Day 7! The Day Before We Go Home

We all decided to get up early this morning thinking that we would get to the Magic Kingdom early today (that didn't exactly work out, but more on that later). Lis and I woke up and took early showers before we got Gabe up. We cleaned up the place a little bit. Gabe just didn't want to get up today at all. :) He was -out- cold and dead to the world. He told me he was having a dream and that I was in it trying to wake him up in his dream. He's been hungry this trip. Today he had two bowls of oatmeal (yesterday was -three-). I was up at 7:30, Lis by 8am, and we were all out the door by about 9am (prepared for a day that might rain, because it apparently rains in Florida!)

We headed down to the bus station, eager to be off to the Magic Kingdom, but the MK buses were not running very quickly today and we got tired of waiting. We had talked the previous day about how cool it would be to ride the monorail again before we went home and Lis suggested that we should have just taken the last EPCOT bus and then taken the monorail from there to the Magic Kingdom. I thought this was a cool idea and said that if another EPCOT bus comes before an MK bus, we could do that. Well, an EPCOT bus was the next one, so we took it. After a few minutes on the bus, we were at EPCOT, but then we had to get on the monorail and to do that required that we go through the standard security bag check and headed up the huge ramp to the monorail loading area. Once there, we learned that Gabe really had to go to the bathroom, so Lisa waited by the monorail track while Gabe and I trekked down, down, waay down to find the nearest bathroom. After an extended sitting session for Gabe there, we headed back to Lisa, who told us that in the last 20 minutes or so, we'd only missed one train. Apparently they do not come and go quite as fast as the buses.

When the next monorail train -did- come a bit later, it was standing room-only (for others, we got a seat!), and we headed toward the Kingdom. Unfortunately, we learned that the monorail doesn't -go- to the Kingdom, it goes to some transportation center, where you must disembark and -switch- monorails. Lame. So as we got off the train, we discovered another couple of thousand people already lined up on the monorail ramp and it looked like an hour wait just to get on a train from there to us, so we headed toward the ferryboat docks, which appeared to have shorter lines.

The ferry ride was pretty fun and we got to go on the big lake in front of the Magic Kingdom, past the Contemporary Resort, etc. So it was a lot of fun, but the accumulated travel time between when we got on our bus and when we got to the Kingdom was probably about an hour and a half (and our 20minute bus ride was looking pretty good by then).

We finally got in the gate and got our kid cart and got into the park properly. By now, it was going on noon and our great early start had been largely eaten away by playing around with the transportation system. Oh well. :) We had the insight to check at the front gate's customer service desk area to inquire about dinner and were happy to find that the Crystal Palace had an opening at 3:20 for a character dinner with Winnie the Pooh and all his friends. We made our reservations and headed out into Main Street.

As we passed the silhouette cutting stand, I remembered doing silhouettes as a kid with my family there and how those silhouettes we made that day had always hung in my parents' house in a place of prominence in the upstairs hall. They were good keepsakes and I decided we should get one done of Gabe. He sat well for it and the girl doing the cutting was super nice. She even cut out a free silhouette of Mickey for Gabe and taped it into his autograph book.

Next, we went to the Laughter Floor in Futureworld, an area of the park we'd not covered at all on previous visits. There was a bit of a line, but it was a blast. Basically, it was a stand-up comedy show done by monsters from Monsters, Inc. There was lots of audience participation and the guy next to me kept getting spotlighted and was a major part of the show (at the end "Rozz" gave him credit for having 'filled the laugh canister'.) It was pretty funny and we all had a great time.

We went from there to the Lilo and Stitch experience. I found this one of the least thrilling experiences at any of the parks. Basically, the premise is that you are a new cadet and Stitch is just being brought in as a prisoner. So everyone sits around a big holding 'tank' while Stitch breaks out. The lights go out as he breaks out and everyone just basically sits there and screams in the dark for a while as various things appear to be happening around you. I guess if you are a kid, it would be fun, because Gabe said he thought it was awesome, but the whole experience seemed a little thinly done to me.

