Question.
How many tired Disney tourists does it take to turn off a flashing necklace?
Question.
Will we ever get back to Port Orleans without real life strangers slapping us silly?
Question.
Will Michael ever find Walt?
Question.
What do the numbers mean?
Question.
Will Hurley ever cut that nappy hair and lose some weight?
Question.
What the heck is up with that island and for what purpose were the Losties brought there?
These are just a few of the burning questions I will try to answer in this, the last official installment of my trip report.
Okay, who am I kidding? Two. I’ll answer two out of the six.
For the remaining four, you’ll just have to check back with me in about fifteen years or so and maybe I’ll be able to let ya know how it turned out.
Or maybe not. Darn reruns. What’s up with that?
But before attempting to answer the first two questions, I’m gonna have to take ya back. Waaaay back. Considering the fact that this trip took place in October, the trip report was started in February and it’s now May, I’d say it’s definitely waaaaay back.
Lemme set the scene.
It was a dark and stormy night. Okay, dark, yes. Stormy, no. We had made it through the busiest day of the trip and had survived another
MNSSHP. We were tired. We were beat. We had finished out our week at the House of Mouse in a grand way and all we wanted at that point in time was to find a bed. Any bed would do. Anyway, there we are on the bus with about two hundred other very tired Riversiders who, judging from the looks of them, were feeling the exact same way as us. And the only thing keeping that bus full of tired, beat down, at the end of their rope Disney tourists from heading back to their hotel was us.
Us and those darned flashing necklaces that we don’t know how to turn off.
The bus driver has no pity for our plight. His arms are Gorilla Glued to his chest. He is eyeballing us and he’s not movin’ the party train until we turn off our kids’ necklaces.
Round and round and round the lights go. When they will stop, heck, we don’t know.
It looked like a club in there. The place was packed and all was dark except for the neon strobe effect our kids’ necklaces were givin’ off. I smack DH and tell him to knock it off. There will be plenty of time to do the Cabbage Patch later, I say. What I need now is a little help, dangit.
We grab the necklaces from around the kids’ necks and I do the first thing that pops into my head. I ask my 7 and 4 year old children how to turn them off. Yeah, this is much worse than the VCR thing my mom used to do to us. Except there’s only one difference. We actually knew how to turn the VCR off. My kids, no clue.
Me: Hey, how do you turn these things off?
DS: I don’t know.
DH: Figures
Me: I remember her saying something about an on/off switch.
DH: It’s so dark. I can’t see anything.
DD: Mooooommmmmmmmyyyyyy. I’m
soooooooo tiiiiiirrrrrrrrrred. Hold meeeeeee.
Me: Well, it’s gotta turn off somehow. Here. I think I feel a button.
DH: Son, how do you turn these off?
DS: I don’t know.
DD: Mooooommmmmmmyyyyyyyy. I’m ‘lergic to bein’ tired. I just can’t
staaaaand it.
I finally locate the button. Whoooo Hoooo. We’re in business now. I push it.
Wait a minute. That only made them go faster.
Crap.
In all the commotion, I glance around at the people waiting on my family to figure out this seemingly simple task. I mean, it’s not like it’s ancient hieroglyphics and we’re trying to crack the code. It’s a freakin’ flashin’ necklace. With a button. As I push the button again and the necklace speeds up even faster, I notice a very grumpy old man to our left. He was not a happy camper. He was sporting a NYPD hat and a crazy mad Perma Scowl. We were scum to him. I could see it in his eyes. He was sittin’ there in his nice comfy seat casting judgemental glances at us while the kids clung to our legs and whined about how tired they were and the bus driver sat smelling the armpit stench on his fingers and waiting impatiently for us to crack the code.
Oh, the pressure.
