Mom, Can You Quit Hanging on to Me and Just Hang on to Yourself? Update 11/2/16

[amberg93]

So excited for you! Have an amazing time on your trip!

Glad Annie had such a great time on the horseback ride, it really sounds like a fun time!

Yay for Nana getting there and for getting an awesome room. Overall, sounds like a great way for her to start out her trip too.

You'll post a video of a big reveal when you get back, right?

 

[minnieprincess]

Have a great trip!

 

[DaisyDuck001]

How was your most recent trip???

 

[MissMaryQC]

Hope all is well with you guys!!

 

[DaisyDuck001]

How did the kids respond to the surprise trip?

 

[MomBird]

I'm back on Disboards, too, and popped over to say I hope you guys had a great surprise trip!!

 

[Sailormoon2]

Loving this current trip report...so excited for you and the big reveal, and the current trip. Wow that is a lot of excitement indeed. Will wait patiently to hear the rest of this one, and hopefully the next Golden TR too.

 

[DaisyDuck001]

Hey DopeyDonald, I would love to read how your February trip went this year! Haven't seen any posts from you in ages. Please tell us all about it!!!

 

[marie049]

I will be going to Disney in September and renting a Grand Caravan as well, with about 7 passengers other than myself, wondering how "roomy" is the van and being 4'11 are the seats adjustable? a little nervous being that I own a smaller car.

So when I left, off the girls and I were walking off the jetway, and the boys were headed for ME and a door outside.

I was still a bit peeved at the boys, because I really wanted some pics on the fake monorail and in front of the Ear Port characters. I really was trying not to get upset about it, but I just was bummed about the way the trip was starting. It seems like we can hold it together until we land at MCO, then all of our travel day annoyances come out. In reality, it's probably lack of sleep and hunger playing a huge part.

I was annoyed too, because now the girls and I had to go to baggage claim to get our stroller instead of being able to hand the boys the claim ticket to give to ME.

BUT, I told myself to get over it! So the girls and I took our pics that I wanted and headed down to the rental car area.

On the monorail

First "Disney" pic!

And, hee hee, while we were taking Ear Port pics I found out that the boys had gone the wrong way anyway and were down in the rental car area. So, I had them quick hop in line at Dollar for me, so that when the girls and I finally got down there, we were next!

So the boys redeemed themselves a bit!

Dollar check in was quick and easy and then we headed over to baggage claim. Hindsight, I should have given the boys the stroller baggage claim ticket when I had the chance, but figured with the time we spent at Dollar the stroller would be waiting for us.

And I wanted it for when we got to the lodge to help with our carry ons etc.

MISTAKE.

Holy cow – you would think with all the rain they get in Orlando, that baggage would be a lot smoother during a rain storm. We ended up waiting almost a full hour AFTER checking in with Dollar to get our stroller.

Cassidy actually ended up falling asleep on the floor!

Finally the stoller came out on the oversize baggage belt and we were on our way to choose our van. The girls and I found a van – silver Grand Caravan and loaded up and headed to Super Target.

Somehow, coming out of the airport ramp I got turned around and ended up taking 528 instead of 417,but it worked out just fine.

We found our way to the Target on 192 and began our shopping.

We just needed to pick up some things like bottled water, granola bars, pop tarts, trail mix, yogurt etc. I also ended up getting the girls some cute autograph books and I picked up a trip report journal.

While we were in Target, we got a call from the boys who were at the WL checking in.

DH was at the check in desk talking with the lady who was checking us in – our request for 1st floor was denied for tonight, but available the rest of the trip, so did we want to switch rooms tomorrow?

I said, yes, we do. First floor is that important to me. So he said, “here talk to my wife and handed the phone to the poor gal – ” So, I was able to talk to her and get it all worked out.

So then DH gets off the phone and finishes checking in.

A bit later, I got another call from him, all proud because there was flag family open dates. He got to choose from 3. HE PICKED THE ONLY DATE THAT WE HAD SOMETHING SCHEDULED FOR. *sigh.

I told him this and he got really huffy. Apparently, he wasn’t happy that I hadn’t taken care of this myself. Even though I was in Target. This is why I need to start weaning my family off of being so dependent on me! I assured him that I would take care of it as soon as we got to the lodge.

