Don & Laurie's Grandchild Trip

Day 7 - Mon. 4/28 - the Whole World

On our last day, when she gets to pick the bus, Serina is surprisingly having a hard time deciding between MGM and Magic Kingdom. Surprising because we can only remember one thing she really liked at MGM, the Muppet Movie. She finally decides on MK. Laurie asks her to get ready while she's in the shower and I'm down for coffee. When she gets out of the shower, Serina's still was laying in bed with the blankets up around her neck. After chatting away for a while, Laurie asks her why she didn't get up and get dressed, and she says she was just tired. But when I get back with our coffee and knock on the door, she hops out of bed, fully dressed, including sneakers. Never pass up an opportunity to pick on Grandma.

It looks like Monday at MK will be very busy again, the bus is out front of our hotel when we get there but it's full already. When we get to the park, we almost get trapped in Town Square because we don't have Timon or Peter Pan yet. They're about ready to take a break though, so we head back for our first adventure with Buzz Lightyear. Buzz is a walkon, but Serina isn't sure she wants to ride because it looks too dark and too loud. We talk her into trying it, but she and Laurie have the bad luck to get a space pod with dead batteries, neither gun even lights up. So they just ride through looking at everything. As soon as we get off Serina says "we're going to do it again and get a car that works." So I park myself outside the exit while they go back on. While I'm sitting there, four unlucky souls come over to see their favorite attraction, Carousel of Progress, only to find it's once again too unbusy for it to be open.

For as long as Buzz has been around, there is still a high percentage of smiles and laughs from people of all ages coming out of Buzz. It seems that grandiose hand motions are also necessary for a full description, even to people who just rode it with you ;-) A grandma and mom and two girls come out all smiles, arms waving, laughing. The lone exception is a three-year-old who comes out screaming. I can't imagine what's so terrifying, until I hear dad tell mom that he didn't want to come out, "he loves to spin that car, I couldn't shoot anything."

Pooh is closed again today (and an additional two months) and Serina informs us "When Pooh is broken I ride Dumbo, that's just my rule." Well all righty, then. She also thinks that maybe Pooh is closed because some paint scratched off and they're fixing it. Wonder if she subconsciously got that idea from Buzz ;-) The line is very long for Dumbo and through either bad luck or poor planning it's my turn to ride the elephant with her. Grandma can't believe we're in a 45-minute line for Dumbo, but she realizes we have no choice, you have to go to MK on your last day, whether you're 5 or not.

She never did ride the carousel (because it makes her dizzy), but we manage a Dumbo ride, the teacups, the Barnstormer with me, an autograph from Max, and then the Barnstormer again with Laurie. Good timing, the train is there at ToonTown when we get there for it, and we pull into the Main Street Station at 11:05, just as the characters are coming back out.

We get autographs from Timon and Wendy and Peter Pan and even the reclusive Daisy Duck. (Note to self -- Peter Pan is terribly annoying, he should go on the "6-very-last" list.;-) Another first for us now, lunch at Casey's Corner. Serina thinks it's neat that our last Magic Kingdom lunch is right next door to our first Magic Kingdom lunch. The show is going on at the Castle Forecourt, but the trees block our view. Serina says "wouldn't it be nice if the show was right over here." Then after a 30-second pause she adds "of course if it was over here I'd probably have to move back, so it wouldn't make sense." Gotta love that.

During lunch, she's looking through her autograph book and doesn't recognize a few (there are a couple I'm not sure of). She tells us that Stanley is the only one who actually knows how to write.

After lunch we check in on the Country Bears. Serina likes it and wants to see it again, but there's a very long line and she doesn't want to wait. We're winding down and picking favorite repeats now, which leads us back to Small world. At 1:12 on Monday though, the SW line goes all the way up the ramp, down the building and back, and a hundred feet out into the street. The sign says 35-minutes, but we get in it anyway and it's 16 minutes from the time we get in line until we're on the boat. (The other 19 minutes comes in the Aloha room, waiting to get back to shore.)

Out in back of the castle, Laurie spots another management-looking type CM carrying a trash picker-upper. We've seen that quite a few times this trip, and don't recall seeing any CM's whose job seems to be primarily cleaning streets and sidewalks like we used to.

We walk down around the side of the castle and once again we're just in time for Belle's Story Hour, working our way into position to be second for autographs afterwards. It's 2:30 now and we have 2:50 FP's for Buzz, so Laurie's going to get us a drink and we'll watch the cars on the Speedway for a few minutes. It's a week after Easter, and it must be pre-schooler day, because everything in Fantasyland is packed but there's only a 30 minute standby on Space Mountain. I get to sit with Serina on Buzz this time, and ask her midway if it's too loud and she says it isn't. (It's twice as loud as some of the things that have scared her, which helps confirm the pitch issue.) This time Laurie beat me, and Serina had 27000, pretty respectable for a 5-year-old.

We sort of tricked Serina, Laurie was stopping in one of the shops on Main Street and Serina and I were going down to the hat shop to get the hat she had picked out on Day 1 (you know, the blue sorcerer's hat that's almost as tall as she is, with the lights that flash). The deal was that we would all meet on Tony's porch, and wouldn't you know it, while we were waiting there for Laurie a parade came by! It isn't too loud and doesn't bother her a bit, we think daytime vs. nighttime is a big factor. She knows everyone in the parade, and she loves every minute of it.

