Sheep Guarding Llama

We were not up that early this morning.  Already the exhaustion is hitting us.  To be fair, Dominica and I had a lot going on leading up to coming to Walt Disney World so it is kind of only fair that we still be exhausted.  So it was around ten when the five of us, dad is now in tow, arrived at Disney’s Animal Kingdom to begin the day.  This is dad’s and Luciana’s first time here and Liesl’s first time since she was just turning one.

First stop was The Tree of Life and the 3D movie “It’s Tough to Be a Bug.”  Liesl and dad really liked this one.  Luciana couldn’t figure out what was going on so it wasn’t really fun for her.

We were all a little hungry, dinner had been so early last night for all of us (dad had gotten a salmon burger at the hotel on his own) that we decided to just hit Pizzafari and grab a quick breakfast.  There were not many people there and we were all in a “go slow” mood today.  On top of being tired, Dominica and my feet were already starting to hurt.

Dominica decided to run back to the hotel for a bit so dad and I took the girls on the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail, which is part of the real “zoo” part of the Animal Kingdom, as Liesl was anxious to get to see the giant bats that Dominica had been telling her about but we did not know where they were.  They were not on the Pangani trail but we got some exercise walking around it.

After the Pangani Trail we walked around the Discovery Island area for a while which has some minor trails of its own.  We waiting there for Dominica to return.  She got back and we hopped on the Kilimanjaro Safaris.  The girls did not like this.  It was too rough.   We noticed that the “poachers” portion of the ride had been removed.  It is less of a ride and more of a real zoo trip now.  I like the improvement.

We left Africa and headed over to Asia so that Liesl could do the Maharajah Jungle Trek as this is the one that has the bats (and tons of other animals.)  The two zoo “trails” in the Animal Kingdom are both really excellent zoological exhibits.  We had hoped to have gotten lunch in Asia but the restaurant that we were interested in did not have a single vegetarian option so we had to bypass that and hope for something elsewhere.

Next stop was the Dinosaur Land and we just gave up on finding something really neat and original and just ate at Restaurantasaurus.  I sat outside with the girls while Dominica and dad got the food.  Liesl was very restless and wanted to ride the Triceratops Spin ride there because it is just like Dumbo.  So she and I went and rode it alone and then returned to the restaurant where everyone else was resting.

The our Fast Pass took us to Finding Nemo: The Musical.  We saw this one four years ago and we really liked it.  So well done.  It’s a Broadway level performance.  Highly recommended.  A very big change of pace over most of the rides although these shows are becoming more and more popular these days in the parks.

Dad watched Luciana in a little playground area with a big plastic dinosaur for climbing and Dominica and I took Liesl to ride Dinosaur! which is a cross between a traditional Disney animatronics ride and a thrill ride.  Eric, Mark and I went on this one when we first hit the Animal Kingdom while it was still being built in the late ’90s.  Liesl and I went over first and got Liesl measured to make sure that she was tall enough for these rides.  The limit is forty inches and she measured in at a whopping forty two inches!  She truly is a big girl now.  So I texted Dominica and she came and met us.

Liesl really like the ride but took it very seriously.  The magic really worked for her on this one.  They convinced her that we really did go back in time and see dinosaurs.  She got really scared that we were not going to escape before the asteroid hit and she refused to ride the ride again because she was not confident that the ride wouldn’t cut it too close next time and not make it back.  She had fun, though, and had tons of questions about the dinosaurs afterwards.

That was our last ride for the day.  We were all tired and any other ride would have been a ton of effort and walking.  Not for us.  Our dinner reservations tonight are at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and getting from any park to any resort is always a huge ordeal so we wanted to allow plenty of time for that.

