MINMATE -- Tribe of 9 -- 2nd half Trip Report

minmate

I can show you the world... Don't you dare close y
Joined
Feb 27, 2004
Messages
1,730
Grandpa and Calista waited for a table at the GF Café, and I went and woke up Brayden and we all reconvened by the café, only to learn it would take another 45 minutes or so yet… We’d missed our PS here by at least an hour… so we bailed and went to Gasparilla again and spent some time playing the games in there too.

I still very badly wanted to go into the MK for the e-ride night that we’d already bought tickets for but Joe and my dad wanted no part of it… I was so frustrated… yet again things were just not working out. I acquiesced and we just let the kids watch Mickey cartoons and have an early night. (well 10ish)

DAY FOUR HIGHS: Time spent in AK was nice, grandpa’s magic card that bought neat toys for the kids.
DAY FOUR LOWS: Farewell to mom and sis, the rain and missing e-ride night b/c dad and Joe didn’t want to go, Jayleigh’s arm thingie… what was that… still don’t know!

DAY FIVE 6/15 UNEXPECTED EARLY ENTRY:
PLAN: Do Whatever Day….
My dad left early today at 6:30 a.m. so we were officially on our own in the World with the four kiddos.

We decided to head into MK for our 8:30 PS at Crystal Palace… got on the monorail at 8 a.m. and blinked and there we were at the MK again. I’m telling you, with these lovely little ones in tow, we are always too early or too late… never just right on time! We walked right in for our PS and got our strollers. We took our time and watched a momma duck with her five little baby ducks in tow, with their own security guard watching over them… just like Make Way For Ducklings… they were walking up the ramp by the lockers under the train station… those baby ducks were sooo cute… we watched them and gave them all names according to the people in our family based on their personalities and how the coincided with ours… one little duck just flat out sat down and stayed there…. That was the Meghan duck we decided… the tired Meghan duck. We got our picture taken on Main st. and with the kids holding Tinkerbell… nobody was on Main St… so we meandered and when we saw the massive line at Crystal Palace just decided to skip the PS. We walked around and saw a big bunny. We discovered from a passing CM that his name was Goliath. We saw TONS of ducks, birds and other animals… We walked through the castle and the kids tried to peek through the closed doors convinced they could see Cinderella inside. We sat down next to Adventureland and just relaxed for a few minutes before they dropped the rope… we went straight to Jungle Cruise, which the kids liked more than I thought they would. Our guide was funny with his jokes. Then it was back to Pirates again. Again, the Pirates gift shop was a big deterrent for the kids… we settled on getting everyone “hooks” which they loved. Off to see the Cinderella show… it was just starting… now I know this might sound kind of yucky, but the kids complained they couldn’t see and man, we only had two sets of shoulders and four kids… so I set two of the kids on top of one of the trash cans and they were able to see up there fine. We then went back to the Pirates gift store to meet Hook, Mr. Smee and Peter Pan.. This was a great character meet… the kids all had their hooks and Brayden had a whole conversation with Hook about how he doesn’t like Pan and he fights him and on and on…. They hooked their hooks together and had a grand ole time… I even forgot to do the tick-tock thing to him. Peter Pan is by far one of the best characters in all of WDW… While he drives his handler crazy…she’s worried about him wrapping things up, but he just ignores her and takes his time with each and every guest, talking to all of them… I enjoyed listening to him talk to all the other guests… he convinced Brayden to let him sign his sword to make it a Lost Boys sword… which Joe got a big kick out of too! Peter Pan reached his hand out for a five from meghan and she kept giving him her “hook” – that was cute too. This was great!

Well, when that was over we went to the tiki gods and let the kids get wet through there again. We criss crossed that side of the park for a bit hanging out in Liberty Square with some Mickey Bars and ice pops, and headed over to Fantasyland for Pooh FP’s… We went to the Golden Carousel… walked right on and rode it twice… when we got off the line was long and wrapped all the way around… guess we timed that one right! Jayleigh insisted I ride with her.. and Brayden gave me a heart attack every five seconds leaning back shouting… ‘Yay-hoo!” note Not yahoo… but YAY – HOO! Too cute… He was a pirate again today… surprise surprise. We rode Pooh and it was better than I’d remembered. By then we had moved our way into Tomorrowland and got FP’s for Buzz again. We rode TTA and the kids loved it… I was happy about that. It was starting to rain so we headed into Starlight Café for lunch but it was so crowded.. nowhere to sit… headed over to Pinocchio’s Village Haus and managed to snag a table there. Again, had some potty pit stops and came out just in time to miss the rain – yay! Wiped off the strollers and headed back to TTA again.. By now, Megalogic set in and Meghan decided she didn’t like this ride after all! Ugh! Bad parents that we were… we made her go on it anyway… Brayden and Jayleigh fell asleep so we just relaxed and Meghan was fine then… Calista was being a great sister, talking her through the whole ride, reassuring her it wasn’t scary or anything. We noticed Carousel of Progress was open and headed to that… It was great… I came out of there totally relaxed and felt like I’d been transported to a whole different world… it was actually a bit disorienting… guess it means it really did it’s job right? I came out feeling like, “It’s a great big beautiful tomorrow…” We were all getting along quite well all day… we woke Brayden up and went through Buzz one last time… was great fun… managed to fit three in each car… I just steered this time. We were in the park until about 4 p.m this day.

