A few years ago, we borrowed another Disney fan's idea and started taking our grandchildren for a week at Disney World the spring before they go into kindergarten.  We take them one at a time so we can focus purely on the one child, which has led to a fairly busy schedule this year, since three of our kids had babies the same spring five years ago.  Haley went with us in April and Caitlyn in June, and now it’s Gavin’s turn.  (And Laurie gets another bonus this trip, with a four-day Disney College of Knowledge advanced agent training program before the boys join her.)

This sixth adventure will be our first with a boy, and all Laurie has been able to talk about for the last six months is how nice it will be for her to be carefree while I assume the role of bathroom monitor.  She’s guessing our bathroom trips won’t take as long as her trips with all the girls, because boys don’t wash their hands.  I can assure you, the entertainment value of a soap dispenser to a five-year-old has no gender limitations.

As with each of our grandchildren, there are certain issues we’re aware of before we leave and other personality traits that we’ll discover during the week that will affect the way we operate, and what we do.  Gavin is very energetic, to the point where I’ve even been known to call him a wild man at times.  We’re sure we can manage that, but he did have a nasty experience once on an earlier Disney trip where he got overheated and went into seizures.  His mom’s a little worried about that, but Papa LOVES the shade, so we don’t expect any problem.  He just turned five last month, and about a year and a half ago lost his dad to an accident in Afghanistan.  His mom did a great job working him through that, and he’s as outgoing as his older sister was on her trip three years ago.  We’re really looking forward to the week, and to getting to know him a little better.

Gavin’s house is about an hour and a half from the airport, and I pick him up on the way to our 7:15 pm flight.  (Laurie’s already at Disney, for her training.)  His backpack and suitcase are packed and he seems more than ready.  His big sister (age 7) is telling him how much fun he’s going to have, but it turns out she’s putting on a brave face.  He hasn’t been away from home for an extended period before, and we find out later that she spent quite a bit of time crying in her room that afternoon.

We start our road trip conversations talking about the attractions at Animal Kingdom for our first day tomorrow, and he seems most excited when I mention Tarzan.  We talk about the Safari, and I tell him my favorites are the giraffes; he says his is the lion.  And that big long snake.  We have no idea what that is yet.  I mention Kali River Rapids and the part where people stand on the bridge and squirt water at you, and he says “That’s called Splash Mountain.”  Okay.

And then our road trip conversations end, because about six minutes up the road, he’s asleep.  I think he’s used up quite a bit of energy today in anticipation.  When I unload the car at the airport, he sees the umbrella stroller we always bring and wonders aloud “Who rides in that, Nya?”  (Our newest grandbaby, one year old.)  He’s well past stroller age for any normal activity, but on this adventure, he’ll quickly come to love it.  So will we.
 
He must have started to learn to swim this summer.  My first clue comes at the airport in Southwest’s ‘A’ queue, when we’re waiting up by the rope, your standard canvas strap type barrier that comes about to Gavin’s chin.  He asks if he can go over by the window to watch the action outside and when I tell him he can, he walks up to the rope and without any comment or expression, takes a deep breath, grabs his nose with his fingers, ducks under the rope and comes up on the other side, releases his nose and lets the breath out, and continues over to the window.  If you can only take one thing with you to Disney World, it should be imagination, and it seems we’ll have plenty of that.

The plane we’ll be riding just came in from Orlando, and about twenty women get off wearing Tupperware Rocks t-shirts.  Bet THAT was a fun convention ;-)  Gavin’s excited about the flight but not nervous, telling me “I flew on a plane only once before, this is my second time.”  We’re down in the Carolinas somewhere as the sun finally sets and Gavin starts chuckling.  “My sister’s in bed.”

We get to Pop Century, and he loves the big icons out front.  It’s way past his bedtime, but he’s quite alert and even bouncy.  We’re on Disney Time.  Laurie meets us and shows him through the food court and he wonders where all the characters are.  Patience, son.  It takes very little time to unpack our suitcases and get our individual drawers set up, and then very little time for any of us to get to sleep.

Quite an adventure we have in front of us, starting with Animal Kingdom tomorrow morning.  There will be singing and dancing, wide-eyed awe, and countless conversations with strangers.  But more than anything, this trip is going to be all about ‘how it works.’  We can’t wait.
Grandbabies 6.1, Animal Kingdom & Epcot

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old grandson Gavin, on the first park day of our week-long July adventure.

We never know quite how the kids will do getting up early in the morning, because they don’t do things in this setting quite like they do at home.  We let Gavin sleep while I shower and Laurie gets ready, as she’s finishing up her training this morning and meeting us later at Animal Kingdom.  When it’s Gavin’s turn, I nudge him a little and suggest it might be time to get up, and he grudgingly says “Yeah, we probably should” and trudges off to the bathroom.  This will work fine.

It’s a well-trained kid we have here; as we’re getting ready to leave the room he says “We have to make our beds before we go.”  I convince him that will be taken care of, and we head out.  It turns out Gavin hasn’t been to Animal Kingdom at all; the ‘big long snake’ and other things he ‘remembered’ must have been on the Jungle Cruise.  There’s only one seat on the bus this morning, and since these are entirely new surroundings (at least for today) he has no interest in sitting between two strangers.  So our first bus ride of the trip is a stander, which for a five-year-old is pretty cool.

The first neat thing we encounter is a talking palm tree entertaining while we’re in line at the AK turnstiles.  Gavin’s quite impressed, and is of course trying to figure out how it works.  He gets only as far as deciding there’s no way it could be a person in there before we make our way into the park.  We’re going to take a Kilimanjaro Safari first, and as we’re walking back to Africa he wants to know if it’s scary.  Not at all.  “Does it go upside down?”  Let’s hope not.  But it’s nice to know that for Gavin anyway, ‘upside down’ is apparently one fear level below ‘scary’. 

In the Safari queue, we go through that little hut that has the overhead tv’s, and Gavin is wondering why they have life jackets among the stuff up in the rafters.  He really IS trying to sort this out ahead of time, isn’t he.  Very reasonable question though, I should think, those must be for the boat tours.  But we’re taking a bus, and he enjoys the ride, on the edge of his seat and taking in everything.  He looks a little apprehensive when it’s clear that our bus is going through the river, but it passes quickly.  You could almost see him thinking “I KNEW I should have brought one of those life jackets.”

As we get on the train to Conservation Station, Gavin wants to know if you have to keep your hands inside.  I say “Yes, why would you want to have them outside?”  “So you can pet the animals.”  He must think we’re going back out on safari.  He’s asking all kinds of questions on the walk to Rafiki’s Planet Watch, most of which I can’t answer.  He doesn’t seem too interested in the exhibits or other stuff going on out here, though there are four times I see him waving and saying “Hi, Stanley.”  Must be a guy thing.  He even giggles at one point because Stanley blew him a kiss. 

The petting zoo is fun, but doesn’t last too long.  The real fun comes when we get to the hand-washing station at the end ;-)  But we do end up getting both picture and video with Rafiki, Stanley, and Pocahontas.  My biggest entertainment is when we’re coming out of the bathroom, watching some poor guy come in with eight single-digit-age kids.  Now THAT could be a project!

Laurie’s work is done, so she joins us now for early lunch at PizzaFari.  They don’t have the lunch coupon things we used to buy anymore, now that they have the new dining plan.  But since there aren’t any table service restaurants in Animal Kingdom, our Disney Dining card will get us a 20% discount here anyway.

After a nice casual air-conditioned lunch, a leisurely walk will get us down to Camp Minnie-Mickey in time for the next Festival of the Lion King.  We end up in the warthog section, but Gavin has no intention of making the warthog sound or motions when it’s our turn.  He loves this show though, he’s up on his toes the whole time.  He’s full of hows and whys, wanting to know how the (mechanical) giraffe works, how does the stilt guy get so tall, and how does he get up on them.  (I’m picturing a five-foot-high chair, but that’s probably not right.)

After the show, he’s quite excited about getting his picture taken with Chip and Dale, and then Goofy.  His first comment about Goofy is that he has very long legs.  With the image of the stilt guys fresh in his mind, he adds “And they’re his real legs!!”  He then notices Goofy’s outdoorsman gear, and wishes he’d brought his hiking boots so he could go hiking with him.  (Recently, Uncle Ty took his three girls, Gavin and his sister, and a friend to WalMart and bought them all hiking shoes, to use on a number of cheap outdoor adventures this summer.  Laurie’s still bummed that she didn’t have her camera with her when Ty and the six kids, age 4-8, came out of the store in a long column like ducks, each carrying their new shoe box.)

We make our way over to Dinoland, and decide that it’s too hot for Gavin to play in the Boneyard playground.  He wouldn’t be able to stay below full speed, and we think a seizure might make the trip less fun.  He must have missed Laurie this morning, because he’s pretty much hanging all over her as we get in line for Triceratops Spin.  She discovers a way to stop the hanging on though – just start dancing to the background music, and he drops you like a hot rock.

One ride on the Spin is enough, he doesn’t really care that much about it.  He’s much more interested in the two dinosaur characters walking around, which are certainly not to be confused with the dearly and recently departed Lucky.  These look more like costumes you’d see in a 3rd grade play.  I guess they fit in with the general dorkiness out here in Chester and Hester land, but none of it fits in with a Disney park, in our opinion.  He thinks the Primeval Whirl would be really cool, but you have to be 48” for that and he comes in at just 44”.

Gavin figures there’s no reason to wait 80 years to use the Clapper.  We’re walking along with him in the stroller and we see him clap twice loudly.  It seems a bit odd, but we really don’t think much about it until we see it the second time.  He’s clapping when Laurie has to slow down for someone in front of us, to get them to move out of the way.  Oh no you di’int!!  Fortunately, we can both keep a straight face while correcting abysmal behavior, but it’s really hard sometimes.  The Clapper is immediately retired.

