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Grandbabies 4.0, the Launch, 3/30/05

Four years ago, we borrowed a tradition from someone we met in a queue at the Magic Kingdom, and began taking our grandchildren to Disney World.  We take them one at a time, the year before they enter kindergarten.  Each of our three previous trips has been unique, with one granddaughter standing in EVERY line for autographs, one afraid of anything dark or high or fast or loud or spinny, and one fascinated watching the rabbits eat the castle lawn.  But mostly, we've gotten to know each of them as individuals, outside the family dynamics, and created bonds we'll cherish forever.  Plus, we've had four extra Disney trips out of the deal for ourselves!

 This year we have to make three trips (damn!), since Laurie's three children thought it would be cool to each have babies the same spring five years ago.  First up is Haley (the third of our oldest's four), for a trip the week after

Easter.  She's had plenty of preparation from her sisters Elysia and Serina (who made our first and third trip), and from a trip with her mom and sisters a year ago.  She'll recall some things, but it will be a very different trip for her, since she’ll be calling the shots (mostly) as to what we do and don’t.  The only solo time we’ve ever had with her is a couple of overnights at our house, so we're looking forward to a whole week of quality time.

We pick Haley up at preschool, and her teacher tells us her backpack is going to be very heavy, because there were a lot of people who had told her they wanted to go with her.  We ask her on the way out of the school if all the kids in her class had wanted to go with her.  She says "No.  [pause, pause]  It was adults."  See, so we're not the only ones.

 We never know how well it's going to go until we get started, not really knowing the child’s true personality.  But I think we learn everything we need about two miles down the road, when I look in the back seat and see Haley telling her Pooh (who's now wearing Tinkerbell sunglasses) "We have to go to the airport before we can go to Disney."  Yeah, she's ready.  Plus, I know I'm back in the company of the ever-entertaining five year old mind when I hear a recent discovery like "Everything I ever said is still in my head."  Enjoy it, hon, there will come a time when it’s all still there but you can’t necessarily find it.

The scariest part of the plane trip, for all the kids, is the acceleration for takeoff, when both the jets and the wheels are very loud.  Haley immediately leans into Laurie, goes into a full tuck with knees up and head down, and is in pre-cry mode when the wheels come up, and the nervousness instantly evaporates.  We're lucky enough to have the plane bank hard toward our side, so she can see the whole city at one time, saying "That's AWESOME!!!"  She's a little ticked off because we told her we'd be flying above the clouds, and this is one of the few times we have an absolutely clear flight the whole way.  We decide to let her sleep through the landing, and wake her up (one cabin light at a time) hoping for no grumpies.  None whatsoever, another welcome surprise.

 Our $20 umbrella stroller broke on the flight, at least in part because we checked it ahead of time instead of at the gate, leaving it at the bottom of the pile instead of the top.  Nothing serious, just that one front wheel would fall off whenever we picked it up.  Good thing Laurie always has a fistful of little rubber bands, a few of them around the post made a workable fix.  An omen though, perhaps, if you believe in that sort of thing.  Five-year-olds really don't need a stroller under normal circumstances, and some will initially refuse it.  But a week at Disney World is about as far from a normal circumstance as you can get, and anything you can do to keep the child from getting tired is going to increase everyone's enjoyment immensely.

We had to wait later than we like to book rooms for this trip (job schedule uncertainties), and couldn't get on site for our whole trip, so we're spending our first two nights at the Motel 6.  Minuses?  No elevator to our second floor room, no dresser, no alarm clock, no toilet cover to hold my towels and clothes in the morning.  Pluses?  34 bucks a night, clean bathroom, comfortable beds, a Perkins next door, and they left the light on for us.  Bonus?  No hassle deciding what to tip the bellman.

 We all fall asleep quite quickly, despite being very excited about going to the Animal Kingdom in the morning.

 Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Haley, on our first park day of a week-long post-Easter adventure.

 In addition to the broken stroller deal, I can't find my recorder this morning, so I end up making my trip notes on the back of a flyer all day.  Throw anything you want at us, we don't care, we're at Disney.

Haley beat the alarm by about 20 minutes this morning and I hear "Wake up, Papa, we have to go to Disney!"  We park at the Animal Kingdom and while I'm standing by the car for a couple minutes adjusting our stroller fix, she says "My legs are tired."  Yes I know, Princess, it's been a long day so far.  We get Haley's pass, and as we make our way up through the Oasis, she echoes our tram driver's warning -- "Be careful, it's a jungle out there".  Our plan is to get a FastPass for the safari and check out the Pangani Trail.

 On our way past the road to Camp Minnie-Mickey though, a CM is telling us the Lion King show starts in five minutes, so we head over there.  We're extremely flexible.  Haley loves the show, especially the dancers.  After the show, she goes over to get an autograph from Minnie, but doesn't want to wait in a line for any of the other three characters there.  [Hmm, kid doesn’t want to wait in lines for autographs, I think we just added a dozen hours to our trip right there, this is going to be GREAT!]  While she's getting her book signed, Gi'Tar Dan is entertaining the troops.  I still miss him in the Diamond Horseshoe.  (Miss the Diamond Horseshoe a lot too, for that matter.)
 
We make it back to the Safari at about 10:30, get our FastPass, and head down the Pangani Trail.  Haley's enjoying the fish, mostly.  And above us is something I don't remember noticing before, upside down bird nests.  Cool.  She only spends about 10 seconds more than I ever have with the naked mole rats, another good sign for our trip.  Though there are only two gorillas out, she's fascinated by them, both by their size and the way they're stripping little leaves for their lunch.  I pick her up to give her a better look, and though she's grateful for the lift, as I put her down she wipes her arm and says "You're getting sweaty!"  Well honey, it's getting toward mid-day and well on its way to 87 degrees, so guilty as charged. She loves the safari, though she's a little concerned about the bumpy ride at first.  Once she realizes that the lack of seatbelts probably means not much danger, she quickly becomes First Pointer for each new animal though, and giggles quite a bit after we make it over a very rickety bridge.

 She's "a little hungry" at 11:30, so we buy her some grapes at a stand and make our way back to Conservation Station.  On the trail, she's sorting out which leaves are real and which are not real, which isn't always as easy here as it sounds.  I take a break outside while Haley and Laurie enter the station, and it's quite comical as six Americans are struggling with head math to let the British woman know that we're expecting high temperatures around 30 today and tomorrow and 20 on the weekend.  (Let's see, does the 32 come first or the divide?)

She doesn't spend much time in the Station at all, getting an autograph and picture with Pocahontas, but actively avoiding Rafiki.  Maybe the face character seems safe but the furry guy doesn't, I don't know.  Haley says "You said there's a petting zoo, where is it?"  Once we get out there though, she doesn't want to touch any of the animals, which makes you kind of wonder what she thought a petting zoo was.

 We get back to the Tusker House for lunch at 12:50, and it's extremely crowded.  The CM cleaning the table says "You should have seen it yesterday!"  We're only four days after Easter, we've done this before, the crowds will be much smaller by the weekend.  Haley declares the mac’n’cheese “too cheesy”.  [No, that’s the Jungle Cruise.]  Elysia always told us that Disney had the best macaroni and cheese in the whole world, so there you go.  By the end of lunch, Haley's getting cold and wants to go back outside.  She's quite taken with the percussion group out front.  We had planned to take a break this afternoon, but she's doing great and we didn't want to miss Flights of Wonder (which has it's last show at 3) or the parade, so we guess we'll just stay here.

 Laurie spots Baloo and asks Haley if she wants to go get his autograph, and she says "Sure."  While standing in line, I'm entertained by a four-year-old who's posing right in front of Baloo but facing away from him with her hands down at her side and her fingers coochy-cooing that thick fur behind her, grinning from ear to ear.  Even though there's no line at all right next door for King Louie, Haley has no interest whatsoever. 

 We just get nicely seated for the 2:00 Flights of Wonder, and for the first time hear those dreaded words.  "Are we going to do any rides???"  [It’s no accident that we always save the Magic Kingdom for last with the kids, or we’d be hearing this all the time.]  She saw this show with her mom, and is quite bored about 10 minutes in.  For myself though, I had been quite disappointed when I learned a while back that Guano Joe had retired, and Laurie had been quite disappointed with his replacement (his cousin Guano Joe) on one of her trips.  But this trip, we get to see a new replacement (his nephew Guano Joe), and I think he did a fine job.

On our way into Dinoland, we run into That Family, with a harried mom dragging a crying kid and yelling "All right, we're DONE, we're going HOME."  We really do have a knack for not pushing the kids, probably because we focus on that.  In four trips now the only meltdown we've ever experienced was Serina's fear-induced exit from the opening of Illuminations.

 While in line for TriceraTop Spin, Haley asks "Can I have the controllers?"  Well certainly you can, it's your trip, so she and Laurie sit in the front with me in the back.  Most of the kids have kept the car pretty close to ground level, but after the initial liftoff and descent, Haley puts it right back at the top again and then bounces it up and down up there, giggling the whole time. We immediately get in line again and I ask if I can run the up-and-down this time, fully expecting her tell me no way, like all the other kids have.  But she says "Sure!"  This is one easy-going kid we've got here, what a joy. y

 Though this is Haley's trip, grandparents as young as us want to have our own fun too, so we thought we'd ride Primeval Whirl and do the child swap.  When we did that a couple years ago with Alexis, they had all three of you go through the line together and then shunted the child and a parent off into a holding area while the other parent rode.  I thought that would keep Haley busy and give her a good view of the ride.  Now, though, they let one parent in line and give the other a FastPass sort of thing.  So Haley and I hang around outside while Laurie goes through the line.  It doesn’t take nearly all of the 15 minute standby line time for the waiting to get pretty old for Haley, and suddenly she says "Hey, I've got an idea.  When it's your turn to ride, is it okay if me and Nana Soccer ride the dinosaur again?"  Absolutely.  Smart girl.  [FWIW, “Nana Soccer” is a name Laurie picked up when the kids were toddlers and she helped me coach a youth soccer team.]

 I get to ride the Whirl with a 20-year-old British girl and her mom who are first-timers.  They ask me what the ride is like, and I tell them "it's kind of goofy, but it's fun."  Then for some reason (maybe weight distribution), once we started spinning we never changed direction.  On every corner, we just spun faster.  By the end of the ride, I felt like I was on Mission:SPACE, and the Brits were looking at me like "Why didn't you WARN us???"