It took us an our to get out to the Animal Kingdom Lodge, Dominica and my favourite place to stay and eat in WDW.  We got there quite a bit before our reservation at Boma (of course we are eating at Boma!) so we took dad and the girls to the Arusha Savannah to see the animals and so that dad could get  a feel for what the hotel was like as the rooms (like the one that Dominica and I stayed in many years ago) have views out onto the Savannah.  Liesl thought that it was fun, Luciana had fallen asleep in the stroller.

Dinner at Boma was very good as always.  It has changed very little, probably due to its continued popularity, since we first discovered it almost a decade ago.  I think that dad liked it too.  It is a large buffet so it is hard not to find things that you will like.  I got a elderflower sidecar while there, one of the best cocktails that I have had in a very long time.

We were in the hotel around nine.  Another early, but much needed, night.  Our feet are really killing us after today.  Tomorrow morning is, thankfully, not a really early one.  We are heading to EPCOT.  Nothing scheduled in the morning.

Today is our big Magic Kingdom day.  Yes we were there the night before last but we did none of the real rides, just the Tea Cups and the Carousel.  Nothing that really screams “Magic Kingdom” and the girls did not get to see it in daylight.  So today is really their true introduction to the Magic Kingdom day.

We had to be up super early today because we have very early reservations at the Polynesian for breakfast.  This is the same character breakfast that we did four years ago when we were here with the Toccos.  We were really lucky that we got to the bus stop and because the park was not open yet everyone on the bus was there for an early breakfast at a resort so the bus driver kindly took us directly to the resort saving us twenty minutes or more.  We would have been terribly late had he not done that.  As it was we were scrambling.

I love the Polynesian.  The water features outside and the big fountain in the middle of the lobby, the lake front, the monorail, the forest all around.  It really is beautiful and it is the oldest of the Disney World resorts, just a little older than the Contemporary.  Breakfast this morning was at ‘Ohana.  They do huge breakfasts there.  The food was the same as it was when Liesl was one, but it was good then and now so that was fine.  It’s very carb and meat heavy so not ideal for dieters or vegetarians but still quite good.  Lots of bread.

This was only our second character meal so the girls were still pretty excited but seeing the characters.  I’m over it already.  I find the character meals to be unnecessarily stressful and they ruin otherwise good dining experiences.  You don’t get to enjoy your food, the entire meal is centered around getting teenages in costumes to sign fake autographs.  It is very silly.  The girls are kind of into it, but not super into it.  This will decline as we do it over and over again.

Breakfast was at eight and as soon as we were done we were off to the park.  We bucked tradition and headed straight to Tomorrowland rather than Adventureland.  One of Liesl’s top requests was to drive the car on the Tomorrowland Speedway so that was our first ride of the day.  We got lucky and had basically no line.  Luciana and Dominica sped away in one car and Liesl and I followed behind as quick as our gas mower engine could muster.  Liesl enjoyed it.  This was actually the first time that I had ever been on this ride. Coming to WDW with little children makes you go and do things in the park that you would never have done on your own.

After the speedway we went to the new ride in “New” Fantasyland called “Under the Sea ~ Journey of the Little Mermaid.”  As this ride is new none of us have ever been on it before.  It ended up being a very quick dark ride that had potential but ended up being very weak.  Even the girls did not like it.  It was way too much targeted at very little children and had no substance.  The outside of the ride, the big waterfall mountain area was very nicely done, that part was quite good.  But the ride itself left a lot to be desired.  But it is in Fantasyland where things have never really been very impressive from a ride perspective.

From there it was time to go ride Dumbo – The Flying Elephant.  This is one that Liesl has been talking about for a long time and Luciana is big enough to go on.  So I took Liesl and Dominica took Luciana and we prepared to fly with Dumbo.  The new update to this ride includes a small child play area in the waiting line, though, so the girls wanted to take a break and go play in there.  Dominica and I got to sit for a few minutes but there was not enough air movement and I was quite warm, even in the air conditioning.  We did not stay too long and then it was time to fly.  Both girls really liked that but Liesl especially thought that it was a grand time.