We were going to see the Tarzan show (since Gavin seemed excited about that) and then ride Kali River Rapids, but it’s so unbearably hot that we unanimously decide to go back to Pop Century and hit the pool.  While Gavin’s changing into his trunks in the bathroom, he’s just singing away.  We can’t recognize the song, but he’s clearly having a good time.  We ask him what the song was, and he tells us it’s a song his sister has on a CD, and he can’t sing all of it because there’s bad words in it, but his sister and her friend sing all of it, even with the bad words.

Gavin lies down on the bed while I’m getting changed and is asleep before I get done, so I guess we’ll do naps before pool.  He really does have only two speeds ... full and off.  Everybody takes a little nap, with mine being a bit shorter because I haven’t finished Harry Potter yet and find it hard to put down.

At the pool, Gavin impresses us with his new-found water skills; he’s quite the little swimmer.  Laurie’s showing him how to float on his back, and he’s a very eager student.  After a bit, Laurie comes over to me and asks if she has staples in her eyes.  Apparently Gavin thinks she does, looking at the remnants of the non-water-proof mascara she used this morning.  We ask Gavin how long he wants to swim, and he tells us “13 minutes.”  That sounds about right to us, so we wait until we get to the 5-minute mark and give him our standard minute-by-minute countdown.  When time is up he’s clearly ready to go, hopping out of the pool and saying “Let’s go to the park and ride some rides!”

We make a very casual trip over to Epcot, where I experience another first, at least with our grandkids – it’s ME making the urgent bathroom trip with the grandbaby instead of Laurie.  It turns out she’s right.  It IS more fun to be the one hanging around outside ;-)
 
We ride Spaceship Earth first and Gavin tells Grandma five times during the ride that it’s not scary at all, so it certainly seems like he’s trying to convince himself.  After letting him know that everything inside Spaceship Earth is ‘not real’, she has a bit of a job convincing him that the fountain in the plaza IS real.  It’s out here in the plaza that he has his very first episode of pin trading.  None of the other kids showed much interest in pins at all, and I’m secretly hoping he finds them as boring as I do.  I’m not sure why Laurie decided to launch into a pin program this trip, but it probably had something to do with getting a pin-and-lanyard free with our Magical Express stuff.  Evil Disney.

At 7:45, all of the Imagination building is closed for the day, so we’ll just have supper at the Electric Umbrella.  Now when we had lunch today at PizzaFari, Gavin cleared the table for us, mostly because we like to burn off bits of that huge amount of excess energy in as constructive a way as possible.  I jokingly told him to not throw the tray away with all the papers, which earned me a little eye-roll and a very ‘duh’ sounding “I know, not the tray.”  After dinner tonight though, he clears up again.  We happen to look over at the trash can in time to see him with a severe “OH, NO” look on his face and his arm fully inside the door of the bin, saying “It went!”

We make one more trip through Spaceship Earth before we go.  I thought we were going to beat the Illuminations rush out of the park, but Laurie has to stop and do some more pin-trading with Gavin just outside the gates.  And it seems fairly urgent to him as soon as she suggests it.  He’s in the middle of a phone call with his Mom as we go out the gates, and as soon as Laurie mentions the pin station, he simply folds the phone up and goes to work.  I guess Mom will figure out that the silence includes an implied “Goodbye.”  Our first day was a blast, can’t wait for MGM tomorrow.
Grandbabies 6.2, MGM & Epcot

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old grandson Gavin, on the second day of our week-long July adventure.

We’re right on schedule this morning getting into MGM a few minutes before rope drop.  All of us had a good night’s sleep and are fully charged.  We wander up through the shops on the left side of the street, picking up a Times Guide and some mints and some apparently critical Buzz Lightyear sunglasses on the way.  We end up in the farthest door of the shop just before rope drop, nearly at the head of the line.

The Times Guide is probably more important at MGM than any other park, partly because so many of the attractions are shows, but also because they seem to have a more varied starting schedule than attractions elsewhere.  Little Mermaid has three different ‘first show’ times, depending on the day of week, sometimes starting at the same time as Playhouse Disney and sometimes later.  The Great Movie ride is open already though, so our plan is to see that, then the Mermaid, then the Playhouse. 

As soon as we walk into the front room of The Great Movie Ride, Gavin issues an awe-struck “WOW!!!”  We never do find out precisely what that’s about, but the place is clearly impressive to him.  The queue can be hazardous for a five-year-old, though.  The railing is at ear-level for poor Gavin, and since he has to watch all those movies while walking through the line just like we do, he racks his shoulder on about five of the posts before we’re through.  The ride itself isn’t nearly as impressive for him as the front room was.  That’s not surprising, since the only movie depicted here that he’s familiar with is The Wizard of Oz.  (That’s his big sister’s favorite, so he’s seen it a hundred times.  His favorite movie is Shrek, and I doubt we’ll see much of that here.)

We’re probably just in time for the Little Mermaid, but Playhouse Disney is loading right now as well, and that only runs once an hour.  Gavin enjoys the show here, but we’ve decided that four must be the age where you reach your peak, dancing-wise.  He’s clearly past that, and scoffs at the notion.  But he knows all the songs and energetically sings along, clearly a man after my own heart.  He has quite a bit of sport breaking the bubbles, too.

The Voyage of the Little Mermaid is one of our favorites here, and Gavin likes it a lot too.  He wants to know how Ariel can breathe under water, and whether Bruce (the shark from Finding Nemo) is Ariel’s friend.  I tell him he needs to be quiet during the show, mostly so I don’t have to make any guesses as to the level of Bruce and Ariel’s interaction.  There’s bubble-breaking here as well, and we get a resounding “Woo Hoo!” from him after Sebastian sings “Under the Sea.”  He’s also instantly fond of the dog at the end, who’s quite energetic himself this morning. 

We make a potty stop after the show, and I catch a little guff for using the short sink and towel dispenser.  Those are ‘his’, and I’m supposed to be using the tall ones.  I suppose I’ll catch on eventually.  It’s quite breezy out by the Big Hat this morning, and we’re briefly entertained by a couple kids laughing and chasing their stroller across the plaza while the wind carries it like a sail.  At the other end of the street, Gavin’s ready for his first autograph of the trip, with Sully (the overgrown star of Monsters, Inc.  No prissy princesses for this boy, it seems).  Unfortunately, they shut the line down just as we get there, with Sully going backstage and his handler reading the riot act to three 20-somethings (two girls and a guy) who had been getting their picture taken.  As near as we could tell, there had been some inappropriate touching, and the offenders were well on their way to being escorted out of the park.  It isn’t long though, before Sully returns, fully composed, and we get our autograph and picture.

We take a brief break near Ellen’s bookstore, and Gavin’s very energized as he looks over at the Star Tours entrance.  We initially think he remembers it from his earlier trip or his big sister’s ‘Disney movie’ (our video of her trip), but it turns out he’s spotted a kid over by the you-must-be-this-tall measuring stick.  He wants in the worst way to go see if he’s tall enough, and is really pumped to find he is.  "And I wasn't even on my tippy-toes this time!!"  Who cares what the ride is, if I'm tall enough, I'm riding!  We’ll get to it in a bit, hon.  We’ve never had any of the kids whine to do a particular thing ‘right now’, because there are so many things to do and they discover early on that if we say we’ll do something later, we will.

The Backlot Express doesn't serve lunch until 11:30, so we're going to Muppets first.  He really likes the 3-D movie, but man, what a wiggle-worm!  Glasses up, down, checking out the walls and ceiling, sitting back, up on the front of his seat.  It sometimes tires me out just watching him.

I'm not sure why, but every 6-year-old and under kid you see dropping his 3-D glasses into the bin has to pause to look down into the bin.  Can't imagine what they think they might see. 

Gavin spots a bathroom and decides we better stop, launching a preemptive strike on the way in so that I’ll get to the right sink and towel dispenser when it's time.  We have lunch at the Backlot Express, out by the windows so we can watch people going in to Star Tours. 

It’s kind of cute that he waves to each of the robots in the Star Tours queue.  Two-thirds of the way through the ride, he asks me "Why do we have to have seat belts?"  Well, I guess we haven't been upside down or actually hit anything, so it does seem a bit of overkill.  On the other hand, if he's used to rides that are even rougher than that, we may need to have a little talk with his Mom about her driving. 

It's 1:00 and sweltering, and we don't think Gavin can stretch his attention span to cover either the Lights, Motors, Action stunt show or the Beauty and the Beast show.  He's got a very bad case of happy feet right now, so we need to get back to the hotel for the hot part of the day and get in a little pool and nap time. 

Back in the room, getting changed for our swimming, Gavin shares with me that my socks look dorky.  I'm not sure, but I think this makes me six-for-six on grandkids dissing some article of my clothing.  I used to attribute it to the unrefined tastes of five-year-olds, but I'm starting to think it might be me.  He makes friends with another five-year-old in the pool, this one just getting the hang of swimming with the floaties on his arms.  In contrast, Gavin wants me to take him on my back out to the five-foot part of the pool, and them promptly just jumps off.  Okay, I see how it works.

After our extended pool time and a very long nap, we’re going to Epcot again, this time to check out World Showcase and the Kid Stops.  (You know, the stations in each of the country pavilions where the little ones can get and decorate a cardboard mask on a paint stirrer handle and avoid the boredom of ‘the shops’.)  We decide on a clockwise tour today, so we can start out with the two pavilions that have the only actual rides back here.  Walking down the ramp to the ride in Mexico, Gavin sees that it's a boat we'll be riding and wants to know "Do we get wet here?"  The look on his face indicates that ‘yes’ might be a better answer than ‘no’.  He enjoys the ride, but isn’t quite so crazy about the Norway ride next door, what with the thunder and lightning and all.

