The Fixer and The Cookmaster:major pixie dust*IT'S FINISHED*EPILOGUE UP!!#389

[Beana9802]

While you work diligently towards the next installment, I will bake some cookies, pour some tea and wait.

No rush cause I am not going to Disney till Oct. I anyone else needs a cookie I will fedex them right out. Have a great day Jamal.

I am in desperate need of homemade chocolate chip cookies! No one I know will bake them for me...
HEH!

 

[MagicMe]

Great trip report!! I've really enjoyed it. The extra perks are so much fun. We were able to experience something similar on our '02 trip when my neice was a "special friend" of Chip and Dale! She took a semester off of college and interned at DW from Jan through Aug. She had a great time and we got to enjoy some extras.

 

[jamal]

I am almost finished with the next installment! Thanks for waiting and reading.

You know, I could really use some chocolate chip cookies too. Is there a more perfect food? The Main Street Bakery and Poly Concierge Lounge take care of me with cookies when I am in the World!

 

[Katy Belle]

Patiently waiting here.....
Really love your report!
Katy

 

[horsegirl]

Jamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal! Hellooooooo? I'm a watin' sista! You must not have a life. Please come back and write. I am needing my jamma fix, complete with lemon drops and wishes.

bumping this back up to know you are loved AND missed!

 

[Dustmouse]

I second that emotion! Am I gonna have to come over and do your laundry so you can write the next installment??!!

 

[jamal]

I second that emotion! Am I gonna have to come over and do your laundry so you can write the next installment??!!

YES! That would be fantastic! The CookMaster has been up to her eyeballs here directing our elementary school's production of The Wizard of Oz. I've been her Miss Gulch, harping on parents to make costumes and scheduling volunteers to corral these 126--yes, 126--third, fourth, and fifth graders. This has been a trip report in itself!


Nevertheless, I have not forgotten my true love, Disney, and my obligation and desire to finish our story. I will carve out some of my Mother's Day tomorrow to finish up the next installment. Maybe I have delayed finishing Day 7 because I dread saying goodbye to the Gatelatches as I know we have to on Day 7. I'll stretch it out but post it tomorrow.

Happy Mother's Day, all.

The Fixer aka Miss Gulch

 

[Beana9802]

YES! That would be fantastic! The CookMaster has been up to her eyeballs here directing our elementary school's production of The Wizard of Oz. I've been her Miss Gulch, harping on parents to make costumes and scheduling volunteers to corral these 126--yes, 126--third, fourth, and fifth graders. This has been a trip report in itself!


Nevertheless, I have not forgotten my true love, Disney, and my obligation and desire to finish our story. I will carve out some of my Mother's Day tomorrow to finish up the next installment. Maybe I have delayed finishing Day 7 because I dread saying goodbye to the Gatelatches as I know we have to on Day 7. I'll stretch it out but post it tomorrow.

Happy Mother's Day, all.

The Fixer aka Miss Gulch

AHHH! I know how you feel. This friday is our 5th grade's musical, Tom Sawyer. I try and help our music teacher trying to get our 80 kids in line...I can't imagine 126!

 

[Lil' Grumpy]

..goofy, me!.....thank you for sharing such a magical adventure..and
letting me relived..some of my own special memories...here's my very
own... for a wish that your havin a very,very,
mother day!!! p.s..tell your friend i'm waiting for one of those cookies
i saw hanging out of your mouth! once and i mean only once..i made
dinner for my wife when we was dating..that did her in on the "spot"!

..that's the special insights you and horsegirl have
given to our lil grouip..of fanny packers! again! i can't expressed how
much enjoyment i got from reading all the things you & your freind
did [ ,really!!] ..all day long!!!

here's a secret..you reminded my of ms. kanaga, dear..with the pooh
gang out to have some fun!! and girl!

nor was it missed..you lil rocky top .. i had a girl "friend"..
a long time ago...she was full of ..you have an accent?

 

[cforsythe]

Mothers Day is almost over. I have been sitting in front of my computer for the last hour catching up on trip reports, and I just found yours. You are an incredible writer!!! CANT WAIT FOR MORE!!!

 

[jamal]

WOW! Thanks, cforsythe. I'm just up the road from you and working on it right now! Check back in a couple of hours.

