Saturday, March 20, 2010

Day Five Magic Kingdom!

February 22, 2010

This morning we took the morning off. The kids were exhausted and we needed to do laundry. Shiloh took the kids back to the beach while I put the laundry on. I got ready and dried the laundry. Then on my way back to the cabin I realized that I had locked myself out. So I left the laundry on the porch and hopped on a bus and rode to the beach to get a key. I got it rode back to the cabin put the laundry away then rode back to the beach. The bus driver was really confused and asked if I knew what I was doing. I assured him that I did it was just a crazy morning. When I got back the kids were playing on the playground. We decided to let the kids ride the ponies.

As we walked over I asked Silas if he wanted to ride a horsey and he said "No...no thank you horsey stinky!" They were stinky! But the girls were not put off. They had fun and thought they should get to go around more than once.

Clara rode Cricket.





Cecily rode Chip.





Next we split up and the girls and I ate lunch by the pool while Shiloh took Silas to the cabin to get the stroller. They ate lunch at the cabin. I took the girls to the store and they each chose a charm bracelet and one charm. Then we waited on the but to take us to the boat that would take us to Magic Kingdom. The girls played with nature while we waited.











Shiloh and Silas met up with us there.

Here Shiloh is finishing the rest of my salad and the kids are feeding bits of chicken to the seagulls.






On the boat to Magic Kingdom we spotted Cinderella's castle!








When we got past the bag check we were stopped by two cast members who gave us "This is my first visit" buttons (which got us lots of attention all day) and then as we strolled past them into the park they sprinkled us with pixie dust! I found a piece of this pixie dust which was a mickey mouse shaped piece of confetti the last time I swept my bedroom. :)

You can't go to MK without pausing for a photo here. Again we swapped taking photos with a family who had one little girl.



We arrived just in time to see this show on the castle.



After the show we kept our spots and had a snack while we waited for the parade to begin. I entertained Silas by letting him take pictures of us.



Then I wanted a lovely photo of the kids in front of the castle (taking the idea from a blog I'd read) but the kids were grumpy and only wanted silly poses.



Waiting...



Anticipating...



Finally after hearing the music for quite some time we spotted the first float!



Clara waved and waved...



And grinned and grinned when she spotted Mary Poppins in her blue dress!



Silas learned if he reached up characters would shake your hand. So he stretched up his hand...



And was rewarded with a shake from Abu! I had to move the camera quickly so all you see really is Abu's hand/arm and Silas' fingertips.



After the parade we headed straight toward the rides. You know teacups and dumbo.











We stayed here for the rest of the day and were able to ride everything. It showered a little bit and people cleared out some. We waited it out and lines were very short.
We rode It's a Small World twice and the first time Shiloh said "This song sounds familier" :) I thought everyone knew about that ride but I guess not.

We met Peter Pan and Ariel.





Then kids also experienced a 3D show of the Mickey Mouse that they thought was great. This was the first time we were able to get Silas to leave the glasses on and he was reaching out for everything. When we came out of the Mickey show it was pouring rain. Luckily you exit into a small gift shop which of course is a marketing stratagy to make money but is also nice because you stay so busy moving from one attraction to the next you don't really take the time to shop. So by exiting into some of the smaller shops that are usually themed according to the ride,you get to see some of what Disney has to offer. Here among plush Mickeys and Tiggers they offered a giant candy machine filled with the same candy that is inside pixie sticks. You choose your favorite size tube and fill it with a rainbow of colored sugar. We decided to make the best of the rain and let the kids choose a twelve inch tube to fill. Why? I don't know. Six inches would've been more than enough. The tubes are quite fat. Everyone wanted a little of every color and there were about 15 differant flavors. At first it was fun moving from color to color putting just a dab of this and a smidge of that but either because of the rain or because it looked like we were having so much fun soon there was quite a crowd circling the rainbow sugar machine! We quickly topped of everyones tube with about three inches of one final color and paid our $12.00 while the kids sucked away in the store and it rained outside. Soon we felt brave enough to dart across to the next attraction. And eventually the rain stopped.

We stayed until closing and watched the fireworks. By the time we strolled to the front of the park when they were over everyone was asleep in the stroller. Cecily was holding Silas on her lap when they crashed.



It made a very interesting time loading up onto the boat. You have to take the kids out and fold the stroller. Then unload to the stoller again and go to the bus. Then unload on the bus then load back up for a stroll to the cabin. I don't remember if everyone stayed asleep but they went straight to bed.

Friday, March 19, 2010

A Quote From Shiloh

I've never had a quote from Shiloh on here before but this one made me giggle for some reason.

As Silas and Clara play in the shower Shiloh is playing hangman with Cecily. Cecily has grown tired of guessing and reading words so Shiloh says "Do you want me to write your name in a curse word?" I walked into the room right at this moment thinking "What?" As he immedieatly corrects himself saying "I mean cursive?"

I don't know why it struck me as funny but it just did.