 Meantime, Haley happily bounces her dinosaur on her third consecutive trip.  After her ride is over and before I finish, Laurie takes the opportunity to explain the second of our only two big rules for the kids (the first is no hide-and-seek outside the room).  Laurie gets down on one knee to talk to Haley and beckons a cast member over.  The CM comes over and also squats down so she’s on Haley’s level.  Laurie says to Haley “If Papa or I ever get lost, you go to anyone who’s wearing one of these special name tags, because they work here.  You tell them we’re lost, and they’ll help you find us.”  The CM nods as Laurie continues “And they’ll ask your name, and what will you tell them?”  “Haley Robbins.”  “And they’ll ask you my name, and what will you tell them?”  “Nana Soccer.”  “Well my name is Laurie Jennings, but if you tell them Nana Soccer, they’ll find me.”  At which point the cast member tells her “Yes, we will.”

 We make our way back up to the Asia entrance to stake out a parade spot, and I go back to get FPs for the Kali River Rapids.  The return time is 7:00, and it’s my theory that there are more unused FPs issued for Kali than any other attraction.  We’ll be gone by then, but standby is only 30 minutes, so we'll ride Kali right after the parade.  Which Haley absolutely loves.  She thinks it's neat that they have the same stilt guys they had at the Lion King.

 While we waited for the parade, Haley was noticing all kinds of people wearing those special name tags.  The other girls really never commented much on it, but she’s quite excited by how many of those people there are.  The Rapids after the parade are great fun, Haley thinks it’s pretty neat that I’m the one who gets soaked (I had an empty seat up-splash from me) and she stays relatively dry.

 Things are quite bouncy as we leave AK at 5:00, it's been a great first day.  On the way out, Haley's quite excited to get an autograph and picture of some bear named -- Kocla??? She doesn't have any idea who he is, and I don't either, unless Fran and Ollie are hiding in the bushes.  [ Okay, I discover later that KODA is from Brother Bear, I haven’t seen EVERY Disney movie;-) ]  But in spite of not knowing who it is, she wants a picture and autograph, so who am I to argue.  Yet when I ask if she wants to also get Chip and Dale, who are right nearby, she says "No, I don't want them."  Can't figure her out.

 On our way back to Motel 6, Haley shares with us that "We have a really nice house to stay in while we're here."  I guess because we have a pool in our backyard and a Perkins next door?  There's no shortage of things adults take for granted, she's quite disconcerted when we enter the room and it turns out somebody made our beds while we were gone.  Apparently they don't have bed fairies where she lives.  Another minus at the Motel 6, the pool is unheated.  Laurie and I only make it to Step 1, and 15 seconds there is more than we need.  It must be kid-warm though, because Haley's loving it.

 About 5 minutes after she's in the pool, predictably, she has to go to the bathroom.  She says "But I'll have to dry off before I go in the room."  Laurie tells her she doesn’t, and I wish you could see the look of total disbelief on her face.  She says "You don't CARE????"  It's as if she was on one of those family-swapping shows and thinking "WHAT kind of rules do you people LIVE by??"

 Tomorrow, we move back home to the All-Star Sports.

 Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Haley, on the second day of our week-long post-Easter adventure.

 We had planned to spend the early part of today at MGM and the evening at Epcot, and then visit a water park on Saturday, our third day.  We find that after a shortish first day at Animal Kingdom and a long second day, the kids need a break.  But the forecast for tomorrow is a high of around 70, so it will probably be about 58 in the morning.  That may be kid-warm, but we’re not water parking in that.  So we’re just going to switch days, since it’s going to be in the upper 80’s again today.

 During shower time, Laurie and I are discussing which water park, what to do in the afternoon and evening, that sort of thing.  Meanwhile, Haley’s all dressed, lying on her stomach on the bed with her cheeks in her hands, and finally gets to the point where she just says “Will you guys stop talking and just get dressed.”  Many of the words she says could be taken as mean or disrespectful, unless you actually hear them and see her face as we are.  She doesn’t have a surly bone in her body, from what we can tell, and her statements are simply matter of fact.  It’s really quite refreshing.

 At 8:45 we check out of our lovely Motel 6.  Laurie has a package to drop off at the Animal Kingdom Lodge for a client, and then we’re going to drop off our luggage and pre-check in at the All Star Sports before heading over to Blizzard Beach.  The girls have their bathing suits on under shorts and a shirt, as girls often do, while I’m wearing my swimming trunks, a t-shirt, and sandals.  We all have dry clothes in a bag to change into this afternoon.

 I only mention our state of dress because we have to go through the “security” gate to get into the All Stars, and the guy at the gate wants to see my photo ID.  I tell him we’re checking in (which used to be sufficient) and explain to him that I’m dressed for the pool and everything’s somewhere in the trunk, but he’s not having it.  Laurie has her driver’s license handy and shows it to him, but he needs mine.  I tell him (I thought somewhat reasonably) that the room’s in Laurie’s name, but he’s not having it.  I think about asking him if we can back up and switch drivers (because they only ever ask for the driver’s ID), but I’m pretty sure he’ll be having none of it.  So I say “Well it’s in the trunk somewhere, are you telling me I need to pull over up here and go through my luggage?”  Yep.  I can’t believe going through customs into Hungary would be this bad.  After digging through half my luggage, I remember I put it in the shorts I have in the bag in the back seat, pull it out, and show it to him.  He nods without a word and lets us go.  It’s not very often I encounter someone who needs, more than anything else, a good smack up side the head, but I’m sorry, this jackass does.

 I take care of stowing the bags while Laurie does the check in.  We always prefer to be in the Touchdown building, but we’re going to end up somewhere back in Tennis.  We stayed there once before (with Alexis), and it’s not too bad.

 A little after 9:30, we’re on our way to Blizzard Beach.  One big advantage of staying on site is the food courts, you can grab anything from coffee to breakfast very handily.  We got up a couple hours ago at our off-site hotel and Laurie hasn’t had her coffee yet, which makes me proud of her that she wasn’t as edgy as me at Customs.  I feel lucky that the gate’s already up as we drive out, if we had to stop for them to raise it, we might both have to produce passports.

 BB opened at 9, so there are quite a few folks in the park already.  Laurie and Haley get a locker and stake out some chairs over in the Tike’s Peak area while I get in line for the chair lift.  It’s probably a 15 minute wait for the chair lift (with the girls joining me for the ride up), then another 20 minutes waiting on top of the mountain for the Teamboat Springs family raft ride.  The view is really cool from up there, Haley recognizes the Big Tree in Animal Kingdom, and the Expedition Everest coaster mountain is going to look really cool when it’s done. 

 I don’t care how warm it is out, that first good splash of water at a water park is … invigorating.  Laurie and I both love this ride, but Haley – not so much.  She doesn’t put it on her list of things to do again later. 

 Now that that’s out of the way, we head over to the children’s section, Tike’s Peak. Haley surveys all the slides and such from below, and decides to go with the slow water slide, the one that’s 20 feet long with a straight slope and no turns.  But she quickly realizes there’s so little water that you have to scooch your butt to get down, so that’s no good.  She immediately goes over to the regular kids’ water slide and just loves that, running back to the top each time.  After about four trips, I ask her if she wants to do the tube slide right next to it, but she has no interest.  As long as you find something that works, you might as well stick with it, even if it means running to the top and sliding down about thirty times in a row, which it does. if !vmli

 I think she may have tired herself a little from the running, because she suggests it’s time for a Lazy River ride.  For those of you who haven’t been to either Blizzard Beach or Typhoon Lagoon, they each have a Lazy River.  (I know they have official names, but for us it’s just Lazy River.)  It’s just a great big concrete ditch, varying from probably 12 to 20 feet wide and 3 to 3 ½ feet deep, that meanders all the way around the outside of the park.  No drops or rapids or anything (though there are some minor waterfalls that it’s fun to avoid or push people into).  It’s full of curves, so you never are seeing a very big stretch of it at a time, which really gives you a sense of floating down a stream somewhere.  It gets its flow from a few big underwater air jets sprinkled about, and we think it takes about 20 minutes to make a complete circuit.  There are 5 or 6 entry points, and you just grab an inner tube and start floating.

 This is just the ticket, for all of us.  I try to get Haley to test the depth and see if she can stand up, but she’s more than happy to just lay across the top of the tube and sun herself like Grandma.  We eventually make our way around to our starting point, and Haley immediately requests a second circuit.  (Cool, I won’t have to wake Laurie up ;-)  We get about half way around the second time before she decides she wants to walk back through the pool to our base.  We forgot that there’s constant wave action in the Blizzard Beach pool.  It’s not a lot, but it really is pretty strong for a 5-year-old.  (It’s knee-deep where I am, and I’m having trouble walking.)

 When we get back, Haley takes a couple more runs on the water slide while Laurie gets lunch, then informs me she wants to try the tube ride.  “What do I have to do?”  Well, you have to take one of these tubes by the handles, and carry it up to the top where that girl will help you get started.  This is where I was prepared to put my foot down and tell her she had to do it herself, but I didn’t get a chance as she grabbed the tube and took off up the path.  She loves it, giggling all the way down, and does it 12 more times before lunch arrives.  She does comment once, on about trip 5, that the tube’s a little hard to carry, but never asks for help or even slows down to tell me. 

 After lunch and a few more slides, we change our clothes and take the rental car back to drop it off at the Dolphin.  WHAT THE HECK IS THIS???  THERE’S NOT EVEN A GATE AT THE DOLPHIN!!  NO CUSTOMS!!  SOUND THE ALARMS!!  Apparently the kind of folks staying here don’t need the kind of protection from terrorists that the four-to-a-room high school football players at the All Stars need.  Drop-off of the car is exceptionally easy, as the valet crew out front takes care of the whole deal.

We spend a couple minutes checking out the fountain in the Dolphin, then catch the boat over to MGM.  At the end of the street on our way in, Haley spots a Stitch she’d really like, and we tell her she can get it on our way out if she wants.  It’s about 3:15 when we get back to check out times for the Little Mermaid and Playhouse Disney.  Each is 40 minutes away, so we decide to wander down the street towards the Muppets.  On the way, she spots JoJo and Goliath, but doesn’t want either of them.  She is, however, quite interested in catching Daisy Duck further down the street.  Unfortunately for us, Daisy’s CM friend says that the people already in line are going to be the last ones, because Daisy needs a little break and will be back later.  We ask her if she wants to get Mickey (indoors further down the street), and she has to peek in the door before deciding she does.