 

[jamal]

Part 14, Day 7, March 29

The Fixers began this day as they began every other day in the World: tying on the feedbag in the Poly Concierge lounge. As I’ve said, the lounge is a fascinating place to people-watch. You have your rare bathrobers (see day 6), your multi-Froot Loop-boxed cartoon watching kids, your Blackberry crunchers, your clueless following feed-the-kids-orders dads, your Unofficial Guide perusers, and your Families With A Plan. These are my people, and we find ourselves slurping our coffee with guidebooks (OK! Mine was a spreadsheet!) together by 7:30 AM each day. There is simply no better way to start a day than this. Follow me here for a minute. Mickey wakes you and wishes you a magical day. You’re with the family you adore in a hotel room with lovely mousekeeping service. You dress for a day of play, wake your family to do the same, and walk down the hall to a continental buffet. The sun rises over Bay Lake and shines on your favorite castle. You doctor a perfect cup of coffee and sit down to soak in the morning. The table in front of you holds 100,000 printed TourGuide MiKE pages, your touring plan, and your trip notes journal. On this day, I find a table by the window and turn my attention to our MK park plan. It’s the Gatelatches last day with us, and it needs to be perfect for them.

Switching verb tenses again...

I noticed and smiled at the family at the next table. The mom was making friendly chat with other guests, and I was next. As I walked back to the coffee trough, she introduced herself as Mary. Her husband was Al, and they had ROOKIE stamped across their foreheads. Sigh. There’s always a new crop rolling off the line. They asked me if we had been to Disney before and wondered about restaurants. I told her I thought her DDs (age 6 and 8) might like Living Seas, San Angel in EPCOT, all about the character meals, fun scenes like Whispering Canyon, O’Hana, Prime Time, etc. The girls looked so sweet and happy. Then mom said she was thinking about the restaurants in Italy and France because they were eating for themselves, not the girls. Huh? She made it clear that she and her DH wanted to get a culinary taste of the World and the girls were along for the ride. I wished I had not mentioned the fun restaurants because those girls’ faces went from to in ten seconds flat. I realllly wanted to scoop those girls up and take them to the castle for breakfast!! Disagree if you want, but I wasn’t following the logic of these first-timers. I love those restaurants, too, but they would not be my first and only choices when traveling with first-trip-to-Disney children.

Shrek, A, and E entered to find me in deep discussion with these folks. They teased me about telling people what to do on their vacation. Hey buddy! They a-s-k-e-d me for advice. When I finally ended my conversation with the DisRookies, I wondered how they would even get in all these restaurants as I had heard the concierge talking about lack of available ADRs the day before.

A few minutes later we saw a child absolutely screaming at his father. The boy was about four, and he was going to town. The day ahead did not look good for these two vacationers. We labeled that meltdown #1 for the day.

We met the Gatelatches around 8:15 to ride Disney’s Highway in the Sky to the Magic Kingdom. Can you tell how much we love MK? I told you it was the Gatelatches last day so we planned to do their favorites that morning. The CookMaster and I went to Space Mountain to secure FastPasses while everyone else headed to Frontierland. All four boys love Big Thunder Mountain Railroad; by 9:30 we had ridden it three times!

We moved through Liberty Square into Fantasyland for Peter Pan’s Flight. This ride--excuse me, attraction--brings fond memories and nostalgia for several reasons. I remember riding it with DH 18 years ago on our honeymoon and it just hasn’t changed a bit. I remember thinking about and thanking God for a husband who understood and loved Peter Pan’s Flight as I did. I recall the safe, content feeling I enjoyed when we first flew over London and Neverland as husband and wife. It’s still the same; our travel partners have just evolved. The second reason I love Pan is my memory of three years ago when DS3 rode with DS9 as DH and I flew behind them. It was my baby’s first trip to WDW, and his big brother pointed out every bit of the attraction.

The most recent reason we feel a fondness for Peter and Co. is directly related to the CookMaster. You already know her as Songbird, Magician, and Model of Zesty Hair. Well, you should know she is also our elementary school’s annual school play director. She is brave, crazy and selfless in her devotion to young thespians. For years she has taken over 100 wild third, fourth, and fifth graders and turned them into performers. In fact, we’ve just done The Wizard of Oz this weekend with 126 children. Yes, you read that right and yes, she is a volunteer. Anyway, last year she produced Peter Pan for the second time in five years. Our families breathed and slept Neverland last year so taking Pan’s flight in the Magic Kingdom washed us in memories. We skipped (well, some of us) off the boats singing “The Jolly Roger is a pirate ship (a pirate ship)…”

Then we went back to another favorite, Mickey’s Philharmagic. DS6 took a fastpass on this one so DH rode the carousel and pulled that sword out of that stone with him.

The rest of us were just in time for the 10:10 show, which we did not realize was the Rude People’s seating! It takes a good bit of shock to render me speechless, but I was in that venue. It was the first time I have ever seen every single row fill with guests who…hold on…sat in the MIDDLE of the row! What? I wanted to SCREAM!! We tried to educate by loudly telling our children to move all the way across to the end of the row. They looked at us like we’d grown horns because, of course, they were already moving across to the end of the row. Well, we had to do our best to educate that crowd. Really, I’ve never seen a group defy the courtesy rule like they did that day. Once my heart returned to a normal rate, we did manage to enjoy the show, especially since we got to watch Cledus try to film it with his 3-D glasses over the camera viewer. We were so curious about whether that would work; it seems it did work!

