The World Awaits!

Day 2 dawned with clear blue skies and an expected high of 80 degrees. We got everybody moving and fed and decked out in our tie dyed Dis shirts and out the door by about 8:30am. We found out that our GPS could lead us to Walt Disney World, but had a tendency to get a bit confused once on the grounds. We realized early on to trust the signs once we were ‘on property’.

Here we have our first sight to let us know the dream was coming true…

…followed a couple of miles later by

We had the AAA Diamond pass, but Roxy’s mom’s handicapped placard put us right next to the entrance to the Transportation and Ticket Center. Roxy snapped this pic of our happy band on the way in:

You may notice that my pop wasn’t present in the picture. He doesn’t care for crowds and had his fill of theme parks earlier in life. He was happy to stay back at the resort with Precious.

We rode the monorail with the girls pointing and doing a good amount of bouncing in their seats. And then I snapped a shot of Roxy with the fam in front of the Mickey Pirate topiary

We just missed rope drop (a theme that continued through most of our days at the World) but were there as the queues were forming for the characters. Right on the other side of the tunnel was Mary Poppins and Bert

Pinochio

Pluto

and Chip and Dale

We then headed up Main Street to the Castle just as the show was starting

After it ended we moved on to Tomorrowland and Stitch

Followed by Space Mountain and lunch at Cosmic Ray’s – we ate early so it was still pretty empty

My mom and Roxy’s mom both braved Space Mountain and decided that it was going to be their last “big ride”. Oddly enough the ride fixed a spinal alignment problem that Ann had been dealing with. Who needs a chiropractor when you have Disney – lol

After refueling we headed around to Fantasyland and ran into Alice and the Mad Hatter

We lucked out with that one and were the last ones to see them before they went back to Wonderland. From there it was around the bend and Snow White’s Scary Adventure

When we came out we saw Mickey’s PhilharMagic was getting ready to start. Now I have heard a lot of conversation about this one and had been looking forward to it. Coming out if it I have to say this it was an instant favorite for me …but I think it should have been called Donald’s PhilharMagic ;-]

A quick restroom break and we were off to It’s a Small World (Mom’s fav)

Followed by Peter Pan’s Flight, a fav of mine from WAY back when

From there we headed down the hill and made it to Haunted Mansion

Hello Madame Leota

This is one the girls had really been been looking forward to since it was closed when we were at Disneyland in ’05. It was very cool to be back in that one …last time for me was when I was all of 7 years old. Gillian was next to me and the stretching room freaked her out just like it did to me when I was her age.

She started to panic when we got on the conveyor belt and Roxy was worried about her and said she didn’t have to go. But I got her on the car and had my arm around her and promised her that it would be fine and that she wouldn’t see anything that she didn’t see in the Haunted Mansion movie. Once we got going she calmed down and had fun and was happy she went through it :-]

We headed down through Liberty Square towards Frontierland, stopping to grab some ice cream and then found ourselves in the stocks!

We were eventually released on our own recognisance and hit the Country Bear Jamboree!

After the show it was getting close to parade time. Splash Mountain was closed but Big Thunder Mountain was beckoning. 

It was about 2:30pm when we left the Jamboree and headed past the silent presence of Splash towards Big Thunder. The girls both needed a bathroom break so Roxy took them while the moms found a shady spot to park their chairs. I talked to them about the Dreams parade since I knew they weren’t going to ride Big Thunder.

So Roxy, the kids, and I headed up to Big Thunder while the moms got good spots for the parade. I caught this shot while we were waiting in line

It was one of the few lines that took any amount of time, but was still somewhere between 20-25min. We got the very back car with Bean next to me:

and Roxy and my Pumpkin Girl right behind us:

It was fun but both kids thought it was too short a ride to warrant the “long” wait in line – lolol

We got out just after the parade had passed, but the girls were ok with that and the moms had a great time watching it. We headed down into Adventureland to catch Pirates of the Caribbean before the parade crowd caught up with us and only had about a 15min wait for it.

I have heard some back and forth about the changes they made, but overall I was ok with the movie-based additions to it. Here’s some pics from it

We spent some time in the gift shop there and I picked up my crimson pirate Mickey Ears which you will see me stylishly sporting in future shots ;-]

We continued through Adventureland and the girls took a quick break dodging the squirting totems with Bean dodging well and Pumpkin being not so lucky 

From there it was right around the corner and on to the Jungle Cruise! It took some doing getting the moms on the boat, but once we were settled we were a tour de force of tie dyed wonder …hehehe

We saw lots of wildlife fun including hungry, hungry hippos

But then the trip took a dangerous turn when Bean was asked to drive!!!!!

The CM was a real kick and kept bugging us to send her a t-shirt …it was one of the high points of the day.

Next was a trip to the Tiki Room. We had some issues with that on due to some initial miscommunications with the CM running the turnstiles in relation to wheelchair access. We just missed one show but I had the moms ready to roll in on the second when he closed up the wheelchair gate (Roxy was with the kids doing the little boats next to the Jungle Cruise and we thought we had plenty of time). I was a bit miffed and went down to talk to him after he closed it.

He was a bit embarrased and apologized for not letting me know when we missed the first show and that the wheelchair guests had to be lined up and go in before they let anyone else in due to the arrangement of the theater.

For the next show he was very gracious and made sure all of the ladies got leis. We had some time to kill so I was able to get some good family shots in front of the waterfall :-]

Then it was on with the show! This is one of Roxy’s favs as a kid and she was ok with the addition of Iago and Zazu …seeing how it would help kids of today connect with it.

When the show finished we had one more bathroom break but then had to beat feet outta there to meet up with my pop and his birthday surprise! That’s right, today was his birthday!

On the way out we ran into Cinderella’s mice

and Chicken Little

We left at a good time and the monorail wasn’t crowded at all. It was nice to be off our feet for a few minutes. We headed back to the resort and “freshened up” before rolling out for Downtown Disney. It was just after dark and the lagoon was reflecting all the lights from the Rainforest Café

We had 7pm reses, so we headed right down to our destination

It was a great meal – everybody got stuffed. And for the food lovers I must again apologize because I have no food pics and can’t remember what everybody had …but it was all good. The only downside was that it was loud and very busy.

But my pop really enjoyed it and we were all set to surprise him with some birthday cake, but the whole thing dragged out so long I ran out of excuses as to why we hadn’t left yet and had to tell him 

By the time we left Bean was down for the count and I had to carry her back to the car

We headed back to the resort and poured Bean into our bed and made sure everyone else was settled in before Roxy and I headed down to the Super Wal-Mart to finally stock up on food and other stuff.

One of the things we needed to pick up was a printer so Roxy and her mom could print out some reports and do payroll for the company they work for. They are the only office people so that bit couldn’t be helped. We picked out a printer, then got an extra ink cartridge, then got distracted looking for DVD-R disks and were on our way back to the resort before we realized we never actually put the printer in the cart!

This little oops would come back to haunt us in days to come.

We made it back after 11pm and sat down to look over the next day. We had everything set up for an EPCOT day including Coral Reef dinner reservations, but I was getting more and more concerned about next week’s weather. The next day was looking like another nice sunny day with a high around 80 again, but a storm was moving in over the weekend.

I had Typhoon Lagoon set for Monday and it was looking cloudy and cool for that day with a decent chance of rain. We also had Monday set as our Spectro night, and I was concerned it might get rained out. But Thursday was also a Spectro so I brought up switching those two days.

It made sense with the exception that we had to try and change a 6 person Coral Reef reservation right before we were supposed to be there. Would we change it up? Would it all work out? Do I have any kind of clue what I am doing???

We’ll see next time – hehehe!