Then he called back a few more times with questions and just to wonder when we were coming back. I think they were hungry. It wasn’t our finest moment, but the travel day for us never is.

Finally we got done at Target and wanted to stop at Chick Fil A. I called the boys to see if they wanted anything, but they didn’t answer, and I tried like 5 times so the girls and I just went by ourselves. YUM-O!

After stuffing ourselves with Chick Fil A, the girls and I headed to WL to get settled in and take care of our boys. We found out later that the reason the boys didn’t answer is that they were down eating in Roaring Fork and getting their mugs etc. So it all worked out – And everyone was MUCH happier with food in our bellies!

It was so amazing pulling up to the lodge for the first time in about a year, knowing that we were going to be staying there again. We just flat out love the lodge. We parked, called the boys to meet us in the lobby and loaded up the stroller.

When we got inside, the boys were waiting for us and we all went over as a family to greet Humphrey.

Cassidy was literally vibrating with excitement. She just kept saying over and over, “I can’t believe we’re in Disney World and we get to stay in the throw up room!” The throw up room is the Wilderness Lodge Villa room to her. We stayed at the Cabins in Feb, so she was just differentiating between that I guess.

After properly getting reintroduced to Humphrey, Dh and I headed over to see if we could change our Flag Family date.

We could – whew. The day DH had it for was our family picture morning, so I REALLY didn’t want to try and change that. The date we chose was the Monday before we left – so perfect.

We then headed to the room to drop off our stuff. I was SO excited to see it. I’ve been wishing SO HARD that they would have a villa (besides a 2 bedroom) that slept 5 and YAY – now there is one.

Of course we had to stop to ring the bells on the way – one of my kiddos favorite things to do

An elevator pic – poor kids – they love the elevator and the long hall, but me? Not so much. With the stroller it’s just so much easier to be on the first level.

After a LOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG walk down a 2nd floor hallway to our room (so made the right decision to switch in the morning) we opened the door to our studio. What did we think?!

WE LOVED IT. It’s seems pretty spacious – we had no trouble getting all of our 8 suitcases in the closet and get our clothes etc organized. The kids loved the bed and life was good.

The bed is awesome – Wyatt had NO trouble fitting on it. One teeny complaint is lack of another table in the room. DH and his laptop ended up over in the kitchen area and it was kind of a pain for him. I told him (after the fact and we were home, he should have just taken it out the door and sat on the balcony with it or down to the lobby to one of those tables.) Oh well, next time.

Right away the kids set up an elaborate sleep schedule – we were there for 12 nights so each kid would get 4 whole nights on the bed.

Cassidy elected herself to go first, much to Wyatt’s chagrin. Funny story….here is how the sleeping that night ended up….Wyatt and Annie got the sofa bed and fell asleep right away. Cassidy was on the fold down, but was tossing and turning and ended up coming and sleeping with DH and I, but the other kids were already out, so the bed never even got slept in the first night. I thought Wyatt would cry when I told him...

By this time we were pretty tired and we just ended up getting settled – I tried to unpack as little as possible since we’d be switching rooms in the morning.

After getting settled we took a trip to the Mercantile. We were very excited that they had really ramped up the WL merchandise. It’s been the same stuff for many years now, so it was nice to see some different items.

Not as nice for our pocketbook though! We kicked off the trip with quite a spendy shopping spree – Long Sleeve T’s for the boys, a hat and mug for DH, Sweatshirt for DH, and a WL hoody for me.

We were also eyeballing a T-shirt for me and the Pillow. LOL – start off with a bang I guess.

The reason that we bought our stuff right away was because DH had been talking with a manager who approached my dh while he was looking around. Dh was wearing his WL T from 2010 and that prompted a conversation about how long over due new WL stuff was. He told DH it was selling fast, so that we should be sure to snap things up if we saw our size. Good sales pitch or the truth, I don’t know. But we did, so if it was it worked!

Then we decided to just hang in the lobby a bit – by far our favorite place to be.

I’m not sure if they were pretending they were at a Grand March or what….We are so weird.

Chillin in the chairs

After that we bought a few bedtime treats – couple of frozen lemonades, some dips and a Mickey bar and headed up to hit the sack.

Pausing to take a break in front of the waterfall. We were SO glad that the waterfall was up and running and looking beautiful!

