since it was a complete walk-on. I took this Snapchat in the 'line' if you could even call it that.


We worked our way next back toward Fantasyland, as we had a Fastpass for the Mine Train that we were unsure if we could hit or not. It had moved into a light rain at this point, so we ducked into the nonexistent line for the Haunted Mansion and walked right in. The hitchhiking ghost had Canada on the tombstone he held with our photos on it at the end, which was really cool!

We then walked up to It’s a Small World and ducked in since the line was non-existent. We walked right into the back row of a boat and right into the ride!

I was VERY excited to see my favourite animal, the koala.

Our names were on the screens at the end, (along with the people in front of us) which we all got a kick out of.

We hurried over to Philharmagic through the rain, and slipped right into seats at the back of the theatre. Not the greatest seats, but it did look like every character was eating the head of the guy sitting in front of us, which was pretty humourous.

After Philharmagic, we realized our FP time for Seven Dwarfs was getting close to the end of the hour, and we’d assumed that they’d cancel the FP since it was raining. Since it wasn’t cancelled, we did the next most logical move.

And tapped into the FP line despite the fact that it was still raining pretty hard.

I guess I can be one of the only people to say that I got wet on the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train? WHERE WAS THE SIGN SAYING YOU MAY GET WET NOW, DISNEY?

(Again, the rain jacket did nothing.)

Soaked from the rain, we decided to make our way back to Tomorrowland, since we’d made another Fastpass for Buzz! We didn’t need the Fastpass for sure, and walked right into the FP line and right into a car. I managed to get Galactic Hero on my first ride of the trip, which I was super excited about. I KNOW MY TARGETS. (And of course I told Cassie about my go-to targets... the next time we rode.)

When we came out of the ride, we saw Buzz with a very short line meeting, so we headed over to meet him. The CM taking photos with my phone was excited that I got a tweet during the photo taking session and since it said “YAAAAS” he made sure to dramatically read the “YAAAS” out loud. Buzz was hilarious and kept us laughing the whole time. So fun!

The rain was picking up a little more now (Buzz met under an overhang), so we decided to make another FP and head to Main Street. It was time to grab our grad ears and meet the main mouse!

We stopped in the Emporium on our way to buy the graduation cap Mickey ears, and then hurried into the Town Hall to shed our raincoats and tap into the line! We were the only ones in the FP+ line...


...and in moments we were walking into the room to see Mickey.
He told us all about his adventures sailing the seven seas with Captain Jack and his pirate crew, and then wanted us to be pirates for our photo.


I was surprised Mickey didn’t mention anything about our graduation buttons, but didn’t think too much of it. (Although our conversation was very similar to the one Mickey had with the family in front of us last year: he must go sailing with pirates a lot. )

The rain was really coming down by this point, so we hurried into the train station to grab a ride from Main Street to Fantasyland.


It was pouring to the extent that the water was actually coming inside the train forcing Cassie and I to huddle together in the middle of our row. In case you’re wondering, that’s another ride that we got wet on that you don’t normally get wet on.

By the time we arrived at the Circus, the rain had moved into a total torrential downpour. We sucked it up and plowed directly through the solid inch of water that had gathered on the ground in the circus. We were headed for dinner at Pinnocchio’s Village House, and by the time we arrived, we were freezing cold and soaked to the bone. I don’t think a poncho would’ve even helped: the hoods on our rain coats were sturdy enough to stay up and our coats covered our arms fully, but our bottom halves and feet were drenched.

Luckily, I’d thrown my flannel shirt from the airplane into my bag in case it got cold, so i used that to dry off a little and then promptly put the shirt on because I was cold. And then I wrung out my braid and got in line for food! I got the pepperoni flatbread, which was absolutely delicious (that may have been me being freezing and hungry, but it was great!), while Cassie got the chicken Alfredo, which she also thought was pretty good. I don't remember what we got for dessert, but it looks like Cassie maybe had sorbet or something? All I remember is that our pops were HUGE. And that led us to a conversation about the incredible portion sizes in the States compared to in Canada.

We checked the wait times on Lines while we ate, and noticed by looking out the window that Peter Pan was only a 30 minute wait. I wanted to see the new queue, so we decided to wait out the downpour (that was supposed to end within the hour, according to the radar weather) in the lineup after we ate.

The queue was absolutely amazing and we were so happy to have waited. The lighting wasn’t great, so I didn’t get many photos. The ride itself was really fun as well: Cassie really enjoyed it! I think us Disboarders tend to get kind of cynical about rides like Peter Pan, but to a newbie, that feeling of lifting off and flying over London is truly amazing.

We walked out of Peter Pan, expecting the downpour to have ceased if the Weather Network was right. Alas, they weren't: there was still a pretty steady downpour. Where would we go next to wait it out? And would the rain ever stop?

Up Next: The One Where a Donkey Thinks It's My Birthday​

 

[AllysonL]

Great update!! Sorry about the rain! That's terrible... but Disney in the rain is better than being anywhere else in the rain (in my opinion anyway!). Love all your pictures!!