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GRANDBABIES 7, A DISNEY
ADVENTURE
WITH COLBY Day 0, poor Don and Laurie on their own Way back
in 2000, after we
sold off our remaining Millennium Crisis Survival Supplies and started
looking
forward again, we picked up the idea somewhere of taking our
grandchildren to
Disney World right before they start kindergarten, one at a time for a
Very
Special Trip. We started that next
spring with our oldest, and it’s been among the best things
we’ve ever done. If you have the
luxury of taking kids one at
a time, you can custom-design the trip, even on the fly, to be exactly
the trip
that child needs. And the best part for
us is that you really get to know that little person, in a way you
really can’t
when you only see them in their family setting. Turns
out kids are altogether different when you separate
them from the
herd. Our
seventh adventure took
place during the first week of July in 2008. This
was only our second trip with a boy, and those are
special for
Laurie because she has none of the bathroom duty. It
was actually Colby’s turn the previous
spring, but he was also the second of our first seven that wasn’t
ready for a
trip away from home with “those strangers” at the age of
almost-five. A little kindergarten
socialization and
independence prepared him and for several months before our trip, every
time he
would have two extra days off school he would tell his mom “I
could go to
Disney with Grandma and Papa today!” We
wouldn’t have normally picked the 4th of July weekend
for the trip,
but we had to wait until school was out and ended up tacking the trip
onto the
end of his family’s annual time-share week in Orlando. Let’s begin, shall we? Two things
are likely to
make this trip different. One is that
being almost six instead of almost five, there will be a few more
things he’ll
want to or be able to do. The other is
that Colby’s a Since
Colby’s already in Laurie was
unlucky enough to
develop some bad problems with both knees recently, so we’ve got
a scooter for
the week. It isn’t long before we
have
our first (and only) incident, loading it onto our first bus. It wouldn’t have had to be an incident,
except for the most inconsiderate and rude bus driver we’ve ever
encountered
anywhere. (Every other driver on our
trip was great; this guy was just … special.)
When he first pulls up, he tells her she probably
won’t be able to get
on because there are people in the seats where the scooter parks. But they have to get up, right?
The bus isn’t full, mind you, but there are
people in those three seats. He tells us
he can ask them to move, but he’s not sure they will. But the sign right there says they have to,
right? Now we’re not ones to take
advantage and you know Laurie’s not especially fond of being
dependent, but
there are certain rules. This guy just
doesn’t want to do the work. He finally
relents, but now
she feels the pressure, especially not yet having any experience
controlling
the damn thing. She would be able to
parallel park it quite easily if he had just asked the folks standing
in the
aisle to give three feet more room. But
as it is, she has to do an eleven-point turn, with the thing shooting
away from
her repeatedly, and is nearly in tears before it’s finally parked. The guy’s definitely not a member of the
Dream Squad. We’re
starting the trip with
one of those good hard afternoon rains, but fortunately it’s
pretty much done
by the time we get to the park and get our annual passes.
Our first stop will be at the new improved
Spaceship Earth. We’re really
impressed
with the changes, right up to ending. Laurie
doesn’t mind it as much as me, but I feel
like the second half of
the attraction is missing! After the
ride, we go to
Guest Services to buy our Disney Dining discount card, and since
that’s
apparently in a different computer system, this is the third time today
I’ve
had to give them our new address. We
have dinner at the Electric Umbrella, establishing our meal pattern for
the
week -- bacon double cheeseburger for me, kid’s meal for Laurie. Test Track
is closed because
of the rain, which probably has added to the 95 minute Soarin’
line. Since we’re right by the Mouse
Gears store with
nothing special to do, Laurie takes the opportunity to replace the
really nice
lightweight backpack she wishes she hadn’t given away to the
girls last year. We can’t do an hour
and a half line even when
we don’t have anything else to do, so we’ll head back to
the room and
unpack. The original plan was for Colby
to join us this evening and spend our first night with us, getting any
separation issues out of the way early. But
his family had a longer than expected day and will be
meeting us in
the morning, so we’re on our own. We
can’t wait for tomorrow morning, and the Day 1, It’s
Thursday July 3rd,
Colby and his family are at their hotel, and they’re all going to
be joining up
with us to share the day at It’s
7:50 in the morning,
and we’re waiting for the troops to arrive at our resort. Colby tells us on the phone that he and Dad
are in the car but “the girls” are still getting ready. Never heard that one before, have you! While waiting in the French Quarter lobby, we
hear “NO LOITERING” and turn to see our cast member friend
Tony behind us! Turns out he’s
working the Disney Vacation
Club station at French Quarter this morning, so we have a nice little
chat
before comparing schedules and making a vague plan to maybe get
together on
Tuesday (which won’t end up working out). At 8:23
the whole crew is
getting on the We were
wondering if there
would be some separation anxiety at the end of the day with the whole
family
there, but as we get on the bus, when I sit down by the scooter with
Grandma
and the family heads to the upper deck, Colby elects to sit by me so I
guess our
trip is officially under way. As we
arrive at the park, we realize we left his ticket in the room. We really need to make rope drop today, so we
guess we’ll have to buy a one-day on our way in. The
disadvantage of having a
scooter from offsite is that you have to load and unload it from all
the
buses. We’re used to being the first
ones off the bus and ahead of our little crowd instead of last off and
behind
them. The advantage is that it’s $15
cheaper a day than renting them at the park, and it’s a long walk
to some of
the bus stops. It’s
about a quarter of, so
they’ve opened the turnstiles but not the entrance and the plaza
in front of
the train station is full. I’m just
going to have to leave Laurie to her own devices with the scooter now,
because
Colby needs a shoulder seat for the train arrival and the grand opening. He’s clearly very excited to see the
characters and the whole show. The park
is open now, and
we’re making a beeline for Dumbo (the slowest loading ride in the
World). Colby already has a plan, he can
ride with me
and his sister with Grandma, so we’ll have a boy elephant and a
girl
elephant. We used to take the kids
directly to the He’s
exploring his fanny
pack as we walk now, since he’s not used to wearing one. We always put a juice box and some raisins
and crackers/cheese and other snacks in there that the kids can pull
out
whenever they want, without asking. Gives
them a little decision-making power and we never
have to stop
before lunch. He’s dragging about 10
feet behind us while he’s checking it out, and it reminds us that
one of the
most important things we bring on these trips is peripheral vision. Laurie skipped Peter Pan and got Fast Passes
for Pooh, so when she returns Colby announces “Now we have Fast
Passes, we can
do anything we want! I want to do Dumbo
again!” Well, that’s not quite
how it
works, we’ll do Dumbo another day. We ride
Snow White next, and
this is a walk-on just like Peter Pan was. This
is now officially our new Rope Drop Magic Kingdom
With a Munchkin
Sequence. Colby says
he’s never driven
the We still
have our Pooh fast
passes, but we’re within five minutes of when we can get another
so we’re going
to head down into Tomorrowland and get some for Space Mountain. We make our way to Buzz Lightyear first,
where Colby informs us that he and Katie decided that he’s going
to ride with
Grandma and she’ll ride with me. So
nice
of them to include us. Everybody loves
the ride, and we decide to check out Stitch’s Great Escape while
Laurie goes to
get the Fast Passes. There’s
only a five minute
wait for Stitch, but that’s time enough for the kids to ask a
million and four
questions. This one’s new for both
of
them, and they’re a little apprehensive. Colby’s
very much into the preshow though, and as
we’re walking into the
main chamber, he tells me with a little smile “I don’t
think I like Level
Threes!” Laurie and I don’t
ever see
this attraction by ourselves because it’s pretty lame, but
we’ve found that the
kids’ reactions range all the way from ‘awesome’ to
‘lame’ to ‘scaredest I’ve
ever been’. Colby declares it
‘awesome’. On the way
up to the Tea
Cups, which we apparently like most because of the mouse that pops up
out of
the kettle, we have to pause momentarily to check out three birds on
the
ground. Once again, Disney sparrows ROCK!! We’re starting to see signs of what
Colby’s
trip is going to be like, because we go a little crazy with the
spinning. I’m actually a little
wobbly. Wobblier than usual.
