It’s still a bit early, so we take the opportunity to grab a few hub/castle pics with nobody around:
As expected, the rope is up by the entrance to Cinderella’s Royal Table. We are at the front and take a few minutes to look around at the empty Fantasyland. Several families exit CRT and start pushing their way up to the rope. I overlook this…the kids are excited…I’ll scoot over a bit and get behind the boys.
Then the Fairy Godmother comes out and starts talking to the people at the rope.
I could have sworn that it was Justin Bieber with the rush of girls that pushed us aside. It was a move I had not yet seen – a lateral movement of a stroller by the parent and almost perfectly timed jump by 2 girls to take the space formerly occupied by me. I utter a couple of choice words sort of under my breath, and wifey tells me to chill out.
The music starts up, which is the queue to let us in. The rope is being held by a CM, who is waiting for the precise/proper moment to walk it away for us to enter. He hears the audio he was waiting for, and people start ducking under the rope and making a dead sprint to Tinkerbell’s Treasure. The 4 of us spread out a bit to block the crowds for a moment while the CM does what needs to be done, and we start walking to our first attraction. For those of you who follow us, listen to WDW Today, and/or know TouringPlans, you know that Dumbo is the first stop. As I shoot condescending glances at a couple running past us with a stroller to make sure they were ahead of as many as possible, we enter the queue line. A few seconds later, I notice a father/daughter also in line, with the girl holding a clipboard. I wonder if touringplans was collecting data today. We’re all in the first ride of Dumbo.
We start our way up, and I have the video camera ready to see what’s going on behind the walls with the Fantasyland refurbishment.
For those who know this attraction, you probably noticed that all the elephants moved to the high point, which is what happens just before the ride ends. Sure enough, after only 2-3 revolutions, you can hear the hiss of the hydraulics lowering everyone. We’re back down, and we come to a stop.
Hmmmmmmmm….something’s up.
We wait for about 90 seconds as the ride resets, and then we’re off for the actual ride.
Well, that was interesting.
We head off and make a beeline to Peter Pan. I notice that the girl with the clipboard and her dad were about 5-6 ships ahead of us. It then dawned on me that they might be attempting to do the Ultimate Touring Plan. After this attraction, I’ll ask them to see if that’s what they’re doing. Pan is a walk-on, and we happily don’t have the attraction break down. We get off, and clipboard girl is nowhere to be found. After hopping off, I make the mistake of checking my phone, and the feeling of dread creeps back in.
Okay, let’s cut across the walkway and hit it’s a small world, which is also a walk-on.
Yeah…check out that last pic…the boats are backed up to the BEGINNING of the white room.
We run away from that attraction and look towards Philharmagic before heading over towards Toon Town for a last goodbye. We all let out a collective “aahhhhhhh” as we entered the air conditioning. As always, we get the requisite opera glasses pic:
We only have to wait a couple of minutes before Minnie starts giving us the directions for the show. We’re in, and I end up sitting next to an older couple (I mean ‘70s’ older and not ‘50s’ older) who have never seen it before. This bodes well because I love seeing people experience this show for the first time. Sure enough, the show does not disappoint, and the pure laughter and joy I hear next to me really helped me reclaim a little of the magic. I actually was smiling as I talked to them on the way out of the show.
The happiness was short-lived, however, because the tea cups were next, and Wifey and I always argue about this one. You see, I’m the kind, caring, compassionate parent who wants his kids to have as much fun as possible. Sheri, on the other hand, is the evil, mean, uncaring parent who wants to suck out as much fun from any experience as possible. As we approach the cups, Sheri looks at me and says that we’re not spinning (ignoring the melodious chorus of “Spin us spin us spin us” from our lovely children). I tell her that we have to spin some or it wouldn’t be the tea cups. The songbirds that usually were hovering around wifey pooped on her and flew over to me. We only wait for one rotation before we hop in a teacup. The boys increase their “SPIN US SPIN US SPIN US” chant before we start. Wifey takes one look at me, and the songbirds fly away.
A tumbleweed blows across the teacup.
A CM starts whistling the theme to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
The attraction starts.
SPIN US SPIN US SPIN US
Gulp
I start to spin.
Wifey hates me.
I stop.
The boys hate me.
I can’t win.
With the teacups done, we head over towards Toon Town when I see the father/daughter/clipboard again. As they run by, I yell out to them, “You trying the ultimate touring plan?”
Big smile from her
“Yep!!!”
“Good luck!!”
We tour around Toon Town a bit, but I’m just going through the motions now. Every couple of minutes, I’m checking the phone to make sure I haven’t missed a call. We see Mickey and Minnie and look around at the houses one last time before they get demolished. After this, we head back through Fantasyland and over to Liberty Square for a spin on Haunted Mansion. Both boys flock to Mommy to ride with her. I grab Eric by the scruff of the neck and force him to get in the doom buggy with me.
Holy cow…not sure what they did, but it was a TON darker in there – it really gave it the ambience that it needed. The séance scene was perfect with the darkness!
We kick out the hitchhiking ghosts and make our way out. As we approach the exit, I get a vibration, telling me that the phone’s ringing. It was Sheri’s Father, and I just missed the call. Not waiting for the voicemail, I immediately call back. As I look around, I cannot help but notice that we are right by the pet cemetery. The boys don’t know why we’ve stopped walking, but they wait patiently.
I’ll spare the details, but, as I put on my Facebook status, “I don't think that giving the order to put one of our cats to sleep over the phone while we're in the Magic Kingdom is quite what Walt Disney had in mind.” Thanks to all the words of sympathy over there...it was definitely appreciated by all of us. Again, we decided quickly not to tell the boys – we didn’t want the boys to associate this with WDW.
Okay….
Now what…
We need to get our minds away from the real world for a while now. We start to walk to Frontierland, and I make the mistake of looking over at Sheri, whose eyes, despite being behind sunglasses, are filled with tears. I let the boys go ahead a few feet, grab Sheri’s hand, and give it a squeeze before trying a failed attempt at a joke to make them laugh as though nothing is wrong. We make the right turn near the parade entry/exit and find Frontierland Donald.
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