We recently joined my friend Char at DL to celebrate her son, Josh's, 10th birthday. I explained to G in advance that, unlike most of trips to DL, this one was not about her. It was about celebrating with friends which means we'd be doing things that they wanted to do and probably in a different order that she's used to. She seemed fine with it but I think its good to explain things ahead of time to avoid disappointment.
We started the day with the Minnie and Friends breakfast. G and I have been a couple times before and, although the number of characters you get to see is pretty great, the food is so-so at best. We normally have great fun at character meals. So, I'm not exactly sure what was going on that morning but the character thing was a bit off. First, they stuck us at a table in the corner which usually is not a problem because the characters come around to visit in a certain order but for some reason it just wasn't working this particular day.
We actually got skipped by a few and then one or two came by when I was in the interminable omelette line. It still was going along well until Capt Hook paid his visit. G loves Capt Hook, all the baddies really, but always enjoys saying "tick tock" to him and having him act frightened. So Hook comes by, G gives him the "tick tock" and Hook runs off scared. But then, he didn't come back! I mean he literally left the entire side of the restaurant without visiting with my friend's son or the people at the table next to us either. G got upset because he had run away from her and actually kind of shut down a bit and the people next to us were like what the heck? Ugh! Hello!!! This is supposed to be fun. I did find the character handler and they arranged for Josh to meet with Hook which was fine but G actually started crying and then it seemed like it was time to go. You can pretty much conclude that the character meal was less than a success if your kid leaves crying. Ah well, what can you do?
Before we left we were able to meet with a few of the characters including Penguin
Tigger who is one of G's favs
I love this pick of Josh pounding it out with Tigger. The look on Josh's face is priceless!
Minnie stopped by for seconds... I mean literally like 3-5 seconds. She stopped, curtsied and then turned to walk away. I had to practically tackle her to get her to come back and snap a photo with the kids. Not sure if they were running late or what but like I said it was a very off day.
Anyway, after breakfast G was able to rally pretty quickly and we moved on to the rides. I have to say, it was a PERFECT day to be at DL. It was cool and as uncrowded as I've ever seen it. Practically no wait for anything. Star Tours had I think a 15-20 min wait but we grabbed fastpass, Space Mountain (SM) was a walk on, Big Thunder Mtn (BTM) was a 5 min wait. It was awesome!!! Speaking of the coasters, Josh is 10 so its reasonable that he wanted to ride them. G's tall enough for everything in the park except Indiana Jones but she hadn't ridden BTM or SM yet. We started with SM. G did NOT like it. Not one little bit. When I asked her at the end if she wanted to ride it again she very seriously said "NO". Even several hours later when normally she'd start to change her mind or consider overcoming her fears she said adamantly "No" but added that she might be ready "when I'm 10". Haha!
We eventually made our way to BTM which was a total winner! G loved it! Its now on her list of must do's.
We spent a lot of time in Toontown. I guess Josh hadn't been there since he was pretty little so he had lots of fun checking it all out. This picture of G cracks me up because its proof that she can do her modeling poses just about anywhere.
Oddly, one of the longest lines we encountered was to visit with Mickey... 30 mins. Umm, no thanks. But we did wander through the Mickey and Minnie houses and G stared into the wishing well there. I think this might be her favorite part of the park.
Having grabbed a Roger Rabbit fastpass on the way in, that ride was a walk on also. Again the standby line was like 30 mins which was so weird because the park was so empty. By this time, my Minnie and Friends breakfast was starting to not sit so well in my tummy so I passed on the spinny ride. G loves it so luckily she was able ride with Char and Josh.
Required group photo with Pluto
and who can resist Goofy
At that point my tummy was really not happy and G was starting to wind down. After passing off our fastpass tix we'd collected we split from Char and Josh (who went on to almost close the parks down!) and headed toward the exit. We encountered Gepetto on our way out for our final photo op of the day and off we went.
Although there were some hiccups it was a really good day. I'm so glad we were able to celebrate Josh's 10th birthday with him. Happy Birthday Josh!
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