Are u allowed to bring the balloon on a plane though? We are flying back home.
Not sure if "allowed" is the right term, but here's our balloon story (copied from my PTR):
So DS12, who was 7 at the time, spotted this balloon and wanted it. Mind you he's been going to Disney since he was a year old and never wanted a balloon before. In fact, none of my kids ever asked for one, so I thought it was an odd request. But he WANTED it. Ok, ok, I said I'd get him the balloon. Walked over the man selling it and it was exorbitantly expensive, IMO, for a piece of latex. But the kid wanted it, and the man assured me it could last for months (in earshot of DS - thanks, Mister, but we fly to WDW - and this was before I had ever read of people on DIS actually deflating these things). Ok, off we go, he's happy as a clam with his balloon, yadda yadda yadda.
Balloon is living happily at the Beach Club for the last few days of our trip, and the time comes to say goodbye. I thought we could just give it to another child and Evan would be over it in a minute. I mean, after all, he's SEVEN - not three. Nope. He wasn't having it. He told me he would bring it home. I said, if you can get it on the plane, you can bring it home - figuring for sure there was no way it was going home with us.
Now we had gotten a great deal on an early morning flight home, but I did not want to pay BC prices to just wake up and leave. So we checked out, left our bags at bell services and decided to do the parks until close and then stay at the MCO Hyatt. The CM at bell services said, I don't think you are going to be able to bring home that balloon. He looked like this:
, but Evan was adamant he would. Off to MCO later in the evening, balloon enjoyed a night at the Hyatt, and early the next morning, after we had checked in, Evan proudly marched up to security with the balloon in his hand. The TSA guy looked like this:
. But he finally decided he wasn't chancing it through the x-ray machine and carried it through himself. We waited for our plane with throngs of other kids fresh from WDW. Surprisingly, none of them had giant Mickey balloons. So it comes time to board. He proudly marches down the aisle of the plane, getting a few looks here and there, and finds his seat and proceeds to try to stuff balloon under the seat. It pops up and hits the ceiling. He tries again. Same result. By now two flight attendants are looking like this:
So one pulls me aside and says it's not going to fit under the seat and we can't have a balloon floating around the plane. Reasonable enough to me - maybe she could mention that to Evan. He looks at her with his big brown eyes and flashes his dimples and next thing you know, she and I are making room in the overhead bin and literally SHOVING this balloon in there. I was positive it would pop. It squeaked and screeched and bam, we slammed the overhead bin. I was hoping no one would need to try to get in there! Then she looks at me and whispers in my ear, it's going to explode at 10,000 feet. Ugh. I turned to the guy sitting next to me and said, If you hear a loud boom, don't panic.
So we take off. No loud booms, but I was trying to prepare Evan that there was a pretty good chance it was not going to still be in one piece when we got home. He assured me it would be.
We landed at JFK, I carefully opened the overhead bin, and out floated Mickey!!
Evan proudly grabbed his balloon and marched back up the aisle. The pilot came out of the cockpit looking like this:
and said, how did that make it through the flight??
And the answer to that, must be, the magic of Disney
The balloon went on to live in his room for two more happy months until Evan turned 8 and announced he was too old for balloons and popped it!
ETA: It was this balloon:
Sent from my iPad using DISBoards
the pieces fall and the bright Coles are attractive to birds that eat them.
