Sunday, January 14th
We awoke bright (or dark, actually) and early. My mom lost one of her earrings down the drain, so I called maintenance and they said they’d send someone during the day to pull the u-pipe off and see if it was in there. We managed to get to the bus stop by my planned time of 8:15. The Epcot bus pulled up soon after and we were off! Epcot was the closest park to SSR and we were there in under 15 minutes. I have to say that we had no problems with the buses all week. The longest we ever waited was maybe 15 minutes and we only had to stand once.
We arrived at Epcot. Laura ran off to Guest Services to pick up her will-call tickets and then we waited for opening. We were way over to one side, but we got to see some of the hubbub around the Family of the Day. The turnstiles opened and we headed with the crowd to beyond Spaceship Earth to await the rope drop. A bunch of characters and the Family of the Day came out. Andrew’s eyes just lit up when he saw Goofy, live and in person. He was on John’s shoulders (Andrew, not Goofy) and started waving like mad. “Hi Goofy! I love you, Goofy!” Those are the moments that make the whole trip worthwhile for me.
Andrew sees Goofy:
I'll go into a little aside here and let you know that John has a severe stroller aversion. He hates to push them, park them, put them on busses, put children in them, etc. So, we had no stroller on this trip. We don't even own a stroller anymore. We are too tall to comfortably push an umbrella stroller, so we've always had to travel with the big suckers. John said he would carry Andrew when needed, but we were not going to rent a stroller. So we didn't (except for one day, but I'll get to that later), Andrew spent lots of time on John's shoulders. He did walk quite a bit. It was only during the times he was asleep that I really wished for a stroller. But, even then John carried him so I can't complain too much. OK, aside over, back to the regularly scheduled trip report...
Finally, they dropped the rope and we headed with the masses towards Soarin’. I have to admit that I was sad to pass the spot where “Food Rocks” used to be. Anabelle was looking though some old stuff of mine right before we left that had been unearthed during our recent move. Among the memorabilia were some pins I had of the old veggie characters. The broccoli was my favorite.
Veggie, veggie, fruit, fruit, veggie, fruit….
We secured our Soarin’ FP’s and had Andrew measured. Now, we are tall people (I’m 5’11” and DH is 6’3”) so we make tall kids. We knew Andrew was right at the 40” mark, but weren’t actually sure he’d make the measurement. It would make things much easier if he could ride, but we were prepared to babyswap if he didn’t make it. He squeaked by and was given the go ahead to ride. They remeasured him again at the end of the queue, and he was still tall enough so into Soarin’ we all go. What a great ride! It was a first for all nine of us and I think we all loved it. Andrew lifted his feet into his seat so they wouldn’t get wet in the river, it was so cute!
We had 10:20am ADR’s at Akershus, so after Soarin’ we decided to ride Living with the Land. I always enjoy it, although the kids weren’t overly impressed. They did like the Mickey pumpkins. Andrew was a little afraid of the opening rainstorm. All week we could tell how scared he was by where he held his hands. If he was only a little nervous, one little hand would come up over his mouth. If he was really concerned, both hands would be up there. He never hid his eyes or closed them, it was always those little hands over his mouth. I wish I had a picture, but I was good in following that “no flash photography on the attractions” rule.
We walked out of the Land and a light rain had started falling. Of course, the ponchos were in the villa so we toughed it out. I ran over to get Test Track FP’s for later and we headed on to Akershus. We were seated about 15 minutes after checking in, the kids had a picture with Belle and then we headed to the buffet. We were quickly visited by Aurora, Snow White, Jasmine, and much to Anabelle’s delight, Mulan. Cassie had a cute discussion about apples with Snow White. Cassie was eating a whole apple from the buffet when Snow White stopped by. Snow was quite concerned about the safety of the apple and said she was now restricted to green apples and apple pie. It was cute!
Cassie didn't seem worried about any poison apples:
Anabelle's favorite
OK, time for the bill. Let’s see if we really do have credits now. Yes, we do. But, wait, we should have more adult TS credits than that left! Hmmm, after a little ciphering, we determined that the SSR CM had deducted FIVE ADULT TS credits instead of 5 CS credits when fixing our account last night. Looks like I have another visit to the front desk added to my evening agenda. I didn’t stress too much about it. I was prepared to give them one more shot to fix our
DDP issues before I lost my cool. Plus, we were at Epcot! Can’t really get too worked up about it now.
Properly stuffed, we headed to the Maelstrom (it’s a FastPass, you know) and rode it without a wait. We dutifully tried on the Viking helmets and the kids started their KidCot masks.
Andrew the Marauder:
The CM manning the booth had the most uninterested expression the entire time we were there. I was commenting on his winning way with kids to another mom waiting by the station. She laughed and said she was just thinking the same thing. He did manage to get our kids their masks and eventually did engage them a little bit. He did have a lengthy discussion in Norwegian with another CM. I really wonder what they were saying. It reminded me of a Seinfeld I just saw again recently where Elaine knows the Korean manicurists are talking about her but has to bring Frank in as a translator/spy. Also reminded me of college when my friend’s Vietnamese roommate and her friends would go into fits of laughter when we came in the room. You could hear my friend’s name in their conversations, but we never knew what they were saying about her. Anyway….
At the Kidcot station:
I just like this one because I think it captures some of the joy:
Thankfully, the rain had stopped and it was drying up quickly. On the way back to Test Track, I picked up Mission Space FastPasses. At Test Track, the CM measured Andrew, and he came up short! Hmm, seems he shrunk over breakfast. OK, no problem, we’re good rule followers. Getting a two year old to stand up straight isn’t as simple as one would think. We got our babyswap pass and John waited with Andrew. Test Track has to have the slowest FastPass queue! But, we eventually got through and the kids all loved it (the grownups did to, I think). John took the three girls back on, the CM took pity on him since really you are only supposed to be able to bring a total of three people in with the babyswap pass. We waited in the GM showroom at the exit area and I think Andrew enjoyed that more than anything all week. He was in and out of every car at least twice. He didn’t care if he was in the front or back, he was just thrilled to have the run of all the cars and trucks.
Our little driver:
Hard to believe, but our first day was half way over already! But, Figment and Crush are still ahead......
It was nice getting most of the princesses out of the way so we didn't need to track them down in the parks! CRT is beautiful, but I don't know that it's worth the premium they are charging now.
