World's Wussiest Toddler Visits Walt's World

[DisneyRegulars]

Hi and welcome to my very first trip report. I only recently discovered DisBoards while we were in the process of purchasing our DVC resale, and now I am completely hooked. I have found other disneyaholics like myself, and it feels sooooo good to be able to talk about Disney without people saying things like: "There are so many other places in the world I would like to see, why do you keep going back there." (Uhhh, because it's awesome and FUN!, what's wrong with having a vacation that's all about having fun?) Anyways, back to the trip report. We will be at Disney January 21st - 28th 2012. I'm super excited for this trip for two reasons. Firstly, this trip will be our first use of our DVC membership. We'll be staying at Old Key West in a 1 bedroom unit. Secondly, this will be our first trip to Disney as a family of three by ourselves. While I am very excited about this trip there is one thing that I am a little concerned about...how will my wussy easily terrified toddler deal with Disney? So without further ado, let's meet the cast of this trip report.

First there's me. I'm 29, and besides Disney I love playing with my son, being active, quilting, board games, smutty tv (like Say Yes to the Dress and The Real Desperate Housewives), and doing just about everything under the sun to avoid actually working on my dissertation. Of the two types of Dis'er personalities (planners vs go with the flow types) I am definitely a planner. Any moment in a park not spent optimizing the number of rides ridden is considered wasted. My idea of hell is walking through a park to see how pretty everything is and marvel at the theming. Marvelling can be done once all the rides are ridden! That said, I've had to change my pace a bit given the new little beasty added to the situation. During our first trip with our son when he was 14 months old I was surprised at how well I adapted to going at his pace. This was made easier by just seeing how happy he was exploring the simplist of Disney pleasures.


Second up is my husband, I call him Grizzly. That DH, DS, DW stuff just doesn't work for me, so when I say Grizzly, I'm talking about my husband. He's 35 or something like that. I'm not sure really, he was 29 for years waiting for me to catch up in age. He never went to Disney as a child, his first time was with me 9 years ago, and we've been back every year since. He loves it. And even loves to wear the silly hats with me. We bring them back with us every year, our Goofy hats and mickey ears. We make a great Disney team as he feels the same way about rides vs. marvelling at scenery. We follow the Unofficial Guide touring plans religiously.


Last up is our son. We nicknamed him Tigger during an ultrasound where he was bouncing around all over the place, so we'll call him Tigger here. He just turned 2 years old this past week. This trip wasn't planned as a birthday trip, it was the only time we could go before some of the DVC points expired. Tigger is awesome, but so is everybody else's kid in the eyes of their parents. He's not allowed to watch tv, so his only real knowledge of mickey or anything disney is from the mickey mouse stuffed animal and his figment stuffed animal from last trip. It would be so cute to see him meet a character that he loved from TV, but that will have to wait until next trip. He has been to disney once before when he was 14 months old. He loved the rides, and we loved watching him enjoy the rides. His favorite was the Mad Tea Party. He HATED the characters, he was completely terrified of them. My plan is to be very cautious this trip and to not ride anything that has any chance at all of scaring him. Since our last trip my son has completely blossomed into his full wussness. He is scared of EVERYTHING (although not terribly shy). He is scared of his race track, a cookie monster that eats cookies, the vacuum cleaner even when it's off, trying on new clothes (especially shoes and jackets), jack in the boxes, and especially especially especially ride on toys (hmm will he like the Carousel?). Like most Mom's I could go on and on and on about my son, but I'll just leave it at this. He's a sensitive little guy.

So the question is: Will Tigger like Disney? Will mom survive another slow paced trip? Will the DVC be all that we imagined? Will we accidentally terrify Tigger on a ride and have him refuse to ride anything else the rest of the trip? Hmmmm.... only time will tell.

Our first thing to tackle is the plane ride down. We're all packed, all we have to do is show up.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Wow we made it. I can't believe how exhausted i am, its 7:30, the beast is in bed for the night and I think I'm just about ready to join him. *So getting here....I got up at the leisurely hour of 7:00am, Grizzly was already up and showered and tending to the beasty. We planned to leave by 8:30 to catch our 10:50 flight from Buffalo to Orlando, we only live 20 minutes from the airport, but i don't like to be worried about missing flights, plus i had quite a hike to take because i work directly across from the airport, so i park the car there for free, but it requires a 15 minute walk to get back to the terminal, so i had to leave plenty of time for that. That was a FREEZING walk this morning. So anyways getting through the airport was fine with the exception of the ridiculously slow curbside checkin guy. Going through security was okay, i liked that i didn't have to take tigger's shoes off anymore because he has a strange attachment to his shoes, much like other kids have to their blankets or stuffed animals, tigger feels that way about his shoes. You don't want to be around when he grows out of a pair and needs to try new ones. Those are rough weeks (yup it takes weeks). So we make it through security shoes still attached to feet, and only a few tears shed because we had to put his blanket through the xray machine. Well there was screaming too, but seeing as we are just about the only people who live in buffalo, we had the airport pretty much to ourselves, so i didn't feel too bad about the screaming. The screener lady was really nice, and tried to make it a game of 'race the blanket' but tigger was too young to understand that. He's pretty tall for his age, 36.5 inches, and he just turned 2 last week, so maybe she thought he was older. The plane ride also went excellently.
We got him all excited about getting his own seat for the very first time, so he didn't seem scared at all when we boarded, unlike our flight 2weeks ago when he screamed in terror all the way until we got to our seats at row 19. He only stopped bc i pointed out the buckles, and he loves buckles. Okay...so back to this flight. My flying strategy has always been bring tons of snacks and new things that he has never seen before. So we started off by eating cheddar bunnies, followed by a peanut butter cracker, gerber cookies, and fruit. Once we were done snacking we played with a pack of 400 square inch (maybe slightly larger) post-its. He loved this. I think we probably played with post-its for a full hour. The only thing i would do differently next time would be to buy name brand post-its instead of target brand, the target ones just didn't stick as well as i would have liked, but definitely well enough to entertain a two year old.