We get our first wide-eyed "Awwwwesommmme" of the trip at the China pavilion.  Not for any of the cool architecture, nor for the acrobats (they don’t perform until later).  It’s in the outdoor shop back by the Kid Stop, where he sees a very ornate sword for sale.  No.  Just ... no.

We’re just sitting down for dinner at the Biergarten in Germany and Gavin is watching the band play, when he suddenly turns to Laurie and gives her his best Warthog.  I guess he finally decided it was okay.  We get our food and are nearly back to our table when he starts to dance to the music.  I couldn't really describe the dance, other than to say it's the only dance I've seen that fits well with a tuba.  After dinner, I’ve eaten enough that it actually hurts a little to stand up or walk.  They say repetition is an excellent teacher, but this is my fifth or sixth time at the buffet here and I just don’t seem to be getting the gist of the lesson. 

People-watching is fun anywhere, but more so at Disney.  While I’m waiting out in the plaza for Gavin and Grandma to finish up at the Kid Stop in Italy, a dad points out to his kids a statue they just passed and says "Hey kids, look, it's Hercules.  Or Zeus.  Or ... who the hell is that, Diane?"  At the American pavilion Kid Stop (which I think will be our last one, since he's showing no interest at all), he spots a CM wearing a Leo lion pin and urgently says "Grandma, where's my pins, I gotta trade her, I gotta get that one."  And we apparently don't need Grandma for the actual transaction anymore, this time he walks up to the CM by himself while we're a few feet away and asks her if he can trade.  And now it's his, and he's one happy camper.  As we're leaving the area, he remembers that his mask is not well attached to the stick and that "she had duck tape there, I'm going to ask her to fix it."  Now to you and me, what she has is masking tape, but if the little redneck wants ‘duck’ tape fixing his mask, who are we to argue.  And once again, he takes care of the entire transaction on his own with us thirty feet out into the plaza, from the very polite request for assistance to the cheery "Thanks" with which all transactions should be closed. 

We’re about done with our circuit for the night, since we want to go back over to Germany to get an upwind Illuminations viewing spot.  (Laurie has no intention of repeating her smoke and ash shower of the other night, when her Disney training group watched from a ‘special’ viewing area that turned out to be directly downwind.)  But we HAVE to continue just a little bit farther, until we get to the Kaki Gori stand.  To make sure all that color goes in us instead of on us, we decide to just sit on the stone wall in the shade to enjoy them.  These little stops are so much fun, when we get the chance to just kick back and laugh and share our assessments of all the things we’ve seen and done.

As we head back up the hill toward the American pavilion, I can’t help but think of our friend John.  He was quite amused on a previous trip when I couldn't talk Caitlyn into pushing the stroller up hills.  Well John, my evil plan is working quite well this time, as Gavin is more than happy to push up the hills.  It’s a very good thing too, because he must be at least twenty pounds heavier than she was. 

Somewhere between the Outpost and Germany, we spend a good 15 minutes with a whole bunch of other people watching a tree frog.  Judging from the expressions on all the faces in our little crowd I’d say this is one of those attractions that’s ‘fun for all ages’.

On our way past Germany, Gavin says “Hey, there’s a train robber!”  More of a 'train stealer' I think, it's a CM who's taking the train in for the night.  We all enjoy Illuminations, and then make a quick bathroom stop in Germany.  Climbing back into the stroller, Gavin announces "I want to go home now."  Well, certainly.  We're all a little tired, and this one has never fought that or failed to acknowledge it.  (Back when he could first talk in sentences, he had no problem asking "Mommy, can I go to bed now?")  We aim to please. 

We get to the Pop Century bus stop and are able to get on the fourth bus that arrives.  We talk about the day, and though he’s tired, he’s still having fun reliving our activities.  We all manage to get seats on the bus, but Gavin climbs on my lap to let someone have his seat, and almost falls asleep before we get back to the hotel.  Tomorrow will be a relaxed day at the water park, as we’ve discovered that three straight days of the theme parks tends to burn the little ones out quite a bit.  Gavin’s very much looking forward to the water park, as are we.
Grandbabies 6.3, Blizzard Beach & Magic Kingdom

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old grandson Gavin, on the third day of our week-long July adventure.

Gavin wakes me up early this morning, wondering if Mickey or Stitch has called yet.  Grandma’s in the shower, so I’m guessing they did.  But suddenly, the phone rings and I’m treated to Gavin’s end of the conversation.  “Hello ... Hi, Mickey ... Hi, Stitch ...” followed by a long pause.  After hanging up, he looks at me and says “Well that was weird.  They just keep talking and don’t talk back to you!”  Then there’s a brief and jovial argument over whose turn is next for the shower.  I declare that the order should be Grandma-Gavin-Papa, the same order we go on the rides.  But he runs over to my bed, jumps up on it, onto me, then rolls over me and declares “No, it’s whoever’s closest to the bathroom, and that’s you.”  Foiled again.

Not only do I get bathroom duty with the boy, but I get shower duty too.  Which has its cool moments, such as when Gavin takes some shampoo out of the Mickey bottle this morning and wonders if it will make him smell like Mickey.  Yes, I think it will.  

We’ve found with the other kids that after two park days, they really need a ‘day off’ at a water park to relax, so this is mainly going to be a Blizzard Beach day.  We were going to have breakfast at Donald’s in Animal Kingdom first, but a combination of a full first bus and three wheelchairs has left us 15 minutes after our reservation time already when our bus pulls into Blizzard Beach on the way there.  So we’ll just skip AK and get off here.  At least we got off here on purpose – the bus driver didn’t make any announcement that I heard, and there are six poor people who just got off here thinking they were at Animal Kingdom. 

We first head over to the kiddie area, Tyke’s Peak, to find a place to park our stuff.  While we’re standing next to the wading pool with Laurie and me debating what spot will be in the shade an hour from now, Gavin heads into the water saying “I’ll be right over here when you decide.”  I swear, if you had to wait for adults to make up their minds every time, you’d never get anything done.  After one trip down the (admittedly lame) flat slide, one down the water slide, and one down the tube slide, Gavin’s ready to check something else out, so we’ll make our first trip around the lazy river.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is absolutely the best way to travel to nowhere in the heart of the central Florida summer.  About a quarter of the way around, the tube is apparently quite an inconvenience for Gavin, so he simply abandons it.  The water’s between chin and nose deep for him, so he’s alternating between swimming, walking, and Tiggering.

A little ways downstream, it’s time for a real ride, so we climb 138 very hot steps to get up to the top of the Teamboat Springs family raft ride.  (Yes, we counted.  We’re goofy like that.)  Talk about a tough job at Disney World, there’s a girl wandering past the queue up here, sneaking up on people and spraying them with a hose.  Everyone’s ducking that initial shot, but are loving it as soon as they realize how much it cools them off.  The ride down is wild and exciting, and now it’s time for lunch at the LottaWatta Lodge.  There’s quite a varied menu here, with burgers, hot dogs, chicken wrap, fish and chips, turkey sandwich, pizza, and even a Cobb Salad.  Not quite the one I love at the Brown Derby, being a little more ‘tossed’ than ‘Cobb’, but still quite workable.  Laurie says the fish is really good, and Gavin votes the same on the pizza.  We’ve had some adventures in picky eating on previous trips, but there aren’t going to be any issues with this guy at all.

[I have to digress at this point to relay a marvelous conversation I overheard on our adults-only RADP trip in early December.  A mom and her five-year-old son were on the bus to Animal Kingdom, going over the list of things they’d do and see during the day.  When the subject came to lunch and the boy wondered what they have there to eat, Mom told him (with a completely straight face) that she’d heard that Animal Kingdom had an excellent wildebeest sandwich.  That ended the conversation for about 20 seconds, after which the boy looked up and said “Mom, do I LIKE wildebeest?”]

Now it’s time to decide what to do after lunch.  Gavin thinks it’s too hot to climb up all those steps again.  Grandma thinks the line to get the chair lift up is way too long.  Grandpa thinks we should take one more trip around the lazy river and then head back to the hotel.  Grandpa wins!!  But first, while I’m making a pit stop, Laurie is reapplying some sunscreen to Gavin.  He manages to get some in his eye, and Laurie suggests he lie down and let his tears wash it out.  By the time I get back, he’s laying on a beach towel in the shade on the blacktop, sound asleep.  Two speeds; fast and off.

After a half-hour nap, we make our lazy river trip.  We must be enjoying it quite a bit, because before we know it we’re entering the cavern a second time, so I guess it’ll be two trips.  Gavin and Laurie decide to get out part way around and do some water slides, but sun-puppy that I am, I’m going to stick to the cool water and the shade.  By the time I’ve floated back to Tyke’s Peak, they’re already back.  Turns out they made one run on the toboggans and then neither wanted to climb to the top again.  Gavin thinks he should make one more trip on each of the three kiddie slides before we go, and as is our custom with most things that don’t cost anything, we agree.

Back at the hotel, I can tell we’ve been at the 70’s building for three days, because Gavin is singing ‘Jesse’s Girl’.  After a lengthy nap and shorter supper in the food court, we set out at 6:00 to spend a leisurely evening at the Magic Kingdom.  When we get into Town Square, there are some characters out, most of whom seem to be bears.  I can’t remember any of their names, so I’m not ashamed to just refer to them as ... Da Bears.  Autographs and pictures are in order here, and we haven’t spent much time on that activity this trip at all. 

