Hop ‘Til You Drop…

In the very brief planning stages of this trip, Phil and I had a bit of a difference in opinion as to whether the park hopping option was necessary. He was right. It was.

We didn’t manage to get to a park until noon, and when we did, it was Hollywood Studios again. Our plan was to snag fastpasses for Toy Story Mania, but they were all long gone by the time we arrived. Since we really had no desire to wait in a 2 ½ hour line, we forewent this option until tomorrow… we hope…

We did stop at the Toy Story character greeting, where we met Buzz Lightyear, and we also traveled a little further into the park to meet Mike and Sulley for the first time. Again, I am amazed at how much Miah loves these guys! Under 2 years old, and she yells the word, “monsters,” with a smile on her face!

We also finally saw the Beauty and the Beast stage show after 3 unsuccessful attempts in ’06, ’08, and ’09. I thought the casting here was excellent, and Miah enjoyed growling at the Beast. We did stand in the back for the second half of the show, because she was tired of sitting…

Undoubtedly, the most exciting thing that happened to us on this trip was that we made a wrong turn at Hollywood Studios and found ourselves being directed by a real film crew to join a group of people who will be featured on the Walt Disney Resort’s television channel. Three takes later, we are looking forward to having our friends who are visiting Orlando in March keep an eye out for us in our television debut!

Just a couple of hours into our day, we hopped over to Epcot in an attempt to bang out the rest of Future World or the World Showcase. As it turned out, we were reasonably successful at completing part of both of them… again. I’m never planning to do Epcot this way again, but by the end of our time there, I had pressed pennies for 8/11 nations, we had Daisy Duck’s autograph, we had walked on to Journey into Imagination with Figment, The Seas with Nemo, and Spaceship Earth, and we had even played at the Kodak Image Works and explored the Living Seas.

Time’s up… We hopped a monorail to the Magic Kingdom for Wishes…

The monorail took a really long time to arrive (about 25 minutes), but we still managed to squeeze our way through the crowd during the parade and position ourselves for some prime fireworks viewing right in front of Walt and Mickey this time. We made Ian stay up, because we wanted him to actually see the show, and when it started, even Miah woke up. Wishes is traditionally my favorite show at Disney. I am so glad we made it in time… Looking around at my beautiful family, I know that all of my wishes really have come true…

After a few pictures, we booked it back to the monorail station, because the Epcot monorail was threatening to close at 10:00pm… Small problem… The monorail line was packed! Thanks to Phil’s quick thinking, we jumped on the resort monorail… Miah cried all the way to the Contemporary Resort, where some guests disembarked and we were able to sit down and pull her out of her stroller… just in time to travel to the ticket and transportation center… where Phil pushed both strollers down the ramp and I carried Miah… then we ran back up the other ramp and made it on the last monorail back to Epcot for the night with 5 minutes to spare…

We arrived back at the Epcot parking lot, found the van, and were on our way back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep before we attempt to fight the crowd in the morning for those Toy Story Mania fastpasses…

‘Night.

Lisa

Day 14 Photo Count: 141

Photo Highlights:

Caleb & The Aliens...

Have I mentioned lately how much I love this kid...

Wishes...