Upon leaving Frontierland, we walked through the darkened and deserted streets of the Magic Kingdom toward Adventureland.
And paused to do the Rerun in the middle of the street.
Right hand, left hand, shoulder pop, jump.
We love Pirates of the Caribbean more than Raj loves him some horn rimmed glasses and Dwayne loves to say hey
hey hey so as it popped up in our line of vision on the right, we shimmied on over and paid them a visit. In doing so, we hit upon what would be the theme of the rest of our evening.
We walked straight through the queue without stopping once, not even to let anyone “catch up with the rest of their party” or “get ahead of the children” and were stomping our wet feet all over the seats of a big brown boat with handlebars within roughly sixty seconds. We rode the familiar ride, singing that familiar song and pointing out the familiar scenes to our children.
“Look, Mommy’s chasing Daddy with the broom.”
And yes, this is the scene that made our then three year old daughter kick her fear to the curb and laugh out loud. On another trip. Not this one. Or the last one. It sparked an appreciation for this ride in her all those years ago. Or, at least it took her mind off the spooky dungeons she’d encountered during our hideously long wait in the queue that day.
Not this day. That one.
So we said it again. Just like we do each and every time we see it. Because we’re creatures of habit. And we occasionally like to amuse ourselves and no one else.
After we slid past a realistic looking Jack Sparrow and the ending scenes, we bumped the boat in front of us and eventually docked, stomped our wet feet all over the seats on our way out and made our way toward Main Street. It was almost time for the fireworks and we were NOT going to miss out on those. Like we had done with the parade. We ain’t about being 0 for 2. NOBama. So we beat a trail to Main Street where the crowds were already assembling for the special showing of Music, Magic and Mayhem. But instead of stopping to stake out a place, we kept walking.
All the way to the Main Street Bakery.
Because what good are fireworks without snacks?
Since I was in the mood for a cool and refreshing lil sumpm sumpm and my Dole Whip was eluding me again that night, I made the biggest mistake of the year (almost) and went with the strawberry and cream smoothie. A strawberry swirl it ain’t. And that’s all I’ll say about that. The kids grabbed cookies, a brownie and a drink and DH messed up and got the same thing I did. Sucker. Right as we were finishing up at the cash register, we heard the beginning of the music and the first explosions of the fireworks.
The kids and I literally DROPPED what we were doing, turned tail and ran outside. George Costanza couldn’t get out of a burning building any faster than we got out of that bakery. We were gone like a freight train, gone like yesterday. Leaving DH high and dry. All by himself. Attempting to juggle two trays with everything but the kitchen sink loaded on it. Which he could NOT bring out into the street.
Or so he thought.
After a few extremely persuasive words yelled from the vicinity of the doorway out into the street, we sheepishly power walked back over to join him, grabbed our stuff off the tray and then turned on a dime and ran right back out into the street.
In an effort to not miss a moment of them there fancy fireworks.
We love us some perimeter fireworks and this one did not disappoint. Although the name of the party we were attending did contain the word “Pirate”, I have to admit I was really surprised to hear Pirates begin to play roughly halfway through the show.
Shortly before our trip last October, a friend gave us a CD with some Disney music on it. One of the songs was the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean. As we made our way around property on that trip, we played that CD nonstop and more often than not, we wound up listening to Pirates. As we drove around at night with our windows down, discussing the day’s events and anticipating what the next day would bring, we did it all with the theme from Pirates running in the background. It was my son and husband’s favorite by a landslide and it quickly became THE song from that trip. Not this one. So as we stood there in front of the castle, taking in the cooler than cool fireworks and hearing that familiar music boom all around us, we were transported back in time and the memories from that trip became intertwined with the present in an instant.
Kind of like with this trip report. Apparently.
We stood in the middle of Main Street sucking back nasty strawberry and cream crap, hoping in vain the taste would change with the next slurp and were in awe of this part. It was, hands down, one of the most perfectly timed portions of any fireworks show we’d ever seen. The explosions were choreographed perfectly to the music.
The music wasn’t hard on the ears either.
We were blown away by Music, Magic and Mayhem. We felt they really outdid themselves with that one.
Once the fireworks were over, we took a stroll toward Adventureland. Because we had a date with a pirate.