After the post-its we played with android aps on my phone. He especially liked the toddler lock ap which allowed him to press all the buttons on the phone without anything bad happening. I spent some time trying to convince him to nap, and although he laid down willingly, and his eyes were droopy, no napping took place. Sigh...we were getting to that grumpy whiney 'i really need a nap' state. So we looked in the magazines for pictures of dogs. Then we played with some red crayola color magic clay. I didn't realy like this stuff. It got the table red, and still had bits fall off which people have claimed is what makes it better than playdoh. I wouldn't recommend this for a plane. To its credit though the red cleaned right off with a baby wipe. We also played with a set of The Very Hungry Caterpillar colorforms. Tigger loved these. Except he didn't like making scenes with the colorforms, he liked putting them all in one big pile on the board. So he would make pile and i would then put them back on the starting paper and he would do it again. I think another solid hour was occupied by these. And then we landed. Only rough part was when i insulted him by bring out the 'wrong' crayons, so even though he had asked to color, coloring was out of the question when the crayons didn't come in a box. But we eventually landed, got all of our bags, took the shuttle to the rental place, got in the car and headed to our second home. Tigger was asleep before we even got on the highway.

Up next, our first look at our first dvc room at OKW, and a quick trip to downtown disney for an EOS sandwich.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

We made it to OKW by 3:45 but purposefully drove around another 15 minutes so Tigger could continue napping. We did online checkin, so grizzly was inside getting our keys for all of 30 seconds. I was staying in the car with Tigger who was still asleep, but was super jealous of grizzly's trip to get the keys because i didn't want to miss having someone say "welcome home" for our very first dvc stay. Grizzly returned to the car disappointed because noone said anything to him. At least i didn't miss it. We quickly found our room, a 1 bedroom in bldg 51, and we could not beleive how HUGE it is. Especially the bathroom. I can't believe the size of the bathroom. This villa feels bigger than our first apartment we lived in for 5 years across from the crazy lady with no teeth, and the old lady and her alzheimic mother who always wanted to see my ferrets, except everytime i would bring one over she would say "ooooh what is it?" even though i had just had a different one at her house not 30sec earlier. Such fond memories of that little apartment...if i can manage to forget the flood and the chronic flea infestation...but this villa is just amazing. We didn't stay long though before strapping tigger into the stroller and attempting to walk to downtown.

Hmmmm... You never realise just how many fountains there are on disney property until you bring a toddler with you who's sole goal in life is to spot the "splashing water". Wow is tigger obsessed with water and fountains, and i could tell he wanted to play in all of them even if they were located in the middle of a pond.

We made it as far as Saratoga Springs before we gave up and took the boat from there. The boat had pulled up right when we were passing the stop, and neither of us were exactly sure how to walk the rest of the way anyways. I enjoyed the trip over to downtown from ssr, but the trip back on the boat to okw felt agonizingly long. I'm not sure they could make a slower boat if they tried. I'm sure some people probably just love this pace, but it was way to slow for me. I think we will definitely drive the rest of the week. One cool thing about the ride back was that it was dusk, and all the cool long necked birds were lined up along the canal waiting to eat dinner. It was pretty awesome, inparticular the giant blue heron. Did i think to get a picture, of course not.

We were back in our room and tigger was bathed and in bed by 7:15.

When did the McDonalds disappear from downtown? We were going to get tigger some cheap chicken nuggets, but couldn't find any chicken nugget like item for under 7.00$. When did kids meals get so expensive?

Grizzly is out shopping right now. Our goal is to only eat one meal out a day, a bag of frozen chicken nuggets was on the list.

On deck for tomorrow is a very quick romp to HS before meeting one of grizzly's friends from college at around 11:00.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Last night grizzly figured out how to hook our phones up to the tv, so we could stream netflix shows on the tv. It was so nice to have a chance to relax without having to lie in bed and whisper in the dark, as we have done on many previous trips with tigger.
We were up at 6:30 this morning and out the door by 7:50am. Our first stop was to the concierge desk to purchase our annual passes. Yeah! We have two more trips planned this year, so they were definitely worth it. Then off to HS we went. We arrived early enough to park in the very first row of cars, but still rather late for us. Grizzly practically ran to the turnstyles, and he was quite dissapointed that we were not the first ones in line. At around 8:35 they let everone in the park. We walked down the main strip expecting to meet a rope at some point, but there was nothing. It felt odd to enter the park with no fanfare or opening show, almost a little sad. We had a very short agenda this morning because we were meeting a friend at 10:30 at downtown disney. Grizzly headed over to ride RRC and get fast passes for TT, while i meandered back towards the honey i shrunk the kids play ground. When grizzly got to RRC he was told the ride was not open yet, and that he also couldn't form a line. Thats so ridiculous! Just don't let people in the park yet if they're not allowed to form a line. My playground was also closed till 9:00am, so we went to look at the muppet fountain. Tigger LOVED this fountain. Every time a fish would spit he would laugh and his whole body would shake with happiness. There was twenty minutes of fish spitting happiness, which also included him running around the fountain with his hand running through the water on the ledge. He got soaked! Only 20 minutes in the park and he was drenched. I came prepared for this though and swapped out his sweatshirt before heading in to the playground. As i suspected he HATED this playground. Everything terrified him except the squirt gun and the little pads nearby that shooted up water. But i had to hold him the whole time. There was a cute little slide made out of a pink leaf, but he was too scared to try that. I once bent down to look into one of the caves and he screeched so loud and clung so tightly too me. I could not for the life of me convince him that i was just looking, and that i had no desire to shove him into a dark scary cave. So after only 5 minutes or so in our only planned destination for the morning we were done. We headed back towards the hat to meet up with daddy where we spotted donald duck. We went over to look at donald from quite a distance away bc i knew he wouldn't like them, but he surprised me by requesting to go meet donald like all the other little boys were doing. So we got in line, and the whole time in line tigger was so excited, he just wanted to run right over and meet donald and not wait his turn. But then came his actual turn. We got about 5 feet from donald and he let out the loudest scream of terror, so i just tried to leave but the photopass person insisted that we get a photo, so i stood about 10 feet in front of donald and daisy, and tigger cowered into my shoulder and she took the picture. I felt bad, for tigger, i don't intend to scare him on purpose, thats why we looked at donald from far away, but he requested the visit. I guess he's still scared of the characters, one question answered!

After that we went to see play house disney. This was my first experience with this show, and i thought the story line was idiotic. You'd think with all the story writing talent disney has on hand they could think of a better way to bring 4 shows together. How does handy manny fixing a machine at all teach goofy how to make a cake? I really don't get how having friends cheer for him would help, or how this related at all to fixing the machine. Seems to me they could have found a cook book in the treasure chest or something. Grrrrr.. So we sat to the side incase tigger got scared. He liked the parts with mickey mouse, but since he hasn't seen any of the other shows he got a little wiggly during those parts, but stayed quiet. Overall i could see how little kids would like this, especially if they were fans of the shows, and i liked the size of the characters because they weren't huge and scary. Tigger seemed to enjoy it, and loved tearing the green streamer to bits that fell near him. After the show we headed straight to down town to meet grizzly's friend.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So this evening after tigger's nap (3.5hrs woohooooo!), we returned to downtown disney because this afternoon's trip with grizzly's friend was a bit of a dud. Although we did get to let tigger play with some legos and it was really cute because in order to reach the blocks in the center of the table his feet would come up off the ground.