 As long as we’re back here, we wander over and get FastPasses for the new Lights, Motors, Action stunt show that’s currently in soft opening.  They have three shows today, and we’ll be seeing the last.  Even if you’re not going to the stunt show, you’d be well-advised to know what the show times are, because you want to see the Muppets or Star Tours while the shows are running instead of right after 3000+ people have been dumped out into the street in that area.

 There’s actually a bit of line for the Muppets, which we’ve seldom encountered.  We always try to make this the first 3D show the kids see, because it’s the least intimidating.  Haley loves it.  On the way out, I spot Woody, Buzz, and Jesse and ask her if she wants to get their autographs, and she says “Well not ALL of them!”  As we go around the corner, she sees Kermit and Miss Piggy, and really wants to get Miss Piggy’s though.  They’re signing (stamping) together, and I really was hoping to see how Kermit would react to “Not YOU!”  but the ever-polite Miss Haley deprived me of that opportunity.

 She’s very interested in the robots in the Star Tours queue, we don’t recall any of the other kids more than noticing.  The ride, however, is one time only.  We told her she could just close her eyes during the really scary parts, which turned out to be most of the first part and all the “city” part (the Death Star scenes).  So even though it’s a fairly short ride, I’m guessing she saw about 40 seconds of it.

 We messed up a bit here, we forgot about the parade and it’s about three-fourths over when we exit Star Tours.  Can’t even get close enough for her to get a look from my shoulders, so she’s a little bummed.  Once the crowd clears, we make our way over to the Backlot Express for dinner.

 Lights, Motors, Action is definitely worth a checkout; it’s sort of the Indiana Jones show on speed.  (Pun intended.)  It’s a little boring for Haley by the 10 minute mark, but like everything else that isn’t on her A-list, she hangs in without complaining.  There is a ton of skill, cool music, some cute setups, and the cast seemed pretty well on top of the whole thing already.  And 5000 seats is a BAT.  I asked the CM out front what kind of crowds they’d been getting, and she said they hadn’t sold one out yet, but they’ve been close and most shows have been to around 3500.

 At 6:20 we get back down to the Mermaid end of the street to discover that both it and the Playhouse are next showing at 6:45, so I guess we have to make a choice.  And, just like you would -- we choose Popsicles!!  While we’re eating those, we get to chat with three families and the grandma who are quite intrigued by our one grandchild at a time program.  The conversation started as I was trying to keep ahead of my rapidly melting popsicle when a 6-year-old nearly took my ankles out with a stroller.  I did the one-foot side-step shuffle, protected all skin, and never spilled a drop (or even looked up, I guess).  The mom was beside herself apologizing to me, and I told her “Hey, I’ve got eight grandchildren age eight and under, I’ve had a fair amount of projectile avoidance training.”  I thought it was kind of cute that as I described all our trips for them, all three moms were ready to sign up but grandma seemed much, much less eager.

 Haley thought the Little Mermaid show was great, “all except for that Ursula part.”  At 7:15, her request is “Let’s get Stitch and go back to the hotel and swim.”  This girl has a couple little moves that we’ve found quite cute so far, including a Fanny Wiggle.  That’s the one where you put your elbows up almost to horizontal, bend your knees slightly, and wiggle your butt.  The first time we saw it, we weren’t sure of the context and thought it was a Neener, Neener sort of thing.  But we understand it now.  She sees the Stitch we saw while entering the park, and thinks it’s a little too big.  (Now this is barely bigger than standard teddy-bear size, so that seemed a little odd.)  She wants to go inside and see if they have smaller ones.  They do, but they’re barely less expensive, so Laurie suggests she get the bigger one.  She goes back outside, and as she walks up to pull it off the shelf, she gets within about three feet, pauses for the wiggle, and then collects her Stitch.  So now we know -- it’s the Life Is Good Fanny Wiggle.

 All the luggage we dropped off with Guest Services out front this morning has magically been transported to our room.  (I LOVE living on-site.)  We find our room, which is the farthest room in the farthest Tennis building.  It’s time to set up house for the rest of the week, so we each pick a drawer (Haley’s is at floor level) and each put our own things into our own drawer. She has all kinds of questions about which side the socks should go on and where the undies go, and we give her a degree of latitude with which she’s unfamiliar, but enjoys quite a bit.  She’s about three-fourths of the way through unloading her little suitcase when she says “This is a lot of work for a little child.”

 As Laurie’s getting ready for bed, Haley sing-songs to me “Stitch is falling in love with someone, he told me right in my ear.”  This is such a fun trip.  Looking forward to Epcot tomorrow.

 Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Haley, on the third day of our week-long post-Easter adventure.

 I’m reapplying our rubber band stroller fix in the room this morning, mentioning to Laurie that “I have to make sure things are ready for the occasionally lazy Miss Haley.”  Haley’s chipper response -- “Hey … I’m always lazy.” 

 At Epcot, we head to Test Track first, figuring we’ll get that and Honey I Shrunk the Audience out of the way first and then tour Future World leisurely.  The standby line is only about 15 minutes, and as we’re winding through I remember Lexi’s question of “Where are the men to all these tools?”  Laurie and I find there are quite a number of places in Disney World now that bring to mind some past cute comment from one of the kids.

 During the pre-test training video, Haley isn’t too excited.  She isn’t protesting, but is clearly a little nervous.  And she doesn’t enjoy the ride at all.  She’s taking our earlier advice to shut her eyes when it gets scary, and to her great credit, after she matter-of-factly tells us she’s never riding that again, she SKIPS through the post-show and out of the building.  I think the kids have figured out early on that we aren’t going to MAKE them do any particular thing, so they’re generally willing to try whatever we suggest.

 Haley can’t figure out why we’re in the sun and it’s cold.  It’s 10am and probably in the low 60’s, and very windy.  It’s mildly uncomfortable, but we’re getting 9 inches of snow back home, so everything’s relative. 

 Quite the obstacle course laid out for us between Test Track and HISTA.  We take our normal shortcut through Mouse Gears, but when we try to go through the end of the other part of Innoventions, we get right up to the door before we realize they have planters blocking the inside of the doors and the section is closed.  So we double back and walk the long way around the end of the building, but when we get to the path to Imagination, there’s a rope up across it.  We can’t see any sign of a reason for the rope, so I’m assuming it’s just one barrier to World Showcase that somebody forgot to take down this morning.  We duck the rope, along with two families behind us, who look like they also are hoping they don’t have to get into a discussion with their kids about the relative importance of barriers. 

 Laurie thinks we should visit Figment before we shrink any audiences, to avoid having two maybe-scary attractions in a row.  Haley really enjoys Journey Into Imagination.  I don’t know if she remembers it from her other trip or not, but she “tricks” us by plugging her nose before the smell chamber lets loose, giggling the whole time.  We get up to HISTA just as they’re loading the theater, so we miss the pre-show there.  Haley doesn’t like the show itself at all, but not to the point where she feels she has to bail from the theater.  We’ve been enjoying this and the other shows quite a bit this trip because of the high number of rookies that seem to be here this week.  Between a third and half the audience is seeing it for the first time, and that newbie reaction adds a lot to the fun.

 Haley’s not impressed at all with the jumping fountains, but they’re hard to really “get” when you’ve got 20 mph winds and they’re all missing their targets by a good 3 feet.  As long as we’re up here, Haley agrees that seeing Figment again would be fun.

 It’s 11:00 now as we’re in the Electric Umbrella for lunch, and the girls find us a table while I grab the grub.  Haley spots a CM cleaning tables (with his back to them) and says she thinks he has one of those special name tags.  He turns around and she’s quite excited to see that he does.  And she’s also quite proud that “I saw that by thinking it instead of seeing it.”  As are we. 

 And now comes that part of every trip where we spend some time shopping for gifts for the siblings at home.  (And of course when I say “we”, I mean Laurie and the grandbaby.)  Maybe it’s just because I’m a crotchety old grump, but the primary impetus behind this activity seems to be so that those left behind don’t feel left out, but since every one of them is getting Their Very Own Whole Trip, it all seems a bit redundant to me, but maybe that’s just because I’m a crotchety old grump.  [Laurie’s response to this is undoubtedly just an exasperated “Men”.] 

 I find a nice spot in Innoventions Plaza that includes lots of sun and fountain music and no wind.  At some point, I had sort of closed my eyes like a pampered cat and let the atmosphere wash over me, when I suddenly hear a little voice saying “Sorry we took so long shopping.”  Well, bless her little heart. 

 We were really hoping we could catch soft opening of Soarin’, but no such luck.  As I describe the ride to Laurie, Haley’s telling us she’s got a headache, which is her way of saying “don’t make me go on that”.  As we make our way down to The Living Seas, we encounter another first for me, a toddler with “squeaky shoes”.  Sound like a squeeze toy with every step.  Much more comfortable than a cowbell, I suppose.  It’s 12:30 and we mention the possibility of a nap soon, and Haley doesn’t seem to be unreceptive.

 You can tell she’s spent a lot of time at her dad’s camp; we’re looking at about a million yellow and silver fish swimming around the bottom of the Living Seas tanks and she says “Wish we could go fishin’!”  I can remember our friend Joe accompanying us for a morning on a previous trip, and saying he didn’t realize it was possible to spend more than five minutes in Living Seas.  With the 5-year-olds, it’s hard to spend less than five minutes per window.  (And remember, a lot of those windows look into the very same tank ;-)

 From about a room and a half away, Haley spots Dory.  It’s cute, they have one little tank (with a mirror over it so you can see the fish from above too) that has a Dory, a Nemo, and a Marlin in it.  And I’d never seen a real Dory-fish before, so I have to give mad props to the animators for getting the fin movement down so exactly. 

 Haley reaches her own personal boredom threshold while we’re in line for Turtle Talk with Crush, and it’s pretty cool that she’s the one who recognizes it first and suggests a game of Simon Says.  At which Grandma rocks, by the way.  Speaking of which, Turtle Talk with Crush so totally rocks, dudes and dudettes.  Definitely worth checking out, if you haven’t.

 We walk back through Innoventions to send some emails, and since we’re coming in from the outer ring instead of the plaza, we take our first trip in several years through the Sega room.  This isn’t the total progress-annihilating distraction for the 5-year-olds that it was for our two sons that we brought at age 21 and 12. 

 Haley wants to ride in the Big White Ball on the way out, and we’re treated to a running commentary of IRememberThis IDon’tRememberThat the whole time. 

 Back at the All Stars, Haley takes a quick dip in the “small pool” (the wading pool), and then we settle in for a good nap before we head back to Epcot for dinner.  I should point out that whenever I say “we” take a nap, that generally means Laurie’s catching up with some on-line work and Haley and I are sleeping.

