“You’re My Favorites: Now Go Away!” Feb/Mar 2019 First Family Trip (Complete 8/19)

We were in room 3064 and, getting off of the elevator, found ourselves just two rooms away overlooking the Creepy Clown Pool.
I was in 3060, so 2 rooms down from you (one of the brick balconies but without a tree obstructing my view). What did you use to request your room? I had submitted a TP request, but was assigned a 1st floor, pool view which I wasn't happy about (lack of privacy was an issue), so they were thankfully able to move me to the 3rd floor pool view.

My last experience with the five of us in a single room was a cruise ship room, so it’s possible that my expectations were so low that anything that didn’t involved us tripping over each other and shimmying around furniture would have been welcome.
Yeah, I can definitely imagine that being an improvement! Once the girls get bigger you can consider the Poly Villas for space. Mom and I were in there and it was soooo spacious! Plus 2 HUGE bathrooms (one sink/shower, and one tub/sink/toilet) - like, literally those bathrooms combined are probably the size of my actual bedroom. It's more points, but cheaper than having to get 2 rooms and you get the benefit of the Polynesian.

People complain about Boardwalk feeling very spread out, and we never had that feeling given our close elevator proximity.
Same here. Though I never really had to leave the vicinity of the elevator, since I could go up to my room or down to the walkway out to the Boardwalk.
 
Hopping aboard . Looking forward to reading more about your adventures
 
Very wise reminder to all us Disney trip goers to put every situation in the right perspective. A useless trip to a room that wasn't ready is inconvenient, but that 100 dollars is a nice perk.

I think in the dining plan comparison breakdown, the plan won out this night by not having an ADR to follow. You all seemed really relaxed and happy with your decision to grab a few QS items; it might have been a little more hectic had you had to worry about making it to a reservation on time. Plus, the ice cream you got there was probably better than the Kitchen Sink. Personally, I found the Sink to be a fun experience, but taste wise it was too crazy.

Glad to hear the single stroller made it to your room, even if it did interrupt the bedtime routine a bit.
 
Hi :wave: just found you trip report. Your girls are adorable. It's so nice seeing Disney through the eyes of your children.

I'm looking forward to following along.
 


Yeah, I'm pretty sure we'd have to proactively schedule that if we wanted to make it happen. Which, we totally can! You're one of only a handful of real-life people that would actually care about most of my nitty gritty details.

You know I live for the nitty gritty! Yes, a WDW geek-out night would be great. My retiree mom's nights have been pretty booked up lately, leaving my babysitting opportunities more limited than usual -- but C is home on Fridays, so maybe we can escape somewhere one Friday evening.

She apologized again, told us to go grab lunch somewhere, and that there would be a $100 room credit on the account for our troubles. I asked if we could at least leave our bags, which she said was perfectly fine, so we dumped everything except our swim bag and headed out to the pool.

This is great!!! Far exceeds the minor annoyance of bathroom changing (which, as you said, you had planned for anyhow) and an extra trip up to the room.

It’s hard to tell from the pictures, but the balcony is designed differently from the typical ones at the resort. The cut-out section where you can see the pool is smaller, but then there’s a couple extra feet behind the brick wall on each side. We had a table and two chairs but had room to drag another room chair out there so the kids could have breakfast (and drop their crumbs) outside in the mornings. I was also pleasantly surprised with how big the room felt inside. We kept the sofa folded out to a bed, the Murphy bed down, and the coffee table and chairs tucked to the side pretty much the whole time. Even with that, we had plenty of room to maneuver. My last experience with the five of us in a single room was a cruise ship room, so it’s possible that my expectations were so low that anything that didn’t involved us tripping over each other and shimmying around furniture would have been welcome.

Aren't balconies at WDW wonderful?! Our stay at YC club spoiled me for so many reasons, but the balcony may be the biggest one. Since our post-YC stay was at AoA and gave us space to hang out after the girls went to sleep, we haven't yet felt the sting of no balcony yet. This fall, we'll be at Coronado, so back to hanging in the bathroom with the sliding doors closed while we drink wine and unwind from the day (we did that in 2016 at Caribbean Beach and it actually wasn't too awful...but certainly no where near as wonderful as a balcony!).

That's awesome that the studio had more space than you had anticipated! Sounds like switching over to that from the Pop rooms was a fantastic move for you guys.

We continued our tour around the lake with a stop at Ample Hills.

Ample Hills is amazing -- and 100% reason enough to stay along Crescent Lake!

I was generally pleased with my Walmart grocery experience, especially given the pricing. I had looked at Garden Grocer and Prime Now, but the same groceries were about 20% cheaper using Walmart and I had a coupon code that wiped out my delivery fee. I went into it expecting that it wouldn’t be perfect (Walmart isn’t generally known for its customer service) but I think the less than stellar substitution was worth my significant cost savings.

Good to hear! We've been happy with our switch from Orlando Grocery Express to PrimeNow, especially since my girls are so particular and routine about some items, BUT I will definitely throw together a Walmart order to see if we can get our items through them instead.
 
Wow, that was really nice! That's a whole dinner!

Yeah, it really was nice. Since we were on the dining plan, that covered a couple of meals worth of tips.

I almost forgot all about Ample Hills!!!

You can't forget the ice cream!

Enjoying your report so far! :)

Thanks so much.

The girls will get a good laugh from that years from now!

Right? They picked it for Mickie and Minnie without actually noticing the wedding theme.

Thanks for sharing so far - sounds like an amazing day. Also great comparison with the DDP. I think it works well with your family and while the kids are young!

I definitely think the DDP was the right choice for this trip, but it was a conscious decision we made to splurge a bit more to get a whole lot more out of it. I don't think it's the right choice for most families, but we are right in the sweet spot for it.

Signing up!

Welcome!

Joining in. Can't wait to hear about the rest of your trip.

Glad to have you. :-)

Sounds like a good first day! And the bonus $100 for the inconvenience is a pretty nice deal :)

Love the pic of all of you in the photobooth!

It was a really nice way to start off vacation without too much stress. I'm glad we ended up having a laid back day where we moved on our own schedule.

Dinning plan made sense when you have kids 9 & under and you do lots of character meals. We did it our first trip and really enjoyed it. I wish we would have done it the second trip, we didn't enjoy as many meals because I was trying to save.

I was very glad to have it this trip, but that's because we were really going all out on meals the kids would like. Had we been a bit more conservative on the character meals, it wouldn't have made sense.

