Yep, another last minute trip
With a quiet weekend coming up having only one child for the first time in over a month, we thought it was time for, you guessed it, another trip to Disney. We do this a lot after the family trip since it’s usually more of a production and this year we did one park commando day with the whole family, plus we had some DVC points we had to use by July 31 or we’d lose them.I booked us a Studio at the Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge and we left out Friday after work. Magic Kingdom closed at 11:00 but it was Extra Magic Hours there so it was open until 2:00AM, no we didn’t stay that late with an almost five year old, but we did get to ride quite a few rides and see Spectromagic, the night time light parade. It seemed a little busy in the park compared to most of our visits but we picked a spot on the parade route not long before it began and we weren’t crowded at all. We got to ride a few rides including the Teacups and also Kellie’s first ride on the Indy Speedway
We hadn’t stayed at the Wilderness Lodge in a few years and we forgot how nice it was to walk out to the dock and jump on the boat and likewise come right back to our resort by boat. We had a ground floor room that was right inside the lobby from the quiet pool entrance too which was very convenient. But we weren’t in bed until after 1:00AM.
Saturday I was up at 7:00 and getting a shower and while Kriss got hers I thought it best to run to the car and get my rain jacket and some coffee for us. Kellie was a bit sluggish getting up but when we reminded her we had brought her Cinderella dress and autograph book she was out the bed and we got to the boat just in time to miss rope drop. We headed straight to Dumbo since there are no fast passes for that ride and it backs up quickly and then got in line in time to meet the princesses before they started at 10:00AM. They didn’t have a Photopass photographer for Cinderella but Belle and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) did. After riding a few more rides we decided that the weather was getting a little gray so we headed to the boat launch before the rain came. On our way out the Magic Kingdom under the train station I heard a voice call my name from the side and turned to see my aunt Margie coming towards me with her sister. I hadn’t seen her in a while so it was nice to talk to her for a few unplanned minutes in Disney.
Back at the room we dropped off Kellie’s dress and a few other items while I plugged the camcorder in for a “quick zap” charge and geared up for Hollywood Studios (MGM if you haven’t heard it’s changed names) in the rain since we had a late lunch ressie (reservation in Disney speak) at the 50′s Prime Time Cafe. We walked out the Villas which is conveniently located right behind the bus stop at the Wilderness Lodge and waited for our bus in the damp gray. After watching several EPCOT, Typhon Lagoon/Downtown Disney, and even a Magic Kingdom bus (jeeze you can ride a boat there, why would you want to get on a bus) we got tired of waiting and decided to drive despite NOT wanting to get my car all wet and nasty inside if we had to throw a big wet stroller in the back in a hurry. Of course as we were pulling out the parking lot a Hollywoods Studios bus was patiently waiting for passengers at the stop!
It was still sprinkling so we caught a tram from the parking lot to the park entrance. We found a place to park the stroller under cover near where we were eating lunch and being a few minutes early Kriss decided to look for a pair of socks to wear with her Crocs while I ran to the back to attempt getting a fast pass for the new Toy Story Midway Mania ride. HA, fat chance arriving in the park expecting one at 1:00PM for the newest ride in Disney! All were distributed and people were gathered around the machines under the eve staying dry so you couldn’t even get to them if they were available. The standby wait time was 130 minutes, not an hour and thirty minutes, two hours ten minutes. So not wanting to disappoint I went to the Little Mermaid theater and snagged some passes for there and went back to find the family and eat.
50′s Prime Time Cafe is a neat place to eat and if you’re not in a bad mood, a fun place too. It’s made up like your mom’s, or grandma’s kitchen of the 50′s (so it looks like the kitchen in my first house I bought from my grandparents) with pine cabinets and those black hinges, nick knacks galore, and black and white tv’s running briefs of 50′s shows like Dick Van Dyke or My Little Margie (which was ironic since seeing my aunt Margie a few hours ago) and the cast members are all dressed up and act the part of mom’s little helper. Most will instantly become your uncle Dave or aunt Sue and be sure to be on your best behavior (keep your elbows off the table) or suffer the wrath of one of them.
It was also a Star Wars weekend so I wanted to go check that out after lunch and we walked around to the Star Tours area. It was still a light mist so the characters weren’t out signing autographs and after ducking into the makeshift gift shop/warehouse they setup we headed towards the new ride again, yep, still 130 minutes, so Ariel it was.