 Our nap is a little longer than planned, so we don’t have time to do anything at Epcot before going back to our dinner at Germany’s Biergarten.  I carry Haley around the buffet table to make her selections, but get a variety of no, no way, ew, and I don’t think so.  So in the end, the $8.99 Kid’s Buffet at the Biergarten pretty much comes town to a 5-inch plate stacked a half-inch deep with applesauce.

 After dinner, Haley starts her Kid Stop Tour.  For those of you not familiar with that, there’s a special table at each of the eleven country pavilions.  The child can get a poster board mask on a paint stirrer type stick at any stop, then at each stop you can color it up with markers, the CM will add some dangly thing appropriate to that country, and they’ll stamp the handle with that country’s seal.  We have to find the stop first though, and Haley offers “We could just ask one of the workers where it is.  I’ll find one for you.”  And she leads me into a shop and does exactly that.

 We get to the stop, and she picks up her mask and begins coloring the lips orange, talking to her mask the whole time and saying “I swear I’m not picking on you.” Outside Germany, we walk past the model train setup, and that’s good for about a minute and a half.  We’ve spent well over half an hour here with each of the other kids. 

 We’ve discovered what else is number one on Haley’s Disney list, because this is about the third time today that she’s heard drums or a certain kind of music and said to us, all excited, “It’s a PARADE!!!”  But of course, it’s not.  We don’t spend much time at the American stop, but do get the opportunity to chat with the CM, who lives in our region and gives us updated weather news from home.  (As much as 29” of snow in some areas!)

 I get another little slice-of-Disney-life chuckle while the girls are making a bathroom stop upstairs at the Yakitori House.  A gaggle of 16-year-olds chatter their way up the street (about twenty of them in all), and head up the stairs to the Japanese fast-food place saying “Who cares, it’s food.”  Apparently somebody does, because about five minutes later they’re all back and chattering their way over to a more western civilization.

 You absolutely CAN NOT predict what is going to turn on any particular 5-year-old.  On our way in to the Japan Kid Stop, we enter a little front room that has a statue of a warrior on a horse, and if she hadn’t just stopped, I’d be afraid she was going to pee her pants.  “GRANDMA, CAN YOU TAKE MY PICTURE???”  Her preference would have been to be ON the horse for the picture, but I told her we couldn’t cross the chain in front and she was fine with that.  (Good thing she didn’t remember our rope-ducking this morning.)  We discover later that her daddy took her horseback riding last summer, and apparently she has quite fond memories.

 The Moroccan Kid Stop is a little more appropriately staffed than it was the last time we were here, when it was run by an American kid who just got transferred from Japan.  This at least looks like a real live Moroccan.  Laurie tells me she spotted one little boy on our tour who had a really neat idea -- on a back page of his autograph book, he was having the CM in each country write his name in their native language.  Cool idea!

 Man, I thought the food selection process with the little one was a bit dicey in Germany!  I just made a pit stop in Morocco and heard a mom out in the waiting area explaining to her little one “Oh you’ll like this one, honey, it has chicken and almond and nuts” and he’s got a look on his face that’s saying “Why don’t you just stop messing with me and get me the Happy Meal?”

It’s 7:30 now on the Saturday after Easter and EVERY restaurant in Epcot is packed.  I feel bad for Haley, we’ve got an actual marching band going by in front of France and she’s way back in by the Eiffel Tower somewhere at the Kid Stop and can’t hear them.  I didn’t realize she even heard it in the quick explanation when we started, but one reason Haley’s so psyched about the Kid Stop program is that if you get all 11 stamps, you get a Special Prize.  (I’d tell you what it is now, but that would likely spoil the excitement for you.)

We’re headed in to the United Kingdom KS now.  [I should mention I found my recorder on Day 2, and one of the joys of using that is that when I listen to my notes when I get home, I can hear the British Invasion and almost be there.]  This also happens to be the only Parent Stop on the trail.  There is a large, very comfortably upholstered chair at each side of the room, and Laurie and I snag those in a heartbeat.  Haley’s listening to the music while she’s in line, and going through what I can only think is some kind of color guard routine.  Laurie and I love a lot of things, but none quite so much as a happy child.  She would prefer one of us to be in line with her, but we’re just so danged comfortable in these chairs, so she takes care of the whole transaction on her own. 

 Another odd thing she’s jazzed about is the castle at the top of the hill in Canada.  She wants in the worst way to go in and check it out, but it’s all closed.  As a consolation, she insists on us taking her picture in front of it.  As a bonus, we get down to the street just in time to watch marching band #2 go by, which she’s very happy about. 

 Walking down from Canada, we pass a guy who’s telling another guy that he’s never staying on-property again, it’s just too much hassle.  Laurie and I just look at each other with our mouths hanging open and then burst out laughing.  He apparently has never stood in the middle of 30 acres of blacktop in spot 56 waiting for that hourly shuttle back to the Doubletree!

 Now we have to make a decision, because we’re at the front of World Showcase and our feet are very tired (notwithstanding our brief stay in the UK).  Are we going to walk all the way around to China and finish our tour tonight, or get it tomorrow.  We figure there’s just about enough time to hit the last three before Illuminations, so we might as well get it out of the way and just watch the show from over there.

 Mexico and Norway go very quickly, and then we get to the final stop in China.  I’m waiting out by the front gate when Laurie and Haley come out.  She spots me and starts running and yelling, with this HUGE smile on her face, “PAPA, I WINNED!!!”  And her Special Prize?  An 8x10 picture featuring Goofy and a number of his friends!  SCORE!!!  She’s very proud of it, and later when I ask her if she wants me to carry it for her, she says “Yes, but be really careful not to bend it.”  It was all I could do to avoid buying one of those portfolio cases in the art store out front. 

 Haley absolutely loves Illuminations, she remembers seeing it before.  She tells us before hand that sometimes when it’s loud, “I have to hold my heart”, which consists of clenched fists pressed against her chest, presumably to ward off the vibrations that the big ones give.  And she holds her heart pretty much throughout.  We hear about ten Whoa’s, a couple of Wow’s, and at least half a dozen big giggles.  At one point, when a particularly swirly display goes off, she says “Well, that’s new!”  You didn’t know there were Disney experts who couldn’t write yet, did you.  We hear people all the time saying there’s nothing at Epcot for kids.  Well we’ve got a 5-year-old who would beg to differ.  She spent a very enjoyable evening on her “mission”, and after the Illuminations finale is over and the people are cheering and the lights come up, she nearly brings tears to our eyes when she turns to us and says “Now THAT’s why I love coming to Disney!”

 It’s been quite a long day, even with the nap, and we end up standing on the bus back to the hotel.  She’s very quiet and looks like she’s as uncomfortable as we are, but doesn’t complain at all, just asks us to let her know when we see Blizzard Beach and McDonalds so she knows we’re close.  As soon as we’re off the bus, she’s back chatting away about things, with not a care in the world.

 We’re all looking forward to our fourth day tomorrow, and our first trip with her to the Magic Kingdom.

 Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Haley, on the fourth day of our week-long post-Easter adventure.

 Orlando came within two degrees of a record low at 47 last night, so it’s a little chilly this morning.  Haley wants to wear her blue sweatshirt this morning, because “I wore the pink one last night and some cold air got through it.”  Laurie’s in the shower and Haley’s telling me “You better get up, if you make us late you’re going to be in Big Trouble.”

 I know Laurie and I have had this conversation before, but we think crowds might be light at MK this morning because it’s quite cool and we switched to daylight savings time last night, which is bound to have messed a few people up.  It was kind of neat that Disney apparently left every one of their guest rooms a phone message yesterday about the time change.  I told Laurie the people staying offsite wouldn’t have that advantage.  “Except at the Motel 6, where there aren’t any alarm clocks to not set!”

 Somewhere on the crowded bus last night we lost Haley’s autograph book.  We thought she might be upset about that, even though she only had a handful of autographs.  She said “We can get another one.”  Laurie acknowledged that was certainly one solution.  And Haley says “I know they have them because remember yesterday when we went shopping they had them right next to those pink shell things.”  So you can totally tell the girl’s going to be a hard-core shopper when she grows up, but at least she’ll always apologize for how long she took.

 We’re walking from the bus stop to the front of the Magic Kingdom when we hear Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah and her pace picks up and she says “LET’S GO SEE IT!”  We don’t quite make it for Rope Drop, but we couldn’t have missed it by much because there isn’t a very long line yet at Dumbo.  She isn’t sure she wants to ride, but we explain to her the concepts of very long lines and now-or-never and she decides to take the plunge while I go get FastPasses for Pooh.  5-year-olds are all about details, and she thinks it’s really cool that the “ropes” in the Dumbo queue are gold, just like the decorations on the castle. 

 I think I’ve only ridden Dumbo once, but I’ve watched a number of flights and noticed a pattern.  Each flight seems to include at least one adult giggling, and at least one adult couple where the guy is unsuccessful at hiding the fact that he’s on it ONLY for her.  I don’t remember which of those guys I was the one time I rode.

 We go down and get in line for the Indy Speedway, while Laurie picks up a new autograph book.  I feel honored that Haley has picked me to ride with her, seems she’s finally warming up to me.  It also seems she’s quite anxious to drive – every time the gap in the line in front of us gets as big as two feet, she’s yanking on me to close ranks.  [Some of you have grand ideas of ways to improve Disney World, but mine are simple.  When I get to run Disney, I’m changing the Speedway so there are several lane-change spots around the circuit and you get a free lap if you beat a certain time.]  Poor Haley has no control of the car whatsoever, and we’re bouncing around, and she’s flopping around like a rag doll.  But we pass the green car three times, so it’s a great run.

 Laurie’s not much of a spinner, so it’s me Haley takes to the Mad Tea Party.  She is in charge of the spinning, and has the upper hand on the giggling, too.  She’d like to ride again immediately, but we gently talk her out of it.  We figure we can do the Carousel and Small World and Mickey’s PhilharMagic anytime, but we better do Peter Pan and Snow White now, while the lines aren’t too bad.

 She really likes the Peter Pan ride, but can’t figure out why Peter isn’t anywhere in the ride!  She’s very concerned when those bad guys have the kids all tied up, and is practically cheering when we finally see Pete and he saves the day.  Definitely on her do-it-again list.  Snow White isn’t quite so exciting, but she still enjoys it quite a bit.  She really wants to ride the Carousel, and it’s right here, so why not.