As we walk up through the shops on the Emporium side of Main Street, the subtle change in merchandise from one shop to the next isn’t lost on Gavin.  About two-thirds of the way down, he announces “Finally, some BOY stuff!”, which in this case seems to mean hockey shirts.  We get over into Adventureland and there’s only a ten minute wait for the Jungle Cruise, so we go on that.  It’s another disappointing cruise for us, as have been the last two or three we’ve taken.  The skipper never slows the boat down, and doesn’t really even give himself time to set up the jokes, and we end up stacked up at the end like on Small World.  Somebody needs to talk to these kids about pacing.  Gavin’s fine though, for him it’s all about rhino horns and spitting elephants, and great big long snakes. 

We have to wait a bit to get on the Aladdin ride because they can’t get the gates open to let people on.  Apparently, there’s some kind of safety link between the ride itself and the gates, so they have to clear all the previous riders out, start the ride empty and run it through a cycle, stop it, and then the gates open without a problem.  We start to walk out to our spot and Gavin’s not moving, so I tell him “Come on, it’s our turn.”  He looks up at me with what I take to be a mixture of fear and embarrassment and says “I can’t, my leg’s stuck in the fence.”  And sure enough, it is, he put his leg through the bars and can’t get his knee back out.  So I clear the ride out, run it through a cycle, and then his leg comes out with no problem.  (Not really, but wouldn’t that be cool?)

Next is the Enchanted Tiki Room, for some fun with Iago and Zazu and M’boa and those hip Tiki gods.  Laurie is fully prepared to reassure Gavin that everything is all right when the thunder comes and M’boa appears, but he turns and looks up at her and smiles a this-is-cool smile.   He asks her a couple times if the birds are real and she lets him know they are not, but on the way out he waves to them.  The fact that they aren’t real is no reason to not show a little appreciation and friendship.  [Laurie says:  This is perhaps the neatest thing about going with a five-year-old.  There’s a fine line between real and not real, and they don’t care where the line is, it’s just all ... fun.]

On the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, Gavin’s only the second of our six grandchildren who shows concern during the firefight between the pirate ship and the fort, ducking down in the boat as we sail through the fray.  Interestingly, it was his big sister who three years ago looked at us in bewilderment and asked “Why aren’t you ducking???”  Laurie had explained to him as we got into the boat that we’d go through a little stretch where it was quite dark and we’d go down a little hill, and he had immediately taken her hand, placed it on his leg, and started gently rubbing it.  That was his security blanket.  By the time we get into the room with the singing donkey and the lady in the red dress though, he picks her hand up and gently puts it back on her own leg.  I can handle it from here on out, Grandma. 

At the Country Bear Jamboree, Gavin is alternating between giggling loudly and nearly falling asleep.  We grab some ice cream afterward, and since it’s almost 9, we’re racing the parade to Casey’s Corner from opposite directions, hoping to be able to cross the street and at least have the option of getting out of the park ahead of the crowd.  (He hasn’t seen a parade yet, so we have no idea if he’ll be interested or not.)  Turns out we’re way ahead of it, so we casually make our way down toward Tony’s Town Square.  We’ve enjoyed the afternoon parade from Tony’s porch in the past, but they have dinner seating out there now so that isn’t going to be an option.

We’re still trying to navigate from the middle of the throng at the end of Main Street, when Gavin spots the first parade float and jumps out of the stroller yelling “THE PARADE’S HERE!!!!”  Guess that answers that question.  We convince him to sit down until we can get to some kind of opening in the crowd, and eventually make our way down to the entrance of the train station.  Gavin gets to stand up on a low wall next to us, and instantly becomes silently glued to the parade.  Several minutes later, he turns to us and screams “GOOFY!!!”  Shortly after, Chip and Dale get the same introduction, as does Ariel.  When Cinderella and the Prince go by, he waves to them until they’re well past us.  And when the final float goes by, he turns to Laurie and calmly informs her, since she must look like the kind of person who wouldn’t know these things, “That’s Captain Hook.”

All in all, another very good day at Disney World.  Laurie and I are very much looking forward to rope drop at Epcot tomorrow, our first chance to ride the really cool rides there without big lines.
Grandbabies 6.4, Epcot, Fort Wilderness, MK

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old grandson Gavin, on the fourth day of our week-long July adventure.

These are sharp kids we bring with us to Disney World.  They have a way of (as our Carousel of Progress friend puts it) getting right to the core of the apple.  As I’m leaving the room to get some food court coffee while we’re getting ready this morning, I hear Gavin asking Laurie “What are we going to miss if we’re late?”  She explains that we won’t ‘miss’ anything, we just have to stand in longer lines if we get there later.  That’s all he needed to know, and he wastes no time getting into (and out of) the shower.

I really thought that one of the small time-savers on this trip (being the first of six with a boy) would be that we wouldn’t have to spend any time preparing hair.  It turns out though that Gavin has some morning prep work himself.  (I blame his mother ;-)  He has what I would call a short-spike haircut, and he takes full responsibility himself for his ‘look’.  It’s really quite a fascinating process, involving just the right amount of water on his hands, some Got-2-B-Glued Spiking Freeze Spray, and a couple minutes in front of the mirror getting it just right.  Not only does he not require help from either of us, I get the feeling it wouldn’t really be welcome.  It’s cute.  And when he walks out the door, he looks like he feels like a million bucks, and that’s certainly not a bad way to start the day.

Laurie and I aren’t the only ones who take a quick last-minute inventory before we leave the room for the parks.  On the kid trips, we always just have cereal in the room each morning, so we can get to the park as early as possible and avoid lines.  Then each of us carries a fanny pack with a juice box and a couple snacks.  They can have something from their pack whenever they want it, and we never need to forfeit prime morning time to eat.  They’ve all quickly caught on and done a great job of self-rationing.  But Gavin’s the first who has to check on the way out the door to make sure he has his room key in his fanny pack.  I certainly hope he won’t end up far enough away from us to really need it, but we HAVE let him open the door every time, and he clearly takes the responsibility seriously.

Our mission to make rope drop at Epcot this morning is successful, complete with the character bus out front.  We manage to beat most of the crowd into Soarin’, which we all enjoy immensely.  Gavin watches the pre-flight instructions intently, and has no problem working the extra belt loop for “our shorter aviatorzh.”  (Mimicking Patrick Warburton’s voish, sorry.)  He has lots of questions about what’s going to happen with the seats and how everything works, and then we’re flying.  He’s in awe, and loves it as much as we do.

We stop on the way out of the building for one of Gavin’s lengthier bathroom stops.  Laurie enjoys this time immensely, from her comfortable spot OUTSIDE.  I talked to him yesterday about folding toilet paper, trying to get him past that stage where you just wad up half a roll.  He apparently finds that annoying, telling me this morning that “My dad makes me do it HIS way.”  Thinking I may be undoing some parental work here, I ask him what his dad’s way is.  At which point he lowers his head a bit, with a sort of ‘busted’ look on his face, and says “your way.”

The Test Track line says 25 minutes, but it’s out the door farther than the depth of the building and isn’t moving, so we don’t believe it.  We picked up FastPasses for Soarin’ while we were there, and we’re already at the time where we can get another, so now we have them for both Soarin’ and Test Track.  Laurie and Gavin are ready for a breakfast snack, which they have while I have a smoke.  But by the time they’re nearly done, I decide I’m a little hungry too, so I pull out some crackers and cheese from my fanny pack.  In a subconscious effort to catch up and not make them wait, I guess I must be eating them a little too aggressively, because Laurie says “Boy, you’re eating like Gavin, you’re going through that in a hurry.”  And Gavin, seeing a chance to GIVE an instruction he’s probably received at home a thousand times, grins up at me and very slowly says “Take your time, taste your food.”

Since we can get into the Imagination attractions most any time, we decide to try to beat the crowd to The Living Seas.  I think Gavin is the first of the grandkids to really appreciate the Hydrolators, and the notion that we are going way down under the ocean.  We don’t really spend a lot of time with the fish this trip, but we all really enjoy Turtle Talk with Crush again.  That is just such a cool deal.

We use our FastPasses to ride Soarin’ again, and it’s interesting to watch Gavin’s hands during the ride.  He grips the hand holds during the takeoff, but as soon as we clear the clouds, his hands are in his lap.  Then he grabs on again when we’re up with the hot air balloons, until we clear the trees.  But, as with most of the folks on the ride, it’s one constant grin.

The Imagination ride with Figment is fun.  Gavin does plug his nose in the Scent Lab, though well after we’ve received our free scent.  We’re going to skip Honey I Shrunk the Audience this trip though.  He doesn’t want to do another movie with the special glasses, because the only thing he liked about the other one was where “Fozzie blew that thing out.”  Interesting highlight, I guess.  We believe a critical part of our success with these trips is that the kids know right off the bat that we’re not going to ‘make’ them do any particular attraction.  There’s so much to do and see here that our days will be full no matter what we pick or skip.  If there’s something we’re sure he’ll enjoy (like Mickey’s PhilharMagic), we’ll find a way to talk him into deciding to try it, but we won’t make him.

We go over now and use our FastPasses on Test Track.  He handles the ride well, though he’s definitely sporting a ‘holy crap’ look when we almost hit the semi.  As we’re walking off the ride and checking out our picture, he’s telling us repeatedly that the ride was awesome, then suddenly asks “Can I drive that truck???”  I’ve never thought of wanting to drive the truck, though I imagine that would be kind of cool, for a very small part of a day.

On our way out through the showroom he spots somebody in one of the cars and wants to know if he can drive one.  Sure!  He spends a minute ‘driving’ the Cobalt, followed by a sharp-looking red pickup.  As he’s climbing down from that, he spots THE vehicle across the room, looks down at me with a just-won-the-lottery look on his face and says “I’m doin’ the Hummer!!”  Which reminds me of another way that grandchildren are even better than your own; they’ll never be on YOUR car insurance.

