November 13th
Friday, the 13th
I didn't set an alarm or have a wake up call for this morning, but we were both up and awake at 7am. Happy vacation! Since we were up early, we decided to go ahead and make it for rope drop/park opening. After eating breakfast in our room (donuts and milk for Riley, coffee and muffins for me) we dressed and headed out. I was all set to drive, but my daughter wanted to ride the bus again. I should have just made arrangements to return the rental car right then!
It was chilly this morning. Where's our Florida weather? Oh yeah, this is OUR Florida weather. Last October when we went to Disney they set record lows 3 days in a row. I'm thinking we bring the cold weather with us! It was so chilly outside the windows were fogged!
DHS all ready for Christmas
Today Riley had one goal. Making me ride RNR. Now, I love roller coasters. The higher, the faster, the better. However, I hate going upside down. I always end up with a headache. I loaded up on Tylenol before we left.
When we arrived at DHS, we were the 3rd and 4th people in our turnstile. Now, this made things interesting, as when they let us through, we got to the rope and were first in line. Right in front of the Toy Story Mania guy. I start negotiating with Riley.
"Since we're right here, let's go ride TSM first. You know how long the line gets and it sometimes runs out of fastpasses. If we do it first and get fastpasses, we could probably ride it twice."
She's not buying it. Until I promise 2 rides on RNR. Then she bites.
What did I get myself in to?? But the rope drops, and we're soon speedwalking back to Toy Story Mania
Okay, whoever named it Mania was correct. It's a madhouse dash to get back and ride it. It's a fun ride but, to me, I don't think it's worth the 90 minute waits you usually see. Thank goodness for fastpass! However, thanks to our early arrival and some quick walking, we were number 19 & 20 to ride it this day.
Since we NEVER ride this standby, we've never seen Mr Potato Head before. Unfortunately, they had us speedwalking so quickly to get on the ride, we only got a brief glimpse and a couple of seconds to listen
Load in, take off and almost half of our screens didn't work, but that's okay, because they pulled us off at the end and let us ride again! We had quite the competition shooting playing the 3D carnival games on the ride, but I beat her both times.
I may or may not have been rubbing in the fact that I tripled her score here.
We grabbed fastpasses for later, then headed back up front to torture me for awhile. Time to keep my promise for RNR
Thankfully it was only a 5 minute wait. Of course, they see Riley's birthday button, and put us in the front row. Oy. Thanks. I actually liked it, and I didn't end up with a headache! I bought the picture. I'll have to scan it and post it
A little more negotiation took place. Riley is a thrill ride girl. However, she hates scary things, Halloween etc. She was starting to refuse to ride Tower of Terror.....my all time most favorite Disney ride. This was not going to fly with me at all. She LOVED it last year, and rode it at least 15 times. I told her since I had to ride RNR, she owed me one trip on ToT for every ride on RNR. She finally relented, and of course, she loves it (the drops, not the theming)
Again, we bought the picture. Her eyes are shut.
Can I just stop and say how much our family loves DHS. It gets such a bad rap on the disboards, but we spend tons of time here on every trip. We love the thrill rides, the older boys love the Indiana Jones and Lights Motors Shows, DH is a huge Muppets fan and Riley loves to draw. I knew before I even asked where our next stop would be. Animation Studios to watch the movie about how Mushu became a character, then off to play the animation games.
We took the drawing class and tried our hand at drawing Piglet. Once outside we ran into the characters from the movie UP, which was appropriate as we had watched it on the plane trip to MCO.
The character handler here was great. He made lots of small talk with people in line, and held out his pins for Riley. I had bought her 4 pins to go on her autograph book bag I had made for her, and she had never pin traded. She compared pins, he realized she was new, and explained the whole pin trading process to her. She ended up trading a Mickey pin for a Mickey and Minnie in front of the castle. After that, she was totally hooked on pin trading!
Were you able to get the tickets fixed at GR. It said you had to go to the resort, but I'm guessing that Epcot was able to fix it so go them!! How horrible would that be to have to bus allll the way back to the resort to have the tickets fixed 
Sounds like you are having fun already!
my teenager can't be parted from her phone long enough to appreciate it......
ToT is my fav ride at DHS. I'm glad Riley decided to go on it with you 
How cute was that face painting - she is absolutely adorable!