 We head down to Pooh at 10:30 to use our FPs.  There sure is a lot of hopping and skipping today.  (And Haley’s excited too, har, har.)  She seems to enjoy the ride while we’re on it, but has kind of a pout when we get off.  We’re not sure if that’s because it was too short or what, but decide to take a break in front of This Area Is Being Refurbished For Your Future Enjoyment across from Pooh to rest a bit and de-pout.  Haley says “When we get home,” (which means back to our hotel) “can I talk to my sisters?”  So that’s what it is, our first really missing home moment.  It’s Sunday morning, so Laurie says “How about if we call them right now?”  Haley’s the baby of the family, and there’s quite a bond between her and her 7- and 8-year-old sisters.  Things are much peppier after the phone call.

 During the Pooh ride, she waved to most of the characters as we went by, and after our little break, as we’re headed down toward Toon Town, she looks up at the big sign on the Pooh façade and waves goodbye to the characters there, as well. 

 We spend quite a bit of time in Minnie’s house, especially the kitchen.  The tour of Mickey’s house is more of a zip-through though.  And that leaves us in Exhibition Hall, where it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which line is ours -- we’re going to see the Princesses.  The line is the longest we’ve been in yet for anything, a little longer than either Laurie or I are used to or comfortable with.  Haley, meanwhile, is singing and swaying without a care in the world.  We have no idea what she’s singing, but life is definitely good.  She asks me if I want her to read the letters on the front of her autograph book, and I say sure.  I’m looking around the room though and she must have thought I wasn’t really paying attention, because she rattles off A-U-T-O-G-R-A-P-S.  There’s a slight pause before Laurie tells her she forgot one, and she looks up at me with an impish grin and says “No I didn’t.”  A girl who knows how to pick on Papa can’t be all bad.  We probably spend 30 to 40 minutes in line to see Cinderella and Aurora and Snow White, which is definitely worth it, at least from Haley’s perspective.

 She decides she wants to ride the Barnstormer, but when we get there it’s a 20 minute wait and she changes her mind.  Laurie mentions that we have to remember to refer to the Barnstormer as a plane instead of a kid’s coaster, especially if we end up in a Princess line with some mother helpfully pointing out that her child was terrified of the roller coaster.  Haley must have heard this conversation, because I say something about the “plane” later, and Haley says “Would you just call it what it is.  It’s the Barnstormer.”  Well, all righty then.

 After a short time in the playground, we hear our whistle and catch the noon train to Frontierland.  As we go through Main Street Station, there’s still a ton of people coming into the park.  We pick up FastPasses for Splash Mountain, and head down to Pecos Bill’s for lunch.  Haley selects a nice sun/shade table outside, where we can enjoy the flowers and birds while we eat.  After lunch, we’ll get FPs for Big Thunder, use the ones for Splash, and then go over to Tom Sawyer Island.  We’d been over with the other girls just to have lunch and feed the ducks, but think we’ll explore some today.

 Haley rode Splash with her mom a year ago.  She wasn’t really tall enough to ride, but got in somehow.  She didn’t like it.  She started this trip out saying she wasn’t going to ride it, but Laurie kept telling her it might be different because she’s a year bigger now, and “You don’t have to decide now, just think about it.”  By day 2, she thought she might try.  By yesterday she had decided to ride, and by today, she says she’s going to put her arms up.  Which (to my great surprise) she does, on the very first big drop at Slippin’ Falls.  The bad news is, that must have unsettled her enough that she’s in I Don’t Like This mode the rest of the ride, telling us twice she wanted to get off, and ducking completely out of view for the big drop.  As we approach the unloading zone, she turns and tells Laurie “I think I should wait a couple more years before I ride it again.”  Her Dad’s coming in two days and looking forward to riding it with her, so we’ll see how that goes.  But I love it, because even though the ride bothered her, she’s skipping and laughing when we get off and life is still good.  She wants to see her picture on the way out, and giggles quite a bit when I point out white-shirt me, green-shirt Grandma, and invisible Haley.

 The raft trip over to Tom Sawyer Island is kind of exciting, she says she’s never ridden on a raft before.  First thing we do is take a walk through Mistery Mines though, and she says “Oh, I remember this, I went on this before.”  Must have walked over.

 This child’s going to end up here for the Flower and Garden Festival some year, I swear, because flowers are what she’s been pointing out more than anything else.  After having gone through the mine, she’s quite nervous about the dark circular stairway leading down from the Rifle Roost at the fort, but we manage to talk her down.  She loves the barrel bridges though, and really really enjoys the fact that Laurie is having a bit of a hard time walking on them. 

 We get back off the island with just enough time to use our FPs on Big Thunder before the parade, and Haley screams the whole way.  Now we intentionally sat in the very front row to make the ride as tame as possible, but clearly it’s not tame enough.  For half of the first fast stretch, we’re thinking those screams are of the This Is Way Cool variety, but we realize pretty quickly that they’re actually Get Me The Hell Out Of Here screams.  As we get to the second lift and she’s catching her breath, I tell her that there are only two more fast parts, to which she sarcastically responds “Oh, that’s just great.”  I think the only enjoyable part of the ride for her is the exit.  As we’re walking down to the parade, I say “Well we found out one thing, Haley sure can scream loud!”  And instead of being moody or upset or anything, she just grins broadly and says (as if I’ve made the world’s biggest understatement) “Yes, I can scream.” 

 We stake out a spot across from the Country Bears to watch the parade and Laurie goes to get ice cream, which judging from her demeanor when she returns is roughly three and a half miles away.  Haley absolutely loves the parade, waving to every character and float as they go by.  Except the villains.  (And really, if you’re going to act like Ursula does, do you really deserve waves?)  The parade ends, and we casually make our way through Adventureland and the Main Street shops on our way to City Hall, where Laurie needs to pick up some things.  We get down to the end of the shops at Town Square, and the parade is still finishing up there!  In fact, we’re standing pretty much all by ourselves and get to see about two thirds of the parade again!  This time, she even manages to wave to the bad guys, and Cruella waves back at her and winks.  Now that’s big.  And Beast looks right at her and gives her the eyebrow bounce, and she turns around with her mouth hanging open and says “Did you see THAT?” 

 While Laurie’s picking up her items at City Hall, Haley and I wait in the shade down at the end of the building.  Again, the flowers and the birds are getting a great deal of attention here.

 When the girls went shopping yesterday, Haley picked out some jewelry for her oldest sister Elysia, sharing with Laurie the whole story about the time that Elysia stole her mom’s rings.  If you’re going to send a 5-year-old for a week with us, there are two things you should probably know: 1) we religiously follow a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy when it comes to your family business; and 2) 5-year-olds tell anyway.  Haley hadn’t found anything that she thought was right for her middle sister Serina, but somewhere today she saw Mickey Hands and knew they would be perfect.  Then after a 30 second pause, she tells Laurie “No wait.  Maybe then she’d punch harder.”  Ah, I forgot the joys of siblingness.  Laurie explains to her the properties of padding, and they seem like good idea again. 

Each day at All Stars, Haley’s wanted a picture with the Mickey statue, and we’ve told her to remind us later.  So as we board the bus from Magic Kingdom back to the hotel, she says “Let’s not forget our Mickey picture today.” 

 After our picture and a quick change, it’s swim time.  We think maybe the Baseball pool is closer to our room than the Surf pool, so we start walking down the end of the complex toward it.  It soon becomes apparent that it’s not closer at all.  As we finally get down to the pool, Haley says (just matter-of-factly, with no expression) “This is a very long short cut.  Don’t go this way again.”  Yes, we already figured that out.  She loves this pool though, mostly because the 3 foot deep area goes all the way around it, instead of being just on the ends like Surf.

 When we get back to our building, Haley takes care of the elevator-button pushing as she has since we got here.  We always take the elevator up, but when we go down we take the stairs right around the corner from our room.  When we go down for dinner tonight though, we decide to take the elevator down, as well.  That decision prompts this puzzling exchange (from the Department of Things We Take For Granted):

 Haley:  “How do we go down in the elevator?”

Laurie:  “We use the same elevator we came up in, it goes down too.”

Haley:  “But where do we go?”

Laurie:  “Same elevator, right down at the end of the hall.”

Haley:  “But where do we go?”

 We’re confused, and figure we’ll just show her when we get there.  We’re almost at the elevator when Haley, who’s clearly been rolling this over in her head, says “Do I push ‘1’?”  Ah, so THAT was the question!  She’s been pushing ‘2’ to get to our floor all this time, without having any understanding of the connection between ‘2’ and the ‘second’ floor, so she had to construct that relationship in her head.  Call me silly, but I get such a rush whenever I witness children teaching themselves something!

On the way to the food court, Haley is on the phone with her sisters again.  We smile as we hear her tell Elysia in a very excited voice “I rode Splash Mountain, and I was only one inch scared.”  We’re not sure why tonight in the food court is different than any of the other meals we’ve had here, but suddenly she wants to be sure that we not forget to pray before eating.  Perhaps it’s contrition for the “one inch scared” fib.

At about 7:00, we’re headed back to Magic Kingdom with the plan of hitting a few more attractions and hanging around for fireworks.  We’re lucky enough to get to the other end of Main Street just as Cinderellabration is about to start.  [This new hub configuration is much more functional, and much less pretty, and I miss the pretty.]  I try to tell Haley this is a show that tells how Cinderella became a Princess and got her crown, with her friends there to watch.  But I can’t fool her, because she knows Cinderella already IS a Princess, and that white dress means she’s getting married to Prince Charming.  And they’re going to live up in that Castle.  And she’s going to have a baby.  All righty, then.

 She’s very excited to see Aurora (“I call her Sleeping Beauty”) and Snow White join Cinderella, because she talked to all of them and shared hugs earlier today. 

After Jasmine and Belle come out though, she says “That sure is a lot of princesses.  I hope there aren’t any more, that’s enough.”  She’s spellbound throughout the show, and almost in tears afterwards because she can’t go up and hug them again.

 We make our way back around the castle to the Carousel, and Haley wants to ride by herself this time.  I tell her we want to be near her, and she says “Well there’s a bench right behind that horse.”  So I sit with a guy who also has an independent 5-year-old granddaughter, just one horse over from Haley.

 We start for Small World, but there’s no line for Mickey’s PhilharMagic, so we pop in there.  Haley’s all excited until we get to the glasses case, where she says, somewhat dejectedly “Oh, a show?  That’s great.”  But of course, she absolutely loves it.  We’ve had the kids try to pick off some jewels on past trips, but this girl wants to reach out and touch Donald, musical instruments, pie, etc., grinning all the time.  And the giggling when we get splashed, oh my!