Day Four-Holywood Studios

February 21, 2010

Today we visited Holywood Studios. I had done reading on the attractions the night before and Shiloh and I had marked up a map and planned out a stradegy for park opening. I felt like we needed a stradegy if we were going to get to ride the new 3D Toy Story ride. I read a lot of things that talked about how everyone rushes to this ride at opening and they do it because if you don't you won't have another chance to ride it. The line becomes long and the fastpasses get all used up early. We made it to the park before opening (this was a first) and waited (like sardines) with everyone else until they opened the gates. I had map in hand and when they opened we walked straight toward the Toy Story ride. There was a man with a large video camera set up yelling to the crowd as we passed "Everyone look as if you are very excited to ride on Toy Story Mania, like you can not wait to get there!" As the people passed and heard him they really pumped up the energy thinking they were helping to film a commercial or something. Me included. But just a split second after we passed by I realize everyone is already acting this way and the camera was most likley a prop used to point out the obvious. For fun of course. Anyway we reached THE LINE. There were actually cast members directing people which way to walk, where to park strollers,go left to stand in line to ride, go right to stand in the get a fast pass and so on. We made a split second decision to stand in line to ride as we saw the fast pass come back times head into the afternoon. But just like all lines at Disney we didn't stop walking. They had green army men "directing" the crowd as well and were mostly meant for our entertainment however the line moved so quickly that we didn't get much time to stand and watch them. I didn't even have time to snap a photo of them before we were inside and inside Andy's room. We waited in line about twenty minutes which was the maximun wait time we experienced for any ride our entire visit. I think maybe it was the time of the year? However I guess our stradegy worked to our advantge. We were entertained in line the entire time by giant game pieces and a giant Mr. Potato head telling jokes to the crowd that we hardly noticed any wait at all.











Once we came off the ride and compared scores (Shiloh beat me) we saw there was no line outside the building and decided to ride again. This time we only had to wait about ten minutes and this time I was sure I would beat Shiloh's score cause he took Silas in his lap. I was free to shoot as fast as I could and really bump up the score at the end on the bonus round. Shiloh beat me again. I picture Silas asking "Daddy I wanna shoot" and Shiloh saying "Not right now I have to beat Mommy!" but I know this isn't true because when Silas rode with me he just wanted to watch. He didn't care about pulling the string that would shoot the gun. I can see now why everyone rushes to this ride. It was fun. ;)

I'm sure we would've kept riding over and over but we had places to go! Next door was the Prince Caspian attraction and we thought we may get to meet him. We watched a film and them got to see some of the props and costumes from the movie. When we asked the lady about the Prince she said he didn't work there anymore. Cecily was upset. In tears upset. So we went back inside the film area and snapped a photo with Aslan's stone table instead. I knew it was too dark to turn out great but Cecily was really upset and that seemed to make it better.





Next we spent some time meeting these characters you may recognize. Cecily was a little intimidated by Mr. Incredible and Frozone. I'm not sure why but she wasn't having her picture taken next to these giant headed people.







One of the things I most looked foward to at HS was the Beauty and the Beast show. I knew the girls would really like it. It's like all the best parts of the movie(the songs) live on stage. They did like it and couldn't stop thinking about why the little girl who was chosen to receive a felt rose from the prince at the end of the show was any more of a "special guest" than they were. I assured them it was because she was in the front row and nothing more but they weren't so sure.









Next stop Star Wars Simulator. Silas was too small for this ride so we tried out the child swap system. Shiloh took the girls and we simply told the man at the begining of the line that we wanted to use child swap. He gave us a ticket and Shiloh went ahead. When they came out Clara felt sick and didn't want to ride again so I took Cecily straight to the front of the line with our ticket. The only line we had to wait in was the handicap line. I like this system. The kids get to ride twice and wait only once! When we got a little smarter we combined the fast pass with the child swap and rode twice with almost no wait. But you can only use a fast pass one at a time. So if you are waiting for your turn to come around on fast pass on one ride you can't get another one until the first one is done.

These buildings aren't real they are just painted on and made to look 3D.





We made sure to stay till park closing because we wanted to watch Fantasmic. It's a water/laser show that Mickey conducts and you have a chance to see all the characters in one place. We went to the earlier showing that started at 7:30 and while in line to get in I saw the Hollywood Tower of Terror. I told Shiloh he should ride it and although the girls were tall enough it is kind of a scary ride. He went to ride alone and I parked the stroller and found seats. We had a while to wait for the show to start but they played music to entertain us. When a song from the Little Mermaid came on Cecily just stood up in the bleachers and started dancing. I don't know where she learned her moves but she was quite good. Clara soon joined her and I got our the video camera. I hate that it's so dark but maybe you can see a little. After that one song they wouldn't dance anymore. I guess they were moved by it!




We basically did all the attractions at HS but I guess we chose not the get the camera out because the next photos are of us leaving. Sad. Well we still had three days of parking around ahead of us!



When we got on the bus to go back to the resort a group of high energy teenagers got on with us. It turned out that they were also staying at Fort Wilderness and so transfered to the next but with us. When Silas started acting grumpy they started talking to him. One girl asked what his name was and I told her. Then they were asking him all kinds of questions. They asked if he saw Mickey Mouse and all of a sudden Mickey's voice came on the loud speaker saying "I hope you saw me Silas cause I certainly saw you!" Then "Mickey" giggled. It was our bus driver of course but the girls kept saying "We heard Mickey talk to Silas!" I think it's impossible to go to Disney and not have some little experience like this. Everyone calls the girls princess and Silas pirate. You might walk by someone and they will blow pixie dust on you. Which is mickey mouse head confetti. Or like when we were waiting for Aurora to come back to sign autographs and they decided to move the spot where she was greeting kids, the lady came and got our family and took us to the head of the line in a secret back door because she knew we were waiting. Everyone one is so friendly. Shiloh and I talked about stratagies the bosses used to make sure the employees act like they are just working to have a job and we thought they must have secret shoppers. People who walk around pretending to be on vacation but are there to check out attitudes. I don't know how else to accomplish this. I didn't see one bad attitude. Not like when you go to six flags. What do you think?

p.s. spell check won't work so sorry if you notice typos.

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