Saturday, July 27th
You didn't need to hear about the boat back to MK and the bus back to CBR, right? So let's just skip that and get to the good stuff.
This was JJ's departure day.
E was particularly enjoying playing big sister to N, and I think JJ were enjoying that they didn't have to keep the munchkin entertained the whole time themselves.
For those who didn't follow the pre-report, you might remember that I was having trouble getting commitment about ADRs. I sent a list of possibilities months in advance of the reservation window, with descriptions of food, theming, etc. No one responded. I made a list of places we were going to go, and told them to let me know if there were any that they would like to join us for. No one responded. I went ahead and made ADRs for 10 of us, so that if they decided last minute, we wouldn't have to try to find ADRs...much easier to reduce the number later than to try to add people. I sent the ADR list with times, and still heard nothing. When we all got there, JJ just tagged along, and I was glad that I had had the foresight to make these reservations for all of us. I had even planned all the really fun stuff that I thought N would love in the first week while they were there, just in case. So it hadn't registered when JJ said they had eaten at Tuskerhouse that that used up their last TS dining credits, and today was the Princess Storybook dining at Akershus, for which they'd need the dining credits.
I'm getting ahead of myself....let's start at the beginning. We got up, planning to do rope drop so I could catch soarin', because somehow someone must have accidentally changed OUR fastpass for soarin' the first day and I didn't realize it until we were already there that I didn't have a soarin' fastpass. We went to Old Port Royale to grab some breakfast. JJ were sleeping in as they had gotten sick the night before. We missed rope drop by 15 minutes, and I don't know what was going on with M, but he was in a mood. We got off the bus and he took off without us, went through a different bag check line, and was just ignoring our existence. We went straight to Soarin', and the wait time said 15 minutes, but we ended up walking on. I had spent the bus ride trying to snag a fastpass, and I was succesful, but we didn't use it as the standby time was low.. We were in Row 2 in the middle. M took A to TT while E and I went through the standby for Soarin' again. We got row 3 far right and wow was that distorted. I had been warned, but it was worse than I thought, and the Eiffel Tower just looked so wrong. Then we finally used our fastpasses and asked for row 1. The CM recognized us, this being our 3rd ride already, so he took pity on us and we got row 1 middle and it was amazing. Then we went to visit Figment.
I had been chatting with my brother via Facebook, and asked them if they were joining us for our lunch ADR, which we were heading to soon. He said they didn't have any dining credits. How could that be? I counted and recounted....I had told them to skip the Boma breakfast just so they would have a credit left for this lunch. How could they not have any more? Then I remembered....they went to Tusker House last night. I was so disappointed, because I had figured this was the perfect end to the vacation...a nice lunch all together with the princesses. Well, that wasn't going to happen. So we went just the 4 of us, and M was still grouchy as anything. (maybe he was grouchy because it was so hot? He's sweating buckets)
E pointed out our server's nametag: Christina from Arendal. Arendal, as in the inspiration for Arendelle! That's so cool! E and I ordered the meatballs.
M got some sort of sampler that had a sausage, a meatball, and some Salmon?
And we asked if they had fries, but they didn't. And our awesome server went and found fries somewhere else in the park for him....how awesome is she??
E did not like the meatballs at all. She had debated whether she should get the kid's menu mac n cheese or the meatballs, so she was really angry at herself for choosing the wrong thing. But Christina was amazing and brought her a large portion of the mac n cheese, and E liked that so much more. And then came dessert. I thought I took a picture, but once again, I can't find it. My phone doesn't do pictures in order when I transfer them to the computer. The numbers are random so they are all mixed up and I have to go through all of them to find the one I'm looking for and it isn't necessarily with the other pictures from the same day, so it's rather frustrating. Well, I remember it was some sort of trio for all of us to share, and it had some sort of rice pudding, a chocolate mousse thing and something else...E and I ate it all because A didn't like any of it, and M said he didn't feel well and needed to leave. He ended up leaving before we paid and he went back to the resort. We chatted with our server for a bit about the real Arendal and she said it was so weird because when she had come to Disney to work, she found one of her school classmates was working there as well, so it was nice to have a familiar face and it was odd that 2 people from such a small place ended up working there at the same time. We also talked about the food and we admitted that we weren't fans of the schoolbread and she said what they have at Epcot is not really like the real stuff they get back home. It's a different kind of bread, and there was something about the custard and icing, too, but I don't remember and I don't have it in my notes.
After lunch we met up with JJ to do TT. We had gone over to get a return time and then went to Mousegear one more time. My brother had wanted to get J an anniversary present, and J had been eyeing the Jack Skellington ears. So he put N and E in charge of distracting J so he could get to a register undetected. My niece is so funny...she suddenly REALLY had to go to the bathroom. Come on, Daddy J, I really need to go potty! So we got J's ears and then waited for the distraction team to return from their fabricated bathroom emergency.
J and I took the chicken exit at TT. I was surprised my brother went on this one.
It was so bizarre....J and I said we decided not to ride and they pointed us to a stairway to exit, but it's somewhat open, so you can see the people in the cars and we wanted to wave to our group, but someone came and shooed us along and told us we could wait for them by the photo screens, but we could not stand there for 30 seconds to wave to them from the stairs. We said we just wanted to wait until their car came by to wave, but nope, we couldn't do that. We had to exit right away. Is this standard practice? It's not like it was a dangerous place to be, or that by standing there we would be ruining the magic for anyone, and there was no one else there, so we weren't backing up a line. So strange.
J gave the kids each $5 to get the TT drivers licence thing. E opted not to get the license and J said she could just keep the 5 bucks.
JJ had a ton of snack credits left, and as it was their last day, they wanted to use them up, so they treated us all to raspberry Lemonade slushies...except A got cheetos because he doesn't like slushies. Best. Slushy. Ever. It was SO good.
We headed over to Soarin' so JJ could ride as they hadn't done it yet. We waited outside and E made a friend. I had parked E and A on a bench so I could go to the bathroom and there was an 11 year old girl there with her teacher for a summer program. The teacher had needed to charge her cell phone and there were outlets there, and the girl had bought a unicorn marionette somewhere and it had gotten tangled and she and the teacher were unsuccessful in untangling it. E asked if she could try. E is...well, first of all patient, second she's persistent, and she loves to help people. She also likes to build things, and fix things...she likes to see how they work. (She got a rubics cube that broke and she figured out how to put it together again, and then when her classmates' fell apart, she fixed them as well, taking pictures of each step to teach them how to do it themselves.) So she managed to get this thing untangled and the girl was so amazed...wanted to pay E and E was saying no no, you don't have to pay me, I just like doing stuff like that, but the girl was so insistent. They had been trying for such a long time and she had thought her souvenir was just a complete loss, and beyond fixing and she was so grateful that a complete stranger would be willing to help her, and was in awe that it was another KID who fixed it when her teacher couldn't. She insisted E take a dollar as a thank you. It was so sweet.
JJ came off the ride and I was glad that my brother had fit into the seat and have the seatbelt buckle. I was a bit worried it would be another FoP moment. But it was fine and they liked it. We said goodbye and N was not wanting to do pictures.
And then it was over. No more family reunion. I'm so sad we didn't have much time that day, but I'm also so glad we got the time that we did.
