Wednesday February 9th 2022 – This Better Live Up to the Hype
We were determined to get an early start this day because I had booked not only Kid’s Nite Out for that evening but also our PCR tests to fly home. When we were in the airport getting tested to come to Florida, I was a ball of nerves, convinced that one of us was going to test positive and it would destroy the trip. I held my breath as I opened each person’s file and read their status then announced it individually; “Daddy gets to visit Mickey. Claudia gets to visit Mickey.” And every time I read one out, I was certain that the next result would be a bad one.
By contrast, testing to go home and this sounds terrible, but I didn’t care. As one of the town doctors, David would be sincerely missed, but we’d figure out a way to get him home, but as for the rest of us, more time in Florida sounded ok to me.
The only aspect I was stressed about was the cost. I’d done a fair amount of research and thought that I had found a free PCR testing site but when I called and explained that we were Canadians, I was told we’d have to pay.
There was also some rigmarole around whether Claudia needed to be tested. As she was under five, she did not but I had David double check all the rules that I had checked myself just to be safe. Clark was very very sad about being swabbed but I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. I knew we had to stay in the car, so were we going to swab ourselves? I was going to have to wait until the afternoon to get answers.
We went to Mickey’s Philharmagic again. This was a fan favourite this trip, they’d added a new section from Coco and the kids adored it. I gave Claudia her pacifier when she asked for it so she fell asleep in the stroller. Unfortunately it didn’t have shade or recline so she didn’t end up napping very long but she woke up a little refreshed which was good.
We went on the teacups and the line moved quickly. As I get older, I’m noticing that I can’t do the spinning rides as much; I came home with a little bit of vertigo from all of them.
Caption: Claudia fell into Daddy’s leg coming down the steep moving walkway from the People Mover and was sad. By contrast, Clark built a lot of confidence and independence on escalators and moving walkways this trip. Being five hours from a city, my kids rarely have the opportunity to ride such things.
After leaving the Magic Kingdom at two to make our four o’clock appointment at CVS, we rolled up and waited, and waited, and waited and Clark got increasingly anxious and declared that he had to pee. Then we were handed kits, given instructions on how to swab ourselves and told to give them back. David swabbed himself and Clark who was very sad. Finally I did mine and we dumped the kits into the drop box and drove away.
Caption: Yes, that is a pacifier in Claudia’s mouth. Please judge me.
We didn’t pay. I couldn’t believe it. Yes I had done my research but we were supposed to shell out $750.00 US for those tests and we hadn’t. I felt like there had to be a catch so until we got our results, I wasn’t going to hold my breath, still I felt a little delighted about it all. My research had saved us a grand.
We drove back home and met our new Kid’s Nite Out sitter. Paula only does on property so we had Barbara, her super calm demeanor made me feel confident about leaving the kids with her. Claudia seemed to bond with her right away.
Caption: I have a Mike shirt on under my Mike sweater. It’s like Inception for Monsters.
Then it was time to go to the Studios, David and I were going to try Rock’n’ Rollercoaster and Tower of Terror but it was packed! We booked a Disability pass for the coaster as soon as we tapped in and waited for the time to come up. That night we wore our matching Mike Wazowski sweatshirts that I’d gotten everyone. Well almost everyone, Claudia had a Minnie sweatshirt and Dad chose to be Sulley.
During the trip we got a lot of positive comments about our attire. I’d ordered Buzz shirts for Clark and Dad and Woody shirts for David and me. Mine was a men’s small, I thought to myself how much larger than a women’s could that be? The Woody shirt was a circus tent, I took reams of fabric off the bottom, the sides and the sleeves and still the sleeves were baggy.
Caption: I also want to be buried with this sculpture.
David liked wearing the Woody shirt and telling every security guy he saw, “You’re my favourite deputy!”
I also got matching green alien shirts for everyone. Clark’s was an adult small so I had to completely take the shirt apart and make a new child size one. It turned out ok, please no one show it to my Gran though – she’ll be so disappointed with my seams, it hangs a little funny.
The shirts had the added benefit of making the kids and us really easy to spot. I think the next time we go, I will make an effort to have more matching shirts. I’m thinking the Incredibles. I mean I already have to wear long black gloves, why not incorporate them into an outfit?
We definitely did not win the award for Best Park Outfits though. That distinction goes to the Mom who dressed her infant twins as the evil step sisters and the older girl as Cinderella. You have not lived until you’ve seen twin babies wearing a green and blue bow and dress and a pink and purple bow and dress, being tiny evil stepsisters. I just about lost my mind fawning over them in the line up of It’s a Small World.
