Posted by We’ve reached the end of our Disney saga. If you haven’t read the posts of our first few days, click {Day 1} and start there!
Tuesday, Day 5, was the most exhausting day of our trip, by far. We have decided that, next time we go to the Disney, we will do a week-long trip with Day 4 as a day of rest/relaxation. Going from the time the park opens to the time the park closes for 4 straight days takes a lot out of everyone, even the children that ride in the stroller and get to take naps!
Tuesday started really early for us because we had to checkout of our room at the Art of Animation and be on the shuttle towards Chef Mickey’s by 7am (to make our 7:45 breakfast reservation.) We checked in for our flights and checked our bags at the resort prior to boarding the shuttle. They gave us our boarding passes so that we could avoid the check-in counters at the Orlando airport later in the day (more about those boarding passes later!) Chef Mickey’s is located at the Contemporary Resort next to Magic Kingdom. The front desk at Art of Animation told us that the driver might be willing to drive us there after he dropped everyone else off at Magic Kingdom, but he was not. He told us we would have to catch the monorail over from Magic Kingdom. Once we got to Magic Kingdom though, we learned that the monorail wasn’t running until 8:30am that day so we had to briskly walk from Magic Kingdom to the Contemporary to make our reservation. We got there with about 3 minutes to spare.
Chef Mickey’s was probably the best character dining experience for us because 1) Our kids love breakfast food. 2) The twins love the characters that they see on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and were super excited the whole time. 3) Noah had been talking about not seeing Donald Duck for the past couple days … and he was at this breakfast! 4) They serve unlimited coffee — the elixir of life for this completely exhausted Mom and Dad! The picture below that looks like it’s just Pluto kneeling by our table– Eli is wrapped in his arms.
After breakfast, we rode the monorail over the Magic Kingdom, so that Noah could experience riding the monorail. Once we made it into the park, Emry Jane was asleep. Noah and I rode Stitch’s Great Escape while Tommy stayed with the babies. What a weird ride. Noah didn’t like it at all and refused to ride it again with Tommy. Afterwards, Eli, Tommy and Noah rode the Buzz Lightyear ride while I waited with our sleeping Emry Jane. Next, we rode the People Mover and the Astro Orbiter (Noah, Emry Jane and I rode in a rocket together.) The twins did not wait well for rides on Tuesday. Mini-meltdowns galore. Once we made it on the rides, they were happy, but the waiting in line was miserable.
We had some time before our next Fast Pass for Space Mountain, so we decided to walk over to Dumbo. It was only a “30 minute wait” and, according to Tommy, it’s the quintessential Magic Kingdom ride, so we thought we would brave the wait. It was awful. The line took at least 45 minutes. The play area in the middle of the line is a GREAT idea, if you have children that understand that they have to wait in line until you reach the play area. Eli threw a massive fit because he could see the kids playing and we wouldn’t let him go over there. I’m not sure Dumbo was worth all that screaming. Emry Jane and I rode together, (she was definitely more of a mama’s girl at Disney!) while Noah rode an elephant behind us. Tommy and Eli rode on the other side, which really worked out well because Emry Jane liked waving at them across the way 🙂
An important thing to know about Disney– they move your stroller while you are waiting for rides. We got out of Dumbo and our stroller was nowhere to be found! We walked all around where we had left it. Finally, someone sitting nearby said that a worker came and move some strollers around the corner to a different stroller parking area. We found ours at the far end of that stroller lot. Searching for the stroller was definitely something that we had to do many times while at Disney. Those dang balloons on Saturday were actually a great idea because they helped the stroller stick out in the crowd of other strollers!
Eli fell asleep right after Dumbo (who would have guessed that the one throwing all the tantrums was tired?!) so Emry Jane and I watched the race car ride beside Space Mountain while Tommy and Noah used their FastPass. Tommy and the babies were going to ride the People Mover again while Noah and I rode Space Mountain, but the line was too long. They rode the Carousel of Progress instead. Noah had reminded us many, many times that morning about the frozen lemonade that he was promised the day before and he was so excited to find a refreshment stand that sold frozen lemonade right outside Space Mountain!
Our plan for the day was the end our time at Magic Kingdom right after the parade. I thought the kids would really enjoy it. The twins were napping during the parade on Saturday and Noah had been in line for Splash Mountain. It would be a great finale to our trip! Our last FastPass was for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at 2:45pm, so we could ride that first, watch the parade at 3pm and be on our way to the shuttle right after!On Tuesday, the sun was shining and it was HOT and CROWDED at Magic Kingdom. The rain had definitely worked in our favor on Saturday because the wait times on Tuesday were much longer! We waited 20 minutes to ride the Carousel. Tommy really wanted to take the twins on It’s a Small World one more time but the wait time was an HOUR!
Emry Jane fell asleep on our way towards Big Thunder Mountain, so Noah and Eli played together in the little play area under the bridge by Splash Mountain until it was our turn to ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Tommy was going to take the twins and find a spot on the parade route to watch the parade while Noah and I rode, then we were going to switch so that Tommy could ride with Noah. Because it was so crowded, Tommy got almost to the entrance of the park before he found a place to watch the parade and, even then, he had to hold the babies up on his shoulders to see around other people. The parade also started early. Noah and I used the Rider Switch t0 ride again because we would not be able to get back and forth through the parade crowd to switch out with Tommy. We took the short cut by the Aladdin ride to catch the end of the parade near the park exit. Noah really liked the fire-breathing dragon. Noah and I ended up meeting Tommy and the twins at the shuttle for our resort outside the park because it was so crazy crowded that we could not find each other in front of the castle!!