 If you haven’t seen the redone Small World, you owe it to yourself to check it out.  Yes, it’s the same silly ride, with the same silly Please Turn Off My Brain song, but oh my, the color and the sound!  The load/unload room has been completely redone, with much more to catch the eye, and very pretty.  The colors inside are much more vivid, but it seems to me the biggest difference is in the sound, which I understand was mostly redone.  It seems to me the sounds in a room are a little less jumbled and more localized, and it’s very enjoyable.  We don’t hear much from Haley, she’s just taking it all in.

It’s time for the fireworks now and we’re out back by Pooh, which used to be our favorite spot.  It’s not so great a spot with Wishes though, because of all the stuff happening right over the Castle.  We give ourselves whiplash looking back and forth from the Castle stuff to the main stuff.  And Haley is more than a little put out that she only catches a very brief glimpse of Tinkerbell.  On the bright side, it’s really cool (and a first for us) to have a child humming or singing along with most of the songs during the show.It’s time for the fireworks now and we’re out back by Pooh, which used to be our favorite spot.  It’s not so great a spot with Wishes though, because of all the stuff happening right over the Castle.  We give ourselves whiplash looking back and forth from the Castle stuff to the main stuff.  And Haley is more than a little put out that she only catches a very brief glimpse of Tinkerbell.  On the bright side, it’s really cool (and a first for us) to have a child humming or singing along with most of the songs during the show.

Being at the back of the Magic Kingdom on a night when the fireworks are the same time as park closing is just nuts.  If you want to wander for a half hour, that might not be so bad, but Haley doesn’t want to, she’s tired and just wants to leave.  So do the tens of thousands of other people here.  We move toward the front of the park, at not much more than a crawl.  It’s pretty bad when your big goal is to maneuver yourselves into position behind the widest couple you can find, just so you can have a little elbow room in their wake.  We get to the bus stop and it looks like we might be on the third bus.  We’re tired enough that if there aren’t seats left, we’ll just wait for the next bus rather than stand.  We do end up getting a seat, but Miss Haley’s sound asleep in the stroller, the first time that’s happened.

 She gives a few grunts and groans as we carry her on the bus, and again as we carry her off, but otherwise sleeps soundly.  When we get her back to the room, we figure we might as well get the rest of the moaning and grunting out of the way quickly, so we lay her up on the bed and double-team the sneakers, socks, shorts, shirt, nightshirt, sheets, Stitch, blankets… It wasn’t quite as fast as a Nascar pit stop, but must have looked fairly similar.  And she’s happily sound asleep.

 We had planned to repeat the park opening Fantasyland deal tomorrow, but we’ve toured hard for two straight days and stayed late for the fireworks, so tomorrow’s going to be a very casual sleep in day.
[TR] Grandbabies 4.5, Magic Kingdom, 4/4/05

 Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Haley, on the fifth day of our week-long post-Easter adventure.

 Despite being up well past her bedtime last night and dead tired, Haley’s just a little too chipper for me this morning as she says “Papa, it’s time to get up, we’re waiting on you again.”  And she’s even peppier after talking to Daddy this morning, since tonight’s the night he’ll be flying down to join us.  He shared a day of his daughter Elysia’s trip with us four years ago when our dates coincided with the end of a cruise he took.  Then two years ago, he flew down with us on his daughter Serina’s trip and spent a couple days, because we wouldn’t have been able to get her on the plane if he hadn’t.  So now, he figures there’s no way he can NOT share a day of his daughter Haley’s trip.  So he’ll fly in tonight (Monday), spend all day tomorrow with us, and fly home Wednesday morning.

 This must be the trip of losing things.  Laurie wakes up this morning with fresh memories of a dream where her glasses were lost and hanging on a nail somewhere.  Sure enough, she can’t find them, and figures the dream means she put them someplace she never does.  She’s a bit frantic, until she remembers that when she picked up the sleeping Haley last night her glasses got so smudged she couldn’t see through them and she hung them on the front collar of her sweatshirt.  Which is right where she finds them.  Whew!

 Haley’s not only very good with letters and numbers, but also with orienteering and knowing left from right.  All the way from the room to the bus stop, she rides in the stroller and points with the appropriate foot for each of our turns.  But this morning, we interrupt her regular route to take her down to play on the big X’s and O’s in the courtyard in front of the Touchdown building.  Both her sisters stayed there, and she’s seen them play on these oversized letters in each of their videos.  (Around our house, the videos of the kids’ trips are known as ‘Elysia’s Disney Movie’, ‘Lexi’s Disney Movie’, etc.)

 It’s almost 11 before we get to the Magic Kingdom, and the scene out front highlights the reason we prefer to get there at rope drop – there are masses of people coming into the park.  While we’re in line out front, there’s a guy behind us barking orders to a group of six or seven, telling the teenage kids which of them needs to go through the ticket line first, hold your ticket this side up with this end first, the whole nine yards.  I joke, sort of generally toward the group, “Man, somebody’s had some military training!”  As the guy smiles and says “You need it”, the elderly woman with them leans over to Laurie and me and quietly says “Yes, and I’m about to go AWOL.”

 We decide to go over into Adventureland first today, and near the bridge Haley spots Rafiki.  For some reason, she’s all excited about getting his autograph this morning, even though she didn’t want to get near him at Animal Kingdom the other day (when there was no line).

 As we approach Aladdin, Haley’s eyeing the jewels in the ground.  She stops and spends a minute trying to pry one out of the pavement.  After giving up, she grins at us and says “Sometimes, don’t you wish we were magic?”  As the girls get in line for the ride, I run over to get FastPasses for the Jungle Cruise.  This show is just always going to be a guilty pleasure for me.  I can’t help but grin broadly as I hear the announcement over the queue’s PA:  “If any of our passengers want to exchange foreign currency, don’t worry, we have banks all along our river.”  I have the same effect on Laurie – some things are so goofy you just have to smile ;-)

 I make it back in time to ride Aladdin with them, and Haley loves it, as expected.  I mentioned the spitting camel to her, and she makes sure she keeps it way up there just in case.  She wants to ride it again right away, but ultimately decides the line is too long.

 We visit the Tiki Room and suggest sitting around in the back, but Haley wants to sit “right up front”.  And she enjoys the show quite a bit, although she could do without M’Boa.  And Iago is very rude.

 We’re on our way back to the Pirates of the Caribbean now, and Haley urgently has to go to the bathroom.  It’s kind of cool to discover that she recognizes the word ‘RESTROOMS’ by sight, so she spots it from about 30 yards away before we do.  So I guess being 5 is a little like going to another country where you don’t know the language – there are a few words you should learn to recognize.

 We have to be a little coy going in to the Pirates ride, because Haley’s developed an aversion to dark places and drops.  The hallway is a little dark here, and she has a pretty good grip on my hand.  She doesn’t even want me to pick her up to look through that dark window (at the chess-playing skeletons).  Apparently the mere fact that I suggested it is enough to make her let go of my hand and grab Laurie’s.  We see the boat now and try to tell her it’s like Small World, but she immediately asks if there are any drops.  We’re not going to fib to her, so Laurie tells her there’s one small one, and she says she doesn’t want to go on.  Laurie just keeps gently talking to her as we move down the queue, and telling her she’ll hug her when the drop comes, and when we get to the boat she gets right in with us.  I tell her (remembering her standard of measurement) that the drop is only “one inch big”.  It’s a little tense at first, what with the dark and the wind and the Dead Men Tell No Tales Orchestra playing, and we go over the drop.  We get to the bottom and Haley says “Is THAT the only one?”  We tell her that it is, and she’s fine for the rest of the ride.  At one point, she tells Laurie “I hardly had time to scream.”

 We go over now to use our FastPasses on the Jungle Cruise.  Our boat has a Japanese guide, and Laurie recognizes him from her February trip.  He wasn’t very good then, being very hard to understand, and we’re tempted to wait for the next boat, but decide not to.  Turns out his speech hasn’t improved, and he leaves out a number of the jokes, as well.  As we get back to the dock, we do hear the guide in the boat in front of us making the important announcement that the 3:00 parade has been rescheduled; today only, it will be at 2:60.  Our guide’s best line may have been unintentional -- after he told us not to climb over the middle seats but walk around, somebody behind us obviously does.  As we walk off the dock, we hear him say “I already tell you that twice, if you’re going to visit here, you have to learn the language.” 

 It’s time to head over to the Harbor House for lunch.  On the way over though, Laurie spots some grapes for Haley from the Liberty Square fruit stand, and then spots a foot long hot dog stand nearby for her (the hot dogs are a foot, not the stand).  I’m holding out for my traditional happy meal inside.  I’m in line there with Haley when she says “I want to go find Grandma.”  I tell her that wouldn’t be a very good idea, because then all three of us will be lost.  “I could just ride rides until you guys find me.”  She may be getting a little too comfortable here.

 We discover after lunch, as we get the stroller, that we’ve lost autograph book # 2.  This one only had a few signatures as well, but it had the Princesses.  We backtrack to the last couple places the stroller was parked, but have no luck.  She doesn’t seem to be upset at all, but boy is it annoying for us.  Seems like we’re not the biggest losers though.  On the path to the Crystal Palace, we run across two 3-day park passes on the ground.  I’m thinking man, THAT could ruin somebody’s trip.  But Laurie tells me the new passes are name encoded so they can get replaced.  Okay, so we ARE bigger losers.

 And speaking of lost, one of us is.  Laurie has to stop at City Hall again, and suggests we can just meet her out at the bus stop.  But I tell her it’s no problem, we can wait down at the end of the building like we did yesterday.  It’s one of those conversations that last about 12 seconds while you’re headed in different directions, and both parties know exactly what was said.  Or think they do.  And to make a long story short, Laurie thought I was waiting outside and ended up outside the gates and couldn’t get back in (since I still had her pass from getting a FastPass earlier).  And I’m waiting inside, wondering what’s taking her so long.

 Well, that fiasco’s over now, and we all really need a nap.  After which, we decide to go over to Fort Wilderness, since Haley was so taken with the horse the other day.  It will be after 6 by the time we get over there so we may not actually find horses, but we’ll see.  We were planning to just take the first park bus we see and transfer, but that ends up being an Animal Kingdom bus and the driver is nice enough to remind us “You don’t want to do that now, the park just closed and the lines are crazy long, any other park would be better.”  So we grab the next bus, to the Magic Kingdom, and take shuttle boat over.