What did you use to request your room? I had submitted a TP request, but was assigned a 1st floor, pool view which I wasn't happy about (lack of privacy was an issue), so they were thankfully able to move me to the 3rd floor pool view.

The member I rented points from put the basic "near elevators" request on file. I then put a very detailed TP request in. I explained that, traveling with two strollers, proximity to the elevator was our primary concern. I then when on to say that, if possible, we really wanted rooms numbered xxxx-xxxx. I'd have to go back and look up the exact numbers, but I gave rooms on floors 3-5 and the range encompassed the block of dedicated studios near the elevator where we were ultimately assigned. I figured a dedicated studio would have less risk of sound from neighbors since it doesn't have a connecting door and Hubby prefers not to be on a ground floor for safety reasons. Maybe it was just luck, or maybe giving an exact range of room numbers made it easier for the assigner to quickly see a room within the range rather than having to look at specific features of various rooms.

Yeah, I can definitely imagine that being an improvement! Once the girls get bigger you can consider the Poly Villas for space. Mom and I were in there and it was soooo spacious! Plus 2 HUGE bathrooms (one sink/shower, and one tub/sink/toilet) - like, literally those bathrooms combined are probably the size of my actual bedroom. It's more points, but cheaper than having to get 2 rooms and you get the benefit of the Polynesian.

We looked at renting points for Poly but Boardwalk was already stretching our budget more than we liked. Maybe next time, especially if we're going for a shorter trip, we'll be willing to put up the extra money to stay there.

Same here. Though I never really had to leave the vicinity of the elevator, since I could go up to my room or down to the walkway out to the Boardwalk.

Exactly! I think my experience of Boardwalk feeling compact and accessible was directly related to having the stairs and elevators right there.

Hopping aboard . Looking forward to reading more about your adventures

Welcome. Thanks for joining.

I think in the dining plan comparison breakdown, the plan won out this night by not having an ADR to follow. You all seemed really relaxed and happy with your decision to grab a few QS items; it might have been a little more hectic had you had to worry about making it to a reservation on time. Plus, the ice cream you got there was probably better than the Kitchen Sink. Personally, I found the Sink to be a fun experience, but taste wise it was too crazy.

I agree about not having an ADR, as I would have been stressing it the whole flight down. And, logically, I know that the Ample Hills ice cream is much better than the stuff served at Beaches and Cream. I just think that the kids would have lost their minds if they brought out a giant family sundae for us all to share.

Hi :wave: just found you trip report. Your girls are adorable. It's so nice seeing Disney through the eyes of your children.

I'm looking forward to following along.

Thanks for joining in. It really was amazing getting to see their reactions to everything. They say the only thing better than being a young kid who believes at Christmas is being the parent of that kid at Christmas. I think the same is true for Disney: watching their joy was incredible.

You know I live for the nitty gritty! Yes, a WDW geek-out night would be great. My retiree mom's nights have been pretty booked up lately, leaving my babysitting opportunities more limited than usual -- but C is home on Fridays, so maybe we can escape somewhere one Friday evening.

Dude, I'm just sitting here, getting ready to watch trash TV tonight. Come on over :-)

Aren't balconies at WDW wonderful?! Our stay at YC club spoiled me for so many reasons, but the balcony may be the biggest one. Since our post-YC stay was at AoA and gave us space to hang out after the girls went to sleep, we haven't yet felt the sting of no balcony yet. This fall, we'll be at Coronado, so back to hanging in the bathroom with the sliding doors closed while we drink wine and unwind from the day (we did that in 2016 at Caribbean Beach and it actually wasn't too awful...but certainly no where near as wonderful as a balcony!).

That's awesome that the studio had more space than you had anticipated! Sounds like switching over to that from the Pop rooms was a fantastic move for you guys.

Yeah, the balcony was key for being able to all share one room without feeling the crunch of having to keep silent and dark once the kids were asleep. Although, EP and HS proximity may have spoiled me more than the balcony. Being completely on your own schedule without having to worry about bus times and lines was awesome.

Ample Hills is amazing -- and 100% reason enough to stay along Crescent Lake!

Agreed. It was delicious.

Good to hear! We've been happy with our switch from Orlando Grocery Express to PrimeNow, especially since my girls are so particular and routine about some items, BUT I will definitely throw together a Walmart order to see if we can get our items through them instead.

I thought the variety was really good. Plus, you can save even more money by purchasing their off-brand items instead of the brand names. I know some people are particular, but I find off-brand granola bars, peanut butter, cream cheese, etc to taste perfectly fine. Their 6-pack of cheese bagels were surprisingly yummy, to the point that I may be grabbing them in my day-to-day life as well, now.
 
Park Day One: Magic Kingdom (TP Predicted and Actual Crowd Level 6)

The excitement of our first theme park day had all of the ladies in the room up before 6:00am. Hubby and I tried a few times to shush the girls into resting quietly a little longer, but they were having none of it and, honestly, neither was I. We eventually gave up and put on Disney Jr so that Hubby could rest a bit more and the girls would at least sit quietly for a few more minutes. Holy moly, those TVs seem bright first thing in the morning! I tried to adjust the brightness, but Disney has locked out a lot of the controls on the remote. I get it, they don’t want someone completely screwing things up, but I wish I could have just dimmed it a bit. After a few seconds of temporary blindness, our eyes adjusted, Hubby rolled over, and I started getting ready for the day.

The forecast was a high of 73, right of the border between shorts and pants weather. Since we were planning on staying for the fireworks, I opted to put us in pants and risk being a bit warm at the height of the day to avoid being chilly later. Today would include lunch at CRT, so the girls and I all had lightweight princess dresses and Hubby had a prince t-shirt. I got myself dressed and headed down to the Boardwalk to wait for the bakery opening at 6:30am. Crescent Lake is so tranquil in the early morning hours. There were a few folks jogging while the sun was rising and it made for such a pleasant early coffee run. I ended up arriving at the bakery right as the CM was unlocking the door, got our two mugs filled up, and headed back to the room.

I had gone back and forth about whether to do Tinkerbell gifts on this trip. Our good friends had done them, and her kids had talked about them several times, but I didn’t think my girls heard enough to expect anything, so I was under no obligation to do them. While I was wavering, I saw a post on a local freecycle Facebook page giving away a couple dozen little Disney figures and was very kindly given them. Before leaving, I had sorted out the figures based on which characters and rides we’d encounter each day, wrote up daily notes from Tinkerbell, and had each set bagged together for easy access at night.