We explored the circus area where they have a large “cooling” station in the middle with lots of water things to cool you off.  Liesl played there for a long time and we were happy to sit.  It was right in front of the Barnstormer which was not running today or we probably would have gone on that.  It seemed to have been down for maintenance.

Our next FastPass+ was “Enchanted Tales with Belle.”  This is a new “ride” that they have put in recently and one of the most popular.  We were lucky to have the FastPass because the line was ridiculous.  This “ride” is a combination of some modern animatronics with live action story telling.  It is amazingly well done and it involved audience participation which is really cool.  I got selected right from the beginning to be one of the knights guarding the castle in the story so Dominica was left with the girls.  They took a bunch of people from the audience for a number of different roles.  The big role, though, of course requires a big time roar, as you can imagine, and obviously no one roars better than our Liesl who has been a roaring expert since she was two.  She was naturally selected to don the red cape and play the role of “Beast.”  Holy crap she was so adorable.  We had so much fun and she was so cute.  This is probably the best thing that we did the entire vacation.

It was only now eleven thirty and we heading to Tomorrowland and Auntie Gravities for some ice cream.  While we were eating the ice cream Liesl got to see the robotic trash can that walks around talking to people.  She thought that that was awesome and she followed it around for a while.

Luciana was really tired and needed a cat nap.  So she and I sat out the next ride and she napped in my arm.  Dominica and Liesl went on and did the Buzz Lightyear Space Rangers ride.  Dominica said that Liesl had a lot of fun but that it was not nearly as good as the Toy Story Mania one from yesterday for her because it was more abstract and she was unsure if she was hitting anything.

After Buzz Lightyear we went to Dominica and my perennial favourite, The Carousel of Progress.  Luciana woke up for this.  Liesl had a great time.  The theatre broke down while we were in it and we were stuck watching the opening sequence twice, Liesl didn’t like that – it definitely took away some of the magic – but she thought that the whole presentation was really interesting.  She loves things like that.  Sadly, the final scene in CoP is that weird early 2000s thing that they shoved in there that doesn’t make sense or fit with the original theme.  Originally it was to be a display that showed the march of progress from turn of the century to the 1920s, to the 1940s and ending in the mid-1960s when the Carousel was made.  But they removed the 1960s display and replaced it at some point with this bizarre jump of forty years that doesn’t fit with the style or progression and looks horrifically antiquated and out of touch.  So it fails at being classic while failing at being modern.  And to rub salt in the would, there was a “sequel” ride made to pick up on the 1980s from where CoP left off in the 1960s – Horizons in EPCOT – but they removed that long ago so that is gone too.

We cut across the Magic Kingdom and took the girls to Pirates of the Caribbean.  They were not into this and pretty tired already.  So we had grumpy girls as they waited to get onto the ride.  Liesl claimed that she didn’t really like it when we were done.  Well anyway, it was more for us than for them.  We did notice that they fixed some of the mistakes that they made in this ride post-movie era.  They had cheesed it up more than they should have and, for once, Disney actually backed off and improved a ride rather than ruining it.  So it is better today than it has been for the past five years or so.

We decided that we needed to get to EPCOT because we had dinner reservations there and we didn’t want to just pop in and do dinner and nothing else.  So we headed out down Main Street but stopped in to set Liesl up with her game “Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom.”  This is a card game, kind of like Magic the Gathering (which I have never played and don’t really understand) that you play around the Magic Kingdom with these secret spots where you stand and use your cards and secret displays come alive and you interact with them.  Very cool for kids who have been to the parks a lot.

Liesl was pretty excited about the game so we went and did the first one of the interactions before leaving, at the Emporium on Main Street, so that she could see it in action before we left for the day.  She is really excited about this.  What a great idea.

We grabbed the monorail and rode that to EPCOT.  This is the second time on the monorail for the girls – we took it from the Polynesian to the Magic Kingdom this morning.