Take one….Arg…Obnoxious boy strikes again…

Take two –there that’s better…

However, as you can see a bit of directly to Wyatt’s left there is a construction wall. Now, I knew that the main pool would be closed but the villa pool would be open. We were OK with this as we’ve never swam in the main pool. No big deal to us. We were a bit worried about how busy the villa pool might be, but what are you going to do.

I knew about this ahead of time thru the Disboards and from a phone call from the lodge. I wasn’t too worried about it at all. I was a little bummed not to be able to get the $50 off a night that some people were as we were renting points, but figured that was not a huge deal, comes with the territory of renting points and that inflexibility.

That being said. I was NOT prepared for the walkway from the boat dock to the villas being closed. We use that almost exclusively. Also, we use that way to get to Roaring Fork. It was a HUGE bummer for us and ended up coming into play in a huge way only a few days into our vacation, but that is a story for another day.

Armed with our treats and mugs, we headed back to the room to get some sleep for our 1st big Disney Day in the morning!

 

[DopeyDonald]

Wow - If you can believe it - I'm back to the DIS. I have been lurking on and off since we got back from our Feb 2015 trip. I'm not going to go into too much, but we had an incident on that trip that was not good. It was my fault and I take full blame. Long story short with as little drama as I can muster - lol. My DH is on the road a lot - like Monday thru Friday a lot of weeks. I DIS at night when he is gone and when he is home I am rarely on the computer. So he didn't really know about my DIS habit - I wasn't specifically hiding it or anything, but it was just one of those things that we didn't really discuss. Fast forward to our Feb trip. My kiddos and DH were recognized (No worries to the DISer it should not have been a big deal at all ) and my DH kind of freaked out (not at the DISer thank goodness) but at me when we met up. DH used to be in law enforcement and he was NOT IMPRESSED with me for having our kids pics on the internet and thought it was "fishy" that someone would randomly run into and recognize them.

It was not a good situation and to be completely honest, my DH wanted to go home. He was over reacting, but I think his law enforcement background came into play. I was able to calm him down and talk with him and show him my trip reports and how easily they can be found etc. He still was having a hard time believing that anyone would be down there at the same time we were etc. and he couldn't get over that it was a coincidence (I swear I think he thought my kids were being stalked - lol). I finally talked him down and we were able to come to the agreement that we would stay. In fact, we ended up adding a day onto the end of the trip, since we basically lost a day not talking much. Part of the deal was that I would not post any more trip reports etc. so I kind of bailed on the DIS. I should have come on here right away and told you guys what happened, but I really wasn't in the mood to do so.

Since then, we have run into a few other people that DIS and this past trip our Ranger at WL that led us in Flag Family was on the DIS and was explaining to my DH what it is all about, and I think my DH finally "got" it! So I am back! lol.

Now that I got that drama out of the way I can continue. So I have a few questions on how to proceed....I have this one (Sept 2014) to finish, I have a Feb 2015 to write about, though I didn't take notes and it was kind of a whirlwind, and we just got back 2 weeks ago from our annual Sept 2015 trip. I'm thinking I'll finish this one and do a mini one for Feb? I do want to get to Sept 2015 soon though, since it's fresh in my mind and I can't wait to show you my pics - best trip yet!

Let me know what you think...if I still have any readers that is.... lol

 

[DopeyDonald]

For now I think I'll just jump back into this Sept 2014 trip for a quick update. Let's see if I can figure this new system out - that's how long I've been gone!

When I left off, Nana had just arrived and we'd grabbed a quick bite at Roaring Forks. Bellies full, we got Nana and her things settled and decided to head to DHS and jump right into things with Nana. Once we arrived, DH, Nana and the big kids headed to either RNR or TOT - I can't remember which they had a FP for. Cassidy and I headed to TSM. Our family is OK with this because (shhhhh, we really don't like TSM all that much) Here are a few pics of our adventure.

After some TSM, we wandered around and took this pic of Cassidy - I didn't tell her where she was standing because she would have gotten mad at me. When we watched Indiana Jones before this trip, she had kind of a crush on him and was all embarrassed about it. I took advantage of the fact that she can't read yet and took this pic - lol.