And we don’t think we’re going to be spending
much time with the characters either. He
has an autograph book with him, and he got Bullwinkle the other day at
Universal (well, who wouldn’t?), but we just walked past the Mad
Hatter and
Alice and he didn’t want to stop. We’re
walking by Cinderella’s step-family now and he has no interest in
them, either. It’s
time to use our Fast
Passes for Pooh, and everyone loves it. It’s
11:00 and with just a light breakfast,
there’s no way Laurie’s
going to be able to make it until our 2:30 lunch at After
we’ve checked out
Minnie and Mickey’s houses (and garage), we take that nice back
walkway over to He
initially says he loves
the As long as
we’re over here,
we see the Carousel of Progress. In a
first for us, the carousel can’t make any progress at the end of
one of the
scenes, so we see that scene twice. Everything
works well after that, though, and we
don’t think the
attraction will make either of the kids’ highlight reels. As
we’re picking up Fast
Passes for Buzz, Katie wants to know “What about that one where
the monsters
make you laugh?” Well, as it turns
out,
it’s right here, let’s do it! And
it’s a
major hit, as you might expect. It seems
there’s no minimum (or maximum) age at which a one-eyed green
monster falling
on his head is funny. We still
have time before
lunch, so we’ll wander through the Lunch at
the It’s
a little after 3:30
now, so it’s definitely time to head back to the hotel for a swim
and a
nap. It’s July.
It’s Laurie had
told the staff
that Colby’s sixth birthday was coming up, so he has an
incredible birthday cake
made out of bath towels on the table in our room. All
seven of us hit the pool, which is one of
the nicer ones on property because there are a couple places where the
pool is
shaded. One of them overlooks the
serpent water slide, and as soon as we get to it Colby wants to know
how many
times he can slide. I immediately tell
him “Fifty-three,” because I feel like that’s the
maximum number of slides I
can watch before my pruney body needs a nap. “I
may want to do a hundred” is the reply. Well,
that’s up to Grandma. On my way
back to the room
for said nap, our rabbit courtyard is getting good use.
We have three kids under nine kicking a
soccer ball around, a separate group of nine apparent family members
just
sitting in the grass, and a two-year-old punishing a beach ball with an
adult
wiffle bat. It turns
out I’m the only
one who actually needs a nap, and I don’t apologize for it. At 6:30, everyone is relaxed and dried off
and recharged and hungry, which the food court will take care of. After dinner, we get out to the bus stop just
as our bus is leaving. Colby surveys the
parking lot across the street and suggests we take one of those taxis
over
there. Let’s wait until Day 7 and
see
how our cash stacks up. The
recording on the Some day
I’m going to
remember that the Railroad closes at dusk, because this is not the
first time
I’ve dragged everyone up onto the platform and then had to
sheepishly
retreat. We’re headed back to Colby
wants the front seats on
Splash because he wants to get wet. I
told you he was a veteran. We hear five
“yeah”s
out of him, and that’s just on the first drop.
I know he’s not quite six yet and is a long way from
testosterone, but I
swear he sounds exactly like a 17-year-old guy who just spotted the keg. It’s
a quarter to nine, so
we hang around by Pecos Bill’s to watch the fireworks. Colby really isn’t that much into them;
he’s
too busy striking poses with his new light saber. For
the rest of us, the fireworks for the 4th
(here on the 3rd) are exceptional, with the usual displays
over the
castle and in back of the park, but also in the front. We
discover an advantage to
having a scooter when you ride Big Thunder. When
they’re using both sides of the loading
platform (and perhaps a
certain number of trains), a train that leaves the right platform
(where the
scooter entrance is) will return to the left platform, and vice versa. So you’re forced to ride it twice
consecutively to get back to your scooter. Colby
loves that, but he screams the entire time. (The
good kind). In
the space of a half hour, he’s gone from
17-year-old boy at a kegger, to Luke Skywalker, to a 12-year-old girl
at a
Jonas Brothers concert. Colby
likes the Pirates, sitting
up in the front row with his mom who is also a big Disney fan and
hasn’t seen
the new version before. On our way out,
while I’m escorting Laurie up the scooter elevator, Katie makes
her fist ever pin
trade, followed shortly by Colby. Mickey’s
PhilharMagic will
be our last attraction of the night, before we part company and head
back with Colby
to our resort. While we’re waiting
to
enter the theater, we’re talking with his mom and dad and
refreshing our memory
of his sleep patterns, whether he has a hard time getting to sleep or
getting
up in the morning, nap habits, and such. He
seems to be fooling with his sister and not paying any
attention to
our conversation, but I should know better. Midway
through the show, he falls asleep! We wake
him up to leave and he beams up at me
saying “See, Mom told you I go out like a light!” It’s
11:40 before we’re
ready to brush our teeth, excited about the week to come, and
especially
excited about the water park and Animal Kingdom tomorrow.
But just as we’re putting the toothpaste on
the toothbrush, the crocodile tears start to come, as well as “I
want my
daddy.” We get him calmed down and
Laurie
offers to let him sleep with one of us if he wants.
Gee, thanks, I wonder who he’ll pick.
Fortunately, he’s a very still sleeper, which works better for me
than the two
snugglers and a draper that we’ve comforted in the past. Day 2, Typhoon Lagoon and Animal Kingdom It’s
the Fourth of July, and
our plan is to avoid all the fireworks parks that will be packed today,
in favor
of a water park and Animal Kingdom. When
we get up in the morning, Laurie tells us that Colby woke up during the
night
and said “I want my mommy.” Colby
says
he doesn’t remember that at all. She
also
tells us that I put my arm around Colby and told him that it would be
all right
and he settled right back to sleep. I
don’t remember that at all. I tell
her
it’s because guys can work things out with no drama, even in
their sleep. Since we
had such a late
night last night, we didn’t even get up until 9:15, and now at
9:50 we’re
hustling to make it to the food court while they’re still serving
breakfast. Colby’s definitely in
energy
replacement mode this morning, he’s going through his waffles and
grapes and
apples as if he were on a mission. On the way
to the bus stop, he
has to walk the curb, like every kid ever. And
where there isn’t a curb, he has to walk on the
very edge of the
sidewalk. We get
into Typhoon Lagoon,
and while the boys stop to pee, Laurie goes on ahead down to the kiddie
part of
the water park to find a spot to leave our stuff. She
really didn’t want to go on ahead, being worried
about getting lost and wasting time reconnecting, but I assure her
it’s a
simple route and she reluctantly accepts. Unfortunately,
on our way to meet her I end up taking a
wrong turn and guess
what -- we’re on the wrong side of the river, lost and separated. There it is in print, hon – you were
right
and I was wrong. And the reason I got
disoriented? The entire map in my head
is the one for We
reconnect fairly quickly
and find a place to put our things. It
turns out that Colby is a soft-talker, so I’m spending a lot of
my time bent
over. Our first order of business is one
and a half circuits of the lazy river. He’s
been very good at following the rules, and one time when he goes under
the
water to avoid that cold spray off the cave entrance, I say “You
cheated!” He vehemently denies that;
“There’s no rules
on that waterfall!” He takes
two quick trips on
the water slide before we head out into the wave pool.