After the show it was almost time for the High School Musical 2 pep rally and since Kellie loves HSM (those songs kind of get stuck in your head) I headed to the “big hat” to get my place, fortunately the rain had stopped. After standing for a while among many other people in wheel chairs, ecv scooters, and strollers, a cast member comes over to us and tells us only that we can’t take our stroller up once they come by and start performing. I looked closer to the hat staring at a sea of wheeled chariots and though how stupid this was and we quickly changed plans and headed back to the room to go swimming. We also briefly discussed coming back for rope drop the next morning before leaving for home so we could ride Toy Story Mania even though we had planned to go to EPCOT and had even made a ressie for early lunch at the San Angel Inn in Mexico.
The pool was a nice break though. The Wilderness Lodge has a really neat pool set down by the lake looking up the hill at this majestic Lincoln Log set of a resort where a waterfall starts in the lobby and makes its way down to the pool before spilling into the lake (even though I’m pretty sure it’s not the same water all the way down) near a geyser that used to spray water over 100′ high but now pees a stream of water more like someone knocked the end off a water faucet maybe 40-50′. They do have a lot of rock features with a small slide running through them dumping you into the pool and Kellie was willing to try it which surprised me. I stood to the side of the slide exit waiting for her bright orange floaties to come around the corner and catch her before she went under the water and she had a ball, by the end of our swim time I was just there “just in case” and wasn’t even touching her. She then decided she wanted to go to the hot tub so I went over to where Kriss was sitting and told her we were going around the corner to the quiet pool near our room and sit in the hot tub for a minute before dinner but when we got there and Kellie stuck her feet in, she officially declared that it was “hot” in the hot tub and wanted to get in the pool again. After another 30 minutes or so we went to the room to clean up for our dinner ressie.
Dinner we ate at the Wilderness Lodge at Whispering Canyon, which is a misnomer because this place is anything but quiet. We’d been here before so Kriss and I knew what to expect but the last time Kellie had been here she was breast feeding so we knew she needed to experience it. I’m not certain why we decided to eat at two abusive restaurants in one day but before we had even ordered our drinks I (along with all males over 15) was standing in a U around the perimeter if the main dining room dancing to My Little Buttercup for some lady’s birthday. Kellie got to ride the stick pony around the room and there is lots of yelling, whooping, singing, and banging the tray stands on the wooden floors as they walk to and from the kitchen. Now let me give you a quick little sidebar on Kellie. Her nickname should be the ketchup kid, she eats it on almost everything, and when I say she eats it on everything, I don’t mean a dip in it. Whatever she is actually eating, the food, becomes merely a ketchup delivery device for half a jug of ketchup at a sitting. So my unknowing beautiful little princess orders a cheeseburger and politely colors with all this chaos going on around us while Kriss and I are looking at each other smiling knowing what is about to happen. She didn’t even notice it when other diners asked for ketchup at their table. So when our food arrives shy Kellie is staring up at the server trying to get get him to read her mind when he assumes that what she is about to ask for is ketchup (maybe he did read her mind) and tells Kriss and I what we need to do. “1-2-3 WHO’S GOT THE KETCHUP!!!!” we yelled as loud as we could and within seconds a train of at least six other diners carrying armloads of ketchup bottles come fill our table while puzzled Kellie looks on. When they all left Kellie turned to us and all she could say was “why did all those people bring me that all that ketchup” in the cutest little voice that would melt your heart. Within minutes there was someone on the other side of the room needing ketchup and I heard the yell so I loaded up as many as I could in my arms and Kriss grabbed a few and we made our way to the recipient’s table, leaving one bottle for Kellie on our table. I couldn’t carry them all and Kriss didn’t want to leave Kellie out of site so she shuttled some more to me and then a little boy at the table near us said he’d help and grabbed an arm full and took the last of it.