During lunch at the Electric Umbrella, Gavin is intrigued by the ‘little salad’ Laurie gets.  (You and I usually refer to it as coleslaw.)  We go through four or five menu options with him that all sound good, before settling on the macaroni and cheese.  When that’s all he eats of the meal, Laurie tells him he has to eat his applesauce as well.  He immediately picks up on the fact that she has peeled off some dry parts of the roll from her beef sandwich and says “You have to eat your crust.” 

We decide to do the Figment ride again, and end up in a short line behind a 20-something couple, she with bright pink short spiked hair and a nose ring.  Gavin says (not at all quietly) “Look at her HAIR.”  The girl looks a little embarrassed, but her guy is clearly trying to stifle a hearty chuckle.  You just know he’s not a fan at all of the hair, but he loves her and can put up with just about anything.  I wonder aloud to her “Well, you really didn’t expect that people WOULDN’T be looking at it, did you?”  She smiles, but Gavin then brings out the big guns, and comments “It looks like boy’s hair.”  Now she’s REALLY embarrassed, and her boyfriend is no longer feeling the need to hide his amusement, either.

Laurie decides at this point that she’s going to go over to the First Aid station and see if they can help her get to the bottom of an ear problem she’s developed.  She hasn’t been able to hear well since we were at the water park yesterday, and thinks that either she got water in her ear and dislodged some wax or maybe even has some kind of infection brewing.  She tells us to go on ahead and she’ll catch up with us back at the room or at Magic Kingdom when she’s done.

Gavin and I e-mail our picture to his mom from Innoventions, then go down to ride Spaceship Earth again.  We manage to get stuck in the short line in front of one of the Old Troll’s ‘bored teenagers’.  After his parents have explained that it’s a slow ride and ‘educational’, he’s whining and wants more info.  This is where Gavin jumps in to tell him that he’s ridden it “a thousand times,” and to give him the important scoop.  When the kid asks him what you do on the ride, Gavin patiently tells him “You go up there and they ask you how many, and you tell them how many of you there are.”  And really, that IS all you have to do. 

Throughout the ride, he’s telling me exactly what’s happening in every scene, and I can tell these are exactly the things Laurie was describing to him when he rode with her the first two times.  He was really, really paying attention.  At one point, he asks me about a guy who’s standing up on a balcony looking through a sextant, and I must confess I don’t remember seeing him before.  On the way down the hill at the end of the ride, he wants to know if we can ride it again without getting off, but it’s a little too busy (and he needs to run a bit), so we’ll get off and go around into the line.  As we’re going into the building, he tells me to “say four,” and it takes me a while to figure out that he’s trying to guarantee us a stranger-free car, since four is what they hold.

We know that when the ride stops it’s usually to let a wheel chair guest on.  Today we witness another stop-the-ride event.  A three-year-old has just got into the car behind us and has to pee, urgently.  Her mom asks the CM to let them out, just as they’re about to leave the turntable.  He says he really can’t stop it, can she hold it?  Mom says “I’m thinking you’ve got two choices, stop it or mop it.”  He chooses stop.

On the way out of the park, I see my new favorite t-shirt, spotting a guy from about a mile away wearing a bright pink shirt.  And I mean bright.  As we get close to him, I see that it says across the front “Don’t laugh, this is your girlfriend’s shirt.”  While I’m greatly amused by the joke, it might be even more effective if this particular shirt weren’t a size XXXL.

On the bus back to the hotel, Gavin wants to sit right behind the driver, but I want to sit a few seats back where I can wedge the stroller in between two seats and not have to hold it.  He tells me “It’s okay, you can sit back there.”  So I do, and he sits behind the driver, singing away and leaning over occasionally to look out the windshield.

After our nap, Gavin thinks it would be a really good idea to pet the horses over at Fort Wilderness.  Sure, why not.  “How do we get there?”  We’ll take a bus and then go on a boat.  “A boat?  Awwwesssommme!!!”  Taking our shortcut through the parking lot to the bus stops, he grins and says “We were smart, all these people drove here and we flied here.” 

If you’re going to make an impromptu trip to Fort Wilderness, keep in mind that there’s a Hoop-de-Doo show that starts at 7, and for quite a while before that the boats will be quite full.  A little too crowded to get full enjoyment from the boat ride.  We don’t really get to pet the horses, either, or any other animals for that matter, because they’re all lounging in the shade away from the fence.  Which makes them a bit smarter than us goofballs in the hot sun outside the fence.

We’ve generally found something with each of the kids that has amazed us.  In Gavin’s case, we knew coming in that he was hyperactive.  And yet this is the second time I’ve seen him trying to sneak up on one of those little Florida lizards.  The boy can put on some big-league stealth when he wants, and for quite a long time, too.  It’s comforting to know that if he concentrates really hard, he does have a speed between full and off.

Laurie finally catches up with us at Trail’s End, after quite an adventure.  They couldn’t really do anything for her at the First Aid station, but told her she could go to the medical center and get some attention there.  They would even transport her if she didn’t have a car there.  Sounded good.  After a very short wait, a CM whose job was apparently just such transport arrived, took her backstage out of the Odyssey, and drove her the 10 minutes or so over to the medical center in Lake Buena Vista.  As with most medical centers, she registered and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  (She wasn’t too upset though, the latecomers that were moved ahead of her tended to be babies with fevers.)  After about four hours, she saw a doctor.  A brief application of warm water and peroxide took care of a deep chunk of wax, she could hear, there was no sign of infection, all is good.

So she called for transport again, and about 10 minutes later a driver showed up for her, and the adventure began to get interesting.  She asked him to take her to Magic Kingdom (thinking we’d be there by then), and on the way the driver felt the need to share his life story with her.  He was from Columbia and had only been here about six months, having been granted political asylum.  Yikes.  Added to all the stress from everything else today, the words political asylum just left all kinds of spooky things running through her head.  Drug cartel informant?  Spy?  Juan Valdez’s sister’s mean ex-husband?  Knowing that there was undoubtedly no problem here but feeling a little freaked out anyway, she silently launched into her Tower of Terror mantra; “This is Disney, everything’s going to be all right, this is Disney, everything’s going to be all right.”  But she still wanted to get out of that van sooner rather than later, and after finding out via cell that we were at Fort Wilderness, decided to have him drop her here so she can have supper with us at the Trail’s End.

This used to be one of the best kept secrets on property (though you need reservations now, so I guess it isn’t a secret any more.)  We have a very enjoyable dinner, with Laurie now able to laugh about her reactions on the Columbian Exile Express.  During the course of discussing the various menu items at the Trail’s End, Gavin tells her about how much he likes fish, and that he and his dad (Daddy Shawn) went fishing and caught a great big fish.  (Here, Gavin holds his hands up about 15” apart.)  He says they cooked it and ate it, just the two of them, his daddy ate half and he ate half.  It’s been just a year and a half since Shawn died in Afghanistan, but that’s about a third of Gavin’s life.  It’s nice that he has a memory of something he’s quite proud of.

On our way down to the dock, we’re noticing the hundred golf carts that always decorate the Settlement, and Gavin points out (of course) the one that’s built up on a massive set of springs to look like a monster truck.  We really do have a great deal of disposable income in this country.

It’s getting pretty well into the evening and we’re all a little tired, so we figure we’ll just head back to the hotel.  But Gavin wants to see the SpectroMagic parade again, so we’ll slip into the front of Magic Kingdom just for that.  We find a nice spot just inside the railroad where we’re well back from the crowd and Gavin can stand on one of those little three-feet-tall walls and get a good view.  He loves it again, and we certainly don’t mind it either.  As soon as the parade is over, we slip out ahead of the crowd and catch a not-nearly-full bus back to the hotel.

We had a great deal of fun today, notwithstanding Laurie’s Adventures in Health Care Systems and Foreign Diplomacy.  And we’re excited about tomorrow, a rope-drop tour of Fantasyland in Magic Kingdom.  This has become sort of the peak of these trips, and tomorrow we’re adding a first for us – a character breakfast at Crystal Palace.
Grandbabies 6.5, Magic Kingdom

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old grandson Gavin, on the fifth day of our week-long July adventure.

We’re out at the bus stop at 7:30 this morning to catch our bus to the Magic Kingdom for our character breakfast at the Crystal Palace at 8:10.  This will be a first for us; we both love the Crystal Palace but have never done a breakfast in MK.  We were initially concerned about transportation, but they told us that busses start running at 6:30 to cover breakfast.  We walk through the front gates at 8:10, with the park not open until 9.  It’s very weird to see the park completely empty like this.  Gavin is concerned that it’s not really open and we’re not supposed to be here, and Laurie has her camera out, clicking happily up the street.

Gavin just LOVES meeting Pooh and Tigger and Piglet and Eeyore.  This kind of thing seems to be right up his alley.  He’s also quite taken with the castle as we approach, and decides he wants to have lunch inside.  (We’ll pass on that, the image is a lot better than the reality.) 

If we had made our breakfast seating on time, we would have been at rope drop under the castle.  But it’s 9:10 when we arrive and Dumbo already has quite a line, so we’re heading over to the Speedway first.  He really didn’t show much interest in either Aladdin or Triceratops Spin, so we should be able to skip this ride (and line) entirely.

It turns out that Gavin is a very intense Speedway racer.  Did I mention I’m glad he’ll never be on my car insurance?  Since Caitlyn was quite jazzed about the Astro-Orbiter and opened our eyes to a new option at this point down here, we ask Gavin if he next wants to ride the rocket ride (that he can see) or Peter Pan and Snow White, and there’s no hesitation in his selection of Peter Pan. 

