Dear almousefan, slk537, briarberry, jer1997, Olallamom, lonegirl, BigTigg'r, lexmelinda, Poohbear77 & mrsswat,
Thank you so much for your kind words! It is a thrill to think that people are reading and enjoying my report. Lonegirl, thank you for mentioning the pictures. I'm proud of my amateur photography skills. If you want to know my secrets, check out this book:
How to Photograph Your Life: Capturing Everyday Moments with Your Camera and Your Heart
12. Why did I almost start crying during the Opening Ceremony?
After years of being away and after months of planning and dreaming, the girls and I had finally arrived at the gates of the Magic Kingdom. I don't remember seeing the Opening Ceremony before. I felt so emotional. I felt so lucky to be there and to be able to bring my children there. Disney World is such a special place. Everyone knows about it. It's where you go to celebrate after a big victory. It's where kids have the time of their lives. I know there are other great places to go. I know not everyone wants to go. But lots of people do want to go, and not all of them can. But we were there and I knew we were going to have an awesome day.
Of course, we had a plan. I had questioned the girls repeatedly about what rides they wanted to try. I got different answers at different times, but we had settled on the following--
Wait, I think I should tell you a little bit about us and our approach to rides.
The older two are twins. DD11a weighed a pound less than her sister at birth, but she grew quickly and she is now several inches taller. When they were babies and toddlers we used to get a lot of attention, but now they are so different in height and appearance (much stronger resemblence between DD11b and her younger sister than between her and her twin) that nobody would guess they are twins and they sometimes don't believe us when we mention it! DD11b is the roller coaster lover. DD11a has a mixed reaction to the thrill rides. She likes them but she's intimidated by them. DD7 is not ready for roller coasters. She has tried them at a nearby amusement park but she didn't enjoy the experience. I am definitely scared of big roller coasters. The medium ones, I can handle. It wouldn't break my heart to skip them, but I'm up for it.
--OK, so the plan was for DDs 11a and 11b to ride SpaceMtn while DD7 and I went to Dumbo. The older girls would meet us at the Carousel. I gave them a map and told them to walk past the race cars. We didn't have cell phones or any way to make contact other than "See you at the Carousel," but I had confidence in them.
DD7 and I were in the second group on Dumbo. She loved it. I decided that we were ahead of the other girls and we had time to hop on my favorite ride, Peter Pan. I just adore that moment when we fly out of the window and over the city of London. Apparently the CM loading the ships thought there was hardly anyone in line, because he asked DD7 if she wanted to trade any pins. She scrutinized his lanyard and pointed at a pin of Oddball, then struggled to remove a pin from her own lanyard. I felt bad about the people waiting behind us. Three or four ships had gone by empty while we conducted this transaction. But he had initiated it! Julia loved the ride too. Next, the Carousel.
Listening to the carousel version of "Chim Chim Cher-Ee" I experienced again that feeling of perfect contentment, that I was just where I wanted to be.
But I still didn't see DDs 11a and 11b anywhere. So DD7 and I rode Snow White. She was scared when it looks like the rock is going to fall. As we exited, we saw DDs 11a and 11b walking up. They had had fun on Space Mtn. I was happy about that and happy that we'd reconnected without mishap.
Now that we were together again, we rode Peter Pan and then headed to Frontierland. DD11b, of course, wanted to ride Splash Mtn. I have to confess that I had never been on this ride. But I thought it was time to give it a try. DD11a did not want to go. And all of a sudden DD7 said that she did. We got in a quickly moving line and asked her if she was sure every other step. She seemed cheerful and excited. We boarded. But as we embarked on our journey and experienced some of those trick hills, where it seems like you're going to have a big drop and you don't, she started to cry. DD 11a was not much help. She kept saying, "It's fun! You'll see; it will be fun!" Finally I snapped at her, "Stop saying that. It isn't fun for her!" I tried to reassure DD7 that it would soon be over. And you know, the big drop really isn't that scary. The anxiety leading up to it is much worse. I think I could enjoy the ride much more now that I've been through it.
DD7 recovered quickly as soon as the ride was over. I think she had a peanut butter chocolate chip granola bar at this point. (You know how in the Harry Potter books, people eat chocolate to get over dementor attacks? I think it works for Muggles too.)
I got FPs for BTMRR and in the meantime we headed to PoC, another childhood favorite. The girls have not seen the movies, but DH and I enjoyed them and I was interested to see how the ride had been updated. I guess this was the first time the girls had encountered the audio-animatronics. They thought the figures were real! And even when I said they were not, they thought that at least some of them (such as Jack Sparrow) were. Since we'd walked on, we went back for another trip.
Next up was BTMRR. DD11b was determined to go and DD7 was determined to stay behind. DD11a was unsure. "Are there any big drops?" she kept asking. "You went on Space Mtn!" I told her. Finally I convinced DD11a to accompany her sister. My worry and guilt about DD7 during Splash Mtn had taken a lot out of me and I wanted to skip this one and stick with her. So they went off while we browsed in a nearby shop. Luckily, DD11a did enjoy the ride, as I had expected.
Now it was back to Fantasyland for Small World, which they were dying to ride, but I had put them off because I knew we could do that anytime. But on the way we passed HM. I liked this ride as a kid. I knew the ride itself was tame. The atmosphere was spooky but not scary (nothing jumping out at you, for example). We went in. Unfortunately, the stretch room really unnerved DD7. She was crying even as we boarded our buggy. The CM tried to reassure her, "I used to be scared too but it's really not that bad." But she whimpered and hid her face against me the whole time. And the ride stopped twice! Briefly, thank goodness. I pulled out my Palm Pilot and drew pictures for her on the NotePad to distract her from the mansion.
Small World seemed like a good antidote. While we waited in the short line, we agreed to ride twice, switching places so we'd all get good views of both sides. But we were put in the front of the boat. We all enjoyed it and we felt there was no need to ride again. I thought about getting FPs for Mickey's Philharmagic, which was new since our last visit. But there was no line, just a short wait for the show in progress to finish.
We loved it! I picked up FPs for WtP instead.
So now it was about 12:15. We'd done almost every ride on our list.
In my next post I will answer
13. What was my next worry that didn't come true?
We brought our mister fan along on the outing to DTD and used it liberally but we didn't bring anything to drink. (We had brought a Nalgene bottle in order to carry drinks along with us. If you don't know about these, they're really useful. Virtually indestructible and come in a wide variety of colors.) I for one was thirsty, and though the kids didn't say anything, I'm sure they would have welcomed a cold beverage. But I was too cheap to buy anything. I would really like to do that one over. Fortunately and fittingly I was the one who ended up suffering the most from this poor decision.
We also learned the hard way about missing bed linens..now it's one of the first things we check for when we arrive in the room. That and are the batteries in the remotes in working order 
