Caitlyn Trip Report

We stop (as is our custom) at the Burger King just outside security inside the Buffalo airport, mostly to get the feel of the sounds of the airport while still in a relative comfort zone. We know she’s flown, but it can’t hurt. Grandma’s going to get the food while I watch all our stuff, and Caitie gets to pick who to go with. To no one’s surprise she picks Laurie, and it's soon apparent that she's not quite sure about me yet. On the way up to the counter however, we do see our first official 'skip' of the trip. She’s ready.

On our way down to our gate we get to the moving walkway, which she remembers from her last flight. We get on in Laurie-Caitie-Don order and keep walking, but about halfway down she tests our statement that she would get to decide a lot of things, by stopping right in front of me. I complain just a little about getting held up, which gives her a little giggle. Yes sir, bonding through teasing, this should help prepare her for school.

We’re on the plane now, and I’m not sure if she knows something we don't, but this is the first time we've had one of the kids pull out the plane evacuation diagram. She tells Grandma, "We're going to go out 'A'". I’m thinking “Damn right we are, but it better be into a jetway in Orlando.” There’s no fear in her voice at all, just curiosity when she asks Grandma how it works when the air masks fall out of the ceiling. We've always felt the little ones are usually best served when you find a way to answer their questions honestly, and it's becoming apparent that she has a million of them, and I bet her mom and dad have already answered at least several hundred thousand. It's definitely not going to be a boring trip, we haven't left the ground yet and she's thrown out a week's worth of conversation.

She has quite a sense of humor too; as soon as they start pushing us back from the gate she looks up at Laurie with a little grin and says "I think maybe I don't want to fly." It turns out though that she’s the first of the kids who has REALLY appreciated the window seat, pointing out all kinds of cool things to me. A few minutes after we’ve distributed the tasty Airline Peanuts, she announces to us that “I'm making peanut butter in my mouth." And we’re only almost over Pittsburgh when she looks up at Laurie with a mischievous grin, bounces her shoulders a little, and sing-songs in sort of a Goofy voice "are we THERE yet???"
We’ve been in the air a little over an hour now, and it’s starting to get dark. We had asked her earlier what time she usually goes to bed, and she told us she usually goes as soon as her eyes start getting dizzy. Must be they are now, because she still has her seat belt on and is laying her head on Laurie's leg, leaving a wake-up call for just before we land, because that's the fun part. We wake her up shortly after breaking through the clouds over Daytona and she says "HEY, I see some lights!! I think it's one of the parks!" Flying over some of greater Orlando's lakes, she wants to know which ones are the water parks. We soon discover why the landing is the most fun part, as she leans as far forward as she can so her whole weight is on the belt. Once the arms are up and the wheels are down and they reverse the engines, it IS sort of a thrill ride, complete with the requisite giggling.

Three times between the plane and the inter-terminal monorail we hear "It's beautiful in here. It's like a hotel." We kind of take it for granted at this point, but it IS kind of pretty. Our Magical Express [brand new free Disney transport program] luggage tags didn’t reach us in time, so we spot the big Mickey hand in the main terminal lobby. The instructions (relayed by a series of helpful folks) are very simple: take those elevators right over there down to Level 1, right across from the elevator is the Disney desk, get your travel vouchers, go down and get your bags yourselves (or point them out to Disney staff for transport), go to the ME station outside, they’ll load your bags, and you’ll get on the bus. And it works exactly like that.

Our bus pulls out 15 minutes after we get outside the building. If you hear complaints about Magical Express from people who regularly use Tiffany or some such, remember we’re talking apples and oranges there. If you compare it to Mears (which we most often use), it’s quite favorable from our perspective. The bus is very comfortable, complete with TV’s playing Brother Bear. Not long after we’re on the road, the driver tells us we’ll come back to the Bear in a few minutes, after we’ve watched a short Disney DVD showing newer attractions. Caitlyn wants to know what day we're going to be seeing each of those things. She still wants to do Splash first, but patiently listens to us describe our general plans for Days 1 - 5.

She asks us "How many Disneys are there?" Well, some people would say one, but our answer is four and we list them for her and can see her mentally arranging the days of our trip. We always introduce the parks to the kids in the same order, Animal Kingdom, MGM, Epcot, and Magic Kingdom, because we’ve found that keeps their interest up the best for each of the parks. But she ultimately wants to know "What day is it when I get to pick where we go?" We always give the kids complete freedom to pick where we go on our last day (knowing that it will be Magic Kingdom), and that’s apparently important to Caitie.

Her mom is a big-time Disney fan as well, so I believe she’s seen almost every movie represented at Disney World (at least 31, by my quick count), and will likely have a deeper appreciation of many of the attractions as a result. For example, she's very excited to see Herbie the Love Bug.

We tell her that we always unpack everything as soon as we get to our room, and she’ll have her own drawer for all of her stuff. She immediately decides that she needs Drawer # 5. We tell her that she can have the bottom of the 4-drawer, but she insists she has to have Drawer # 5 because she’s 5. We give her the famous ‘we’ll see’.

We don't really get the details, but Caitlyn is having It's a Small World for her graduation this summer. I ask her what graduation, and she tells me "the one so I can go to kindergarten."

And now she’s very, very excited because we just drove under that Welcome to Disney World arch, which means we're here. (I was talking about Caitlyn, but Laurie has the same face.) We're doing the fist pump and chair dance, "we're here... we're here... we're really really here."

Our bus stops briefly at Pop Century and Animal Kingdom Lodge, then on to our home at All Star Sports. It’s exactly an hour and a half between the time our plane touches the ground and the time we walk into our room. That’s about what we experience with Mears, so we have no complaints. Caitie spots a toad on the ground outside the building, and wants to know if it's real. She later shows it to Laurie and decides it must be a girl, "because look at the eyes."

We have friends who have stays here overlapping ours, and Laurie had worked on getting rooms near each other. Apparently the only way they could do that was to free upgrade us to a preferred room, so we're right on the back of the Surf building, on the end right across from the food court. Sweet. We get into our room and launch into the unpacking. I count off the drawers for Caitlyn, and coincidentally, Drawer #5 just happens to be the bottom of the four-drawer. She's quite happy things worked out for her.

As we settle in for bed, Laurie tells her that if she gets scared during the night, just say “Grandma” and Laurie will wake right up. It can’t be more than two minutes and we hear her say “Grandma,” and look over to see an impish little grin. A little later though, she does say "Grandma, could you lay down with me just until I go to sleep?" Grandma does, and she’s out in two minutes. Caitlyn, that is.

It’s 12:30 now, but I’m sure we’ll all be bright-eyed and ready to see Animal Kingdom tomorrow. We’re very much looking forward to another unique, enjoyable, and memorable trip. This one will be, as it turns out, complete with Academy Awards and ant funerals and Cotton Rides and six Dinosaur Rides. (The dinosaur ride isn’t the Dinosaur ride, and you get 30 bonus points if you can figure out what the Cotton Ride is before we get there.) And as a bonus to me, there will be no mention of a ‘journal’ the entire trip ;-)

Grandbabies 5.1, Animal Kingdom

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Caitlyn, on the first park day of our week-long June adventure.

We set our wakeup call for 7:15 this morning, but it's raining like hell and Laurie’s been hearing thunder since 3am and there are tornado warnings in effect until 11am for several surrounding counties, so we're going to lay in a bit. This in spite of the wakeup call, which I enjoyed back when it was Mickey saying “up ’n at ’em”, but which is much less cute now that it’s Stitch. I almost want to roll over and go back to sleep just to spite the little bugger.

I have a shirt I wear once in a while, a very brightly colored shirt with half inch squares/rectangles of orange and red and yellow and black and silver and a hard-to-describe pattern blended in as well. It’s a little loud, but I like it, and I always seem to end up wearing it to Animal Kingdom because it breathes really well and AK is always so hot. It’s loud enough that I was walking through the mall at home one time with it and heard a voice I didn’t recognize say “Is there some place I can buy a shirt like that, or do you have to get it as a gift?” I was a little surprised to find the voice belonged to a 20-year-old stranger with a grubby t-shirt under a worn black leather vest, 40” baggy shredded jeans on 30” legs, and a couple pounds of metal hanging off various parts of his face. “I think it’s one of a kind,” I replied, “but if you’re looking to upgrade, I can probably part with it.” He and his buddies decided that wouldn’t be necessary, and I was glad I could provide a brief bit of entertainment for them.

But this morning, when I come out of the bathroom wearing it, Caitlyn innocently says “Your shirt makes you look a little funny.” So I guess Slash wasn’t out of line after all, turns out I’M the rebel.

We actually end up heading out of the room for Animal Kingdom about 9:30. Caitie reports that "I've seen lots of aminals, but I've never been to Aminal Kingdom." We get into the park at 10:10 and the rain is just starting to ease up. It’s no surprise that the tip board says we won’t have to wait much for anything we might want to see.

Our timing is right for the Festival of the Lion King [musical theater-in-the-round stage show], so we make our way back toward Camp Minnie-Mickey. Caitie spots Goofy ‘fishing’ as we cross the little bridge and mentions it but doesn't suggest stopping. [They have a number of scenes with life-size replicas of the characters in this section of the park.] She’s used to operating on someone else’s schedule, as are all kids her age, so we remind her that this trip is different and that if there’s anything she wants to spend some time with, we’ll either do it right then or make sure we find time to do it later. So right now, I tell her we need to check out this ‘fishing’ thing. She’s giggling quite a bit as she points out to Laurie that Donald has caught a boot, and that Goofy is pretending to be fishing, but he’s really sleeping, and he has a VERY big sandwich and apple, and he doesn't even have string on his pole, which is a good thing or he would be catching the ducks that are swimming by. As we walk away, she says "I LOVE this place."

Caitlyn gets autographs from Chip and Dale and Goofy, and then gets in a long line for Mickey and Minnie. When we’re about two-thirds through the line, the Mice need to take a break for a few minutes (reportedly for some cheesecake), and we all decide to bail to get to the Lion King show on time. She isn’t quite ready to be a participant yet; she offers no tusks to help out the Warthog Section. [The audience is divided into four sections, us being Warthogs.] I can’t help it, I still get chills during that opening song of the Lion King. And Caitie is bobbing and weaving to see around the folks in front of us so she can take in every character in the show.

She’s VERY excited when Timon comes out, in spite of her undisguised disgust with me when I inadvertently call him Timba. She loves the Tumble Monkeys, and clearly thinks it’s a great show overall. It occurs to me that, though we love the show and make sure we see it every trip, there are two ways it could be improved immensely -- shorten the Lion Sleeps Tonight number to about 11 seconds, and go back to singers who are more interested in faithful representations of the originals than in trying to outdo each other with vocal gymnastics. Laurie was a little disappointed in Flying Girl and Helper also, as they didn’t seem quite as graceful as past performers. I can’t knock any of them too much though, since I’m the kind of guy who says things like “Here comes Timba!”

Caitie, whose disposable camera currently holds only one shot of our hotel room, urgently wants to get a picture of the finale. (It hasn’t always worked that way with the kids, I remember Alexis filling her camera with blackbirds and toads.) As we leave, she tells us she loved everything except the part where Timon was mean. Not remembering what that part might have been, she points out that after we stood up he yelled "GET OUUUTTTT!!!"

It seems odd that as we’re walking back over to see Minnie and Mickey, I’m in the happiest place on earth and hearing background classical guitar playing “Brother Can You Spare a Dime.” What are they trying to tell me? We have a To Each His Own moment with a woman in the queue whose favorite things at Disney World are Tarzan Rocks and Fantasmic; those two are both on Laurie’s and my Probably Won’t See Again list.

We manage to just get into the Pocahontas show [where she teaches about saving the forest, with help from animated trees and real animals], even though it has already started. No loss, as Caitie seems nearly as bored with it as I am. But in another stroke of good timing, we are just exiting the show when Daddy calls. The first thing she tells him is "We haven't ridden any rides yet!", but her voice and facial expression are telling us that that isn’t yet a fatal flaw. After a bit, she looks up from the phone and asks "Are we going to the Stinkbug after we eat?" You just can’t get conversation like THAT at home.

One of the things we’ve learned from the kids on these trips is how much eye candy there is overhead. Most adults don’t tend to look ‘up’ much, but kids are always looking up just to interact with adults so they notice all kinds of things up high. And Caitie is loving the ladybug streetlights near Pizzafari. We go to the Tusker House for lunch, and Caitlyn has selected the mac&cheese, an excellent choice. Elysia had told us Disney’s mac&cheese is the best anywhere, but Haley had declared it “too cheesy.” You might want to keep that in mind when you ask someone’s opinion of any particular Disney food or resort or attraction or transportation or whatever. (See Tarzan/Fantasia discussion above.) Apparently, it’s ‘just right’ for Caitie though.

After lunch, we get FastPasses for the Safari and head out to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. After parking the stroller, I find myself walking down the path behind my two babes with their sleeveless shirts and their shorts and their little white sneakers and their happy, bouncy walks and life is good. Caitlyn is very excited when she sees the train pull in. I assume she’s been on one before, but maybe not. The train guy talks about the Affection Section (petting zoo), and she tells Laurie "I'm not petting any alligators!" I think she saw the Safari on the TV in the room and is getting the two mixed up.