We were out of the park and waiting for the shuttle right on time; however, the shuttle that usually runs every 15-20 minutes hadn’t arrived 30 minutes later. Someone behind us in line called Art of Animation to see if they were sending a shuttle. Two arrived after we had been in line for 35 minutes. Our late shuttle caused us to miss our Magical Express bus to the airport, scheduled to leave at 4:15pm. We arrived at Art of Animation at 4:12pm and the Magical Express was still at our resort; however, the driver told us that we would have to wait 35 minutes for the next bus because “he couldn’t wait on us.” Our flight wasn’t leaving Orlando until 7:20pm, so we decided just to wait the extra 35 minutes vs. arguing with this driver. It gave us some time to go to the restroom, change diapers, refill our resort cups (more coffee!) before the 45-minute shuttle ride to the airport.
Remember those boarding passes that I said I would get to later? Well, we had dealt with our boarding passes on both flights to Orlando. I had glanced at our tickets when they were handed to me on Tuesday morning, saw that the first two said “with lap infant” and assumed that both babies were accounted for on our boarding passes. As we were approaching security at the Orlando airport, I realized that the two “with lap infant” were both tickets for ME– one to Charlotte and one to Knoxville. Only ONE baby was listed on our tickets. We were in Orlando, where they are probably on high alert for kidnapping, and I’m freaking out about the POSSIBILITY of being accused on smuggling one of my children onto an airplane (I’m a little oversensitive about this because that actually happened to me the very first time I flew with 10-week old Noah to Utah for my brother’s high school graduation!) We were about to have a little “Come to Jesus” meeting with security if they refused to let us through with ALL our babies. THANKFULLY, the lady we dealt with at security was fabulous. I explained the situation to her (how we had just realized that they left one of our twins off the boarding passes) and she turned to Noah and asked him to identify each of us. Security Lady: “Who is this?” Noah :”My sister, Emry Jane.” Security Lady: “Who is this?” Noah: “My brother, Eli.” She asked questions until he had identified each of us. She told us that they usually ask the kids to identify the people in their party, if they are at a trust-worthy age. Her words, “Old enough to say no, no, no, that’s not brother and sister.” She waved us through to fix our boarding passes at the gate. They even let us go to through the security scanners in the VIP lane, thanks to our wide double stroller (behind an actor from the Godfather movie series.)
We made it to the gate in plenty of time to fix our seat/oxygen mask situation and to have a quick food-court dinner before the flight. They moved someone else so that we could sit across the aisle from each other. The flight attendants were so excited to see the twins that they got the attention of the pilots (“Look how cute these twins are!”) and the pilots invited Eli to come sit in the cockpit! Noah, Tommy and Emry Jane had already made their way to our seats, but Eli got to sit on that cushy seat and stare at all the buttons for about a minute. I was too nervous that he was going to push the WRONG button to leave him there any longer than that!
The flight to Charlotte was pretty empty so we had empty seats in the middle for the twins. Eli sat in his seat between Tommy and Noah quite a bit, but Emry Jane just wanted to sit in my lap or Daddy’s (and constantly jump between the two.) The man sitting with us does not look very happy to be sharing a space with us in the picture below but he was very friendly. We talked a lot about Disney since he is taking his four children there this summer. He also gave the twins an unopened bag of peanut M&Ms so they are now friends for life, haha.
Our second airplane ride, from Charlotte to Knoxville, was a bit more… exciting. Eli had a blowout poopy diaper right after we boarded the plane. Since it was such a small plane, I thought it would be better for everyone near us for me to change his diaper and dispose of it before we took off. There were still a few people boarding. I changed his diaper in the exit row floor (using our diaper bag mat, just call me Mama McGyver) discovered the blow out, cleaned him up, changed his clothes and put the dirty clothes into a ziplock bag then into the diaper bag. Then, I put the dirty diaper into a separate ziplock bag and took it to the front to ask the flight attendants where I could throw it away. The flight attendants were EXTREMELY rude. One actually pushed her nose away like it was the worst smell in the history of the world (it might have been, but I have never seen an adult woman actually hold their nose like that.) The other told me that I had to walk the diaper back to the gate to throw it away, without leaving the jetway. She actually said, in the most condescending tone possible, “You need to get the attention of the person at the gate and tell them to watch you throw it away because you aren’t allowed to leave the jetway.” When I got back to the airplane, the flight attendants were laughing with the pilots about what had happened and the pilot was calling it in to someone on their radio that we hadn’t left yet because a baby had a dirty diaper. I was furious– the way they treated and talked down to me then laughed at our situation. Next time, I will just leave them to deal with the dirty diaper. I know that I was completely exhausted and grumpy and it was almost 10:30pm at night, but you have no right to be rude to a mom trying to take care of her baby. I was one mad Mama Bear. Tommy says it was one of those experiences that I will laugh about later. Maybe. The fact that both of my boys have had blow outs on airplanes is comical. I’m sure Emry Jane is saving hers for next time.
We have ALMOST fully recovered from the exhaustion. We are already talking about going again in the fall of 2018, so it really must have been a great trip for all! Even Tommy, who was dreading it, is already talking about what we are going to do when we go back to Disney World. Also, if you read all FIVE Disney posts, thank you for sticking with me! I hope that you found a couple helpful tips, especially if you are going to Disney with toddlers. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
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