It was probably 9:00 or so now and Magic Kingdom closed at midnight that night so we walked down to the boat dock with Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin fast passes still in my pocket from the morning (yes you can use them any time after the posted time on the ticket, not just the one hour window) and me hoping to see the Wishes fireworks at 10:00. When we came around the corner a boat was just pulling away so we were right up in line behind one lady and her kids, she said they had just put up the rope and wouldn’t let her on. As we stood there looking across the dark lake hoping to see a boat headed our way I saw a green train of lights moving across in front of us so I told Kriss to take Kellie across the dock to watch. This is called the Electrical Water Pageant and it takes place every evening on Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon in front of the resorts there (weather permitting) and is a long line of boats strung together that start playing music and then light up in time with the music depicting seas creatures, King Triton, and at the end a patriotic display with Yankee Doodle and Your a Grand Old Flag playing. We watched the entire show and then it went dark and starts heading toward Fort Wilderness campground when we realized there was still no boat and changed plans to head back to the room. We passed the pool and Kellie said she wanted to swim some more so we let her change and took her back to the kiddie pool where she instantly made a friend before the top of her foot was wet until around 10:45. The family of the little girl was ready to leave and begging and pleading with her to get out and dry off when Kriss realized it and walked over and told Kellie she needed to get out since her friend was leaving which she replied “awww, I was playing with my friend” as she stepped out of the pool after being told only once to do so, yes she is still our most polite child. Kriss told her she had to go to bed too so we could get up early to try to see Toy Story Mania so we went to the room where we thought she would doze off pretty quickly but to my surprise she was still awake at 11:30 watching Hannah Montana, Suite Life of Zack and Cody, or some other Disney show on TV, I’m pretty sure I fell asleep before she did.
Sunday morning I was up even earlier for some reason, I seem to have the ability to wake up early when I know I need to, like getting to a park in time for rope drop! I got in the shower before anyone else woke but when I got out I heard Kriss moving around which meant she was packing up the room, she’s pretty awesome at that on leaving day. When I got out the bathroom she had pretty much packed up everything without waking up Kellie and had our last remaining clean clothes laid out for us all to wear. I finished up while she was in the shower and made a quick haul to the car to get the biggest part of our “stuff” loaded and grabbed us both coffee, by the time I got back to the room they were both pretty much ready to leave and it was 8:00, one hour before rope drop. We got the last of our junk loaded and made a bee line for Hollywood Studios.
Apparently there were many others having the same idea because we were parked on the second row and since we were only there for one thing, we left the stroller, bags, and rain gear in the car, it was blue out so far but there was a 70% chance of rain starting at 11:00. We zoomed around the bag check line, I HATE that stupid, useless bag check line (don’t even get me started on how stupid that is) and to the turnstiles which all had probably 20 people in the already. Kriss noticed Stormtroopers up on the roof that then started talking and carried on an act about should they shoot us all or let us in early and fortunately they decided to let us in early so we made our way all the way up Hollywood Blvd (which is their version of Main Street) to the end closest the hat where the rope was and we only had one row of people in front of us. We quickly formulated a plan of what to do, assuming that everyone else was there for the same reason (Toy Story Midway Mania) since we had already passed Sunset Blvd and everyone headed to Tower of Terror and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster had turned off and everyone wanting Star Wars autographs had gone the other way. She was going to carry Kellie as quickly as possible but not try to outrun everyone while I stayed up with the cast member and straight to the fast pass machine which was giving out 9:40 passes first thing. When I got out of line I turned around and saw Kriss between me and the entrance and motioned for her to get in line and quickly caught up to her. When we were outside the wait time sign read 5 min, then 20, then 30, and this jumped all in a matter of minutes. The line moved fairly quickly, especially since there were no fast pass people getting in yet. What an AWESOME ride! I’ve always liked Buzz Lightyear Space ranger Spin at Magic Kingdom but this one is even better, I won’t describe it here but even Kellie loved it. When we got off the fast pass return time had already gotten up to 4:00 and it was only 9:40, but we quickly got back in line and rode again to confirm, yep, we still loved it.
Afterward we headed to EPCOT, our original plans had been to go there on leaving day anyway, and we went to Test Track for fast passes on our way to lunch in Mexico at San Angel Inn. We rode Three Caballeros, then Nemo and then wanted to go ride the new Spaceship Earth again. For some reason I pulled out my tickets to check our fast pass time and somehow I’d gained an extra park ticket, a 6 day pass that had the signature of Nicole on it. Kriss got in line at Spaceship Earth while I walked across to Guest Relations, hearing thunder in the distance, and turned the ticket in, I hope you get it back Nicole! When we got of Spaceship Earth it was raining pretty good so we left the park, sad to leave, and headed back home.