Afterwards, we went and got some ice cream and decided to head over to where the silhouette lady said we could find Mickey; where else would he be but at his house? It started to look like rain as we headed that way and just as we reached Mickey's house and went inside the "judges tent" in the back yard, it really started coming down. We made it inside just in time (while Lisa parked the cart). We stood in line for a long time while it rained and finally got to see the grand prize, Mickey and Minnie Mouse! We all got photos and hugs from Mickey and Minnie and Gabe got their autographs too. Minnie saw Mickey's silhouette and asked where hers was (that's why there is a little mark on Mickey's silhouette in Gabe's autograph book, Minnie was turning the page with the pen). It was a really magical experience and we were all glad we did it!

Afterwards, the rain was still coming down, but it was almost 2:30 and we knew we had to be at the Crystal Palace checked in by 3:00pm to get our dinner, so we donned our parkas (I'm sure we looked like pros!), and slogged through a light drizzle over to the Crystal Palace restaurant.

We checked in and were the envy of many standing outside as we headed inside for an extended dinner with all the Pooh characters in a super-nice buffet. We met Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet, and of course, Pooh (according to Tigger, Rabbit was sleeping). Got lots of autographs and hugs and photos. We all overate the really excellent food and had an excellent time.

When we came out, the rain had stopped, and we headed toward Pirates of the Caribbean. First, we came to the Robinson Family treehouse, which Gabe wanted to explore. That place was really cool and we all wanted to live in a huge treehouse by the time we were done.

After the treehouse, we went to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride (again), and when we came out of there, we hit the gift shop for a moment, and we -almost- got Peter Pan and Wendy's autograph, but a grumpy old Disney employee was in the process of whisking them away just as we got there and wouldn't let us see them. So we went -back- through the Pirates ride (yet -again-). So we went through the ride again and headed to Frontierland in a light drizzle with the idea of riding the Thunder Mountain Railroad.

On our way there we remembered that we had not yet checked into our flight! This was about 6pm, so I knew that there was a chance by now that people had already checked in before us and we might be in a much later boarding group (which might hurt our chances of sitting together). So I called Southwest on Lisa's phone while I actually checked-in online using the web browser on my phone. Once I got ahold of someone, I tried to upgrade our seats even earlier, but all the earlier boarding groups were sold out. Nevertheless, we did get the same boarding group (B9, B10, B11) that I'd gotten when we flew to Florida, so we left there fairly confident that our seating arrangements would be good tomorrow. Gabe and I had a fun time with me trying to get popcorn from him and him only giving me crumbs.

Next, we headed to the Thunder Mountain Railroad. The line for this ride was LONG and Gabe wasn't at all sure he'd like it as he watched this coaster flying all around. When we got on the coaster, Gabe had a blast! He said "I don't wanna do this again!" while were on it, but in the end, we all realized that we had a wonderful ride and that roller coasters were "-awesome-". :)

After this, we were starting to get pretty tired. We knew we had a long evening of packing ahead of us, so we decided to head back to our hotel for the evening. We headed toward the entrance. We walked -through- Cinderella's castle and went to the gift shop on the other side for a moment. We took some photos in front of the castle and then stopped to pick up our silhouettes and buy some more souvenirs before we headed out (and Gabe wanted to get a silhouette of Minnie, since she had asked about it. :) Gabe and I went into the jewelry shop and Gabe picked up some Tinkerbell earrings for Mom, so we got some of those for her and surprised her with those.

We headed back to the bus. We were going to do the train, but it was almost 9pm by then and again, we knew we had a lot to do back at the hotel, so we decided to skip it and head to the bus. We ate some food at the hotel and after Gabe went to bed, we started packing up. Packing was nightmarish and I think should have qualified for credit in some sort of engineering course. We got -so- many souvenirs during this trip it was ridiculous! :)

Yet Another LONG Day at Disney. As Gabe said tonight, "This has been a magical vacation." And it really has!