March 15, 2014
Disney World
The plan was this: a 3-phased departure, with cars leaving at 8:45, 9:00 and 9:15. This is not exactly how things turned out. It turns out that making smoothies and breakfast sandwiches for 19 people takes a bit of time. At some point, midway through breakfast and coffee, Mason announced that the third car was supposed to be heading out.
We ultimately all pulled into the Disney parking line-up at about 11 am, and parked about 11:15. From there, a line up for the shuttle, then the line up to exchange our confirmations of purchase for actual Disney access cards, then the line up for the monorail to take us to the park, the security line up (very short) the entrance line-up (also short), and by noon we were taking our group photo in front of the Mickey Mouse garden.
After a brief disappointment when we found out there is no Indiana Jones ride in Disney Orlando (thwarting the Duns’ traditional Disney kickoff), we instead headed for Space Mountain and came across a Fast Pass kiosk. New plan!
The fast pass kiosk at Disney is a fairly time-consuming process that required all 19 of us to swipe our cards at once so that we would be guaranteed of the same entry times at the rides we selected. We had a false start when Mason swiped his card twice by mistake, resulting in the complete annhilation of all previously swiped cards, after which the Disney cast member ran the process for us. A short 30-40 minutes later (it seemed), we were set with our passes for Big Thumder, Space Mountain, and Pirates, with a couple of trades for Jane and Tyran.
Finally, we were ready, and we opened our Disney vacation with all 19 of us going on the Pirates of the Caribbean using the first of our fast passes, which seemed right, somehow. After that, the group split up with plans to meet at Space Mountain at 5:30 (a minor mishap when I told the kids 4:30 after misreading the fast pass time, but easily corrected – what did we ever do before text messaging??).
Disney was beautiful, sunny, hot and crowded but not intolerable. The rides are much less impressive than in California, presumably because Florida has spread the rides out around 5 or 6 parks. Big Thunder and Space Mountain are really the only thrill-rides, and the Florida park lacks a Toon Town, a Cars ride, Indiana Jones and the Matterhorn, to name just a few. But we assume this will all be made up for at the other parks.
Still the best ride at Disney.
With the lack of ride variety, we actually lined up to ride Space Mountain and Big Thunder more than once. Than after our 5:30 fast pass ride on Space Mountain, we decided to head home after a seemed-longer-than-it-really-was detour for the boys to buy and trade pins.
Back at the house, we had pizza and wings, slushy drinks and made the boys clean up, to their utter horror and our complete satisfaction. We had some head-butting when we tried (and eventually succeeded) in kicking the boys out of the pool so that we could use the hot tub in peace. In turn, they staying up ridiculously late watching youtube, until we finally just unplugged the router to force them all to bed, because what else is there to do at 1 am if you can’t watch youtube?
Plans for tomorrow: Leave by 9. Again, we will see.
Meltdown count: 0
Breakdown count: 1 (shower heat lamp)