When we get to Conservation Station, I stop to take a break outside while the girls go inside, and I soon experience another first, a phone call from the Rafiki line. This is the first time we’ve both had cell phones with us, and we’re loving it. Laurie’s letting me know that instead of checking out the exhibits first, they’re getting autographs from Pocahontas, Rafiki, and Stanley. I catch up with them as they’re finishing up, and suggest we check out one of the sound booths.

We put the headphones on and settle in for ‘Song of the Rainforest’, which turns out to be another heavy-handed Save The Forest cautionary tale. We don’t even get to the thunderstorm though, as Caitlyn dumps the headphones about a minute in, when the bugs start flying around our ears. Laurie and I look at each other and mentally note that Drew Carey’s Sounds Dangerous is not in the cards for this trip. I think the sounds are way cooler than Caitie does, but the story leaves me wanting to exit early also. Love those headphones though, I definitely have to get me a pair of those babies before Star Wars 3 gets to DVD.

Caitlyn says she hates spiders, but spends at least 15 minutes checking them all out. Of course these are different from the spiders at home, being the behind-the-glass kind and all. I wouldn’t have thought she’d have any critter issues, given that when I was at her house last summer she walked up to me with a little beach pail containing two massive slugs, which she had named (logically enough) Aurora and Rose. We also get to see a small room with hundreds of butterflies and she wants to know if they're all brothers and sisters. Must not have been listening closely to the message from Pocahontas, apparently we all are. (Which reminds me, my shirt’s the Color of the Wind, so back off, Munchkin.)

We go outside to the Affection Section now, and are relieved that there are no alligators in sight. Lots of goats and a few sheep, but no gators. A goat seems to be reaching for whatever's in Caitie’s fanny pack, which she finds kind of humorous. She doesn’t want to walk away, because she wants to pet him, but she doesn’t want him messing with her snacks either, so she’s trying this cute little junior contortionist deal where her shoulders are headed north and her hips are headed southwest.

They have a neat little low-elevation Jungle Gym sort of thing for the goats to climb on. A woman near us is surprised to see that the maker of this unit is the same company that did their playground back home. Her husband is surprised she’s surprised, quite sensibly wondering if she thinks a company could make a go of it selling just goat recreational equipment.

By the time we leave, we’ve set several new records -- 15 minutes with the spiders, 20 minutes with snakes and lizards and butterflies, at least 20 minutes petting goats and sheep, more than an hour and a half total, counting the autographs. Maybe this ISN’T a half-day park. Caitie says our next destination should be the other place you can pet animals. "You know, the Safari." [Not a petting zoo, but she doesn’t know that yet.]

The music on the path between Conservation Station and the train would make excellent going to sleep music. In fact, Laurie’s had a bit of an upset stomach, and credits this music for calming that. As we ride the train back to Harambe, it doesn't seem to us like Caitlyn’s paying any attention to our conductor’s listing of the various AK attractions. When she mentions the kids' playground in Dinoland, though, Caitie immediately says "That's me, I'm going there." It’s fairly crowded on the tight path up from the train station, and she reaches back and grabs me by the wrist for the first time. We’ve had a little less than a day to bond, but it turns out I’m an okay guy and almost as good a safety zone as Grandma.

She appears to be loving the Safari. I’m a little worried about her neck, what with her head whipping around so much in every direction. Early in the tour, she’s a little concerned. “Are we driving through the RIVER???" Yes. "Are we going to drown?" Doubtful. They’ve changed the route to Lion Rock [a high rocky section where you can sometimes see a lion or lioness or both] a bit, so Caitie spots it before we do. "Simbaaaaaa!!!!"

We’re going to head down to Dinoland now, but we need to stop in the Harambe Square because Caitie needs some popcorn. Despite the rain, there are a couple 8-year-olds pulling the ropes that activate the misters on the corner, giggling profusely. She’s quite impressed when we get to the point on the path that has the overlook with the Picture Spot of the Tree of Life [the central icon of Animal Kingdom, a giant ‘tree’ with hundreds of animals carved in the trunk]. That’s a lot of aminals, she thinks. In fact, it occurs to me that if you stand there as long as 10 minutes, you’re bound to learn how to pronounce dozens of animal names with a British accent.

As we approach Dinoland, Caitlyn’s giving us a very lengthy description of long-necks, and wants to know if there's one of those there. She’s telling us all about how long the neck is, "and that doesn't even count the head!" We’re comforted to learn that she’s never seen one for real, she’s just looked at them on the computer. I ask her if I can have a little bit of her popcorn, and she says “You can have as much as you want." What a sweetheart. Later on though, Grandma reaches in and grabs a big handful and Caitie turns around and calmly tells her "Don't forget, I'm sick." A little is fine, but if you’re going to be a hog, you should probably get your own.

It turns out the Boneyard play area isn’t of interest after all, as we sail right by without comment. We spend a little time watching Lucky (the new free-standing audio-animatronic dinosaur), and Lucky's cool. Not quite as cool as Crush [we’ll get to him later], but then who is? We decide Laurie and Caitlyn are going to ride the Triceratops Spin [a Dumbo clone], while I take a Primeval Whirl [a Wild Mouse type coaster]. We tell Caitie she’s not tall enough for that one, but she’s not going to just take our word for it, we have to take her over and stand her by the yardstick to prove it. Okay, no problem.

I end up sharing the Whirl with a 6'4" 30-year-old manly-man wearing a "Finish Every Play" t-shirt, along with his slightly older, slightly shorter, slightly less studly brother. But they both look like they were probably captain of their college rugby team. The older one hasn't ridden this before, and it’s soon apparent that he’s not crazy about hanging over the edge at the top. But then once we start spinning, both of the manly-men are giggling like 12-year-old girls. Ah, the great equalizer.

Our rides get done about the same time, and Caitlyn runs over to me and chirps "Was your ride good, Papa?" She wants me to get a chance to ride HER ride, so we do. As we get near the front of the line, she looks up at me and asks "Are you excited about this ride?" Well obviously! And we go up, and we go down, and we’re bouncing, and she’s giggling, and “Can we do that again?” We would, but we don’t want to miss the parade.

On our way out of Dinoland, we ask her if she wants to go down and get an autograph from Pooh or Eeyore. She thinks for a few seconds, then says "Not now." As we walk along, I consider it partial payback for annoying me so much when I see a cast member having to stand there bouncing that damned four-foot ball while it's raining. We eventually arrive at our chosen parade spot near Tusker Square, and decide that we need some ice cream. Well, Laurie and I do anyway. We each have a waffle cone and Caitlyn selects the Fruit Smoothy, which is a purplish berry concoction. And of course this being Animal Kingdom, there are no lids on the container. And of course there is NO color of clothing that goes well with a Fruit Smoothy. Any kindergarten teacher or cafeteria worker will tell you that most five-year-olds wear some food, and ours is no exception. She’s got a little orange juice on the front of her shorts, a big glob of berry on her shirt front, and a little circle of berry on her butt. Probably trying to outdo my shirt.

When the first parade character gets to us, Caitlyn starts waving. And she never puts her hand down until the parade is finished. Girl’s a pro. She’s quite amused (and I’m a little freaked out) that Minnie's jeep has eyelashes over the headlights that wink. And the bubble bath is hilarious, as are Goofy’s golf clubs ready to fall on the ground. We had chosen this spot so we could see the parade both start and finish, but she’s getting tired so we head out. In fact, we haven’t gone very far before she’s sleeping in the stroller.

Back at the All Stars, Caitie says we should follow her to the room. She’s walking along fifteen yards ahead of us, peeking over her shoulder periodically to see kind of where we're aiming, then leading us there. You know that several elements of body language can mean more than one thing, but there's only ever one thing that skipping means. Life is good.

In the room, Caitlyn wants to talk into my recorder, and her initial offering is "Grandma and Papa had a very good day with me." I couldn't have said it better myself. The TV is already on channel fiveteen [the main Disney channel] when we get to the room, so we catch the last ten minutes of some Toon Disney bilge called Dave the Barbarian. If you haven't seen it, please don't encourage them. But then we get treated to the beginning of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. And Laurie and I are reminded of how much we miss that show at MGM. There are few things that are quite as gripping to me as that chorus singing about the bells bells bells bells bells bells bells bells bells of No-truh DAAAHHHHHHMMMMM.

After a very refreshing nap, we’re headed to the Grand Floridian for a character dinner at 1900 Park Faire. [You don’t actually eat the characters, but 4 or 5 of them will come around to tables for autographs and pictures.] On the way to our hotel bus stop, Caitie and I decide to take the long cut around the end of the building and meet Laurie out front. I say something about how we’re going out to wait for the bus, and she corrects me instantly. "I'm not waiting for the BUS, I'm waiting for GRANDMA." Yes, well I suppose, first things first.

We get off our bus at the Magic Kingdom to walk over to the monorail station. Caitie perhaps sees it up ahead when she confidently tells us "Follow me!" Sure, we’ll see where we end up. [Part of the bay juts out between the bus stops and the monorail station.] She’s skipping along until she gets up to the head of the bus stops, then suddenly stops and turns to us and says "I have one question. How do we get over there when there's water between us?" Well, I guess we’ll just have to go around the water. She’s unreasonably excited to see all the Mickey-shaped stones in the Magic Kingdom walkway, walking along saying “Mickey Mickey Mickey Mickey” in much the same voice as that dog on TV says Bacon Bacon Bacon. Glad we didn’t have to spend long on THAT path.

When we get to the restaurant, Goofy is out in the hall so we begin to get the autograph book and camera out. She already met Goofy this morning, so she tells us she doesn't need his autograph or a picture, she just wants to hug him. And as we go to get in line, she informs me “You can sit with Grandma, I can do this myself.” And then proves her point. Then it’s time for a bathroom break, and as the girls head off, she tells me “If Cinderella comes out, you tell her I'm in the bathroom." Bet Cindy never gets tired of hearing THAT. I need to make a stop also, which lets me overhear a cute conversation between a guy and the baby girl he’s changing in the men’s room. “Daddy, you have to wash your hands after you touch my hiney." He tells her he cleaned them with a wet wipe, but you and I both know he totally didn't.

Never having eaten here, I’m surprised by the volume in 1900 Park Faire for the character meal. I can’t remember ever having eaten in a louder place, though Laurie believes Chef Mickey’s and the Crystal Palace are louder. It’s just a big ol’ rectangular room with no sound absorption, and when you fill it with people and 40% of them are small children, it reminds me a little of Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve, only with less pushing. There’s a very nice selection at the buffet, which we’re soon enjoying. I can’t believe how much this diet has taken over me though, I get back to the table to discover that I’ve put both carrots and broccoli on my plate. How the hell did THAT happen?

Caitlyn enjoys getting an autograph and picture with Cinderella and later, one of the Mice. But when she sees Prince Charming making his rounds, she tells us she doesn't want his autograph. Laurie protests, but Caitie simply tells her “YOU can get it if you want, but I’M not going to.” And she’s serious, because once he gets within a couple tables of us, she comes around to the chair on my side of the table (probably to avoid being too close if Grandma gets all girly). And when he gets to the table next to ours, she’s actually slinking down and almost hiding under the table. We’ve concluded that perhaps the Prince is too handsome, and thus a little intimidating for her. I must have the same effect on people, because nobody ever wants my autograph either.

When he finally gets to our table, he looks down at Caitlyn and she simply points to Laurie, with no expression on her face whatsoever. He takes the autograph book and pen from Laurie, and while he’s signing, he says to Caitlyn "Can I get a picture with you Princess?" Without hesitation she says "Nope," and points to Laurie again. So I have a beautiful picture of Laurie and the Prince. As we’re finishing dinner, we’re talking about favorite things we did today, and favorite Disney movies, and favorite characters. She asks me who my favorite character is, and I pull out my best Eeyore voice and say “Nobody cares about the donkey.” She looks up at me with a face full of sincerity and says "I do." Oh, you little sweetheart. And she’ll bring this back up on our last day, too.

It’s getting close to 8:00 now, so Laurie gives Caitie a choice of going back to the pool for a while before bed or going to the Magic Kingdom for a bit. Surprisingly, she says "I think it's past my bedtime, we probably should go back to the room." No problem. We get back and tell her to change into her swimming gear, and she tells me “I'm going to leave my blue earrings on, because the BLUE ones are waterproof, okay? Just so you know." Okay. Then there's a 10-second pause before she grins and says "I'm just messin' with you, ALL my earrings are waterproof." And I’m here to tell you, being ‘messed’ with by a five-year-old is fairly entertaining.

We spend quite a bit of time in the pool, but still should be quite rested for rope drop at MGM tomorrow.

Grandbabies 5.2, MGM, Epcot

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Caitlyn, on the second day of our week-long June adventure.

We’re all feeling pretty good and ready to go this morning. Laurie’s upset tummy is fixed, Caitlyn has worked her way down to just a slightly runny nose, and we’ll be on our way to MGM by 8:30. Caitie is getting a little impatient while us old folks finish getting ready, and wants to go outside. We open the curtains all the way and tell her she can wait right outside the window where she can see us. Which she happily does. She knows how to use her room key now, if only she were big enough to actually move that very heavy door.