 Pretty impressive that the ferry coming in at 6:30 is absolutely packed.  Laurie thinks with the new ticket system, fewer people have park-hopper tickets and are trying to get the most out of their single-park ticket when it’s Magic Kingdom.  Also, today (Monday) is one of three days this week the park was scheduled to be open until 10 instead 9, and they’ve extended to 11, so occupancy at the resorts must still be really high too.  Haley’s looking out the boat window and can tell that’s real water, but has to ask for confirmation anyway.

So now we’re taking a very relaxing stroll up to the Tri-Circle D Ranch.  Haley suggests that we try to find a horse we can “borrow”.  As we suspected, it’s too late in the day to borrow any horses, but there are quite a few animals we can pet, some very very big horses in the barn, and three very noisy peacocks who turn out to be all yap and no fan.  A couple of the barn stalls are empty, which makes Haley wonder if someone borrowed them.  We assure her they’re working, and head down for supper at the Trail’s End at 7:20.

We’ve had breakfast and lunch here several times, but this is our first supper.  And it turns out supper is all about the color.  Haley likes the corn, if we can just get that green stuff out of it.  And the green beans look really good if we can get those purple things out.  But I melt when she hollers across the room with a big smile “PAPA, THEY HAVE GREEN JELLO FOR YOU!!!”  Seems like forever ago while we were waiting for our flight out and getting to know each other that I mentioned my favorite color is green.

 While Laurie’s getting her dessert, Haley is filling me in on the rules of choking.  If you choke on something that has skin on it, you try to grab the skin and pull it out.  If it’s something very small, you just drink and drink and drink.  I’m thinking of having these rules printed on napkins for our barbecues back home.  Our friends will be choking on little things all night!  After dinner, we make a slight detour on our way back to the dock, because we see a horse standing in front of a cart across the way.  Laurie tells Haley, “See, we told you Luke had to work tonight.”

 We boat back to the Magic Kingdom, walk in just past the train station, and find a nice spot on the wall from which to watch SpectroMagic.  Haley loves this one as well (except Ursula), but she does mention that she knows Ursula isn’t coming back where we are.  We point out to her that even Ursula is smiling, because EVERYBODY loves being in a parade, and that seems to make sense to her. 

 After the parade, we’re on our way back to the bus stop at 9:30 and our little princess is singing … Here Comes Peter Cottontail!  (Note to self -- If you take a 5-year-old the week after Easter, Peter Cottontail will become even more annoying than the Small World Song.)

 Because we were out in the front of the park, we get on the first bus back to the hotel.  On the way, we get a phone call from Daddy, who’s at the airport Mears station and needs to know where they should take him.  It will probably be close to 11 before Ty gets in, but Haley (who usually goes to bed at 8) is trying stay up.  I give him a call from the room later and he’s on property now, so I tell him I’ll meet him in the lobby.  Haley pops up all excited and says “Can I go with you?”  Absolutely!  So I throw her sneakers on, she passes on a jacket, and we’re headed down to the lobby.

 Now the first day we were at All Star Sports, Laurie and Haley had walked down to the pool and taken a wrong turn, which Laurie told Haley was a “shortcut”.  Haley’s mentioned this several times since as “Grandma’s and my shortcut”, and it seemed important that the location not be disclosed to outsiders like me.  Well, on the way down to the lobby tonight, I bypass our normal route and cut across the quad between the middle of the Tennis building and the middle of Surf, and Haley asks me “Is this YOUR shortcut?”  Yes.  “Well I guess since you showed me your shortcut, I should show you Grandma’s.  Our shortcut is a really tricky one, though.  In fact, it’s tricking me right now, because I don’t think I can find it.” 

 Ty comes in one end of the lobby about the same time Haley and I enter the other end, which leads to a delightful squeal-run-jump scene.  It’s quite a late night for all of us, but we’re planning on going to a water park first tomorrow (Daddy’s request), so we should be in good shape.

 We would have thought it might be a little struggle getting up this morning with the very late night we had last night, but Haley’s up at 8, eats more breakfast than she has all week, and seems to have found an even higher excitement level. 

 We get to Typhoon Lagoon and end up at a little overlook on the path in.  We pause there so I can show Haley the wave that’s coming.  Of course (since we’re watching) we spend probably 30 seconds with no wave.  And we discover that the Impatience Gene has successfully been passed from Grandma to Daddy to her when she suddenly turns and says “Well let’s just go down and get IN IT.”  She’s loving being in the wave pool with Dad, and with every wave wants him to move about 3 feet closer.  Eventually they’re far enough out that the water is splashing a lot of her, but almost knocking Ty off his feet, and she still wants to go farther.  I suggest to Ty that he short-leg the next one and see how that goes.  Well it doesn’t go over her head, but it does go over her face, and now they’re moving backwards at about 30 feet a shot.

 We make a half tour on the Lazy River, until we’re over between the other side of the wave pool and the kids’ section.  There are a couple 30 foot water slides that empty into the edge of the wave pool, and a couple of the older girls loved these when we brought them.  Haley tries it once, but ends up coming down mostly backward, and gets seriously dunked at the bottom.  Okay, we’re not doing that again!  We cross the bridge over to the kids’ section (Ketchakiddie Creek), to see what they have to offer.  This is nowhere near as good as Blizzard Beach’s kid areas, as it predominantly consists of various apparatus with which to spray water on each other.  I think there’s a very limited age range that finds appeal in that, and it doesn’t include 5.  There aren’t really any water slides, but there is one tube ride, that seems a little longer than the one at BB.  Haley makes 10 or 12 trips on this one, and is more than a little reluctant to give up her tube each time.  (Unlike the one she did before, there are more kids than tubes on this one, so you have to give up your tube at the bottom and wait for another.)

 She wants to try that water slide by the wave pool again, and Ty tells her it’s no big deal if she gets dunked, she should just hold her breath when she gets to the bottom in case.  Not leaving anything to mere chance, she holds her breath from the time she sits down at the top until she’s standing at the bottom.  Now that she knows how to survive the ride, several more trips are in order.  When she’s through, Laurie and I take our Lazy River back to our base camp, while Haley and Dad scrounge up a sand bucket.  And now Haley’s playing in the sand in the shade, Laurie’s lying in the sun, life is good. 

 As we’re getting our stuff out of the locker to leave the park, Laurie realizes she’s lost her watch.  Not your everyday K-Mart Timex, mind you, but an expensive silver and gold Disney job that she fell in love with a couple of years ago.  What the heck is it with us losing stuff this trip?  She’s had trouble with the clasp a couple times before, and I wish I would have realized before now that this could have been prevented if I had just wrapped five or six of those little rubber bands around the clasp for her when she put it on.  Neither her return to our base camp to sift sand nor our call to Lost and Found later on is successful, and she’s really bummed.  It’s a Disney sort of bummed (where you’re 90% still having a good time), but bummed nevertheless.

 We take our bus back to the All Stars, change our clothes, and head back to the Magic Kingdom.  This is day 6 of 7 for us, and Haley’s down to the clothes she didn’t pick first.  And as sometimes happens to the baby of the family who dresses at least partly in hand-me-downs, her shorts today are just a little too big.  After Ty sees her hiking them up a couple times, he decides to buy a belt for her somewhere on Main Street, but it can’t be done.  (Men’s belts with Goofy buckles maybe, but not for kids.)

 Our priority seating for the character dinner at the Crystal Palace is for 4:20.  This wouldn’t have been our first choice, but by the time we locked in Ty’s travel plans it was all we could get.  And I wouldn’t recommend 4:20 at all.  I think they begin serving dinner at 4, and everyone gets into the line at the same time.  And the line stays very long until almost 5:00.  After that, you get the newcomers rotating through and the line disappears for the night.

 Haley’s very excited at the thought of meeting Pooh and his friends.  Laurie apparently doesn’t want to have her miss autographs with them, because I glance down at the table and see we’ve brought the notepad and Bic pen from our room.  (Good Lord, I’m guest starring in ‘Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Disney World’!)  But we do have a strict two-autograph-book limit on these trips, not that we’ve ever got past one before.  Haley has great fun with the characters, and surprisingly jumps right in to join the Hurray Parade.  My companions are having such a good time they don’t even seem to take a moment to feel sad that I got gypped out of seeing Eeyore at our table because of a poorly timed solo entry into the food line.

[N o b o d y   c a r e s   a b o u t   t h e   d o n k e y  L]

 As we finish up with dinner, Laurie goes over to get FastPasses for Splash Mountain, which will be good at 7:40.  Haley says she’s not going to ride.  Daddy says he was really looking forward to riding it with her, and her reaction is pretty much ‘sorry about your luck’.

 We meet up again at the Country Bear Jamboree.  We see something here we’ve never seen before, when a guy carrying his child comes out the IN door.  At first, we think the child had to leave, but then a mass of people are pushing the doors open and coming out.  The show must be over, and it was just a case of one person going the wrong way and a bunch of others blindly following.  Haley likes the show, but apparently in a limited way.  We ask her if she liked it, and she says “Yeah, it was short. I’d like to do it again.”  Laurie reminds her that tomorrow is our last day, and she gets to pick all our rides.  “Well, I’m not going to pick that one.”  (Dumbo remains at the top of her to-do-again list, and that will be first thing.)

 Haley’s shorts are beginning to be a bigger (get it?) problem now, as she’s sort of holding them up.  Ty figures if he can’t get her a belt, he’ll just get her new shorts, but those are hard to come by here as well.  So it’s Grandma MacGyver to the rescue again.  She scours the first shop we see and finds a set of three Mickey headbands, each a different color with a little Mickey outline on one side.  Knot those three babies end to end and you have a nice $8 belt.  (I tell you, it’s ‘Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Disney World’ ;-)  Laurie points out to Haley the Mickeys on each end and tells her it looks really cool, and Haley’s quite proud of it. 

 She tells us again that she’s not riding Splash Mountain, she wants to ride the Pillow Ride again.  We’re used to the kids giving attractions their own names, like the Waterfall (Splash), the Wolf Ride (Haunted Mansion) and the Rabbit Ride (Kali River Rapids), but we can’t immediately put a handle on the Pillow Ride.  Until she says something about the jewels on the ground.  Now I knew Aladdin was supposed to be a magic carpet, but until now I had never noticed that the sides of the car are made to look like pillows, which I guess if I was going to design a magic carpet I would include too.

 After she bounces her dad around on Aladdin, we make one more attempt to talk her into riding Splash Mountain with her dad.  She’s quite resolute.  And Ty has always been as accommodating with his girls as we have, so he just shrugs his shoulders, realizing that that log has sailed.  We figure it’s a good time to go see the Haunted Mansion.  Haley quickly determines she’s not going on that one again, ever, but is skipping fairly briskly as we head up into Fantasyland.

