Day 9 concludes. It's our last Disney sleep.
While mulling around the Tomorrowland bridge we hit up the photopass guy:
Tinkerbell makes the hideous magical crane disappear!
It was a romantical moment for the couples:
After deciding we weren't particularly thrilled with any of the bridge vantage points I pulled Tracey down into the path that goes from by the TL bridge to the area by the ice cream parlor corner. That's where Jerry, the girls, & I watched Wishes last May. We liked the spot so we staked it out. Mom & Dad found a bench up by the bridge until it was almost time. Dad just can't stand that long.
So while we waited for Wishes with our spot another family came along to get their spot, too, and we started chit-chatting. The mom of the group was like my mom's age. She was very chatty (which we enjoy). They were from Georgia, from a town very near where the home of the Cabbage Patch Kids is. When we started talking about the Cabbage Patches I told her all about my collection & my obsession. Of all the stupid nights to leave Ellie Boo in the room. Dangit! She told me all about going to the new Babyland that just opened this last year and seeing Xavier again. She had met him many, many years ago in the late '70s. She used to have a booth in the local fair or something to sell the crafts she made with her family. Xavier had a booth next to hers. Over the course of this event with the neighboring booths they got to know each other. She said he didn't sell many of his odd looking dolls and she felt so sorry for him. At the end when they started packing up she felt so badly for him that she traded some items & paid some money & adopted 2 of what she said were "such ugly little things". I grinned ear to ear and asked her if she still had them. She said yes. I offered her $2,000 cash on the spot for one sight unseen (I don't carry around $2K but I'd have gotten it for her within 24 hours had I needed to). I promised more if I saw them & fell in love with one. She just grinned a very wise, knowing grin and said she couldn't sell them because she was leaving them to her granddaughters. Dangit! I offered considerably more. She just smiled & winked at me. She knows what she has. Dangit! But that sweet lady knew us collectors and said they're used to seeing us around at certain times of the year. And just like everyone else who's ever met Xavier in the past or present, she gushed over what a sweet soul he is, how kind & friendly he is. The only way the moment coulda been better for me is if she'd have sold me one of her old babies who turned out to be the awesomest bald booger ever! So goes the dreams of a crazy cabbage collector! LOL!
Soon it was time for Wishes to start. Mom & Dad came down to our location, we all stood there, and gazed up at the the spectacle unfolding before us. Not long after the show started I looked over at my beloved & our boys and watched their eyes as the flashes of light from the pyro bursts illuminated their faces. I thought of the last time I was at WDW watching Wishes, when they weren't there with me, and I smiled because this time they were. We were where we are supposed to be together. My eyes welled up with tears but this time it was tears of absolute bliss. Still smiling, I looked away so they wouldn't see and let the tears flow. I was completely & utterly happy in every way. I'm glad we didn't leave early. These are the moments that bring us back time and time again.
Wishes ended but we weren't ready for our fun to stop. We made our way to Adventureland for Mom & Dad's first Jungle Cruise. A night cruise! Fun! We had to get one last voyage on Pirates so that was next. Then we moved on towards Frontierland to stake a spot for the last run of Spectromagic. Right when Spectro started it began to drip-drop raindrops. Thankfully, the rain held off long enough for us to get out of the park and under the cover of our bus stop before the skies opened up. Good timing!
It was time to begin the miserable task of packing up. **siiiiigh**
When we got back to the room Brian wanted one last adventure before he hit the shower & shed his David Starcastle persona. Here he is conquering & defending his bunk:
Oh! Dangit! I forgot a pic earlier in the day! Shoot!
Okay! Here's yet another booooring pic of the savanna.
But wait! There's something to tell you! Do you see the bull thing (I forget their critter names) with the giganto horns towards the middle of the pic with his head strangely tilted???? We noticed this guy very early in our trip. Whenever he walked he lumbered along very slowly always with his head tilted at some odd angle. There's another one not in this picture that also had the head tilt but just not as extreme. You should see them! When they ate straw from piles on the ground they literally rested one horn on the ground and munched from that odd position. On our Sunrise Safari while we had the curator for the lodges' animal collection(s), Greg, to talk to we asked what was up with the head tilt bulls. Were the horns too heavy??? The answer was no. Not at all. The horns are actually not that heavy because they are not solid inside. The horns function similar to what our sinuses do. These 2 animals are actually brothers. When the first one started tilting they ran all sorts of tests on him thinking he had an issue with the structure of his inner ear or maybe an ear infection or something causing his equilibrium to be off. Then his brother started presenting the same head tilt. Basically, it's been determined these guys both have some sort of genetic predisposition to sinus infection. Those horns are full of infection and liquid and it's totally throwing them both off. They were starting heavy doses of antibiotics that very week. So if you saw them out on the savanna off of Zebra Trail or near Arusha Rock those were some seriously congested guys out there! Bless their hearts! :kiss:
Talk about some mark-up! And Disney didn't put a logo on or anything. They were exactly the same! Grrrrr!!!!
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