DECEMBER 5, 2011
Day 1, Part 6 In Which We Probably Made Goofy Look Normal
Attention: This was one of the silliest nights of my life.
We were so. TIRED.
You know how, after a night of heavy drinking, your memories are...well... let's just say a BLUR? I'm not talking blackout drunk, I just mean that nice place alcohol can bring you where everything just seems really fun and silly.
This is the place we were in during our late night MK excursion.
However, it did not involve alcohol.
You can achieve this feeling naturally by combining radical excitement with extreme fatigue. Or by overdosing on food... but you all know THAT story already.
So just a warning: my memories on this night are fuzzy at best. I mostly remember a lot of colors and giggling, just to give you an idea of how this is going to go. And there are not a lot of photos. But hopefully the descriptions will paint enough of a picture in your imagination.
So let's get right to it! After deciding to
Live It Up at the Kingdom despite barely being able to function, we high tailed it on over to Liberty Square. You see, our friend Master Gracey died at a Mansion there and gets awfully sore if we don't visit him every once in awhile. On our way, we stopped at Sleepy Hollow because my mom was basically asleep and needed a coffee.
I love that place, it's so quaint. I have always meant to get a treat there but it's never the right time. I have to remember to do that sometime soon. And also, the CM taking people's orders there was from Lyndhurst, NJ, which is like 20 minutes from where we live and right next to where my mom grew up! I love when that happens!
I'm pretty sure this is when we stopped in a store but I don't remember where it exactly was or what it was called. I took a picture of Mickey Lawn Gnomes because that is what people who are not drunk do.
It's a good thing I am not in charge of our lawn decorating because I would have purchased approximately 40 of these bad boys to surround our home.
Onto the Mansion!
Once we got over there, I realized I COMPLETELY forgot that they redid the queue. We had never seen it before and, in our sleepy giggly state, we found the entire thing fascinating and hilarious.
When you get to the point where the line splits and you can go off into the graveyard or into the building, I was all, "WHAT IS THIS?" and then ran into the graveyard while singing "What's This" from one of my favorite movies, The Nightmare Before Christmas. I barely remember this but I remember I LOVED it and we kept letting people pass us so I could press the books or whatever it is (I really don't remember?). OH, YOU KNOW WHAT I DO RECALL? That thing where you touch the instruments and they make the sound of the instrument!!! OH DISNEY!!!!!!!!!
I also couldn't find Master Gracey's grave? Which was troubling. It was probably just me buuuut WHERE IS IT? Cause it's not in the same place, right? Sorry. I was delirious.
Of course, our tour was interrupted by our doom buggys stopping about ten times during our tour. Look Master Gracey, I know you like us, but if you keep trapping us in your house, we're not going to be so inclined to come back. Or at least, we wouldn't in most haunted houses, but this one? Getting stuck is AWESOME cause you get to look around at everything! And who cares if a silly spook sits by your side when they're all so friendly...for the most part.
I think I'm exaggerating, though. I think it was three times that we got stuck? The first time I can't remember but I know it happened (am I making sense?).
I do remember my mom asking me to point out Hidden Mickeys or any other cool things, and I showed her the hidden Donald and the Grim Reaper Mickey, but all the other ones TOTALLY slipped my mind!
The second time it stopped was the GRAVEYARD SCENE! JACKPOT! We got to look at EVERYTHING. It was amazing! I remember noticing a bunch of things I had never seen before, but of course I can't remember exactly what they were now. Like I said, we were just so deliriously tired.
The third time we stopped was right before the hitch hiking ghosts part, but Master Gracey just kept yapping and yapping anyway, so we were sitting there looking at nothing while he was going on about the hitch hiking ghosts, and we just found it hilarious and cracked up ENDLESSLY. I remember us being like (talking to Master Gracey) "Uh, what are you talking about? Hitch hiking ghosts? WHERE? I SEE NOTHING!" While looking around for them, craning our necks, over and over.
Once the ride started going again, Master Gracey repeated the line, "Oh, and there's another matter I forgot to mention, beware of hitch hiking ghosts!" And I was like, "UH, you ALREADY SAID THAT." And my mom said, "Oh! THERE they are!" once the ghosts appeared. You had to be there but it was SO FUNNY in our delirium. I think we then started talking to the ghost in our Doom Buggy. I probably said something to it in a British accent b/c that's what I do when I'm in a silly mood. I do this weird Cockney thing that sometimes blends with an Australian accent. "Oy! Nice to meet you, chap!" It's all a blur.
After we got out of the mansion, I tried to show my mom Mr. Toad in the Pet Cemetery, but you can't see him at all in the dark!
My mom kept bringing up how tired she was and that she really didn't think she could last much longer, and I felt the same way but I was in denial about it. Like, I just wanted to not be tired so we could stay until closing (1 AM) and so I acted like I was totally fine, when in reality I was afraid to even blink because I thought if I closed my eyes for even a second, I would just immediately collapse into a coma.
And still we soldiered on.
I THINK we went on It's A Small World (IN THE NAME OF EVERYTHING CLASSIC IN THE ENTIRE WORLD) next which is obviously the thing to do when you are so tired and happy you feel like you are living in a dream. I was seriously floating on a cloud the entire time.
Oh look, a picture!
And of course, because it's us, something silly and hilarious had to happen. Again.
They changed the Small World queue. The part where you used to exit is now part of the queue. So we went that way and walked around to the bottom... I am not going to explain this well because it is such a blur, but basically what happened is I told the CM there were two people in our party, she put us in a row, there were barely any people there and we all boarded the boat, except my mom.