So we returned tonight to let tigger play in the fountain outside EOS. Turns out despite his love of fountains and water he was scared to actually go near the water. Shocking! He stood cautiously at the very edge, and enjoyed himself immensely from that distance. We munched on some EOS for dinner and then while tigger took forever eating the peanut butter out of his sandwich i jotted over to the pantry store and bought a plastic plate so that tigger wouldn't accidentally break all the nice dishes in the villa. We walked through the toy store on the way back to the car, and inside the world's wussiest toddler fell in love with the world's scariest toy. Check this puppy out:

I had to buy it. He wouldn't stop hugging it. Here he is in the car on the way home. He has him all "cozy" under his favorite brown blanket.

On the ride home the dinosaur spent most of his time eating elmo. Poor elmo. Tomorrow we're headed to the Animal Kingdom for morning extra magic hours because tigger will be up, so we might as well take advantage of the cool weather and happy animals. He's gonna love the dinosaur section...i hope.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

You know what they say about the best laid plans...well actually I can't remember exactly what the remainder of the expression is, but it's something to the affect of "the best laid plans always get eaten by a crocodile or meet some other terrible demise." Our plans for this morning were to take advantage of morning extra magic hours at AK, but that was squashed when a hideous beast called the teething monster visited Tigger last night. Shortly after the Giants vs Redskins game once we were drifting blissfully off to sleep, Tigger woke up screeching in excruciating pain. I went out to the living room to find him writhing in pain, and just screeching the most horrible screeches, I'm sure our neighbors in the studio lockout really loved this, but to be honest I didn't even think about them until later. 5 minutes later tigger was still screaming and writhing, we couldn't hold him so he was just flopping around on the floor. We decided we should probably find an urgent care place to take him, but after a brief internet search i was overwhelmed by the number of choices and the number that were not open past 8pm on sunday. Ugh. So i decided it would be best to call the 24 hour nurse hotline on my insurance card to see what their opinion was on what we should do, and how long we should let him scream before getting him help. This of course wasn't Grizzly's plan. He tends to be a bit more panicky than me, so halfway through my conversation with the nurse he starts shouting from the other room, "just find a place we can go!" which only made the conversation take longer. I actually really liked talking to the nurse. They had a really clever way of getting your personal info from you while still making you feel like you were being helped right away. She would say things like "so he's been screaming for 10 minutes now?, when was his birthday?" or "did he have anything new to eat?, what is your relation to him?". So eventually half way through he list of questions related to what could make a 2 year old scream she mentions teething. Suddenly i had flashbacks of his first set of molars. I have no idea why i hadn't remembered this until she mentioned teething. *For his first molars day care called me up and had me come pick him up only 30 minutes after dropping him off because he was inconsolable. So i picked him up, drove him home and spent the next 8 hours listening to him scream, exactly as he was now screaming in the other room, but the first molars didn't have the accompanying writhing. Still when the nurse mentioned teething i ran into the other room, and shouted to grizzly to ask tigger if his teeth hurt. I really had to shout to be heard over his screams, and the nurse on the phone was obviously concerned about him. We spent the next 5 minutes or so figuring out where the nearest ER was, and i hung up. Then came the mad scramble to put on clothes and head out the door, except by this time grizzly had found something out. Every time he would ask tigger if something hurt, like his bum or his tummy, tigger would very briefly stop his screaming and answer very clearly "no". But if we asked if his teeth hurt, he would just scream even louder (if that was even possible) and mash his face into the bed. Hmmm.... this calmed our nerves a bit. We brought him out to the car, and the change of scenery calmed him a bit and he stopped screaming. THANK GOD! So we headed for an 11:30pm joy ride to Walgreens where we purchased some ora gel. Before we had started the journey in the car i gave him some children's motrin to help with teeth pain. When we got back he of course refused to let me near his mouth with the ora gel. Grrrr. So we put him back to bed and hoped for the best. Our plans to get up at 6:30 , a mere 6.5 hours away at this point, were quickly thrown out in favor of the much more appealing get up when Tigger wakes us plan. He woke us at the still rather ungodly hour of 7:30, and we leapt into action, we had AK to go to after all. How would a teething Tigger's day be?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So the Tigger alarm went off at 7:30 am and we launched into action. We managed to shower, put on sunblock, pack our bags, eat fried eggs and sausage, feed Tigger and make it inside the park by 8:38. We had 22 minutes of EMH to enjoy before the throngs were upon us, except it's late january, so the throngs never really did materialize, but we still felt good about getting there for part of EMH. We headed straight to the safari to see it before the animals started hiding from the heat. After that safari I can honestly say that if someone offered me a free African safari, and i had to leave tomorrow, and i had to take Tigger, i would turn around and PAY them so that i wouldn't have to go. That, or perhaps go, and immediately feed tigger to the first lion or hyena we came across. I have no idea how long that safari was, but it felt like it was about 7 hours too long. My goodness, it just never ended. It didn't help that the girl driving the truck was the worst narrator ever, so the ride only seemed that much longer because it was agonizing listening to the driver stumble over her script, never mind keep Tigger seated. He could care less about the animals. He did enjoy the rockiness of the truck, but that only entertained him for about 30sec of the 7 hours we were on that darn safari. The kid can name sooooo many animals too, i thought he would really enjoy it. Anyways three days later we made it off the safari and headed over to dinoland usa. We started our dinoland adventure on triceratops spin. Since the ride operator said we could stay on, we rode three times in a row, and played musical chairs in between runs, by switching up who got to sit next to tigger. Here is tigger on his favorite ride so far, he dragged that elmo around everywhere we went:

After triceratops spin we went over to check out this guy, that Tigger loved when he was 14m old:

This time his love had greatly diminished. That picture is as close as he got, notice he's all the way back by the tail! I was kind of expecting this, so we moved on to the bone yard. After our complete failure to enjoy the honey i shrunk the kids playground i didn't have much hope for this one. Upon entering my hopes diminished even more as all the bushes growled with sounds of dinosaurs, sounds that i was sure would freak out sir wussness. Sounds much scarier than the sniffing dog noise in HISTK, and was scared to death of that. But he seemed unphased by them and requested to go down a yellow slide. I brought him up to the top of one of the smaller yellow slides, dad waited to catch at the bottom. Tigger sat down at the top of the slide, performed the obligatory scooting to get closer to the slide...i began to silently cheer in triumph...but then mr. McWuss declared "it's dark in there" and unscooted himself all the way out of the slide. Meanwhile some whiley kid runs up and dives around tigger to go down the slide, grizzly hears a slider and bends down to catch tigger, and i'm shouting wildly from the top of the slide "it's not ours, it's not ours!" grizzly doesn't really understand what i'm saying till he's practically caught some stranger kid that's way too old to be caught at the bottom of a slide. Poor kid... Anyways, Tigger and i walk back down the ramp to see what else there was to play with. That's when he found this car:

If tigger used foursquare, he would totally be the mayor of this car. Check out how cool and relaxed he was up there, just owning the place:

We must of hung out around this car for about 20 minutes. Then grizzly had the crazy idea to let him climb around on the 3 story system of rope ladders and bridges. Well, tigger is scared of a lot of things, but turns out, heights is not one of them. He was amazing on this system, and when he got to the top he just did laps with his dad over and over. He must have gone around 10 times before i even decided to go up to take pictures. He loved loved loved this!!!

This is tigger climbing up the super steep cargo like netting. He made it up all by himself.

And here is one of him walking across the upper bridges with his dad:

After the boneyard tigger requested to ride the "dinosaur again", so off we went to triceratops spin again. This time we rode twice, but the second time through tigger was having trouble sitting in a forward facing position as required by the ride operator, so we decided to get off after only two times. Well tigger didn't understand why we were getting off as he wanted to ride it "AGAIIIIIIIIIN!", and then ensued complete meltdown number one of the day. Here he is letting us know how upset he is about life:

We should have just left the park at this point...but no, it was only 10:30, and grizzly really wanted to ride EE. So we walked over there with a sulking tigger. The second daddy disappeared into the line, tigger asked where daddy went. Stupid stupid me told him daddy went to go ride a train. Stupid stupid stupid thing to say. And thus began complete and utter meltdown number two. I just about died being 'that clearly lacking parent' but there wasn't much i could do. Tigger really really wanted to "ride the train too mamaaaaaaaaaaaaa". Oh the wailing. I'm going to attribute at least 1/8th of the meltdown to his teeth to make myself feel slightly better. It was the longest train ride in the world, very reminiscent of the safari we took earlier in the day. Daddy finally re-emerged, and we scampered for the exit. Tigger was clearly exhausted, i was emotionally drained, so i sent tigger back to the hotel with daddy, and i took a bus over to HS to ride a few of the big rides there since we wouldn't be bothering to take tigger back there.

Up next...my quick jaunt to HS and return to my room to languish in the peace and quiet of tigger's nap...but will this actually happen?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So grizzly was headed back to the room with an exhausted hungry tigger, and i was catching a bus to HS. My plan was to ride RR, the new Star Tours bc i hadn't been on since it was redone, and my favorite, TT. The bus to HS was waiting for me at the AK bus stop, so i walked right on, and was at HS and onto Star Tours before dad and tigger even got back to OKW. Okay, Star Tours was totally awesome. I loved it. I would have been happy to ride it again to see a different version, but it made me feel kind of queasy, so i didn't press my luck. I'm not sure what changes between rides, but a giant sea creature latched onto our ship, and i thought this was absolutely hilarious. Anyways 2 thumbs up for star tours. I then wandered down to RR and TT. Who am i kinding, i never wander. I then speed walked over to TT and RR. TT had a wait of 30 minutes, so i grabbed a fast pass and headed onto RR. The single rider line only took me 10 minutes to get through, so i had about 40 minutes to kill before my TT FP. I love the muppets, so i headed over to their store to see if they had anything neat. On the way i decided to finally try one of those mickey head ice cream bars that everyone raves about, to see what all the fuss was about. For some reason i really wanted to hate this ice cream bar, but in fact it was quite delicious. Someone should have warned me to eat it over a plate or at least over my hand though, because after only a few bites of that delicious chocolate shell, the whole back part of the shell fell off and went crashing down onto the streets of NY. I stared down at it briefly, wondering if the 5 second rule applied to melty chocolate, and then sadly wandered off. Looking back i probably should have picked it up so it wouldn't get stepped on, but i was too disheartened at the time. So i checked out the muppet shop, completely dull, every time i go there seems to be less and less cool stuff. I thought after the release of The Muppets they would have capitalized on that and the merchandise would be awesome. I apparently do not have the same strategy as the disney marketing department. After the muppet shop, i headed back to TT. It was still too early for my FP, so i just got in the regular line. It didn't take 30 minutes, maybe 10 max to reach the tv room. After enjoying my favorite ride, and feeling relaxed and rejuvenated from my brief time away from tigger i headed back to okw to enjoy an hour or two of rest before he woke up from his nap. The pixies were flying on my way home. The okw bus showed up almost immediately, and i was back in my room in less than 15 minutes after a completely empty bus ride. Ahhh a few hours of peace and quiet before facing the rest of the day....

