On the Fourth Day...

[gopherit]

On the Fourth Day of Disney, Mickey gave to me:
Four soggy swimmers,
Third place on Millionaire,
Two rooms at Boardwalk,
And a night in the BCV!

Cast of Characters:

Cindy (that’s me, 37 yr old “Mom”, obsessive-compulsive planner of these trips!)
Rich (DH, 38 yrs young “Dad”, basically wonderful and easy going, but occasionally known to slip into the less-loved persona, Mr. “How Much is This Going to Cost Me?”)
Evan (9 yrs old, our deep thinker and comfort seeker)
Ryan (8 yrs old, our tireless spark on an endless thrill quest)
Caroline (4 yrs old and already has the role of drama queen mastered!)

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FIRST DAY
CLICK HERE TO READ THE SECOND DAY
CLICK HERE TO READ THE THIRD DAY

THE FOURTH DAY

Evan (aka Ear-van) was up pretty early, trying to assess how he felt. Problem was, the boy knew too much – namely, that today is Blizzard Beach day. I waited until almost 8 am to call his pediatrician back home, and left a message with his emergency care group for a call-back. At 8:01, however, Evan throws himself in devastated fashion across the master bed where I stand folding some clothes. His father had apparently told him, “No Blizzard Beach for you.” Well, I consoled our son and reminded him that while Daddy had his best interest at heart (maybe not MINE, as I was left to deal with this, but surely our son’s), he couldn’t really make that decision alone – we needed to hear the verdict from the pediatrician. Our pediatrician called us promptly within 5 minutes of my first call – God I love that guy. From the details I gave him, he said we could try using an OTC decongestant to help drain any water and also let him blow up balloons to help “pop” his ears some. As Evan hardly ever gets ear infections (I think his last one was in kindergarten) and has no tubes in his ears, our pediatrician felt swimming would be ok, in moderation – maybe no deep diving. HOWEVER – he was very clear that if pain persisted over the next day or two, or worsened, or other symptoms ever developed indicating infection (fever, nausea, not sleeping, etc) he would need to have his ear seen by a doctor down in Florida. Well, I relayed the info to a VERY relieved son that Blizzard Beach was ok, with a few measures that he seemed willing to fulfill. With a quick glare at DH for his oh-so-helpful prior edict to Evan, I set out to buy decongestant. I am saddened to say that the BW shops did not have such a beast. They had every other combo imaginable, but no simple children’s decongestant. So I took the van and went to Gooding’s. Picked up the decongestant, some balloons, bread and a few other grocery items and came back to the villa. After medicating Evan per doc’s orders and watching him inflate a few bright therapeutic orbs, I then sent DH away with the kids. I was in no way ready to hit BB right then – hadn’t even had breakfast (and my pre-dawn chip and dip fest had worn off). I called my sister – decided she and I would hit BB together about an hour later. So DH went off with the 3 kids in tow while I ate a bowl of cereal and finished some laundry and laid out the dinner plans to my SIL. She was going to stay at the villa today and take a day off with the baby. For a while, it looked like her “day off” was going to include her DH and elder son as well, as my 4 yr old nephew kept getting himself in trouble with his parents and was getting reprimanded repeatedly for his behavior. Great – everybody’s testy today!