 We’ve rarely seen Small World crowded like it seems tonight, and we think that not only are some folks that haven’t ridden in a while checking it out, but more people may be taking a second trip now than usual.  Haley spends most of the tour pointing out to her Dad the things that weren’t there when she came last year. 

 She’s extremely excited to show her Dad Mickey’s PhilharMagic, “I just know you’re going to love it!”  They’re just starting to fill the pre-show holding area, and we find a spot down at the far end of the room where we can sit down and not be in the way.  Right next to a group with kids whose parents probably told them that sitting wasn’t allowed, no doubt.  I feel a little guilty sometimes, but I get over it very quickly.  Haley was right, her dad loves the show, and loves watching her still reach for every duck and thingamabob and musical instrument that comes our way.

 We get down by Pooh and the sign says it’s a 45 minute wait.  The line doesn’t look nearly that long to us, but we don’t want to risk missing the fireworks, either.  We definitely have time though for a ride on the Tea Cups,  and Haley wants both me and Dad to ride with her to spin more.  Which we do.  And she’s quite the little giggle-meister.

We find a very nice spot outside the Tomorrowland Terrace Noodle Station from which to watch the fireworks.  She’s criticized me heavily for making her miss Tinkerbell the other night, so we’re in a prime spot to see her.  Unfortunately, because of wind or fairy union issues or whatever, Tink doesn’t make the flight tonight and Haley’s a little miffed.  She still loves the fireworks themselves though, and appreciates (as do we) that you can see all of them from here while looking in only one direction.  She’s such a little pro now, we hear her mention to her dad at one point “This is my favorite part.”  She’s sitting on his shoulders and we see a number of yawns, her late night last night is catching up.  I look over at one point during one of Jiminy’s little speeches and she’s laying her head on top of his head.

 It’s not nearly as bad a trip out to the bus from this location, but once we get outside the park I realize I’m not going to be keeping up with Laurie.  I’ve got a minor knee twist going on in one leg and a small blister on the other foot, so I’ll just let them go out ahead with the stroller to get in the bus line.  As they take off, I hear Haley saying “I’m not getting on the bus if I don’t have a seat.”  Well of course another 20 minutes in the line won’t bother YOU, Princess, since you’re sitting in the stroller and all.  Laurie was going to get popcorn for Haley during the fireworks, but the line had been too long.  So at the bus stop, Laurie tells her she’ll get some at the food court back at the resort, if Haley is still awake when we get there.  Our bus eventually comes and Ty picks up Haley while I fold up the stroller.  As we get almost up to the bus, Haley slowly picks up her head from Daddy’s shoulder, looks up at Laurie with her eyes barely open and says, almost apologetically, “I’m not going to make it, Grandma.”  And she’s sound asleep before the bus starts moving. 

 Our dreaded last day is tomorrow, and we expect Miss Haley will be taking us back to the Magic Kingdom.

[TR] Grandbabies 4.7, Magic Kingdom, 4/6/05

 Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old granddaughter Haley, on the seventh and last day of our post-Easter adventure.

 Well, we’re all up early on Day 7, since Daddy’s getting on the Mears bus at 8:15 and we plan on making rope drop at the Magic Kingdom.  It’s kind of hard for Haley today.  She isn’t crying or anything, but is sad that her dad has to go before us.  He gives hugs and kisses and gets on his bus, and Laurie asks Haley if she thinks we should get in line for the Magic Kingdom bus and wave to Daddy when his bus pulls out.  She says no at first, but then thinks it’s a good idea.  As his bus leaves, Haley and Grandma go up to the curb where they can see well, they wave goodbye to him, he waves back, and we prepare ourselves for having to talk her into having a good day now.  But she’s all smiles and back in line, and all excited about going to the Magic Kingdom again.  We’re good to go.

 From the People Who Are Unclear About The Concept Department, some guy gets off the bus ahead of us at Magic Kingdom and sees the security tables ahead and says, disgustedly, “What, have we gotta line up AGAIN???”  Yes, Grasshopper, many times, and may they all be extra long, just for you. 

What a pageant the opening of Magic Kingdom is in the morning!  Even if you don’t do ‘early’, you owe it to yourself to check this out at least once.  Scoop appears first on the platform, waving and welcoming everybody, and tells us that we’re just waiting for Mickey and his friends to get here from Toon Town to open the park for us.  The Main Street Dancers come out and give us a little song and dance, and it isn’t long before Haley notices some smoke in the trees.  Then we hear the train whistle, and now the train is pulling in carrying Mickey, Minnie, several friends, and the Your-Name-Here Honorary Park-Opening Guest Family.  They all welcome us, and make quite a production of sprinkling pixie dust for us.  And with that, the park is open and we’re headed for castle.

I’m experiencing a little déjà vu here, as Laurie says that even though she knows we’re coming back in June with Caitlin, she’s still a little sad that it’s our last day.  I do believe she’s said this on the last day of every trip we’ve taken from the second on. 

While I’m getting our breakfast OJ and muffins from Scuttle’s Landing, the elephants land and the girls head down to the Speedway, where I’ll catch up with them.  After I get my stuff and start walking, I can see them parking the stroller down by Pooh.  I must say, Haley has quite a skip on this morning, and while Laurie’s skip isn’t visible, she’s definitely in her Happy Stride.  

I meet them after their trip around the Speedway, which Laurie describes as a fairly rough ride ;-)  She was running the gas and would ease off now and then as a whiplash prevention maneuver.  She instinctively reached for the steering wheel a few times, and each time Haley would just gently push her hand away.

We decide to bypass the Tea Cups this morning and go back up to Peter Pan.  [Man, I thought Laurie and I were bad, some guy just pulled his family out of a 10-minute line because it’s too long!]  Throughout Peter Pan, I’m pointing things out to Haley, and every time I open my mouth she responds “I know”.  It’s as if she were saying “You think this is my first day on the job?” 

 As long as we’re right here, Haley wants to ride Small World again.  She really likes the big clock with the doors that open up on the quarter hour and ring bells and such.  Quite often on Small World, I have to do something to ease the pain and monotony a little.  I used to just whine to Laurie, but since that’s NEVER been well-received, I’ve taken to selecting some category of objects to count.  You know, like heart-shaped objects, or stringed instruments, or animal heads that look like the letter “V”.  Early on in today’s trip though, I realize it might be interesting to count the number of times Haley points at something.  Final tally?  27 points, 7 waves, and 1 blown kiss.  (No idea who THAT was directed at.)

As we go through the line for Snow White, we’re reminded that life is all about the little victories.  For a 5-year-old, it can be a victory to go through a turnstile without having it smack you in the back of the head.  A victory that apparently warrants a great big smile and two thumbs up!  I’m a little surprised she wants to ride Snow White again today, it seemed pretty scary for her the first trip.  But she’s in rapid head pivot mode for the whole trip today, and seems to enjoy it quite a bit.

It’s time for a bathroom break now, so we all head over to the restrooms behind Pinocchio Haus.  I don’t know if I mentioned it already, but we have a rule with the little ones -- when any one of us has to go to the bathroom, we ALL have to try at the same time.  Saves us quite a few stops, and there’s no fuss made, because it’s just the rule.  I obviously get done before the girls, and am rewarded with a performance by a horn quartet entertaining the Dumbo queue.

Since we’re right by the Carousel, Haley thinks she would like another ride, so we do.  At this point, Laurie recalls that she had parked the stroller down near Pooh this morning and forgot to get it on her way back from the Speedway.  We haven’t had it, and haven’t heard a single word from Miss Haley about it.  After our Carousel ride is over, Laurie heads down to get it, while I take a break over by the castle.  Haley starts to go with Laurie, then Laurie catches my attention and Haley comes over to me.  It seems when Laurie told her she couldn’t ride the stroller back, she decided not to walk all that way ;-)

As we get over to the wall beside the Castle, we can hear that Cinderellabration is under way again.  This is VERY confusing for Haley.  “Why is she getting married again?”  “Does she still have the baby in her belly?”  I’ve often wondered why Cinderella never moves around very much in any of her autograph sessions.  Now I know.  She gets married, has a party, and gets pregnant, six times a day.  It must be exhausting.

We have our traditional lunch at Pinocchio Haus, sitting by the windows overlooking the Small World load zone so we can wave at the departing boats.  I like the part where Haley waves, I’m not so fond of the 100^th time she says “Papa, you need to wave too!”  She tells me she thinks somebody messed up, because she just saw “six green boats in a row, how did that happen?”  Come on, people, bad show.

And now it’s time to finally see the attraction we hate more than any other at Disney – the dreaded Last Attraction of The Trip.  Mickey’s PhilharMagic gets the vote this time, and Haley uses Laurie’s lap this time to get her closer to the ‘stuff’.  At this point, she keeps her eyes open for everything in the whole show except those champagne bottles.  I’m not too proud to admit I shut mine for those.  It’s not that they’re scary, it’s just that they give me the same effect I would get if I crossed my eyes ten times in a row rapidly.  And it’s been a long time since I was in junior high and thought stuff like that was cool.  After the show, Goofy says “Hope y’all had a real good time” and Haley grins broadly and yells back “WE did!”  I think that exchange describes our whole trip. 

We were hoping to exit through the Castle (since I’m quite fond of that view of Main Street), but there’s another show going on.  So we go down the side, and the pro Haley recognizes it’s almost over.  She rides along in the stroller, waving to the princesses as they leave the stage. 

We get our Mears bus to the airport, wade through the longest Southwest line I’ve ever seen, and have a great flight back home, with Haley sleeping for about half the trip.  This time, we wake her up for the landing so she will have experienced it.  Getting into our car at the airport parking lot, Haley suddenly says “It’s not fair, you guys got more days at Disney than I did.”  We explain that we got the same number of days, but she insists “Yeah, you guys got more.”  We tell her she flew down with us, and flew back with us, so how did we end up with more days.  She says in her best ‘duh’ voice, “Elysia, Serina, …”  Well sure, if you’re going to count ALL our trips ;-)  I’d say she’d like to go back! 

We’ve apparently had quite a profound effect on Miss Haley over the course of our week with her.  Her mom and dad have both said that she never talked much before our trip, and hasn’t stopped since.  Sorry.

Next up on the Grandbaby Tour?  5-year-old Caitlin (Laurie’s baby’s oldest) in early June.  Can’t wait.