family of 11, land/sea vacation, Day One

HoosierFantasia

Growing older but not up......
Joined
Jul 18, 2001
Messages
403
The Cast: Me (31), DW (32), DD (2)
DB (29), DSiL (28), DN (5)
DB (25), DSiL (23), DN (4)
DD (53), DM (52)
The Trip: Land/Sea Vacation with additional day on front end
Polynesian and then the Wonder


Day One: Saturday, June 15th, 2002
Our flight from Indy thru Atlanta left on time and arrived on time in Orlando with out any problems. This was a good start to a Magical vacation! Being that we added a day on the front of our trip, we had to get our own bags at the baggage claim and our transportation was a Mears Shuttle as opposed to the DCL buses. This wasn?t much of a problem. We actually had a whole shuttle to ourselves and only had to wait about 20 minutes for it. We arrived at the Polynesian around 1pm and checked-in. All of our rooms were ready so we hopped in the golf carts with our luggage and went to our rooms.
Our room, 2026, was very nice. Nice bathroom with double sinks, a day bed (with requested bed-rails) for Maddy, and a veranda with a lovely view of Seven Seas Lagoon, Cinderella?s Castle, and Space Mountain. My parent?s room, 2028, was just like ours. However my brothers rooms, 2029 and 2030, had some trees and shrubbery blocking their view. They didn?t have a good view at all. I would have been upset if I paid for a lagoon view room and that is the view I had. But they liked the fact of being connecting rooms and came over to our room for fireworks so they didn?t care.
We dropped off the luggage and headed for the monorail. Being later in the day, I was able to get the 3 girls to ride in front with me of course. Nice way to ride over to the Magic Kingdom on your first day! We entered the gates and my brothers rented strollers, I brought mine, and we headed up Main Street. Now this was truly a Magical Moment. To see the look on my daughters face when she looked up and said ?there is Turnarelly?s Castle, I see it!? nearly brought a tear to my eye. And don?t ask me about the Turnarelly thing I can?t figure out why she calls her that.
We decided to eat so we headed over to the Crystal Palace and they were able to seat all 11 of us together in about 15 minutes without a PS. This was the first test to see how Maddy would react to seeing some of the Characters. Tigger was the first to come bye and she was all over him. Then Pooh, Piglet and Eeyore. I was pleasantly surprised at how she hugged and kissed all the characters. After lunch we headed right into Fantasyland. We did It?s a Small World (10 min). When we got off it was pouring rain. This was a sign of how much rain we were to see for the rest of the week. Oh well, we donned our ponchos and ran over to Peter Pan (50 min.). This was a really long wait I believe because of the rain and people using the fastpass once the rain let up. The we did Snow White. This was so cute because Maddy kept saying ?I like wickedawitch? and ?Snow white, don?t eat the apple?. After this we started to venture over to Frontierland. Had a picture with Snow White, and got in line for the Haunted Mansion (15 min). One of my favorites. This turned out to be not such a good idea to do at the beginning of a trip. Maddy didn?t like the thunder, lighting, screams and darkness in the room ?with no window?s and no doors?. For the rest of the day, everything we did she was a little hesitant and scared to do it. But after she did it she was fine and said she like it. We then did Pirates of the Caribbean (walked on). Everyone was really tired since we got up at 3:30 am and decided to go back to the Poly. We took the ferry boat back and got some food from Capt. Cooks and ate it at some table down by the beach and watched the Electric Water Pageant. Went back to our rooms. Maddy fell asleep and I went swimming with my brothers at the Volcano Pool and enjoyed the slide. Came back to the room and my wife and I sat on the verandah and watched the fireworks. A wonderful end to a fabulous day!
Tomorrow is Animal Kingdom, and EPCOT with my dad getting his father?s day gift, DiveQuest!

Bill
 
This sounds so wonderful! How nice that you could all go to WDW/DCL!
Turnarelly is so cute! Where do kids come up with these names? Do you suppose that's actually what she thinks you are saying?

My dd2 was also mesmerized by her first view of the castle! She still says to me, in the evenings, "Mommy, I think Cinderella's castle is changing colors now!" (in a sort of sing song voice)

Can't wait to read the rest of your reports. I'm still working on mine and we've been back for a month!

Lisa :D
 
You know what was sad? On Monday when we returned home. I asked my DD2 what she wanted for dinner. She responded " I wanna eat Turnarelly's Castle". We did the Cinderella breakfst why we were there. It was nice that she loved it so and remembered it and wants to go back. But sad we can't go there weekly!

Bill
 
That's sweet that she remembers. hopefully she'll remember it forever...even if it's the only memory she has from your trip.

What's even sadder is that we did not go to Cindy's for breakfast.:( ( This would have been the trip for us to do it too.) We stayed at the GF RPC. Probably the concierge could have pull a string or two. My two older dd's were not into the Princesses and everytime I asked if they'd like to eat in the castle, they said no...too sissy. I figured it wouldn't matter to dd2. Now, the older girls are bigger fans of the princesses (now that they've been to WDW) but our future trips will be on much tighter budgets!

Oh well, live and learn.

Lisa :D
 

I'm really looking forward to the next installment. I'm going with 11 in October. In connection with the Tunarelly castle line; when we disembarked from our 7 night in January, we got on the Avis shuttle, with a family with a little boy and girl. As we drove off, the dad said something about "where are we eating for lunch" and the little girl replied "you mean were not going back to the ship for lunch" She sounded so sad, I almost cried.
 

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