Grandbabies 8.6 - Nya with Princesses
Don Jennings
Nya and I go for a walk again this morning hoping to see more hot air
balloons, but it's just ducks and white fishing birds. She looks stunning
in her Belle dress, perfect for breakfast with the Princesses later. We get
to the park just before 9, and it doesn't occur to us that it's Early Entry
day and we could just go over there on the left and walk in instead of
waiting here with everybody else. Not only does that cost us an extra
twenty minutes, when I pick up our Soarin' fast passes at 9:15 they're for
12:20, so we probably won't get back down here to use them.
Meanwhile, the girls have gone down to take the Nemo ride to see Crush, a
specific request. Turns out Crush doesn't get out of bed until 9:40, so
with our 10:30 breakfast looming we give Nya a choice of waiting for Crush,
going to see Figment, or riding Spaceship Earth. After some serious
thought, her decision is "the turtle". In the meantime, she spies a tank
with dolphins in it that are great fun to watch, and then wants to check out
that empty tank over there that turns out to contain an entertaining
manatee. "He takes up the whole tank!" I finally announce that we have to
go get in line for Crush and as the girls are following me over I hear her
say "Disney is fun, Grandma!"
It's a good thing we came over when we did, because the man is saying "Hurry
up, we're almost full", and he shuts the gate right behind us. We discover
while waiting that the reason she wants to do this again is because "He didn't
talk to me before." Well maybe you have to talk to him. Laurie coaches her
a bit with a question, and she takes a spot right at the very front of the
green carpet and she's ready. With a Belle dress on, I would think she
would have to be noticed. She never raises her hand though, and tells us
later that she changed her mind about talking to him.
On our way out of the Human Tank we decide we'll have time to take in
Figment on our way to breakf - "GRANDMA, THERE'S AN ARIEL WITH A TAIL!!!!"
From about thirty feet away. It doesn't matter that it's not Day 7, and it
doesn't matter what else we miss today, we're getting this doll right now."
We do still have time to ride Figment again though, and then we get held up
between there and Norway because the flowers around the lagoon "are very
beautiful. I've seen red flowers before, but I've never seen purple flowers
like that." The stroller ride around World Showcase to Norway gives her an
opportunity to inspect every inch of Ariel, including the fact that she has
a flower in her hair. We tell her that she can't open Ariel's necklace now,
because if she opens it often it will break. She informs us she's going to
wait until she gets home to open it, "because my mommy can fix anything."
It must be a little nervous out in Norway's courtyard, because she's asking
all sorts of Princess questions, such as "Will the princesses come to our
table?" Yes, just like the other day. "But they won't eat with us?" No.
The breakfast experience itself is so intense that Nya's ready to leave when
we're only two princesses in. She guts it out though, and we get pictures
with all of them, even though we already met and got autographs from a
couple before. When Nya informs Aurora that we got her autograph the other
day she replies "Yes, we're becoming great friends."
Laurie is getting some pictures of the topiaries in World Showcase Plaza
when Nya spots the fountain down by Spaceship Earth, grabs Laurie by the
hand and shouts "Come on Grandma, we've got to see the fountains!!!" After
that little detour, we make our way over to the Imagination pavilion to find
a very long line for Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Good thing we were
skipping that one. (We always work our way up through the Muppets and
Mickey's Philharmagic to gauge the kids' 3D tolerance level, and Sorcerer
Donald is as far as this one's going to get this trip.) But she wants to
see Figment, and really wants to see those Leaping Fountains again. When we
pull up to the stroller parking and I tell her it's time to hop out, hop she
does, beaming and saying "See my smile, Grandma."
It must be busier than normal here today, because Figment's line reaches all
the way out to the door. Nya has all bases covered when we get back into
the Scent Lab - she has her head tipped sideways so her shoulder covers one
ear, her hand covers the other, and her other hand is pinching her nose
shut. After the ride, "Can I jump on the music squares?" Absolutely.
After a briefer visit than our last at the Leaping Fountains, it's time to
use our fast passes for Soarin'. Nya hands our passes to the lady and takes
off running up the empty enclosed aisle ahead of us, getting probably forty
feet ahead before turning around and anxiously telling us "C'mon guys, hurry
up!!" Relax, Speed Racer, no one's going to pass us. We all love the
flight over California again, to the point where one of us skips all the way
out of the attraction. Or perhaps the skipping is because it's 1:30 and we're
headed to the water park.
Our opening activities at Blizzard Beach consist of getting towels and a
locker key, changing into our swimsuits, putting our extra stuff in our
locker, and walking down to Tyke's Peak. Nya walks right out into the water
and around for a bit, before deciding she'd like to do a slide. She does
one of the smaller one's and it's apparently a little tame, because she
immediately heads up to do the medium one. On this one she tries to stand
up a little early at the bottom and trips, going forward onto her knee and
getting quite a nasty scrape from the industrially abrasive pool floor.
(The kind of brushburn that is going to keep slowly oozing blood until you
bandage it.) Nya's obviously quite upset, but Grandma's almost as good as
Mom at fixing things and tells her they have a first aid station that's sort
of like an emergency room where we can get it fixed. The best way to get
there is to take the lazy river around, with Laurie in a tube and Nya laying
across her lap holding napkins on her knee, keeping it out of the water. I
certainly hope it's not too far away, because the volume of tears we've lost
so far leaves her in danger of dehydration. But we get to First Aid, apply
a band-aid, and she's magically cured. (Seriously, band-aids are awesome.)
