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Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Disney World Part Two

Day 4 – Magic Kingdom. The least magical part of our trip! At least for the first three hours. It was almost a total bust, until Jon went to Guest Services (for the second time that day) and said through clenched teeth “I just…want…to ride a ride…without it breaking down.” I contributed, “I am going to lose my mind. We are all losing our minds.”

Here’s what happened: We knew that the new ride, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, would have a ridiculous line. Fast passes had been gone for weeks and the stand-by in the days before was showing a 2 hour wait on our Disney app. Our only chance to ride it was to get to the park at opening and trample a bunch of strollers on our sprint over to it. We didn’t factor into our plans that unless you’re staying on Disney property, the only way into Magic Kingdom is the monorail, and by the time the monorail started running we were already late getting into the park and hundreds of busloads of people had already been dropped off. Sure enough, when we turned the corner to the coaster the stand-by line was 90 minutes. No way. Our first fast pass of the day (Pirates) didn’t start for 30 minutes so we hit Peter Pan on the way (my favorite of the kiddie rides). We showed up at Pirates with a couple of minutes to spare only to realize it was completely broken down. So we hopped over to the Splash Mountain standby line instead. After about 40 minutes we realized that the line was stopped: At moments it seemed like it was maybe moving, but that was only because people way ahead of us (who clearly knew something we didn’t) were leaving. We optimistically stuck it out another ten minutes or so until I could corner a park employee to ask what was going on. This happened:


By now we started worrying that the day was a total bust. It was twice as crowded as any of the other parks had been and with half the rides broken down, dismal people were all just roaming from broken ride to broken ride in the infernal heat like confused zombies. We’d been in lines since 8:30, and it was now noon, and we’d only managed to ride one thing (I guess two if you count the monorail, AND I DON’T. Get a FACELIFT, Monorail). We remembered that when we’d gotten our Hollywood Studios fast passes at Tower of Terror the guy told us we could trade them in at any park. Exasperated, we headed to guest services to do just that. But the lady refused! She harped on and on about how our “incident” happened at Hollywood Studios and that’s a totally different park; Magic Kingdom is a separate park from Hollywood Studios and whatever had happened there had nothing to do with Magic Kingdom, blah blah blah. Ohhh we wanted to murder her. As we left guest services, we checked our Disney app and realized Pirates was up and running so we shrugged and went for it.

Remember how when we were stuck on Tower of Terror, the only thing that kept me sane was the thought “At least I’m not on Pirates of the Caribbean”? Well that was some effed up real-life foreshadowing because Pirates of the Caribbean broke down at the “Yo Ho Yo Ho” part for 20 minutes, and they did not turn the sound off, and I almost lost it. Jon told me later that I had sort of caused a scene and all the people on the boat kept casting tense looks in my direction. I only remember saying “I cannot handle this. I cannot handle this” over and over with my fingers in my ears and my head between my knees. It was a hundred times worse to me than the Tower of Terror and I don’t even really know why. Something about it was triggering to me. Afterward Annie said “Why did you have such a hard time with that? I could have sat there another two hours, no problem.” Aaaaaahahahaha. Anyway, this was when we went to Guest Services for the second time. After Jon gave his speech, I hastily tacked on “but if we could ride the mine ride that would make it all better” and ta-dah, fast pass city. So I guess I owe thanks to the awful shrew that refused to trade in our Hollywood Studios passes for Magic Kingdom ones, because in the end we got Magic Kingdom passes in ADDITION to the ones from Hollywood Studios and had so many fast passes we ran out of time before we could even use them all. And we got to ride the new mine ride, TWICE.

Pics from Magic Kingdom:

Thestral




Annie rode splash mountain! Twice! The second time she was in front of a terrified 7 year old and his parents, and it was HILARIOUS. At one point our log paused RIGHT next to the big drop as another one plummeted, and the kid’s dad immediately said “That’s not this ride. That’s a different ride.” Then at the end the kid shouted triumphantly “I found my courage!!”



This Gaston-themed restaurant was in the new portion of the park. They serve an apple/toasted marshmallow slushie drink with passionfruit foam on top called “LaFou’s Brew” that sounds gross but was one of the most delicious things we ate the entire trip. Jon will not stop talking about it.

I use antlers in all of my decorating.

That night we went back to Hollywood Studios to ride Toy Story on repeat. Photo: BOMBED. Then of course Epcot for dinner.

Day 5 – By this point we’d done all the parks so we voted on which we wanted to repeat. It was unanimous: Animal Kingdom in the morning, Typhoon Lagoon in the afternoon.








Sunset at Epcot our final night


Other things that happened:

  • Me [at Biergarten]: “I’m too full to move. Jon, will you go get me another dessert?” (He brought me two.)
  • All of us saying “These dogs are barking” many, many times each day, and laughing our heads off every time. Somehow I had never heard of this expression before…??
  • Me: Does this look good to you? Jon: The only thing that looks good to me is an anti-diarrheal.
  • Annie complaining that she was in need of a moist towelette after a meal and Jon delighting us all by whipping one out of the place in his wallet where one would stereotypically carry a condom.
  • The sleeping manatee farting a steady stream of air bubbles and hearing Jon’s distinct chuckle through his snorkel from several yards away. Sixty seconds later, and still through his snorkel, he chortled to himself “It’s still going!”
  • Also, this (video forthcoming):



The person next to Annie on her flight home had a blanket covering their head the entire time.


Lastly, some tweets:












And then…this





A Disney vacation is many things, but relaxing is not one of them. It drained my life force, and I can’t wait to do it again.

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