We already got FastPasses for Pooh, but as we walk back up into Fantasyland it’s almost a walk-on, so figure we might as well walk on.  While we’re in the line, Gavin wants to know “Do we get honey?”  You know, I’ve always wondered why I was attracted to this ride so much.  Now I know.  It’s a subconscious belief that I’m going to get honey.  [Laurie adds:  You might think he’s exaggerating, but he’s not; I once saw him drink a packet of dipping honey at Donald’s in Animal Kingdom, by itself.  I guess you’d say my honey has a sweet tooth.]

I get quite a chuckle (as often happens) from a couple of twenty-somethings walking past the Carousel.  They’re speaking energetically in a language I don’t recognize, except for this last part.  She, giggling excitedly and pointing down the street: “POOH, POOH, POOH!!”  He, mockingly: “NO, NO, NO!!”  Gavin gets a little surprise on the Peter Pan ride as we’re flying around the mountain tops; we see “Ariel’s sisters.”  He really enjoys the ride, as well as Snow White and Pooh again.

Our top priority in Toon Town is the Barnstormer, and we get two rides, both in the back row where it’s fastest.  He’s a little disenchanted in Minnie’s house, because he’s trying to move everything he sees and “nothing’s real in here.”  In case you’ve never had (or taken) the opportunity to check out Minnie’s To Do list, here are her plans for today:
1.    Call Mickey
2.    Mousercize
3.    Make a box lunch for Mickey
4.    Have a nutritious, low-fat breakfast
5.    Call Mickey
6.    Tend to the garden
7.    Bake a cake for Mickey
8.    Go to the recycling center
9.    Call Mickey

He’s a little more impressed with Mickey’s house, noticing quickly that Mickey has a “very big bike.”  As we’re looking through all the stuff in Mickey’s living room, he wonders “Does Mickey take his suit off when he gets home at night?” What questions!  I never thought about it, but I’d be willing to bet he does. 

The railroad trip from Toon Town to Frontierland is fun, as always, and we arrive at 11:30 to find a 60-minute wait for Splash Mountain.  We pick up FastPasses and head over to Big Thunder Mountain, where the line’s only about 30 minutes.  For some reason, as we’re snaking through the line upstairs at Big Thunder, Gavin is high-fiving every person we meet in the line.  You really have an excellent head start on life if you can find yourself in a situation that’s both very monotonous and uncomfortably hot and still figure a way to have fun.  (And spreading fun to other people is a good skill to have, too.)  He loves the ride, and the whoops and giggles are as much fun to listen to as Grandma’s.

Speaking of uncomfortably hot, we had planned to go over to Tom Sawyer Island and have a root beer float at Aunt Polly’s and let Gavin run in the shade a little, but we don’t even want to be out in the sun long enough to take the raft ride!  We’ll settle for some shade at the end of Pecos Bill’s and ice pops instead.

Splash Mountain is WAY too short a ride for Gavin.  Some of the others had to be cajoled into trying it, and we’re having a hard time getting him off it.  He’s upset because we missed a section of the ride, they didn’t take us over one of the drops.  We’re skeptical, but he insists that there’s a big drop with no trees and no tunnel that we didn’t see yet, and he kind of doesn’t want to get off until we see that drop.  It takes a while for us to figure out that he was watching the big drop earlier from the upper bridge outside, and from that perspective, there’s no tunnel or trees.  We take him outside and show him the view from both bridges.  He’s still not convinced we didn’t get cheated out of a drop.  Guess we’ll have to ride it again before we go home.  Darn.

Walking out of the park through Adventureland, Gavin spots Timon and Rafiki and wants to stop for an autograph.  I remind him that he already got them.  “I got Rafiki, but I never got Timon!!”  If you want to know the real score, don’t trust someone with no real stake in the outcome ;-)  He was insistent that today when we got back to the room, we were going to swim BEFORE our nap, but wouldn’t you know it, by the time I get through messing around going to the bathroom and getting changed, he’s already sound asleep on the bed.  As a measure of how hot it is today and how hard we’ve been playing, the nap lasts more than two hours.

Now it’s pool-time, and Gavin’s easily the most accomplished swimmer of our grandkids, at least at the age we brought them.  He’s only had a couple lessons at the community pool back home, but while we’ve been down here, a few important things just seem to have clicked.  One is that you can hold your breath whenever you need to, and another is that even though you can’t stand up in a four-foot-deep pool, you can always sink to the bottom and jump up out of the water long enough to get your breath.  Another is that there are a whole lot of fun things you can do in water.  Right now, he’s spotted the “flower power” icon squirting water over one area of our 60’s pool.  He knows it’s too deep to stand there, but he swims over into the spray, giggles a bit, and swims back to the side of the pool.

While we’re here at the pool, I should mention another wonderful example of Disney detail that Laurie noticed the other day.  On the top of one of the 60’s buildings is a giant elephant ‘made’ out of Play-Doh.  And the ears have thumbprints on them, and all the toenails are different sizes and shapes, just like the ones you made.  How cool is that!

We just heard some distant thunder, and Laurie finds out from the lifeguard that they have weather radar they monitor closely on storm days, and the pools close when there’s lightning within seven miles.  They don’t reopen until thirty minutes after there’s no lightning within the seven miles.  She’s in constant radio contact with someone, and suddenly a whistle blows and they’re closing the pool.  But this is Disney, so you don’t scare the kids with talk of lightning, you just say the pool is closing because of “electrical activity in the area.”  (Reminds me of the time we heard them radioing CM’s in the MGM parking lot to take care of a stray ‘turtle’, by which they meant ‘baby alligator’.)  By the time we’ve all had our shower, the storm is here and it’s pouring buckets, our first rain of the trip.  Not too bad, getting to Day 5 in the summer without rain.

The nasty wind finally lets up enough for us to start making our way back toward Magic Kingdom.  We stop at the store to buy Laurie another poncho, since one of our 8-year-old ones finally tore, and it’s raining lightly as we get into line at the bus stop.  Once the bus gets rolling, however, it’s coming down so hard and the wind is so fierce that the bus has to slow down to let the wipers catch up.  It’s only about a 10 minute drive from Pop Century to MK, but when we get there, the ground is barely wet and the sun is shining.  Love that Florida summer weather.

At 7:15 we’re getting FastPasses for Space Mountain.  At some point Gavin discovered he’s tall enough (the first of our grandkids to make that cut), so there’s no question that he’s riding it.  The FPs are for 9:20 and we were planning to watch the parade and fireworks, so that should work out well.  In the meantime, we have dinner at Cosmic Ray’s.  Every time I catch Sonny Eclipse’s act, all I can think of is Bill Murray’s lounge lizard on Saturday Night Live, and it always makes me smile. 

While I’m on a break after dinner, Gavin talks Laurie into going on the Teacups with him.  She explains to him that she doesn’t like to spin a lot, so when she tells him to stop he has to stop.  As they walk away, I hear them discussing a “safe word.”  My feeling has always been that if some activity needs a “safe word,” it might be best just to avoid it entirely.

We figure we should have time to catch Small World, Mickey’s Philharmagic, and the Haunted Mansion (the last attractions other than Space Mountain that we haven’t seen yet) and still have time to get a good spot for the parade.  As we’re walking up through Fantasyland, Gavin gives me another lesson in perspective when, out of a clear blue sky, he asks “How come you wear whitey-tighties instead of ‘regular’ underpants?”  I’m tempted to tell him that boxers on a five-year-old is just unnatural, but that wouldn’t be right.  And I shudder to think what exactly he saw in Fantasyland that made him think of that question.

Gavin likes the Philharmagic, though it’s a little hard watching it with his glasses broken in two.  We had warned him to be careful with them in line, and somehow they magically broke anyway.  He had requested a trade with Grandma just before the show started, but she said “Hey, you broke them, you wear them.”  So he does, holding half with each hand.  He likes Small World too, especially the butterflies for some reason.  There seem to be about two things in each room that he really gets jazzed about. 

It’s 8:40 now, so instead of going to Haunted Mansion, we’ll take a potty break on our way out of Fantasyland and go down and find a good spot for the parade.  He was a little bummed the other night that he could only see the ‘tops’ of the floats from where we were standing.  (The part that was blocked from our view couldn’t have been more than the bottom quarter of the float, well below where all the action is.)  So this time, we’re sitting on the ground right under the rope in Liberty Square.  We won’t be able to miss anything from here ;-)  At the first sound of the music, he urgently turns to me saying “Here, take my napkin!”  Parade.  Must focus.  He’s absolutely glued to the whole thing.

He has a Buzz Lightyear spinny light thing that Laurie gave him before we left home, the kind where you press the button on his back and he lights up and three colored rings spin around.  As each character goes by, Gavin’s holding up the spinny light thing with one hand and waving to them with the other.  It looks unique, until I realize it’s strikingly similar to lighters at a concert. 

He enjoys the fireworks, but I think he may end up more engineer than artist.  He spends more than half the time wondering where Tinkerbell went, and why, and who’s shooting off the fireworks, and where.  He’s standing in his stroller on Main Street by Casey’s, leaning on Laurie and asking her all his questions, when about two-thirds of the way through Wishes he says “I want to go home now, back to our room.”  Done.  But this time, he falls asleep in my lap shortly after we get on the bus.  We’re never sure if the kids are going to wake up grumpy in this situation.  If he does, he’s just going to have to stay grumpy, as I’m quite sure there’s no way I can carry him all the way back to the room.  But when the bus arrives back at Pop Century, he wakes up (sort of), walks off the bus with Grandma, quietly leans against a queue pole until I get off and pop the stroller open, and casually takes his seat for the ride back to the room.  [Some have thought it just terrible that we’d bring a stroller for a child who is really too big for one.  All three of us love it, and it costs no one else a thing.  So there ;-)]

Back in the room, he’s still quite excited that Pluto gave him a high five in the parade.  And he’s still sorry he didn’t bring his hiking boots so he could go hiking with Goofy.  We always seem to have the most fun on Magic Kingdom Day, and we also always seem to be the most tired at the end of it.  It takes no time at all for us to be sound asleep, and I imagine we’ll be quite ready for Day 6 tomorrow.
Grandbabies 6.6, Magic Kingdom & Typhoon Lagoon

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old grandson Gavin, on the sixth day of our week-long July adventure.