At EPCOT we got right in and, of course, went straight on to Spaceship Earth.  This ride Liesl really liked.  She rode it with Dominica and Luciana rode with me.  Ciana did okay but it was pretty boring for her and I don’t think that she could see very much.

Then it was almost dinner time.  So we headed over to The Seas and rode Finding Nemo.  The girls liked that.  Then we were in the aquarium.  In theory they would enjoy it there but there is a shark room for little kids and Liesl was so excited about that that that was all that we could do.  (Three thats, really?)  We got some cute pictures of them in there.  So we didn’t see the aquarium at all.  I took Luciana alone to go see the manatee display but she was not very interested.

Dinner this afternoon was early, about four o’clock, which was good as we were hungry.  We ate at the Coral Reef at The Seas.  Believe it or not, we are pretty sure that none of us have ever eaten here even though it is totally up our alley.  The restaurant has its own view of the aquarium which is really neat and a menu that is perfect for us.  We all really enjoyed our dinners.  This is a “must do” restaurant for us again.

From the Coral Reef it was time to head back.  We were full and very tired.  We took the long bus ride back to the Pop Century to meet up with dad who had just arrived from his flight down from New York.  So we spent the evening hanging out with him for the little while that we were all awake.  The girls were very excited to see grandpa.  But the adults were all very exhausted.  Very early night for us.  We need some sleep.

Tomorrow is The Animal Kingdom.  It will be a first for the girls and for dad too.  He has, surprisingly, never seen the Animal Kingdom!  Hard to believe.

Dad got the hotel room directly behind ours.  So we share a back wall but you have to walk around the corner of the hotel to get to each other’s rooms.  Pretty handy though.

 

For our first day in Walt Disney World, our first real day that is, we took the girls to Hollywood Studios.  This is our only day scheduled in this park.  We slept in this morning, as you can imagine.  We’ve had almost no sleep leading up until now for around a week and with the drive and the late night in the Magic Kingdom last night – we were just beat.  So we slept in very late and just took our time getting started this morning.

Our first stop of the day, and our one big set event, was not a ride but was getting lunch at the Hollywood & Vine where they do a Disney Junior character meal.  Both girls love Disney Junior so this worked out really well as they were excited to meet characters that they really know well.  The food was really good too.  This was our first meal in Disney this year (other than the quick sandwich last night) and it was quite good.  We were ready to eat too being so late in the day.

After the hectic meal, as character dinners are always a big, stressful deal, we went to our one really stand out favourite Hollywood Studios ride: The Great Movie Ride.   That is one of the best rides in all of WDW and it is strangely hidden away in Hollywood Studios with all of the boring stuff.  We rode it and Liesl just had so much fun.  She thought that the whole thing was great and insisted that she was never scared at all, even though some parts of the ride are a little intense, like the shoot out scenes.

Next up was the Journey of the Little Mermaid stage show.  It is a mixture of puppeteers and live action performers.  It is pretty short but excellently done.  Dominica had not really remembered it.  The girls thought that it was cool.

Next up, Disney Junior… Live on Stage.  Another live show and it was quite good.  The girls really liked this too.  We all had to sit on the floor, though, so it was decently uncomfortable by the end.  It was entertaining and the actor who starred in it did a very good job.

We used our FastPass+ for the first time (it is new and exclusive to the Magic Bands) with Toy Story Mania.  Liesl loved this, she did really well playing this three dimensional, full motion video game ride.  I was really impressed by how well she was able to get into the game and she scored really well (it keeps track of points.)  I think that she scored around a 37,000.  Pretty good for a four year old on her first time on any ride like this, let alone this particular one and her first time playing a shooting video game.

Liesl wanted to see the Walt Disney Museum called “Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream” so I took her through that while Dominica took Luciana to deal with changing a diaper.  Liesl liked it and wanted to stop and look at each of the exhibits.  She was so cute.  And the Disney girl watching over the exhibits sneaked over and gave her stickers because she was so good.