We didn’t realize that from 11:30 to 12:30
it’s a bobbing pool. Once we figure
that
out, we go over and get Colby three trips on Crush’n Gusher. This is an awesome ride that’s sort of a
combination water slide and coaster, where jets of water actually push
you up over little hills. He
and I go first on the Coconut slide, and
he reports to Laurie that they have some tubes with three holes and we
should
all go. So the three of us take the
Pineapple run, with Grandma giggling the whole way.
At the bottom, he talks his grandma into going
up with him for the remaining Banana slide. The wave
pool is up and
running again, and Colby starts walking out while looking at us to see
what the
rules are going to be. Laurie tells him he
can go out until the water is up to the top of his trunks.
So what does he do? He pulls
his shirt up to see exactly where
the top of his trunks are and inches out to the right spot. I’m guessing he’s using just a
hint of
tiptoes, but he’s mainly within the ‘rules’. After a couple of waves, we end up out just a
little
farther with him
and he lets us know “Hey, it’s up past my trunks.” We tell him that’s allowed when
you’re with
adults. We enjoy
about fifteen
waves, then go back over for eight or nine trips on the water slide,
and then
the other half a lap of the lazy river. He’s
having a little bit of a hard time getting back
in his tube this
trip, I think his waffle energy is about gone. Laurie
points out his decreased energy level and he
informs us “I have
energy enough for all day long, don’t you worry.” I’m
noticing a little sinus
irritation and a bit of a sore throat, so it looks like I’m
headed for a
full-fledged summer cold. That’s
going
to suck. On our way
up to the Leaning
Palms for lunch, Colby can’t figure out how we’re going to
be allowed into the
restaurant when we’re all soaked. No
problem, we’ll just air dry! It’s
3:35 when
we head back to the hotel to change, and Laurie asks Colby if he wants
to give
his mom and dad a call. Nope, he’s
fine. Back in the room, in addition to
yesterday’s
towel birthday cake we have sort of a pillow wave on the bed with the
koala
webkin at the bottom and the shark on the top. When we
get over to Animal
Kingdom after our nap, it’s 5:25 and pouring buckets, so we park
it on a dry
bench right there at the bus stop and Colby thinks this would be a good
time to
call his mom and dad and let them know what he did today.
With a great deal of excitement and
expression. They’re
giving out 4th
of July pins as we enter the turnstiles, and Colby asks them if he can
also have
one for his sister. Yes, his sister, the
one who calls him evil. It’s
cool going to Disney
with a Disney pro. We’re going
around a
sharp corner on the Safari when Colby says, in his best Rex voice,
“I have a
very bad feeling about this.” Turns
out
what he was worried about was the alligators up ahead.
Not only do we see more hoofed animals today
than we’ve seen in a while, we also have to wait for about five
minutes for a
family of white rhinos that are standing in our road.
Mom and Dad casually wander off after a
couple minutes, but Junior holds us (and quite a few other trucks) up
for quite
a bit. At the
Festival of the Lion
King, one of the stilt guys comes over right at the start of the show
and gives
Colby a high five. And I do mean high, he
had to reach waaaayyy up there to get it. That’s
pretty cool. He
also gets
asked to be in the closing parade, but passes on that.
Probably not fully awake, he almost fell
asleep during the show. As we
leave the park, Colby runs
up ahead of us so he can read ‘French Quarter’ off the sign
and tell us what
bus stop we need to go to. What a
difference a year makes, he’s all smiles, has a bounce in his
step even though
he’s tired, and he has stories to tell. While
we’re waiting for the
bus, I recall having been roped into a couple rounds of I Spy on the
way over,
which I hate about as much as Marlin does when Dory plays it. So I look down at Colby and say “I spy
something goofy.” He gets a big grin
and
answers “Me?” Right you are. After no more than five seconds of thought he
says “I spy with my little eye something that talks a lot.” Busted. Laurie had
really wanted to try
to see both of the other July 4th fireworks tonight. MGM’s are at 9 and Epcot is doing a
special
Illuminations show at 10, but Colby was all but falling off the bench
at the
Lion King and had a very late night last night, so we don’t want
to push him. Laurie doesn’t want to
go to them alone, so we’ll
just call it a night and get a fresh start at Epcot tomorrow. Day 3, Epcot Well, I
have a full-blown
summer cold. The only thing to do for
that at this point is rope drop at Epcot. We
survey the snack drawer to load our fanny packs,
choosing from among breakfast
bars, awesome 1-oz Fruit Loops packs, and Kraft PREMIUM bread sticks
and
cheese. Nothing but the best when Laurie
packs. [ Laurie’s reading this now
wondering when anyone else packs. ] We
also notice that Colby has adjusted his birthday cake.
It has blue pipe cleaners for candles, and
various colors of little dot stickers decorating the top.
Colby has taken the yellow ones and put them
on top of the candles so they’re lit. One of the
things that
always makes these trips with the grandkids so great is that we give
them lots
of little options. Each day he has a
choice of walking down the stairs with me or going in the elevator with
Grandma. The first two days were with
me, and today it’s Grandma. It’s
8:40 when we go through
the turnstiles to get into Epcot. This
is our first grandchild who wants to make it a point to walk through
the Leave
a Legacy monuments in the front of the park, because it’s a
‘maze’. Colby
knows the big ball
must be really big, because its shadow covers the whole ground and we
get to
walk in the shade for a really long time. When
we get up by the rope in the A year of
listening to the
teacher has really paid off, because there doesn’t seem to be
anything Patrick
tells us that Colby misses. The first
thing he does when we get in to the ride is stow his hat in the
underseat bin
and insists I do the same. He gets his
belt through the center loop on his own, so of course I have to give
him a
thumbs up and say “Nice work, pal.” He
gives a major league tug on the yellow strap to make sure his
belt’s tight,
sits back, adjusts his butt, grabs both hand rails tightly and says
“I’m ready
to fly!” It must be
a great day
today, because Colby’s singing as he walks. I
have no idea what because I can’t make it out, but
it doesn’t
matter. He’s very impressed with the
Test Track queue. “There sure is a
lot
to look at in here.” Including
something
that was probably designed with him in mind, a Seat Squirm Test. The scooter entry is pretty cool at Test
Track – you go through the regular line, they send you up to Car
1, and then
they take your scooter up the lift and over while you’re riding
and it
magically awaits you on the other side of the track when you get off. After the ride, we get stalled for a while in
the exit in front of the Future Car, which is apparently very
intriguing. There is
nothing in Ellen’s
Energy Adventure that interests him at all, except for a really cool
mirror he
sees on the way in. You never know if
the reaction would be the same without following two days of rides and
pools. Back in It was
really smart of
Disney to fill the waiting room for Turtle Talk with Crush with
computer games
and aquariums that really do a great job of killing time.
