exwdwcm
wishes she was Wendy Moira Angela Darling
- Joined
- Aug 19, 1999
- Messages
- 5,046
Well you guys have been so patient. A lesson I am learning this week as I still wait for a "Congrats" or "Sorry" email from the WDW Moms Panel! Still waiting, hoping to hear this week though.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
When we left off, I tossed and turned all night, worried about the car lights being left on. Turns out, my gut was right. I should have checked the lights. Yep, the battery was dead. So usually I rent a full size car, like an impala. It has automatic lights. Just like our cars at home. But this time we rented a midsize, cheaper, smaller car. You guessed it, no automatic lights. So the lights had stayed on all night. And the battery was dead, completely.
So after a restless nights sleep, I am up at 6:30am. I was nervous about the car and lights. I should have been. My instinct was right. Darn it! So we are up, we eat some cereal and applesauce in the room and finally head out about 7:40am, later than I had hoped. But we were greeted by this beautiful sunrise! What a great welcome to our vacation! Tink herself must have created it just for us!
I wanted to be out by 7:30am, but DH take the longest showers. I swear he is worse than a girl. We head downstairs to the car and my heart sinks when I hit the unlock button on the keys and nothing happens. Yep, dead as a doornail. What now?DH says, well you have to change your plans and we can walk to the MK instead. Um, no we don't. We can take the bus. And so our one and only experience with a bus begins....
Off we go to the bus stop- just feet from us, after turning off the lights of course on the car and locking it. I get on the phone with National to find out our options. There is the car care center just less than a mile from us near the MK with a National. Just as I get her on the phone, the DHS bus pulls up. Our wait was maybe 5 minutes, not bad. We are the last ones on and it is almost full. So I am juggling the phone, stroller and toddler getting on the bus. I cant hear a thing, so I finally tell her I will have to call her back, but she does tell me it is $39 fee for them to come out and switch the cars or jump me.
We get on the bus and DH says not to worry about it, since we turned the lights off now, we will try and get security to jump us later and it should be fine. So thankful I married a car guy. The man can tear apart and rebuild a car himself, so I figured he knew what he was talking about. Did he?
So on the bus to DHS, we stop at the Poly, however the bus is packed already, standing room only and this guy has this HUGE stroller in the aisle. We are crushed in like sardines. DH would try and offer his seat to a lady, but he is holding our son and there simply isnt a way for him to even move with the giant stroller in front of him.
We make it to DHS at about 8:15am. Later than I hope. It is EMH today- they opened at 8am. So we rush in and head down to Toy Story Mania. We missed the crazy mad dash at least. The standby time is 30 minutes already, so we get fastpasses for 12:05pm. We decide to head to Tower of Terror. This is one of my all time favorites and just think, it stands in the place where I used to park when I worked at DHS 15 years ago. Yep, that used to be the cast member parking lot that it is built on. I only wish it was open when I worked there, I would have ridden it daily!
Now, we werent sure William would want to ride this. I had shown him a video of the ride at home on youtube and made sure he knew it dropped over and over again, not just once. He could hear/see the screams and knew it was dark and scary. But he wanted to try it. Who am I to say no to a 3 year old? He is tall enough. Heck, he was tall enough last year at 2 for it, but I didnt feel he was mature enough to ride it then. Now I did, he is a thrill seeker and not scared of much. Plus he really loves ghosts and the Haunted Mansion, so I thought he would like the whole ghost scene here. He also loves the Haunted Mansion scenes at first with the lightning and storms, so I thought ToT might be up his alley.
He is a clean freak like me, so we joked about how dirty the place was and how we needed to come back and dust. The line for ToT was only 10 minutes. He was a little scared, but still wanted to go on. We sit in the back row with him in the middle of us. He has a death grip on us both. He likes the ghost scene for sure, but once we start dropping, he says, let me off of here. Sorry kid, youre stuck for now. I told him it was okay, and held his hand as best I could. He never cried. But once we were off, he said, that was a fun elevator. Silly kids. I told him what a brave boy he was. He said he didnt want to ride it again right now. Well I figured that much.