One of the reasons the boy had wanted to “win” a ticket to the party so bad was so he could meet Jack Sparrow. Or Jack SPA-rrow. He was pumped about the chance to finally actually meet him and as we wound our way through the moderately long line (the first time we’d seen a line all night), his voice began to raise three octaves and he got fidgety. He laughed for no reason whatsoever. In other words, he was seriously jacked up about meeting the Captain of the Black Pearl.
For all the boy’s talk beforehand though, he clammed up when it was finally our turn for some serious one on one time with Jack Sparrow. Which is the way it usually goes, isn’t it?
Jack Sparrow: Hello there, mates.
The boy:
silence accompanied by a slight step back
The girl:
silence
Jack Sparrow: Yes, was your trip here a long one?
The boy:
silence accompanied by a shoulder shrug
The girl:
silence accompanied by a shoulder shrug
Jack Sparrow: Yes, how did you arrive here in the Caribbean? By ship?
The boy:
silence followed by a smiling head shake
Jack Sparrow: Coach?
The girl:
silence, silence and more silence
Me: Coach.
Jack Sparrow: Ah, coach. Yes. Well let’s have a photograph then.
And that was it. My husband and I stepped in and held a conversation with Jack for a few minutes. He really did a good job. I can’t say I blame the kids though. If you were seven and ten, would you really want to be chatting up a guy who a) wore more jewelry than your mom b) was all up in your grill with his drunken jazz hands c) couldn’t stand up straight longer than two seconds and 3) looked like this?
I think not.
Still, when we left, the boy was on Cloud Nine. And all smiles. He jumped around and walked backwards, talking to us excitedly the whole time as he moved. Recounting the conversation. As it were. The picture they took with Jack Sparrow was one of only two photos I ended up ordering from Photopass from that night. But only because the caption underneath it reads “I Met Jack Sparrow.” And considering the fact that it was probably the highlight of the boy’s night, there was no way I could pass that one up.
Especially at forty percent off.
Mama didn’t raise no fool.
Once we washed our hands of the weirdness, we decided to call it a night. Our shoes were squeaking, our pants were dripping, our legs were aching and an edge of irritability was slowly but surely beginning to creep in. Hard to imagine, considering the night we’d had but there’s only so many hours of walking around getting soaked to the bone that one person can take. And there ain’t enough pixie dust in the World to make you okay with having soaking wet underwear. When that happens, it’s just time to call it a night.
As we squish squashed our way by the castle for the last time, we heard the announcement that the Dream Along With Mickey show had been cancelled that evening. The announcer apologized profusely for any inconvenience. It was at that point that I realized we hadn’t seen any characters out that night for the special meet 'n greets. I was sure they had moved everything indoors because of the rain. I imagine uppity mice ain’t down with squeaky shoes. But still, I didn’t remember seeing any. But I did remember over hearing the murmurs at Splash Mountain earlier about one day passes.
Things that make you go
Hmmmm.
I remembered reading some comments on my girl Frick’s trip report that Disney had given out one day passes in the past at hard ticket events when the weather was crummy. I thought briefly about stopping by Guest Services on the way out just to find out if there was any chance they were doing it that night. But to be honest, we had such a good time that I didn’t feel quite right asking if they were giving out passes due to the weather or any of the scheduled events being cancelled. We’d had a downright awesome time at the party that night. Our experience, although wet and messy, had been an incredible one. Besides, DH and the kids were ready to get gone for good and good and gone so I decided to leave without asking.
We jumped on the nearly empty monorail, picked up our car and my husband drove us out of Disneyworld. This time on purpose.
As he drove, I kept expecting to feel sad that we weren’t staying in a Disney resort and instead heading back to Universal. I thought to myself “Anytime now it’s going to hit me and I’m going to feel sad that we’re not staying here.”
And I’d wait. And think “Okay, here it comes. We’re passing underneath the arches. I’m about to feel sad.”
And then I’d wait some more.
But the funny thing is that it never happened. I was perfectly fine with leaving Disney property to go back to the Royal Pacific for the rest of our vacation. There wasn’t even an ounce of sadness. Who knew?!
We made it back to our resort and after getting cleaned up, we turned in for the evening in our extremely comfortable beds. Everyone fell asleep almost instantly. Everyone except me, that is. I lay awake thinking about those darn tickets. And bed bugs. What I’d wear the next day. Pirates. Bullwinkle. The cool as all get out light fixtures in the bathroom. The dimmer ones. But mostly I kicked myself for not stopping for five minutes to ask a dang question.
Except I actually kicked DH instead of myself.