Magic Kingdom must still be popular on Thursdays, there’s a bus and a half of people waiting at that bus stop, a handful of people each for AK and Epcot, and a dozen of us for MGM. When we get to the park and approach the gates, Caitie says "There's the hat we made on our picture!" [MGM’s central icon is a 100’ blue Sorcerer Mickey hat.] It’s not uncommon to prepare the kids with drawings of the park icons, and say what you want, that hat HAS to be a lot easier to draw than the Chinese Theater.

Laurie somehow crumpled her annual pass in her pocket and now it won't fit in the turnstile. Caitlyn and I are already through, but Laurie’s stuck there. The CM has her back to Laurie, busily chatting away with a family in her native language, helping them quite a bit I’m sure, but completely ignoring Laurie and the folks in line behind her. So when Laurie rises from simmer to slow burn, she simply walks through the stroller gate without using her ticket and heads over to Guest Relations to replace it. The street is full for rope drop, so Caitie and I sneak up through the shops on the left and end up about three people from the rope. Laurie catches up to us just as the Good Morning Music comes up. [When we talk about ‘rope drop’, they let people through the turnstiles a bit before the parks actually open, then hold them behind a rope up the street somewhere until 9:00, when they have a musical welcome and then remove the ropes. If you can ‘make rope drop’, you get an hour or so of fairly empty park (and short lines) before the crowd starts to build later.]

We get back near the hat, and Caitlyn says "Cool, are those plants real?" She's spotting the topiaries for the first time, and she's really impressed with both Mickey and the Brooms, because she loves both Fantasia movies. Fantasia is one of those movies that wouldn't register with the casual 5-year-old Disney kid, but the Disney mom's Disney kid is all over it. (I think Mickey may have also received some kind of ‘award’ for Fantasia, as we’ll learn later in the trip.) A couple sitting near the Brown Derby are in Week 5 of a month-long trip, and tell us they haven’t had a drop of rain all month until these two days that we’ve been here. Boy I feel special now!

Now for those of you who haven't been part of the Playhouse Disney fun (which is no doubt all of you without small children), the 'plot' of the show is that Bear comes out and dances with all the kids, but Tutter is too shy to dance. So they bring out groups of friends, one by one, including JoJo, Stanley, and Pooh, to teach Tutter lessons about how you don't need to be shy around friends. (I take the same lessons, but mine involve about a half bottle of most any kind of wine.) And sprinkled throughout are a half dozen rousing 30-second dance numbers that (most of) the kids love. Caitlyn works her way from sitting for the first dance, to up on one foot for another, to both feet flat and squatting for the next. When the last song comes, she actually stands up, but before they really get it going, she fairly urgently sits again. So close.

We come out of the Playhouse and we're just in time to make the next showing of the Voyage of the Little Mermaid [combination of puppetry, movie, live action and song]. I take my poncho off on the way in, and Caitie warns me "you'd better put that back on, because it's going to rain when the lights look like waves." [They have misters that make you feel like you’re going underwater.] But with all the rain outside, it doesn’t rain inside, even though Caitlyn was completely prepared to hide under Grandma’s arm. We all enjoy the show as usual though.

She doesn't remember the Great Movie Ride [where you ride by stationary scenes from several movies], but as soon as we get inside she recognizes the rope configuration and the memorabilia and says "I remember this ride, it's the one that has the Fantasia video and I thought I was going to be scared but I wasn't." Not buyin' it there, kiddo, as it turns out to be your scariest ride of the trip. Grandma reminds her that everything in here is pretend, so she doesn't need to get worried. I tell her even I'M pretend, and she looks at me and says "You're an actor???" Yep, it's a pretty cool gig, too, giving tours to 5-year-olds. Grandma tells her "Papa is so much fun to bring to Disney." Gee, all these years I thought I was making Disney trips. Who knew I was just Laurie's life-size Pal Mickey [a Mickey doll that informs and entertains].

Things are fine at the start, she really likes Mary Poppins. Then Muggsy takes over our car. I wouldn't have thought a 50-year-old woman would make a very convincing Muggsy, but Caitlyn's buried in Laurie's armpit now. Then she's got her whole body turned away from the Alien, because even though it's so muggy this morning that you can't really see the Alien through the fog, the sound is all about bad bad things about to happen. She’s really creeped out by the mummy room, also. You stop and think about it, this ride has gangsters shooting at each other, cowboys, aliens, creepy archeological sites, snakes, and mummies. How weird is it that the most normal thing in the whole place for a little kid might be a Munchkin? Speaking of which, Caitie must not be a big Oz fan, since she calls Dorothy by her original script name of "Wizard of Oz Girl."

We're walking down towards the Muppets end of the park when Caitlyn spots a gate at the end of the street with a big frog on it and says "I REMEMBER THIS PLACE!!!" I ask what place, and she says "IT'S WHERE YOU GET A FROG'S AUTOGRAPH!!!" Which might possibly be the answer to the question "What foolishness would you LIKE to see." The top half of the mural at the end of San Francisco Street seems stripped and ready for repainting. Doesn't seem like it's been there long enough to need refurbishing, I wonder if some artist put an Oakland building in there by mistake and now they have to remove it. There's a cool billboard on the end of Studio 7, with a young soccer leg and ball and the message "Without sports, weekends would be weekdays." I know that doesn't mean anything, but hey, it caught me.

It’s still drizzling heavily, so the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Playground [complete with 15’ grass, 3’ Lego’s, and kid-sized drain spouts] is closed. Understandable, as I imagine they have enough face plants in there when everything ISN'T slippery. The CM tells me that if the drizzle doesn't get any worse than this, they'll probably run Lights, Motors, Action [a car stunt show], but if it starts raining any heavier they'll cancel. Guess we're not going to build any plans around it today. We notice they've changed that little food counter to a Mediterranean menu, one of many food changes over the last several months which give us a lot bigger variety than I remember having before.

As we head back up New York Street toward the Muppets, Caitlyn gets her first good look at the end of the street and asks "Is that a painted street up there?" Good eye. [It’s a 30’ high mural that looks from a distance like it’s another mile of street.] She wants to know if we can go look at it, and except for the first hour or so in each park (when we make a point to see the busy attractions before they get busy) we'd be more than happy to see just about anything she wants to look at. She thinks it's very cool the way they make it look like a real street. Then she says something about the buildings not being real like they are on the street we just walked up, so I take her to the corner and have her look down the street at those store fronts. Then we walk about twenty feet east and look down the back of the facades. She just giggles and giggles.

With the drizzle and a few things closed, the Muppet line is actually folded across the front of the building and runs out past the fountain. We haven't been in line very long when she asks Grandma if she'll save our spot in line while she shows Papa something. Sure, Grandma says. So she drags me up to the exterior of the Tatooine Traders and puts her hand on the stuccoish wall and says "Look." I ask her what's in there and she says "nothing, it just looks really cool." I've thought the same thing since they built it.

Caitie giggles a LOT through the pre-show [all Muppet routines – the main show is a 3-D Muppet movie], as do most of the other folks in the room. Always a bonus when you get to see lots of people getting the gags for the first time, it seems to make the show newer for you. She understands the glasses, and has them off and on throughout the show. She's even the first to call out spotting Bean Bunny in the balcony. Her biggest laugh, oddly enough, is when either Statler or Waldorf wonders if he has time to go to the bathroom. [They’re audioanimatronic characters in the side balcony; the other one says “We can’t, you old fool, we’re bolted to the floor!”]

Well, now THAT was weird. You may have seen suspenseful scenes on TV shows like 24 or Lost or even The Amazing Race, when a super-tense scene is about to unfold and they go to a slo-mo shot to accentuate it. Well Caitlyn just went into super-slo-mo when she got to the Miss Piggy Fountain. She was just walking along normally, then all of a sudden she's walking about one-tenth normal speed, checking out every fixture and bauble in the fountain, until she gets to the other side and slips back into normal speed without expression or comment. A little too Twilight Zone-ish for me.

We pull up in front of the ABC Commissary. "Hey Caitlyn, let's go in here!" With a bit of a resigned head tilt, "What is it, potty time AGAIN?" No, it's lunch time, but I understand. We have a rule that whenever any one of us has to go to the bathroom, all of us have to try. I think she's getting a little tired of Grandma and Grandpa's apparently less efficient bladders. During lunch, we get talking about Playhouse Disney, and the fact that we thought she was going to get up and dance for that last song. She says "It's too embarrassing." And then, after about a 15 second pause, "And you're not changing my mind with stories." So she got the whole plot and game plan, she's just not buying it.

After trekking all the way across the park, we discover we’ve missed the day's first Beauty and the Beast show [stage musical] by minutes, because the theater’s full. So we start listing for Caitie the few things we wanted to do but haven't yet. When we mention Star Tours [motion simulator ride], Caitie pipes up with "I remember that, I want to ride that three times. Or maybe eight times." So we find ourselves walking back by the big empty theater where we wish we could still watch Doug [stage musical], and the Drew Carey theater [headphones and darkness] where we know she'd have the headphones on the floor and her head between her knees.

I think Indiana Jones [1500-seat stunt show] must have just let out, because the line for Star Tours snakes around the trees outside. Laurie doesn't ever remember the line being out there, but we were in that line outside on our honeymoon, back when it was a full line and not the FastPass shrunken half line it is today. Time just isn't measured the same way when you're on your honeymoon. We figured out one time that we waited more than an hour for 11 different rides that trip, and loved every minute of it. Kind of funny that now, we see a 20-minute line and we're all "Well, what do you think, should we skip it?" And we usually do.

Caitie gets a big kick out of all the robots though. When we get inside and belted up, she announces that she doesn't think she has ever ridden this, so this may be interesting. We go through the speech again about how if it gets scary, you can just close your eyes, but you should try to keep them open as much as you can because there's a whole bunch of really cool stuff to see. But she grabs both armrests and is somewhere between a grin and a giggle for the whole trip, and immediately wants to do it again. The Indiana Jones glut is gone and the line is 10 minutes now, so we get right back in line.

This time through, she's waving to C3PO as we go through the front room. And she apparently was serious about wanting to ride again. In every queue we’ve been in this trip, she's had her head on a swivel and we've had to remind her that the line had moved. But this time, it’s Laurie and me who are checking things out and reminiscing, and every time the gap to the folks in front gets as big as four feet, Caitie’s admonishing "Come on, guys, KEEP UP!!!" And she has just as much fun this flight, with lots of oohs and yeahs and giggling throughout. She's already resigned to the fact that we're going back over to hear Belle now, but wants to come back here after that and ride again. Yeah, give us all Segways and you MIGHT talk Grandma into that.

We're among the last seated for Beauty and the Beast, and I had forgotten all about Four For a Dollar [comedic a cappella group]. A couple of older guys behind us are getting quite a kick out of their test-the-mike operation. They also have a couple special guests who are here on their honeymoon. (I mention this because Laurie thinks it’s really neat and insists I mention it, though I must say I guess the shinyness has worn off that sort of thing for me.) Caitlyn enjoys the show, but not quite as much as we thought she might. She announces that she's a little tired, and not realizing that's it's less than completely polite to bolt from the theater during the curtain call, the poor kids get one bow in and she's halfway to the exit. She gets in her stroller and I start walking backward down the street in front of her, picking on her a little by singing (to the tune of Belle's song) "I've never seen you sleeping in a stroller. But you are tired, I can tell." Not to be out-picked, she barely misses a beat before she starts singing... "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells..."

It's almost 2 and the skies have finally cleared. The Tower/Aerosmith plaza is absolutely packed. I think I've pushed past my goodwill limit with Caitie, because when I ask her for a bite of her popsicle she tells me she's sick. We're headed back to the hotel for a swim and a nap. She wants to make sure she can ride in the stroller when we get off the bus, and Laurie tells her that’s not a problem, as long as we then have our nap before we go swimming. Walking through the lobby, she can barely stay upright, but there's no way she's riding that stroller right now.

She tells us she can't swim, and has arm floaties to prove it. Grandma blows them up part way before putting them on Caitlyn's arms, despite her protestations. When the first one won't go up past her elbow, she tells Laurie "See, that's what I was trying to tell you." Being a kid would be so much easier if adults would just listen. The girls are ready for the pool before me, so they head out as Caitlyn tells me "We'll meet you right at the other side of the end." Whatever that means. She immediately swims directly to the middle of the pool, bumping Grandma's adrenaline a notch. But she has no problem at all, and no fear of the water. After a few minutes she meets a new friend back in the shallow end, and I think they could stay here all afternoon if we let them.

But eventually, it’s nap time. I’m sitting in a chair across from the bed when Laurie tells me there’s a bug on the wall behind me. Before I have a chance to turn around and look, Caitie has grabbed a tape case and squished him with the end of it, and presents it to me for ... verification, I guess. Without thinking, I tell her she needs to throw him outside. So she takes the case over by the sink, takes the bug off the case with a hankie, calmly walks over to the door, and throws the hankie out on the sidewalk. I tell her “You can’t do that!!” It’s all right to throw the bug out, but you can’t just throw a hankie on the sidewalk! So she opens the door back up, bends down, and carefully tears off a tiny piece of the hankie with the bug on it and throws that down. I tell her she can’t even throw a little piece of paper like that, so she goes back and carefully flicks the bug off the hankie completely and finally disposes of the hankie in the wastebasket.

