DAY 2 Continued:
By the time we finished up on Winnie the Pooh, we were getting hungry for dinner. We checked out the menu at the Hungry Bear Restaurant since it was right there, but neither of us were sure about eating the sweet potato fries, so we ended up at Golden Horseshoe instead. Since I had the wristband, we were able to purchase special meals available at different CS locations, so DH got some kind of special party hot dog, I got the fish & chips, and we made the biggest mistake ever and got DS the Kids Power Pack. It came with string cheese, yogurt, apple slices, and goldfish crackers. I figured he'd eat most of this no problem! Yeah, right!! Refused to eat the cheese or the apple slices (he never really eats cheese at home, but he does eat diced apples, so not sure why he wouldn't eat those!), ate half the yogurt and we didn't even open the goldfish because he had been eating those as a snack every day. He ended up eating some of my fries and DH's hotdog to supplement because he was literally crying and throwing a fit every time we tried to give him some of his own food! So much for trying to get him to have something a little healthier...
From this picture, you'd never be able to tell how awful dinner really was!
Once we were finished eating, we made our way back to Fantasyland to ride something we had missed that morning, Pinocchio's Daring Journey.
It was a cute little dark ride, but man did I forget how dark the story of Pinocchio is!
We were about ready to head over to DCA to get in an attraction or two before taking our spots for World of Color, but we wanted just one more thing before we left! Another of the snacks available for the AP Event-goers was a brownie berry skewer...brownie bites alternating with strawberries drizzled in chocolate! We stopped to pick one up at the Bengal Barbecue CS in Adventureland to take with us and eat on the promenade before entering DCA.
Every bit as delicious as it looks!
We made our way into DCA and remembered first to stop and have our free 5x7 photo printed with the voucher we had gotten that morning for the Visa meet & greet. When we did this in WDW last year, they only showed you the pictures from the m&g as an option to have printed, but here they let us see all of our photos and told us we could choose any of them. We ended up picking one of the ones from the Pluto greet anyway of the three of us, and they customized it for us with borders & Pluto's signature.
Up next, DH wanted to ride ToT using the rider switch pass we had gotten earlier. Since DS had not sat quietly in the stroller while I had ridden earlier, we came up with a new plan for when we wanted to ride attractions with a height requirement, and decided the one sitting out with DS would take him on an attraction nearby that we had already done as a family. That way he could be entertained while we still got to ride the thrill rides.
So since the plan was for DH to be riding ToT, I was happy to take DS for another spin on Monster's Inc. since we had enjoyed it so much that morning. I walked up to the attraction only to find it was already closed! So much for that plan. We walked over to ToT intent on waiting for DH nearby only to run into him coming back towards us. He said the FP line was enormous and not moving, so he didn't feel like waiting either. It's a bummer because he never ended up riding ToT and we never rode Monsters Inc. again for the rest of the trip.
We still had some time to kill before we were ready to get a World of Color spot, so we decided to head back to Bug's Land and ride the Ladybug Boogie again since DS had enjoyed it so much that morning.
A little video of DS on the ride
Once we had gotten jostled around on there, we made our way to Paradise Pier to locate our FP location.
We found a good spot and settled in to wait for the show to start in about 45 minutes. All was going well.
...And then everything went to hell! I had asked DH when we were getting ready to come back to the park if we should bring DS's pacifier with us just in case, but he didn't think we'd need it, so we left it. Prior to vacation, we had gotten DS down to just using his paci at bedtime, but we had been a little heavy handed with it on our travel day because of the plane ride and the pure exhaustion. I think we both honestly thought he would fall asleep in the stroller without it. Despite all of our efforts (rocking the stroller, holding him, bouncing and singing) he was just not having it! He was crying, kicking, going back and forth between my arms and DH's and nothing was consoling him. I kept thinking if we could just hold on until the show started, he'd be interested enough in that to calm down. After almost 30 minutes, DH and I looked at each other and just gave up. Only 15 minutes before the show was about to start, we decided to leave. I didn't want to disrupt the people around us anymore, and I didn't want to keep trying to get him to hang on until the show only to have the crying get worse.
DH and I were both really bummed as we strolled through the empty park on the way out (Of course, once we put him in the stroller and started walking he was fine...TODDLERS!
). But we knew we had been good parents and made the right decision, and at least we had 2 more nights to try to catch the show with hopefully better outcomes.