We were in the hot seat for sure. And just for the record, I don’t do well under pressure. Some people flourish under pressure. Like DH. He always seems to handle tense situations with calm and a clear mind. Good to know in his line of duty. And had he not been so busy doing the Running Man, he would’ve handled this situation with flying colors. But not me. I don’t usually handle stress well. I had a really bad flight experience once coming back from D.C. and in the middle of the all the commotion, I tried calling DH on the plane’s airphone. It was one of those deals where they had just informed us that they were dumping fuel because we were “too heavy” to land if we had to suddenly. Yeah. I know. They were experiencing a “power failure” of sorts. Tell me about it. When the flight attendants freak, you know it’s time for you to freak. Anyway, I could not for the life of me get the darn phone to work. It was a seemingly simple task. And any other time I would have had absolutely no problem getting out my CC and swiping it, and operating the phone like a normal thinking, rational person. But the pressure was on and my mind was elsewhere.
So as I stood there on that bus with 200 angry tourists staring straight at me, I couldn’t concentrate on the task at hand. All I could see was the grumpy old man with the perma scowl and hear his antagonistic mumblings under his breath. He was
really ticking me off. DH had tired of doing the Worm and was looking for room to start the sideways shuffle. If he could have found some leg room, he would’ve been gone. But he was stuck. With me. And the kids. No hidin’ from public humiliation this time, buddy. Buck up and deal with it.
Then from out of nowhere, I hear a sweet voice coming from the other side of the bus.
“Just keep pushing the button. Don’t stop. It will eventually turn off if you push it enough.”
I look around to find another Mom with two very tired whiny kids holding onto her legs as well. She is kind. She understands. I can tell. I can see it in her face. Maybe she’s been in my shoes before. She is just as tired as the rest of us but she is not judgemental nor is she wearing a perma scowl. She is just here to help. God bless her soul. Whoever she is.
Her child seconds his mother’s advice. “Yeah, I think you just keep pushing it.”
Then DS pipes up. Suddenly he knows something.
“Oh yeah, that’s what you do. I forgot. But they’re right. Just keep pushing it until it turns off, Mom.”
Thanks, son. Love ya. Mean it.
We finally get the things turned off and everyone on the bus applauds. Much the same way our entire plane did when we landed safely back in D.C. that day. Well, I shouldn’t even compare the bus with the plane because it was definitely apples and oranges. If we hadn’t turned off the necklaces, we’d all just be missing a night’s sleep. If the plane hadn’t landed, I never would have had the opportunity to experience the bus. Or watch my sweet children grow. Or celebrate our tenth anniversary with my dear husband. I could go on and on forever with all the wonderful things I wouldn’t have experienced if that plane hadn’t landed safely that day. Thank you Jesus for bringing Mama home.
Once we got the lights turned off, Mary Katherine Gallagher’s twin brother unfolded his arms and put it in drive. We were off. Back to Port Orleans Riverside. For the last time.
So to answer the first of the two questions, it took four. Four tired Disney tourists to turn off the flashing necklace. Me, the other mom, her kid and DS who chimed in at the end. Okay, five. DH helped when he wasn't doing the Hamma.
Uh oh Uh oh Uhoh Uhoh Uhoh Uhoh. Here come the Hamma.
And as for the second question, well, lemme just say that the only place I've seen total strangers involved in a slapfest ain't on a Disney bus. How's that?
We get back to the room and the kids conk out before their teeth are even brushed. That always makes me jittery. DH and I have a big thing about teeth. We would like for the kids to keep them. I contemplate waking them up to brush, but decide against it. Besides, how would you like to be four years old and be rudely awakened to the loud, whirling sound of a Belle Spin Brush stuck in your head by your overly obsessed Mom? We deposit the kids on the bed and look around.
The room is an utter and complete wreck. Our nice, clean, beautiful room that we had checked into just seven days before now looks like a tornado has come through it. Everywhere we look there are plastic bags with Mickey on one side and his pants buttons on the other. Every one is stuffed full of crap we don’t need. Although we did laundry mid week, we still have an ungodly amount of dirty clothes for me to do when we get home. Between all of our souvenir cups and Mickey plates that I have salvaged from our counter service meals (oh don’t judge me, you know you keep the black Mickey mouse plates too…don’t you?) what little counter area that we had in the bathroom is now completely nonexistent.
