Chapter 7: Checking The Boxes
It’s a little over 2,500 ft. from the entrance of Dumbo to the entrance of Big Thunder Mountain. That's a little over 8 football fields. Just about half a mile. So, I put about 1.5 miles on my personal odometer walking that path three times as I went to retrieve my father’s bag. Thankfully, Disney security hadn’t noticed it lying there among all of the strollers parked against the fence, so I was able to grab the bag and head back. I’d used up most of my anger and frustration as walking fuel on the way and was ready to get on some rides when I returned.
By the time I got back to Dumbo, my brother and his family had left us to go do…something. Maybe visit Ariel? In any case, we’d been on a grand total of one ride together so far. We’d meet up again for a FP at the Mine Train later.
My parents went off to do…something…as well. I know, it’s these kinds of interesting details that keep readers like you coming back.
So, we were once again on our own. The wait time for the Tomorrowland Speedway was posted at 20 minutes, which is probably my limit for that one, so we decided to give in to Drew’s pleas to “ride the race cars” and get it over with.
There’s a hard dividing line for the age at which you enjoy the Speedway. If your age is in single digits, you love it. You’re driving a race car! Once you hit double digits, you suddenly realize that you’re only going 7 mph and constantly banging and scraping the center rail while breathing diesel fumes. With Disney always wanting to put on a good face as far as being environmentally friendly, I’m actually kind of stunned this ride still exists.
I ended up riding shotgun while Scotty drove, and he actually did a pretty good job navigating the course while I dozed off. Julie and Drew were behind us, with Julie operating the gas pedal while Drew handled the wheel. He had a great time.
In the end, though, he was a little disappointed that the course wasn’t longer (a view not shared by the rest of us). He also thought we would be racing each other and was disappointed he couldn’t catch up to Scotty ahead of him.
My parents caught up with us again in order to take Drew over to Enchanted Tales with Belle while the rest of us used our second FP on Space Mountain.
Honestly, I do have concerns about the safety of this ride. You’re traveling through the vacuum of outer space, and yet the rocket ships are all open-air vehicles! Dave and I made sure to hold our breath so we’d survive without oxygen.
We all had a great time, except perhaps for Julie, who could be heard shrieking throughout. She decided afterwards that Big Thunder is about as far as she wants to go with coasters.
We met up with my parents at the Puke Cups, and ate our PB&J sandwiches there for lunch. As it turned out, Drew was chosen to be Chip during the storytime with Belle, and had a great time acting out his part. It was a win-win all around.
Julie, perhaps grateful for a ride where she could see where she was going, took one for the team and rode the Puke Cups with the rest of the family, while I stayed behind to, uh, document the proceedings.
We had some time to kill before our Mine Train FP, so my parents went off to find my brother’s family while we took Drew over to the Little Mermaid ride. For some reason, the wait looked long (maybe 30 minutes). Meanwhile, there was no line to meet Ariel, so we decided to let Drew get another autograph. Again, the kids seemed to enjoy the meet-and-greet while I generally zoned out for several minutes.
We walked over towards the Mine Train and still had time, so we got in line for The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh, or as I like to call it, The Night Pooh Dropped Acid. Man, that’s a weird ride. I really have no idea what’s supposed to be happening in there, but it all passes by easily enough. For his part, Drew seemed to think it was “silly” and was happy enough to go along.
It was finally time for our Mine Train FP, and we met all of the rest of my family out in front of the ride. Everyone would be riding this time except for my SIL, who had ridden earlier and was staying behind with the baby. With that settled, we got in line for a fun ol’-fashioned family roller coaster ride. This would be no problem, since Drew had already tried it out and really enjoyed it.
Naturally, as soon as we got in line and scanned our FP’s, he started making noise about not wanting to ride the Mine Train.
We argued with him the whole way through the FP line. You already rode this. You loved it! Your cousins want to ride with you! Etc., etc. Given Drew’s stubbornness, this only made him dig his heels in deeper. We didn’t get to a full-blown temper tantrum, but we were skirting the line. In any case, Julie and I are bigger than him, so we just forced him to move along. We’d given in on Big Thunder, but in this case, he’d already gone on the ride and liked it.
By the time we were boarding, he was fussing while we demonstrated our loving compassion by forcing him into the seat so we could lower the lap bar.
The train accelerated. We hit the first hill. And like a light switch, the tears stopped, and Drew said, “Oh, I like this ride.”
Little punk.
Hard to tell from this photo, but he had another good time.
It was mid-afternoon now, and my parents volunteered to take Drew back to the resort for some pool time and a nap. Clearly, he needed some rest, so we readily agreed. My brother and SIL left to take their kids for naps as well (I think they rode maybe 4 rides during the day?), so now it was down to five of us. Scrolling through the app, I couldn’t find anything appealing right away, and most of the wait times were now listed at 40 minutes or more. We’d covered just about the entire park over two days, so the rest of us decided we were good for the day. We wandered out of the park and decided to take the boat ride over to the Wilderness Lodge.