When I got back to the room, the girls were still glued to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so they hadn’t seen their gifts on the bathroom counter. It wasn’t until we shut off the TV and insisted they start getting ready that they found the figures and they were thrilled. Since we had FPs for Peter Pan, Tink had welcomed them to the Magic Kingdom and told them to enjoy her favorite ride along with several friends from her movie. The girls were so excited to show us the gifts and made sure that we saved their special note. They seemed to think it would be a one-and-done welcome gift, so at least the next morning was going to be a surprise as well.

Because it was vacation, I left the girls have Nutella on their English muffins, instead of the normal peanut butter. I also poured them each a good glass of milk since I didn’t know how they’d do on dairy intake throughout the trip. Well, they all had a few bites, A started coughing, and she threw up into the toilet. Upon seeing her sister toss, B proceeded to do so as well. This did NOT seem like a good omen! Now, my girls have been known to be cough-vomiters, so I was hoping it was just that and not a real stomach bug. Since they seemed fine otherwise, I decided we’d just keep getting ready for the park and deal with it later if any further symptoms arose. We finished getting everyone ready, gave A and B some dry English muffin to get something in their stomachs, and headed down to the bus stop.

We arrived at the stop at 7:35 to see lots of folks waiting and no time listed for MK on the board. The CM there said that there had been some issue with dispatch for a few weeks wherein MK buses wouldn’t show up with times until they were 2 minutes out. AK and DS were fine, but the MK bus times just weren’t updating. This was disappointing, as it meant we wouldn’t be able to check wait times in the app, either. We had a short wait and were loading onto the bus at 7:39am.

Unfortunately, the bus was nearly full for our first attempt to load three kids, a behemoth double stroller, and an umbrella stroller. There were already a few strollers loaded when we got on, so I dragged the double up to the second level where the kids had snagged the last few seats and Hubby stood with the umbrella. Maneuvering the strollers through all of those folks made me much happier about our choice to book on Crescent Lake: at least we’d only be playing this game half of our trip, since we could walk to EP and HS.

We made it through security and the tapstiles quickly and headed into the park. Turning the corner and seeing the castle, it hit me: we’d really made it, we were in the Magic Kingdom! We started to walk up Main St, but then I saw the omnibus coming towards us. After quickly asking a CM where it picked, we doubled back and waited to board. Yes, our first ride of the trip, and the girls’ ever for Disney World, was the front of the 2nd level of the omnibus!

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Fun fact: you can load your stroller(s) onto the omnibus. I had just assumed that you couldn’t as clearly those vehicles were not built with that intended purpose, so I put them to the side and planned to double back. As the driver was making his last call, there was still plenty of room, so I asked if there was any way they’d fit. He said they’d fit even full and proceeded load them into the space just under the stairs to the second story.

The girls were hamming it up the whole way up Main St, waiving to everyone below and having a blast. When we unloaded in front of the castle, I wanted to make sure we got family photos while we were still relatively put together. As I had read on the boards, the lines for photographers closer to the entrance were several families deep but those nearer to the hub had no one waiting. We hopped in line and quickly got our obligatory castle photos.

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From there, we split up: Hubby and the girls explored around the hub while head back to Starbucks. The line to order wasn’t all that deep, and it was moving fast, but it took forever for the drinks to be made. My frap was done in a few minutes but hubby’s hot latte felt like it took forever. All in all, it was about 20 minutes to get our drinks, which I wasn’t so annoyed about because it wasn’t like we were missing ride time to do it. At least at MK you can do the Starbucks wait before the rope drops.

We met back up at 8:40, I got my “coffee with the castle” picture, and we let the girls try to take a couple photo of Hubby and me.

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Our plan for this day had deliberately not included making it in time for rope drop. I had no idea how we’d do with getting out of the room in the morning and I didn’t want to be rushing the girls up Main St when all they wanted to do was look around. However, since we were all up with the sun, we had all of our looking around done in time. While we found a spot for the welcome show, Hubby and I discussed the action plan for the morning. We were scheduled to start with Merida, then head into Fantasyland, but her greet wouldn’t open until 9:15. Instead, we decided to start with Buzz and Astro Orbiter in Tomorrowland, and then head up to Merida to fall back into the plan for the day.

The girls adored the welcome show. They were jumping up and down, cheering, clapping, and just generally in awe. Once we helped the Fairy Godmother with a little bit of magic, we were on our way back towards Tomorrowland. We were at Buzz at 9:04 and walked right on. Hubby rode with B and I rode with A and C.

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You’d think a ride like this with no height requirement would have the pictures calibrated a little better for small kids, but oh well. Much more upsetting is that, with only two adults and three kids under 7, I had to take one for the team and not get my own laser! Neither of the girls was doing a particularly good job of aiming, so I kept switching back and forth to help them both, instead. We were off of Buzz at 9:12 and over to the Astro Orbiter line at 9:14. Unfortunately, despite it being so early, we still had to wait two elevator cycles to ride. Coincidentally, this was the ride the girls were most looking forward to because it was a spinner on top of a building. I was thankful that my research had led me to ride this first thing in the morning, as I would have been much more frustrated by the slow loading and low capacity later in the day. We were on a rocket at 9:24 and, for a spinner, it is a fun little ride with a great view.

From there, Hubby doubled back to get the strollers we’d parked by Carousel of Progress and the rest of us headed toward Merida on foot. We bumped into Alice heading out toward her greet and walked a bit with her. Alice in Wonderland is one that the girls have no real knowledge of which lead to a pretty funny encounter. She was being sweet and said, “You girls are triplets, right? Do you know I have very good friends who are twins?” to which the girls replied, “Nope! We haven’t seen your movie.”

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On that high note, Alice continued to her meet and we turned toward Merida. At this point it was 9:35 and there was a CM letting people know that her line was closed for now but that we could try lining up for her next scheduled meet at 10:25. We continued on the path towards the castle to our next stop: stroller parking by the Rapunzel bathrooms (thrilling, I know). Strollers successfully stowed, we got into the line for It’s a Small World at 9:44 and were boarding a boat at 9:55. The girls adored this ride and it ended up being one of their favorites. I loved seeing them having so much fun but, oh my goodness, the 5-year-old questions. “Mommy, what’s that? Mommy, where’s that from? What about that, Mommy?” I found myself wishing this ride had a skipper a la Jungle Cruise so that I didn’t have to keep up a running commentary.

After the ride, we were reaching the end of our first FP window but I needed a bathroom break after my giant coffee that morning. We actually used the famed Rapunzel bathrooms and had a quick dance break. If you ever want to hear some off-key but heartily performed Tangled songs, my girls have got you covered.