It was dark, my legs were cramping and my aim was off. I felt bad about it but the way I figure it, it was payback for the time he jammed his thumb into my eyeball socket at three in the morning. Ten years ago. Waking up with a thumb in your eye is
not a fastpass. At any rate, things eventually calmed down and I drifted off to sleep. With visions of one day passes dancing in my head.
The next morning we were awakened at the crack of dawn by the shrill ring of the telephone. DH picked it up to hear the voice on the other end of the line say “
You def’nly need a Tic Tac or sump’m cause yo breaf STANK!”
It was Dunkey. Bringin’ the wake up call.
Okay, so maybe they don’t actually
have character wake up calls. That we know of. And maybe that didn’t really happen.
Please. Your first clue was the word “crack of dawn” This is the relaxing vacation, remember? We were all about sleeping in this go round. But DH and I did get a pretty good laugh as we lay in bed that morning imagining which lame characters should be doing wake up calls at Universal and what they’d say if they did.
After we finally decided to roll out of bed, we got showers and got dressed. And then I broke down and tried to call Guest Services at the Magic Kingdom. Just for the heck of it. And because if I know one thing and one thing only, it’s that it never hurts to ask.
I was eventually connected to someone with Ticket Services and upon explaining that I was just checking to see if,
by some odd chance, any passes were given out the night before to the guests at the P&PP due to some of the events being cancelled, I was told that our tickets had already been credited with another day in the parks.
GET OUT!
I told her.
I was three different kinds of numb. I had hoped that might be the case but I never thought it actually
would be. Because Disney doesn’t give out free stuff. We’re the ones who line their pockets. Not the other way around. But as my husband wisely pointed out, it probably wasn’t such a bad decision on their part to credit us with another day. They knew they’d make money off us by inviting us back again. We’d buy more souvenirs, we’d eat all of our meals in their restaurants, we’d pay for parking. They would get something out of the deal as well. But whatever their reasoning for doing it, we didn’t care. Because we were in possession of four little tickets with an extra day’s worth of fun and pixie dust already encoded in that sweet little strip on the back.
And we were PUMPED UP ABOUT IT!!!!
I asked the CM if she needed our names to verify and she said she did not. All we needed were our P&PP tickets from the night before in order to get into another park for one day. I believe she said that the tickets were good for one year from the date of the party as well.
At which point, I said “I am almost not believing this is true.”
Except that I didn’t. And Simon Cowell didn’t dog me out either.
At any rate, when we hung up, you better BELIEVE I danced around the room. And forced the family to join in with me. Right after DH made a mad dash over to the nightstand to find the tickets. Yes! There they were. He held them in his hands, petted them and called them precious. Then we talked about how awesome this trip was shaping up to be. Not only had we enjoyed a great night with no crowds in the middle of one of the busiest seasons at Disney, but we were getting an extra day in the parks to go along with it.
FOR FREE!
You can’t beat that with a stick. We stopped what we were doing and took a few moments to thank God for His many blessings on our trip thus far and then we grabbed some breakfast and headed out to the parks.
The
other parks.
As anxious as we were to get going and check out the dark side, there was no real rushing that morning. Everything was fairly peaceful. We didn’t feel pressured to run out the door and adhere to a plan. Mainly because we didn’t have a plan. Well, yes we did. Go to Universal Studios and have fun. That was our plan. Aside from that, we were open to anything. As we made our way along the beautifully landscaped resort walkway toward Universal Studios by way of Citywalk, DH asked me what time the park opened.
I told him I didn’t know.
That sound you hear? It’s the sound of NM screaming all the way from Georgia.
But that’s how laid back we were about it. We weren’t even sure what time the park opened. We thought it was nine but it could’ve been ten for all we knew. Even now I’m not sure which. And you know something? It felt AWESOME to be “them”. It really did. We’d thrown off the yoke and we were footloose and fancy free. And it felt
goooood. But not to worry. We had our bases covered as far as the rides were concerned. The fact of the matter is that although this type of blasé attitude could cause some problems elsewhere, it was perfectly acceptable here. Because of two little words.
Universal Express.
Baby.
It’s free when you stay in a Universal resort and that sucker is a one way ticket to the front of the line any time you want it. As many times as you want it. With no windows or return times. It completely blew our socks off. And blew Fastpass out of the water. No comparison whatsoever.
But more on that later.
As we walked that morning, we took some shots along the way.