Next up we met the family over at the Muppets 3D show. Cassidy did not want to be there and pouted through the whole thing, but survived. After getting our Muppet fix and shopping in the Muppet shop a bit, we headed over to The Great Movie Ride. We all enjoy this ride, though Cassidy does get a bit scared during the Alien scene.

After TGMR it was time to split up again. This time the big kids and DH and Nana headed back over to the TOT/RNR area to do whichever one they didn't do before. Cassidy and I went to VOLM while they were doing this. It seems we were doing a lot of park criss crossing this day - I have to work on my FP times!

After VOLM and TOT/RNR we all met up and headed to Draw at the Animators Studio (the name is escaping me right now, I keep wanting to say Art of Animation! lol) We had a short wait during which we took plenty of pictures:

I think Captain Hook looks fetching in a dress, don't you?

Wyatt is checking out my new Angel/Devil Donald shirt magnets - Love these!

Finally it was time to draw - Wyatt wanted to get Stitch SO BAD. But the lady had already had a character picked. It was....Buzz
Kind of a let down, but ended up being pretty cool. Cassidy did pretty well, in fact the animator lady had her bring hers up and she showed everyone on the screen and everyone clapped for her

Personally I think it looks more like Pooh but.... lol
Here is mine, I've done other characters that I liked more, but didn't think this was too bad....

Finally here is a group shot with all of our drawings. This drawing class was one of our very favorite things to do and we are devastated that it is gone for now, and I say for now with the deepest hope that it will show up somewhere else at WDW. If not we may have to make a pilgrimage to DL!

I'm going to end here for now and when I come back with another update we have some Dance Party Drama *sigh LOL

 

[DaisyDuck001]

Welcome back, DopeyDonald. Thanks for asking which trip we're most interested in reading about. When you left off before, you were about to surprise the kids with the news of the February trip. I've been curious to read how that surprise turned out, and how your February trip went. I'm actually most interested in reading about your February trip, even if you don't have a lot of notes or pictures, but I'd rather read about that trip first. Thanks.

 

[BellaBaby]

Welcome back!!

That's funny, I think I'm really bad at names/faces because I don't think I would recognize too many people at WDW.

Anyway, I too had a crush on Harrison Ford as Indy AND as Han Solo when I was a kid! No shame in that!

I will be happy to follow any updates/TR you would like to post!!

 

[Woth2982]

Welcome back! I know the law enforcement thing all too well. My friend's sister is a detective who works in the SVU area, and has my friend paranoid about posting her kids photos places. Glad the CM was able to talk DH down and you are back! I like the idea of wrapping this up, then a mini report to jump right into the next one!

 

[DopeyDonald]

Welcome back, DopeyDonald. Thanks for asking which trip we're most interested in reading about. When you left off before, you were about to surprise the kids with the news of the February trip. I've been curious to read how that surprise turned out, and how your February trip went. I'm actually most interested in reading about your February trip, even if you don't have a lot of notes or pictures, but I'd rather read about that trip first. Thanks.

Thanks! Glad to be back. I'm so excited to post about the reveal - I just have to dig up the pics and video! I'm thinking I will post about the reveal and maybe do a mini report during this one. That is my plan for now. Glad you are reading along.

Welcome back!!

That's funny, I think I'm really bad at names/faces because I don't think I would recognize too many people at WDW.

Anyway, I too had a crush on Harrison Ford as Indy AND as Han Solo when I was a kid! No shame in that!

I will be happy to follow any updates/TR you would like to post!!

Thanks! I've actually seen 2-3 DISers in the past, but just haven't had the guts to talk to them. And now I really don't! lol I agree with you about Indy, but Cassidy is horribly embarrassed about anything like that and does NOT enjoy teasing! lol

Welcome back! I know the law enforcement thing all too well. My friend's sister is a detective who works in the SVU area, and has my friend paranoid about posting her kids photos places. Glad the CM was able to talk DH down and you are back! I like the idea of wrapping this up, then a mini report to jump right into the next one!

Thanks, I'm glad to be back. Yeah, my DH on top of being a former police officer, is obviously older than I am and just never has gotten into social media (he thinks FB is the stupidest thing ever invented) and so he just cannot understand people wanting to share pics and stories etc. I tried to tell him that the DIS is where I have gleaned all of my knowledge of Disney from and he should appreciate that since we use those tips and "secrets" every trip!