We skipped RnR. Ive missed it the last two times. DH doesnt care for it and I wasnt ready to put William on there, so I just skipped it instead of making them wait on me. So we headed to Starring Rolls- I wanted to get one of the famous butterfinger cupcakes we had last year. But it was pretty packed, the line was way out the door and not a place to sit. I decided it wasnt worth it right now. We needed to head over to see Phineas and Ferb, I knew they would be out by 10am. But, I should have checked my times guide, they were actually out at 9:30am. Oops! This was a must do this trip. William loves them. We watch them a lot- heck, I really enjoy the show and love that Bowling for Soup does the song. Gotta love all the crazy music and lyrics.
Since I thought P&F didnt start until 10am, we had a little time to kill, so William and I went on Star Tours. It was basically a walk on, no wait. DH sat out. He cant do the motion rides like that. We actually all rode this together at Disneyland in late August when we spent the day at the park while I was there on business. We loved it, but DH cant do that often. He broke out into a cold sweat, so he decided to pass this time.
William loves wearing the glasses. We sit in the back row and get a great movie! It features the Ewok planet and then a dive under the sea with Jar Jar Binks. Very cool. Poor William, while big for his age, is still so little in that big seat and he was being jarred around pretty good with all of the movement. But we loved it and had a good time.
Next, we head over to the P&F meet and greet, located at the exit of the Muppets. I now realize it opens at 9:30am, which it is exactly 9:30am, so there is already a line of say 15-20 ahead of us. Not too bad though. It moves fast. DH goes to sit down on a bench while William and I wait in line. He brings along his workbook and sits on the ground doing it. Too funny- the kid is addicted to those workbooks. Who would have guessed? Unfortunately I don't have any pics of P&F, they are on our PP CD which we haven't gotten quite yet, so I'll add them later.
We finally work our way up and one family before us, they go to take a break. Thankfully, they only break for like 3 minutes and are back again. We are through the line in about 20 minutes and get our cute P&F pics!
We stop in the Muppet store quickly and it is empty! I had seen cute muppet hats in previous years and wanted one for Will. I found them! They had Animal, Beaker and Kermit. I got one for Will and he immediately wanted to wear it. He wore it a lot this trip, as you will see in photos and I swear every single CM and guest commented on that hat and asked if I made it or where we got it. It was a huge hit. Best $20 spent ever!
DH is a little hungry and was searching for coffee, so we hit up the writers stop near Sci Fi. Line here is about 5 deep, but we wait. It moves so slow and takes forever. I get a yummy oatmeal apple cookie and get William yep, another cupcake. He proceeds to eat the icing only.
We sit near the Sci Fi restaurant and enjoy our cookies. I watch some guest have a meltdown about something on her phone. Always interesting people watching at WDW.
We then head over to the animation area, seeing that we just missed the 10:30am Disney Jr. show, which is a must for us. William is a HUGE Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Jake and the Neverland Pirates fan. Those are his absolute favorite shows. I see there is an 11:20am show, so we park the stroller and head into the animation building instead. This is another thing I wanted to do that we missed last trip.
Weve always missed the characters in there, so I wanted to make a point to see them this time. So we headed in and saw Pooh with about a 10 minute wait.
We attempt Sorcerer Mickey, but realize it is getting too close to our Disney Jr. show time and we probably need to get in line, so off we go. We wait in line about 15 minutes or so and head in. We sit in the back right. Will loves this show, especially the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Jake and the Neverland Pirates parts. He also loves catching confetti/gold doubloons! We have to collect them off the floor for him.
After the show, we head to Pizza Planet for lunch. I managed to find a table outside and it was just perfect to sit there and people watch. Unfortunately DH went to get in line right as a large tour group went in ahead. He gets a salad and then Will and I share a pizza and a small salad. We all share a drink. It is just at noon, so it is pretty crowded inside, glad we got a nice table outside.
It actually feels a little chilly in the shade out here actually.