We're trying to let that knee heal up a bit before we lose the band-aid, so
we decide to take the chair lift up to the family raft ride. Nya loves the
lift, "Look, we're skiing uphill!!" She isn't so excited at the top when it
dawns on her that we were planning to somehow slide back to the bottom. We
haven't completely convinced her that it will be okay because we're all
sliding down together in one big tube, when they say "Family of three?"
That's us, and over the course of the next fourteen seconds we pass a few
people, join three strangers sitting in the tube, get a little push and are
off!! And on the way down the super long ride, Nya says "I want my mommy"
and then she giggles and than she says "I want my mommy" and then she
giggles and then she says "I want my mommy" and then she giggles.
We're all extremely cold now, so we walk in the sun back to Tyke's Peak to
eat some snacks and play in the sand. After a short time, Nya's ready to
get back in the water. She obviously avoids that middle slide that cripples
people, but she makes probably twenty trips on the little slides, the last
few on her belly. Then she goes over to try the long (for a four-year-old)
tube slide, which for most of the grandkids has been too scary. Laurie's at
the top and I'm at the bottom, and she seems to enjoy it quite a bit. After
the second time, she says "I want to do a different one." I naturally think
she means a different slide, but she goes over and deposits her tube in the
pile, grabs another of the thirty identical tubes there, and heads off
running back to the top of the slide. All righty, then, different one.
She's taking a breather now and just wandering around the wading pool. It
isn't long before she walks over to the six-foot-high waterfall and stands
right underneath it, giggling like crazy. I'm guessing at the duration, but
I think she's standing in it for about four minutes when she walks out from
under it, gets all the excess water out of her eyes and mouth and nose and
ears, and then turns around and walks right back under it again!
Having finally finished with Tyke's Peak, we take one more trip around the
lazy river, collect our stuff and go down and change our clothes, and we're
heading out of the park at about 5:20 for dinner at our resort. Nya's still
trying to sort out this injury thing and is asking Laurie what blood turns
into. We tell her a scab, and point one out on a kid's shin sitting across
from us. She then inspects herself, and finds a couple little ones on her
arm and one on her knee that's "been there for a really long time." It may
seem like a long time to her, but you can't fool us - scabs on a
four-year-old are about as rare as mosquitoes and have a life cycle of about
four days.
You can tell this is Day 6 - as the bus pulls up to Pop Century, Nya says
"We're home!" By the time I get back from the room with our mugs, the girls
have got our food and Nya is picking out our table. "Can we eat outside?"
It's in the 70s, there's no breeze, we think that would be perfect.
We always predetermine the order of our initial visit to each park, saving
Magic Kingdom for last, but we've also always left Day 7 as Kid's Choice.
So far, we've had five Magic Kingdoms, one Epcot, and one Studios. That's a
little tougher with Nya though, since she still hasn't separately identified
the different parks. Everything that we mention, she wants to do again, in
all four parks. It seems like Magic Kingdom's responses are a little more
vigorous though, so we'll make an executive decision and go there tomorrow.
We were planning to do something more tonight also, but as we talk about it
we realize that we're all pretty tired and that just hanging around the room
sounds good. By which I mean packing for the trip home tomorrow.
Rudeney
>
> On our way out of the Human Tank we decide we'll have time to take in
> Figment on our way to breakf - "GRANDMA, THERE'S AN ARIEL WITH A
> TAIL!!!!" From about thirty feet away. It doesn't matter that it's not
> Day 7, and it doesn't matter what else we miss today, we're getting this
> doll right now."
See? I knew I remembered seeing them! Just call me a pervert, but
Ariel always catches my eye! ;-)
> Laurie is getting some pictures of the topiaries in World Showcase Plaza
> when Nya spots the fountain down by Spaceship Earth, grabs Laurie by the
> hand and shouts "Come on Grandma, we've got to see the fountains!!!"
Fountains seem to be quite an attraction for Nya.
> We always predetermine the order of our initial visit to each park,
> saving Magic Kingdom for last, but we've also always left Day 7 as Kid's
> Choice. So far, we've had five Magic Kingdoms, one Epcot, and one
> Studios. That's a little tougher with Nya though, since she still
> hasn't separately identified the different parks. Everything that we
> mention, she wants to do again, in all four parks. It seems like Magic
> Kingdom's responses are a little more vigorous though, so we'll make an
> executive decision and go there tomorrow.
I am most surprised that the MK hasn't won all seven previous times!
--
- RODNEY
Next WDW Vacation?
Who knows!
Need to know more about RADP (rec.arts.disney.parks)?
Don Jennings
>> We always predetermine the order of our initial visit to each park,
>> saving Magic Kingdom for last, but we've also always left Day 7 as Kid's
>> Choice. So far, we've had five Magic Kingdoms, one Epcot, and one
>> Studios.
>
>
We were too. Gavin actually recognized that the park with the most things
he liked might not be the park with the things he liked most, and went with
the latter in choosing Epcot. He liked Soarin' and Test Track, but was
mesmerized by Spaceship Earth, even calling his mom and telling her each of
the things he'd learned. The Studios were actually Plan B for Colby, who
had selected a water park for Day 7. We would have gone too, but
thunderstorms were going to ruin that day and he opted instead for another
dose of Lights, Motors, Action.