I think my plan will be to wrap this one up first, but I am going to sprinkle the reveal and maybe a mini trip for Feb in. I just don't think I have enough for a full report on that one. I cannot WAIT to start my Sept 2015 one. I have a title to end all titles for that one. I love how titles are born and not thought of.

 

[DopeyDonald]

Whew - I sure like this new board format - makes it easy to post, I think. So when I left off before we had just finished our drawing class and were taking pics with our Buzzes. I don't have any pics of what happened next because I was too busy being annoyed with my DH. When we walked out of the animation courtyard we could see the Frozen Dance Party was happening in front of the hat. DH wanted to go check it out. He is a very outgoing person and thinks if he is having fun everyone should be. My kiddos were hot and tired (and Wyatt too old - lol) and they are more reserved and shy. They did not want to dance, they were comfortable just hanging out and watching. When this happens, DH thinks they are being rude or party poopers and gets irritated with them. He kept trying to get Cassidy out of the stroller to dance with the characters that were circulating, but she just didn't want to. And instead of us just moving on he KEPT TRYING TO GET HER TO DO IT. *sigh Finally after I convinced him that we didn't have spoiled rude brats, that they were just tired and honestly just didn't want to dance, we moved on.

It was time for Star Tours! I cannot ride this but it was going to be Cassidy's first time. She either LOVES a ride or doesn't so....SHE LOVED IT. and of course wanted to go again right away, and since the wait was only 5-10 mins they took her on again. And again... lol. It was a hit - her new "favorite". The 3rd and final time, the big kids didn't even want to go again, so we spent time in the gift shop doing what you do when you are waiting for someone - take pics of the kids trying hats on!

At this point they were tired of trying on hats, but we made them press on...lol

Look, now even you are tired of LOOKING at hat pics - lol.
Finally here comes DH and Cassidy. Oh, one more hat pic with Cassidy in it....

And of course she looked so cute in it, that Nana had to buy it for her. Next we moved on to a photo shoot outside on the land speeders (is that what they are called? We are not Star Wars people at our house.)

Wow, I was in a picture taking mode that night! After our photoshoot, we headed to the front of the park. Our plan was to head to DTD and eat at Wolfgang Puck's. The kids and I had eaten there before, but DH and Nana never had and were excited to try it. We shopped our way to the front and then what's that? Time for another photoshoot? OK!

Had to stop and give some love to Bo.

And things went downhill and got weird from there....
Nana was trying to make Papa jealous back home I guess...

And then there is Wyatt...
He was getting emotional about leaving Bo I guess, we weren't sure if we were going to be coming back to DHS this trip, so it was a hard good-bye.

On that note I'm going to stop and in the next update we head to DTD for some WPE! Yum!

Edited to add a few photopass we had taken on the way out also. *Note Cassidy's bare feet - lol. Any chance she gets she takes her shoes off...

 

[DopeyDonald]

Alright, I'm going to finish up this day and then maybe post the reveal for our Feb trip.

So after our DHS picture palooza we headed to DTD to eat at Wolfgang Pucks. The kids and I had eaten there before and wanted to share it with DH and Nana. We got to DTD and found a great parking spot right near the Marketplace - I'm so going to miss parking there that close! Once we parked we headed straight to WPE.

There wasn't much of a line and we ordered right away. DH ordered the rotisserie chicken and mashed potatoes, my mom got the meatloaf with mashed potatoes, Annie ordered a cheese pizza, Cassidy got the kids spaghetti with a meatball and Wyatt ordered the mac n cheese. I *think* I ordered the chicken fingers and fries but I can't remember! lol.

Here are some pics we took while we waited for our supper:

Everyone enjoyed their food very much except for Annie who did not like the sauce on the pizza. She is one of my pickier ones and if you couple that with being tired, you get a pouty kid who didn't eat. Oh well, there was plenty of other food for her to sample from everyone else. During supper Wyatt got pretty tired and started to not feel great. He is the one of my kids who if he pushes himself too hard and doesn't rest, gets kind of sick. We thought it would be best if DH took him back to the room while the rest of us stayed at DTD to so some shopping.

We shopped in the Christmas store, Goofy's, Once Upon a Toy, World of Disney and Basin. We were having a great time and decided to introduce Nana to the Ghiardelli Sundae. We ordered 2 to split - the Peanut Butter/Hot Fudge one and the Hot Fudge Strawberry one. SO SO SO yummy.