We walked very slowly back to the entrance, gave up our strollers and headed back to the GF via monorail. We relaxed for a short while when I realized I couldn’t handle another dinner at Gasparilla. I had a PS at Coral Reef for 6:40 at Epcot… so we picked up and headed over there via monorail (transfer at TTC)… we made it just in time but had some scuffles while waiting to be seated… I had to take Calista to the bathroom while she had a meltdown… Amazingly, she recovered and behaved very well at dinner… Joe felt like this restaurant was too nice for our family… the waitress messed up our kids’ drink orders – twice -- giving them Sprite when they don’t ever drink any soda… got that right and then the kids were so antsy… lots of taking them to the potty. Joe wasn’t impressed that there seemed to be more humans in the fish tanks than fish… I enjoyed the tanks but we were pretty occupied with keeping the kids in line, we didn’t get to fully enjoy the ambience… it only held their attention for a short while. I had the steak and lobster… The lobster was good but the steak wasn’t cooked properly… I just let Joe have it anyway because I didn’t want to take the time to have them fix it. We headed out of there full but a bit frazzled. It took Joe a long time to pay the bill and I had the four kids in the two double strollers. I was spinning them around… being goofy… ‘oofy, that is… and more than one person came by saying, “Boy, you’ve got your hands full!” Okay, like I haven’t heard that before… but still I just smile and say… yup!

We took pics by Nemo and headed to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Show… wouldn’t you know it, Calista had to go to the bathroom and the one next to the Show was closed…. Yes, she just went 30 minutes earlier too! So I took Brayden, Meghan and Jayleigh into the show. I’d never seen this before and didn’t realize how intense it was. Fortunately, we were sitting on the end because Jayleigh was clawing and climbing up me and the “mice” made Brayden totally lose it… so we left… I was concerned b/c I couldn’t find Joe. He wasn’t by the strollers and he wasn’t answering his phone… Brayden had to go potty now and I didn’t know if I should take him or stay by the strollers or what… Just then, Joe and Calista came strolling out of the show and we were reunited. We headed to the bathroom – see Brayden insisted on a boy bathroom. Then we went on Spaceship Earth and slowly departed the park… saw a bit of Illuminations and ended up being offered a seat at the front of the monorail back to the TTC. I convinced Joe to stop at the Polynesian to get desserts at Kona Café because I heard they were good. I’m definitely more of a doer and adventurer than Joe, especially by this point. He went along with it anyway… and as we waited, we did laps around the Polynesian… we had also been toting all those characters around that the kids had and let them play with them in the lounge. We brought our waffle cones, macadamia nut torte and white chocolate cheesecake back to the room to eat. The kids got a second wind so we took them to the quiet pool. Jayleigh had on a life jacket and wouldn’t let us hold her… she was actually swimming in the water by herself! Way to go! We were there for I don’t know how long… We planned to sleep in the next day so it didn’t matter.

DAY FIVE HIGHS: Quiet time at MK, Carousel of Progress, meeting Peter Pan
DAY FIVE LOWS: Kids’ behavior and service at Coral Reef

DAY SIX - 6/16: FAREWELL AND MORE SNAFUS:
This is departure day… L
We got up leisurely for a swim and went to the main pool to find out it wasn’t open for another hour and walked back to the quiet pool to find out it was closed due to broken glass and that they were opening the other pool early… so we went back there… geesh! And of course a potty stop was necessary! We got settled and swam for about an hour.. again Jayleigh doing it on her own (as did the older two girls) – Brayden was pretty skittish… but had fun anyway. We decided we were hungry and wanted to say goodbye to Mickey so we got out to go to our PS for Chef Mickey’s Breakfast… I felt bad about rushing the kids on the last day and just lost it when we got to Chef Mickey’s to find that again, SOMETHING WENT AWRY -- they didn’t have our PS number… the hostess was totally rude but got the manager. We discussed the situation and I had my confirm number… appears they booked it for the wrong day – even though I called to reconfirm and they gave the right info then…. Hmmm… After a 15-20 minute wait, they seated us at about 11 a.m. I was pretty much too upset by this point that it was hard to have a great time… Here, we were leaving today and not a single day went by without some sort of headache… missing tickets, missing boxes, missing PS’s, family with short tempers, aching feet and hard-to-get-to-smile… overstimulated/overtired kids working on Megalogic – really wore me down… I just wanted the trip to go more smoothly… The kids were happy though and Meghan gave me a big hug and told me she had such a good time and she was sad to be leaving Disney… it made me feel better to know that they had a good time, despite all the little snafus that frustrated me along the way.