We got back to the resort and bathed DS and put him to bed. Even up until the last minute, I was going back and forth about whether I was going to venture out to DL alone for the AP event, and despite all of my worries and reservations about it...I decided to go!
At 9:30, I snuck out the door (DS was already passed out sleeping in the living room) and headed back to DLR by myself. I had driven to the park when we went back from our break (usually DH does all of the vacation driving) so that I would be familiar with driving the car and the route. I parked with no problem and made sure I got a spot as close to the elevators as I could.
DL was closing at 10 that night, and it was about 10-till by the time I got into the park. I hurried as quickly as I could up Main Street to Tomorroland so I could try to ride Space Mountain before park closing since it wouldn't be running during the party.
However, when I got over to the attraction, the wait time said 45 minutes. I know sometimes they beef it up right before closing and you don't actually end up waiting that long, but if it was a real wait time, I definitely didn't feel like waiting 45 minutes! So I hopped in the 20 minute line for Star Tours instead.
I got to see another scene (the pod races) that I had never experienced before, although I did go back to the underwater planet with Jar Jar Binks. But it was still a very fun attraction!
There were 2 rides open during the party I wanted to try to ride while I was by myself so that I wouldn't have to ride them while the three of us were together, and they were Big Thunder Mountain and Indiana Jones.
I walked over to Big Thunder Mountain in Frontierland and waited maybe 10 minutes if that to ride. Since I was in the car by myself, I was sliding back and forth across the seat which made it feel like an even wilder ride! After that, I tried to find my way to Indiana Jones, but I was kind of wandering around in circles. At one point, I sat down on a bench under a lantern to look at the map to try and figure out which way I needed to go, but then I felt ridiculous being at an AP event looking at a map, so I stopped looking.
I had no clue how to get to Adventureland from where I was, so I went to New Orleans Square to check out the crowds for the Fantasmic viewing.
It was already PACKED around the Rivers of America, so I decided since I wouldn't have a great view anyway, I might as well ride something else. Since it was right there, I took another ride on Pirates of the Caribbean, which was walk-on. It was weird going through Blue Bayou now when it was closed and deserted after seeing it packed full of people eating just a few hours before when we had ridden!
After riding that, I decided I'd better find myself a spot for Fantasmic. I snuck in under the rope of the middle section, and had a pretty obstructed view. I wasted the time until 11:30 playing games on my phone. Once the show started, I was able to move over along the rope a few different times until I could see a little better between people's heads. I'm so short, I would have had to be there from the minute the party started to have an unobstructed view anyway.
Since DH had gotten a lot of pictures the night before and I only had the point & shoot camera, I didn't even try to take any pictures and just enjoyed the show instead. I've never been that big of a fan of Fantasmic in WDW and prefer to only see it once every few trips instead of every time. While I disliked not having a seat and having people's heads in the way, overall I enjoyed the DL version of the show a lot more! The dragon was absolutely incredible, as was the pirate ship!! It was definitely worth going back to the park by myself to see this show, and really a once in a lifetime opportunity for me since we will probably never be considered DL AP holders ever again. We were so lucky and happy that an event overlapped with our vacation dates, and allowed us to see a show we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise!
There was still about 45 minutes to an hour of the party left when the show ended, but I was ready to get back to the room and go to sleep. I followed the huge crowd leaving the area and they actually led me right past Indiana Jones! I considered stopping to ride, but kept walking instead knowing I'd get to ride another day. I was just too tired!
I couldn't resist getting one shot of the Castle lit up on the way out!
It took no time at all to get a tram back to the garage, and walking back to the car was not nearly the scary experience I had been imagining prior to taking the trip. Even when I got back to the resort, I managed to get a parking space right next to the building where our room was, and I saw security out walking through the lot too so that made me feel safer and DH appreciated me not calling him down to meet me at the car and walk me back to the room!
It was about 12:30 am when I got back, and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed! So since we had a rope drop morning ahead of us, that's exactly what I did.
UP NEXT: Another attempt at WoC!
And great to see him okay with the characters again - the pic with Pluto on the ground with him is so darn adorable!
Happy to see you here, Carla!
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I understand what headaches those silly pacis can cause! 
Then there would be no suspense... 
I did get a few other suggestions from friends on facebook that made me laugh. Most of them said they cut the tips and their kids would tell them the pacis didn't "work" anymore! 
