Day 4 Disneyquest and home
We woke up this morning to a drizzly Columbus Day. It seemed like our plan to not go to the parks but try out Disneyquest instead would be a good one. We had breakfast in the Pop Century food court, checked out, stuffed the now overpacked suitcase into the trunk, and headed for the parking lot. We managed to find the car that we had only seen once, three days ago, in the dark. Since it was raining, it was apparent that we were not destined to enjoy riding with the top down in our convertible, even if we did manage to figure out how to work it. That was an upgrade wasted
We drove to the West Side and parked behind DisneyQuest. We bought tickets, even though they wouldnt be open for another hour. So what to do for an hour? Shop, of course! We picked up some jelly beans to munch on in the Candy Kitchen, and checked out Virgin Records and the magnet shop. The line at DQ was building, so we decided wed better jump in it, since they would be opening in 20 minutes.
DQ opened on time. This was our first time here, so we thought the elevator ride that you have to take to get in was pretty cool. I imagine it would be annoying to frequent visitors, since it does seem to hold up the process of actually getting inside!
Once inside, we headed straight for Cyber Space Mountain. I couldnt talk DD into making a coaster that went upside-down, so we ended up with a pretty tame coaster. We took our card over to the simulators and got to ride it. It was a very short ride, but this is definitely worth doing, especially if you are willing to go for it and add loops and corkscrews!
Next we played in the sound booths and with the Create-a-Toy machines while we waited for the first animation class. The animation class could really use a proper queue. There arent many seats, and the instructor wasnt letting anyone sit down while she booted up all the systems. When people were allowed to sit, some people jumped in ahead of people that had been waiting. Some people are just clueless
DD and I did manage to get seats, and we got set up to draw Mickey. Unlike the paper and pencil version in the Animation studio tour, here you draw with a touch screen and stylus. While this certainly made it easier to erase if you messed up, I prefer the paper and pencil version. When you finish, you can get a print out of your drawing, along with some other papers describing how to draw Mickey and a diploma, for $5. We printed out DDs drawing as a souvenir.
DD didnt want to do anything that involved putting on virtual reality goggles, so the rest of our options were kind of limited. I can see 12 year old boys spending days in this place though. We played on some of the old arcade games like Pac Man for a while hoping the lines for food would get a bit shorter. They didnt. So we sucked it up and got in a 30 minute line for pizza at nearly 2 in the afternoon. I think this was the longest we waited in line for ANYTHING all week. At least it was decent pizza.
The only other thing DD wanted to do was the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster bumper car things. The line was pretty short, so we hopped on. I drove. DD loaded and fired the balls at the other cars. She managed to get one direct hit and send someone spinning. This was a fun game, but a bit rough, like bumper cars.
We were bored with DQ at this point, plus it had gotten very crowded
, probably due to the bad weather outside. So we decided we needed to do more shopping. Well, maybe not needed. But if we had the boys along, they wouldnt put up with all this shopping, so we had to take advantage. So we drove over to the Marketplace.
We had just enough time to check out the Team Mickey store (where we actually didnt buy anything!) and the Lego store. DD got a fill-your-own container of legos to add to our lego collection.
Now its time to say goodbye .
We found our way to the airport with no problems. We dropped off the car and we were at the gate VERY early. If I knew we werent going to try to get to a park today, we could have done an earlier flight. Oh well. Our flight left on time and arrived early, only to have us wait a very long time for luggage. On our last trip we flew out of smaller airports (Allentown to Sanford), so we were spoiled with not having to wait long times for luggage on that trip. I called the valet service was soon as the luggage started coming out (cheating a bit, since you are supposed to wait until you have your bags in your hands). As soon as we got our bag, we stood outside in the cold, in shorts, to watch for our car. It pulled up about 5 minutes later, before we had frozen too much. We paid and tipped the driver and he walked off. This was the service we paid the extra $10 for we could leave direct from the airport and the driver gets back to the lot somehow.
Final thoughts: This mom-kid trip thing has the makings of a great tradition. I will be taking DS when he turns 10 for a mom-son trip of his own. DD has told me she wants to do the same thing with her kids, so I think its safe to say she had a good time. I really enjoyed spending this one-on-one time with her, while she is still at an age where she likes me.
She will start middle school next year, so I know my days are numbered.
Its very different doing the parks with only two people. On all of our previous trips there have been the four of us, plus various aunts, uncles, and grandparents. The stress of keeping everyone happy (and fed, and cool, and not bored ) can be a bit much. This was a lot of fun being able to just do what we wanted when we wanted.
Im off to make the scrapbook of this trip now (well, as soon as I finish the one from our May family trip, anyway), so I expect to suffer from Disney withdrawal any time now. I dont think our next trip will be until 2006, so I am planning a Disney cruise for next year so that I can get my Mickey fix!