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We tapped into our first FP for Peter Pan at 10:08 and were on a ship at 10:15. After our trip to Neverland, the kids were requesting a snack. We decided to but back to the Cheshire Café and potentially jump into Merida’s line. We passed right at 10:25, which was her next scheduled meet time, but her lines was already closed, again. The CMs said we could come back at 11:15 for her 11:25 greeting time, so I took a note and headed on. We had more luck with our snack, which was delicious. Plus, since we all split one, we had a nice treat without filling up too much before our big lunch. While we were snacking, I tried to jump into MDE check wait times in Fantasyland but MDE wasn’t loading and the mobile site was giving me a 503 error. We weren’t trying to pick up extra FPs just yet, so I crossed my fingers that this was just a small hiccup and not one of the longer outages that makes MDE infamous.

With Merida’s meet changing our morning plans, we headed back past the castle to use our next FP before her line would reopen. I had built our morning to avoid backtracking, but it really wasn’t that bad. I assume I’m in the minority, but MK felt much more compact than I expected. On the maps, I didn’t want us walking “all the way” from the Rapunzel bathrooms to, for instance, Winnie the Pooh but it felt very close in person. Plus, we could move much faster on the little path between Merida’s meet and the castle because everyone there was just trying to get somewhere. No one was stopping to look around, cutting across to get to a ride on the other side, or hopping into a food line. We were all moving quickly from point A to point B.

Our point B was Princess Fairytale Hall. Despite the sheer volume of character meals we had scheduled for this trip, I wanted this FP because Rapunzel is B’s favorite and this would be the only opportunity to meet Tiana. We tapped in at 10:50am and ushered straight into the meet.

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Tiana asked the girls about their wishes and, while I couldn’t hear everyone’s answers, I heard A say she wished for all princesses to be happy. That girl sure knows how to turn on the charm when she wants to.

When they visited with Rapunzel, the girls told her how the flowers in her hair had all of their favorite colors, and how she was B’s favorite princess.

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We came out just as the Royal Majesty Makers were starting their 10:55 show. We stopped to watch and Hubby was invited in to try to pull the sword from the stone. The kids got a kick out of the show (apparently Hubby shares his name with an evil sorcerer) and he played along and hammed it up.

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This was the first of many times where I was happy that we booked such a long trip. If we only had two days in MK, I’d have been rushing us through our plans. With double that time stretching before us, we had room to go with the flow and enjoy the little moments, too. Our next little moment was a trip into Castle Couture to get Pixie Dusted.

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I have a fractious relationship with glitter. If given the chance, I would ban it from my home, but I have very artistic little girls who live and die by it. My house is infested to the point that I am no longer surprised to find it on a carpet, cat, or spouse’s forehead. If you have managed to exist without this infection, then I would certainly skip this experience. If you, too, are resigned to the fact that it has taken up a semi-permanent place in your life, then the pixie dusting is adorable and the fact that there’s still glitter in your child’s hairbrush a month later unsurprising.

We headed back out at 11:10, determined to be in line early for Merida’s next meet and greet opportunity. On the way, we were spotted by the members of Cinderella’s court from the earlier show, who came over to make sure the girls were save from Evil Sorcerer Hubby and gave them a business card should they need to get in touch.

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From there, we bumped into the Fairy Godmother heading to her greet. She held out her hands to the girls and invited them to walk over with her.

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When we got to her spot, there was quite a line and I tried to usher the girls away since we obviously hadn’t waited our turn like those families. The Godmother was having none of my polite refusal and insisted that the girls pose for pictures and invited Hubby and me in for a family shot as well.

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While this was a lovely little surprise for us, I would have been less than thrilled had I been camping out to meet her for who-knows-how-long and some family just cut the line. Sorry, other families, I promise it was unintentional!

With our two surprise meets out of the way, we continued on and hopped into Merida’s line at 11:15, right when the CMs had suggested. It was already backed up a ways but I confirmed with the CM in charge of crowd control that, if we were in line there, we’d make it in to her next slot. When they opened her garden at 11:25, only about half the line went in and the rest of us were still waiting along the wall outside. It seemed like they were only letting in a family every few minutes from there and, based on my mental math, there was no way we were going to meet her, use our next FP, and make it to a 12:05 lunch reservation. I headed back to the CM in charge and asked for her best guess as to how long the line would be from where we were. It was 11:35 and she thought we would be waiting at least 30 minutes more, given our spot. Hubby and I quickly decided to cut bait. We had done our planned MK rope drop rides already this morning, so we’d just rope drop Merida on that other day, instead. There was simply no way we were waiting an hour to visit her and risk being late to our lunch.

So, if anyone reading this is planning on visiting Merida, don’t listen to the CMs who tell you to get there 10 minutes before her next scheduled time! Get there 20-30 minutes early with snack/lunch in hand and then your waiting time can double as meal time. Or, go ahead and rope drop her even though her greet won’t open for 15 minutes, as the line will build up quickly before she ever gets going.

Having essentially wasted 20 minutes on Merida, our 3rd FP window was open. We headed around the corner and got in line for Winnie the Pooh. My goodness, that section of Fantasyland needs stoplights! Or, perhaps, there should be stroller parking on the same side of the walkway as the ride designed for young children. I felt like I was playing Frogger trying to drop the kids at the ride, walk the stroller across to park it by mine train, and walk back to get in line. As soon as we tapped in, I started refreshing and was able to pull Jungle Cruise for 3:35pm. I had hoped to make it closer to 2:00pm but the line was moving quickly and I wanted to stop fiddling with my phone. We were in a honeypot and on our way through the Hundred Acre Woods at 11:54am. I know this ride doesn’t get a lot of love, but my girls had a blast. They laughed out loud every time Tigger bounced out and surprised them. We were off just in time to fight our way across the crowds to our stroller and head toward lunch.
 
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Well, they all had a few bites, A started coughing, and she threw up into the toilet. Upon seeing her sister toss, B proceeded to do so as well. This did NOT seem like a good omen!

Oh no! That doesn’t seem like a great start! Glad it didn’t derail your morning.

Yes, our first ride of the trip, and the girls’ ever for Disney World, was the front of the 2nd level of the omnibus!

That’s awesome!

It looks like you really had a great morning with so many meets and surprises!

I love your girls’ dresses - they are so cute!! Are they identical? Sorry, I’m sure you get asked that all the time.
 