On the way to TSMM, we run into three folks I recognize from a facebook picture. They are cast members, dressed in some Hawaiian shirts, holding a video camera etc. As I get closer, I see it is .Heather! My old roommate from the college program 15 years ago. Weve kept in touch by email, facebook and always try and visit while we are in town. She still works for the mouse, has ever since the college program. She was one of the Ziti Sisters at Epcot in Italy for a while, but now just subs there. Now she is doing some pre-crowd show before the parade. So I knew that might be here when I recognized those outfits from one of her FB pics. So happy and random to run into her. We meet her coworkers and chat for a bit. Unfortunately we wont catch her later for the parade preshow. Will is going to need a nap by then!
So we continue on to Toy Story Mania. The line is now 60 minutes, it said 90 minutes earlier. After a nice relaxing lunch, we head over to Toy Story Mania to use our fastpasses. It's funny, we only wait about 10 minutes max, but we get looks from those in standby. Then as we are in the staircase area, folks in front of and behind us start giving folks in the other empty line next to us dirty looks, as a family with a special needs child walks by. Come on people!!! Enough already. A CM walks by and someone asks him if we can get in that shorter line. Um no, if you could, they would have put you in it originally! The CM tells them it is the line for GAC passes, or single riders etc. to try and fill up empty spots I swear!
Will sits almost in my lap, I let him pull the gun while I aim. I actually did okay considering I had a toddler assisting. Alan gets a pretty good score, but I can't remember what. After enjoying shooting to our heart's content on TSMM, we decide it is break time. We head out of DHS over to the bus. We only wait 5 minutes and actually run into a family that was on the bus with us there that morning. We chat briefly. Always nice making friends in the world!
We get back to BLT and I grab our mugs, which we had kept in the stroller (one reason I LOVE having a stroller, hello storage!) and fill our drinks. Alan tells me to call security about getting a jump for the car, so I do. They say to put the hood up and they will find him in the parking lot in a few minutes. AWesome! I wonder how many times a week they have to do this. A LOT, I bet.
Alan said they were really nice and got it jumped. He drove it around a bit and then came back up to the room for a rest. I got William down for a nap, finally at about 3pm. Once Alan is back, I head down to do one of my favorite things at the world.......SHOP! I do love Buena Vista Gifts in the CR. I manage to spend about $140. OUCH! Mom had given me a list. I got 3 calendars, one for me, mom and sister. Got her a few ornaments (the round 40th one), a "monorail" t-shirt for my sister, WDW candyland game for Will for Christmas and more, including a mousepad and nice writing pen for work. I get back about 4pm and Will is waking up.
I take a few pics of our view- amazing!
Next up, the rest of our first full day- dinner in the castle with some beautiful girls.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
When we left off, I tossed and turned all night, worried about the car lights being left on. Turns out, my gut was right. I should have checked the lights. Yep, the battery was dead. So usually I rent a full size car, like an impala. It has automatic lights. Just like our cars at home. But this time we rented a midsize, cheaper, smaller car. You guessed it, no automatic lights. So the lights had stayed on all night. And the battery was dead, completely.
So after a restless nights sleep, I am up at 6:30am. I was nervous about the car and lights. I should have been. My instinct was right. Darn it! So we are up, we eat some cereal and applesauce in the room and finally head out about 7:40am, later than I had hoped. But we were greeted by this beautiful sunrise! What a great welcome to our vacation! Tink herself must have created it just for us!
Off we go to the bus stop- just feet from us, after turning off the lights of course on the car and locking it. I get on the phone with National to find out our options. There is the car care center just less than a mile from us near the MK with a National. Just as I get her on the phone, the DHS bus pulls up. Our wait was maybe 5 minutes, not bad. We are the last ones on and it is almost full. So I am juggling the phone, stroller and toddler getting on the bus. I cant hear a thing, so I finally tell her I will have to call her back, but she does tell me it is $39 fee for them to come out and switch the cars or jump me.
We get on the bus and DH says not to worry about it, since we turned the lights off now, we will try and get security to jump us later and it should be fine. So thankful I married a car guy. The man can tear apart and rebuild a car himself, so I figured he knew what he was talking about. Did he?
So on the bus to DHS, we stop at the Poly, however the bus is packed already, standing room only and this guy has this HUGE stroller in the aisle. We are crushed in like sardines. DH would try and offer his seat to a lady, but he is holding our son and there simply isnt a way for him to even move with the giant stroller in front of him.