Sister, her 2 dds, and my BIL and his son and me made our way to the bus stop. On the way I reminded BIL yet again – BUY THOSE E-RIDE TICKETS! They had planned to do the e-ride on the 11th , but had yet to buy their tickets for the event. It is now the 10th. I was determined that this one thing, this one little item, they would somehow do – it was up to them. We arrived at BB at around 10:30. As soon as we walked into this park, I realized the magnitude of our problem – how the HECK was I gonna find them in here? My sister was very optimistic, while my BIL was just ready to put his stuff down anywhere and get into it all, with or without my DH. After checking out the Tike’s Peak (no Rich), the Ski Patrol (no Rich) and then the beach area (Nope… not there either), BIL was plopping his stuff on the first open chair. I decided to split from them – figured I could cover more ground alone. I cased BB from stem to stern. Yes, we have radios and cell phones, but if he were in the water, the radio or phone would be on the chair. So much for that. Finally, after 45 minutes of searching, I found them over at Tike’s peak (sometimes the last place you look is the first place you looked…) BIL was with them, but no sign of my sister. They had somehow lost her and her dds. We couldn’t seem to stay together if someone tied us with a rope. I told DH of my problems finding them. He said he didn’t see why I had so much trouble – he left their stuff in plain view over near the beach so we would see it. He then took us to this “unmistakable spot”… or at least, he tried to. He couldn’t find it for a while – we looked in all the shady huts near the wave area until FINALLY he points to 2 chairs and says, “THERE!” Ah yes, how could we have missed it – 2 chairs! And to mark them as “different” from the 4 hundred thousand other chairs that surrounded it, he had placed an inside-out gray t-shirt and his glasses. All the other “stuff” (my daughter’s bright purple cover-up, the kids t-shirts, their sandals, the orange cooler) was tucked into a bag or stuffed UNDER the chairs. Now HOW could I have missed that? I guess the look on my face said it all, and I could tell now that he was getting defensive. He then says to me, “Where are the towels?” Oh great – he brought kids, but no towels. Neither did BIL. I didn’t care if I had one, but I had specifically brought the kids’ beach towels with us on the trip for use at the water parks. And now they were sitting at BWV. I said, “Well, guess I have to go back then.” This got him agitated – “Why? They can just do without.” So I said I would go rent towels. Well that idea didn’t strike him well either – pay money for a towel? To use and give back? That idea ranked right up there with valet service. I said, “I am losin’ it here, ok. And I’ll just have to go back and get the towels.” He then said, “Will you cut it out? You’re the one making this all so hard for yourself. You set yourself up to do EVERYTHING.” I responded, “Well LOOK what happens if I DON’T! They have NO TOWELS!” To which he responded, “And they DON’T CARE!” I looked around us – there were all these drippy little vertically challenged impatient faces staring back. I said he couldn’t make that call – that was for them to say. So he asked the kids, “Hey – by the way, we don’t have any towels. You guys will have to drip dry on the way home. You ok with that?” They all just nodded yes and said, “Can we get back in now?” I added, “You will ride the bus WET. Understood?” “YES – but can we go back now?” The kids took off with BIL and I turned to DH and said much more softly (pathetically, if you will), “All I’m saying here is that – I’ve lost my magic. I have really lost it. I was up until 2 am trying to figure out how to turn myself around, and I need your help. Please HELP ME find my magic here, because I worked really hard on this whole thing and I do NOT enjoy feeling this way.” At this point the boys raced up and wanted to go to the tube rapids. I elected to take them – it would get me away from DH at this point, and I needed the space. It was a pretty desperate diversion for me, as I am normally not one to do that kind of stuff anymore. Having kids sorta took the thrill seeker right outta me. I guess managing 3 kids is thrilling enough in its own right. I really HATE the water slide in our town. The kids always beg me to ride, and I go maybe once or twice down, that’s it. But I really needed to get away. Plus, I could tell that the kids were sensing my negativity and that bothered me. I wanted this to be a big, happy family time together! So off to the tubes for us. On the way there, the boys pit-stopped in the bathroom. While I was waiting on them, I overheard some parent giving their spouse the what-for, then their kids showed up and the parent lit into them about nothing. Really, it was piddly stuff, but the parent was already agitated and miserable, so it didn’t take much to set her off. I thought – There. That’s it – That’s what I DON’T WANT TO BE. I don’t want to be so consumed in what went wrong that I can’t enjoy what is going RIGHT. And with that (and empty bladders) we ascended towards the Rapids.

The boys and I had a grand time with the tubes. My adventure-seeker of course opted for the tunnels and such on a solo tube, whereas Evan and I were content to take the open routes, sometimes together, sometimes as singles. Man, though, those tubes are HEAVY to haul up all those stairs. After about 3 trips on these, we tried the 8-man toboggans. Evan had been dreaming about these ever since he was 3 and watched the “Caribbean Beach Party” video that features BB and TL. This was great fun, and I proved I was definitely built for speed (all that chip and dip paid off). My boys were stunned that I was doing these things with them – who was this woman, and into what trunk had she stuffed their real mother? We then headed back towards our “2-Chair Spot-It-Anywhere” camp. Ironically, as I stood at the chairs trying to dry my face on my beach cover-up I spotted none other than BIL, led by DH, wandering aimlessly as he looked again for the “Spot”. Instead of rolling my eyes in exasperation, I laughed. Granted, it was a Squidward sort of laugh at their expense…but I actually laughed.