Colby’s really been looking forward to seeing
Crush because his sister told him there’s a real live turtle in
there. He’s definitely more of a
spectator than a
participant, so we sit in the back and enjoy the show.
The real He does a
pretty good job of
staying with us, in general, but he’s constantly changing from
left hip, right
hip, ten feet back, six feet ahead. I get
the feeling there are invisible reins at work here.
It’s good that he stays close, but I’m
starting to feel like a bobble-head keeping an eye on him.
I shouldn’t complain, because part of that’s
just the Disney Walk that affects Laurie and me as well. Not
so much Laurie this trip, what with the
scooter and all. We have
lunch at the Sunshine
Food Fair. There’s a definite
sequence
for his meal here. He’s carefully
excavating his mashed potatoes out from under his chicken leg, without
touching
that. Once the potatoes are gone, the
fruit punch jello disappears, followed by the entire chicken leg. He has taken the very sensible approach of
saving the carrots until last, to see if he’s still hungry. He’s not. We very
much enjoy Soarin’
again with our Fast Passes, and decide to get more for use later. We’re headed out past Spaceship Earth,
and a discussion
of the ride itself leads to questions such as “How did the
cavemen die?” I’m pretty sure
they got eaten by
dinosaurs. When we
get back to the room,
Colby actually agrees that he might like to lay down for about fifteen
minutes
before we hit the pool. Me too. Laurie tries to wake us up after a half hour
but he’s not budging, so we sleep right through for an hour and a
half or so
until we need to take a bus and monorail to Chef Mickey’s. Today is the first day it hasn’t been
overcast, and it’s just seriously hot. It’s
not even particularly humid, but just the heat
is beating me up. Colby is
really loving Chef
Mickey’s, because we have FIVE characters with us.
Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, and
Donald. We had told him that Donald (his
favorite character) isn’t usually there (he is), so Colby was
really excited
when he showed up. When Donald gets to
our table, you can just tell from Colby’s expressions that if we
had to go home
tonight, it still would have been an awesome trip.
We love
air conditioning,
but you know it’s cold when even Colby says he wants to go
outside to eat his
dessert. As a bonus to the evening, on
our way out he spots a cast member with the perfect Tinkerbell pin that
he’s
been trying to find for his sister. His
hands are actually shaking, he’s so excited.
The awesome part is that after he’s made the trade,
that pin goes
directly into the fanny pack, it’s not going on the lanyard. It’s
twenty minutes to seven
when we head back over to Epcot, and nowhere near as hot out. I love naps. Colby
is a little bored with Spaceship Earth, but
I’m a little bored with
the second half of it now too. On the
way over to Living With the Land, we tell him he might be able to see
pumpkins
shaped like Mickey. He wants to know how
they do that – “Do they put a Mickey seed in it?” God, I hope not. Colby
can’t decide between
seeing the fireworks tonight or going back to the hotel to swim. He’ll let us know. I’m
about whipped, so we may have to steer
him toward the pool. In the meantime,
we’re using our fast passes we got this afternoon for
Soarin’. He’s an old pro now,
leaning way forward in
his seat to check out the floor below us. At
the end of the ride, he looks up at us and
says “Well, we got our fireworks right there, let’s
swim.” Yay! That was a
great day. We’ve had a lot of fun,
and we’re still in
the front half of our trip. Tomorrow
we’ll be going to Hollywood Studios, which Colby has been to
before, so he’s
looking forward to that. Day 4, Hollywood Studios This trip
with Colby is very
different from our other grandbaby adventures. We
haven’t once had to get him going in the morning,
he just gets up,
gets dressed and puts away his dirty laundry without any direction at
all. Very different from the girls’
trips, where
things tended to get left lying around and sleeping in was Plan A. Not that I’m making any statement about
girls, you understand, it was Miss Laurie who made this particular
observation. Last
night, Colby was really
looking forward to riding On our
slow walk to the
front of the line, he’s really working so hard on talking himself
into going
through with it. “Will you buckle me
in?” “Will you sit next to
me?” “Will you hold my
hand?” I’m pretty conflicted
about the whole deal. I’m really
rooting for him to win this battle
with his fear, but at the same time, I hate this ride.
(Un)fortunately, he’s victorious and loves
the ride. Laurie got
Fast Passes for
Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster while we were in the tower. It’s 10:10 and the passes are for 10:45,
but Colby
doesn’t think he’s going to ride it because it’s too
high. I’m not sure if he’s
judging that by the size
of the guitar out front or what. We wander
back into the
Animation Courtyard to catch the 10:30 Playhouse Disney show. I find a nice spot in the shade, which is
very welcome because I’m drenched already. We’ll
have to make sure to really pump the fluids
today, because it’s
going to be really hot. Colby
isn’t into the show
very much until one of the cast members comes up and sits down beside
him and starts
talking to him about it. She must be
quite persuasive, because now he’s clapping and waving his arms
and generally
quite enjoying himself. When it comes
time to dance, he wants me to get up and dance with him.
Of course as you know, parents aren’t allowed,
so he decides to pass as well. We’re
walking down We’re
walking over to the
stunt car show when Colby suddenly pulls my arm out of its socket after
having
spotted Darth Vader and Darth Maul. (He’s
a big Star Wars fan.) (Colby, that is,
not Darth Maul.) We have to spend some
time checking out their costumes, and also Yoda. And
then we can hear the cars warming up, and
Colby’s heading for the show, power walking about twenty feet
ahead of us. He
told us after He has
seen this show
before, and although he says it’s a different show this time,
he’s telling Laurie
with great (and accurate) detail what’s going to happen next as
each stunt sets
up. He tells us he wants to see It’s
Tough to Be a Bug today, by which we’re hoping he means the Honey
I Shrunk the
Kids Playground. We have
lunch at the Backlot
Express and are thinking about doing Star Tours when we’re done,
except that
Indiana Jones just let out and the line is huge. Colby
suggests that we get Fast Passes for
Star Tours and head to the resort pool. Done
and done. Surprisingly,
we
get held up on our way out by a keen interest in a performance of High
School
Musical. The pin
trading is going
well. He started out with 11 pins on his
lanyard and has 10 now, since Tinkerbell went into his fanny pack. He has probably owned about 20 so far, and is
now trading away ones he was excited about trading for yesterday. I guess it’s just like life –
it’s the
journey, not the destination. Grandma
asks Colby if he
wants to swim first or nap first today. He’s
unlikely to make the same mistake two days in a
row, so he picks
swimming. On the bus back to French
Quarter, she suggests he lay down across the two seats next to her with
his
head in her lap. “Not for a nap,
just
for a rest, right?” Absolutely. We’re not quite clear of the parking lot
and
he’s sound asleep. Since the bus
stops
at all the Colby’s
dad had called
earlier and left a message that they were back home from their trip
now, so
Colby gives a call back and talks with his dad briefly before saying
“I want to
talk to my sister for a minute, it’s really important.” He tells her all about the pins he got for
her, then talks to mom for a bit. We
thought he might have a twinge of missing everyone, but sorry guys, the
pool
awaits. As we get
ready to leave the
room to go back to the park, for about the fourth time since we
arrived, he
carries his towel ‘birthday cake’ in front of him singing
happy birthday to
me. He’s wondering if yesterday was
Day
3. This is about the stage in each trip
when it gets hard for us to keep track, too. You never
really know what’s
making a big impression on a kid because they register a lot of things
without
mentioning them, but as we’re walking into Hollywood Studios
tonight, he says
“You remember when we took that elevator up to Lights, Motors,
Action? That was REALLY crowded!” It really was, with a scooter, two
wheelchairs, and assorted companions. My
neck is getting a workout again this evening trying to keep track of
him. He’s touching the benches on
one side, the
chain on the other. If you could trace
his path, it would look just like Jeffy’s in the Family Circus
strip. Colby
really enjoys the Rock
‘n’ Roller Coaster preshow, but the minute we get out into
that alley, we see a
car take off and he says “That’s TOO FAST!” We’re thinking he might want to bail,
but
there’s almost no wait to the
front of the queue so he doesn’t have a lot of time to think
about it. The guy asks us how many, Laurie
says three,
he assigns us Row 11 and 12, Colby walks right up to the gate without
hesitation, turns to us and says “Well, there’s no turning
back now.” I’m pretty sure I
hear a high-pitched
“AWESOME” at some point during the ride.