We make it to DHS at about 8:15am. Later than I hope. It is EMH today- they opened at 8am. So we rush in and head down to Toy Story Mania. We missed the crazy mad dash at least. The standby time is 30 minutes already, so we get fastpasses for 12:05pm. We decide to head to Tower of Terror. This is one of my all time favorites and just think, it stands in the place where I used to park when I worked at DHS 15 years ago. Yep, that used to be the cast member parking lot that it is built on. I only wish it was open when I worked there, I would have ridden it daily!
Now, we werent sure William would want to ride this. I had shown him a video of the ride at home on youtube and made sure he knew it dropped over and over again, not just once. He could hear/see the screams and knew it was dark and scary. But he wanted to try it. Who am I to say no to a 3 year old? He is tall enough. Heck, he was tall enough last year at 2 for it, but I didnt feel he was mature enough to ride it then. Now I did, he is a thrill seeker and not scared of much. Plus he really loves ghosts and the Haunted Mansion, so I thought he would like the whole ghost scene here. He also loves the Haunted Mansion scenes at first with the lightning and storms, so I thought ToT might be up his alley.
He is a clean freak like me, so we joked about how dirty the place was and how we needed to come back and dust. The line for ToT was only 10 minutes. He was a little scared, but still wanted to go on. We sit in the back row with him in the middle of us. He has a death grip on us both. He likes the ghost scene for sure, but once we start dropping, he says, let me off of here. Sorry kid, youre stuck for now. I told him it was okay, and held his hand as best I could. He never cried. But once we were off, he said, that was a fun elevator. Silly kids. I told him what a brave boy he was. He said he didnt want to ride it again right now. Well I figured that much.
We skipped RnR. Ive missed it the last two times. DH doesnt care for it and I wasnt ready to put William on there, so I just skipped it instead of making them wait on me. So we headed to Starring Rolls- I wanted to get one of the famous butterfinger cupcakes we had last year. But it was pretty packed, the line was way out the door and not a place to sit. I decided it wasnt worth it right now. We needed to head over to see Phineas and Ferb, I knew they would be out by 10am. But, I should have checked my times guide, they were actually out at 9:30am. Oops! This was a must do this trip. William loves them. We watch them a lot- heck, I really enjoy the show and love that Bowling for Soup does the song. Gotta love all the crazy music and lyrics.
Since I thought P&F didnt start until 10am, we had a little time to kill, so William and I went on Star Tours. It was basically a walk on, no wait. DH sat out. He cant do the motion rides like that. We actually all rode this together at Disneyland in late August when we spent the day at the park while I was there on business. We loved it, but DH cant do that often. He broke out into a cold sweat, so he decided to pass this time.
William loves wearing the glasses. We sit in the back row and get a great movie! It features the Ewok planet and then a dive under the sea with Jar Jar Binks. Very cool. Poor William, while big for his age, is still so little in that big seat and he was being jarred around pretty good with all of the movement. But we loved it and had a good time.
Next, we head over to the P&F meet and greet, located at the exit of the Muppets. I now realize it opens at 9:30am, which it is exactly 9:30am, so there is already a line of say 15-20 ahead of us. Not too bad though. It moves fast. DH goes to sit down on a bench while William and I wait in line. He brings along his workbook and sits on the ground doing it. Too funny- the kid is addicted to those workbooks. Who would have guessed? Unfortunately I don't have any pics of P&F, they are on our PP CD which we haven't gotten quite yet, so I'll add them later.
We finally work our way up and one family before us, they go to take a break. Thankfully, they only break for like 3 minutes and are back again. We are through the line in about 20 minutes and get our cute P&F pics!
We stop in the Muppet store quickly and it is empty! I had seen cute muppet hats in previous years and wanted one for Will. I found them! They had Animal, Beaker and Kermit. I got one for Will and he immediately wanted to wear it. He wore it a lot this trip, as you will see in photos and I swear every single CM and guest commented on that hat and asked if I made it or where we got it. It was a huge hit. Best $20 spent ever!
