Vacation Recap, Day Two: Destination: The Magic Kingdom

Day Two: Friday

Disneyworld, here we come! Now, I haven’t been to Disneyworld since my honeymoon, in 1995 and a lot of things about the whole Disney Experience have changed. It’s still the “happiest place on Earth”, but a few days before my trip – I figured out that the place is a Major Attraction. I mean, M-A-J-O-R. I sort of had an idea – but honestly, I hadn’t paid much attention to it because I wasn’t planning a trip there so why bother, right? One thing about me is that if it doesn’t affect me directly, I’m rather oblivious to things. I was oblivious to the Disney Machine until like 2 days before the trip. DUHHHHHhhhh to me.

My mom, who is a World-Class Scrapbooker, made Daughter this sweet-ass autograph book. When I say it was “sweet-ass”, I am 100% serious. Donald Duck lost his shit when he saw it – demonstrated by the fact that he had to show it to every single Disney worker in the immediate vicinity prior to signing it, miming his awe, because he’s doesn’t talk. I have the pictures to prove it. Too bad he couldn’t talk, because I’m sure he would have said, “This autograph is sweet-ass.” You could read it all over his face! Really! It was a little three-ring board book thing, that my mom covered in Mickey Mouse fabric. Some of the pages were Disney-generic, while some of the pages – like the Donald Duck one, Ariel, Cinderella, Mickey, Minnie – they were character-specific. So while Donald was signing the autograph book, he actually had his own page in the book. He wasn’t signing one of those rinky-dink autograph books that you can buy in the park. Oh no. He was signing a one-of-a-kind autograph book made by a World-Class Scrapbooker.

Anyway, I also discovered that there is a collection of penny press machines around WDW (Walt Disney World for those of you not in the know). I figured Daughter would get a kick out of trying to find all of the machines, and she’d also enjoy watching the pennies get stamped with all of the different designs. BTW, I was right. And I have 46 pennies and 8 quarters that went through the penny presses, stored in the souvenir book sold at WDW. She got all excited everytime we came upon a new penny press machine. I especially loved the ones where you got more than one penny design (lots of them had 4 penny designs). I liked being able to fill up her souvenir book. I didn’t like having to haul around 3 rolls of quarters and one roll of pennies…but I did it for her. And it was a lot cheaper than collecting the pins they sell or any of the other collector crap at Disney. I got off cheap with the penny collection, considering the cheapest pins sold for $7 apiece.

Our day started when Auntie Millie dropped us off at The Polynesian as planned, and we Monorailed over to The Magic Kingdom. We arrived at the entrance around 8:20am, and MK is scheduled to open at 9am. So far, so good – we are on schedule. Since it’s going to be a hot day, I tell my mom I am going to go buy a pair of sunglasses for Daughter and I – because like the idiot I am, I leave my 10,000 pairs of sunglasses at home and only pack one pair. They were brand new (never worn) and got crushed in my purse during the flight. I love wasting money, don’t you? I go to the little kiosk thing that is outside MK, and get a pair for myself, and also find the cutest pair of lavender-teal Little Mermaid pair for Daughter. She is wearing her teal Little Mermaid, “Disney on Ice” T-shirt she got a few weeks ago when Disney on Ice was in town, so I figure these are going to match her tee perfectly, and she will look adorable all day long. (I was right. Those sunglasses were da fucken bomb!)

About 10 minutes before MK opens, they put on this little show up above the entrance where the train arrives. The train pulls up and who should get out? Fucken MICKEY MOUSE! I about lose my shit like the girl in the footage of the Beatles showing up in America, coming out of the airplane. You’ve seen it right? Yeah, that was me. Then, Snow White comes out of the train! Holy Shit! Snow White too???? I nearly pissed myself.

After the performance, MK opens and we are off. The plan for the day was to start in Fantasyland, where the Dumbo, Peter Pan, Teacups, etc. rides are because they are some of the most popular. Also, Ariel’s Grotto is there, and if you don’t get your ass in line as soon as MK opens, you will be waiting forever to get her signature. And with the Special Autograph Book we HAD to get in line immediately. So Daughter met Ariel who was adorable…let me tell you – I was just as excited. I’m sure you already gathered that I get off on meeting the characters like I was 6 years old too, but I’m just saying. We got some pictures and her autograph, and Daughter was excited. We rode a bunch of rides and moved along.

We spent most of the day looking for penny press machines, riding the rides and taking pictures. It was hot as Hell – I think it got near 90 degrees, but I didn’t mind. Most of the rides are indoors and air conditioned so it was a nice break. We never had to wait very long for any of the rides and used FASTPASS for Splash Mountain (which was a good call.) I bought a few souvenirs (I usually get refrigerator magnets from every place I visit), so I got a few magnets, got Daughter Mickey Ears with her name embroidered on them (a MUST as far as I was concerned – she chose the Tinkerbell ones) and my mom bought scrapbook shit and talked me into getting scrapbook shit. Of course.