It beat my neck up pretty good, because I was spending
most of my time
watching him instead of the road, but he immediately wants to ride
again as
soon as we’re off. Toy Story
Mania is
cool. With the scooter, we go in the
wheel chair line. It’s one of the
best loading
arrangements we’ve seen, essentially a siding where all the
loading can be done
without affecting the movement of any other cars. Colby
sits with me (by request) and Laurie is
in the car behind us. It’s the only
fault I find with this attraction, I wish they’d load families of
three or four
into Rows 1 & 3 or Rows 2 & 4, so at least you could see each
other
throughout the ride. I outscore Colby by
a little, but that doesn’t mean I
win. We look at our categories and as a
result of the respective scores, I’m a Bird and Colby’s a
Beaver. He informs me that beavers beat
birds. Foiled again.
He
declares the Muppets
movie “awesome”, so we’re batting nearly 1.000 this
trip. He did get to touch Waldo’s
nose, he says, and
I don’t know how it could get any more awesome than that. On a bench
across from the
Star Speeder Picture Taking Spot, I’m listening to a boy explain
it to his
family. There’s just something
musical
about a ten-year-old Indian boy’s synopsis of Return of the Jedi. We’ve
been looking forward
to riding Star Tours with Colby, knowing that he’s such a huge
Star Wars
fan. If we hadn’t known it before,
it
would have been obvious watching him with his light saber the other
night. As soon as we get inside the
building, he
announces “C-3PO’s working today.”
In
the second queue room, he’s a little bothered by the fact that he
can’t
remember the name of that red robot, “but I think he was in the
movie with
Anakin.” He’s also very
excited when we
see the boarding instructions and discover that we may be riding with
Chewbacca. We
can’t hear all of Colby’s
comments during the ride, but they are fairly continuous.
Among them are “He’s not supposed to be
driving here” and “Darth Vader’s shooting at
us.” As we leave the ride,
it’s so obvious that
Colby has enjoyed his trip that the cast member just outside our
shuttle asks
if we’d like to ride again. Well,
duh!! So he tells us to wait while he
lets the others know what he’s doing. Now
you have to picture this, because the cast member is walking along a
couple
feet from the closed exit doors with his hand out toward them,
presumably so he
won’t get smacked with them if they open. At
the same time the thought crosses my mind, Colby says
out loud “He’s
using the force.” That’s one
of the
advantages of going to Disney in peak season, they use actual Jedi to
man this
ride. [On a side
note, I can’t
believe that on our 50th or 60th trip on this
shuttle we
just now noticed the red plastic strap on pilot Rex’s arm that
says “REMOVE
BEFORE FLIGHT”. Has that always been
there?] On our way
out of the park,
we’re walking past the closed Indiana Jones theater as Colby
starts
‘dunh-da-dunh-dunh’ing Indy’s theme song. We get out to the bus stop and have to wait
for what seems
like a long
time. He can’t figure out why all
those
buses are just sitting over there in the parking lot when we need one
over
here. But suddenly, the Fantasmic
fireworks go off and taking their cue, it’s like all the busses
wake up and
move to their respective stops. Colby
must want to stay up for some reason, because about three times on the
way back
(and around the whole Riverside loop) he repeats for us Stitch’s
“no sleeping” wake-up
call. But it doesn’t work, and
he’s out
before we get back. Day 5, It’s
Monday the 7th
of July, and we’re very excited about having breakfast with
Donald Duck at the
Tusker House this morning, and catching the Animal Kingdom attractions
we
missed the other day. We’re sharing
our
bus to the park with a British family who is having all sorts of fun,
right up
until they discover that this particular bus is not going to get them
to
Epcot. Poor saps. As
we’re walking from the bus stop to the
gate, I realize that the sun is low and coming over my shoulder and
Colby is
making sure that he walks ahead of me within my shadow.
If we can just keep the sun over our
shoulder, it’ll be like an invisible leash and our necks
won’t get quite so
much workout keeping track of him. We’re
still chuckling about
that poor lost British family as we get to the gate to be let in for
our 8:40
breakfast. We’re not on the list. What?!?!? “We
do have a After some
discussion, we
decide to go back to our original original plan to go to a water park
this
morning and We make a
quick stop back at
our hotel to change clothes, and head out for We’ve
always said you have
to be ready for whatever, because you never know what’s going to
turn a
particular kid on. Colby is very excited
to get our picture taken in the sleigh on the way in.
Okay. We wander
over to a place we
know you can always get a couple chairs (and is devoid of teenagers),
the area
overlooking Tike’s Peak. Colby
checks
out the slides they have there and is wildly unimpressed.
“Let’s do something else.”
No problem. The line
for the chair lift
isn’t going to get any shorter than it is right now, so
we’ll head up the
mountain. After probably ten or fifteen
minutes waiting for the lift, Laurie mentions to Colby that we’re
almost to the
end of the line. “I hope you mean
the front of the line!” Well
yes, I guess the ‘end’ is where we
‘started’. Halfway up the lift
we’re looking almost
straight down into the Summit Plummet slide, and Colby’s not 100%
sure he wants
to do that one anyway. We take
the Family Raft Ride
(large tube, seats six) with three other people who like to go really
fast. This is the only water ride
I’ve
ever been on that’s actually longer than you think it’s
going to be on the way
down. We all love it.
Then we get back to my third favorite ride in
all of Disney World, the He wants
to do the wave
pool, which at this park is actually the bobble pool.