We’re on our third set of plans for today.  Originally, we were going to spend this morning at a water park and finish off Epcot this afternoon.  But the kids always get to pick what we do on Day 7 (a half day, followed by our flight home), and while we know they’ll pick another round of Magic Kingdom, Gavin has decided he wants to spend his last day at Epcot!  So we changed the second part of today to Magic Kingdom.  But then we realized there are extra magic hours at MK tonight.  With the park open three hours later just for on-site guests, a lot of those without hopper passes will be choosing MK today, so it might be better for us to do whatever we’re going to do there this morning instead.  We always say, we’re nothing if not flexible.

We’re out at the bus stop at 8:29.  Our bus is there, but it’s now full, and it looks like there may be more than a full bus of people in the line ahead of us.  While we’re waiting, we discover that one of the reasons Gavin favored Epcot for his pick’em day is that he really wants to go on that Big Ball Ride again, “because that’s the first ride in the park.”  Such little pros we’ve turned these kids into!  The next bus pulls up and starts loading, and as we wind our way into the final row of the queue, Gavin points out “Definitely not getting seats.”  It’s morning, we don’t care.

As we walk from the bus to the Magic Kingdom entrance, Gavin’s helping me push the stroller.  Oh he’s in it, but he has some kind of rowing motion going with his arms and butt that I’m sure is doing something to help propel us.  We were going to take the train back to Frontierland, but are told that (like yesterday) there’s only one train on-line, so it’s 20 minutes between arrivals.  Guess we’ll walk up Main Street through the shops again.  This gives us a chance to admire Gavin’s use of the mall-walking genes he got passed down from his mom, with oohs and ahhs at various displays.  He isn’t asking to buy anything, just admiring.

We’ve become used to questions out of left field from the kids.  We’re in line for Splash Mountain and Gavin wonders if there are any spiders on the ride.  We can’t imagine what would have made him think there were.  After a minute or so though, he smiles and says “Oh, wait, this isn’t a real cave, is it.”  On the ride itself, he wants to know how Brer Fox set that trap Brer Bear got caught in.  I think I know, but I love his sister far too much to share information like that with him.  As we walk out of the ride, we’re treated to one of our absolute favorite things: a skipping five-year-old singing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!

Big Thunder is quite a treat again as well.  Gavin has his hands up in the air for every bit of the ride except the lifts and the station.  There’s one fast part where you go up a little hill and suddenly level out, then just as suddenly go down a drop.  Gavin (and Laurie for that matter) comes off the seat, and the look on his face is priceless.  (For me, the little whoop that Laurie gives here every time is, also.)

The line is fairly short, so we decide to ride Splash again.  The courtyard is full of that banjo and mouth harp music, which is perfect for Gavin as he bounces and dances along.  It occurs to me that in our other five grandbaby trips, we’ve had probably three Pooh’s and a couple of Piglet’s, but this is our first true Tigger.  This time through the ride, as we get to the rabbit trap scene, Gavin concludes “I don’t think Brer Fox knew that Brer Bear likes carrots too.”

We were going to do these two Mountains and then take the train around to Space Mountain, but with the limited train schedule today, we don’t want to take a chance on wasting that much time.  As long as we’re walking around the Rivers of America, we may as well take in the Haunted Mansion.  It’s quickly clear that Gavin believes we should have skipped it.  The very first dark hall we go up has him terrified.  He spends most of the rest of the ride with his ears covered and his forehead down on the bar so that he can’t see or hear anything.  We ask him what he wants to see next after we get off, and his answer is calm, simple, and direct – “No more scary rides.”  No problem.  We’ll stick to what we know.

Laurie seems to have some kind of mental block where she always thinks Peter Pan’s a walk-on and forgets that the line wraps down around the building.  As we round the corner in the queue, she says (déjà vu here) “I didn’t realize the line was so long.”  And Gavin’s at that point in our travels now where he immediately says “Let’s go then,” and ducks under the chain rope. 

It’s time for me to take a break while Laurie takes him on the Carousel.  As they disembark, I see her turn one way out the gate (thinking he’s right beside her), but he turns the other way.  They get probably thirty feet apart when they both realize they’re not together.  They each stop and turn, looking around for the other.  Laurie spots him first, he looks a little concerned but not panicked, and she can read his lips calmly and silently saying “Grandma, Grandma, Grandma.”  He quickly spots her and as they reunite, he says “Boy, there sure are a lot of people here with yellow shirts!” 

We walk down past the castle just in time to catch Belle’s Story Hour.  Gavin’s main concern at first is that he not get roped into getting up on the stage.  After we escape that, I’m watching his expression through the show and I do believe the boy has the hots for Belle.  Shucks, me too. 

It’s very hot out now, and a nice walk back down through the cool shops is in order.  We picked up something for Sissy yesterday, and need to get something for Mommy and Daddy today.  Gavin’s trying on hats ‘for Daddy’, and needs to see what they look like in the mirror.  But a mirror is very hard to find up here in the ‘boys’ section.  We get down into the ‘girl’ shops and there’s a mirror every three feet.  Go figure.

Our shopping’s done now, and Gavin and I are walking a bit ahead of Laurie when he informs me he’d like to go on the Lazy River now.  Us too.  He beckons me down and whispers to me, conspiratorially, “I want to push Grandma through the waterfalls.”  Don’t we all.  And I don’t mean that in a bad way, and it’s not just me and Gavin.  ALL the grandkids have wanted to push Grandma through the waterfalls.  I suspect it’s because she’s so much fun.

Apparently, Gavin likes to people-watch as much as we do.  On the bus back to the hotel, he gently taps me on the knee and grinningly points to the seats across the bus, where three 17-year-olds have apparently had a very hard morning – the boy on the left is sound asleep, as is the girl leaning on his shoulder, and the boy on the right is unsuccessfully struggling with the sermon’s-a-little-to-long-head-bob. 

We’ve all been impressed by the giant Big Wheel sitting by the giant Foosball table between the 70’s buildings at Pop.  Gavin thinks that tire must “have a lllottt of air in it.  I hope it doesn’t go flat.”  There’s just one English family waiting with us for our Typhoon Lagoon bus, and the four of us quite enjoy watching Gavin and their 7-year-old daughter stealthily searching for lizards among the knee-high bushes behind the benches.  There’s no end to the attractions here, and we enjoy them all.

We stop for a quick potty break as we get into Typhoon Lagoon, and Laurie borrows my recorder to say this:  “I just want to add here that I really, really, really enjoy going into the rest room by myself, doing my hair, not having to be saying to the five-year-old child beside me ‘Okay, do this, let me help you with that, let’s do this, don’t do that’, just taking my time, relaxing and getting ready, and meeting Papa outside.”  I’m not sure what all the fuss is.  You take a five-year-old to the bathroom and the only thing you really have to do is make sure he doesn’t decide to try and hit the top of the urinal.  (That never happened, but with Gavin, it had crossed my mind.)

As agreed, we begin with a trip around the Lazy River.  I’m not sure if we’ve mentioned it before, but we love this particular part of Disney Summer, floating down the stream in the shade.  Gavin’s trying all kinds of different swimming things and having a ball.  In fact, he’s having so much fun that he forgets about his diabolical plans for Laurie and the waterfalls.  But this ain’t Laurie’s first rodeo; she’s diabolical enough to have taken him to the OTHER lazy river, the one that doesn’t HAVE a waterfall ;-)
 
After one circuit, he wants to check out the wave pool we told him about.  A brief pause here to describe the wave pool, in case you’re not familiar with it.  There’s a chute that’s (I’m guessing) about fifty yards wide and a hundred yards long.  The water is maybe 8’ deep at the back of the chute and 5’ at the front, where the pool fans out like a giant mushroom to a gradually decreasing depth.  A generator creates a wave at the back of the chute that’s probably 4’ high, rapidly decreasing in height after it fans out.  You get to pick how high your wave is by how close to the fan-out point you stand (or tread).  You hear the wave, then hear 236 screams, then see it coming up the chute, then have a fair amount of time to prepare yourself for when it gets to you.  Then everyone in the pool goes (as my father would say) ass over teacup, and as the water leaves your ears you hear 173 giggles and wait about two minutes for the next one.

Laurie’s the water baby between us, so she’s in charge of this program.  Gavin starts by taking her out to where the standing water’s about up to his belly.  The first wave comes, and it’s just over his head.  We watch to see what his reaction will be, and he flops around a bit by Laurie until he regains his feet, wipes the water out of his eyes, and says “Let’s go out a little farther.”  By the time we’re getting ready for the third wave, we’re out far enough so he can barely stand up and keep his chin on top of the water.  When the wave comes, he just jumps and lets it carry him.  And he’s quite the projectile, it turns out.  He crashes into me and throws me off-balance and I have a nice strawberry on my knee to show for it. 

On about the fifteenth wave, he faces it and just before it gets to him he plugs his nose, arches his back, and rides it in with sort of a submerged backstroke.  After about twenty waves, we think he could use some shade and talk him into going back over by the kid pool for a bit to ride the water slide.  Which he does, once.  At the bottom, he looks at us with a look that can only mean “what are you trying to con me into over here?? The REAL fun is over THERE!”  So it’s back to the wave pool.

We probably spend an hour all together in the wave pool.  To fill in all that boring dead time between the waves, he’s practicing floating underwater, on both his stomach and his back.  And doing a very good job of both, including a ‘dead-man float’ that’s far too realistic.  Two or three of our grandkids have been comfortable and done a decent job in the water, but this is the first who has attacked it.  But we finally arrive at the point where Papa is in danger of some serious overheating, so it’s time for another trip around the Lazy River.