DH is a little hungry and was searching for coffee, so we hit up the writers stop near Sci Fi. Line here is about 5 deep, but we wait. It moves so slow and takes forever. I get a yummy oatmeal apple cookie and get William yep, another cupcake. He proceeds to eat the icing only.
We sit near the Sci Fi restaurant and enjoy our cookies. I watch some guest have a meltdown about something on her phone. Always interesting people watching at WDW.
We then head over to the animation area, seeing that we just missed the 10:30am Disney Jr. show, which is a must for us. William is a HUGE Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Jake and the Neverland Pirates fan. Those are his absolute favorite shows. I see there is an 11:20am show, so we park the stroller and head into the animation building instead. This is another thing I wanted to do that we missed last trip.
Weve always missed the characters in there, so I wanted to make a point to see them this time. So we headed in and saw Pooh with about a 10 minute wait.
We attempt Sorcerer Mickey, but realize it is getting too close to our Disney Jr. show time and we probably need to get in line, so off we go. We wait in line about 15 minutes or so and head in. We sit in the back right. Will loves this show, especially the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Jake and the Neverland Pirates parts. He also loves catching confetti/gold doubloons! We have to collect them off the floor for him.
It actually feels a little chilly in the shade out here actually.
On the way to TSMM, we run into three folks I recognize from a facebook picture. They are cast members, dressed in some Hawaiian shirts, holding a video camera etc. As I get closer, I see it is .Heather! My old roommate from the college program 15 years ago. Weve kept in touch by email, facebook and always try and visit while we are in town. She still works for the mouse, has ever since the college program. She was one of the Ziti Sisters at Epcot in Italy for a while, but now just subs there. Now she is doing some pre-crowd show before the parade. So I knew that might be here when I recognized those outfits from one of her FB pics. So happy and random to run into her. We meet her coworkers and chat for a bit. Unfortunately we wont catch her later for the parade preshow. Will is going to need a nap by then!
So we continue on to Toy Story Mania. The line is now 60 minutes, it said 90 minutes earlier. After a nice relaxing lunch, we head over to Toy Story Mania to use our fastpasses. It's funny, we only wait about 10 minutes max, but we get looks from those in standby. Then as we are in the staircase area, folks in front of and behind us start giving folks in the other empty line next to us dirty looks, as a family with a special needs child walks by. Come on people!!! Enough already. A CM walks by and someone asks him if we can get in that shorter line. Um no, if you could, they would have put you in it originally! The CM tells them it is the line for GAC passes, or single riders etc. to try and fill up empty spots I swear!
Will sits almost in my lap, I let him pull the gun while I aim. I actually did okay considering I had a toddler assisting. Alan gets a pretty good score, but I can't remember what. After enjoying shooting to our heart's content on TSMM, we decide it is break time. We head out of DHS over to the bus. We only wait 5 minutes and actually run into a family that was on the bus with us there that morning. We chat briefly. Always nice making friends in the world!
We get back to BLT and I grab our mugs, which we had kept in the stroller (one reason I LOVE having a stroller, hello storage!) and fill our drinks. Alan tells me to call security about getting a jump for the car, so I do. They say to put the hood up and they will find him in the parking lot in a few minutes. AWesome! I wonder how many times a week they have to do this. A LOT, I bet.
Alan said they were really nice and got it jumped. He drove it around a bit and then came back up to the room for a rest. I got William down for a nap, finally at about 3pm. Once Alan is back, I head down to do one of my favorite things at the world.......SHOP! I do love Buena Vista Gifts in the CR. I manage to spend about $140. OUCH! Mom had given me a list. I got 3 calendars, one for me, mom and sister. Got her a few ornaments (the round 40th one), a "monorail" t-shirt for my sister, WDW candyland game for Will for Christmas and more, including a mousepad and nice writing pen for work. I get back about 4pm and Will is waking up. I take a few pics of our view- amazing!
Next up, the rest of our first full day- dinner in the castle with some beautiful girls.
, but I am so thrilled to be spending every day with her. I am so glad that you finally have your adorable DS!
It was amazing that even the kids got along well!