Some of the ‘bobbles’ are two-foot waves
though, so it’s lots of fun. We
somehow
have developed a hankering for fried dough, so since I’m not much
of a bobbler
anyway, I offer to go back and get my room key so we can buy some. Turns out they don’t charge to room keys
at
the dough hut though, so Laurie kindly offers to make the second trip
back to
get real actual money. She brings all
our stuff back while Colby and I bobble some more. We get our
fried dough for
lunch, and dessert is blue cotton candy. We
don’t count points at Disney. After
a little more bobbling, we’re ready to go up the chair lift for
another Family
Raft Ride. About the time we get to the
lift, they stop it because of impending lightning, so we decide to head
out. Good call, since about the time we
get to the entrance they close the park and we’re ahead of the
rush to the bus. I have to
tell you here that
I produce these reports from brief notes taken on a voice recorder. That’s always a problem at water parks,
since
we don’t really have a waterproof recorder. However
Colby has graciously agreed to spend the bus ride
back to the
resort helping us remember what we’ve done here and in what order. He does a phenomenal job, and we don’t
think
he’s left anything out, except that one time when we had to give
him a three
minute time out for running too far ahead of us. (We’re
taking his word about that being the
Flamingo exit, but I’d probably bet on it.) We’re
all changed now and on
a bus to We also
have to explore the
rules concerning that yellow line on the floor up by the bus driver. No, your foot can’t be on it. No, your shoulders can’t be leaning out
over
it. No, every part of you has to be
completely behind it. “What if you
take
your shoe off and your shoe’s ahead of the line but you’re
completely behind
it?” See Colby, you’re why
federal
regulations on lawnmowers alone fill three rooms at the Library of
Congress. We get to
the park and start
talking about pin trading. Laurie has
some kind of golf ball pin that she wants to trade for a Dumbo pin for
his
other grandma. Colby wants to trade one
of his for the golf ball. She
won’t. Halfway up Some times
we worry that
these trips get to be one big blur for the kids, but his memory’s
working
fine. We go into the Columbia Harbour
House on Day 5 for dinner and he says “Boy, it’s nice air
conditioning in
here. Minnie sure didn’t have air
conditioning in her house!” That’s
for
sure, and that was on the morning of Day 1. We’ve
just gone back out
into the street again and Colby is extremely excited because he’s
spotted a
cast member with the apparently hard-to-find Dumbo pin for his other
grandma. He trades for it right away,
and it immediately goes into the fanny pack. Not
going to trade that one by accident either. In the
middle of
Frontierland, out of nowhere he mentions how bumpy that bridge was on
the Safari
at Animal Kingdom. I believe he’s
replaying this whole trip in his head while we’re making it! Country
Bears won’t be going
on his must-see-again list, he’s pretty fidgety throughout. Aladdin looks better, but about the time the
ride takes off, his hat flies off into the water. That
ride is wasted, since his entire focus
is on the hat. After the flight crew
fishes it out of the water for us, we immediately get in line again so
he can
actually enjoy the ride, which he does, thoroughly. In the
Tiki Room, his head
is on a swivel throughout the show, and everything is
“awesome”. He loves the Tiki
Gods, the Birds of Paradise
are especially awesome, and he wants to be sure we realize that all the
flowers
up in the ceiling are singing, too. Most of
the Jungle Cruise
jokes clear Colby’s head by quite a bit, but he really believes
we are in the
jungle and enjoys the trip. Laurie and I
enjoy the fact that Captain Jonny is one of the best skippers
we’ve ever had
here. At least half of his jokes are
ones we haven’t heard before, and that’s pretty hard to do
at this point. We wander
down the street to
ride Pirates, and Colby notices all kinds of things he’d missed
the first
time. When we get into the auction
plaza, with the two guys standing up on the bridge, he says “Wait
a minute,
there was a guy sitting on the bridge, why isn’t he here
tonight?” He’s relieved to
find him sitting on the next
bridge down. We may
finally be done with
the pin trading, because he has realized that he likes all the pins on
his
lanyard and doesn’t want to give any of them up.
We’re debating whether to go on While
we’re deciding on a
ride, Laurie decides it’s ice cream time. Colby
takes this opportunity to balance on a rock. “See
how I balance on a rock?” I tell him
that balancing on rocks is always
really cool, right up until the part where you fall off.
Ten seconds later, he falls off and scrapes
his knee all up. I’m practically
psychic. But ice cream heals most
wounds, in this case Colby’s first ever Mickey Bar.
It turns out the three napkins I grabbed are
a bare minimum. The wound is still
bleeding, so we stop in the gift shop for some bandaids.
They sell a little variety 9-pack from behind
the counter at all the shops for $2, which is nice because it saves a
trip all
the way back to the first aid station. Refreshed,
we decide on a
double trip on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. On
the first trip, he gets thrown around like a rag doll,
because he’s
focused on showing Grandma goats and other neat things he’s
spotted. On the second trip, he has his
hands up in
the air the whole time, except for that one hidden drop before you go
in the
mine, which takes his butt about six inches off the seat and causes him
to grab
the bar for dear life. But going down
the next hill his hands go up again, and he’s flopping again. On our way back into the station, he just
puts his hands behind his head with his elbows out and tells Grandma
“I was
just relaxing the whole time.” Colby and
I take the train
from Frontierland over to During
Laurie’s trip across
the park Colby’s dad had called for him, so now we’re on a
bench up the hill
from the train station and Colby’s on the phone.
His dad tells him he’s going to have to come
home early because he’s going to miss one of his baseball games. Colby has apparently already sorted this all
out,
because he tells Dad “I’m going to miss two games, and then
be back for the
last one!” He’s like any other
five year
old on a phone, with one leg up over the back, laying down, both legs
up, both
feet down. Another train comes into the
station and he says “Hear the train, Mom?”
Apparently she doesn’t, because he hops down and
runs over to the rail
saying “Here, I’ll show you” and holding the phone
out toward the train. He gets his sister
on and tells her he got
her fourteen Tinkerbell pins. We’re
going through the We take
another ride on Buzz
Lightyear before heading back to the hub. “There’s
our castle!” Well, we’ve
always thought of it as ours too. Spectro
Magic is in full swing, and our timing is perfect.
I load Colby on my shoulders and we take a
casual walk down Back at
our hotel, we have
to see if any of the night bunnies are out. It
doesn’t seem to be that dark out, but they sure
do blend in with the
ground well. Colby spots one right near
us, then after a while sees one out in the middle.
I see what looks like a stone down on the far
end, but that turns out to be number 3. Another
awesome day, and though our trip is winding down, we still have
breakfast with
Donald to look forward to. Day 6, Animal Kingdom, breakfast with
Donald No
seriously, we mean it
this time. It’s actually the right
day
for our character breakfast! It’s
overcast this morning and there’s a slight breeze, which bodes
well for the
temperatures today, even though the humidity is about 131.
Colby is wearing his Donald shirt today; who
knew Donald played basketball! He was
hoping that Grandma had a Daisy shirt, but no luck.
While we wait for the bus, he’s reassessing his
pins, to see if there are any he’s willing to trade.
From the sounds of it, he’s down to about
three tradeables. At the
park, Laurie has to
make a quick stop so I ask Colby if he wants to walk ahead with me to
check in or
wait for Grandma. “I’ll walk
with you,
she can catch up.” And he’s
walking
about twenty feet ahead of me, so I think he’s anxious for this
breakfast. And it’s absolutely
awesome, not only is
Donald there, but Daisy and Mickey and Goofy! And
that Daisy, she dots her “i” with a little
daisy!! Donald signs as “Donald Duck
#1”, so for the
rest of the day Colby’s singing “I’m Donald Duck and
I’m #1”, to the tune of …
something. He’s
the only one of the
grandkids who hasn’t wanted to spend even a minute shopping, but
he’s checking
out the pin station now. Nothing bought. The queue for the Safari provides us with an
opportunity for him to tell us all about what his summer back home is
like. Seems he spends a lot of time with
his best friend playing secret agent. Laurie’s
thinking that must be like cops and
robbers, only with higher
tech gear. What about Cowboys and
Indians? “Nope.