We ate some lunch and then decided to hit the Ski Patrol. Still no sign of my sister, although they said they had seen one of my nieces for a while. The kids loved Ski Patrol area, especially the iceberg walk across the pool. My nephew got very upset over the slide there, however, because for some reason, he couldn’t slide – he was all friction. His cousin Caroline, however, was like a slippery eel. With the way those slides are set up, he was intent on racing her, but much to his dismay, he couldn’t even finish the race (much less win). Often he had to scooch his way down to the end of the slide just to hit the water. We decided to try the Family Raft Ride, and walked the stairs from there – yowza, this, combined with the tubing stair climbing I had already done, and I was beginning to feel like I had spent the day on a thighmaster. The family raft ride was difficult for us due to our numbers. We had 3 adults, and 4 kids. Man could we have used my sister and her girls! They wouldn’t let us all in one raft, and they wouldn’t add other people to our rafts (I guess we looked shifty and nobody wanted to ride with us.) So whichever raft had only one adult always went too slow and invariably got rammed from behind about halfway down the trip! After 2 trips on this, Evan wanted to take his dad tubing and tobogganing, but Ryan said no thanks. Errrruh? What was with that? My thrill seeker was done?!? Ryan had discovered his new love – the lazy river. So he and BIL and nephew went cruising on the river – I was SUPPOSED to be with them, but they went too fast, too far ahead, and dd and I got held up in a tube jam in the tunnel. I was a bit panicked by this – Ryan has a habit of racing ahead and losing us. I was worried that BIL might not realize that I didn’t have Ryan – he did. I had visions of a crying Ryan wandering aimlessly through BB, looking for us. After a trip and a half around the river and still no sign of them, DD and I got off the River and I posted a note at the camp spot – WHO HAS RYAN? From a distance, it was then that I spied clearly way up on the toboggans my DH and Evan. (Like I said, eagle eyes in the distance, can’t read crap up close.) DD and I walked up to that area, and at last found, of all people, my sister! Her girls had abandoned her long ago and she was very happy to have located us. Turns out her “camp” was very near ours – we just never were there at the same times, I guess. So much for the Small World concept. It was now about 4 pm. We waited for Rich and Evan and then did the toboggan runs together. My 4 yr old dd LOVED this. The CMs were so great with her, too. They would get her all set on the mat and ask if she was ready to “win”. Then they would push her out well ahead of the rest of us. It was so bizarre to see her sailing off the edge of the earth and then, once I took off, I’d catch her in no time flat and pass her by – she thought that was hilarious. We did that a couple times. I took my sister and Caroline and Evan over to the tube rapids again. Man did it KILL walking those steps! At one point, we were all so pitiful, we started laughing, and the laughing hurt so much, I can still feel it in my ribs, I swear, a full 2 weeks later! Caroline loved the 2 man tube all the way until the very end. The water came rushing up over us and right up her poor nose. I tried to comfort her, but of course they are yelling at you to get off your tubes, and let me tell you, a graceful dismount off those things just can’t be done. She somehow ended up taking another face-full of water again. When I finally had her calmed down, the one thing she would say is, “No Tubes! No Tubes!” We went back to the toboggans. Son Evan was in absolute stitches trying to tell us about watching some poor guy at the toboggan race try to retrieve his kid’s mat. Apparently the guy did a dramatic dash, followed by a slide, then went airborne, and finally landed flat on his back, feet in the air. It sounded lethal to me, but Evan was literally hyperventilating with laughter as he told the story, and I had to have my DH interpret. You know, I think that kid watches too much “America’s Funniest Home Videos”. I took the kids to the snow cone place (or rather, snow cup… these things were huge!) Caroline chose for her 2 flavors bubblegum and pineapple – gag. Evan and Ryan made more reasonable selections (something like grape and blueberry). While the kids chowed down, my BIL, my sister and I then did the 8-man toboggan twice. We then did the individual toboggan runs that twist and turn – oh man, that killed my lower back for some reason. We did it twice, and after the second time I said “No Toboggans! No toboggans!” We then did that dual-tube speed race – is it the Slush Gusher? Wow was that fast. By now it was 5 pm and the lines were really low – very easy to get onto most things. We headed over to relieve Rich; he had all the kids in the wave pool / beach. He and Evan hit a few tubes and toboggans one last time, then I told him to hit the family ride one more time, but without me – I had my mind set on one of the snow cones. And besides, then they would have 2 adults, and all four kids could ride together. They would enjoy that.

My sister and I each got a big snow cone (cup), and she headed back to BWV while I sat and watched kids horse around in the Ski Patrol area. THis was a very relaxing reverie for me -- I was at one with BB, slurping my snow cone, watching others enjoying the water in the late afternoon sun, content knowing my remaining family was off having fun. I was also trying my best to dry out sans a towel. After their raft ride, the kids continued to play in the Ski Patrol area, riding the tubes (yes we managed to get dd to try these – her fear of tubes was absolved after a few rides in the far more gentle orange tubes!) The boys even did the zipline (which, BTW, looks like a torn rotator cuff waiting to happen – I saw kids get so jerked and flipped by that thing if they tried to hold on all the way down! OUCH!)