Fairy godmother is awesome. We had awesome pixie dust from her as well on our trip. I love your girls dresses btw
 
The girls adored the welcome show. They were jumping up and down, cheering, clapping, and just generally in awe. Once we helped the Fairy Godmother with a little bit of magic, we were on our way back towards Tomorrowland. We were at Buzz at 9:04 and walked right on. Hubby rode with B and I rode with A and C.

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So jealous! Our trip to Disneyland, we waited in line 90 minutes for this thing. Never again!


We bumped into Alice heading out toward her greet and walked a bit with her. Alice in Wonderland is one that the girls have no real knowledge of which lead to a pretty funny encounter. She was being sweet and said, “You girls are triplets, right? Do you know I have very good friends who are twins?” to which the girls replied, “Nope! We haven’t seen your movie.”

:rotfl:



We came out just as the Royal Majesty Makers were starting their 10:55 show. We stopped to watch and Hubby was invited in to try to pull the sword from the stone. The kids got a kick out of the show (apparently Hubby shares his name with an evil sorcerer) and he played along and hammed it up.

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I love what a good sport he is! DH can sometimes call it up but other times gets self-conscious. Just like me!

I have a fractious relationship with glitter. If given the chance, I would ban it from my home, but I have very artistic little girls who live and die by it. My house is infested to the point that I am no longer surprised to find it on a carpet, cat, or spouse’s forehead. If you have managed to exist without this infection, then I would certainly skip this experience. If you, too, are resigned to the fact that it has taken up a semi-permanent place in your life, then the pixie dusting is adorable and the fact that there’s still glitter in your child’s hairbrush a month later unsurprising.

I have a boy and somehow we STILL always have glitter somewhere. A friend calls it "the herpes of craft supplies."
 
Before leaving, I had sorted out the figures based on which characters and rides we’d encounter each day, wrote up daily notes from Tinkerbell, and had each set bagged together for easy access at night.
Perfect!

Well, they all had a few bites, A started coughing, and she threw up into the toilet. Upon seeing her sister toss, B proceeded to do so as well. This did NOT seem like a good omen! Now, my girls have been known to be cough-vomiters, so I was hoping it was just that and not a real stomach bug.
Oh No!!! Morgan has thrown up in Disney World with similar results. Something just didn't sit well.

After quickly asking a CM where it picked, we doubled back and waited to board. Yes, our first ride of the trip, and the girls’ ever for Disney World, was the front of the 2nd level of the omnibus!

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I loved riding the Omnibus! Perfect way to start the day, I think!

Coincidentally, this was the ride the girls were most looking forward to because it was a spinner on top of a building. I was thankful that my research had led me to ride this first thing in the morning, as I would have been much more frustrated by the slow loading and low capacity later in the day. We were on a rocket at 9:24 and, for a spinner, it is a fun little ride with a great view.
They seriously need to figure out how to make getting on and off that ride a little better! Then again Spinner Rides are slow loading anyway...

She was being sweet and said, “You girls are triplets, right? Do you know I have very good friends who are twins?” to which the girls replied, “Nope! We haven’t seen your movie.”

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Ha!

he girls adored this ride and it ended up being one of their favorites. I loved seeing them having so much fun but, oh my goodness, the 5-year-old questions. “Mommy, what’s that? Mommy, where’s that from? What about that, Mommy?” I found myself wishing this ride had a skipper a la Jungle Cruise so that I didn’t have to keep up a running commentary.
Got to love the questions!

Plus, since we all split one, we had a nice treat without filling up too much before our big lunch. While we were snacking, I tried to jump into MDE check wait times in Fantasyland but MDE wasn’t loading and the mobile site was giving me a 503 error. We weren’t trying to pick up extra FPs just yet, so I crossed my fingers that this was just a small hiccup and not one of the longer outages that makes MDE infamous.
MDE was pretty bad while we were there. The one day, when it was down I thought I had lost all of my fastpasses for the second half of the trip!

how, who came over to make sure the girls were save from Evil Sorcerer Hubby and gave them a business card should they need to get in touch.

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What was on the business card? That is hilarious!

When we got to her spot, there was quite a line and I tried to usher the girls away since we obviously hadn’t waited our turn like those families. The Godmother was having none of my polite refusal and insisted that the girls pose for pictures and invited Hubby and me in for a family shot as well.

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I have a feel ing they do that often. Just take the magic and run before anyone complains! ;)
 
I love the photo of the girls on the Omnibus!

We headed back out at 11:10, determined to be in line early for Merida’s next meet and greet opportunity. On the way, we were spotted by the members of Cinderella’s court from the earlier show, who came over to make sure the girls were save from Evil Sorcerer Hubby and gave them a business card should they need to get in touch.

This is so funny! I love little touches like that. Also, so sweet of the fairy godmother to pose for a picture. How fun that you had such cute little magic moments to start the day!
 
I am enjoying your trip reports so much! Brings back so many memories, going to Disney with my triplet siblings!!!!
 
Before leaving, I had sorted out the figures based on which characters and rides we’d encounter each day, wrote up daily notes from Tinkerbell, and had each set bagged together for easy access at night.
How cute!

Because it was vacation, I left the girls have Nutella on their English muffins, instead of the normal peanut butter. I also poured them each a good glass of milk since I didn’t know how they’d do on dairy intake throughout the trip. Well, they all had a few bites, A started coughing, and she threw up into the toilet. Upon seeing her sister toss, B proceeded to do so as well. This did NOT seem like a good omen! Now, my girls have been known to be cough-vomiters, so I was hoping it was just that and not a real stomach bug. Since they seemed fine otherwise, I decided we’d just keep getting ready for the park and deal with it later if any further symptoms arose. We finished getting everyone ready, gave A and B some dry English muffin to get something in their stomachs, and headed down to the bus stop.
Oh no! We've been sick in Disney, myself with a horrible stomach virus and the boys when they were younger with upset stomachs in the middle of the night. NO FUN! I really hope the morning wasn't foreshadowing for later in the day..........

Yes, our first ride of the trip, and the girls’ ever for Disney World, was the front of the 2nd level of the omnibus!
:laughing: that's great! Not everyone can say they've ridden that, you need to really be in the right place at the right time.

Unfortunately, despite it being so early, we still had to wait two elevator cycles to ride
We don't love Astro Orbiter but have ridden a couple times and it seems whenever you attempt it, the wait is s-l-o-w.

