Saturday, September 30, 2017

A Disney Story

Disney, 2017.

The wife and I have been wanting to hit up Disney during Halloween for a number of years now.  The Trick-or-Treating (or really, the get a whole shit ton of candy to make up for your entrance fee in just a few hours), The special fireworks and the parade.

Truth be told we just love Disney and every single time we head to California the two of us, at the very least, hit up Downtown Disney to walk around and browse the stores then eat dinner at the Jazz Kitchen and catch the fireworks before we go back to the hotel and, eventually, head home.

We also both love Halloween and try to go all out and hit up a lot of local stops every single year during the season so we have been waiting to combine the two seasons for quite some time.

The wife found the dates that Disney labeled as "Special Attraction" and booked it for the ourselves and the children and it just so happened to fall on my birthday.

Disney does not disappoint, it is truly a magical place and I hope to raise my Toddler and the future baby serge properly so that they also love going to Disney and just enjoying a day hanging out with moms and pops.  I guess only time will tell if that happens or not.


So we get to Disney and there are 5 of us.
Myself, the Wife and Toddler and the two 12 year olds (ours and a nephew).

The wife and I wanted to take the toddler to see all the Cars stuff because that is what he is into and we decided the 12 year olds could go off on their own as one had a phone like device and we could keep in touch.
We would meet up for Dinner and finish the evening together.

So, we split and started to enjoy our days.
The toddler loved the Mater "cow" ride and made me ride it with him multiple times.  In fact, the 2nd time I recorded him during the entire ride just to have his reactions because he had so much fun doing it.
We also got to go meet Mater and McQueen and get our pictures taken with each which was pretty enjoyable even though the toddler was starting to get tired and, thus, moody.

We walked around a lot and eventually headed over to the original side so we could look at more and start the candy gathering.

After we filled a couple of bags the wife decided that she was starving and we went to get in touch with the 12 year olds.
No answer.
No answer
No answer
After about 30 minutes the wife starts to worry some.  We can't get a hold of them and her phone is acting up so if they try to call us it won't be successful.  We contact the nephew's mom so that she can use her tracking app and it is not getting a signal.

I decide that since our 12 year old loves the Indiana Jones ride we should head over there because there was a good chance (better than 50%) that they would end up over that way at some point because he would want to hit up that ride multiple times.
We wait around and nothing so the wife heads to the "Lost Parents" area to report that even though they aren't lost we were having phone issues and couldn't contact them and to have them call me if the kids got worried and went there.

Meanwhile the wife is calling her sister to help out and asking me if I have seen them and at this point I hear them announcing that the ride is down for maintenance and will be up shortly (this explains the lack of line which I did not notice until now).
So I'm pacing back and forth with a sleeping toddler in a stroller and the wife is starting to freak out when the boys walk up to me like nothing happened.

This was about an hour after we started to try to get in touch with them.

I ask them where they were and it turns out they spent the last hour on the Indiana Jones ride because it broke down when they were about half way through.  We couldn't get in touch with them because they were not receiving a signal because of where they were stranded.

From there we hit up Dinner at the Jazz Kitchen, watched the fireworks, the 12 year olds got a TON of candy and then we saw the parade and went back to the hotel.

Out of everything, other than watching the face of my toddler, I absolutely loved the fireworks and the Halloween presentation.
This is something we want to do again and probably by ourselves to truly enjoy the entire experience without having to worry about diapers, tracking children and every other distraction that comes with bringing a bunch of brats along.


TLDR:
Can't find kids
Go to kids favorite ride
They show up because they were stranded on said ride
Everything worked out
Happily ever after