PRO: until May 12 she gets in FREE
CON: she probably wouldn't remember it
PRO: she is in LOVE with Mickey and Minnie Mouse
After much debate and a change in date, we finally ended up going the week of December 3. It ended up being the PERFECT week for a trip to Disney (and Sea World and Busch Gardens) because the weather was warm AND there weren't major crowds. We had hoped that would be the case with a couple of weeks of school left before Christmas and it seemed to work out well.
The entire trip turned out really well because we had a free place to stay in Tampa (thanks, Danny!) and my cousin was able to get us free and/or discounted tickets to Busch Gardens, Christmas Town at Busch Gardens, and Sea World (thanks, Debbie!!!). This meant that we were able to book a better quality hotel in Orlando, closer to the action, and with a shuttle!
We stayed in Bowman on Monday night, so we could trade cars (for a bigger one) and be an hour closer to Orlando. It really isn't a bad drive from Bowman to Orlando. Maybe 6 hours? We set off around 9 on Tuesday and Little Miss slept for a LONG part of the morning. We stopped for a picnic lunch at the Florida Welcome Center and then drove the rest of the way. Little Miss was incredibly good in the car!
When we got to our hotel, Little Miss was ecstatic because Mickey and Minnie were everywhere. Passing the gift shop, she immediately wanted a new stuff Minnie, which we held off on until we got to Downtown Disney that evening. Little Miss enjoyed Downtown Disney because there were Minnie and Mickeys to see and trains and carousels to ride!
She also some ice cream (belatedly we realized that when she says ice cream, she really means chocolate milkshake!) and was well behaved for dinner at a nice Italian place. As you can see in the train picture, we gave in A LOT on this trip for the "no sa except in the crib" rule. A tired and cranky 2 year old is much less cranky when there's a pacifier in her face!
Little Miss slept great in the hotel in her Pack 'n Play and we were up and ready to face the day the next morning. As you can see, we gave in the night before and picked up a stuffed Minnie (not counting the big and tiny one that we already had or the one we bought her later at Disney!).
We rode the hotel shuttle over to Disney. Their policy is that if you stay there the night before you can stay parked there and ride the shuttle, so we took advantage of that!
Our first stop once we got inside the park was to find the line for meeting Mickey. That was on the short list of "We Must Do This" that we had. The line was virtually non-existent - it was a 5-minute wait time. She was excited to go see Mickey - we'd been talking it up for a couple of days. However, we also wondered how she would respond to a full-sized Mickey, especially given her reaction to Santa Claus! The verdict: she HATES real life Mickey!
Petrified, petrified, petrified is the way to describe her. They usher you into this smaller room to wait when it's almost your turn, so she could see Mickey that entire time and was SCREAMING to leave. But we got her picture with Mickey! We didn't attempt to see the princesses at the Theater because we were afraid she might have the same reaction. She also freaked out when she saw Pluto ACROSS the plaza from us.
We did a couple of live action tests on the way over to the rides. She passed those with flying colors. Real people = no problemo! Mary Poppins was right next to the Theater where Mickey and the Princesses are, so we almost went back for the princesses, but we decided that we needed to get to the rides before the lines got too long. We met the Fairy Godmother on the way to Fantasyland. We also finally stopped to get her an autograph book, which unfortunately means no Mickey autograph :( She does love "my book and pen" though!
Then we discovered Dumbo, which had to be her favorite ride. She rode it at least 3 times and would have ridden it a zillion more if we let her. Clearly the wait times for Dumbo weren't much worse than the others! It did get a little bit longer the closer we got to noon. She will STILL talk about it - how it goes "up in the air" and then "down in the water". She now has a stuffed Dumbo, which she could really care less about, and has actually watched part of the movie.
Minnie, Daisy, Donald, and Goofy were all available for Meet and Greets at the Storybook Circus around the corner from Dumbo, so we decided to see if Minnie was any better than Mickey. The answer - NOPE. We had to wait 10-15 minutes in line for our pictures with Minnie and Daisy. Goofy and Donald were across the tent from us and we decided not to continue to traumatize her!
There's some pretty good video of her waiting in line that I will add at some point.
We then went on to It's A Small World (after stopping to eat lunch on a bench), which Little Miss also LOVED. We went on it twice in a row (maybe a 5 minute wait?). She wanted to go again, but we couldn't handle that song one more time!
We ended the day at Magic Kingdom by riding the train (which she didn't love as much as we thought she would), catching part of the show in front of Cinderella's Castle (which she happily watched for several minutes), and shopping on Main Street (where we picked up a pair of Minnie flip flops that she LOVES LOVES LOVES - you can see them below). We were getting ready to head out the gates when we decided to stop at the Princess Meet and Greet. The wait time was only 5-10 minutes, so Little Miss and I headed on in. Clearly it's just people hiding in costumes that she doesn't like because she was EXHAUSTED, but willingly went up to each princess, let her sign her book, and gave her a hug!
She passed out within minutes of getting in her car seat. Mommy and Daddy stopped at a random Wendy's on I-4 on our way to Tampa. We had hoped for an easy transition to her PnP for bedtime once we got to Danny's that night. No such luck - she was a little hungry, so we fed her PLUS Danny has a huge (not life size but big) Santa that sings and dances). Little Miss was terrified of him and kept asking if Santa was going to come in the room with us! I think it was 10:30 or 11 before we got her to go to sleep!