“You girls are triplets, right? Do you know I have very good friends who are twins?” to which the girls replied, “Nope! We haven’t seen your movie.”
Love it!
I assume I’m in the minority, but MK felt much more compact than I expected.
I agree. I don't really care if we backtrack or not the way some do; we really mostly do what we feel like doing when we want to do it. I don't think MK is tough to go from spot to spot and I don't think HS is, either. AK, yes for the most part and Epcot I admit I don't particularly like going back and forth between FW and WS so we hardly ever do.

What a pain about Merida! I love her but have only met her once at her M&G: we got lucky when we had breakfast at CRT and she was filling in for a missing Aurora :goodvibes When we met her at her M&G it was around when she first started meeting so her lines were always long and I've wanted to meet her again but as you said, it seems her line is always crazy or always closed.
 
Thanks for the tip on Merida. My girls love her so assuming her meet times are similar when we go we will just plan to have a snack/lunch break while we wait.
 
Whew, happy to hear the vomit incident didn't impair your first morning. My son is a cough-vomiter, too, so I feel your pain.

Lovely photos of you all on Main Street. And for five, your daughters took a pretty decent photo of you and your husband.

You had a good attitude about the Merida situation. If I had shown up a second time only to be turned away, I probably would have let it get to me a little.

When one visits the Tangled bathrooms, one must always sing and dance to the music...

Oh, glitter. I agree with you 100% on that front. And the "sprinkling of pixie dust" they get at Disney is astounding. The things we do for our kids...
 
Sounds like such a great morning! The girls are adorable! And what a fun, expected meet with Fairy Godmother!

Stinks about the Merida situation, but you did well working around it! And hopefully you were able to catch her on another day!
 
Oh no! That doesn’t seem like a great start! Glad it didn’t derail your morning.

That’s awesome!

It looks like you really had a great morning with so many meets and surprises!

I love your girls’ dresses - they are so cute!! Are they identical? Sorry, I’m sure you get asked that all the time.

We did have a fun morning with all of the surprise characters.

Yes, they are identical. We hit the crazy genetic lottery.

Fairy godmother is awesome. We had awesome pixie dust from her as well on our trip. I love your girls dresses btw

She was very sweet with the girls. I really hit the mother load on the dresses: they're comfy, cheap, and machine washable!

So jealous! Our trip to Disneyland, we waited in line 90 minutes for this thing. Never again!


:rotfl:



I love what a good sport he is! DH can sometimes call it up but other times gets self-conscious. Just like me!

I have a boy and somehow we STILL always have glitter somewhere. A friend calls it "the herpes of craft supplies."

Oh dear, 90 minutes for that ride is at least 70 too many.

Hubby can get self-conscious, too, at times. Put him at a dinner party with people he doesn't know well and he's miserable, but surround him with kids and he plays right along.

Your friend's description of glitter is perhaps a bit more colorful than I use around kids, but certainly accurate :-)

Perfect!

Oh No!!! Morgan has thrown up in Disney World with similar results. Something just didn't sit well.

I loved riding the Omnibus! Perfect way to start the day, I think!

They seriously need to figure out how to make getting on and off that ride a little better! Then again Spinner Rides are slow loading anyway...

Ha!

Got to love the questions!

MDE was pretty bad while we were there. The one day, when it was down I thought I had lost all of my fastpasses for the second half of the trip!

What was on the business card? That is hilarious!

I have a feel ing they do that often. Just take the magic and run before anyone complains! ;)

Thankfully, the throw up seemed to be one-off, not a stomach bug.

The Omnibus really was awesome. I had seen it in one of your TRs so it was in the back of my head when we got there so early and we were lucky enough to have it coming just around the corner while we were walking in.

That was my only time actually failing to get MDE to work, thankfully. There were several times where I had to switch to the mobile site, or force-stop and then restart the app, but that was the only time I was completely blacked out of it on both fronts.

Here's the business card
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I love the photo of the girls on the Omnibus!

This is so funny! I love little touches like that. Also, so sweet of the fairy godmother to pose for a picture. How fun that you had such cute little magic moments to start the day!

We did have lots of fun, little moments this morning.

I am enjoying your trip reports so much! Brings back so many memories, going to Disney with my triplet siblings!!!!

Glad it's bringing back happy memories :-)

How cute!

Oh no! We've been sick in Disney, myself with a horrible stomach virus and the boys when they were younger with upset stomachs in the middle of the night. NO FUN! I really hope the morning wasn't foreshadowing for later in the day..........

:laughing: that's great! Not everyone can say they've ridden that, you need to really be in the right place at the right time.

We don't love Astro Orbiter but have ridden a couple times and it seems whenever you attempt it, the wait is s-l-o-w.

Love it!
I agree. I don't really care if we backtrack or not the way some do; we really mostly do what we feel like doing when we want to do it. I don't think MK is tough to go from spot to spot and I don't think HS is, either. AK, yes for the most part and Epcot I admit I don't particularly like going back and forth between FW and WS so we hardly ever do.

What a pain about Merida! I love her but have only met her once at her M&G: we got lucky when we had breakfast at CRT and she was filling in for a missing Aurora :goodvibes When we met her at her M&G it was around when she first started meeting so her lines were always long and I've wanted to meet her again but as you said, it seems her line is always crazy or always closed.

I was so glad that their stomachs settled that day. I did NOT want to spend the next week over a hotel toilet holding someone's hair.

I was definitely frustrated by Merida because I had no idea she was going to be that busy. She doesn't have any wait time in the app, and I hadn't really heard anyone talking about meeting her in any context, being easy or hard. If I had realized she was going to be that time consuming to meet, I'd have planned for her better.

Thanks for the tip on Merida. My girls love her so assuming her meet times are similar when we go we will just plan to have a snack/lunch break while we wait.

I hope her wait isn't as bad for you, but at least you know to be prepared. Then, if it's easier than expected, that's just some extra time in your schedule.

Whew, happy to hear the vomit incident didn't impair your first morning. My son is a cough-vomiter, too, so I feel your pain.

Lovely photos of you all on Main Street. And for five, your daughters took a pretty decent photo of you and your husband.

You had a good attitude about the Merida situation. If I had shown up a second time only to be turned away, I probably would have let it get to me a little.

When one visits the Tangled bathrooms, one must always sing and dance to the music...

Oh, glitter. I agree with you 100% on that front. And the "sprinkling of pixie dust" they get at Disney is astounding. The things we do for our kids...

Yeah, the cough-vomitting is tough. When they were younger, I would get worried that every throw up was the start of a major stomach bug. Now, I'm used to it so I tend to go the other way and downplay the importance when they throw up, as evidenced by my feeding them and taking them into a theme park immediately after they tossed. It worked out for me this day, but there are other times where I've been surprised to find out they are really sick, not just having a gag reflex moment.