I’m both sad that I didn’t take a picture of the babies because they were the cutest things ever but also relieved because it would be awkward to have a stranger’s children as the background photo on my devices or framed on my wall.
I swear next time I’m going to make badges to carry around that say, “Mama, you won Disney.” Seriously, forget Beyonce breaking the internet, those little babies broke Disney for me.
After going on Rock’n’Rollercoaster, we booked a Disability pass for Tower of Terror but then realized that we didn’t want to hang around for two hours. I told David the wait was that long because one of the elevator shafts was down and when we got back, one of the blogs I follow confirmed that Tower of Terror was undergoing maintenance and only one shaft was running. (Thanks EasyWDW, RIP Josh.)
We’d had an issue while checking out of the Beach Club so we decided to head there, before going out for a sushi dinner. I went to the Screendoor again in search of a toy set I’d seen, they were sold out but told me where I could find one. The helpfulness of the cast members really makes a difference. I’ve never had such excellent service anywhere else.
Then David and I met up and went in search of a toy set. We visited the Swan which had been renovated since I last visited. And saw a dirty droid. I swear those things look like they’re waiting to be put in Goodwill’s dumpster. I don’t know why everyone loves them.
There was a candy store and if it weren’t for the fact that we’d been subsisting on junk for the past ten days, I would have filled up a bag. Forget Pick-a-Brick walls, pick a weird candy walls are where it’s at.
Then we went across to Dolphin, or Fish as we’d been calling it. David couldn’t get over how homely the sculpture was. Because I’ve seen it so often, I just take it for granted that there’s a bizarre, ugly fish sculpture that everyone calls a porpoise on one of the hotels.
The sushi restaurant was fabulous and the service was quick. But man alive was the wasabi spicy.
David warned me saying, “Go easy on the wasabi – it’s really hot.”
But I'm from Brampton, I live for spice. So I smeared a ton of wasabi on a roll and popped it in my mouth.
I’ve eaten wasabi before that’s so hot that I covered my nose because I thought flames were going to come out and I didn’t want to burn the person sitting across from me.
The nose-flame wasabi had nothing on this wasabi. A second after I put the roll in my mouth, all of my hair follicles stood on end and I thought my scalp was going to leap off my head and run out the door like something out of a Robert Munsch story. It was nuts.
Suffice to say, I went easy on the wasabi after that.
After dinner, we were at a loss of what to do. Then I turned to David, “Disney Springs?”
We hot footed it back to the Studios parking lot to pick up our car. David drove us all the way up to the top of the parking structure so I could go over all of the bumps in the parking garage. On Tuesday he’d driven down them with Clark at a high speed and both of them claimed it was like a ride. I do not want to die in a parking garage so I made David go slowly, but even then, those bumps were a lot.
First order of the night – Gideons: Home of the Half Pound Cookie.
After looking at a map, we located the famed bakery and joined the line then proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. For serious, it was like the hot new club in town or Burberry at Christmas. This better live up to the hype, I thought.
It did.
Thirty minutes later and a hundred dollars poorer, we came out holding two giant shopping bags of diabetes. It was glorious and how.
First off, Gideon’s has figured out the entire point of cake is the icing. Their cake was three slivers of cake stuffed inside a mountain of two kinds of icing. It was everything I’ve ever wanted from life.
Then the cookies. We had a heck of a time trying to decide which cookies to buy; there was actually a limit on the number of the flavor of the day that a person could order. Wowzers, those were spectacular cookies. We split a pistachio cookie and an Everlasting Flame cookie which had chili pepper, cherry and dark chocolate.
The only thing that was better than the cookies was the coffee. David got nitro cold brew and they sprinkled the spicy cocaine powder that was on the Everlasting Flame cookie on the coffee. It made me miss coffee even more than the mornings when the kids have been up five times in the night. I only drank a half a sip because it packed a serious punch. I can’t believe that David was able to sleep for the rest of the week, it was that strong.
Then we went to Sephora because the day wasn’t awesome enough as is. David stopped briefly at the Lego store but had already purchased everything he wanted there. We also stopped at the World of Disney. I know there are other cool little shops with things that I like for example dresses, toys and art but I don’t like shopping enough to look in all of the stores to figure out which ones those are. So we went home, and gifted our babysitter with a Gideon’s cookie. She seemed as delighted with that as she was the tip. To be fair, they were really good cookies.
Caption: We also saw Goofy that evening but didn’t take a photo with him.