We made our way back to the GF and hung out for a bit until it was time for the Wonderland Tea Party. Brayden, Meghan and Calista were scheduled to go… Brayden was being so goofy, singing about going to a “very merry unbirthday” -- figures when we got there and it was time for parents to leave he didn’t make it… He was fine at first but they took to long to get all the parents out and it bugged him out… so I took him back to the room. We had a late checkout of 3 p.m. I had to go settle some stuff with the bill and got a bellman to come fetch the bags. I hung out with Brayden and Jayleigh who made a half-hearted attempt to dress for the pool again… instead they chose to run around the hotel room naked. Joe went down to UPS a box of stuff back home to us and to get the girls… they had a surprise of a bouquet of flowers when the got back to the room. They loved the Tea Party… sang songs, played hide and seek, ate dessert first and sandwiches and nuggets. They really loved it and I would do it again for them in a minute… they are excited to try the Pirate Adventure next time.

We finished last minute stuff in the room, headed to Gasparilla one last time and had some food. We decided to give the flowers to the cashier at Gasparilla who had always been so nice to us… she seemed happy and offered us free snacks for the plane ride home… Nice!!!

We went to wait for Happy Limo. It ended up being 15 minutes late… just enough time for Calista to get sick and rush into the bathroom to throw up… that came totally out of left field and she was fine afteward… Hmm… guess she was just sick about leaving Disney. So, when the driver got there and told us it would take us at least 45 minutes to get to the airport we just thought… “well that figures… we’ll probably miss our flight too!” Apparently, he was kidding but we didn’t realize it at first… it was also the same driver my mom and sister had on their ride to the airport… Well, we got to the airport and made it to the ticket window just before a big line formed… then got in line and got seats across from each other. We were stuck on the runway for about a half hour. Guess how many times I had to get up to take kids to the potty during the total 3 hours? Brayden was just out of his mind… didn’t stop talking the whole way… he was furious he couldn’t go back to the hotel… he talked about a hundred different things at a million miles a minute… he reminded me of that bit that Bill Cosby does about the kid on the plane, “I’m Jeffrey, I four years old….” Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey…..

Halfway through the flight he remembered he didn’t get to go to the “birthday party” (the wonderland tea party he bailed out on) and yelled all about that while I tried to explain to him how he chose NOT to go! Ah… then he started flipping out about how he thought the plane was going to land in the water… he kept opening and closing the windows… “Oh I can’t look… No I don’t want to land in the water… I want to land in the grass!” The couple in front of us were thoroughly entertained! Joe was totally annoyed – embarrassed rather! Then when the plane finally landed, he had the windows open and peered out so excited with a huge grin on his face…. “Hey we didn’t land in the water after all, we landed on the road… that’s just wonderful!”

Wonderful Indeed!

Then SOMETHING WENT AWRY! They lost one of our bags! Wonderful!

We were in a brain-fog at 10 p.m. as we reported the missing bag and got the car and made our way home… the kids were wide awake now and all wanted to sleep in bed! We had to be up the next morning for Preschool Family Day… Meghan and Calista were both performing and Calista was graduating and moving onto Kindergarten…

Yup… talk about your emotional roller coaster… Wonderful… just wonderful!

It’s just now that I can sit back and reflect on the vacation as a whole… I’ve been slammed at work and been going non-stop since we got back… we had a very different experience this time around with a lot of events that challenged the magic for us and really wore on our emotions. I’d have to say I learned a lot and left WDW with mixed emotions… somewhat relieved to put this trip behind us, but sad to see it ending, knowing it will be quite some time before we go back. Taking a 5, 4, 3 and almost 2 year old to WDW is no “walk in the park” – but frankly, raising a 5, 4, 3 and almost 2 year old is a “handful” now isn’t it… But you know what… It’s wonderful! Just wonderful!


DAY SIX HIGHS: Wonderland Tea Party, seeing Jayleigh swimming with a life jacket but no grown-up help.
DAY SIX LOWS: Chef Mickey’s missing PS, losing our bag and leaving of course!
 
Thanks so much for a "real life" trip report! I hope you got your luggage back! Be so grateful Jayleigh's arm got better before you got to the hospital. We took our youngest in when she was 9 months for the same thing. She wouldnt move it, and she cried in pain if we touched it. We got her in to the dr after 5 hours. the dr thought it was nursemaids elbow, but couldnt get it to pop back in, SO, then she sent us to the ER for xrays, which came back normal. She said to take her to an orthopedist in the morning. But at 9pm that night, she just started moving her arm again, no pain. I was so grateful she was fine, and while the dr couldnt explain it, it still cost us 200.00. Again, thanks for finding the time to post, it was great to see my future. (PS lucky you! I always wanted to name my daughter Calista - now 4 girls later, Hubby still wont give in to that one.)
 





New Posts










Save Up to 30% on Rooms at Walt Disney World!

Save up to 30% on rooms at select Disney Resorts Collection hotels when you stay 5 consecutive nights or longer in late summer and early fall. Plus, enjoy other savings for shorter stays.This offer is valid for stays most nights from August 1 to October 11, 2025.
CLICK HERE













DIS Facebook DIS youtube DIS Instagram DIS Pinterest

Back
Top