After our nap, Caitie and I are going for a walk while we’re waiting for Grandma to finish up some things she’s working on. As we go out the door and are walking down the sidewalk, she’s a little surprised there aren't a lot of bugs outside our door for a celebration. What??? “You know, when somebody really old dies, everyone gets together and they have a celebration about him. And then you find a bury spot and you put up a sign. So I think when I get back to the room I'll see if I can find a little stone and I'm going to make a little sign in case all the other bugs come to celebrate.” Thank God for short attention spans, because by the time we get back to the room, that whole little program has evaporated.

After our walk, we all go down to the Food Court for dinner. Now I'm just guessing here, but I think Caitlyn is hungry. I'm holding her up as the signs at the various stations cycle through their pictures of the menu items, and she decides "I want that" five or six times. She really is very flexible as to what she'll eat, we've yet to come across a menu that didn't have something she was excited about. And just so you know, french fries are best when they’re dipped in barbecue sauce.

I keep notes of our trips on a microcassette recorder I keep in my fanny pack. I'd never remember everything any other way. The reason I mention it is that as I listen to the tape now, I can constantly hear in the background "Papa, Papa, Papa..." Caitlyn had asked me yesterday morning if she could talk into it. I didn't bring extra tapes, so I simply told her no, there wasn't enough room on the tape for her also. Later in the morning we were waiting for something or other and I had just started recording something when she looked up at me, all serious, and said "Papa?" I paused the tape and asked her what she wanted, and with a look of satisfaction she told me "I wanted to get on your tape." And she's been doing it ever since.

We head over to Epcot after supper, and as we pass a throng heading out of the park, Caitie observes "Those people are NOT going to all fit on one bus!" We get through the turnstiles and she’s just beside herself over the character topiaries [they have dozens of additional topiaries now, during the Flower & Garden Festival]. "That is SO COOL!!!" She wasn't sure if she'd ever been to Epcot before, but we're under Spaceship Earth [180’ tall geodesic sphere, a slow ride past scenes about history of communications] when she looks up and says "Nope, I don't think I've ever been HERE." We ride Spaceship Earth first, and she's quite apprehensive that things are going to jump out at her. After the ride though, she wants to ride again. She and I make our way up to the tip board while Laurie goes back downhill after the stroller, and it seems like it's taking her quite a while. I finally get a call from her that she's at Guest Relations because someone stole our stroller. We’ve never had anything taken in all our trips to WDW, so I choose to believe it was taken by mistake. While she’s waiting, I go down to check the side where we left it, and confirm it’s not there. I go around to the other side to check, because the CMs have this nasty habit of moving strollers around, but it’s not there either. Then when I come back around the first side . . . there it is! I wonder how far someone got before they said “hey George, we didn’t have any half bottles of orange juice, did we?”

Laurie doesn’t want to steer Caitlyn on to anything scary tonight, so we ride “the dinosaur ride,” also known as Journey Into Imagination [slow ride past comical scenes about imagination, with a purple dragon called Figment]. Or as we call it, Figment. The first time through, she’s not crazy about Figment picking on us, and she’s quite proud of herself for ‘tricking’ us by plugging her nose in the scent lab. All in all, she’s quite eager to ride again, and we do.

We’re trying to meet up with our friend Tracy for Illuminations [park-closing fireworks and laser show extravaganza]. We know she’s up by Canada [one of 11 country pavilions around the World Showcase] somewhere, but we can’t reach her on the cell phone and it’s way too crowded to just run across someone tonight. (Tonight is an Extra Magic Evening [park is open an extra 3 hours for resort guests only], which has undoubtedly made the park much more crowded all day long.) Laurie finds a spot where Caitie can stand on a bench and watch, and she’s absolutely unconcerned about maintaining any contact with Laurie. She’s glued to the show.

The fireworks are over and Caitlyn is quite concerned that we need to find our friend. We eventually track each other down by the totem pole, and Caitlyn whispers to Laurie “Ask her to come on the Figment ride with us.” We’re picking on her about having her nose plugged before, and I tell her that skunks don’t really smell that bad. She simply replies “Well, they sure don’t smell like flowers!” Yep, she’s a Disney girl. She’s also quite the social director (as will be evidenced throughout our trip), and she’s now busy organizing who’s going to sit with whom on the ride. We ride Figment again and she’s clutching my arm this time, especially when Figment says “it’s a blast!”

At 10:10 the standby line for Soarin’ [combination of Imax movie and 40’ high motion simulator] is 70 minutes. The Living with the Land [slow ride past history (and future) of farming] line is even 25. As we’re walking over to get in that, Caitlyn asks if we can go on the Cotton Ride next. We have no clue what that is, until she says “You know, the Cotton Ball Ride.” Ohhhh! Spaceship Earth!! Most people call it the Golf Ball, but I guess you go with what you know.

It’s so hot and humid in here tonight that Laurie gives her a choice between this and that. She sensibly asks “If we ride the Cotton ride, will that be our last one?” Laurie tells her it probably will because it’s getting pretty late. “I really want to ride this.” Well, duh. She thinks the chickens on the Land Ride are cute, and states “They’re robots, aren’t they.” And (as Caitie predicted), we’ll take another ride in the cotton ball on the way out. Tracy asks Caitlyn if she’s going to sit with her, and she says sure, and begins telling Tracy all about the ride and how she’s going to love it.

We’re leaving Epcot now, and suddenly Laurie’s biggest concern is whether we’ll make it back to Sports in time to get some milk and our traditional carrot cake. Outside of these Disney trips, she’s a pretty cheap date. It’s almost 12:30 before we get to bed; it’s been a very long day, but a good one. Good thing we’re planning a light day at the water park tomorrow.

Grandbabies 5.3, Animal Kingdom, Epcot

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Caitlyn, on the third day of our week-long June adventure.

We’ve really been enjoying Caitie’s wonderful sense of humor this trip. I think that particular personality trait will get you farther in life than any other, and the five grandkids we’ve brought so far have all been blessed. I’m sitting on the bed getting my feet dressed this morning while Laurie makes some phone calls, and Caitie’s using my back for a writing board. I tell her she needs to be quiet because Grandma’s making some phone calls, and she leans around to look me in the eye and asks with a grin “Is Grandma invisible?” Okay, point taken.

Our plan had been to open Blizzard Beach [water park] this morning, but the weather channel shows a bright orange band that will be here in about half an hour and they’re calling for up to an inch of rain today. So we decide we’ll just mess around in the hotel pool a little this morning and then maybe hit the couple things we missed at Animal Kingdom and MGM. Caitlyn still wants to see the Stinkbug and the Burning Guy and the Cotton Ride. (That’s Tough to Be a Bug, Lights Motors Action, and Spaceship Earth for you folks who don’t know the five-year-old WDW lingo.)

When we get to the pool, she’s got her floaties on and apparently doesn’t want to bother walking all the way around to the shallow end of the pool, so she decides to go in at the 5’ mark. She assures us it’s okay, telling Laurie “I know it’s not the steps, but I’m not jumping in.” And she casually lowers herself in and she’s off. She eventually works her way down to the shallow end and is quite excited when she finds a spot where she can stand up without her head going under. (“And I’m standing up all the way to my heels!”) Grandma also teaches her how to dunk her head completely under water, and she’s quite excited about that.

It’s 11:00 now and still drizzling off and on when our friends John and Charlotte arrive. They’ll be staying in the room adjoining ours for a couple days before moving over to Boardwalk. Caitlyn is a little miffed that we don’t immediately open the door between the rooms. Jeez, kid, give them a chance to settle in! After which, they join us for lunch at the food court. We notice all of a sudden that she has the hiccups and mention it, and she says “You could take me on that Movie ride and that would get rid of them.” The adults have a wonderful catching-up lunch and Caitie is being very good, but at one point leans over and whispers to Laurie “I want to get out of this building and go do something.”

We do too, but it’s absolutely pouring now at 12:30. Well, let’s poncho up and head for the Stinkbug. It’s back to a strong drizzle now as we enter the park, and Caitlyn has spotted some black swans she needs to check out. As we continue on past the Oasis and the rain lets loose again, she asks Laurie “Do you think God is making it rain hard like this?” Laurie says yes, and after about a ten second pause, Caitlyn says “Well it’s annoying.” She has the glasses off more than on for the Bug movie, but says she likes it.

With all the rain, we’re already partly soaked so we figure we may as well go on Kali River Rapids [wild 12-passenger raft ride]. On the way in Caitie observes a statue with its head missing and a lizard nearby, and theorizes that the lizard probably bited his head off. She also tells Laurie the flowers here smell like rainbow. She loves the Rapids ride. I’m not sure Charlotte does, as she’s the lucky one this trip to get drenched.

For some reason, John and Charlotte are heading back to the hotel to dry off. Caitie decides she doesn’t want to see the car show, she wants to go to Epcot instead. The next bus that comes is an MGM bus, so we take that and then the boat over to Epcot. We even get the chance to feed half a dozen ducks and a large number of fish at the MGM dock on the way.

It’s 4:10 by the time we get to the International Gateway, and we figure we may as well start our Kids Stop tour and get part of that out of the way this afternoon. [Each of the 11 country pavilions has a Kid Stop, where they can get a country stamp and further decorate their mask.] She picks up her mask and gets her first stamp in France, and is intrigued by the idea of a ‘prize’ for collecting all eleven stamps. She asks where we’re going next, and we tell her Morocco (no reaction) and then Japan (“That’s a very long way, at least on an airplane.”) Now I don’t think she’s ever flown to Japan, but I can’t argue with her either.

We’re on our way to Japan now, plodding along in our ponchos and wet sneakers, with a World Showcase shopping bag as a poncho for the mask. My hands are so wet they won’t properly run my recorder, and Laurie says “Isn’t this fun, this is just like trick-or-treating in the snow.” I fully appreciate the sarcasm until I look over and realize she’s serious. And she explains to me that when it comes time for important events, you can’t just not do them because of weather conditions or some other trivial impediment. And of course she’s right, and we really are still having fun.

We get to Japan and point out the buildings to Caitlyn and she says “I thought that was China!” I get the feeling she’s seen Mulan a couple hundred times but hasn’t caught Godzilla yet. At the Japan Kids Stop, she decides to decorate her mask a little more and picks the black crayon. She only makes a couple little marks between the forehead and ear on each side, each consisting of two or three interconnected squiggles. They seriously look to me to be some kind of asian characters that she’s trying to simulate. On our way out, I mention to Laurie (quietly, I thought) that I didn’t know she knew how to write Japanese. And Caitie informs me “That’s not Jackaleens, that’s hair.”

In a stroke of rare (for this trip) good timing, we’re going to reach the American pavilion in time to do the Kids Stop and still be in time for the Voices of Liberty [an a cappella group singing patriotic songs and standards; the audience sits on the floor around them, under a cupola that provides awesome acoustics]. We’re sitting on the floor and Laurie’s explaining to Caitie about the cupola, but she starts pumping Laurie to find out what the prize is for the Kids Stop Tour. Laurie won’t spoil the surprise though, and Caitlyn pleads her case by saying “I promise I won’t tell anybody, and I’ll forget about it before we’re done.” The Voices of Liberty are (as always) awesome, and the lead Oh Susannah singer picks Laurie as the lucky person whose hand he takes for a serenade. Now Laurie’s all red-faced and smiling and girly, but Caitlyn is in shock. I’m not sure if her concern is for Grandma or that she might be next, but she most definitely has an I Didn’t Sign Up For THIS look on her face.

There’s quite a line in Italy. The guy running the Kid Stop here is the same guy that was here in April when we brought Haley, and he’s quite the comedian with all the kids. Like the face characters, where there’s more interaction, there’s a longer line.

We need ten or fifteen minutes to look over the train in Germany [an outdoor model setup, complete with miniature village, tunnels, etc., that’s about 100’ long by 6-10’ wide]. It’s interesting how with the five grandkids we’ve taken, we’ve ranged from more than half an hour here to more of a ‘Yeah, so what’ reaction. Caitie’s getting quite a chuckle out of a blackbird that’s hopping around among the houses, telling us that it’s a monster. (So maybe she HAS watched Godzilla.) She’s telling Laurie “This is SO COOL in here, they have a farmer and a tractor and look, they even made little trees right here. This is just SO COOL that they made this right here.”

Next is China, and I ask her if that’s where Mulan lived. She excitedly tells me “Yeah, Mulan was there and her father had the bad leg and she pretended she was a boy even though she was a girl. Is that girl pretend?” What? She’s pointing over to a bench and we crack up when we look over and see a very wet and tired woman sitting there in her poncho, staring blankly at the ground and looking quite ready for sleep. After we’re by, Laurie has to go back and tell the poor woman our grandbaby thought she was Disney atmosphere, which she gets quite a chuckle out of as well. She acknowledges that she feels as much like a statue as she apparently looks. Caitie points out about ten things in the China pavilion that are very ‘cool’, including the elephant and the monkey puppets and the umbrellas.