Which, it turns out, is a good place to practice some more of those floating techniques.  And some handstands!  I can’t do those but Grandma’s a pro, so I think she may have introduced this trick also.  But the river gets kind of crowded sometimes, and on one of his handstands he comes back up right into the butt of some random 80-year-old guy who’s just floating around, minding his own business.  Quite a surprise for both of them, I’d say!  It does give us an opportunity to introduce to Gavin the concept of putting more thought into the where and when of a trick though, which he puts to good use for the rest of our lap.

It’s time to leave for our character dinner at Chef Mickey’s, and we’re all ready to go now, except for the part where Gavin and I are done changing and are now sitting around waiting for the casual, enjoying-her-freedom Miss Laurie.  Gavin announces “I’m bored AND thirsty.”  It sounds like he can handle either one of those, but the combination is killer.  Luckily, he survives both. 

We haven’t had a monorail ride yet, so we catch a bus from the water park to the Grand Floridian and take the monorail from there.  He’s had all kinds of questions about the monorail as we’ve driven past, most of all concerning how you get off it.  We’re thinking he’s seeing it way up off the ground and picturing ladders or parachutes or something, so we explain the concept of stations to him.  It’s clear that he doesn’t quite get it, even when we get on it, because you can’t see from inside the station that you’re ‘up in the air’.  But when we round the bend approaching the Magic Kingdom station, he’s looking out the window and says “Ohhhh, I see how it works.”  Yes, with this one, it’s all about ‘how it works’.  He’s still only guessing on the deal with the Contemporary though, telling us “the building opens up just enough so the train can fit through there.”

Did you ever get into a line and find yourself wondering after a while if you’re in the right line?  No?  That’s just me?  Well we got into a line with all the other people checking into Chef Mickey’s, to get our picture taken.  Since everyone was lining up, it seemed like something that came with the meal.  The CM’s were even directing everyone where to queue for “the picture.”  After our delightful pose, however, we discover that it’s like any other let-me-take-a-picture-you-can-buy-later deal, only much better camouflaged.  We have rarely felt conned at Disney World (outside Chester and Hester’s), but after standing in that line we sure felt we’d been had, as did many of the other grumbling folks who went through the line. 

We’re seated up in sort of a loft at the side, probably under the monorail.  Gavin reminds me of a scout.  He’s looking out the windows over the other room, he’s looking around the corner into the other loft room, he’s looking over by the door, he’s looking around the corner again.  No character is going to sneak up on him, that’s for sure.  We get autographs and pictures with Goofy, Donald, Dale, Mickey, and Chip, and are waiting (not all of us entirely patiently) for Minnie.  Before he heads to the dessert table with Grandma, he leaves me quite explicit instructions as to what I should do with the autograph book while he’s gone.  Fortunately, she comes after he’s back, so I don’t have a chance to mess anything up.

We didn’t notice during dinner, but our afternoon thunderstorm has reared quite an ugly head.  Not only is it raining very hard, but there’s a steady 20 mph wind as well.  We kill some time on the back porch of the Contemporary, waiting for things to settle down, and then make a loop on the monorail again.  The rain has almost stopped by the time we get back over to MK and make the walk over to our bus.  It’s time to go back to the hotel and pack.  Boo!!  Tomorrow’s our last day, which at Sir Gavin’s request, we’ll be spending at Epcot.  We’ll only get half a day in before leaving for our 4:00 flight home, but it’s always such a nice casual boy-did-we-have-fun-this-week kind of tour, and we’re really looking forward to it.

Grandbabies 6.7, Epcot & home

Laurie, Don, and 5-year-old grandson Gavin, on the seventh and final day of our week-long July adventure.

Gavin’s racing Grandma to get ready this morning.  I’m sure this was Grandma’s idea, but he’s got even more energy than normal this morning, knowing this is our last day and he’s deciding where we go and what we do.  I try to help him with his shoes, but he won’t accept the assist; he tells me “I know exactly how to double-tie.”  He’s probably noticed that I slip my sneakers on and concluded that my actual tying may have been done by others.

The race was effective, as we make rope drop at Epcot.  The character bus comes out to greet us in the Fountain Plaza, and we think it’s safe to say now that Pluto is Gavin’s favorite.  He’s the one he has most excitedly pointed out every time we’ve seen characters.  As soon as the quick march back to Soarin’ begins, I go out in front to get FastPasses for us while Laurie pushes Gavin in the stroller.  He’s telling her “Why don’t you keep up? Run!”  Heh.  She smiles and suggests that if he gets out and runs, then she’ll run too.  He declines.  Guess the current speed is acceptable after all. 

It’s 9:15 when we get to the turnstiles and we board shortly after.  On the ride, it’s fun to watch Gavin (and lots of others) pick his feet up as we go ‘over’ the ridges and waves and what-not.  The only part he says he doesn’t like is where you follow the hang-glider up along the cliff wall.  Come to think of it, that may be the only place where you’re looking pretty much straight down for a moment.  Once again, as we’re walking out of the ride, Gavin has both fists up in the air with a big Woo Hoo.  As we leave, the line of people still coming in stretches outside the building, and he shakes his head and says “Boy, a LOT of people like Soarin’!”  True words.

The standby line for Test Track says 40 minutes, but it looks like (and turns out to be) more like 20.  Gavin wants to know why they have all the ‘fences’ in the queue here, and Laurie tells him that all the tools are here to be looked at, but not to be touched.  I tell him that they use all these tools to test cars, and he tells me “They used to.”  Well, yes, nobody’s doing much in here lately.  (His big sister Alexis gave us one of our favorite lines here, when she asked “Where are all the men to these tools?”)  He decides he wants to sit on the outside this trip, so Laurie lets him get in first, since he’ll think of that as the ‘driver’s seat’.  He clearly enjoys the ride again, and when we go around the big curve on the outside and start the long trip back in at high speed, he’s grinning and WooHooing with his hands up in the air all the way back in.

He immediately wants to ride again, but by the time we get outside he’s decided he wants to go on the dragon ride (Imagination).  And on the way, we’re going to  go to one of Papa’s favorite Epcot attractions – the Fountainview Café Bear Claw.  We all really enjoy sitting in the shade for a minute over breakfast, watching the fountain and talking about what fun we’ve had this week.  And Gavin’s joy is fairly unbridled this morning.  As our Figment car gets underway, Gavin points up ahead of us and shouts “OFF to NEVERLAND!!!”  I’ve never thought of it in those terms, but that’s exactly what I feel every time we get on that plane in Buffalo for one of these trips.

We use our FastPasses and ride Soarin’ for the last time this trip.  It’s every bit as much fun as the other times we went.  Gavin’s quite impressed with the number of people still waiting to get on the ride as we’re walking out.  “I’m glad we’re not still waiting with THEM!”  Someone from the line asks us if it’s worth the wait, and Gavin eagerly offers “It sure is, and the ball looks like it’s coming right AT YOU!” 

He clearly is aware that Spaceship Earth is going to be our last ride of the trip.  We’ve arrived at one of those few times of the day when the line wraps around both sides, and Laurie asks him if he’s sure he wants to wait in line for this one.  “Yep!”  This ride has really triggered something in him, he’s up on the edge of his seat and discovering something new in about every other room.  His mom manages to get a call through while we’re still on the ride, and it’s fun to hear the excitement in Gavin’s voice as he’s describing the ride to her.  “I love it, they’re all robots but they look like real people, but you can learn new things from them, like that’s the very first telephone.”

You and I can sort of see a flaw or two in their plan, but there are hundreds of people lined up buying tickets outside Epcot at 12:20.  Most of them are at best going to be in very long lines all day, and a lot of them are no doubt going to think they didn’t get their money’s worth.  We were here at rope drop, and may have had more fun in three hours than they will between now and their cranky exit.  Thanks, RADP, for showing us the way ;-)

As we go to catch our last internal bus of the trip, back to the hotel, we’re in line all by ourselves.  Until a group of about forty joins us.  Gavin, as has been his practice all week, strikes up a conversation with Amanda.  She looks to be about 20, and is here with a “psych group,” whatever that means.  He wants to know if the guy sleeping next to her is her boyfriend, and if the guy standing up next to us is her brother.  He tells her he’s 7 and in pre-k.  (I hope as he gets older, his ‘lines’ get better.)  She enjoys the conversation as much as we do, and Gavin has yet again helped make some down time more fun.

Our Magical Express bus back to the airport is actually a Cruise Line bus.  It’s kind of odd that these busses aren’t wheel chair accessible, as the poor couple outside have just discovered.  They’re being told they have to call something special.  Doesn’t sound right.

I get to see yet another example of Gavin’s outgoing nature in the rest room at the Orlando airport.  There’s a janitor in there whistling away, and singing softly in Spanish.  Gavin stands right next to his cart, looking up into his face.  The man looks down at him and smiles, never wavering in his work or tune, and Gavin gives him a big grin back.  And then on our way back out to the gate, Gavin’s singing in ‘Spanish’, just making up words as he goes along.  Now he takes a seat in the window with a two-year-old boy, playing some sort of hand game, just keeping him entertained.  This boy will go far.

So our sixth grandbaby Disney adventure has come to an end.  We really are lucky.  We’ve been able to give something very special to each of these kids, both in terms of Disney fun and the kind of focused attention you can only get when you’re an only child on holiday.  And they’ve given so much enjoyment to us.  After making three such trips this year, it’s a little hard for us to imagine not making a trip next year, since Colby’s only 3 now.  Maybe we need to start recycling.  Elysia’s almost 10 already ;-)