Next was Muppets 3D.  This did not go over so well.  The girls do not like the Muppets nor are they interested in 3D movies.  And we had a pretty long wait before the movie started and the “show” that they do in the waiting area is not entertaining at all. It is supremely boring, actually, so the girls wanted to bail on the movie before we even got into it.

We did the Great Movie Ride again because the girls were getting restless and it was the one thing that Liesl really loved.  We lucked out that we managed to get the “other” experience on the ride – for those unaware, there are two different “paths” that you can take through the ride.  The stories don’t diverge too much but they do change a little and it made it a lot more interesting.  Normally it is years between us getting to see the two different shows.  This, I think, is the first time that I have seen both of them in one day.  This time too, we were directly under the Alien and what wasn’t scary at all to Liesl the first time was surprising the second time and she screamed very loudly.  It was hilarious.

We skipped tons of rides because we were tired and we did not want the girls to be upset about everything.  So by early evening we were on the long bus ride back to the resort, the Pop Century.  Our hotel room is in the 1980s section.  We decided that we were so ready to just hang out in the hotel room that we just used a quick service meal from our meal plan to get food from the resort’s fast food court.  I got the salmon burger which was very good, I highly recommend it.

We were in bed early.  Probably before ten.  Maybe even before nine!  We were completely worn out but our first day was a success.  A good starting meal and at least one classic ride that Liesl loved.  Luciana is definitely much less excited about the rides than Liesl is, but we are really here for Liesl this time.  We didn’t want to miss her being around five to really get that early, magical experience that you can only get when you are still young enough to not be completely sure which things are real and which are not.  Although even in the really realistic parts of the rides that a lot of kids get fooled by, she did not have the slightest problem knowing that it was all pretend and that none of it was real but she still really enjoyed it.

Tomorrow we are off to the Magic Kingdom.  We have to be up early because we have a now regrettably early breakfast planned at the Polynesian Resort.

 

We only made a small amount of the long drive from Houston to Orlando last night. Today is our real driving day. Many miles to go. About ten hours of driving to do today and the family needs to stop often. Luciana, at least, after having seen the doctor yesterday is feeling much better.

We drove all morning and then not far from Tallahassee we stopped for a morning nap at a quarter till eight in the morning. We slept in an Econolodge for several hours. We got up and were on the road around noon trying to get down to Disney so that we could make it to the Halloween Party tonight.

We were not on the road for very long when the rains, which had plagued us last night, picked up.  At one point the rain was so fierce that we had to stop driving altogether and rest at a rest stop.  We could not see the road!

We made it, although it was a struggle all day. I was very tired when we got to the Pop Century to check in.  It was nearly eight in the evening.  We parked the Acadia and got checked into the hotel. We got our room, 9163, and got the girls into the room. I stayed in the room with them while Dominica worked on getting stuff out of the car that we would need for the week while in Disney.

The hotel is decent. Definitely one of the value resorts. We stayed in the All Star Music, a similar level resort, when we were here in 2009 for Liesl’s first birthday. No surprises for us. There was, however, a strong odor of something rotting right outside our hotel door that lingered the entire week. Liesl will probably never forget that smell.

We were not in the hotel for very long before we made our way to the Magic Kingdom so that we could attend Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party there. We scheduled this trip around making it to this, the very last night of the Halloween show and to stay just long enough to make it to the first night of the Christmas show – both were shows that Dominica has always wanted to see so this was a chance to get them both out of the way so that she will hopefully not feel any need to see them again.

We made it on to Main Street, USA and Katie, who had driven up from Tampa (we saw her just two days ago in Austin) joined us there to watch the castle illumination and fireworks show. That was okay although not actually very interesting. The video projected on the castle was kind of neat but just high powered projectors, nothing really special and fireworks are fireworks and not something that I particularly enjoy. The girls seemed to enjoy it but were getting restless.