Once we were done with our Sundaes we headed back to the van to head back to the WL. Once back we checked on the boys and found them asleep - I have no idea what time it was, but I'm guessing around 10:30-11pm. Us girls then decided to go for a late night swim. We LOVE LOVE LOVE the quiet pool at VWL. It is our happy place (honestly we changed our reservations from POR to VLW this Sept so we could say good-bye to it ) So we suited up and headed down.

It was a gorgeous night and we had the pool to ourselves. The year Cassidy got sick we had planned on doing a world tour around Epcot as the C.A.K.E girls - those are our initials - Cassidy, Annie, Kristi and Emily - we were going to have T-shirts made and everything. That didn't happen, but we still talked about the C.A.K.E girls every now and then. What does that have to do with swimming? Well.....we decided that the C.A.K.E girls should also get into synchronized swimming. LOL So we developed quite the routine and began practicing for our "show". We had so much fun that night.

Here are some pics

After getting the beginning of our "routine" down we headed up to the room to get some rest for the next day. We were heading to Magic Kingdom and Epcot!

 

[DopeyDonald]

Side bar:

The Big Reveal for our February Birthday Trip

So I'm sure this will be extremely anti-climatic since it's been so long since it's happened. So we decided to tell the kids the night before we left since we wanted them to be able to pack some things and we are NOT morning people. Well in actuality we told them 2 days before since we had decided that we were going to drive down and spend the night in Minneapolis the night before our flight since the weather looked bad. So we were flying out on Fri the 30th of Jan and we were going to spend Thursday night the 29th in Minneapolis. So we told them on Wednesday evening.

It started with Wyatt getting home from Basketball practice and the girls just hanging out in their room. I set the kitchen table up with the dress box and Jaq and Gus. I also had a decorative "invitation" laying on top of the box that said:


Golden Birthdays aren’t meant to be celebrated

In shopping malls, water parks & with dolls.

Golden Birthdays are meant to be celebrated

In castles wearing ball gowns, dancing with princes.

We also had all of the Golden Magic Bands (yellow but close enough to Gold for me ) waiting in another room laying on a pillow to present to her.

So we called the kids down and told them that something had arrived for Annie for her birthday. She sat down at the table and read her card. She really didn't know what to think at that point, she just kind of smiled awkwardly and opened her box.

You can see Jaq and Gus's ears peeking up from in front of the box.

She pulled out the dress and was SO excited.

She loved the dress so much. She was so happy that we remembered that she liked to dress up too as we had thought she wouldn't want to our last trip. At this point though, as she told us later, she still thought the dress was for her birthday party back home here. She hadn't connected any dots yet.

So the next part of the reveal was to bring out the magic bands. DH went and got them from his office and presented them to her on one of our Disney pillows.

There now if you look at her face, there is a little bit of WHAT?! is going on here....

Checking out that band a little more carefully....

Now things are starting to click and this was the face we got....

She was BLOWN away. Cassidy was excited too and Wyatt was in shock. They could not believe we had pulled off a surprise like that. (I DO NOT KEEP SECRETS WELL - LOL) At that time we presented Cassidy with a present also- Figaro had brought her a Minnie Mouse dress for her to wear on this trip. She was thrilled. Poor Wyatt just got a gift card - he was pretty OK with that though

I don't have more pics than this because I was trying to sneakily video also, which I am working on editing because it is about half an hour because we hid the camera so they wouldn't see it so we had to record everything.

So now the kids knew we were leaving the next day for Disney World! They were SO excited and so were we! Annie was so excited and greatful. She is constantly feeling left out being stuck in the middle and it was nice to do something so special just for her. Unfortunately the Castle was closed while we were there, but we did a birthday dinner at 1900 PF for her and she loved it.

I will be writing a mini trip report soon with that trip's details. It was one of my very favorite trips - we had a wonderful time.

 

[DopeyDonald]

Back to September for now;

After our late night swimming, we slept in a bit the next morning. Today we were going to be headed to Magic Kingdom and we had a fastpass for BOG lunch. We had never eaten there (Annie and Nana had dinner there once but the rest of us never had) and were excited to try it. There are not many pics from this morning because it was drizzly and we split up for a bit. The big kids, DH and Nana headed to MK via boat for their Space Mountain Fast passes they had. Cassidy and I were taking our time getting ready because we were tired and Cassidy was not feeling 100%. I think she was wearing down a bit too after so much activity.

