One of the things I absolutely love about Elisa is that we are so on the same page when it comes to important things. We've always agreed about the type of dog, house, and vacations to take. When it came to children, we were aligned. It made things easy. The same comes to cars. We've always....well, almost always been aligned. You see, things were a little rocky when we got married. Elisa had been devoted to her little 1994 Toyota Corolla. It was a great car - incredibly well cared for and Elisa would remind me over and over that it would hold it's value (she is an accountant, after all). I, on the other hand, had traded in my first car (1978 Dodge Aspen...AKA The Tank) for a smaller Dodge Shadow. I loved that car. It was a stick shift, was red (go Utes, right?), and just fit me. Elisa hated it. Maybe it was the fact that it didn't have air conditioning. Maybe she had some bad memories because my idea of teaching her a stick shift was to do a single circle around a parking lot and then to have her pull onto a downtown street. I'm still unsure.
When we got to the point where it was time to start thinking about our next cars, we both tried to offload the old cars. Elisa would remind me of the resolution - 10 years after the car was originally sold, she was about to still make about $4,000 off of it. I conceded horribly when I realized that I would get more "money" if I donated the car to Kidney Kars and wrote it off on my taxes than I would if I went and sold the car somewhere. Ouch. But we moved on. Elisa got...wait for it...a Toyota Corolla. She lovingly dubbed it 'Ruby Red' (what is it with people giving the car a pet name?). I ended up getting a Toyota Camry. That's right...Elisa made me a Toyota guy. Of course, to date we still have Ruby Red. I ended up cycling through a couple leases. The Camry's lasting memory was backing out of the garage (trying to avoid another car in the driveway) and cleaning "removing" the side view mirror. Then it was onto the Black Toyota Highlander. Remember the story of Lukas projectile vomiting on the back of my head? Yep, that was in this one. Most recently, Elisa was ready to not be in Ruby Red, so I got that as the hand me down. She got a Toyota Venza, which she lovingly dubbed "Sheba."
Yet, I said we were aligned. Maybe not always on the car we loved, but on the car we would never get. Elisa and I kind of despise minivans. I'm not exactly why. My first thought is the look. It's not an attractive looking car. I was slightly frightened of the sliding doors. And, sadly, minivans are as common in Utah as those little stick figure family things are in the back windows (ugh...but that's another blog). When you travel, however, with six people (two car seats), the stroller the size of NY, and luggage, a Toyota Camry or Ford Fusion just isn't going to cut it. You have to get a minivan. When I started driving it on the trip, it just wasn't working. The sliding doors. The ugly look. The fact that we still had to pile luggage in every crevice just to get from the airport to the hotel. But as each day passed by, the minivan started growing on me. I discovered that the stroller (which tended to seem huge in our Venza) easily fit. The sliding doors, I found, could be controlled by buttons in the car. There were also buttons on the keychain. I started to get used to pushing the back door and 2 side door buttons and have the entire car ready to be loaded by the time we walked up to it. Even better, when in the car, a couple button pushes and the minivan is secured. Sure, the look wasn't really growing on me. But I had turned a corner.
As we started driving to Magic Kingdom on our last day, I mentioned to Elisa that the minivan was kind of growing on me. Ladies and gentleman, I think we are officially misaligned. She looked at me as though she was thinking "oh good God, it's like the return of the Dodge Shadow!" I did feel slightly pathetic at the fact that I was going to have to return to the unfortunate world of closing the car doors myself. What a rough existence. But when a trip is going to end, you have a longing for things that will soon be gone. Sue me. The minivan wasn't so bad. Although I will say, absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. I'm back in Utah and have started seeing minivans on every street, with those little stick figure family counts. I'm back to hating them. Alignment is looking good...