DH and I exchange a weary glance. We know what needs to be done. We are leaving out first thing in the morning. So as DH and I exchange glances, we get our second wind and kick it into high gear.
When we got there the week before, everything was so nice and neat. All of our bags were packed very orderly. I had subcategories in my packing. Really, subcategories. Each child’s entire outfit for each day was neatly rolled up into big Ziploc bags with the child’s name and the park that we were going to that day written on the outside of the bag in a black Sharpie. I would’ve said black magic marker, but apparently the funding of some of my readers’
Disney vacations depend upon upholding the reputation of the almighty Sharpie.
If the suitcases were organized beyond all human reasoning on the trip to Disney, they were just the opposite for the trip back home. Basically, at 1 a.m., we decided our rule of thumb on the packing would be simply this: If we could shove it in and manage to get the zipper around it, it was all good. That’s all we needed. It was a free for all.
After DH’s tenth trip, (stuff always multiplies for the trip back) the only thing left was the laundry basket full of dirty clothes. But DH is exhausted. He is spent. He has used the word “
Ridiculous” twenty three times in the last hour. I watch as my husband picks up the laundry basket, opens the door and throws it into the back of the van from our room. He turns, slaps his hands together a few times, and then collapses in the middle of the floor.
Nighty night, Dear. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite. Yeah, bed bugs. Gotta remember to check for those from now on after seeing that Dateline special.
The next morning, we wake up tired and depressed. We are leaving. Our vacation is over.
Where did the time go? Has it really been seven days already?
This is always the way it is for us.
When we get there, we feel our time is endless. There are so many possibilities. So many things to do. We jump right in head first and are on top of the world. Even by the third or fourth day of a week long trip, it still seems like we have so much more left to do. But then once the fifth day rolls around, we are over the hump and the time seems to pass at light speed. Before you can blink, there you are. Wistfully sitting in your hotel room on checkout day, looking under beds and checking the bathroom one last time.
We still have a few counter service meals left and we had agreed to meet our friends at 8:30 that morning at the food court for one last Mickey waffle. It is all we can do to get up and get our gang going in order to be on time. We make one last pass of our room and close the door behind us. The kids are sad. I’m sad. DH just wants to get the show on the road. We’ve got a schedule to keep. Or so he says.
We all head to the food court. Because this was a Saturday, the place was a mad house. We stood in the middle of a scene from the Matrix again.
We finally got our meal and ate.
There wasn’t much conversation this particular morning as I recall. There was no happy laughter. No joyous anticipation.
We all knew we had to go back home today. And we all knew what that meant. I have tried very hard in the trip report to not get into what we had all left behind us at home on this particular trip to Disneyworld. Although something as big as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is hard to sidestep and I know I have mentioned it in passing a couple of times. My intent was to not mention anything about the storm during our adventures in the World to make a point. That point is that while we were there, it almost didn’t exist. The destruction left behind us at home, I mean. We didn’t think about it while we were there. Except for the time when we met the Canadians, Katrina was the furthest thing from our minds. But as we sat in the food court that Saturday and reflected on our awesome vacation that was coming to a close, we were painfully aware that we were now on the brink of stepping back into the real world again.
We were experiencing a case of Disneyschadenfreude like you wouldn’t believe.
For those of you unfamiliar with ZZUB’s work, that basically means we really, really, really didn’t want to leave.
Up Next: The Wrap Party aka The Epilogue
Between you and all the Trip Reporters you mentioned above (and some other terrific writers) I feel inspired to write my own TR eventually. Dunno when I'm going to find the time to do it, but until then I am so glad to spend the time reading yours.
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