But we do play Indiana Jones!” We’re
trying to picture what that’s like with
two six-year-olds, but not too hard. The Safari
ride is nice, we
see lots of animals, no rhinos block our path, and I think this is the
first
baby giraffe I’ve seen. Ooh, Colby
just
spotted the baby white rhino! The tour
guide is excellent, speaking a little too fast, but telling us a lot of
things
we didn’t know before. Because the
scooter-accessible safari doesn’t exactly leave on a regular
basis, by the time
we get off we’re too late to see Flights of Wonder.
So we’ll make a quick potty stop and maybe go
over to Expedition Everest and see if we can lose our breakfast. On the way
to the bathroom,
we’re trying to see if Colby has decided what park we’re
going to
tomorrow. The last day is always
kid’s
choice, and he hasn’t been able to decide because he has about
three things in
each park he wants to do again. We
wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we end up at a water park. On the
corner between the
bridge and the Tusker House and the road to Colby
decides he’d like to
see It’s Tough to Be a Bug again. He
saw
this last week with his family, but apparently this is the first time
he’s
actually been sitting down on the bench at the end when the termites
and
cockroaches leave. It’s very cool
watching
his eyes pop and the laughter that follows. We finally
get to see
Flights of Wonder, which he finds pretty boring. Well,
you never know until you try. The
highlights though are an owl with “the
biggest bird eyes I’ve ever seen” and, of course, an
American eagle. On our way to Everest we
see an empty car go
through, which seems odd. The He
didn’t think he had ever
ridden Primeval Whirl until he sees it, then he remembers it. “It was my favorite ride!” By our estimate, he currently has 107
favorite rides. I offer to take the
outside of the car to give him a little cushion, but he insists on
being on the
end. We have one of those rides where
the wide-bodies in the middle are headed toward the corner just as we
get to
the corner, so our spinning keeps accelerating on every turn. We’re all a little wobbly when we get
off,
and Colby hit his head twice, and we make Grandma wait five minutes
before we
let her drive the scooter. We all
agree that we’re the
hottest we’ve been on our whole vacation, so it’s a good
time to get out of the
hottest park in the World and get back to the pool.
Good thing, because as we get off the bus at
our resort, we’re hearing pretty loud thunder.
And while we’re in the gift shop picking up our
picture of Colby on Rock
‘n’ Roller Coaster, it starts pouring.
So
we have to put on the ponchos we carried in our fanny packs all morning
just to
get from the gift shop to our room. Colby
decides he’s the luckiest of us because his
poncho covers his
whole legs. Mine barely covers my knees,
and we’re not sure what Laurie’s is covering on that
scooter. We’re too busy dodging
puddles to look. Instead of
the pool, we take
a two and a half hour nap, and now it’s a quarter to five and
we’re headed to
Epcot. Laurie notes that this is the
first day we’ve used our park hoppers, which must be some kind of
record for
us. It’s still raining quite hard
while
we’re on the bus, and after a bit Colby pulls his poncho out of
his fanny pack
and puts on quite a mime show for us, without realizing that
we’re watching
him. We have it rolled pretty tight,
probably five or six inches long and a couple inches thick. He holds it for a while and then decides that
it would be easier to hold it under his hat. That
doesn’t work so well, so he attempts to balance
it on top of his
brim. On a bench, maybe, but on the
moving bus, no. Maybe if I unroll it a
little and drape it over the top of my head. No,
one side’s longer than the other, let’s
adjust it a little bit. No, that
doesn’t work, let’s unroll both ends
so it’s even. No, it wants to fall
off
my shoulder. Ah, let’s just put the
damn
thing on. And then,
my personal highlight
of our entire trip. He has his poncho
on, with the hood up. The hood is
sticking out about four inches in front of his face, so it’s very
ghost-like. He slowly turns, looks up at
me, and with a completely straight face and the deepest voice a
six-year-old
can possibly muster, says “Luke, I am your father.” As
we’re walking up toward
the Land, Colby spots some stones in the ground that have lights
shining up
through them and says “See Grandma, I told you I could find
something cool at
Epcot!” One thing you’re
reminded of
fairly quickly when you’re wearing a poncho and responsible for a
five-year-old
is the importance of peripheral vision. We
have none. Laurie and I almost have to
separate a little so we can triangulate on the little bugger and keep
him in
sight. Living in
the Land has a
number of “awesome” things, and quite a few that are at
least “cool”, and lots
of questions. “What if you dropped
your
hat in the water?” “What if
that roof
broke?” “What if those balls
dropped off
the ceiling?” I think he’s
going to be
another Irwin Allen. We have
dinner at the
Sunshine Food Fair and Colby wants to have exactly what he had the
other
day. You’re on your own dude, I
can’t
remember what I had for breakfast. Here’s
a tray, have at it. Honey, I
Shrunk the Audience
is next, and Colby wants me to take him out of the theater while
we’re small so
he can stay little the rest of his life. The
more he thinks about it though, the more worried
he’s getting. “When I shrink,
if I fall out of the chair,
will you get me?” I tell him the
chairs
are probably going to shrink too, but we can hold hands if he wants. Once we’re into the movie and the
theater
actually does shrink, it doesn’t look like it did so he’s
feeling a little bit cheated. Outside,
we run across my
favorite water art of all time, the Leaping Fountains.
He asks us “Can we stay here and watch these
for a bit?” Absolutely.
This is how you have fun at Disney World, if
you really try. Standing in your poncho
in the rain watching fountains. After a
while, we ask him if he’d like to go see Figment, and he says
“After I watch
this about a hundred times.” Man
after
my own heart. He also likes the upside
down waterfalls, but he has that one figured out. “There’s
a big air conditioner at the bottom
blowing the water up the hill.” We walk
down to the Figment
entrance and Colby says to the cast member standing outside under the
big
umbrella, “Awesome show!!” We
think he’s
talking about the fountains! He really
likes this ride and is completely unprepared for our free
‘scent’, unlike his
big sister who had spotted it a mile away on her trip and had her nose
plugged. There’s no one in line when
we
return, so we stay in the car for a second trip. Yesterday,
we had mentioned something about
back-to-back rides on It’s
10:00, well into Extra
Magic Hours, and we’re ready to go down for one more ride on
Spaceship Earth
and head out. After the ride, it occurs
to me that I probably wouldn’t have made such a goofy face for
our in-flight
movie if I had realized that they put all the faces up on the big
screen in the
exit room. How did I miss that
before? It’s also cool how they take
the
faces and drop them as points of light onto each person’s home on
a world
map. It’s interesting to see where
today’s visitors came from. Obviously
Florida is pretty much all white, as well as the Boston-Washington
corridor,
but there’s also quite a bit of white in the Midwest, pockets of
Mexico, Chile,
Brazil, Puerto Rico, Great Britain, and one little piece of Spain. As
we’re walking out
underneath the big ball, Laurie mentions she’s going to put her
poncho back on
even though it’s not raining, because when she had it off inside
the ride she
had goose bumps. Colby looks up at
Spaceship
Earth and says “That’s what happened to that ball.” We get
back to French
Quarter and Laurie hears a conversation behind us on the sidewalk, from
three
people who have just arrived for the start of their vacation, having
driven straight
through since three this morning. It
works out great, because Laurie’s able to give them our three
Super Fast Passes
for Hollywood Studios, and they’re thrilled.
