Nick’s First Vacation: The House Of The Mouse (Part 3)
By the time we left the All-Stars we had 20 minutes until our dining reservation. The skies were starting to get very dark. What else can you expect from Florida? Honestly, you can practically set your watch by the afternoon storm. I always bring our Disney ponchos with us, but we only had one, so I really didn’t want us to all get stuck in the rain. We didn’t have time to wait it out either, so I was really getting worried by the dark skies. Our hurry wasn’t helped by the fact that there was a ton of traffic on the roads. The weekend we were there was the start of The Food and Wine festival plus it was a race weekend, so everything was very busy.
We were parking five minutes before our reservation. We grabbed the one poncho to carry with us, but we managed to make it to The Rainforest Cafe with only a few sprinkles. We parked Nick’s stroller in the stroller parking area and we covered it with the poncho. The last thing I wanted was to find a soaked stroller when we were done with our meal (it did rain while we were inside, but they moved all the strollers to a covered area). Then we headed over to the elephant to check in. Luckily we didn’t have long to wait before we got our table. We were all really hungry.
We ended up with a great seat. We were in the gorilla area, but you could see a lot from our table including the big fish tank (Nick loves watching fish). We ordered as fast as we could, but sadly we had a long wait for our food to come. Nick was so good during the wait though. He really liked coloring the menu. This was the first time we had given him crayons, but he seemed to know what to do. When our food arrived we all inhaled it. Nick loved his pizza, and luckily his sippy cup felt like working, so no trouble there. We were all very full when we left. It had been a wonderful meal, and we had all had a really good time.
The end of our meal meant that it was time to shop! We went to many places in Downtown Disney. Of course I had to show Nick where Mommy used to work even though my stores were no longer the same ones I had once worked in. Then we went to Once Upon a Toy where we got Nick a build your own Mr. Potato Head (which he still loves) as well as some stuffed animals of his favorite characters. Then we headed to World of Disney. Sadly we didn’t find some of the stuff I went there to get, but we did get Nick a new hat (which he refuses to wear :-p).
By that time it was around 5:00 and we were shopped out, but not done. While it was just a quick over night trip to the World I still wanted to give Nick a little taste of Disney. First we rode the bus to the Grand Floridian. Now you have to understand Jason hates riding the bus. I guess it comes from riding buses like it to get around years ago. On the other hand I live for the bus. It is a must do part of Disney for me. This means that one of us is never happy if we do or do not ride the bus. Well, much to Jason’s dismay Nick loved the bus.
After getting off at the Grand we walked over to the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC) by way of the Polynesian. While passing the Wedding Pavilion we saw a couple taking wedding pictures and I wondered if they were Disneymooners. It’s always fun to see other Disney brides and grooms. When we got to the TTC we went to get on the monorail to Epcot. We had just missed one, so we were the first ones in line. I had chosen not to take the Magic Kingdom monorail to the TTC because I knew that there was a Halloween party that night and I didn’t want to get stuck in those crowds, but I hadn’t planned on everyone from the Magic Kingdom piling out of the monorail to get on the one for Epcot. Even though we were first in line people pushed and shoved and we were not the first ones in. We did manage to get seats, but poor Jason kept having people squish in next to him and one person practically sat on him! Even as tight as the space was Nick enjoyed his first monorail ride. I pointed out to him where Mommy and Daddy got married, but of course he had no clue what I was really pointing at. We’ll leave that for another trip.
We rode the monorail back to the TTC where we got off and walked to the Polynesian bus stop to take the bus back to Downtown Disney. Of course as our luck would have it there were a ton of people waiting to get on and we had to wait for more than one bus. One thing that I don’t like about the Deluxe Resorts is the fact that everyone waits for the buses in a mob, so everyone pushes and shoves to get on and there is no sense of who was there first. The roped lines at the Value Resorts may not look so nice, but at least they keep everything in control.
We did manage to get on the second bus, although there weren’t many seats and Jason had to stand. Nick was so tired that he feel asleep in my arms as we rode. Of course once we got off he woke up. From the Downtown Disney bus stop we walked back to the car and loaded Nick and our packages up and then we drove back to the Movies. We were lucky and our room was close enough to the parking lot that it wasn’t a terrible walk to unload the car (remember we had checked in, but we hadn’t gone to the room). Normally it only takes a few trips, but since we had to take Nick every time it took far longer than normal.
By the time we were all done unloading we were hungry, so we went to the food stand to get some dessert. I also picked up some items for breakfast while we were there. We decided to take our food back to the room. When we got there we put some milk in Nick’s sippy cup and the #!?% #@ cup didn’t work again!!!! Our overtired, and likely very thirsty boy, lost it. I figured out we had forgotten a spoon for my desert, so I took Nick back to the food court with me, which calmed him down. When we got back to the room he went right for a drink and the cup still wouldn’t work. By that point Nick was an emotional basket case, and we just couldn’t get him back. As he was screaming I called my mom and asked her to bring a new sippy cup with her for Nick when she flew out the next morning. We had looked for one while shopping that night, but hadn’t been able to find any with handles. At that point though I would have done a lot to just have a working cup.
We changed him for bed, and I tried to lay down and rest with him, but nothing worked. I didn’t know what to do so Jason took over while I jumped in the shower real fast so we could all go to bed. When I got out Nick was still fussing, so I took over. Eventually we did get him calm enough to go to sleep, but it wasn’t easy. By that point our nerves were so shot that Jason and I kept snapping at each other. It wasn’t a happy ending to our magical day.
Next up: Boarding the Fantasy