2014 DisneyWorld Day Six: Return of the Crapping Birds

Accuweather RealFeel: 38 degrees

Leah wanted to show off her new Minnie pajamas that she woke up in this morning along with the new winter hat she picked up yesterday.

We monorailed to Magic Kingdom after I once again had a banana breakfast (sorry, no picture this time) and headed straight for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, which was a walk-on with no wait. Leah tried to chicken out, but Rachel wasn’t having any of that to begin the day. Of course that seriously hindered Rachel’s ability to hit any decent targets, so I was the only one to reach Space Ace or better.

Aly and Rachel hopped into the no-wait line for Aly’s favorite ride in all of the World, the Astro Orbiter, while Leah and I headed over to the line for Buzz Lightyear, though Buzz was not year appearing. It was around 9:40, and Buzz would be appearing at 10, but we wouldn’t be around this part of the park again, and we’d be first in line, so a little wait would be worth it.

Until the bird crap struck again

Buzz still hadn’t arrived when Rachel and Aly came over from their ride on the Astro Orbiter, that’s how short the wait was (which is very unusual). And then

Wait, you need some backstory here

My father, widely known as Bill, Grandpa Bill, or Uncle Bill, was frequently a target of seagulls and pigeons at picnics, outdoor events and family outings. It was uncanny how many times this happened – it actually developed a life story of its own.

First it was like, okay, that was kind of weird, I can’t believe a bird pooped on you.

Then it was like, sheesh, I can’t believe a bird pooped on Dad again!

Then we reached the anger phase, where we shook fists skyward and with collective raised voice yelled birds, why do you shit on our father? WHY?

Next we questioned our father. Dad, are you leading a secret double life where you’re not a banker, but some kind of evil bird torturer? Rest assured, the investigators we hired concluded he was not.

Finally, we just decided that there was some sort of higher-plane nature process at work that simple beings like us could not comprehend at work. Perhaps a pattern in his hairdo (unchanged since the late 60s, I can confirm with my slide-cataloging work) that looks like a bird targeting device from above. Perhaps the rhythmic sounds of blood pulsing through his head make a unique sound that drive birds to loose their foul payload at the moment they fly over Billsville. We just don’t know. But we realized that it was wise to carry an extra polo shirt when attending an outdoor event.

So I almost wrote something when that bird crapped on me at Animal Kingdom the other day about becoming my father, and Rachel actually said that to me, but I decided not to, since this is the year I turn 40, but on that note

let’s get back to the story

we were still the only people in line, but the character handlers (yes! they exist) had brought out the battery that Buzz uses as his stamping station so we knew he’d be out shortly. As Rachel and Aly walked up to us in the queue area, Aly, who has made it her personal goal to touch as much surface area of DisneyWorld as humanly possible followed by touching her mouth, nose, eyes and face (currently at 1.4% of DisneyWorld surface area), ran her hand along the top rail of the fence. I saw her hand pass through some wet bird poop and used the “STOP” voice that usually gets results from kids, adults, horses and amoebas alike, but what it caused Aly to do was slide her hand faster and add her entire long sleeve of her brand new white Minnie sweatshirt that we bought yesterday to the slide along the top rail. The best part? Her hand picked up all the white parts of the bird crap, and the white sweatshirt picked up all the brown parts of the bird crap.

In horror, I grabbed her wrist, because her first reaction WAS TO TRY AND PUT THE HAND TO HER FACE! Which might have either: a) actually killed me, or b) caused me to put my daughter into a washing machine. I mean, I have a very strong stomach for these sorts of things, but even I have limits. So Rachel took her away to the bathroom while I continued holding Lele at the front of the waiting area and people lined up behind us, and I had to warn them to keep their kids off the railing, though there honestly wasn’t much left, lol – Aly had cleaned up most of it. When they finally got back from the bathroom, we had let about ten groups pass us, but we did have some nice time with Buzz. Rachel says her fingernails will never be the same from cleaning the sweatshirt, but I reminded her that fingernails grow and can be cut. I’m not sure she believes me though.