Serina doesn't want to go back to the room because she isn't tired (ever hear that one before?), she wants to go to MGM and see the Muppets again. She falls asleep on the bus on the way over, wakes up ungrumpy, gets in the stroller and promptly falls back asleep. This gives Laurie and me the chance to enjoy a very casual walk to the back of the park, and what may well be our first extended one-on-one conversation of the trip;-) (It's a shame there's nothing in the Doug theater, like for instance, oh I don't know, DOUG?)

We're in front of Star Tours when I mention to Laurie that we have to remember to get her Neapolitan on the way out. She says "Hey, I could go get it right now!" I'm thinking wait a minute, isn't this the same girl that didn't want to go from Country Bears to Small World because it's "way across the park"? Reminds me a little of Serina, can't walk because her toe hurts, but can race us to the train ;-)

We figure it's a good idea to let Serina sleep, so Laurie suggests I take a Star Tour and they'll meet us at Muppet Plaza. I get to sit next to a couple of 40-something Brits making their first trip to Endor, and she's very carefully trying to only take half the armrest. I tell her if she needs the whole thing it's no problem, I've been to Endor many times and it's usually a pretty smooth flight. As we take our first "detour", she seems very appreciative.

Laurie and I both get another first today, since Serina is picking not only the busses and attractions, but the seats. We end up front row center at the Muppets, right down by the penguins. What you miss when Waldo is "bouncin' on peo-ple's hea-eads" you more than make up for with the strength and closeness of the 3-D effects. I didn't notice her taking her glasses off this time, and several times I see her reaching out to grab Waldo or a pie or something. It's an ear-to-ear grin through the whole movie.

She still wants to ride a ride, and we tell her the only thing we haven't seen yet here is the Beauty and the Beast show. So she decides on the Mermaid. (I've stopped trying to predict her.) We're just making the turn down the street when out of the blue she says "I want to go on the Star Wars ride." We tell her it was pretty bumpy, and she says she doesn't care, she wants to ride it. And we do. She seems quite apprehensive at the start, and many parts are clearly uncomfortable for her, especially flying through those icicles. One neat thing though, right after we get caught in the tractor beam and ease off our main thrusters and lurch forward, she looks up at me and giggles. And she's quite bouncy and smiley after the ride, she probably wouldn't do it again right away but darn it, she's crossed one more thing off her list. We're quite proud of her.

We miss the loading of the Little Mermaid Theater by about 30 seconds and don't really feel like waiting around for half an hour, so "Serina, do you want to go to the Beauty and the Beast show or Epcot." Without hesitation, "Epcot." That was the one place she ruled out last night, but we've discovered we can get her to do almost anything by threatening her with a show ;-)

The boat is loading at the MGM dock when we get outside; so we run down to catch it. As we approach the boat skipper, she looks at Laurie with great concern and says "Oh dear, you've got a bit of poo on your shirt!" Laurie thinks she's been birded, but when she looks down, what she finds is Pooh. Nice one Skipper, and Serina gets a chuckle at the thought that one of the "bosses" tricked Grandma.

On the ride to Epcot, we get to wonder why we're going to Epcot. We had planned on eating at the Garden Grill, but none of us are very hungry and there's no point to a character meal when you've already got autographs and pictures from all of them and if we're going to eat there it will just be at the food court and Serina doesn't want to see a "show" there and she has mentioned riding the Barnstormer again and Laurie thinks it's nearly mandatory to end your trip in the Magic Kingdom anyway so why don't we just go back there instead. So we get off at the Yacht and Beach Club to catch a MK bus ;-) As luck would have it, the bus is just about to leave when we get out to the bus stop, so we run and flag it down and we're on our way.

The train is just pulling into Main Street station as we're going through the turnstiles, so we hustle up to the platform for our ride to the Barnstormer. We're barely clear of the station when Serina asks, "where's Splash Mountain?" We tell her it's at the next train stop and she says "I want to ride it again, but Grandma, will you cover my eyes when we get to the big drop." No problem ;-) I have to laugh when Laurie points out to me that that over the last hour we've run to catch a boat and run to catch a bus and run to catch a train to get some place we hadn't even planned on going;-) In spite of our feet, it was fun.

In the Splash Mountain line Serina tells Laurie she likes the little drops but not the big one. Her conclusion is "I think you have to ride a LOT of times before you're used to THAT one." You're probably right, and we have and we are;-) And this time, she even likes the big drop. We're not sure how much of that is because she knows she isn't going to ride it again. She says she's going to tell her sister that she also had her arms up on Splash, perhaps that's why she had no interest in getting the picture ;-)

Now it's 7:45, the park closes at 8:30, there's no place here to get anything to eat, and our feet are very tired. So we're going to call it a trip and head back to the hotel. After a mandatory last trip to the pool, we settle in for a good night's sleep and the trip home.

We think we've helped Serina start to get past a number of her fears during the trip. When we start our descent into Buffalo on the flight home she asks if she can sit next to the window and then has her face glued to it, pointing out to me the "highway" (that's any 4-lane), baseball fields, and school busses. Pretty good, considering six days ago her dad had to shut the window a number of times on the trip down.

She sleeps through most of the long car ride to her mom's house, and is so excited to see her sisters that the three of them immediately disappear into another room and only came out for a quick hug goodbye. We aren't sure if she's enjoyed the trip as much as we think she has, but her mom and dad tell us later that she talked about nothing else for the next two weeks.

So it turns out we were right at the start -- we kissed a few geese and gave her (and us) a fun and memorable trip.

Day: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7