There are several not-decent photos, and a video of me saying to them, "Are you sure you're taking pictures and not video?" so don't give them too much credit. They did manage to get at least one nice one, though :-)

I would have been more annoyed about Merida if I didn't have the other RD day in my back pocket. I knew I had potentially opened up that morning for myself if there was something more pressing than re-rides of Buzz and Astro, so I wasn't going to sweat it if we missed her the first day.

The pixie dust was definitely sprinkled with a heavy hand, but I had expected that from other TRs I'd read (I think one of yours, actually) so I knew what I was getting myself into.

Sounds like such a great morning! The girls are adorable! And what a fun, expected meet with Fairy Godmother!

Stinks about the Merida situation, but you did well working around it! And hopefully you were able to catch her on another day!

It really was an awesome morning. I had purposefully tried to build a plan that left room for the little things and it worked out for us, then.
 
Park Day One: Magic Kingdom (cont’d)

We ended up right on time for our 12:05 ADR at Cinderella’s Royal Table. I hadn’t been able to grab this time slot when my dining window first opened, but the TP reservation finder landed me the perfect ADR very quickly (I believe within a week). There was a 15-minute wait to meet Cinderella, but she was having a nice long chat with each family once they got to her. Plus, my kids enjoyed taking in the details of the castle while waiting: they were super excited to find Jac and Gus at the top of some molding.

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After a fun meeting with Cindy, we headed up the spiral staircase to our table. I shouldn’t be surprised, given the price tag and popularity of this restaurant, but the castle is gorgeous and every detail is on theme. Our waiter came to take our drink orders right away, but the kids were so distracted that even selecting a drink was a challenge: they just wanted to take it all in. We figured out drinks and tried to focus them in on meal options, but we had barely made it through the appetizer choice when our drinks were brought out. The server was very understanding and put our appetizer selections in because the parents were quite hungry despite the girls’ total disinterest in food. We eventually managed to nail down everyone’s picks and finish our order.

The girls were very concerned that the princesses hadn’t made it to our section of the restaurant, yet. The dining room has a handful of distinct sections and everyone in ours was just being seated and putting in their orders. It was clear to me that they had the character flow such that we would all get situated and then the ladies would start coming through. Unfortunately, the preschoolers refused to take my word for it. They were very worried that our section didn’t meet princesses and my assurances were insufficient. It got to the point that the solo diner at the next table over was laughing at us and I had to flag down one of the servers to confirm that our table would, in fact, be on the meet and greet rotation. Our appetizers came out, including this adorable soup.

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The princesses started coming in a steady stream over the next 25 minutes, and lunch was brought sometime in there, too.

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All of the characters were great. The girls told Snow White how much they love the dwarfs, asked Jasmine where Carpet was, and talked to Aurora about Phillip. Ariel in particular was quite fun when she asked the girls why they had their dinglehoppers at the table. They tried to explain to her how forks worked but she maintained her polite confusion, which they found hilarious.

The girls all picked the decorate-your-own cupcakes for dessert, which they took very seriously.

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We were finishing up at 1:40, just over 90 minutes past our ADR time, and used the bathrooms on our way out. Since our Jungle Cruise FPs weren’t until 3:35, we headed down to enjoy Mickey’s Philharmagic. Unfortunately, the doors to the show were closing right as we were coming in, so we had to wait pretty much a full show cycle and were seated at 2:10. We had great seats about halfway across and halfway back, and everyone loved the experience. I am a sucker for 3D gags; despite knowing logically that there is nothing in front of me, I still squeal and duck when an instrument appears to be flying at my head. The girls had fun reaching out to try to grab everything and Hubby was mostly enjoying watching me act like a little kid.

We got out around 2:30 and I knew I needed to move if I wanted to get through into Adventureland before the 3pm parade started. We grabbed the stroller and started heading through Liberty Square, but the CMs were already directing traffic in such a way that prevented you from being on the main pathway at all. We were directed to a cut through, but then the crowds simply weren’t allowing our double stroller to get anywhere once we crossed. We ended up unloading the kids and carrying the strollers up the two steps to patio in front of Liberty Tree Tavern. At this point, I decided, rather than battle to get out of this mess, we’d just move our Festival of Fantasy viewing to this day and clear things up later in the week. I saw a spot where there were a group of adults sitting at the rope and waiting for the parade but there was still room behind them to fit the strollers. The reason there was still room was that it wasn’t all that easy to get the strollers back down the patio steps to the spot, but we were up to the challenge. Once we moved our strollers in, another family moved their Disney-rented double in, so it tightened up quickly.

Now, this was my first (but not last) time of the trip where the parade messed me up, but I’m not sure if this one was my fault. The timestamp on my photos shows the first floats in front of Liberty Tree Tavern at 2:53pm, meaning it had to have started moving at more like 2:45pm. Do they bump the parade earlier if there’s a threat of rain coming in? Would this have been announced on some sort of loudspeaker that we didn’t hear because we were in CRT and then Philharmagic? All’s well that ends well, and the girls could see just fine because the adults in front remained seated throughout, but I really thought I had more time to get where I wanted to before the parade traffic cut us off.

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The parade was beautiful and we got to see Maleficent back in action.

After our accidental parade viewing, we hit the Adventureland Breezeway bathrooms and decided to share a few treats. I wanted to try the specialty cone from Aloha Aisle, but it wasn’t showing up in Mobile Order and the line was atrocious. Instead, I picked the somewhat shorter Sunshine Tree Terrace line while Hubby and the kids waited on some benches across the way. There was a CM coming through the line whose only job was to let people know that this was the location for citrus swirl, not pineapple dole whip, and I saw several people bail out of line once they heard her. How do you just get into a food line without knowing what they sell?

My intention was to try the citrus swirl, but that machine was down. Instead, we got an orange dole whip twist in a cone and a float for everyone to share. I manned the float while Hubby manned the cone and the girls jumped back and forth eating from both.

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Apparently, we were quite a sight, because several folks around us were smiling at the girls and commenting on how well they were sharing. That turned to the inevitable, “Are they triplets? Are they identical?” spiel that we get pretty much everywhere we go. When they were babies, the stroller with three car seats might as well have been a flashing neon sign saying, “Infant Triplets: Come Tell This Woman She Has Her Hands Full!” Now that they’re older, it’s gotten a little better because people who aren’t looking closely just see us walking with a small cluster of kids. Once someone takes more than a passing glance, though, it’s pretty obvious because all three are identical. The trick to avoiding the questions is to keep moving and don’t make eye contact, but that’s not really an option when you’re stopping to eat. I was interested to see how much attention we’d get on this trip because people already have plenty to look at in Disney without staring at my kids. We still got the question from nearly everyone we directly interacted with (characters, servers, cashiers, etc) but fewer random people came up to me out of the blue to ask if they were triplets.