We get our Norway stamp and then ask her if she wants to ride the boat ride here. She wants to know what it’s called, and the name Maelstrom doesn’t mean anything to her. I tell her I think it’s Norwegian for thunderstorm (which it totally isn’t, it turns out), and she says “The Thunderstorm ride? Oh great, so I’m going to be scared?” She gets through it without being too scared at all, but wonders what was the point of the troll sending us over the waterfall backwards.

When we get into the market in Mexico, she loves the fact that it looks like we’re outside when we’re not. She also loves the storefronts and wonders if we can go up to one of those second floor balconies. (I think Paragon lives up there somewhere.) When I tell her the buildings are all pretend, like the ones over by the Muppets, she’s quite disappointed that we can’t go around behind them to see. She loves the boat ride, and thinks it’s funny that on our first grandbaby trip, Elysia wanted in the worst way to climb that pyramid. In the first room though, she says “What’s that?” We tell her it’s fog, and she says “No, that on the wall.” We tell her they’re vines, and she asks “No dead people?” And I realize there were vines all over that mummy room, and man, that Movie Ride really DID scare her. We get to the fireworks room and Laurie tells her that her daddy really liked this part when he came with us. She says “Cool. What did he say to you? He probably said ‘Ma, this is my favorite part of Epcot’”. Yes, something just like that.

We were only going to do part of the Kids Stop Tour tonight, but we’re close enough that we might as well continue. Caitlyn’s quite excited that we only have two countries left, and that we’re so close to the big cotton ball now. She’s also got a wow or two for the topiaries in the World Showcase Plaza. We take her picture in front of Timon and Pumba and then she’s wandering around checking the rest of them out. I spot an excellent angle and tell her to come over to the side so I can get her picture with Simba. She’s looking around for me a bit before she finally spots me and scolds that it would help if I’d told her I was over by SCAR. When she poses for the picture, she puts on a mean face because HE’s mean.

Whoa, a first for this trip, late on Day 3. Caitlyn’s the one who calls potty break. We’re up in Canada now, and Laurie’s as excited now as Caitlyn is with the flowers. They have a lovely colored grouping of Bambi and Thumper and Flower, very nice job, very Rose Bowl Parade-ish. We go up and get the UK’s stamp first, and Caitie’s very excited now about the impending prize. We’re not sure what kind of a monster we’ve created here, because she wants to know if we can get another prize tomorrow. I don’t think so, but I bet two consecutive Kids Stop tours WOULD be the world record. Now if we were going for consecutive days of Drinking Around the World [an unofficial adult game involving each country’s native beer], I bet somebody some time has set a pretty high bar for that one.

We finally complete our tour in Canada, and she’s extremely excited with her new Goofy picture. “I CAN’T BELIEVE I WON THE PRIZE!!!” We’re headed back to the hotel now, but she says she wants to ride the dinosaur ride first. Laurie tells her we can ride it if she can remember that his name is Figment. She says “Maybe you guys could just write it down for me.” But then about every hundred feet we walk, she turns around and says “Figment.” That name will be locked in forever now.

We get down to the fountain [an elaborate active fountain choreographed to music] just as it’s starting its performance, and we all really enjoy that. Caitie’s getting pretty tired, having been up quite late last night, so it doesn’t take much to convince her to skip Figment and just head back to the resort. Epcot isn’t crowded at all tonight, what with the rain and all, but at 8:00 the tip board is showing standby times of :10 for Mission Space [an advanced space motion simulator that makes many people sick], :55 for Test Track, and 1:00 for Soarin’.

Our timing is getting much better, a bus rolls up to the stop just as we do. There are only five of us on the bus and Laurie and I take our traditional seats right across from the back door, but Caitlyn decides to sit by herself up in the back section. Yep, we’ve reached that point in the trip where the kid knows her way around a little and needs just a little bit of independence.

When we get back to our room at Sports, her immediate desire is to get together with Charlotte. We had planned to open the rooms and get together with them this evening, but I try to tell Caitie that they may be finishing their dinner or otherwise not quite ready for company, and decide to distract her with a walk. And right outside our door is a rabbit in the grass, perfect distraction. We briefly do the Can I Pet It – I Think You’ll Scare Him Away dance before she suddenly says “I GOTTA SHOW CHARLOTTE!!!” and bolts back into the room and is knocking on Charlotte’s door. Which leads us directly into a very entertaining evening of pizza and wine and retirement congratulations and general merriment with John and Charlotte and Tracy. At Disney or anywhere else, nothing quite beats good conversation with good friends.

Though Caitie was quite tired before, the conversation has energized her as much as it has us. But since we’re the ones consuming all the pizza and wine, we finally do call it quits around 10:30. We’ll be going back to Epcot in the morning so we can catch Future World at rope drop.

Grandbabies 5.4, Epcot, Magic Kingdom

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Caitlyn, on the fourth day of our week-long June adventure.

We had originally made a priority seating at Chef Mickey’s this morning, but cancelled it yesterday so that we could try to make rope drop at Epcot to see Soarin’ without an hour line. And now, as Laurie’s getting ready to take a shower, Caitlyn asks “Grandma, can I take a shower too?” Rope drop would be nice, but it’s hard to tell a kid they can’t take a shower.

It’s 9:30 when we get into the park, and John and Charlotte have offered to go get all our FastPasses for Soarin’ while we go over to Test Track [life-size test vehicles on a track, up to 60mph]. Caitie’s riding in her stroller in her poncho observing “Must be God thinks those plants still need water!” Most of the other kids have been intimidated by the noise of the cars outside Test Track, but she’s watching the cars in the mirrors above the entrance saying “That looks like it’s going to be fast on me!” We go through the standby line, and it always amazes me how the racket of all that test equipment completely disappears when you’re in that little sound room in the back. It does, however, make it much easier to hear Caitlyn saying “Papa Papa Papa Papa …” while I’m taking notes. After 20 minutes in the line we hear an announcement that they’re shutting the ride down because of inclement weather moving into the area, so we’re bailing from the line.

There’s a very cool Butterfly Room on the path between Test Track and Imagination, a netted enclosure that’s temporary home to hundreds of butterflies of several types. As we make our way across the plaza, Caitie wants to stop for a minute to watch the fountain perform, and we’re always up for that. As we make our way toward Imagination, we’re passed by a Segway parade. They must be closer to the end of their tour than the beginning, because they all look fairly proficient at this point. Thankfully, Caitie doesn’t notice (or care about) the cheerleading exhibition on the Imagination stage, so we don’t need to spend any time watching that. She is excited to take another trip on the Figment ride, this time with John and Charlotte. They hadn’t been on since the third coming [this is the third version of the ride; the first was getting old, and the second was universally hated], and really like the change.

On our way into Honey I Shrunk the Audience [3-D movie] she recognizes the picture of Wayne Szalinski, and wonders whether they’re going to be small or big. Kind of hard to answer, I guess it depends on your perspective ;-) She likes this movie, and has the glasses more on than off.

Soarin’. What a cool ride. The three of us are messing around in the hall playing some kind of London Bridge foolishness when I mess up and hurt Caitie’s chin, and now she’s mad at me. But all is (temporarily) forgotten once we’re on the ride. “Are we really over the ocean?” “Are we IN the movie?” “I want to do THAT again!!!” Laurie declares it the best ride she’s ever been on, anywhere. We got FastPasses on the way in that were good from 1:00 til 2:00, and John and Charlotte get ones on the way out that are good from 2:30 until 3:30. And we didn’t spend much time in line, either! Quite the popular attraction.

The Living Seas [aquarium pavilion] is much busier now than I can remember it being since the first couple years it was open, because of Crush and Dory and Nemo. [If you haven’t seen Finding Nemo, you really should.] I see a black and yellow fish but can’t remember his name, so I ask Caitlyn. “He’s NOT in the movie.” I was thinking of Gil, but the more I look at this one, I realize she’s right. She doesn’t have any interest in touring the aquarium at all, because those are just “fish fish.” (By which she means they’re not Nemo.) We all really love Turtle Talk with Crush [an interactive animated visit with the cool turtle dude]. I’m amazed at the technology that must be involved, and Caitie just knows he’s cool. She gets a big kick out of his swimming into the glass and his bad case of the ‘bubbles’ [turtle gas]. In the end, she was a little ticked that he didn’t ask HER any questions, but was probably a little relieved as well.

We end up spending so much time in the Living Seas that it’s already time for our Soarin’ FPs when we come out. I promise Caitie I won’t touch her in the line, and thankfully, Laurie has finally convinced her that the previous incident was an accident, and not intentionally inflicted as she had apparently believed. We’re all loving the ride again, we sit all the way over on the left side this time and she tells us afterward “I thought I was going to skin my knee on that rock!” Ironically, she takes a header while running down the hallway in her sandals on the way out, and comes up with a very nasty brush burn on her knee. I remember us calling them ‘strawberries’ when I was a kid playing basketball, but I also remember there’s nothing sweet about them. This gives us our only sobbing “I want my mom” of the trip, but that IS, after all, a child’s first line of defense against any kind of pain.

We stop at the first aid station behind the Odyssey, where Caitlyn’s very excited to discover they have ‘special’ knee bandages. On our way around past Mexico, we see a couple CMs out in the lagoon on jet skis, flying kites. You suppose anybody bids on THAT job when it comes up?

And now we’ve arrived for our 2:00 lunch at Germany’s Biergarten with John and Charlotte, and Tracy and three of her friends. This is the first trip here for some of the group, and everyone seems to enjoy it a lot. Certainly nobody’s hungry after. Most of our other grandbabies have been kind of picky eaters, but Caitlyn enjoys quite a variety of things. As I take her through the buffet line, it isn’t simply no-no-no-yes, it’s Little Of This – No – Lot Of That -I’ll Try Just A Little.

I’ve had the Belle song stuck in my head since we were at MGM the other day, driving both Caitlyn and Laurie nuts. It just popped in again, but I thought I’d ask Caitie permission to sing it this time. “Sure! Just go some place else and do it and not by me.”

All we have left on our To Do list here are the Universe of Energy and Postcards From Innoventions [a booth where you can e-mail your picture], and we decide to skip Energy. I’m kind of sad we’ll miss Test Track this trip, but we have more trips down the road and it’s kind of nice when the next grandchild inevitably asks if so-and-so rode this and we can tell them no. Makes them feel special. Caitie has some fun with the postcards though, and orders half a dozen retakes on the picture before we finally insist the last one is good enough. She picks the background with the planets in it, and we fire it off to Mom and Dad.

We’re walking out of World Showcase, in the rain again, and Caitlyn is riding in the stroller with the hood over her head. And she’s singing. We can’t tell what she’s singing, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? Life is good. It’s 4:10 when we walk out of Epcot, headed back to the room.

Once there, we’re listening to her half of her conversation with her dad. “Did you get my picture? ... Check your e-mail, does it look like I’m in space? I wasn’t really ... I’ll be the goodest girl ever ... It’s been raining every single day, and this is Day 4 already.” And then Laurie and I both crack up because they remind us so much of a couple of teenagers, with “I’m going to hang up now ... I love you too ... are you hanging up? ... nope, I’m going to hang up, right now, okay? ... did YOU hang up?”

It’s 6:20 and I’ve had MY nap, even if Caitlyn didn’t sleep. We’re headed over to the Magic Kingdom now for our first visit there. We always save MK for last with all the kids, since their interest in the other parks wouldn’t be nearly as great if they get the idea in their heads at the start of the trip that the parks are supposed to be all rides. After not sleeping during two hours in the room and the bus ride to MK, Caitlyn falls asleep about ten seconds after sitting in the stroller at the bus stop! Okay, this may be a fun evening. But she does wake up quite pleasantly as we get to the turnstiles, though she’s too tired to get up and run her own ticket through. She’s quite refreshed by the time we get to Town Square, and is excited to get Pinocchio’s autograph.

We go back into Adventureland and Laurie and Caitlyn get in line for an autograph from Jasmine and Aladdin and Genie while I go down to get FastPasses for Jungle Cruise. On the way there, some damned invisible camel [situated around the Aladdin ride] spits about a foot in front of my eyes. Takes you a second to figure out what’s going on when that happens. On the way back, the camel actually gets me, right in the ear. Okay, so I’m a slow learner. Back outside the Dole Whip stand, Laurie just shakes her head and rolls her eyes as I practice my best moves for hosting the Dole Whip Interlude at the annual RADP meet. Caitlyn’s eating an ice pop while waiting for Jasmine, and checks a couple times with Laurie, “Is my face messy, because if it is, clean it off before we get up there.” Important to bring your best face when you meet Jasmine.

Now that we’re autographed, we’ll take a ride on Aladdin’s Magic Carpets [another Dumbo clone]. Another first for us here, as Caitie wants to take the back seat and make it tip because “Papa didn’t get to do the up and down yet.” She does back-seat drive a little though, directing me to get us to the right height so the camel will spit on us. When we get off, the ride operator says “Thank you for riding the Magic Kingdom’s 18th most popular attraction.” Caitlyn, like four thousand other kids a day, says “Look at ALL the jewels on the ground!! [embedded into the blacktop] Can we get them?”