The characters we met and got autographs from were Goofy, Donald Duck, Peter Pan, Captain Hook and Mr. Smee, Mickey and Minnie Mouse (this was another time I about pissed myself. Everyone in the park kept saying it was a 50/50 chance Minnie would be with Mickey and when she was there…I did a little dance on the inside), Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Belle, Silvermist and Iridessa (two of the fairies) and Tinkerbell. Besides Ariel, Tinkerbell is Daughter’s favorite Disney character. Tinkerbell was AWESOME. She had all of Tink’s mannerisms down and when she saw Daughter’s autograph book (we had her sign the same page as Peter Pan) she lost her shit because of Peter’s signature. “My friend Peter signed too? Look everyone! Peter signed too!” Daughter was giddy. One of the reasons she loves Tinkerbell is because Tink is so sassy. Whenever we watch “Peter Pan” we always joke around and say “Sassy Tink!”…Tinkerbell sure lived up to the sassiness in the movie. She was so great. I could tell Daughter was having a blast. Tinkerbell asked her what she liked to do, and she answered that she loved playing video games. Tinkerbell spent the next 5 minutes asking Daughter to explain what video games were, because, after all, there are no video games in Neverland! Daughter thought this was hilarious and must have mentioned it to me 2-3 times over the weekend. Bravo to Tinkerbell. I swear I want to write Disneyworld a letter and tell them their characters are TOP NOTCH.

One of the rides that Daughter was bugging me to ride all day was The Haunted Mansion. Of course, once we got on it she got scared – especially when the ride got stuck and we sat on it not moving for 5 minutes. She got all creeped out by the tombstones and ghost shit everywhere. I found this incredibly amusing considering how many time she mentioned wanting to ride it. Kids.

We caught one of the parades -- earlier that morning, my mom was talking to some woman who was there with her husband and kids. They were a young-ish couple, and she told my mom that her husband was a soldier who was getting shipped out to Iraq soon, so they came to Disneyworld to spend some “family” time together before he got deployed. Anyway, during their conversation she mentioned Disney has a new parade – I think it’s called “Pumpin’ Up!” or something. We caught it around 3pm as we were on Main Street in one of the gift shops. Daughter knew the song (I have no idea how) and when we got home I found out it was a Hannah Montana song called “Pumping Up the Party” or something similar. Daughter doesn’t watch Hanna Montana, but she knew the song somehow…LOL She has been singing it non-stop since we got home, but it’s a cute song, so I am not 100% irritated by it.

The day was relatively smooth, so I don’t any good stories to tell. My mother behaved and Daughter behaved and we didn’t run into anyone else misbehaving. Darn. I always love a good scene. We stayed for the fireworks in the evening and didn’t leave MK until around 9:45 (I think it closed at 10pm.)

However, I did call Auntie around 9:30 to tell her to pick us up at the Polynesian around 10:15. And of course, when she picked us up, she again had a major attitude. Maybe I was reading into things, but I don’t think so. My mom told me later that for some reason Auntie, The Greek Goddess and Brittney couldn’t go out to dinner because she had to pick us up and they “didn’t have enough time.” I swear, the woman needs some medication or something, because we had told her the fireworks were at 9pm, and that we were “probably” staying for them. We were gone ALL FUCKING DAY. I don’t know about you, but I usually eat dinner anywhere between 6-8pm, right? They ended up ordering pizza on the condo resort and not going out because Auntie had to pick us up. It was about this time that I realized that I was getting extremely irritated by her attitude and her BLAMING my mom, me and Daughter for why she could/couldn’t/wouldn’t do certain things. Again, it’s not my fault if you can’t plan your day properly in order to find time to eat dinner in the 14 hours were at WDW. I wanted to ask her what the fuck her problem was because her shit was getting OLD fast. Next opportunity I get, I am recommending some A.D.D. meds and possibly an anti-depressant to her, because seriously –honest-to-God – she needs them. Get your shit together, Woman! After this trip, she has been placed on my Shit List and I don’t think she’s getting off of it anytime soon. And if you think I’m being harsh, this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to her shit on this trip…trust me, you’re going to be appalled on Day Three.

So that was our Disney Experience. And it wasn’t until I was already home and back to work when I realized that I forgot to look for the brick that Husband and I purchased after our Honeymoon. Disney was selling bricks at the time (actually, they looked a lot like pavers) that you could get engraved with your names, the year and whatever as a momento. We got one with wedding bells, the year “95” and our names. FUCK. I forgot to look for it. Guess I will never get to see it in person!!!!