Snack complete, we headed to Jungle Cruise and were on a boat at 3:55pm. While we were waiting for our boat, I was able to grab Magic Carpets FPs for 4:15pm. Our skipper, Renee, was delightful and clearly enjoying her job. Hubby is the king of Dad jokes, so this ride was mostly for him, but the whole family was laughing along. We unloaded and headed right to our Magic Carpet FPs, tapping in at 4:27pm and flying at 4:32. For anyone following along specifically because they are outnumbered by kids under 5, the CMs let the girls ride in the front of the carpet together, with the adults behind: an adult was not required to be in each row. The girls spent the ride trying to get us lined up just right to get spit on by a camel and were nearly successful.

It started lightly raining as we were unloading, so we headed into the Enchanted Tiki Room to enjoy the show and stay dry. Hubby had hyped it quite a bit (the girls were walking around the house singing, “In the tiki tiki tiki tiki tiki room,” in the lead up to the trip) and this was a bit of a letdown. They liked the first song, but when the tempo slowed down, they started to get bored. I was surprised, as they’re usually suckers for animatronics, but I think they were expecting the whole thing to be super high energy the way Hubby had been singing. They didn’t dislike it, but I’d say they were underwhelmed.

We were out at 4:40 and went around to grab a spot for the 4:50 Muppets history show. We parked the strollers right up at the rope and I snuck around the corner to grab a Mickey waffle with strawberries from Sleepy Hollow to enjoy while we watched. I had my waffle in hand at 4:49 and was cutting up bites for the girls as the show started. I only got to half pay attention to the show as I was also trying to cut waffle fast enough to meet the demand for more bites x 3, but it was cute and clever, as the Muppets always are. It started spitting rain again as things wrapped up, so we headed back into Frontierland to see the Country Bear Jamboree and stay dry.

For the second time that day, we happened to be walking into a show just as they were closing the doors ahead of us, so we knew we had a bit of a wait. Hubby wanted to use the restroom and all the kids insisted that they did not, so he headed off alone. Of course, 30 seconds later, A just had to go to the bathroom. If I took all three girls, I wasn’t going to make it back in time for the next show. Instead, we waited until he got back and then quickly piggybacked A over to the ladies’ room. We made it back just in time to grab our seats.

The girls didn’t know quite what to make of the show. I think part of it was the sound quality, as I was having trouble understanding a lot of the dialogue, too. They liked the up-tempo parts, started squirming through the slower moments, and decided that they liked it but didn’t need to do it again. By the time we got out, it was about 5:30 and it was raining steadily. Our next stop was supposed to be the Move It! Shake It! parade, but I wasn’t sure how they handled that during inclement weather. The CM outside of Country Bears confirmed that, for the safety of the performers, the parade wouldn’t include the dance section if the weather conditions stayed as they were or got any worse. They would do it as a straight run through without stopping to dance, but that wasn’t what we wanted to see. Our weather app said it would be raining steadily for at least another 120 minutes so we officially gave up on the parade and decided to get dinner, instead.

After much debate back and forth about where we could all find food to enjoy, we settled on Columbia Harbor House. I put in a mobile order while we were walking over and the food was ready when we got there. Hubby doesn’t do seafood, so he got the pot pie, which he wasn’t thrilled with. The girls shared a Trio Platter which they picked at with much cajoling. I thoroughly enjoyed my lobster roll, though, so at least one of us was fully satisfied.

We were watching the radar while we ate and the rain wasn’t moving on any time soon. Plus, the temperature was dropping and the kids were starting to drag. This was supposed to be our night to see Happily Ever After, but I didn’t want to spend the next two hours with cold, tired, wet kids. At 6:15, I grabbed Pirates FPs for 6:35pm and Hubby and I decided that we’d make that our last ride and then head out. We finished up, walked over to PotC, and were on the boat at 6:44pm.

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The scene with the cannonballs seemingly being fired in the direction of our boat was a bit too realistic for the girls. They proceeded to jump at every loud noise and generally be on alert for anything else being pretend-shot at them. There were no tears, but they were adamite that they didn’t want to ride again. We continued on to the bus stop through steady rain and only had a few minute’s wait before we were on our way back to Boardwalk for the night.

Overall, we had a nice first park day of the trip. The rain only got heavier as the evening wore on, so leaving early was the right call for us. The morning stomach upset didn’t turn into anything more, which I think in and of itself was a win. In looking at my plan for the day, we had missed Merida, the carousel, the river boat, the Hall of Presidents, Move It! Shake It!, and HEA. I started shifting things around to make sure we got back to Merida, the parade, and the fireworks. The others were only listed as filler to begin with, so I’d keep them in the back of my head as options on our next park days, but I wasn’t concerned about getting to them. Plus, we had unexpectedly accomplished Festival of Fantasy, Astro, Buzz and Pirates, which left me with a big chunk of time and a FP to reschedule on one of our other MK days. With this being our first time as a family in MK, and an early exit to boot, I was happy to have accomplished 9 rides, 6 shows, 4 character meets, 1 parade, 1 pixie-dusting, and 1 lunch in the castle.
 
Dining Plan Day 2

Day 2 Actual Spending
Main St Bakery: $11.53
Cheshire Café: $5.85
Cinderella’s Royal Table: $309.35
Sunshine Tree Terrace: $11.32
Sleepy Hollow: $6.20
Columbia Harbor House: $56.22
DDP Day 2 Value: $400.88

Total DDP To Date: $586.99
Amount remaining to break even: $1,527.92

Moderate Splurge Adjustments
We would not have enjoyed our two adult beverages at CRT had we been paying for them ourselves, so that’s definitely advantage DDP. At Sleepy Hollow, I would have gone with the Nutella waffle with fruit if paying out of pocket, which I would say is advantage OOP. Not that the Mickey waffle was bad, but chocolate hazelnut spread = yum! Finally, we would have stuck with just water at dinner if the drinks hadn’t been included with our credit. I’d say that is a slight DDP advantage: we enjoyed our soda and chocolate milk, but would have been fine without.

Moderate Splurge Day Two Estimated Cost (Tax and Tip): $367.63
Moderate Splurge Budget To Date: $481.91
 
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