From there, we made our way towards Fantasyland, but stopped off at the Tomorrowland Indy Speedway, where Aly first wanted to see if she was tall enough to drive a car by herself.

Guess she should have listened to us and brought tennis shoes, eh? That’s less than an inch. She wasn’t too disappointed, though. Leah chickened out (shocked!!) but was on the bridge cheering us on as we departed then headed for the teacups. Aly was in charge of (relative) steering, and I handled the gas pedal.

I say “relative steering” because we’ve let Aly steer on this ride as long as she’s been going to DisneyWorld and she’s always liked just letting the car bounce back and forth against the guide, which can be a very jarring ride, as you can see from what it’s doing to her face:

We got over to the teacups in time to get a picture of Rachel and Leah on the ride, and then the four of us rode in two separate cups, because Leah doesn’t like to spin. I took her, while Rachel gave Aly a super spinning ride.

When we came off the ride, I spotted Alice with a shorter line and I said, let’s go get in line, which of course Aly instantly started grumbling about. The group ahead of us was about to meet Alice when the White Rabbit reappeared, which Aly got excited about. As has become the norm on this trip, the girls present the characters with their stuffed animals (??), and the characters make a big deal about that, which in this case they made a very big deal about it and the girls loved it. Aly was once again proven wrong, but will of course learn nothing from the experience, lol.

After that, we made the short walk to Be Our Guest, we we had used the secret link to use our Fastpass+ lunch reservation. And that turned out to be a good thing, because there was a massive standby line to get into the place, which I took a photo of on the way out of the restaurant. We went up to the checkin window and mentioned that we had a FP+ reservation, and the lady gave me a sly look and said “Are you sure?”, so I know that there aren’t many people taking advantage of this yet. We walked past the huge line right inside and proceeded right to order our lunch, then proceeded to choose a table in the Belle and Beast dancing room, a much brighter room which suited Leah better than the two other darker rooms. Our food arrived quickly, with Aly, Rachel and I all having the potato leek soup again. Aly had the macaroni that she had the other night, so I didn’t bother photographing that or the soup. Here’s another thing that is awesome about DisneyWorld: you can ask for any recipe, and they’ll give it to you! Sometimes they have it ready to give you, sometimes they don’t, but they’ll get it to you. We asked for the potato soup recipe, and they didn’t have it handy, but the chef asked for our email address. For you skeptics out there, we’ve done this before and they’ve followed up every time.

I had the braised pork:

while Rachel had the croque monsieur (missing something that will appear in a moment):

Leah is eating that something:

And then showing off her developing silverware skills (yes, we warned her about putting an eye out. You may stop gasping now, Grandma Jan.)

I can’t remember if I photographed this the other night or not, but who cares! The meal was completed with, well, what else? Everyone’s new favorite, the strawberry cream cheese cupcake, which is an incredible bargain at DisneyWorld standards, at just $3.40 including tax. I’m bringing them home for everyone!

Here’s that picture I promised of the line waiting to get into Be Our Guest for lunch on a chilly January day. This was taken just outside the entrance to the restaurant and if you follow the line towards the top of the picture, it then turns left and disappears beyond the left edge of the frame. It’s a lot of people.

After that, Aly and Rachel headed to the Haunted Mansion, while I took Lele to it’s a small world, since she’s too scared of Haunted Mansion these days. Except that we didn’t even make it down the ramp before we had to take the chicken exit because she was “too scared” to ride IASW – Dougs of the world, rejoice. We had planned to regroup at the Woody and Jessie character meet near the Splash Mountain exit, so Leah and I went to the Laughin’ Place playground next to that instead to wait for the Haunted Mansioners, which had a posted wait time of 20 minutes. The only problem was that it was still pretty (comparatively, don’t yell at me, Midwesterners who are not yet snowbirds) cold and that playground is completely in the shade, being located under the train station, so I was frozen by the time the girls rejoined us 40 minutes later.