As we stood and waited on the dock, we noticed an issue with our camera. The zoom lens was no longer zooming. It was stuck in place. We could jiggle it a bit, but something in the mechanism had completely jammed. Julie and I both fiddled with it, trying to see if we could get it back to normal.
I took this photo of the Red Roof Inn.
And as it turned out, that was the last photo that camera would take. Eventually, inevitably, I pushed a little too hard, and heard something snap, and that was the end of our $600 camera lens.
Needless to say, that put me in a foul mood. I couldn’t blame anyone but myself, either.
Julie seemed less upset. As it turned out, she had been kind of hoping to ask for a new camera for Christmas. Make sure you act surprised next week, honey.
From this point through the rest of the TR, all photos were taken with our phones.
I have always loved the Wilderness Lodge. I’m a sucker for the rustic, natural look. Tie that in with a National Park-lodge inspiration and you’ve hooked me completely. So I’m usually up for any excuse to wander the building.
I was a little disappointed to see that the trees have now obscured this view, though. I know, it’s more natural to let them grow, but I admit I did like the view better when I could see the building.
Over the years, we’ve taken several photos of the big kids by the Mickey totem pole next to the gift shop. Are you ready to feel old? No? Well, too bad. I feel ancient.
Man, I really wouldn’t mind staying here again.
After farting around in the gift shop a bit, we took a bus to the Shopping Center Formerly Known As Downtown Disney. I have a hard time calling it Disney Springs, but I do like the new look a lot better, even if it’s still populated mostly by stores I have no intention of spending a dime in.
Sarah wanted to check out the art store, so we wandered in there for a while. We usually like the giant World of
Disney store, but it was in the middle of a re-model and only a small portion of it was open at the time, so that felt like a bust. If only there were other stores in the parks that sold the same kind of merchandise you can find there. Sigh.
It felt weird to be using a “park day” to wander a resort and shops, like I was going against all of my fiercely-held principles about squeezing value out of my park tickets. I think this was an effect of the FP+ system. We’d done the rides we really wanted to do and couldn’t get any FP’s to ride them again. We had no desire to wait more than an hour in line for them. And we had no desire to wait more than 30 minutes in line for the secondary rides. So that in turn made us shrug and say, “Oh, well, I guess there’s nothing left to do.”
In hindsight, I was a little too trusting of the posted wait times. I would learn through the week that sometimes they were wildly different from the actual waits, and it seemed as though they were being manipulated to spread people throughout the park. So, I guess even a seasoned Disney veteran can learn a thing or two at times.
We had a big 13-person dinner reservation that evening at Chef Mickey’s, so we rode a bus to the Contemporary Resort and met up with everyone there. This meal was one my parents had asked for in order to do a special character meal with all of the kids. And they blew us away by paying for all of us. If you’ve ever eaten there (or, really, anywhere in Disney) you know that ain’t cheap!
I have a lot of photos of the kids with the various characters there, but I didn’t ask permission from my brother to post photos of his kids so I will refrain from doing so. But I can say that having dinner there was worth it for the kids. They really loved having all of the characters come up to the tables. All of the interactions were good—each kid got at least a little bit of individual attention. Drew’s cousin was especially excited to see Donald Duck, and loudly demanded that my father go to meet him as well. This is most likely because my father, as mild-mannered as he is, does a spot-on Donald Duck impersonation.
The food itself was fine. I know Chef Mickey’s gets a bad rap, and yes, it’s overpriced for what you get, but pointing that out at Disney is like pointing out that the ocean is full of water. I liked the meal and watching my kids with the characters. It’s not the best I’ve had at Disney and I probably wouldn’t go without kids. But it wasn’t bad. I even ate some vegetables.
And some sugar.
Holy cow, that was a lot of sugar. I can feel it…
Rushing straight to…
MY BRAIN!!!!!
Don’t worry, he crashed by the time we got back to Coronado Springs for the night.
All in all, I’d say that Monday was our most frustrating day in the parks. Between the waiting around for family, breaking my camera lens, and the sense that we’d covered the MK just halfway through the day. Thankfully, we still had the rest of the week to get back in our Disney groove.
Coming Up Next: Our first look at Toy Story Land.
Love that you quoted Ricky Bobby
Hence proving your theory right.
You could probably send it into Canon (or Nikon- can't remember what you shoot with) and get it fixed. I've had to do that before. Then again, if you were looking for something else or different, I'm sure it wouldn't be worth the hassle. 
Now THAT'S generosity! 
aboard! Thanks for following me over here from the DIS Dads thread. But why would you torture yourself reading all of those TR's! That's hours you'll never get back.