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I entered the room as quietly as possible, so as not to have any chance of waking up the tigger, even though he is a pretty sound sleeper. What do i find on entering? No-one. Hmmmm...where is grizzly who should have been on the couch watching a movie? Then i notice the bedroom door slightly ajar and i think, maybe grizzly snuck in there to take a nap himself. I quietly tip toe over...peak in the room and find tigger and daddy sitting on the bed making pirate noises. Sooooo disappointing! Although the pirate noises were very cute. Turns out tigger had refused to nap. In his two years i can count the number of refused naps on one hand, this was number 4. Tigger is the grand master champion of napping, and if he doesn't nap, well there is a reason why i remember the exact count of refused naps. So we asked him what he wanted to do, and provided some choices, tigger chose play in the pool. So i went out to the living/kitchen room to eat a sandwich, while dad was apparently trying to sunblock a rabid raccoon in the other room. When i was on the last bite of my sandwich, a wild child comes running into the kitchen trying to find mummy. Tigger is pants-less. He is followed by a very defeated looking daddy, who said all "all that time and i only got his pants off, i'm making a sandwich." So we both sat and sulked while tigger whined and drove us generally crazy with his*sleep deprived toddlerness. It was only 2:20, we had 5 more hours of this until bedtime. What on earth were we going to do? Well grizzly came up with the world's worst idea. Lets take him to ride the tea cups at the magic kingdom. GREAT! The only thing that i can think of that is worse than an over tired toddler, is an over tired toddler in a theme park. But seeing as i couldn't think of anything better to do, i sulked along with this most terrible of plans. Tigger seemed to be confirming my ideas on the entire car ride over, just typical angry toddler behavior. Oh this was going to be awful. Grizzly kept telling me i didn't have to go, but i wanted to be around for the train wreck that was about to happen. I told him i would stand back and laugh at the horrid child and his poor foolish daddy when the meltdowns started. Then something happened between getting out of the car and the tram ride to the TTC. Tigger seemed to perk up a bit. Hmmm maybe this trip won't be so bad after all...i'll update you on what came to be tomorrow, but for now i must crawl into bed so we can head back to the MK in the morning.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Okay, so i last left off on a tram ride headed to the TTC for an afternoon of 'fun' with a very cranky toddler. We passed the time on the tram by allowing tigger to put sunblock on my arms and legs. He thought this was awesome, and while he was busy sunblocking me, i was able to sneak in and get his face and arms without it being much of an issue. After the tram we gave tigger the choice of train or boat, and he chose boat, so off we sailed to the MK. By this point i was dreading a repeat of the Triceratops Spin meltdown that was sure to occur when we attempted to get off our first ride. Ugh. We headed straight to the Mad Tea Party. The line was about three cycles long, and tigger waited very patiently. The entire time in line we discussed how everyone has to get off when the ride is done, and how soon it would be our turn. Well something must have totally clicked in tigger's little head. The second the ride stopped he requested to ride it again, when i told him we could, but that we had to wait in line he was totally cool with that. This is by far his favorite ride, we rode three times in a row. No meltdowns, no crying, it was just blissful spinning.

After all the spinning we went to check on the length of the pooh queue, but it was 40 minutes so we went and got fast passes. It drives me crazy that the fast passes for this ride are so far away, but we hiked over to the pooh fast passes, and of course the machine spit out 'surprise' fast passes to mickey's philharmagic. How are they surprises if you get they every darn time? I didn't really mind because they gave me something to give tigger. Next tigger saw that the carousel was spinning so of course he wanted to go on that too. Tigger however is terrified of ride on toys shaped like any creature. He's okay with a tricycle, but any sort of horse or other rocking creature and he won't go near them. So i was surprised he wanted to go near something with so many horses. Turns out he was still terrified of the horses, and refused to sit on one, even with mummy. So tigger and grizzly sat in the sleigh, and he loved it.

Next up we had a little time to kill before our pooh fast passes and it was getting pretty hot and crowded. We opted to go someplace quiet and cool, so we went and had an early dinner at the columbia harbor house. We were just about the only people in the place. Tigger had chicken nuggets, i had clam chowder, and dad had the fish sticks. All was okay, but it was air conditioned, and it was quiet, so it got 21 stars out of 10. Here's tigger enjoying some correctly shaped chicken nuggets:

After the dinner we were fueled and relaxed, so we went to tackle pooh. Tigger loved it and requested to ride it again. "ride it again, get in line again" has become a common chorus after every ride. I think he says it even if he doesn't even like the ride that much. We weren't about to wait in line for the pooh ride, so we did the next best thing and went back to the tea cups. We rode twice more before heading out of the park for the day. In order to make tigger's 7:30 pm bed time.

On our way out of the park we happened upon the last half of the dream along with mickey show. West wanted to watch it, so he sat up on grizzly's shoulders and clapped and bounced along with the music. When the witch came out he didn't even bat an eye. Well maybe he looked a little concerned, but he didn't bawl his little eyes out or scream, so i was impressed. Here he is watching the show:

We managed to leave the park, get back home, and get tigger into bed without a single meltdown, it turned out to be a wonderful afternoon, and sure beat moping around the room for 5 hours. Tomorrow we return to the magic kingdom, will we follow our customized unofficial guide touring plan?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So today was our first official magic kingdom day, and if tigger got in a good nap we were going to try to stay up all the way to wishes at 8pm. I know 8pm may not seem late to some, but tigger self destructs at 7:31pm, so he rarely gets to stay up past 7:30, and on work days is in bed by 7pm. Back to our plans...pre- tigger days we would follow the unofficial guide touring plans religiously, and our idea of the perfect day at disney was to ride as many things as possible. We had never once watched a parade, nor any show at the castle stage, and our idea of the perfect viewing spot for fireworks was from the train on thunder mountain. Well we were using the unofficial guide lines ap, and they let you create custom plans, so we entered in all the attractions we thought tigger might like (we had a total of 15), and hit optimize. Our first instructions were: buzz lightyear, astro orbiters, and tomorrowland speedway. We got on buzz, and i was immediately concerned about the ride choice...it was much darker, both theming and lighting than i had remembered...but surprisingly tigger seemed to handle it okay. The kid won't go near wooden horses, but evil villains and witches he is fine with. Hmmmm strange kid. We taught him how to use the spinner, and he spun us around like crazy and had a blast. This ride, by the way, is impossible to play if you are constantly spinning, our scores we so dismal. The end of the ride was met with the traditional chorus of " do it again!", our touring plan did not call for riding buzz twice in a row. The touring plan nazi in me wanted to keep on task, but the mom in me just wanted tigger to have fun, so back on buzz we went. After two buzz trips we stood in line for the astro orbitors, but tigger couldn't see what he was waiting for, and thought it was only an elevator, so he declared that he didn't want to ride it, and off we went towards the speedway.
I have very fond memories of this speedway from when i was a kid. I very distinctly remember my first ride with my mom. I was five, she let me drive, and we hit the rails 23,907 times and laughed and laughed and laughed the entire ride. I think of this first ride every time i ride it. I hope tigger has this kind of lasting memory about something in disney someday, if i had to guess right now, his will probably be related to the tea cups. Knowing how much i love this ride, grizzly let me go on with tigger while he stood on the bridge to get pictures. I put tigger in the drivers seat, and we were off. I spent a few seconds trying to get a picture of us with my phone and the tigger tried to kill us with the rails. The rail bumping is fine if you're bigger, but if you're tigger sized, the bumps practically throw you out of the car, or head first into the steering wheel. After two huge bumps while i was messing with my camera, i seized the wheel and saved tigger from certain death, or at the very least a very nasty concussion. We had fun the rest of the trip, and i'm glad i got to take that first ride with him , although i know it will be a year or two before he'll remember. Here is the only picture i managed to get before tigger tried to kill us, i look like a crazy person, but also very happy to be riding this ride with my little beasty:

At this point we decided to throw the touring plan out the window bc the tea cups were right there, and they beckoned us. They beckoned us three times in fact:

After the tea cups i had a very non brilliant idea. I sent daddy and tigger to the carousel, while i walked back to buzz to collect our stroller. This was a terrible idea. Tigger had been rather clingy to me all morning, and when i walked away he apparently got very upset. He also wanted nothing to do with the horses. By the time i got back with the stroller he and grizzly were standing by the construction wall just standing there and sulking. My arrival triggered a bit of a melt down, we sat on the ground let him fuss about while trying to decide what to do next. He didn't want any snacks and just seemed grumpy and tired. Surely what we needed was another ride that spun, so we walked over to Aladin's carpets. He enjoyed this ride, but the camel wasn't spitting, so the whole thing was just okay. After this we headed to find a spot on main street for move it shake it, and we also got a snack. Grizzly and i each got one of those gigantic cinnamon buns from the main street bakery. DELICIOUS! Tigger tried the frosting but opted to eat his graham fishes instead. The kid hates sweet unhealthy foods. He asked for apple sauce instead of his birthday cake last week, and he doesn't like ice cream bc it's cold. He's a little odd. We sat through our very first parade, and my very first parade ever too. When i was little there were no fast passes, so parade time was prime ride time, my parents never let us watch the parades. The music to this parade is growing on me, and tigger loved all the characters on the floats. On the way back to the car i asked tigger if he wanted to take a boat or a train back to the car, and he said "i want to take a school bus" so tigger and i went to catch a 'school bus' back to OKW while grizzly drove the car back. The bus took forever to arrive, and then when it did arrive they had to switch drivers. Why does switching drivers take soooooo long? You'd think with all disney does to be efficient, they could figure out how to switch bus drivers in less than 15 minutes. Grrrrr. We were the only ones on the bus so we passed the time by trying out every seat on the bus. Tigger liked his 'school bus' ride, and we arrived back at the hotel shortly after grizzly. We lunched and then both tigger and i took naps.

Up next...we return to the MK for more fun. Just how many more times will the tea cups be ridden? Will we make it to wishes?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So after nap we try to offer tigger a snack, but he refuses, and we head back to the MK despite the fact that he has eaten very little all day. Perhaps his teeth are still bothering him. We park, and we decide to race the parking tram back to the TTC. We kicked that parking tram's butt! Onto the 'train' we went and trotted on in to the MK. We of course started with our favorite, the tea cups, which i think we rode three times. I'm not sure where my phone was this afternoon, but i have zero pictures, anyways tigger didn't look much different from the other ten or so times we rode them. After the tea cups we asked him if he wanted to ride the carousel, but this ride is now on the list of things tigger is afraid of, and the question was met with wails. We headed instead for IASM, which we rode twice in a row at tigger's request. He wanted to go on a third time, but i wasn't confident he could sit still for another time around, so we opted to go find some dinner. I was really wanting some chicken fingers, so we went to the chicken place in tomorrow land, and can you believe the chicken place doesn't carry chicken tenders. Grrrr. So we headed all the way back to where we were to settle for 'chicken breast nuggets' bc the picture looked like chicken tenders. They were essentially chopped up chicken tenders, and they definitely hit the spot. Tigger hadn't eaten anything all day and he threw one of his floppy fits when i mentioned chicken nuggets earlier, so i got him mac n cheese. He's sensitive to dairy products, so we're still waiting to see if it bothered him at all, but he did eat every last bite of that mac n cheese, and about 1000 french fries, it was such a relief to see him eat. After dinner we wanted to let tigger watch the entire dream along with mickey show ( check that out, a full parade, and an entire show all in one day!!! I'm like a mom with a toddler or something. ) He liked it, it was the 6:30 show, so it was dark out which i think made the show a little better. After the show tigger kept asking where mickey and minnie went. During the show tigger kept yawning and rubbing his eyes, so despite that we only had about an hour before wishes, we decided to leave the park and head home. We had tigger in bed by 8pm. So nope we didn't make it to wishes, however we did race the parking tram back to our lot and again we won! We weren't even walking fast this time either, and it sure beat having to fold the stroller and fit it onto the tram.

Up next...the briefest of mornings in EPCOT.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Alright...after an early evening at the magic kingdom, we were up in plenty of time to be at epcot for opening. A little back story is needed here to explain tigger's clothes. I have a very good friend from Taiwan, who is in love with Japanese culture, so when Tigger was born she sent me a kimono for him. She thinks that i forgot about it, and that tigger had outgrown it before he had worn it, but i hadn't and having no kids of her own she did not realize the kimono was huge and would not fit tigger for a couple of years. I brought it with us, because i thought epcot was the perfect place to wear a kimono without seeming terribly out of place. Can you think of anywhere else a kimono would seem appropriate? I wanted to get his pictures in front of the gates in the water by japan, so i dressed him up in this outfit in the morning:

He didn't want to take his monkey pjs off, so we compromised and he got to keep the monkey shirt on underneath the kimono top. Once inside epcot we first rode the nemo ride. I tried to cover tigger's eyes when that very scary chomping fish comes out, but he REALLY hated that. Bad idea. He probably would have been better off just seeing the fish. He loved this ride and requested to go on again, but instead we went to see figment, which he also requested to ride again. He liked the carpeted music making thing in the exit area:

But most of the morning tigger just seemed a bit off. Even on his dad's shoulders he would flop over and rest his head:

We decided to ride spaceship earth and then head home. I think we were back at our hotel room by 10:30. We never got the picture of tigger in japan.

We decided to pass the rest of the morning by going to the pool at hospitality house. I hopped in the kiddie pool with tigger for about 2 minutes, then the urge to try the slide overcame me and i ran over and went down. It was fantastic! I would have gone down several more times, but my bathing suit wasn't the best suited for sliding, and i didn't want to give any of the kids a free show, so i only went down once. Grizzly liked it too. By that time, about 3 minutes in the water i was freezing, so i sat the rest of the time trying to hide from the sun but stay warm. Grizzly played with tigger and travelled from little pool to big pool for the next 2 hours. Then it was back to the room for lunch and a nap.

