Day 5 (Saturday, January 30th, 2010): Back to Epcot and the puking begins!
Day 5 found us returning to Epcot for the second time, with Caryn joining us this time around. We had breakfast at the house and were at Epcot before the park opened. We had missed the opening ceremonies on our previous Epcot day, in favor of picking up the 1st Visit pins for the kids, but were plenty early and found a nice spot at the front of the rope. It was a warm, cloudy, humid morning and started to rain lightly while we were waiting. We asked a CM if the characters would still come out, but he was pretty evasive. Another CM came over and started talking to us and we found out she was from Niagara Falls! Small world! A few minutes later the characters did come out, and to Sam and Madeleine's delight there was much character interaction!
Donald came over first:
Followed by Minnie, who gave Madeleine a high 5!:
Minnie then tried to give Matthew a high 5, but he wanted nothing to do with it!:
After that, Pluto came over to give out some 5's:
And then let Madeleine give him a kiss on the nose!:
Mickey arrived next:
Matthew wanted nothing to do with him!:
Goofy was there as well, but he never came over. The characters did a wonderful job of interacting with the crowd however, and my kids were thrilled. Such a nice start to the day! I had geared the morning toward attractions I thought Caryn would enjoy and as soon as they dropped the ropes we all headed to Soarin'. We all went down to get the Rider Swap pass (again, such a pain with little children that this is down the long hall and down the stairs) and while Rick, Caryn and Sam rode I got FP's for all of us to ride again later. After they returned, Caryn, Sam and I rode while Rick took Madeleine and Matthew to ride Nemo.
Madeleine must have gone on Nemo at least 10 times during all of our various Rider Swap waiting!:
We met up outside between the two attractions afterwards and walked over to Test Track. Rick, Caryn and Sam rode that and then Caryn, Sam and I went on Mission Space. Madeleine and Matthew were content to play alongside the strollers, chase birds and watch people while waiting. When the others were done with Mission Space, the "Jammitors" arrived and we watched a bit of their show:
Our last stop of the morning was Ellen's Energy Adventure. Warning to anyone with young children or teens: BORING!!!! I had done this attraction before but didn't remember how long and boring the intro movie, midpoint radio talk and ending movie was. The ride through dinosaur part was way too short to hold the interest of any of the kids and we would definitely skip this attraction in the future. The only good part was that Matthew napped in Rick's arms for most of it!
It was lunchtime by this point so we headed over to the Patisserie in France, found a nice table outside and ordered a misc. bunch of delicious things to eat: quiches, napoleans, croissants, pastries, etc. We were about halfway through our meal when all of a sudden Caryn said, "Um.......Matthew just threw up!"
Sure enough, even though we hadn't heard a thing, there it was all down his jacket and shirt. We didn't know what was wrong with him, as he hadn't been acting sick or abnormal or anything, so we just cleaned him up the best we could with a bunch of napkins and baby wipes and carried on. When Rick and I were finished eating, we asked Caryn (who was texting) to watch Sam and Madeleine (who were still eating) and took Matthew with us to look in a nearby shop. I was showing Rick a winestopper with a glass Mickey head that I thought we should buy when all of a sudden,
, Matthew threw up again. This time it was all over - all over him, all over his stroller and all over the floor of the store. We hurried back out to our table and tried in vain to clean him up once again, but this time it was just too much and while we were trying to clean him up he vomitted again.
We gathered everyone up as quickly as we could and started heading back to the parking lot, but on the way we passed the squirting water area we had promised Sam and Madeleine they could play in before we left the park for afternoon naps. As soon as they saw it they started carrying on about playing in it, and since I didn't know if we would be returning to Epcot I decided to let them have 10 minutes to play. I didn't want to take the time to change them in to their bathing suits, so just let them go in their clothes.
Here they are having the time of their lives while Caryn, Rick and I sat on the sidelines with a stinky, pukey, sick baby:
I still can't believe I stopped to let them do this, but I didn't want to ruin everyone's fun and I really didn't know if we'd be returning. After their brief water play, we loaded everyone into the car (two soaked kids and one puke covered one - delightful), drove back to the house, gave Matthew a bath and put all of the kids down for a nap. I then started what would be the first of many loads of laundry and Rick headed to the car with a bucket and washcloth to clean out Matthew's stroller and car seat.
Coming up: Will Matthew recover and can our day be saved?