The gate closed on her literally a SECOND after I had walked through it. We were both so tired that we just paused for a minute and stared at it, expecting it to magically open!
My mom and I then both looked up at the control booth and waved. At the exact same time. Again, you had to be there, but IT WAS TOO FUNNY. Like we didn't even say "Hey, help us!" at first or anything, we literally just waved. The CMs probably thought we were just being friendly. And one of them waved back, smiling. LOLOLOLLOOLODJSDLMJS.
I said, "Can she get through? She was supposed to be on this boat." But they already knew and were trying to fix it.
For some reason, this took a LONG time. My mom and I just kept looking at each other, frustrated but amused. Like, we just wanted to get on the freaking happiest cruise that ever sailed already, and we were so tired, but it was also really funny so we didn't really care. Things like this happen to us all the time so we just kind of laugh about it.
I guess there isn't a button you can just press to open those gates, or if there is, it wasn't working because they never did end up opening! After them trying to fix it for about 5 minutes, they just escorted my mom around to the other side of the boat, where you'd normally exit, and finally she was able to board and we were able to get going! I wanted to call Guest Services and demand ten free Le Cellier reservations for our inconvenience, but I was in too good a mood, so we just sailed on with another hilarious memory. CA-LASS-IC.
After we safely docked and were able to exit together with no trouble, we danced on over to Mickey's PhilharMagic.
I absolutely love this show and was SO excited to be seeing it so early in the trip. It means a lot to me because it focuses specifically on the Disney movies that touched me most as a child, as if it were made for me! I was never into Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, or Snow White that much when I was little. I mean, I LOVE those movies and they are classics and have a very special place in my heart (actually, Snow White was the first movie I EVER saw in a theatre when I was 3, and I still remember it to this day!), but how much I love them does not even compare to the OBSESSION I had and still have with Aladdin, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Fantasia, and Peter Pan. I always joke that they tailor made this attraction for me! And by joke, I mean I very seriously tell people that they tailor made this attraction for me. I am QUEEN OF THE POLYNESIAN, after all. By the way, I was still wearing my crown. All night. I had attached bobby pins to it so that it would stay affixed no matter what, and it worked perfectly! I plan on doing this again the next time I visit the Poly, just so my loyal subjects recognize me instantly.
As usual, I cried during this show (my favorite 3D show ever, FYI... I mean how could it not be when they tailor made it for me...) and I'm pretty sure my eyes didn't fall out. They were really sick of being open.
After we stumbled out of PhilharMagic, my mom said the words that needed to be said.
She could not go on any longer. It was almost 11:30 and we left our house at 5:00 AM that morning. She said she wanted to stay but she knew that if she pushed it tonight, she'd be totally zonked for the next few days and I knew it was true. I bellyached for awhile before finally breaking out of the delusion that I don't require rest and I realized she was right. Usually we don't even do a park on our first day so that we are energized for the rest of our trip, so we were really pushing it here. I didn't want to leave, but I knew that we had nine more days to run wild around the world and right now it was time to stop.
I love the one castle pic I took as we headed out:
What I wouldn't give to be standing in that place right now!
It was still pretty crowded on Main Street, so I told my mom we should walk through the stores which is always my trick to beat the crowds, but I guess everyone was clued into that little trick because the stores were packed too! Not just that, but it took us like three times the amount of time to walk through because we were looking at and obsessing over basically every item.
We then saw a Santa look alike on an ECV by the register. He looked so much like Santa that you could tell he was TRYING to look like Santa even though he didn't have the suit on. His beard was real and he was very pudgy and jolly and wearing red. There were a bunch of children crowded around him. He looked so much like Santa that my mom thought he was like, an official Disney Parks Santa, and said to me, "Why would Santa be on an ECV?" and I was like, "Uhh, that's not SANTA Santa, that's just some guy." and we both were a little skeeved.
Since it's Disney, I'm sure he was just a nice man who dresses as Santa in a totally UN-creepy way. I wasn't too worried about it because I'm positive that if anything even slightly odd went down, Disney would kick his behind out of there in the blink of an eye, but it was just weird that he was sitting there on his ECV listening to what kids wanted for Christmas. Dude, go get a job at the mall!
After stopping to use the bathroom, we finally were able to exit the MK and caught a bus back to Pop where we both collapsed onto our beds! Seriously, I don't think I even watched one full loop of Stacey, I was so zonked. You know that it's a serious situation when I don't even watch one full loop of Stacey!
Up Next: Hitting some of our favorite places on our first full Disney Day!
Great writing style 
)
I couldn't have said it any better. I mean, I'd be lying if I said I stop worrying completely while at WDW because part of me is still convinced I'm gonna go flying into the Briar Patch and suffer death by giant thorn impalement, but the giant weight that I carry around on my shoulders every other day of the year is lifted (and then immediately replaced by my actual giant weight of a backpack) and everything feels right.
Thanks for joining in & 
!!!
I never thought I'd be one to go to Disney around Christmastime and now I can't imagine Christmastime WITHOUT Disney.... the obsession just grows and grows!
<-- this guy may be laughing but I'm dead serious. hahaha
And this is why your trip reports are like some of my top top favorite pieces of literature of all time. 
(said in that beautiful robotic disney resort telephone voice. 
not so much in real life!
She has this idea that you're supposed to get rest on vacation? I don't understand it!