Up next...a not so magical afternoon at the magic kingdom.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Does it count as going to the magic kingdom if you never make it inside the park? Instead we played a game of: how many forms of transportation can Tigger throw up on in a single trip? The answer is two.

Tigger was kind enough to take a nearly for hour nap this afternoon, so when he got up we decided it would be a good night to try and watch wishes again. We got him all ready and jumped in the car at 5:05. Little did we know we would be home by 6pm. On the way I was offering Tigger snacks to eat and he wanted nothing to do with them. He just sat in his seat with his head leaning off to the side looking quite sleepy despite his long nap. Just outside the mk parking entrance the flood gates let loose and poor Tigger threw up all over himself. He sat there wailing that he was "grossy", and neither grizzly nor I new quite what to do. We pulled over, but decided instead to go through the parking gates and stop at the hess where it felt a littler safer than the side of the busy road. Not that you want to hear grossy vomit details, but it smelled and looked like cheddar cheese, and I was really concerned that it had to do with the mac n cheese we had fed him yesterday. Shoot, I've poisoned my kid, i thought. But grizzly set me straight and assured me it was the cheddar bunnies he had eaten earlier. Few, for the moment I was feeling like not quite a horrible parent, unfortunately this feeling wouldn't last long. So grizzly took charge of cleaning the car seat and I changed Tigger's clothes. We discussed what we should do, and ruled out rides, but tigs seemed fine, so we pressed our luck...no wammies..no wammies..no wammies...stop! Oh we got a wammie! We parked in the last row of peter pan lot, and again raced the tram. Oh yeah 3 for 3. We boarded the Monorail and Tigger wanted out of his stroller, so he was snuggling with me when he threw up all over my back. Total utter yuckness! At least there were only two other people in the car with us, though I did feel bad for them. We obviously decided to just stay on the train and head back to the car and head home, the decision we should have made in the first place, but it's just hard to shake that commando disney side of us. This is a picture taken moments before the muppet shirt was made super grossy:

The pixies were not out on or way back. We stayed on the tram,but someone came around and told us they were switching trains and everyone had to get off. Where are the pixies when you need them? I'm guessing locked in the car we should have stayed in. so since they were switching trains they were sending everyone over to the resort monorail. Yuck the slowest monorail on the world. We waited for about ten minutes while the platform got busier and busier and still no train. The last thing we wanted to do was sit on a crowded train with a sick beast, so we gave up and went to take the boat back to the ttc. Even with switching to the boat, The monorail only beat us by a few seconds. Again we raced the parking team back to the car, and again we won, man those things are slow. So we headed home with our sick beast. He ended up being fine the rest of the night, and had a great time because we let him watch playhouse disney,a special treat since we only let him start watching tv last week. I took a shower to watch the grossy off of me, and headed out to epcot to get the snack I wasn't able to get earlier because we left before world showcase even opened. Up next, what was the must have snack? Was I able to enjoy myself and meander around the world and marvel at scenery?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

After my shower to remove the ickyness of tigger vomit, i headed out to epcot on my own. Now that we had returned home and the pixies were freed from the car, they were out in full force and an epcot bus showed up in about 1 minute. I hopped aboard and spent the time swiping out my trip report from the afternoon on my phone. Once at epcot i briefly considered riding soarin, but i didn't really want to wait the 34 minute wait time by myself, so i spent a few mintues searching the stores for a baby blanket sized blanket for tigger. He got sick earlier on his favorite brown blanket, and i thought a nice mickey blanket would be very much loved, but there was no cute small mickey blanket to be found. I think i can go to joanns when i get home and buy some fleece and make one myself anyways. I saw one larger size mickey blanket and they wanted 39.95 for it, and it wasn't even very nice quality, and was way to big for his crib. I ended up just walking around world showcase. I think this place is better in the daytime, it was too dark to appreciate the details at night, so i just headed straight to germany for my snack. Except on the way i was side tracked by the turkey legs. I paused at the american turkey leg place and bought one. Now it was just me and one giant turkey leg. I sat down on a bench to eat it. It was delicious, i people watched a bit. Once i had had my fill of yummy deliciousness, i went to put the leg in the bag i had requested. Well little did i know, that turkey leg had it out for me. The entire time i was eating it it was dripping its evil turkey juice all over my coat and pants. Ugh. So now i was by myself and covered in turkey drippings, carrying a bag full of turkey leg, and the bag was way to small for the leg so the leg was kind of sticking out. Lovely lovely site. I kept on to the germany chocolate shop, and inside in the light i was able to see the real damage. It looked like i had just sat there and rung out a wet face cloth of turkey juice all over my coat and pant, there were even congealed bits on my coat. I was so embarrassed, but i was going to get that chocolate covered carmel darnit! So i waited in the worlds slowest line wafting out turkey smell into the chocolate shop. Not my finest moment. I eventually escaped, and devoured my caramel heaveness on my way back to the bus. I sat crossed legged on the bus to hide half of the turkey juice. I could not get home fast enough. So here i am now, back at the room, still in my turkey juice clothes because our room is freezing and i have no other warm clothes available because they are in the dryer after tigger got them all 'grossy'. This whole place smells like turkey now!

If tigger is better tomorrow we'll be headed to the magic kingdom. I want to take him to the enchanted tiki room, we've been singing the song to him all week, so i think he'll like it.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I forgot one kind of funny story from the other morning. While i was in the shower, dad taught tigger to answer the question "who's the best?" with "mummy is the best!". So i was in getting dressed when i kept hearing the question and answer over and over. I had on my bra and shorts only because i was going to go get sunblocked up before putting on my shirt, so i ran out into the kitchen waving my hands above my head doing my best Rocky impression, going "yeah mama is the best!" Well not only was tigger watching, but so were two construction workers who were standing right outside our patio STARING in at me! So embarrassing. I scuried back into my bedroom to put more clothes on. Note to self, make sure the blinds are shut before prancing around the living room half naked.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So I last left off after the turkey leg attacked me on my solo trip to EPCOT. After my last update, Grizzly and I did the nightly bed shuffle, where we shut off all the lights, and blindly move Tigger's pack n'play, with Tigger inside, into the living room while we take over the bedroom. Out plans were to get up and be at the Magic Kingdom for morning Extra Magic hours. The alarm was set, hopefully the Tigger would be healthy, and we were ready to go.