Good timing has us walking into the Tiki Room without the pre-show (which is a little over a five-year-old’s head anyway). We take our usual seat in the outside row and she loves the show, though she’s disappointed that she didn’t get to see Iago’s ‘injuries’. So we’re getting another first, back-to-back Tiki treks. By the time we get around the building the doors are closed, so I guess we’ll see that pre-show after all. This time we get a seat right up front, and Caitlyn spots (and retrieves) a number of Iago’s stray feathers on the way in. She’s quite satisfied now to see the actual bird damage, and collects a few more feathers on her way out as a bonus.

After another Aladdin ride, it’s 8:30 and with all the late nights we’ve been keeping, we really do need to get to bed early tonight. We find a family of three to give our FastPasses to and make our way out of Adventureland. Caitie’s quite chipper as she rides the stroller back to our bus stop, talking on the cell phone with her mom. Laurie’s hearing bits of her end of the conversation, which includes “I’m talking to you on the ride RIGHT NOW, it’s going REALLY FAST!!” Have I mentioned how much we love our kids’ sense of humor? We’re all looking forward to a Magic Kingdom Morning tomorrow.

Grandbabies 5.5, Magic Kingdom, Blizzard Beach

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Caitlyn, on the fifth day of our week-long June adventure.

Our favorite part of the trip, we’re at Magic Kingdom this morning just before the gates open. We’ve had Caitlyn walk from the bus to the turnstiles each morning, but today she wants to ride so she “won’t get lost.” The turnstiles on the far right seem like the best bet, but we soon discover that those are for people with breakfast reservations only.

We work ourselves to a really good spot up by the left railroad tunnel from which to watch the Open The Park Show. Caitlyn enjoys it, but we think she’s a little anxious to get going. Main Street isn’t too crowded yet (and everyone’s going the same way) as Grandma motors the stroller toward the Castle, but from Caitlyn’s vantage point this must be the scariest ride yet, as she says “Grandma, slow down, you’re going to hit people!” Grandma calmly says “I’ve got it under control,” and of course being the pro she is, there are no close calls.

We get up under the Castle just as they’re dropping the rope there, so our time-tested routine for Park Opening With Little People should go quite well. In fact, Grandma and Caitlyn are going to make it on Dumbo’s first flight, so if I’m going to get the obligatory video, I won’t even have time to go get Pooh FastPasses like I normally do. Caitie’s bouncing the elephant up and down before the ride even starts. She likes the ride, but she’s really already had a few rides on it when you consider it’s virtually identical to Triceratops Spin and Aladdin, so she doesn’t seem overwhelmed.

We make our way over to the Speedway [barely steerable 5mph cars on a closed track], dropping Laurie off on the way to get our FPs for Pooh. I remind Caitie that she can’t run in those sandals. “Grandma made me run.” We really are a bad influence. “But she held my hand so I wouldn’t fall down. I guess I’m just like that dinosaur. I’m lucky.” Riding the Speedway, it isn’t long before the wheel snaps and she catches her thumb a little bit, so I tell her I’ll slow down some. After about 15 seconds of that though, she says “You steer if you have to, but we need to catch up to that car up there.” Eyes on the prize there, pops.

She must have spotted the top of the Astro Orbiter [2-man rockets that just go around and around] from the bus this morning, because while we’re waiting to unload, she tells me that’s what she wants to do next. None of the other kids have asked about (or even noticed) that ride before and it really doesn’t fit into our plans this morning, but then there’s no time of day when the line will be shorter, so why not. As we exit the Speedway, I tell her Laurie won’t ride it and she doesn’t even ask why. She just tells Grandma “I’ve never been on the Rocket Ride before, this will be my first time. We’ll meet you over by the Rockets.” Sort of like saying “Just because YOU have some problem with it, what’s that got to do with ME?”

In the queue/elevator, she meets a new friend Nicole, also 5 or 6 years old. We sit in the rocket right ahead of Nicole, and have to look back at her constantly to make sure we’re at the same height (and presumably the same speed). Laurie skips this ride because her body doesn’t like the spinny things so much, but I’ve ridden once and knew it wasn’t bad. Still, I wish I’d eaten something this morning, because I’m now feeling a little spinny myself.

We return to our regularly scheduled program now and head back up into Fantasyland, dropping the stroller off in front of Snow White [dark ride past scenes from the movie]. Caitlyn has her head tucked right under Laurie’s arm for most of this ride, not sure what’s going to be coming out at her in the dark. As soon as we get into Peter Pan [ships that slowly fly over movie scenes] though, she remembers that ride and begins to tell us each scene before we get to it. We know we can see Small World, the Carousel, and Mickey’s PhilharMagic most any time without a long line, so we head back down to the Mad Tea Party [spin-til-you-puke tea cups]. We have to stop by the Carousel for a minute because Nicole is riding and Caitlyn needs to wave hi.

On the Tea Cups, Caitie tells me I should do the spinning. It isn’t long, though, before she says “Does this thing go any faster?” I can already feel myself getting a little dizzy, so I try to trick her into believing it might be faster if I spin it the other way. “No, that slows us down.” Sort of my point, sorry. Laurie had to retrieve the stroller we sort of forgot up at Snow White, so she’s just getting back when we’re getting done and thinks we should ride again so she can get some pictures. Caitie’s fully in favor of that. And “This time, I want to go even FASTER!!” But when we get up to speed, Laurie’s photography is hampered by the fact that Caitlyn’s laying down in the seat. I tell her a couple times to sit up so Grandma can get her picture, but she says “I’m afraid I’m going to bump into things. Can you make it go faster?”

We use our FastPasses on Pooh [slow ride through scenes from Blustery Day] now, and it’s a very giggly ride throughout. Big thumbs up from all of us, and we have to do it again some time. So our Magic Kingdom morning plan has worked out very well today, even with adjustments. We’ve covered three of the longest-line rides here (Dumbo, the Speedway, and Astro Orbiter), plus Snow White, Peter Pan, Pooh, and the Tea Party twice, all in a little over an hour.

As we go down into Toon Town [where Mickey and Minnie live], Caitie’s a little hungry and wants to have a snack, so we just pull up some shady pavement in front of a shop and dig into some cheese and crackers. “Do you want to ride the Barnstormer [kid coaster that flies through a barn] now?” “No thanks, I’m eating.” Okay, I guess the word I was looking for was ‘next’. And when we get to it, turns out it’s an I Want To Do That Again ride. (Not for me, I forgot how uncomfortable those corduroy seats are!)

Minnie’s House takes her all of about 15 seconds to cover. It leaves us wondering if maybe she’s a little too focused on ‘rides’ now to waste much time with ‘attractions’. But when we mention taking the train to Splash Mountain, she says “Nope, first Mickey’s house.” The train’s pulling out of the station as we get to Mickey’s, and that means I at least get 7 minutes in the shade before the next one comes. I really need that right now because it’s so muggy this morning. I’m not complaining or anything, because it’s far better than the four straight days of rain we’ve had this trip.

Given her disinterest in Minnie, I figure I’ll go up and get the stroller and then go in the exit to Mickey’s house and meet them halfway, betting that ‘halfway’ will be not far from the exit. But Caitie only got five feet in the front door and is still marveling over Mickey’s bedroom. “There’s the uniform he wears when he gets his award for making the best Disney movie, and there’s ties, and his closet full of shirts, and his glasses, and his books, and his picture of Minnie; and there’s his pot of flowers from Minnie, and his car, and his books, and some fish; and a picture when he was a little baby, and a picture when he had a present from Santa Claus, and a picture of some goldfish. And his BED!! And a little couch for him.” You think somewhere along the line Disney has discovered that detail is important?

The rest of the rooms get the same treatment, with the highlights being the really cool lamp Mickey made out of his baseball bat, and his trophies. I wish there was some way the printed word could convey to you the wonder with which this little voice keeps saying “And look ovuh hew-ah!!” There’s a picture of Donald that has her cracking up, and she thinks Goofy and Donald and Mickey had better clean up that mess they made in the kitchen. We missed that next train I figured we’d be on, but another is arriving as we get into the garage. I ask her if she wants to go get on it, but she’s looking up at the garage rafters saying “Look at EVERYthing!!!” And proceeds to list for us everything in the garage. As we leave, she finally notices that Laurie has been videotaping, and says “This is going to be a VERY good video, Grandma!” Of that, I have no doubt.

On the train, we mention the difference in the amount of time she spent in Minnie’s house versus Mickey’s. She says that there’s not so much stuff in Minnie’s house because she keeps her house clean and Mickey doesn’t. (And yet Mickey’s is much, much more interesting, a point I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to make on housecleaning day since I was 6.)

It’s 10:50 as we look down from the Main Street Station to hordes of people coming into the park, and we already have quite a bit of the day behind us. As soon as we get to Frontierland, we get FastPasses for Splash Mountain. We’re surprised to find the window only half an hour away, and we’re also surprised to find the standby time only 10 minutes for both that and Big Thunder Mountain [runaway mine train], where we’re headed next. The other kids have been quite apprehensive about trying new things. But when I ask Caitie if she’s ever been on Big Thunder, she says “I don’t think so. I’ll tell you if I remember anything.” Nice approach, no question of whether or not she’s ‘trying’ it. I’ll skip this ride this morning though because I’ve got a bit of a molar infection that I jarred pretty good on the Barnstormer, and it needs a rest. Turns out Caitie hasn’t been on it, and “It was pretty good, it was pretty fast.” But for balance, we also spend quite a bit of time with the dozen or so ducklings we see on our way out.

Caitlyn must agree that it’s been quite a busy morning. We’re at Pecos Bill’s for lunch and talking about going on Splash afterwards, and Caitie says “I think we should go take a nap.” And then lies down across the chairs. But after lunch, there’s no way she’s going to pass on what she had wanted to be the first (and second) ride of the whole trip. In fact, as we enter the queue, she wants to know if there’s any way we can be sure we get the front seats. There is. She loves loves loves this ride. Grandma’s arm is getting squeezed pretty hard over Slippin’ Falls, but Caitie’s giggling the whole time. She’s giggling even more when she realizes that I got my head soaked at the bottom. As we drip our way off the ride, I’m pretending to be quite upset about being soaked, telling her “Look at how WET you made me get!” As we’re walking out of the building after looking at our picture, I feel her grabbing the leg of my shorts and she says “You didn’t get THAT wet, THIS leg’s almost DRY!”

And at 12:40 we’re on our way out of the Magic Kingdom and on our way to Blizzard Beach. On the phone with her mom, she’s saying “We’re going to the water park, remember, like you taught me, where you go down the slide and land in the water instead of the dirt? That’s where we’re going today, because it’s a very hot day and we want to get cooled off.” In a move that her mom must be getting quite used to, she just puts the phone down and stops talking for most of a minute, while she admires a very big horse walking by. Must be genetic, Laurie says I exhibit the same attention span issues when she’s trying to talk to me.

Laurie and I take our usual seats across from the back door, and Caitie takes what has become her usual seat in the upper deck. She’s reaching down and touching my head periodically and then trying to hide, which unfortunately reminds me of a cat I once had. After a while I tell her “Don’t do that anymore. It was fun a couple times, but now it’s kind of annoying.” She simply replies “Yep. We should probably save some fun for the water park.”

We left the stroller at the hotel, and now Caitie’s questioning the wisdom of that plan. “Why don’t we have the buggy here? Oh, because of the sand. That’s too bad, because my feet are not faring too well.” Faring? Who talks like this? When they’re five?

We had talked to Charlotte by cell from MK, and they had decided to meet us here to break in the Premium portion of their newly upgraded annual passes. We meet them in Tyke’s Peak (the little kid section) and it seems they’re even prepared to hang around there doing nothing while Caitie plays. Now that’s above and beyond the call. Fortunately, after only two trips down that little kids’ water slide, she says “Let’s go do something else.” It must be time for a trip around the Lazy River [artificial stream that circles the park, with underwater jets pushing the water at about 25 minutes per lap]. (I know it’s got a real name, but we’re calling it the Lazy River.)

About a quarter of the way around she decides to put her feet down through the tube to see if she can touch the bottom. She gets down to where the water is about up to her chest and suddenly says “I don’t think this is a good place for judging it,” and urgently makes her way back up onto the tube. Then when we go under the cold waterfalls, it’s coming down so hard that it actually knocks her down through the tube and under the water. Laurie’s right next to her though, and Caitlyn comes up grabbing onto her arm and getting the water out of her eyes, not seeming too concerned at all about getting dunked. She’s quite sure though, that “I don’t want to go through that waterfall NEXT time!”

About three-quarters of the way through our circuit, she tests the depth again and discovers that the water only comes up to the bottom of her neck. And that’s the end of the tube for the day. She’s running through the water now, and when we ask if she wants to go around a second time, we realize the question is rhetorical. The rest of us have been really enjoying the floating too, so we really don’t mind.

This time around, her focus is on getting Laurie and me to either catch up to, or catch back to, John and Charlotte. She’s also making quite a game of trying to pull me through the cold water. As we approach our home base again, she unsurprisingly wants to make a third trip around. I tell her two is enough and she says “Okay then, you just close your eyes and follow me.” Not likely.

While I go back and get the video camera, Laurie takes her over to the Ski Patrol Training Camp, where they have slightly larger water slides. Before I get there though, she decides one slide there is enough and heads back over to Tyke’s Peak. After about two more runs there, it’s getting ready for a major storm, so we decide to pack up and move out.