We finally headed out at 7 pm. We all agreed that if you had UPs or PAPs or such, the idealtime for the water parks would be 5-7 pm. It was SUCH a difference. We heard that BB had been at full capacity that day, and that the wait for the Summit Plummet was over 90 minutes. All that waiting, for a 60 second wedgie. No thanks. It occurs to me that as we’re waiting for the bus, we all have on these photo bands and none of us have so much as looked at a single photo that was taken of us. Oh well. I have decided the heavens don’t seem to want me to photograph the water parks. Last year I had a water-safe camera for DH to use at TL, but he left it behind in the villa. This year I brought another one – but it was defective and it cycled through about 20 pictures, leaving me with only 4 or 5 exposures! Like I said – Oh well. I have a love/hate relationship with cameras anyway. On the one hand, I love to look at photos after a trip, and I am always bummed out by the number of shots that aren’t quiiiiite what I wanted, or didn’t focus optimally, or just missed or preceded the action I wanted to catch. So I always vow – Next trip, I am going to snap so many pictures I get carpal tunnel! But then, the photo op time comes, and I find that the camera sometimes gets in the way of enjoying the experience. I’m usually the only one taking pictures, so I am stuck viewing everything through a lens (well, digital screen). It gets old – sometimes you gotta set the camera down and just LIVE, I say! The best camera I have, after all, is my mind – I can hold all sorts of high-resolution images there and they can’t get ruined by flood, fire, or a toddler with scissors. Granted, they are harder to download and share and pass along that way… but they are still my memories and I’ll keep them forever, I hope. Besides, I tell myself, we are planning to also do TL on Saturday. Maybe I’ll get some good water park shots over there.

Evan complains a little about the ear as we leave the park. Funny, he didn’t complain at all while we were in it. Now he’s tired, though, and there’s a rock in his shoe, and water in his shorts, and his ear hurts. Just call him Ear-yore, I mean, Eeyore. When bus finally comes (about 10 minutes) the kids are in decent shape – their bathing suits are fairly dried out, and their t-shirts are of course dry. Caroline has a nice dry Ariel cover up, so she’s ok too. I suck it up and realize DH was right – the world didn’t stop for a lack of towels. I’m glad I didn’t go back and get them – they probably wouldn’t have understood or appreciated the effort anyway. And then I would have been miffed at their seeming indifference.

When we arrive at the villa, SIL has made the spaghetti and salad. The kids are fairly well spent, and knowing that Wednesday is our big MK day, we convince them to turn in early. Evan doesn’t seem to be complaining too much about the ear now. Nonetheless, I give him another dose of decongestant per the instructions, let him blow a few balloons, and put a few drops in his ears to dry up any water. Once the kids are down, I slip the stuff in the fairy bags and head for bed. I leave the weather channel on for a while. It frustrates the crap out of me that they have no “Local on the 8’s” down here…. It just shows weather around the nation. I don’t care about the nation – show me a stinkin’ Orlando radar and forecast! Hmmm. Appears that the storm out in the Atlantic is gaining some strength. Worry-wart BIL (a very glass-half-empty kinda guy) is of course already convinced it’s going to hit us. Yeah right, whatever… See ya in the morning.


COMING NEXT: THE FIFTH DAY... (click here!)
Princesses, Pooh Bear, and meat on a stick – what 14 years of Marriage will get ya!
(Plus – one more day closer to you-know-what…)

 

[crazyforgoofy]

How DO you remember all this detail? Your TR is amazing. I'm really enjoying reading about your adventures. I'm the planner and Disney freak in our family too. I'm now know where to find my Magic again when I lose it - at Blizzard Beach! Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Minniespal]

Great report ~ Thanx for sharing.

 

[lorifl2]

Your reports are fantastic! More please!

 

[KayleeUK]

Wonderful reports Thank you for sharing your trip with us

 

[LuvindisCruiser]

Your reports are great ! It's like reading a good novel. I can't wait until I have some quiet time to pick up where I left off !! I love the detail !!! Especially with your hubby and all the commotion of going with other families. You feel like you are responsible for everything because you know so much from these boards. I know sometimes on vacation we just have to breathe and say " I will have a good time (even if nobody is cooperating) I can't wait for the next "chapter" !!!

 

[leahannpen]

Love it, love it, love it!

 

[4greatboys]