We arrived at Magic Kingdom, Lukas and I with a tear in our eyes. The minivan made me misty, but the end of the trip was clearly taking its toll on my little man. He had been in his version of paradise for 8 days. One more, and he'd be back to school, homework, without an Expedition Everest in sight. As we walked up Main Street, Lukas whispered a "secret". He didn't want to go home. In fact, he wished that his Kindergarten was at Disney World. Don't we all, little buddy. Don't we all. I did prepare Lukas for today's festivities though. He had, indeed, lived in paradise. It was time to put a little time and focus on the things that Miles might enjoy in Magic Kingdom. He was generally agreeable, but did want to make sure that Space Mountain was at the top of our list. We had been here for almost 9 days, and still hadn't made it over to Tomorrowland. So that was our first stop. When we arrived, the wait was 10 minutes. Not terrible, but I knew there were some Miles rides that we would need to get on before the crowds started to balloon. So we got fastpasses and headed over to the Tomorrowland Speedway. Miles had been dying to ride on "Lightning McQueen" and trying to explain that Cars Land is in Disneyland and not Disney World is just something a 2 year old isn't going to wrap his head around. This was the closest possible thing. As we waited in line, I kept telling Miles that we would ride Lightning McQueen. He finally started believing me.
Sure enough, when it was our turn to get on the ride, we were lucky enough to get a red one. I positioned Miles in the driver's side, figuring he could give us whiplash by playing with the steering wheel, and I could push the gas. Once we were buckled in, Miles just sat there staring around. I told him to drive with the steering wheel. His comment? "Nah!" He was in it for the joyride. The effect of whiplash, however, ended up being the same even though I was now steering and pushing the gas. Apparently, driving one of these cars is a little difficult when you're not on the driver's side. We just went back and forth between the left and right side of the lane. This was not my idea of a great ride. If I kept this up, I'd get us beaten and bloodied. By the end of the ride, I felt that I had perfected the art of at least not killing our necks and heads while we drove around the Speedway. Miles just kept saying "I'm riding Lightning McQueen!" and "Nah!" everytime I offered to let him take the wheel. When we arrived back, I picked Miles up and walked to the exit. I sat him down in the stroller and awaited the arrival of Elisa and Lukas, who were right behind us. Elisa looked down at Miles and freaked out. I didn't blame her. Miles had apparently had a horrible bloody nose. It was all over his face. It looked as though he had just survived his first MMA bout. Elisa asked what happened. I was speechless - no, not that Miles had gotten a bloody nose. I was just slightly perturbed that I had taken an entire drive, picked him up, walked him to the exit, and plopped him in the stroller without realizing that his nose was Old Faithful. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I keep racking up these nominations for Father of the Year. A few more Disney trips and I'll have that award in the bag!
I decided to make it up to Miles. I would immediately take him on Dumbo. Disney is redesigning much of Fantasyland to expand it by about 3 times its original size. One of the updates already completed is the move of Dumbo, and the addition of a second Dumbo right next door. Disney is also playing around with the idea of a queueless line. That is, you don't have to wait in a traditional line. You enter a circus tent where the kids can go crazy and when your group is next to ride, you are called up. At this time in the morning, the waiting wasn't required. You could walk right through the circus tent and head to Dumbo. But I was so focused on looking at what was in the tent, I clearly didn't see the 4 foot tall pole which started the line out to Dumbo. It was one of those moments where a slight adjustment at the last moment saved the family jewels from a fate worse than death. I tried to shake it off and act like nothing had happened. That was harder to do as I limped onto Dumbo. A bloody nose and a near male catastrophe. This day wasn't going so well.
Back off of Dumbo, it was time for our Space Mountain fastpasses. We headed back to get in line...only to discover that the wait for Space Mountain was now...10 minutes. Good one, Brad. So glad you took the time to get those fastpasses! Lukas, the parents, and I headed into ride Space Mountain (the Disney World version is really more like Matterhorn at Disneyland, just in the dark). The ride was quite phenomenal. So much better than I remember it being. Everyone loved it. When we got off the ride, I went to see the ride photo. This was one of those pictures that is so bad, you have to get it. Lukas looked scared. My Mom appeared to be sleeping. And I looked stoned. Ah, memories. I made sure I got a copy immediately. Don't worry. A photo tour of all of these events (we didn't snap one of the toilet present, don't worry) will be hitting the blog next week.