[ Now if I had transcribed these notes right after our
trip instead of
eight months later, I might have some idea what these ‘super fast
passes’ were
all about, and how we acquired them. We
know we never got anything from the Dream Squad, and we’re
picturing something
that looked like a regular fast pass but was good for any one of the
fast pass rides
at that park, but we have no clue beyond that. ] On the
walk back to our
room, Colby is quite enjoying the fact that “My mom and dad are
in bed
already. It’s even after the
pool’s
bedtime!” It’s been a very
long day, and
though we had best intentions of packing tonight, not one of us has the
energy. We think we’ve settled on
the Day 7, Kid’s Choice, Hollywood
Studios Well, his
choice for As
we’re getting ready,
Laurie finds the camera that we thought we had left at home and have
been
working without all week. “How much
does
that bite”, I ask, rhetorically. “A
lot”, she replies, disgustedly. At
least
we got some good use from the It’s
8:25 when we get on the
bus, which is pretty remarkable considering we packed everything this
morning. We get to the Studios just as
they open the
turnstiles, and slip into those stores on the left side of the street
and pass
about 700 people on our way to the rope, about two minutes before drop. I’m not sure how many people slip out of
the
line down We tell
him we’re almost
there, and he says “I know, I see the monkeys hanging across the
street!” We’re in line for
fp’s when some random guy
is panning around with his video camera and gets down to Colby and says
“Hey,
that ain’t my kid!” No, but
nice
framing, good work! We go through the
standby line right after getting the passes, and we all have a ball. Now we’re in cruise mode.
We’ve already reached the time when we could
get more fast passes, and we briefly think about going over to Rock
‘n’ Roller
Coaster to get some. We’re all so
tired,
the feeling quickly passes. He wants
to ride Star Tours
again, but he doesn’t want to have Rex for a driver, because
“He’s not a very
good driver.” On the way, we end up
in
the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Playground again. We’ll
end up logging more time here this trip than
we have in all our
other trips put together. He’d
really
like to get up in that spider web, but with the rain this morning
they’re not
allowing it. As long as we’re sort
of in
the neighborhood, we pick up fast passes for Star Tours. Laurie
thinks it must be
time for breakfast, so we duck into the Writer’s Stop (which
I’ll probably
always call ‘Ellen’s Buy the Book’).
Breakfast for Laurie and me is an enormous Rice Krispies
Treat, but
Colby has been wanting ice cream since 8:00 this morning, so an ice
cream
cookie will do. Also a slush, because
that’s been mentioned a number of times this week as well. We
haven’t seen the Indiana
Jones show in a long time, but Colby really likes it.
We’ve looked at the times guide, and there’s
a show at 11:00 that runs 30 minutes, and an 11:50 LMA show. We figure if we sit in the far back right at
Indiana Jones and are among the first out of the theater, the two will
fit
nicely. We’re
walking along and he
wants to know where the Finding Nemo ride is, and we tell him Epcot. “Well why didn’t we go on it
yesterday?” We were hitting things
we had missed earlier,
what can I tell you. We never made it
into World Showcase at all this trip, and only saw Illuminations from a
distance. We had talked about it, and
the Kid Stops, but there was no interest at all. This trip
has had a very
different feel to it, with Laurie crippled and me with the flu, but
Colby has
been an absolute trooper. We had a cheap
umbrella stroller with us, just as we have with all the kids, but
he’s the
first who never wanted it once. (In
fact, we left it in the room when we checked out because it would cost
more to
check it on the plane than it cost.)
We were also amazed when it came time to pack
this morning. We told him “Take
everything in your dresser and your dirty laundry bag and put it in
your
suitcase”, and he simply set about the work and kept at it until
it was done,
with nothing else needed to be said. That
just doesn’t usually happen when you’re
this tired ;-) It’s
time for our Toy Story
fast pass, and Colby has to decide who to ride with.
He’s ridden once with each of us, and
immediately picks “Papa”. Yay,
me! And then a minute later, he says
“When I come
back when I’m 10, can I ride Toy Story Mania again?” Doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.
At 10:40, the standby time is 80 minutes, and
the current fast pass return times are for 4:00. We hustle
our butts over to
Indiana Jones, working up quite a good little sweat in the process. It’s 11:02, and they won’t let us
in. The cm is actually being kind of
snotty about
it too, telling us we should have been in line a half hour ago. Well we probably should have, but are you
sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable working at a car wash or
something where
you wouldn’t have to talk to all these annoying people? As we turn to walk away, Colby brings back
his ‘deep’ voice to start dunh-dunh-dunh’ing the
Darth Vader theme. On our way
to Star Tours, we
run across a group of young Jedi in training, so we have to watch that
for
fifteen minutes. We ask him if he’s
ready to go home, and he says he wants “to stay in Disney forever
and live
here.” Aren’t you going to
miss your mom
and dad and sister? “No,
they’ll move
here too, I KNOW my sister would live here with me.” I happen
to look over during
our shuttle flight and he’s sitting with his hands folded in his
lap. We haven’t seen him sit like
that before,
he’s usually got a good grip on the arm rests, but then it dawns
on us that
that’s how we’re sitting. Once
again, be
careful what you do, because you’re definitely being watched. And probably being copied. As we exit
the attraction,
he is just talking a mile a minute about green light sabers, and masks,
and
whatever else. He has not said a word
about shopping the entire trip, and we really thought it was because he
had no
interest. But we finally realize that we
did off-handedly mention way back on that first night, in the Emporium,
that we
usually wait until the last day to buy whatever stuff we want to buy. He has patiently and silently waited. Now he’s ready. So
we shop. If you had
ever told us we’d
do this, we would have said you were insane, but we’re now seated
for our
SECOND Lights, Motors, Action show of the trip. The
number one highlight of the show is Herbie, the Love
Bug. He loves the show as much as he has
the other
times he’s seen it. We’re
secretly glad
we don’t have more days ;-) You know
that thing where
you get a really serious look on your face and point your first two
fingers
back and forth between your own eyes and someone else’s, to
signify “I’m
watching you”? Well there’s a
mirror
along the wall where we’re walking out, and Colby’s doing
that to his
reflection, with a little grin. Hey!! The spider web is finally open, so he’s
climbing! He’s made a connection
with a
couple other unrelated boys who are probably eight and four, and
it’s fun
watching them collectively make decisions and follow each other around. But now
that time has come
when we have to leave our last park. Back
at the resort, we had left our suits in the outside
of our luggage
and are going to have about 45 minutes of pool time before we have to
leave for
our flight. Colby immediately finds a
buddy who looks to be about the same age, and offers “I’ll
count how long you
can stay under if you count how long I can.”
The other boy has a little harder time with it than Colby
does, but
they’re working together well and I’m hearing numbers like
22 and 18 being
thrown about. Five seconds is the
longest I’ve seen, but they’re probably using a different
measurement system. We end up
getting a little
bonus time with Colby because our flight out to We finally
get in the air
three hours after we were supposed to, and bob and weave around
thunderstorms
all up the coast, leading to another first for Laurie and me -- twenty
minutes
in a holding pattern north of Philadelphia, flying in lazy eight-mile
circles
at 8600 feet. Colby was awake until
probably With our
seventh awesome
grandbabies adventure under our belts, we certainly feel remarkably
lucky. First, because our children have
raised
children with active imaginations and wonderful senses of humor;
second,
because they’re willing to let their babies wander off for a week
with Grandma
and Papa; and third, because there’s such a cool place to share
with them while
we’re getting to really know them. Can’t
wait for trip number 8 with Nya in March. I
should have the trip report done around Christmas. |
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