Here are a few pics from Nana's camera documenting their bus journey -

Once everyone got going Cassidy and I got ready and headed to the boat dock. While we were walking there, I heard the boat horn blow and knew that we just missed a boat - and we could see it had been a big one. This meant that we would have a wait and that the next boat was probably going to be a small one. Cassidy was pretty crabby at this point and I finally figured out she was hungry. She is not picky normally, but when we are traveling she can be a bear with food. She had been wanting a taco very badly and there are just not many places to get a taco at Disney World.

At this point it was probably 10:15 or so and our lunch reservation was for 1pm. I knew we had some time to kill do I decided that her and I would go to Epcot, head to Mexico, get a Taco and then head to MK. It sounds crazy but there was a method to my madness. I decided that we were going to leave the van at Epcot and take the monorail to MK. My thought process was this - MK was closing early that night for a Halloween Party, so after leaving the MK we could all head to Epcot via monorail and hang out there for awhile. That way the van would be there waiting for us.

My plan worked perfectly! Cassidy and I got in the van and drove over to Epcot. Once we parked and got into the park, Cassidy decided she wanted a hamburger instead *head smack - I could have gotten her one of those anywhere!!!! Oh well, so we swung into the Electric Umbrella and grabbed her a kids burger to go. She ate it in the stroller while I headed to the monorail. She ate every bite, so it was a good stop after all.

So now her and I were on the monorail headed to Magic Kingdom with a full belly - life was good.

We arrived at the Magic Kingdom and headed to the Little Mermaid ride. Everyone else was still doing other things - the had gone on Space and done Buzz I think. Cassidy and I enjoyed our ride on LM but when it was over we noticed that there was a long line of people blocking the exit. CM's were trying to get everyone flushed out but it was POURING. and I mean POURING. We really needed to get going to our reservation though and I hate standing in crowds so we decided to make a break for the stroller. It had been drizzling up until then so thankfully I had the stroller covered and I had a poncho in my backpack. However, between the exit and stroller parking was enough to SOAK us. Water was ankle deep at stroller parking and I am NOT exaggerating. I got Cassidy loaded up and we begin to head to BOG. The water was crazy. I have only seen it pour like that once before in Disney - nuts. We made it over to BOG and were able to get inside. We were very wet and it was pretty cold in there so it made for a pretty miserable meal.

Here you can kind of see how wet Cassidy is -

We went through the line and ordered (I had not done the pre-order thing) and had trouble finding a table big enough for 6 of us. We finally found one and waited for our food to get to us. We were divided. DH, Wyatt and the girls liked their meals, mom and I thought ours were almost unedible. The boys had ordered the beef sandwich and I can't remember what the girls had but my mom and I had the Croque Monsignor (sorry for the spelling lol) and to be honest, I think I could have made the same thing at home. It was nothing special and we didn't even finish half. We did enjoy the cupcakes we had for dessert though.

Here we are finishing up with our meal. You can see I kept my poncho on the whole meal because it kept me warmer - lol. I was so wet and cold!

After we ate we headed over towards Splash Mountain to use our next Fast passes. It had stopped raining and was fairly nice out but Cassidy just couldn't seem to warm up. She was shivering and looked pretty miserable. I wondered if she was getting sick We went on splash (probably not my finest moment - getting the shivering kid even more wet but she wanted to go....lol) After Splash we ended up buying Cassidy (and Annie so she could match - thanks Nana) a sweat suit outfit. She put it on and was much warmer and started to feel better.

She was chilling in the stroller, warming up and taking a little rest and then we would start the rest of our packed afternoon! (You can still see how wet the ground was from earlier!)

Up next some more MK fun and then on to Epcot!

 

[MusicMicha]

I just love how you guys did the reveal!!! What an amazing surprise you pulled off! I promise to catch up with the rest soon. You asked for pic's if I didn't trip report so I'm finally going to try to insert some. One day I'll write a report, one day. This is our Cassidy who has grown so much this year! Below is Lily and me being silly outside LTT. She is now almost up to my nose and she's only 9....