After finding a bigger boat (thanks, Barry), we were on our way to Downtown Disney. I love the ride, even though the boats travel slower than your average giant tortoise. It's a very relaxing ride with nice views of Port Orleans French Quarter, the Treehouse Villas, Lake Buena Vista golf course, and Saratoga Springs. Plus lots of trees with Spanish moss hanging from the limbs. We even saw a couple of herons and egrets hanging out by the water's edge. The skipper avoided any accidents or crazy Ivans, and we pulled into the dock.
One of the things we really wanted to do was go up high in the Characters in Flight Balloon here. We'd borrowed a zoom lens for the camera from a friends and thought we could get some great shots.
Not all of us were on board with this idea. I had shown Dave some pictures of the balloon up in the air and asked if he wanted to go up. He said he'd "think about it", which is Dave's polite way of saying, "ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME?! I wouldn't go up there if the earth was on fire!"
In the end, it didn't matter. When we walked by the balloon, the message board said it was grounded due to high winds.
The breeze didn't feel bad to me on the ground, but we missed out. Maybe it's just as well. It would have cost my family $72 to go up.
From there, it was on to the West Side and
Does the name "Ridemakerz" bother anybody else? Companies that intentionally mis-spell words are a pet peeve of mine. There's one company in our area called Copi Kwik that I refuse to support on principle alone.
Any-hoo, the boys were really excited to build cars of their own. As a Dad, I of course did not share in any excitement whatsoever.
The concept is like the Build-A-Bear stores--you pick out the body of your car, customize it with tires and rims, pick a chassis (remote-control or non-remote) and then accessorize with stickers, pimped-up snap-on motors and spoilers, etc.
The only downside is the hit this takes on your budget. The body alone starts anywhere between $15-$30, and it's another $25 if you want remote control (which we did--I mean, what's the point of building this thing otherwise?). The $15 bodies were...um...how do I say this? Ugly. My 2000 Grand Am looks better, and I had to duct tape my window on that car. Mrs. Oblivious and I didn't like the idea of spending more money, but we wanted the kids to have a nice-looking car for their trouble. Finally, Scotty and Dave decided on a Mustang body. Scotty's was electric blue, while Dave went for the chick-magnet red with flames.
The boys were happier than a tornado in a trailer park, running from one station to the next. And the process was fun. They had one building station where you could use a power screwdriver on one of those cords that hung down from the workstation, and the kids felt just like a NASCAR crew doing a pit stop. It took longer than we expected, due to the fact that they had approximately 3 employees staffing the entire store.
Julie and I did the best we could to keep costs down: we found a $10-off coupon on the Ridemakerz Facebook page, brought our own batteries (4 AA's and one 9V, for future reference), and limited the add-ons (so we got the basic sound, stock rims and tires, one page of racing-number of stickers to divide among the two). They still came out to around $50 apiece.
We were most definitely officially at Disney World. Their grandparents had given them some money to spend, so we applied that cash as well. Here are the finished products:
Shake 'n Bake!
Not to be outdone, Sarah had some building of her own to do. She loves dinosaurs and stuffed animals, so the Build-A-Dino shop at T-Rex was basically designed with her in mind.
At first, she had thought she might want to build a pterodactyl, but then she spotted another creature and opted for it. According to my extensive notes, this dinosaur is called a (mumble-mumble)-osaurus. By its nature, the stuffed animal was less expensive than the cars, so we let her splurge on the outfit to keep things fair. Behold the Super-Dino, or as we named it, Clark Rex:
My job here was to keep the boys calm. Last time we were inside T-Rex, we had to cancel our lunch because Dave was scared of the dinos and went into Global Thermonuclear Meltdown when the "meteor shower" show started. Now, a year later, we stood in the shop and...you guessed it! Meteor shower time! I couldn't tell if he enjoyed it or not, but he simply stood there and watched the ceiling, which is much easier to deal with as a parent than Global Thermonuclear Meltdown. Good job Dave!
We took the Slow Boat to Riverside and spent some late afternoon time in the big pool at Ol' Man Island. It's a great setting--secluded in trees, away from the buildings, with a nice waterslide and lots of spurting fountains. Unfortunately, I haven't uploaded any pictures of it yet, so you'll just have to trust me.
Around 6:15, we gathered our things and caught the bus to the Magic Kingdom. Again, transportation was more crowded than we had anticipated. From here, we walked to the monorail station for a quick ride to the Contemporary...or so we thought.
It was a Halloween Party night, so groups were arriving en masse and in costume (I dressed as a tourist Dad, in case you were wondering). The monorail station was packed with people leaving the parks, presumably those who didn't have Party tickets. We barely had room to stand on the platform. When the monorail arrived, many in the car didn't get off at the stop. We were going to try to squeeze on, but a 280-lb. (or so) man shoved his way in front and cut off Dave in line, so we had to stop and wait for the next train. If I remember correctly, I said something to the effect of, "Have a magical day, sir!"
We caught the next monorail, somehow squeezed on, and barely made it in time for our 7:40 p.m. reservation at Chef Mickey's.
Apparently, we were lucky enough to be there during the test week when Mickey was posing with guests outside the restaurant instead of visiting tables. Nobody liked this, so they've now gone back to the old way.
I need to upload some more pictures, so I'll stop here for now and come back with a mini-update about dinner (with pictures!) later on.
Coming Up Next: Our stay in the Cinderella Castle Suite!
No, not really. It'll be Chef Mickey's, like I just said. Geez, pay attention.