Laurie had intended to not bring her glasses to the water parks, but realized she had them while we were on the Lazy River. And now, when she looks at her watch and can’t see it, she realizes she’s lost them, probably when she dunked herself getting out of the tube. She walks back down to check with the lifeguard, with no success. By the time we get out to the front of the park, it’s pouring, and we take shelter under a big group umbrella by the turnstiles. After a while, Laurie takes the opportunity to put Guest Services on the lookout for her glasses, but they already have them. Now THAT’s a happy ending, because she wasn’t looking forward to four days of training (scheduled at the end of our trip) without them. Once the storm finally gives way, John and Charlotte give Laurie a ride to the Car Care Center to pick up her rental car for the week, while Caitie and I go back to the room for a nap.

As we arrive back at Sports, she asks again what day it is that she gets to pick where we go. I tell her that’s Day 7, and she says that on Day 7, she wants to go to All Star Music [the hotel next to ours]. Ooooh-kay. She’s not tired for a nap now, so (as we always do) I shut the blinds and turn channel fiveteen off and tell her that we have to lay quietly for a bit, but we DON’T have to go to sleep. She thinks it would be okay to turn the TV on but have the sound really, really low, but I don’t. And it’s not more than a minute and a half before she’s asleep.

At 6:30 we’re headed back over to the Magic Kingdom for dinner, though Caitlyn’s vote was to go see Crush. We start reciting the list of what we haven’t seen yet at MK, and when we mention the Haunted Mansion she immediately says “I’m not going on THAT.” We explain it’s not like the haunted hayrides we think she’s gone on at home, there’s nothing that jumps out at you. “Oh wait, is that the one that has the talking head stones?” Yes, and apparently that triggers the right memories and it’s okay.

She hears the background music as we’re going through security out front of the park and says “Hey, that sounds like Woody’s Roundup music!” Not sure if it’s actually the official rootin’est, tootin’est, but it’s certainly dang close.

We manage to find our own private dining room upstairs at the Columbia Harbour House. We have a beautiful view of the Haunted Mansion and the Riverboat and Aunt Polly’s and Tom Sawyer Island from here, and also a “weather vane that has a horse instead of a chicken! And it’s on a house instead of a barn!” Heck, it must be Topsy-Turvy Day. Later we discover that under that ‘house’ is a “well with no hole in it!” (In case you’re wondering, this is all part of the guard house or whatever it is at the head of the Haunted Mansion walk.)

Which is where we’re headed right after dinner. Caitie’s complaining that her belly hurts, and she thinks she’s going to have a baby. Grandma thinks the odds are pretty much against that, and Caitie says “Well, a baby french fry, maybe!” She points out horseshoe prints on the path and starts reminiscing about the jewels we saw in the ground before. She seems a little iffy for most of the actual ride, but gamely wants to know if we can do it again.

They must have just filled Grizzly Hall for the Country Bear Jamboree, because it’s 16 minutes until the next show, so we’re going over to the Jungle Cruise [boat ride through 3 continents and dozens of corny puns from the skipper]. We get a running commentary from her all through the destroyed Mekong Temple, and we’re not sure if she just thinks all that stuff looks cool or if she’s sort of whistling in the dark to make it less scary. Her biggest giggles of the ride come as she’s ducking to keep those darned elephants from squirting her. Although she doesn’t complain about the ride (or anything else on the trip), she must have thought it was kind of lame. When Laurie is thinking of doing Pirates next, she asks Caitie if she wants to go on another boat ride, and Caitie says “Not THAT one again!”

She’s quite sure she’s ridden the Pirates of the Caribbean [slow boat ride past pirate scenes] before, but is getting pretty frustrated during the ride that she can’t remember any of the scenes. Until we get to the very last room and see that guy all tied up, and “I remember THAT!!” Well everybody remembers THAT, because you always sit right there in front of it for twelve minutes waiting for your boat to get to the unloading zone.

Walking back through the Pirates plaza, she says “Grandma, I think I’ve got the bubbles.” We’re on our way to find a spot for the parade, but Caitlyn says “Wait, we didn’t ride that thing Papa wanted, that Country Bears.” On the way by, she wants to go in the Tiki Room and get more feathers, but agrees to pass. Talking with her mom on the phone, we hear “Naw, I want to stay here for twenty more days.” You’re not the only one who’s ever felt THAT way!

We’re very close to parade time, and had thought we’d see Country Bears after it, but its last show is at 9:00, and we don’t want to miss SpectroMagic [nighttime parade with many characters and half a million lights]. We pick a spot by the Bears because a CM in the store here told us the parade starts in Frontierland tonight, so we figured we could slip down through Adventureland and the Main Street shops to Town Square and see it twice, like we did last trip. But alas, the CM has it backwards, and it will be a bit before it gets to us. While we’re waiting, Caitlyn asks “Do you want to count to a hundred and one with me Papa?” Thinking there must be something special about that number, I ask her why and she says “to waste time until the parade comes.” Okay, you got me. She absolutely loves the parade, and recognizes and is excited by all the characters from quite a distance away, giggling all the way through it.

It’s 9:45 by the time the parade is finished with us, so we’re all getting ice cream and heading to Main Street to watch the Wishes fireworks. Without too much effort, we score a trash can outside Casey’s Corner for Caitie to sit on. She loves the fireworks as much as we do, and tells us her favorite ones are the “glitterish” ones.

It’s no surprise that lots and lots of people leave the park with us right after the fireworks, and our bus is extremely crowded. Caitie didn’t want to wait for another bus with a seat, and finds a spot sort of wedged between two seats where she can stand for the trip. Now this is about a 15-minute trip, and I think that’s a very long time for a five-year-old to stand at 10:15 on a park night. Yet she never shows any signs of complaint whatsoever. Laurie asks if she’s glad she had a nap this afternoon. “Yes, but I’m still a little tired.” Laurie tells her it’s okay, we’ll be going to bed as soon as we get back to the hotel. “Well, I’m not THAT tired.”

But she is. And so are we, extremely. Day 6 tomorrow is what we call our cleanup day (where we go back and pick up things we missed), but we usually decide we haven’t missed enough in any particular park to make a trip back there, and end up going to Magic Kingdom. But this trip we’re going to hit Epcot again tomorrow, right after we all get some much-needed good sound slee............

Grandbabies 5.6, Epcot, Blizzard Beach, Magic Kingdom

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Caitlyn, on the sixth day of our week-long June adventure.

Our plan was rope drop at Epcot, but we realize this morning that it’s Early Entry [park opens an hour early for resort guests] there today, so that could be iffy. We do pretty well though, and it’s only an hour between wakeup call and out the door. We usually end up spending Day 6 at Magic Kingdom, but we got rained out at Test Track the other day and Caitlyn wants to see Crush again. And we all definitely want to see Soarin’ again.

There are at least 14 people ahead of us at the Epcot bus stop. We know this because there’s a guy doing a head count of his group, and coming up one short of his expected number of 15. The bus comes, and the whole group has to pull out of line and wait up by the building, and I’m sure glad I’m not THAT kid.

The entrance to Epcot is really screwy this morning. We go down to the middle of the ticket booths like they made us do the other day, but today that’s for regular folks who have to wait until 9 to enter the park; us Early Entry eligible folks are supposed to go down to the middle and then double back to the near side and enter. What we really need here is that chick with the big Mickey hand from the airport.

I go over and get FastPasses for Test Track while the girls are getting our breakfast at the Fountainview. Love those bear claws. At 8:35 the Test Track line says 15 minutes, but it’s out the door. Our FPs are for 9:15 to 10:15 though. At 8:46 we’re in the standby line for Soarin’.

All I can tell you about Soarin’ is that I can’t think of the last ride I went on where two-thirds of the audience applauds at the end of the ride. The American Adventure gets applause, but that’s sort of patriotic applause. This is Damn That Was Good applause. Caitie is upset because her plastic ears fall off during the ride. I think she thinks they’re out in the orange groves somewhere. I retrieve them for her afterward and get her calmed down, but in the process forget to get our camera bag out from under my seat. We really don’t want to spend half the day without it while it works its way to lost and found, or try to talk our way back through the line to get it, so I just wait right outside the exit doors of the theater until the next show’s over. As soon as the doors open, I slip back in and get the bag, without any problem, but not without some strange looks from the CMs.

This ride is so cool, we figure we might as well get FastPasses on the way out. The Land pavilion certainly hasn’t been configured for this kind of traffic flow. Getting out is kind of a pain in the butt, with everyone trying to crowd into a one-person-wide escalator. Then when you get off the escalator you’ve got a whole bunch of people trying to cross your line coming in to go down the stairs.

We run into John and Charlotte outside, on a picture-taking tour of Epcot. During Flower & Garden Festival, that sounds like an all day job. They decide to get FastPasses for Soarin’ as well, and maybe we’ll be able to ride it together again.

Caitlyn doesn’t seem to be that crazy about Test Track, and keeps asking when it’s going to go fast. She has a death grip on Grandma’s arm when we do, but wants to do it again. I suppose for a kid, the first trip on that is a bit like your first trip on Splash – you’re thinking ahead so much to the featured part of the ride that you miss a lot of stuff before that.

After Test Track, we go over to see Figment again. Caitie’s still awed by the final room, saying “Wow, look at ALL those STARS!” We’re headed down to the Living Seas and before we’ve gone far at all, she spots the blue wall of the pavilion and says “Oh, I see Crush’s hotel now!” We run into John and Charlotte again on the way down, and thanks to Crush and Dory and Nemo and Marlin, the queue is full again and winds out into the very hot, very humid courtyard. Caitie agrees she doesn’t want to stand in that line, and thinks we should take one more dinosaur ride before lunch.

There’s a whole line of characters that just appeared outside the Imagination Pavilion, and we get a half dozen autographs and pictures. By this time, we’re VERY ready to enjoy some of Figment’s air conditioning. Caitie, little social organizer that she is, thinks that she should sit in the front between Grandma and Charlotte, and John and I should sit in the back.

Our Soarin’ FPs run out at 12:05 and John and Charlotte’s start at 11:54, so there’s just time for lunch at the Sunshine Food Fair and then we can ride together. The new menus here have added substantially to the food options in the park, a welcome variety in counter service that we’ve noticed in all the parks.

We all love our Soarin’ ride again, and it’s so hot when we get outside that NOW is the time to get the heck out of Dodge and cool off. Not after another visit with Crush, not even after another Cotton Ride, now. Laurie and Caitlyn decide the best way to cool off would be Blizzard Beach, and Papa decides the best way would be a nice nap in a cool room. So that’s what we do. As the girls head out the door at 2:00, Caitie’s planning to push Grandma through the waterfalls, and Laurie’s telling her they might do other things besides the lazy river. I think they’re going to have a good time.

Now I won’t report on my nap, but Laurie will definitely report on the girls’ water park adventures.

Caitie does talk me into a trip around the lazy river, walking the whole way. I suggest to her several times that she looks tired and might want to get in or at least hang onto a tube, but she says “no, I want to walk!” Only it’s not walking, it’s running the whole way. She’ll hang on and float for about 10 seconds, then be off and running again. She tries to push me through the cold waterfalls, but I manage to get us turned around and push Caitie through instead. She informs me she doesn’t like me when I do that. We make a deal that when we get to the sneezy house, neither one of us will try to push the other into the cold splash. And it works out fine.

After the one lazy river tour, we head up the hill to the big water slides. Caitie seems to think the steps need to be counted, and there are 87. We go over to the toboggan slides, and I’m thinking it’s the one I remember where you’re all lined up side by side and go down at the same time. But it turns out they’re individual slides. I get Caitlyn started on hers, and then jump on mine. You’re laying on your stomach on a foam mat, with a couple handles on the front to hold onto. And it’s a fairly wild ride, swishing way up one side and then way up the other side, and you really can’t see anything outside your own slide, and it’s a really really long ride down. Being slightly heavier, I get to the bottom first and wait for Caitlyn. And wait. And wait. And I’m thinking “oh my goodness, Caitie’s stuck up there in the middle somewhere crying, she’s going to be so scared.” And then all of a sudden she comes flying out the bottom, and she’s giggling, and screaming “CAN WE DO THIS AGAIN!!!!!”

On the way back up the 87 steps, we decide that this time we’ll do the one I thought we were doing before, and race side-by-side down. After we’ve been standing in line for a while, she gives me a rare “when are we going to get there.” I wait about 15 seconds, then put on a very whiny voice and say “Oh Caitie, when are we going to get there, this line is SOOOOO long, and it’s SOOOOOO hot, and I’m tired, when are we going to get there, Caitie?” She must be comfortable with the role-playing as well, because she looks back at me and says “Now honey, I think it will only be about three more minutes.” A sense of humor is so important when it’s hot at Disney World.

I put Caitie on the toboggan and give her a push before I start, and still beat her to the bottom. And once again, as soon as she gets to the bottom, “CAN WE DO IT AGAIN!!!!!” So we go back up the 87 steps and decide to do the swishy one that we did the first time.

But my bare feet are hurting now because of all the sand on the steps, and I feel like I have a hundred little blisters. I break the news to Caitlyn that I can’t climb up again, and without missing a beat, she says “they have chairs that will take you up to the top.” She wants to go up and do Summit Plummet [120’, 55mph body slide]. I’ve been telling her that she’s not tall enough, and that they won’t let her ride, but she won’t let it go. It’s a 30 minute wait for the chairlift, but that still beats walking up again. From the chairlift, you’re looking right down over the bottom half of the big drop on Summit Plummet, and that only makes Caitie want to do it more.

