While celebrating Papa's 70th BDay, Jim was introduced to his dad's, schoolmate's husband. Never met the guy, but Jim can conjure up a good conversation with a rhino, if he wanted to. Found out this guy, Herb, has worked for Disney for almost 40 years. He offered us tickets to go, Jim politely declined, but Herb was relentless, thankfully. He got 3 free tickets each month and didn't mind giving them to us, at all.
Ok, so this is where God was doing back flips trying to get our attention with a blessing and we had better realize it or it's our own fault for missing out. So, we took Herb up on his generous offer. Our magical blessing was a trip to the Magic Kingdom, generous compliments of Herb.
We started on what I truly remember the most, the monorail. For some reason, that part always stuck out in my mind, maybe because it was the beginning and the end to Disney.
We went to the carousel first and got to visit 90% of the kid-friendly rides. The tea cups were being worked on and Peter Pan was a 35 minute wait. We were so spoiled that 35 minutes was way out of the question.
We were so blessed to have the longest wait be only 15 minutes, and that was the Dumbo ride. Herb gave us some great advice on the best times of the year to visit Disney, best times of the week and also which rides to visit first.
No, Jim did not want to ride the race cars by himself...
Katherine will tell you her favorite part was meeting the princesses. She was a tad bit nervous, as I would be if I were given the chance to meet my ultimate hero in person.
We couldn't pass up It's a Small World. That ride we walked onto the boats, no wait.
Nathan was excited to ride Winnie the Pooh.
The Magic Carpets of Aladdin ride was starting to inch into nap time for little man.
I was looking for a ride that I didn't have to get off and on and we could just go around and around in circles, so I thought a ride on the train would do it. Nope, too interesting and noisy. Aha! I thought. I put Daddy in charge of Little Lady and took Nathan to the People Mover. Just in case you were wondering, each round trip is approximately 9 minutes and 45 seconds long and when there are no lines, the nice people at Disney will let you ride around and around with a sleeping baby until you need to get off. He started off slumped against my side and by the end of the ride, he was lying down on the seat and I was on the opposite side with my feet propped up to prevent him from falling off. All the girls manning the entrance/exit would ahhhhh over how cute it was to see a sleeping child on the People Mover. We were almost on a first name basis after passing by them a total of 5 times. We made 4 round trips and he got in a good 35 minute nap. Thank goodness. He was close to melt down.
While Nathan and I were making around rounds, Jim took Katherine to visit Toon Town again and also watch the Country Bear Jamboree.
We managed to make it to almost 7pm with 4 very tired family members. Katherine will still tell you to this day that we went to the Real Disney. You see, for a couple of years now we've been taking them down to Downtown Disney, which is free, and eventually the name was truncated to Disney. So when it was time to explain to her where we were going, I made the mistake of saying the Real DisneyWorld, so it stuck.
I was most impressed with how friendly the workers were. They were helpful and courteous. I think the last time I went was in high school for Night of Joy and the time before that was probably middle school age. Jim has a hard time remembering the last time he went to Disney, but he can remember the last trip to Epcot, sometime in the mid-80's I think. So, this was a big treat for us as well. Getting to see it all through our children's eyes, not having to wait in long lines, having the tickets paid for, things going pretty smoothly.
Adding 20 years of "wisdom" onto my last visit (and I use that term loosely), also brought a new perspective for me looking at the theme park as a wanna-be entrepreneur. Walt Disney was a brilliant man. He had a vision and built an empire in the swamp land of Florida. To this day, just the mention of Disney, almost anyplace around the world, conjures up magical feelings and wonderful childhood memories for most. One of my big moments of awe happened while waiting to visit the princesses. I noticed a portion of the walls were made of corrugated green house panels. They were painted pink, with painted golden stars scattered about and a light shone behind the panels to make them glow. How simple was that? For all these years, in my mind the buildings in Disney were also magic. And now, I see how common household objects that you can buy at Home Depot were used to put the whole place together. Sounds silly, I know, but rather ground-breaking for my tiny brain.
Thank you Lord for blessing us with generous friends, quiet car rides, patient kids, short lines, an area for naptime, good food, friendly visitors, exhausted kids and tired feet. It truly was a magical day.
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