After Space Mountain, we hit Buzz Lightyear, where I got another in-ride photo where I've fashioned myself to look like One-Eyed Bart from the old Western movies. Honestly, stoned on Space Mountain, and taking Buzz Lightyear shooting games a little too seriously? Miles just sat and said "Nah!" again. After a quick ride on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, though, Miles was getting used to having the rides all about him. He wanted to go on the Tea Cups. As we walked over to get in line, Elisa bowed out but threw me a gentle reminder that Miles had been throwing up just 2 days before. I decided to put Miles with my Dad, who gets queazy on spinning rides. That assured me that the tea cup would be making very slow rotations. I, on the other hand, was going to make my Mom and Lukas pay for joining me. From the minute the ride started, I was a maniac. The teacup went faster and faster and I knew that once it stopped, everyone would be cursing my name while falling over themselves to get to the exit. I was so forceful, even Lukas, at the end, asked me to slow down a bit. Yowza. When the ride stopped, I looked up for the first time (I was focused on turning, not looking around). Disney World was in full motion. I felt like Miles did at Chef Mickey's. It's probably good there wasn't any Mickey's Breakfast Pizza to be found. I might have lost my vittles.
After teacups, we hit the Merry-Go-Round. And after that, Miles wanted back on It's A Small World. 1,000 slightly creepy characters later, we were heading back over to Splash Mountain. Lukas had been a very good boy. He deserved a little thrill ride. We decided to let my parents and Lukas go first, so we took Miles over to a little play area where he could ride a slide and climb through a play house. About 5 minutes into our wait, Lukas was back. Apparently, Splash Mountain completely shut down. The break was so bad that the water had stopped running on the hill, and everyone that was on the ride had to be helped out of logs where they stopped and moved to the exit. Well, there went that idea. I checked my Disney app and saw that Pirates of the Caribbean was closed too. Was anything going to be open today? We decided to take the long ride around Magic Kingdom on the train, as Miles had been wanting to ride the entire time. It wasn't overly amazing. But Miles enjoyed it. And that's all that matters.
When we got off the ride, Splash Mountain was still down, so we decided to eat some lunch. We headed to Columbia Harbor House, which had counter service food but it was slightly upscale. You could get a lobster roll, for hell's sake. We ate a pretty good lunch and I took Miles to the bathroom for what I now counted as the 1,432 time on the trip. My photographic memory now knows the location of every restroom facility in the entire Disney World property. Go ahead, quiz me. For the first time at a theme park, Miles volunteered to go #2. Without remembering that I was in a public place, I raced back to the table to announce to the world that Miles just dropped a load. I'm sure Elisa was so proud. Of both her son and her socially awkward husband. Hey, I need to earn that Husband of the Year trophy too! My collection won't be complete!
Since Splash Mountain was still out of commission, we decided to head over to Pirates of the Caribbean for one last ride of the trip. It had been closed, but now my app said it was open. When we arrived, it was closed again. Just as I was starting to turn the stroller around, though, it reopened. Good grief. Make up yer minds, ya land lubbers! So we hopped on Pirates. I had a suspicion that I knew what was wrong with the ride when we sat down. The hill in this ride is pretty tame compared to the Disneyland version, but the floor of the boat had about a 1/2 inch of water. I hoped we weren't going to sink. When we headed down the hill, I was sure the boat was solid. It was just that the splashing was on high. I got more soaked on a small hill on Pirates than I had on Splash Mountain. It didn't help Miles enjoy the ride in the slightest. By the time we emerged, we were pretty much done. We had been on about 60 rides over our vacation. It was time to relax a bit. For me, it was time to start throwing clothes back into our space bags and start praying that we'd be underweight on our bags. I gave Lukas an extra tight hug and threatened to put him in time out if he cried on the way out. No, not really. I just told him if he cried I'd take him back on Haunted Mansion. Okay, that's not true either. But you almost believed me. My record is working against me.
With that, we officially said goodbye to Magic Kingdom. By the time we got back to our hotel, it was starting to rain again. And just like clockwork, we didn't have the ponchos. We did get the kids naps and I enjoyed the fact that the pool part was not happening because of the rain. Silence was wonderful. However, today was not a nap day. It was a packing day. Elisa loaded up our space bags, and I played the fun game of trying to get the air out. It took me attempting to deflate one bag 4 times (it kept ripping open) before I realized we might have tried to pack a little too much in. By the time the kids were waking up, though, Elisa and I had packed nearly everything. Man, we were efficient! It was still raining, so we played the game of "what do you want to eat for dinner?" I didn't have reservations for dinner (shocking!), and our original plan had been to head to Epcot to maybe enjoy some food at the just underway Food and Wine festival. The rain was kind of killing those plans. By the time the kids were showered and ready, though, the rain had subsided. I knew we were set because the Pool Party was getting underway again. Quick, let's leave before another Disney version of Marco Polo gets underway!