Except that turkey leg had other plans. Sometime in the middle of the night Grizzly started bombarding a comatose me with questions about the Walgreens we had visited earlier in the trip. One important thing to mention, I wear earplugs at night. So I couldn't hear the questions quite right, on top of not being able to process a simple question in my half asleep state. I eventually answered his question, yes it was a 24 hour Walgreens, and he scampered off. His tummy was bothering him. Yeah, it could have been the same bug that Tigger got, but Grizzly was adamant it was the turkey leg. He didn't sleep the rest of the night while he struggled with a tummy ache that half a bottle of pepto couldn't cure. I struggled with sleeping in general as he got into and out of bed over and over again. At some point the alarm got shot off, and I woke up when Tigger called for me. "I need my mommy!" is a new phrase of his this trip, and I kind of like it. So I got up with Tigger at 7:15am, EMH started at 8:00am, but I wasn't about to leave the house with a possibly still sick Tigger by myself, and Grizzly wasn't moving from the bed. I decided to feel out Tigger's health for a bit, and we sat down to watch an episode of Playhouse Disney, but before the episode was even half done Grizzly emerged and was raring to go. So we went. A little late, but we made it to the Magic Kingdom by 8:30ish.

Up next, the best day ever at the Magic Kingdom.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So this was not our first day at the MK, and we had some things on our list that we still had not seen. Being a little concerned about Tigger's tummy we avoided the teacups, and instead headed straight to Peter Pan. What is up with this ride? I really don't think it's that great, but then again I haven't seen the movie. Perhaps I should make that a goal before next trip. It was only 8:30 or so, and the line was already 35 minutes long. 35 minutes!! EMH wasn't even over yet. So we got fast passes. And low and behold out came two surprise passes to Mickey's Philharmagic! I was floored! Or maybe not. I really like Mickey's Philharmagic, it makes me kind of sad its not more popular and they seem to have to push it on people. With Peter Pan passes in hand we headed over to Buzz Lightyear for a little Space Ranger spinning. On the way out of the ride Tigger spotted the 'train' or rather the TTA People Mover. He really wanted to ride it. Actually we could have spent all 7 days just riding the boats, monorails, parking trams, and 'school buses' and Tigger would have had the time of his life. I was a little concerned about the extended period of darkness as you go through Space Mountain, but I figured we'd give it a try. He's never really shown any fear of the dark, so on we went. And of course he loved it, it was a TRAIN!!!! The dark didn't bother him, and he wanted to ride it again just like every other ride/show we experienced this trip. Here is our pathetic attempt at a self portrait on the TTA, this was the best one we got out of like 20. At least you can tell we're all smiling.

After the TTA Tigger requested the race cars. Yep! Tigger requested them. A boy after my own heart. So we road them, Dad was in the car behind us, and thank God Tigger got a blue car because all line long all I heard was "I want to go in a blue car, I want to go I want to go".



This day was also a turning point in our trip. Pretty much the entire trip we had been pushing the stroller around empty while one of us carried Tigger. He refuse to walk and refuse to ride. He was being very clingy, but we humored his request to be carried because we were dragging him around a place with an awful lot of people, and I could see how that may scare a little boy. But in the Speedway line he wanted to walk!
Here is him standing in line, I know not the most exciting picture but imagine how excited we were that he wanted to be down. It was 29 lbs of relief. And it meant he was getting braver, or at least more at ease with his surroundings.

I wanted to let Tigger pick out a stuffed animal, but I wanted to do it before he got cranky, so it couldn't wait till we were headed home. Instead we headed over to Main Street next to let Tigger pick out a new stuffed animal. With a little help from me he chose both Daisy and Donald Duck. I know he was only supposed to get one, but when I asked him which one he wanted between the two, he correctly used the term 'both' and said "both of them". So he got both, and he even thanked the cashier very nicely when she gave him the bag. Next off we zoomed over to the queue for Tom Sawyer's Island to catch the first boat over. We arrived in line at 9:55am, and were some of the last on the first boat over, which meant we were the first ones off. We were on a mission to find a paint brush. We looked everywhere, and then rumors started circulating that they were no longer doing this. One cast member said it had been months since they hid paint brushes, while another said that it had only been a week, and that the whole thing was 'under refurbishment'. Darn. So sad, no paint brushes to find. I hope they bring this back, it's just about as close as you can get to a real life treasure hunt nowadays. But Tigger enjoyed walking around the island a bit, especially the stairs in the fort. Here he is on the island with his new friends that he carried around with him the entire time:

After our brief foray to TSI we decided to eat an early lunch. Pecos Bill did not have the delicious chicken tender nuggets we were craving, so we headed back to Pinnochio's in the now ridiculously busy Fantasyland. We got there as the register people were opening their rolls of quarters, ordered two chicken tender baskets, and the mac n cheese for Tigger. Tigger wanted nothing to do with the mac n cheese, the same dish he devoured before, and instead ate mostly french fries and some of our nuggets. After our lunch we used our fast passes for Peter Pan. Tigger liked it. I still hated it. We took a quick spin on IASM, and this time when Tigger saw the kangaroo he shouted out "It's a mama and a baby giraffe!". It was so funny because he has gotten kangaroo right every other ride. And then we left the Magic Kingdom to head home for some rest and relaxation. Also we raced the parking tram and won every time.

We will return to the MK this afternoon. Will we finally make it to see Wishes?

 

[Attagirl3]

You are a trooper! After wussy kid vomit, dripping turkey legs, lurking construction workers and a possible stomach virus I think I would be done. Wishing you lots of pixie dust for the remainder of your trip!

 

[Mrs. Sojourner]

You have such an adorable little guy! I love his all stars; too cute! It looks like he is doing so well and having a great time. So funny that he picked out the big scary dino at DTD.

I absolutely love the kimano- sorry you didn't get to get the picture in the Japan pavillion. Poor little guy!

I think we should start a "I've been puked on at WDW club." Mine was as we were in our first line during EMH at HS. My three year old did a real number on me. I tried to clean it up, but decided to buy a new shirt and clean-up/ change in the bathroom. Mr. Sojourner and the two older kids stayed behind as I headed back to our room via the buses. I somehow akwardly managed to fold up the stroller carrying the sick toddler and get a seat on the bus only to have her loose her cookies again on the bus with everyone staring at me while I held the disgusting mess in a blanket, still carrying sick toddler, and folded stroller. I somehow managed to get off the bus and back to our room, without any help.

The "Mummy is the best!"-Rocky impersination-in front of the construction workers...hilarious!

That us so exciting that Tigger is starting to feel more comfortable! I hope you make it to Wishes!

Enjoying your TR; thanks for sharing!