It was time for Space Mountain so we zipped back to Tomorrowland. Cledus was beginning to show some anxiety about the pending trip to the airport (5 hours pre-flight) and departure time. This was driving The CookMaster mad, so she and I decided to go do some last-minute Main Street shopping while the men and boys rode Space. She feared he’d bypass the shop she needed in his hurry to catch the taxi to the airport, and she wasn’t about to miss this important purchase. The Gatelatches have two precious grandbabies from Cledus' older children. In four years, they have had three weddings, a graduation, and two babies to celebrate. The CookMaster was not about to leave Orlando without mouse ears for DGD and DGS! We had a mission for monogrammed ears, so off we went to the front of the park.

It didn’t take long for the chapeau cast member to set us up with monogrammed Mickey and Minnie ears (how do they do it? It’s fun to watch.). We strolled through The Confectionery so The CookMaster could purchase more of her favorite spun sugar cotton candy. I stood outside watching families enter the Magic Kingdom. I loved seeing their faces as they glimpsed the Castle for the first time. A few minutes of this and I had to whip my head around as I heard one of my favorite MK sounds: Hildegard and her friend the Main Street suffragette!!

When the CookMaster emerged from the candy shop, we approached the ladies for a conversation. I had told the CookMaster about them after our last trip and told her I knew this would be the role for us someday. You know, the someday when we kick our grown children out of the house, move to Disney World and get to pick our jobs? Surely you know this game. Anyway, Hildegard first cautioned us to get off the tracks “The horse is REAL!”
I told her we had met the Mayor on an earlier trip. She proceeded to chat with The CookMaster:

CookMaster: So, are you the Mayor’s wife?
Hildegard and friend: His WIFE? Listen, Mayor Wilson is a good mayor, but he’s a MAN!
Are you Listening to me? Do you have blond roots??
Us: We want to live here with you!
Hildegard: Well, we need more sistahs. I’m the FUTURE mayor. Of course, we don’t have the VOTE yet. Please, hurry up and move here. We need more women who will work for the VOTE.

We chatted and hugged and posed for a permanent memory:

By now we were late to meet the boys, knew Cledus would be standing on his ear (The Airport!!! Remember???), and needed to get some lunch before our goodbyes.

Parting is such sorrow. I can’t bear to do it yet.
Tomorrow’s chapter: a quick goodbye and carrying on without the Gatelatches…

 

[Katy Belle]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I've been patiently waiting! Love your report!
Katy

 

[jamal]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I've been patiently waiting! Love your report!
Katy

Thank you Katy Belle! Have you always lived in Qatar? Have you been to Disney? I'm so fascinated by your location..

 

[nicolemarie]

Loved your latest installment! Especially the morning planning with coffee - I could SO relate to that! Your pics are great, too. I wish I could get over my trepidation of posting my family pics on the net - it really is fun to put faces with cyber-names!

Thanks for a great installment!! You are definitely a kindred spirit!

 

[sheridac]

Jamal~

I'm so glad you brought forth, unto this nation, a new TR installment. I was glad for your happy memories and sad for your friends imminent departure.

 

[GeorgiaAristocat]

Wonderful installment Jamal. I had never heard of the Main Street suffragette before! (How did I miss that with all the accumulated knowledge around here?) I shall be on the lookout for our next trip. But since she doesn't have big ears or a tail, I doubt my kids will stand still for a picture!

Waiting to hear about the sweet sorrow of parting, and the rest of your week!

Amy

 

[jamal]

Wonderful installment Jamal. I had never heard of the Main Street suffragette before! (How did I miss that with all the accumulated knowledge around here?) I shall be on the lookout for our next trip. But since she doesn't have big ears or a tail, I doubt my kids will stand still for a picture!

Waiting to hear about the sweet sorrow of parting, and the rest of your week!

Amy

Yes, you'll have to tell her about your good work for the people of Georgia. She will try to set you up as a Main Street resident! If you see Mayor Wilson, tell him we said Hi. More on him in a later installment.

 

[Grammyof2]

Fear Not!! The rude people will be there next time too. Doesn't it just drive us (the people who actually listen to the instructions) crazy when they act like they can't hear. Dangit, I know they can cause I know sign language. And I have signed "move to the end of the row" on more than 1 occasion. They have signed back, but it isn't anything I had to go to class to learn.

 

[jamal]

I'm always so disheartened when I see rudeness, especially at Disney. I mean, it's so magical and cast members try so hard to explain the rules for everyone's safety and pleasure, why be selfish?

When you go in October, Grammy, please tell the Rude People they made my trip report.