(The producers wish to apologize for the unscheduled hiatus. The chief writer was called away for a more pressing project that actually paid money, then fell into a deep depression that turned to anger and is now just simmering bitterness following the royal hosing his team experienced in the NFC Championship Game. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.)
I grew up in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, the golden age of TV Sit-Coms when every problem (even on the “very special episodes”) could be fixed in 30 minutes. And so it was this day. A half hour after leaving the airport, we were pulling in to Old Key West. The four older kids had already arrived and had called and received our owners locker. They had also gone to the store in the main building to get a few items to stock the fridge. It was 7:30 pm, and our first FastPass window had just opened. Our timing for the bus to Magic Kingdom was perfect with the assistance of the app. The bus was surprisingly not crowded. Except for a minor issue with daughter’s friend at the tapstyle, everything went smoothly. We were on Main Street at 8:30 and made our way through the crowds to Mine Train. We got to the entrance with 5 minutes to spare in the grace period.
After the ride, we were all hungry. It had been a very long day by this point. It seems that we have established an unplanned tradition of eating a late dinner at Columbia Harbor House on arrival day every trip. This trip would be no exception. A few went upstairs to secure a table while three of us waited for our food. Mobile ordering for 8 people seemed too confusing after such a long day and the lines to order were very short. Within 5 minutes, My wife and son were carrying trays of food up the stairs followed by me with the tray of drinks ... without lids. I was thinking of the poor parents with young children who inevitably wind up with a lap full of Sprite, and the CM’s who are constantly sopping up soda after spills. I was thankful that I had an older group and we wouldn’t have to worry about that. We distributed the food and drinks among the two tables in close proximity. I sat down to my comforting familiar plate of fried shrimp and fries, pulling the tray with my dinner closer to my position at the table. SPLASH! My Diet Coke toppled over and spilled across the table. No one who knows me would call me an environmentalist, but they wouldn’t call me whatever the opposite of an environmentalist is either. For a brief moment, however, I became an advocate for every river-polluting, landfill-filling, whale-killing, global-warming, plastic-producing, rain forest-clearing industrialist that ever lived. Why couldn’t I have a lid on my drink?!? Two deep breaths (and two trees’ worth of napkins) later I acknowledged that I could have been more careful, and silently apologized for wanting to take up landfill space.
By 10:00 pm, we had made our way to Frontierland and redeemed our 2 other FastPasses that I had scrambled for earlier in the day- Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain. Splash ended up being our go-to additional FP on later days on the trip. It was always easy to secure. Thunder was the group favorite, and much tougher to get as an additional FastPass.
As we walked through Magic Kingdom throughout the evening, I kept commenting how light the crowds seemed. My wife and sons agreed. I don’t mean to say that it was like a day in September, but is certainly wasn’t a “ Oh-Hell-No!” day that some crowd calendar might predict for the Saturday night at Magic Kingdom between Christmas and New Year’s. I didn’t dwell on it, but just enjoyed it. The night was a very pleasant one, just warm enough to make the jeans I was wearing feel like a bad choice. Otherwise, we had space to move freely and never had to worry about getting separated (The incident with the fake monorail at MCO was still very fresh in our minds.)
Everyone was getting tired, but we decided to ride Pirates then Jingle Cruise with a 4th FastPass before heading out. I’m not a fan of the holiday overlay, but all were amused by our Skipper. It was almost 11:00 pm when we disembarked. It was time to go. We had an early morning rope-drop to make at Hollywood Studios. We waited a very short time for our OKW bus and were back at our room by midnight. Our luggage was waiting just inside the door. I quickly changed from jeans to shorts and didn’t see my jeans again until the night before we went home when I packed them back in the suitcase.
As everyone settled in, I informed them of the ungodly hour they would have to wake. I assured them they would all have time to rest, nap or relax later, but we had to get up early for the plan to work. Though I never heard it, I’m pretty certain there were whisperings of “Your Dad is crazy.” I did not give it a second thought. I knew they’d be convinced by the end of the next day