At that point, nobody was interested in meeting Woody and Jessie anymore (thanks for the unnecessary freezing, people!!), so we again split. Aly and I headed for Pirates of the Caribbean, while Rachel took Leah to the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. PoTC was fun when not obnoxiously overrun with clapping and cheering Brazilian Tour Groups (for the record, when used this way, “Brazilian” can mean one of several South American countries who send obnoxious youths to DisneyWorld this time of year, including Brazil, Argentina, and others). I’ll try to refrain from showing my learned bias any further here, lol. Leah liked the Treehouse and we met up at the front of the park, boarded a monorail for the Poly, and retired to our room for a few hours of Aly-requested downtime. Which is odd, because for once it seemed that Leah was completely amped and ready to go and we may have missed out on some Leah park time, but oh well. Aly of course, didn’t really want downtime, but wanted some 3DS time to play her new Mario game, lol. Regardless, it gave me a chance to edit pictures and start working on today’s post.

Here’s the real reason we take a break

‘Ohana. A restaurant right here in the Polynesian, with gluttonous amounts of delicious food served family-style, and a long-standing favorite of this family. We checked in for our 5:00 reservation and had to wait a few minutes before being seated by our excellent server, Trevor.

When you come to ‘Ohana, you better show up hungry, because no matter how long you wait to be seated, you will not wait any longer to eat. You sit down, and pineapple bread is at the table for you. Then you order drinks, and the passion fruit salad with honey lime dressing shows up.

A few minutes later, the pot stickers and sticky wings arrive.

If you’re smart enough, the Lapu Lapu arrives. If you’re even smarter, you carry one or more in with you.

I didn’t take a picture of the Asian noodles, but this is the next thing that comes out, and is usually the #1 for Aly and Rachel. That completes the appetizers. Then the servers start coming around with grilled steak, chicken, pork and shrimp. No shrimp at our table. We all agreed that the pork was #1, we were split on steak/chicken as #2, but we loved them all. It’s a huge amount of food, and despite the fact that the plate of noodles/vegetables is humongous, we ordered a second one, along with a plate of fries (you’re shocked!!) for Leah.

It’s not over though. You feel full reading this, but you don’t feel fulfilled, there’s something missing, you’re not completed yet.

That is bread pudding topped with vanilla bean ice cream, and then that is topped with banana caramel sauce. It’s heavenly.

Still not done though. The kids get their own dessert, several scoops of the vanilla bean ice cream covered with Mickey head candies (not pictured).

Still not done though. Since Leah’s birthday is Saturday, our excellent server brought out two chocolate cupcakes covered with Mickey head candies and lit the candle for Leah to make a wish. Her wish? “I wish for my friends: Mommy, Daddy, and Aly.” Which is adorable, but still doesn’t make up for the 15 complete and utter fits that she has thrown every day here (and the last two months).

Done eating! However, as we left the restaurant, the lounge that is attached just outside was just bringing out their polynesian dancers and the girls wanted to watch. During the second song, they invited kids up to dance. As our kids were packed to the gills with food and sugar, Leah wanted to drag Aly up there, so we sent them up.

It turned out a bit different than the instructors were showing them though. Leah grabbed Aly and started pulling her in circles until she spun her to the ground (yes, the little one is a beast).

So there actually was an after dinner

We were split on whether to go back into MK to watch the fireworks or watch from the beach here at Poly, but we ultimately decided to make it an early night for Lele since we have an early date with Pooh in the morning. While Rachel was putting her to bed, Aly and I headed down to the beach, where I stole some towels from the pool to wrap my legs to keep from shivering until the fireworks started. Rachel showed up right as they began, so the three of us chattered through the fireworks and then came inside the lounge to warm up, Rachel and Aly with hot chocolate and I with adult POG. I’m thrilled to be wrapping one of these posts up at 9:30 instead of 11:30 so I can get a good night’s sleep before an early morning tomorrow, especially since it will literally be freezing overnight here tonight and be around 38 when we head out.