Remember when I said that there would be stretches where my memory has failed me? Now is one of those times. The timestamp on that last picture was 12:01. The next picture I have is from the Celebrate a Dream Come True Parade, timestamped 3:23. I have no video from that time, and didn't do any Facebook updates. Soooo....
I do know that we ate lunch somewhere. We usually do that about this time of day. There is a charge on my Disney Visa statement for this day from Pinocchio's, which is the closest CS restaurant to BBB, so we probably ate pizza.
I do know that Bambi, Madison and Grandpa went over to ride Splash Mountain again, and that Evan and I were killing time. We got FastPasses to Big Thunder Mountain, and were then walking past Pirates of the Caribbean and saw the wait was 5 minutes. I asked him if he wanted to go on it, and he got very excited. The 5 minute wait must have been how long it took us to walk to the boat, because we didn't encounter any line and walked right to the front row of a boat. He loved it - the boat ride, the animatronics, the cannon blasts, everything.
We met back up with the rest of the family and did the Country Bear Jamboree again. And again, the kids loved it.
By the time that was over, it was almost 3:00, and we were right along the parade route in Frontier Land. We staked out a spot and then several things all happened at once.
It starts to rain. It feels sooo nice since it's been so hot and muggy all day. We don the ponchos what we brought and stay relatively dry, as it's not a torrential downpour (yet).
Second, Grandpa disappears and comes back with ice cream. This isn't very noteworthy except to illustrate that I like ice cream.
Third, Bambi gets a call from her mom, who, along with Bambi's brother, had stopped back at the house to let the dogs out before joining us back at WDW. If you don't recall the foreshadowing that I did in
post #11, let me refresh your memory:
The problem is, Evan and I (and to some extent Bambi's Dad) are about the only males that Pepper trusts. [Side note: remember that last sentence. It's a bit of foreshadowing.] Something must have happened to him before we got him, because he is very scared of men.
Well, Bambi's Brother, being a strange male, must have spooked Pepper. Grandma was letting the dogs out the front door to do their business, and Pepper takes off.
Another side note - he's done this before, once. We were up at my brother's farm with Pepper after only having him a few months. Another one of my brothers opened the house door, spooking Pepper, and he ran away. He was gone for 3 days before I was able to find him and get him home. He learned a lot from those 3 days and now rarely leaves my side.
Anyway, he didn't go far - only 4 or 5 houses away. He would slowly come back towards her, but never get within 10 feet. Luckily, they live on a very quite no-outlet street, so there wasn't much traffic to deal with.
So we're on the phone, in the rain, trying to talk Grandma through getting Pepper back into the house. Grandma had taken the van after leaving MK that morning, so I had no way to get back and help.
Eventually, using a combination of treats and his best friend Allie, they were able to coax him into the backyard and into the back door. Crisis Averted. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Disney trip report:
I seem to remember the parade starting in Frontier Land and working it's way to Main Street, but it was getting well after 3:00 and there was no parade in site. We were thinking that it was canceled due to the rain. We did see a little black tractor heading down toward the castle, which was interesting. Even with the rain getting harder, we did see the parade coming from the castle area.
You can kind of see how hard it's raining by looking in the tree above Jiminy Cricket's head.
And how lucky is Mary Poppins that her costume includes an umbrella?
And then we get too see why that little black tractor went chugging by earlier. I guess even Disney floats have technical difficulties every once in a while.
The parade ended and the rain let up. We decided to do take Madison on BTMRR again while Evan and Grandpa played at the little playground under the WDWRR station. Just as we were about to get on ride, it was shutdown due to "lightning in the area". We waited, and waited and waited. We were told that we could wait or leave. I was pretty ticked that they had already taken our Fast Passes and would not reissue them.
I couldn't get enough cell service in the loading area to check the radar, so we left it up to Madison if she wanted to wait or leave. She wanted to wait, so we did. After about 10-15 minutes, we climbed into a ride train to the thunderous cheer of everyone else waiting. Madison felt like a rock star.
After we got off BTMRR, the rain started again, and it was
heavy.
We swam over to the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor, where my texted joke evidently wasn't funny enough. We came out of that to see that it was still pouring. Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin was closed to "technical difficulties" and we didn't want to subject the kids to Stitches Great Escape. We still had a couple of hours before dinner reservations, but there wasn't anything we felt like doing in the rain at MK. We made our way out of the park and over to the monorail for the ride to the Grand Floridian.
Fresh off her dog-wrangling adventure, Grandma caught up to us here. We were about an hour early, but I checked in and got my pager hoping we could get in. Luckily, there was a TV with old Disney cartoons to sort-of entertain the kids and a nice plush couch in the lobby to keep us comfy and well-rested after a day in the park.
About 10 minutes after our ADR time we had our photo taken and were seated. I'll never know why CRT is the only restaurant that includes your picture in the cost of the meal. They came around 1/2 way through our meal to show us the picture. It was nice, but not $29.95 for a few 5x7s nice.
We had taken the kids up to the buffet to get their food and get them settled in eating before we went. Just as we got the kids sitting and eating, Cinderella came over.
By this time, Evan was very hungry and shoveling down his Mac & Cheese. He refused to get up for a picture, so Bambi "assisted" him. Helpful hint - if you want to keep your fingers intact, don't get between Evan and his Mac & Cheese.
Prince Charming came over a little later. Evan was still eating his Mac & Cheese.
By now Evan was pretty sick of having to leave his food for pictures. But these are family memories, darn it! Lady Tremain.
Anastasia
Drizella
The Royal Waltz
The food was fantastic. I'm sure there are foodie TRs out there that royally pan this food as mediocre at best, but I'm not one of those people. This food was good, and the strawberry soup was out of this world. I think I had 3 bowls.
Overall, Madison's 5th birthday went quite well, despite the rain. She had a blast, and that's all that matters. Another drive back to the house and we all crawled into bed.
Tomorrow: Evan's 3rd Birthday at DHS & Dinner at Whispering Canyon Cafe.