We decided to head back to Epcot, really with two missions. Get Lukas on the more intense version of Mission: Space and get some grub. I should have known we were in trouble when the longest line we had to sit in for the entire trip was the security line at the Epcot gate. The woman checking bags just got on my nerves because she would check 4 bags from the line on the left, and turn and check one bag from our line on the right. I didn't think it would help our cause to start acting like an insane idiot, so I didn't even make subtle comments under my breath. I did try to run her foot over with the stroller. I missed. You can't win them all. By the time we got into Epcot, I kind of wished that it had kept raining. Wow. Crowds. Everywhere. And not just crowds - drunk people. This is the adult Disney World. Food and Wine Festival? They should have just called it the Liquor Store. Lines for every station of food. You could hardly walk anywhere. The line for the Guiness was snaking around the building twice. Suddenly, I wanted to get out of Epcot and Disney World as fast as my little legs could carry me. I used the battering ram stroller to get us to Future World, and we headed straight for Mission Space. And for as busy as World Showcase was, Future World was dead. No drunk people in sight!
As we strapped ourselves in for Mission Space, Lukas was nervous. I was fine. Until the ride told me to stare straight forward, don't look right or left, don't look down, and keep my head back. Suddenly, I felt woozy. The ride itself was awesome. But I did have a fleeing thought that my young mind and body just weren't what they used to be. Could I be feeling my very first symptoms of a little motion sickness, or was I just so hungry I was going to pass out? As our final ride of the entire trip, we rode on Spaceship Earth, which was about the history of communication. I thought, as a history major, that it was excellent. Elisa, as an accountant, thought it was "pretty dumb". Well said, dear. Lukas seemed to enjoy it, though. Learning is fun, right Luke! I hoped he thought that because we hadn't touched his homework packet for the days he missed...it would indeed be a rude awakening when we returned home.
It was late, we were tired, but we still hadn't eaten. So I decided that we could probably get some good counter service back in World Showcase, so long as we avoided the Food and Wine kiosks. Of course, that meant that we would have to wade through the still building crowds. When I was planning the trip, I had very nearly planned it for the week after we actually came. We had an interest in the Food and Wine Festival. As we passed every drunk group of 20 people, I silently thanked myself for NOT scheduling our trip during this event. It took all of the fun out of Epcot. We arrived at America and headed inside for our final meal of the trip. The food was a bit weird. Apparently, I hadn't learned my lesson from strange foods on a burger, and got a cheesburger with barbecue pork on top. It was just as *good* as the burger with shrimp. I clearly got an F for my food ordering on ths trip. Sometimes, as a food, different means you are cultured. In Disney World, different just means an extra bottle of Tums.
As we wrapped up our meal, I was greeted with our final inexplicable adult behavior of the trip. At the table next to us, there was a cute little girl in full on Minnie costume. And next to her was her mother. Probably about 35-36. And also dressed in full Minnie costume. Now, I thought it was weird to do this at Mickey's Halloween Party. This was downright disturbing. Okay, adults. Listen up. You can love your Disney characters. Just don't LOVE your Disney characters. Dress up ended about 30 years ago! And with that, I could tell that I had filled my glass with Disney magic. I was drunk too...just off of wishes, stars, and Mickey ears. It was time to go cold turkey. The trip was ready to be done.
We headed back to the hotel and got the kids to bed. Elisa and I finished packing and we set our alarms for the very early time of 4:00AM. Yep, it was my planning that put us on a flight by 7:30AM Florida time. I just hoped that I'd be able to walk away from my beloved minivan. Maybe it would be easier to do if I donned a full Minnie costume?
Yet, the blog is not quite over. Just remember the adventures in getting to Florida. More stories await from our flight back. Join me tomorrow (my birthday!) for the last official installment of the Pierce Vacation 2012 Blog. Where Elisa starts fretting about time, the front desk forgets how to push CTRL+P, we load the stroller with every bag possible (plus Miles), realize we might be a "little" over on bag weight, Elisa returns to her vices, Miles makes us pay, Lukas serves drinks, I can't remember what I did 10 days ago, and we collapse from sheer exhaustion. You've stuck with me this long...what's one more blog? Eh?
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