After the fireworks were over we went into Fantasyland and gave Liesl and Luciana there first real taste of Walt Disney World. Their first ride was the Tea Cups which we had to do tonight because only Katie could take them on that ride. My vertigo and Dominica’s nausea preclude us from even making the attempt. Katie rode with them twice, the girls thought that this was great fun.

Then we took them on Cinderella’s carousel. Katie took Liesl and I took Luciana for a spin on the wooden horses. They loved that too. Maybe even more than the teacups.

We went to Liberty Square and while there we watched the Halloween parade go by. And we tried to get some food. Katie and I stood in line for half an hour to get the special “Halloween Party only food”, part of the big draw of these events. After waiting for half an hour, I was told that no, I could not use my snack credits for the special event food. So I tried to pay with room credit and I was told that the hotel credit was not attached to the Magic Band that I was wearing. I had the backup credit card style thing that the hotel told us to keep “just in case” but it did not work either. Dominica had thrice made sure that our credit card was attached to the Magic Band and not having to carry your credit card into the park with you was, we were told, a key benefit of the system. If they can’t figure out how to get you food or allow you to enjoy the things that you are paying for already, it is a pretty big failure. I was not happy at all after that. Disney’s response was simply “sorry, you can’t buy food here for no fault of your own and we aren’t going to accommodate you even though we are the ones failing.” Not impressive.

We then went to the dance party where the girls and I danced to overly loud music in Tomorrowland out on the street for probably half an hour, maybe longer. While we were there dancing Dominica went and got dinner, veggie sandwiches, from Cosmic Ray’s and we ate out in the public area before loading the girls up into the stroller and calling it a night. We are all so tired, we need sleep. Katie has a long drive back down to Tampa and we just need to get to bed so that we are able to be functional tomorrow. Tomorrow is our real first day at Disney and we want the girls to be able to enjoy it.

We were asleep in no time tonight. We have two double beds so Dominica and I will be taking turns with Liels and Luciana all week. The girls really miss me so fight over who gets to sleep with me. But we will be just alternating each night, probably.

One really awesome change that has happened since the last time that we were in WDW is that there is now free WiFi in the hotels and all through the parks. What a difference that makes. Now we can stay in contact all of the time. And we can use FourSquare, Facebook, Flickr, email, etc. while we are in the parks. That is really great.

Today was an insanely busy day.  Dominica and I got up this morning in Austin at the Holiday Inn.  We packed up and checked out early in the morning.  The drive from Austin to Houston is about three hours.  That was pretty easy.  We got there in good time and pretty much immediately dealt with finding a walk in clinic that could see Luciana.  She has been horribly constipated for weeks and is getting in more and more danger.  She needs a doctor to check her out at this point.

We ended up spending hours at a clinic.  It took forever.  No idea how it could possibly take so long.  They did determine, though, that nothing was “really” wrong and the doctor was able to clean her out.  And as much as it hurt at the time, in less than thirty seconds she was feeling so much better and for weeks she would keep saying how the doctor made her better.  It was, apparently, a very positive experience for her.

From there it was back to the Grices’ and immediately getting ready for trick or treating over at the Toccos’.  Liesl is dressed up as Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty and Luciana is dressed up as Snow White.  They were adorable and Luciana was so excited about being Snow White.  It was adorable.

The family all went out trick or treating for about an hour, maybe more.  The girls had a ton of fun.  I made it about halfway but I hurt my heel and we decided that it would be smartest if I went back to the house before I did some damage and could not walk around Walt Disney World tomorrow.  That would really suck.

After trick or treating it was a rush to get changed, get in the Acadia and hit the road.  Tons of driving to do tonight.  We are seeing how far we can make it on the road to Orlando!  It was probably ten by the time that we left.  The girls will be able to sleep.  I have to drive all night.  It is over fourteen hours of highway time from Houston to WDW.