Thanks for letting me share!
We woke up this morning to a drizzly Columbus Day. It seemed like our plan to not go to the parks but try out Disneyquest instead would be a good one. We had breakfast in the Pop Century food court, checked out, stuffed the now overpacked suitcase into the trunk, and headed for the parking lot. We managed to find the car that we had only seen once, three days ago, in the dark. Since it was raining, it was apparent that we were not destined to enjoy riding with the top down in our convertible, even if we did manage to figure out how to work it. That was an upgrade wasted
We drove to the West Side and parked behind DisneyQuest. We bought tickets, even though they wouldnt be open for another hour. So what to do for an hour? Shop, of course! We picked up some jelly beans to munch on in the Candy Kitchen, and checked out Virgin Records and the magnet shop. The line at DQ was building, so we decided wed better jump in it, since they would be opening in 20 minutes.
DQ opened on time. This was our first time here, so we thought the elevator ride that you have to take to get in was pretty cool. I imagine it would be annoying to frequent visitors, since it does seem to hold up the process of actually getting inside!
Once inside, we headed straight for Cyber Space Mountain. I couldnt talk DD into making a coaster that went upside-down, so we ended up with a pretty tame coaster. We took our card over to the simulators and got to ride it. It was a very short ride, but this is definitely worth doing, especially if you are willing to go for it and add loops and corkscrews!
Next we played in the sound booths and with the Create-a-Toy machines while we waited for the first animation class. The animation class could really use a proper queue. There arent many seats, and the instructor wasnt letting anyone sit down while she booted up all the systems. When people were allowed to sit, some people jumped in ahead of people that had been waiting. Some people are just clueless
DD and I did manage to get seats, and we got set up to draw Mickey. Unlike the paper and pencil version in the Animation studio tour, here you draw with a touch screen and stylus. While this certainly made it easier to erase if you messed up, I prefer the paper and pencil version. When you finish, you can get a print out of your drawing, along with some other papers describing how to draw Mickey and a diploma, for $5. We printed out DDs drawing as a souvenir.
DD didnt want to do anything that involved putting on virtual reality goggles, so the rest of our options were kind of limited. I can see 12 year old boys spending days in this place though. We played on some of the old arcade games like Pac Man for a while hoping the lines for food would get a bit shorter. They didnt. So we sucked it up and got in a 30 minute line for pizza at nearly 2 in the afternoon. I think this was the longest we waited in line for ANYTHING all week. At least it was decent pizza.
The only other thing DD wanted to do was the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster bumper car things. The line was pretty short, so we hopped on. I drove. DD loaded and fired the balls at the other cars. She managed to get one direct hit and send someone spinning. This was a fun game, but a bit rough, like bumper cars.
We were bored with DQ at this point, plus it had gotten very crowded
, probably due to the bad weather outside. So we decided we needed to do more shopping. Well, maybe not needed. But if we had the boys along, they wouldnt put up with all this shopping, so we had to take advantage. So we drove over to the Marketplace.We had just enough time to check out the Team Mickey store (where we actually didnt buy anything!) and the Lego store. DD got a fill-your-own container of legos to add to our lego collection.
Now its time to say goodbye .
We found our way to the airport with no problems. We dropped off the car and we were at the gate VERY early. If I knew we werent going to try to get to a park today, we could have done an earlier flight. Oh well. Our flight left on time and arrived early, only to have us wait a very long time for luggage. On our last trip we flew out of smaller airports (Allentown to Sanford), so we were spoiled with not having to wait long times for luggage on that trip. I called the valet service was soon as the luggage started coming out (cheating a bit, since you are supposed to wait until you have your bags in your hands). As soon as we got our bag, we stood outside in the cold, in shorts, to watch for our car. It pulled up about 5 minutes later, before we had frozen too much. We paid and tipped the driver and he walked off. This was the service we paid the extra $10 for we could leave direct from the airport and the driver gets back to the lot somehow.
Final thoughts: This mom-kid trip thing has the makings of a great tradition. I will be taking DS when he turns 10 for a mom-son trip of his own. DD has told me she wants to do the same thing with her kids, so I think its safe to say she had a good time. I really enjoyed spending this one-on-one time with her, while she is still at an age where she likes me.
She will start middle school next year, so I know my days are numbered. Its very different doing the parks with only two people. On all of our previous trips there have been the four of us, plus various aunts, uncles, and grandparents. The stress of keeping everyone happy (and fed, and cool, and not bored ) can be a bit much. This was a lot of fun being able to just do what we wanted when we wanted.
Im off to make the scrapbook of this trip now (well, as soon as I finish the one from our May family trip, anyway), so I expect to suffer from Disney withdrawal any time now. I dont think our next trip will be until 2006, so I am planning a Disney cruise for next year so that I can get my Mickey fix!
Thanks for letting me share!