The rickshaws seemed like a pretty cool way to get to and from the parks. That is, if you could catch them at the right time. Which we never seemed to be able to do.
The way the resorts and parks are set up there is once you leave your resort, you walk (or ride) to Citywalk, which is similar to Downtown Disney. It serves as the hub, I suppose. From there, you have Islands of Adventure on one side and Universal Studios on the other. Everything is situated very close together so it’s an easy walk to get most anywhere on property.
Once we arrived at Citywalk, the first thing we noticed was the familiar music that was playing. I’m all about the familiar background music and although I can’t be sure, I think it was coming from this little place.
I love me some Jimmy Buffett. Mainly because you
just cannot hear his songs without associating them with laid back times. And vacation. It’s like watching fish in a fish tank. It just relaxes you and brings your blood pressure down. And if it doesn’t, it should. It’s toes in the sand, sun on your face, know every word by heart music to me and it immediately put both me and my husband in a good mood.
We paused for some pictures beside the Bass Pro Shop car on display outside Nascar Sports Grille. Like every other Redneck that had come that way.
And then we kicked it on in. We were ready to get down to bidness.
Ersal Studios. It’s the new Universal Studios. And what you get when you don’t have the patience to wait for the words to spin all the way around again. Like the person in the right of that shot. Every group that stands in front of that globe does that. Every single one. Part of the group stands at attention with the smile and the designated lookout person cranes his neck in order to give the go ahead with the shutter once the letters swing on around. It’s Unwritten Rule Number 7854 in the Ersal Studios handbook. You gotta have a spotter.
We made it through the entrance pretty fast, noticing the main difference here is that there are no finger scans. Just someone standing there scanning tickets and ushering you through. Once we were on the other side of the gate, we took in the scene.
Main Street it ain’t. But it was vacation and we were giddy all the same.
After picking up a few maps (because we would actually need them here), and scoping out our options, we decided to walk straight ahead and take in Shrek 4D first.
The kids love Shrek and had been pretty pumped about this attraction. We knew the line for this would get pretty long later in the day so we hit it when we first arrived. That would turn out to be a good decision because even with Universal Express, we ended up waiting longer for that attraction than any of the other ones the entire trip. The wait wasn’t bad though because along the way, we were treated to our first dose of Universal humor.
The play on Jaws cracked us up. As did Liar Liar.
Once we made it through the mostly boring and unfunny preshow, we took our seats inside the theatre, where the lights soon went down and the show began.
It was similar to Philharmagic except it was nothing like Philharmagic. And the seats bucked and moved along with the action on the screen. Didn’t expect that. Three of us enjoyed it. The fourth one, not so much. The girl started crying shortly into the show and did not stop
the entire time we were in there. Which is highly unusual for her. She even scooted over to sit in my lap and bury her head in my shoulder halfway through the show. What was up with that? This is the same girl who braved Space Mountain back to back, laughed in the face of the drunken pirates and dropped five stories into a briar patch over and over just the night before. But once the show ended, we realized what was going on. It wasn’t so much that the show had scared her (which it did a little) but it was moreso the fact that she lost her cooler than cool pink Rock Star sunglasses during the show.
Her “stylin” new sunglasses.
As the lights came up, she explained what happened, wiped the tears off her cheeks and pointed out the last known location of the sunglasses in question. And begged me to retrieve them. The only problem was that last known location. They had fallen into the crack between the seats.
Not the crack between the seats!
Anywhere but the crack between the seats!
But as much as I hate theme park grodiness, I love my daughter even more. And she was some kind of upset about those sunglasses. So I did what any mother would do in that situation. I bit the bullet and dove into the bowels of theme park nastiness. Where no human hand should ever dare go. The crack between the seat and the seat back.
Which was NOT the floor, by the way. The seats were arranged on a platform type contraption so everything that gets dropped between the seats stays between the seats.
It’s kind of like Vegas in that respect. Only with more potential for disease.
I held my breath, counted to three and then shoved my hand blindly down between the cushions of the seat. And instead of pulling out the object of our daughter’s affection, I pulled out something entirely different.
You’ll never guess what.
Up Next: Ten Reasons Why You Should Throw Some Rubber Gloves in That Backpack and Other Tomfoolery
Waiting patiently for the next guffaw-inducing update 
Great value for the hard ticket...
And, of course, the Girl's tough decision was as sweet as a piece of that BGPC thing that Z's still hankering for.
You know what I mean! Blech!