But I manage to talk her into the Family Raft Ride [1200’ long water slide] instead. For some unknown reason, they put the two of us in one boat all by ourselves, even though it can hold six adults. The ride is still quite wild though, with splashing up one side and then the other. But being so light, we’re running enough slower than the family of five or six behind us that they catch up with us about halfway down and push us the rest of the way. She likes this one too, but my feet are done and we’re headed back to the hotel.

And Don’s right where we left him, so I’ll wake him up and turn the reporting duties back over to him.

Good news, Laurie didn’t lose her glasses, or her watch, or anything! It’s 5:20 now and we’re planning to go back to the Magic Kingdom, but it’s storming again right now. Half the sky is clear and it looks like the rain will be short-lived, so we may as well work our way to the car. We walk along the sides of the buildings under the second floor walkway, and manage to get all the way from our room to very close to the edge of the parking lot, with only having to walk about 50 feet out in the rain. We’re going to drive to Boardwalk, take a bus to MK, then come back to the Boardwalk to watch Illuminations and Wishes from John and Charlotte’s room.

I can remember on our second trip together, ten years ago, following the advice of this group and parking at the Beach Club to go over and watch Illuminations. Now at the Boardwalk they have signs that say “We regret that we don’t have space in our parking lots for clowns like you.” Or words to that effect. We encounter easily our longest wait of the trip for a bus here, as three Downtown Disney busses and two for Animal Kingdom come before ours.

Caitie was wide awake while eating her fruit rollup at the bus stop, but once we’re on the bus, she falls asleep quite quickly. So I carry her from the bus into the park, where she finally wakes up. We’ve arrive just in time for the last Cinderellabration [open air stage ceremony with five Disney princesses] of the day, but they cancel it because it’s still drizzling. As we go through the Castle on our way to the Pinocchio Haus for dinner, Caitlyn points out something I don’t remember noticing before -- the tops of all the pillars underneath the Castle have characters carved in them.

We pick up FastPasses for Mickey’s PhilharMagic on the way to our usual seats in the Pinocchio Haus, by the windows looking into Small World. She’s just giggling away at the scenery inside the ride entrance/exit, and I’m not sure quite what part of it she finds so amusing. Once Grandma is in line for the food and we’re holding the table, Caitie suddenly has to go to the bathroom. I tell her she’s going to have to hold it for a couple minutes, because she broke the rule when I took a potty break in Town Square and she said she didn’t have to go. (We didn’t make her because she wasn’t really awake yet.) But it’s soon apparent that ‘holding it’ may not work, so I ask the woman at the next table (who’s waiting with a sleeping baby for the rest of her crew to bring their food), if she’ll watch our table and stuff while we handle the emergency. She’s been listening to our whole predicament, so she smiles knowingly and agrees.

During dinner, Caitie says to Laurie “Remember that ride that I wasn’t tall enough to ride?” Laurie confirms she’s talking about Summit Plummet, and she says “I think I’ll be big enough when I’m 32. Would you bring me back to Disney when I’m 32 so I can ride it?” Laurie tells her that her daddy really liked that ride (he called it the Atomic Wedgie), and that maybe he’ll bring her some time before she’s 32. We’ll bring her kids when they’re five, though.

We must have hit an Extra Magic day again here at Magic Kingdom, because after dinner the line for the Carousel is wrapped about all the way around it and the Small World line doubles back across the front of the building about three times. We’re nearly through the ‘outside’ portion of the Small World line, inching along behind a family of six, when the 9-year-old says he can’t wait until they get back to the house. Mom wearily replies “I wonder how much MORE I can spend to keep you unhappy.” Caitlyn’s very impressed with Small World [slow boat ride through dozens of rooms with hundreds of animated international dolls]. When Haley got to the tropical room it was ‘Lilo’ she spotted, but Caitie says “Look! Aloha Girls!” Sounds more like an Elvis movie than a Disney one.

Our passes get us into PhilharMagic [Disney’s best 3-D movie] with only about a five minute wait, but it’s 8:20 now, and iffy that we’ll get back to John and Charlotte’s at the Boardwalk for Illuminations. Caitie sits on my lap for the show, and I have to hold her when she’s reaching for those 3-D jewels so she doesn’t cuff the guy in front of us. She loves the show and thinks we should do it again, but we’re still going to try to get to Boardwalk on time.

The Castle is closed off, forcing us to walk down around the side. We encounter a rabbit on the way, and while we don’t spend nearly as much time rabbit-watching as we did with Elysia, we do spend a few minutes, proving once again that EVERY ride is an E-ticket [top-notch attraction] for somebody. We catch a break with the bus as one comes just as we get to the stop, and we get to Boardwalk right at 9:00. Charlotte’s room, of course, is at the far end of the building so the girls are running down the very long hall to get there in time. (I’ve seen fireworks before, my pace is somewhat more casual.) Their room (and the view from it) is absolutely beautiful, overlooking the lake above Jellyrolls. From the balcony, off in the 1:00 direction you can see Spaceship Earth and the upper half of Illuminations, and in the 11:00 direction you can see the tops of Wishes. Pretty cool.

We drive back to the room and decide that school most certainly is out somewhere, because Magic Kingdom was packed on this fine Monday evening, and the All Star Sports pool is also packed, at 10:30 pm. And speaking of packed, that’s what we have to do now so we can leave tomorrow. (Well at least Caitie and I do, Laurie still has those four days of training.) We’ll throw the bags in the car in the morning and drive over to Magic Kingdom, leaving from there for the airport.

Grandbabies 5.7, Magic Kingdom and home

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Caitlyn, on the seventh day of our week-long June adventure.

Today is our last day, and this is the day that Caitlyn gets to decide where we go. She has a ‘list’ of things she wants to do, though she hasn’t shared that list with us. We just mention things and then she tells us whether or not they’re ‘on the list’. In the car on the way to the Magic Kingdom, she’s telling us that we have to come to her preschool graduation in August. From the sounds of it, they have quite an interesting program, including Pinocchio music when they’re walking in, and at some point they all sing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah. “The teacher says that sometimes we sing it nice, and sometimes it’s horrible.” Yeah, preschoolers are like that.

We park the car and take the tram and monorail. It looks like we’re about one tram late for rope drop, but still in pretty good shape. We sort of hustled up Main Street again, and I’m not saying it’s hot or anything this morning, but I’m already sweating like P-P-P-Porky. The girls are headed for Dumbo first again, but the line is maybe three rides long this morning. On my way back from getting our FastPasses for Pooh, Laurie calls me to let me know they went over to Scuttle’s Landing for snacks instead of riding. Caitlyn had said “I don’t want to stand in a line for this, take it off the list.” No problem.

All three of us ride the Speedway, the girls in one car and me on the other track. Boy, this sure confirms my manliness, racing around the Indy Speedway, trying to beat the orange car with the five-year-old driving. After we finish our lap, I can see Laurie and Caitlyn up ahead doing the happy chair dance in their car because they beat me.

We’re going down to Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin [slow-moving car through multi-room infrared shooting arcade] now, because Caitlyn told us that was the first thing on her list of things to do. She doesn’t get a very high score on the ride, but doesn’t know that. Or care.

She had heard something on the monorail about Stitch’s Great Escape, and put that on her list. Laurie told her that it’s mostly dark and scary, but she said “Grandma, I don’t care about dark and scary, I want to do it.” I figured after we rode Buzz that maybe the girls could go see Stitch while I enjoyed that new-fangled air conditioning on the Carousel of Progress. But it turns out Stitch has come off the list and we’re headed back up to Fantasyland. I’m glad we’re at least slowing our pace a bit, because I was starting to actually get a little dizzy from the heat.

I suggest Snow White and Peter Pan, and she informs us that Peter Pan is NOT on the list, but Snow White is. As I’m parking the stroller up at Snow White, Caitie suddenly and urgently says to Laurie “Wait a minute. WHAT ABOUT OUR FLIGHT???” We tell her she’s got three more hours here before we have to leave, but it’s clear that she’s thinking about home and does NOT want to miss her ride.

After Snow White, we finally get our first Carousel ride, and I ask her if after this we can please please please see Mickey’s PhilharMagic again. She says “Yes. And it sprays a little bit of water on us, so we can cool off!” In PhilharMagic, we’ve gone way past occasional giggling now, to outright full-time laughing. Now I have to tell you, I shut my eyes when the champagne corks pop, because if I don’t, I get the same kind of headache you get if you try to cross your eyes ten times in a row. Caitie has her glasses on for the first two, pushes them up for the next two, and then puts them back on for the rest, laughing the whole time.

She tells us that Small World is on the list, and then we should eat dinner. While we’re in line for Small World, we get to see the clock strike 11:15, which Caitie thinks is pretty cool. But soon Grandma starts the How Much Longer whine again, and this time I get to hear Caitie’s response, which includes “Do you want to go back to our room and not have the TV on at all?? Then stop your whining.”

I can’t stop myself from counting something every time I go through Small World. Being a former youth hockey coach, I feel that skaters are sadly underrepresented, with only two:( Laurie has noticed a big difference between today and the rest of our trip. Just about every time we got off a ride all week she would say “Can we do it again?” But today, after every ride she’s asking “Is it time for our flight yet?”

We go down to Liberty Square for lunch and Caitie is getting very tired. I think maybe we’ll see the Country Bears after lunch and that will be it. Laurie has snagged a foot-long hot dog that she and Caitie will share, along with a fruit platter from the Liberty Square market. I go with the traditional fish and chicken combo from Columbia Harbour House, and we meet upstairs there. Our table from the other day is unavailable, being currently occupied by a Keys to the Kingdom tour group’s lunch. (Having taken that tour, I smile at the thought that these people’s lunch may be tainted by discussions of colonial sewage like mine was.) But Caitlyn finds us a spot that actually is better, a table in the archway over the street from Liberty Square into Fantasyland. It’s a wonderfully relaxing lunch, perfect for our last meal of the trip.

After lunch, I’m standing in the upstairs hallway checking out decorations, waiting for the girls to finish up in the bathroom. When they come out, Laurie tells me that she’s very much looking forward to our next trip, with Gavin. All five of our grandbaby trips have been with girls, but when we bring Gavin, SHE’ll be the one relaxing in the shade and checking things out while I’ll be the one taking forever in the bathroom, saying “Okay, let’s go, you don’t need to play in the soap ...” Then after half a minute, she says “Of course, you probably won’t make him wash his hands afterwards.” She’s catching on.

Caitie all but goes to sleep during the Country Bear Jamboree [down-home musical revue, with bears], she’s extremely tired. She’s loved the trip, but this kind of constant input really is exhausting. There are a couple things she giggles at, and she does acknowledge that my favorite bear (Big Al) is kind of cool.

And now it’s over. Caitie wants to know if we can have ice cream on the way out of the park, and we tell her that’s a tradition for us, it’s practically required. When she says ice cream, what she’s really talking about is an ice pop, and mentions it by name (which I think is Itsakadoozie). Laurie tells her she’s got a pretty good memory, and suggests that she probably remembers what the ‘dinosaur ride’ is called, too. She immediately says “Figment.” And then about a minute down the street, she turns and says “Spaceship Earth.” So she spent a little brain time right there pinning down the real name of the Cotton Ride as well.

We’re in the car now, headed out to the airport. Caitlyn wants us to tell her exactly when we “leave Disney,” so we put her on the lookout for the big Welcome archway. And she waves to the characters on the sign. And just to prove that she’d like to melt my heart, when we’re about halfway to the airport, out of a clear blue sky, she says “Papa, EVERYBODY loves the donkey.” Awww.

She’s not quite done with me yet, though. We both have hugs and kisses with Laurie at the airport, and I call Laurie a big cheater for getting to stay for four more days. Caitie and I check our bags outside, because the line is much shorter than the one inside. And very shortly, our bags are checked and we’re through security, and she’s pushing the stroller with our carry-on in it, and we’re both quite relaxed and happy. As we’re sitting by the window at our Gate, watching the plane traffic, she asks “Where’s Zach’s mom?” (That’s my first wife, from 15 years ago.) I say I don’t know, she’s probably home. “Why did you guys break up?” Oh, I don’t know. “Was Grandma prettier?” Okay kid, just because you point me at the minefield, doesn’t mean I have to walk in. I tell her that Zach’s mom and I broke up a long time before I met Grandma, but she still wants to know why. I finally tell her that I don’t really remember, it was such a long time ago. Then there’s about a 30-second pause before she grins and says “You probably think I ask too many questions, don’t you.” Not at all hon, it’s way better than not enough.

She’s EXTREMELY excited to see Mom and Dad when we get back, and her three-year-old brother practically dives into a hug, he’s missed her really bad this week. We’ve had another awesome trip, and now I have another first – making the two-hour drive home from the airport by myself. My baby is all safe and sound in her own house, and my babe is enjoying a wonderful Cape May buffet with friends, and I’m on the road. Temporarily alone, but secure in the knowledge that “everybody loves the donkey.”

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