The experience was probably helped by the fact that we had very limited goals for this last trip to the Magic Kingdom: we wanted to ride the Jungle Cruise (after being stymied by long waits on Monday), meet Tinkerbell (ditto), and
First stop, Jungle Cruise. While the wait time had been 45 minutes or more on Monday, we just walked straight onto the boat on Friday. I'm not quite sure what the big deal is with this ride since everything on it couldn't have looked any faker. Even Amanda was unimpressed. And if the "big deal" with the ride is all the high-larious puns delivered by the captain, I'm sorry, but it's totally not worth it. If we had waited an hour on Monday for THAT, I'd have had some choice words for Mickey Mouse next time I saw him.
But with no wait, there was no harm done. On to It's a Small World! Again, there was no wait, and we got right on the boat. Reagan assumed the position, this time on my chest. That was the best part. I believe this was our third journey through the magical world of first generation animatronics, so Amanda (and everyone else) was becoming quite familiar with the scenes. The funny thing is, while she talks about how much she LOVES the ride (it was her favorite), you'd never know it by watching her ride it. Rather than laughing, singing, or even smiling, she just calmly looks around at everything. Studying. We fully expect her to see some random object in a few months and say, "that's just like on It's a Small World!"
After Small World, we headed over to Tomorrowland to ride the Astro Orbiter, which I can't help but call the Astroglide (heh heh . . . some of you out there know what I'm talking about, amirite?). Anyway, this is the ride Amanda saw from the race car, causing us to slam into the guide rail. It's like Dumbo on steroids -- rocket ships spinning around a central tower, going much faster (and higher) than Dumbo. I fully expected Amanda to get cold feet when she got a close look at it, but we braved the 20 minute wait, and she rode it with no problems. I started getting a little queasy, but she was a champ.
Then, Amanda wanted to ride the Teacups, so Susan took her on that while I played with Reagan, who was happy to get out of the stroller for a bit. By this point, it was getting close to lunch time, so we headed over to Adventureland to eat at a Mexican quick-serve place Susan had spotted. The food was good, and so were the girls.
After lunch, we went to ride Peter Pan, which we had gotten FastPasses for earlier in the day. FastPass is definitely the way to go for Peter Pan since the lines are always really long for some reason. Amanda wasn't too fond of the ride when we did it the first day (something about volcanoes), but we bribed her to try it again by promising we would ride Small World again if she did. She eagerly jumped at the offer. Yay.
So we did Peter Pan and got in line for Small World. By this time, the line was maybe 15 minutes long, still a far cry from Monday. But it was worth it to have Reagan resting on my chest again.
When we finished Small World, we split up. Susan took Amanda to ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (which was to be her first real roller coaster), while I took Reagan to ride Dumbo. Ever since the first day, Reagan would point at the ride and say something that sounded a lot like "Dumbo" every time we walked near it. We therefore assumed it was her favorite ride and favorite character, so we wanted her to ride it again before we left. She was actually a little fussy riding it with me this time, so maybe I ruined her love of Dumbo. Or maybe when she was pointing and saying what sounded like "Dumbo," she was actually using her baby word for either "foreigner" or "morbidly obese person on a rented scooter." Lord knows the park was loaded with both of them.
After Dumbo, we reconnected with Susan and Amanda, only to learn that Amanda was just barely too short to ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The park had three different people measure her, but she was too short by about a quarter of an inch! She was definitely going to ride it and had really gotten all psyched up for it, only to have those hopes dashed. She was very disappointed, but she handled it really well and knows that next time she comes to Disney, she'll be big enough!
Not that it's the same thing, but we decided to take her on the regular railroad, which happened to have a stop right there in Frontierland. That was a nice relaxing way to kill 20 minutes, and we got a good view of the huge expansion of Fantasyland that will open in 2012. We've got something else to look forward to now.
After the train dropped us off where we started, we had one more attraction to visit -- Tinkerbell. For some reason, they've got the Tink meet-n-greet set up in Adventureland instead of Fantasyland, but whatever. This line was supposed to take 30 minutes, but it actually took closer to an hour, making it the one thing that day where the wait got a little monotonous. After the wait, we got to meet and take pictures with one of the other fairies (I think she's called Fawn) and with Tinkerbell. I guess Amanda did fine, but she acted really weird around them -- she would stand very still and force a smile for the pictures. She wasn't unhappy, but she wouldn't really engage them in conversation, despite the best efforts of the fairies. You'll see that in one of the pictures I'll upload. Very odd.
After the Tinkerbell experience, it was time to do some souvenir shopping (we'd gotten off remarkably light to this point) and head back to get Reagan a nap to make sure she had a good night's sleep!
After the nap and a quick dinner at the hotel (using the last of our meal plan meals), we started the depressing job of packing to go back home. We wanted to pack as much as we could on Friday night so we could have a stress-free breakfast at the hotel and hit the road right afterward.
It was a good thing we packed most of our stuff the night before because Reagan decided our last morning would be the morning she would give us problems. Beginning just after 5:00 a.m., we heard her fussing pretty good in her pack-n-play in the closet. Even at home, she still cries out for a few seconds some nights without actually waking up, so this wasn't particularly unusual. But she seemed a little more upset than usual, and it went on a lot longer. Finally, after she had cried for over 20 minutes, I broke down and went to check on her. There she was, standing up, wide awake, looking at me with her lower lip jutting out. I couldn't resist such a sad face, so I picked her up. She immediately quieted down and got incredibly happy! I bent over to put her back down, and the crying started. Stood back up, happy again! Amazing how that works!
Since I apparently had no other choice, I brought her to our bed to see how that would work. Let me tell you, she had a grand old time. She crawled around, climbed on the pillows, laughed, got cuddly, etc. Although she would lie down and seem like she might actually go to sleep, it never lasted more than a few seconds. This behavior would have been adorable if it hadn't been 5:30 on the morning we were facing a 500 mile drive.
Finally, at about 6:30, Susan did us both a favor by putting Reagan back in the pack-n-play. She (Reagan) fussed for just a moment or two before going back to sleep. We also went back to sleep and almost missed our breakfast reservation thanks to Reagan's morning antics, but it worked out fine.
We left the Wilderness Lodge at 10:40 a.m. and made remarkably good time. We had expected to make several stops to calm down a fussy child (or two), but both kids did really well for almost the whole drive. We actually made it in about eight hours, which was about two hours less than we had prepared ourselves for. Reagan was happy for most of the trip, even though the sun was in her face for virtually the whole time. She even made up a little game where she would take her pacifier out and put it on top of her head. Then she would laugh until it fell off, at which point she put it up there again. It was actually pretty impressive that she was able to balance it there repeatedly, and her squeals of laughter really cheered everyone up.
Amanda was just wonderful, too. She didn't whine at all and was very helpful keeping Reagan entertained by retrieving dropped toys, feeding her cheerios, etc. Toward the end, Reagan got tired and hungry, so the last 30 minutes were a little rough for her, but overall it was a very pleasant end to a wonderful vacation.
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