I was suprised at how far away from everything Wally World actually is. It took a good 20 minutes to drive there, and our condo was really on the south end of the "strip" that is International Drive. Once we reached the complex, it took a bit more time to make our way to the Magic Kingdom. It's amazing how much of Florida has become the private property of Disney Corp. It's almost scary. It's like entering The Vatican, a country within a country with it's own infrastructure, customs, and laws.
We received a "Diamond Club" parking voucher from AAA (about the only tangible benefit to our membership for this trip, besides a handful of road maps). This afforded us a reasonably close parking spot, next to the handicapped lot. We walked to the ticketing/transportation center to buy our extra tickets.
Getting into Wally World aint cheap. We looked for discount tickets, but just about everyone who we talked to basically laughed at us when we told them we were only interested in single day tickets. If you want to commit to a multi-day, park-hopper, gold-star, Disney addict package, then you can get a discount. Otherwise, you pay full price. We weren't going to be in Orlando long enough to spend more than a day enjoying their brand of hospitality. By the way, a 10-year-old is an adult in the eyes of Disney Corp, so we had to purchase two children and one more adult ticket. ka-CHING.Once we got past the cash register, the kids were excited to see the Monorail which was available to transport the patrons and their now lighter wallets into the parks themselves. The girls were on the lookout for "hidden Mickeys", and spotted a topiary mouse right away.
Elzie asked the opinion of a "cast member", who suggested we take the ferry boat across to the Magic Kingdom, and save the speedier but less scenic Monorail ride for the trip back. We boarded the "Sargeant Joe Potter" and crossed the pond to the Theme Park. Kaybee remembers seeing Cinderella's Castle from the ferry boat on the trip over - I think that's when they finally realized that we were actually there.Elzie stopped to rent a stroller immediately after disembarking from Sgt. Joe. $10 for the day (No, it wasn't motorized or made of solid gold or anything). It came in very handy most of the day for transporting our backpack cooler. The four-year-old wasn't having anything to do with it, however. She screamed as if we were torturing her whenever we tried to force her to ride in it. (The 7-year-old did get a ride in it on our way out of the park that evening...)
Finally we were in! We headed for Fantasyland, per Elzie's master plan. The youngest spotted the carousel right away and decided that was for her. All the girls rode while Arby parked the stroller (the main activity for the stroller was parking it and retrieving it). We grabbed a "FastPass" for the Peter Pan ride, and waited in line for the flying Dumbos. It was beastly hot and humid, so we broke out the frozen water bottles while waiting in line. I was worried that they might still be solid blocks of ice, but I needn't have. They had melted quite nicely. We also enjoyed mini raisin/cinnamon bagles from the cooler bag. Bringing those was a great idea - score one more point for Elzie. 
7-year-old wasn't sure she wanted to ride the flying Dumbos. In fact, she was quite sure she was NOT going to. 20-30 minutes later, when we finally got close to the ride, she changed her mind and agreed to sit with her Mom. Little bit and number-one-daughter sat together, and Dad snuck out to the exit to avoid flying alone in his own baby elephant. I could just imagine a pained look on Dumbo's face as he struggled to bear my weight and remain airborne. We spent most of the morning in Fantasyland, riding Peter Pan, Small World, and the teacup ride. We took short side trips into Frontierland and Adventureland, but mostly hovered around Fantasyland, which had most of the rides our younger kids wanted to ride. The FastPass thing was handy - with careful planning, we were able to wait in-person for one ride while simultaneously and virtually waiting in another line with the FastPass.
The park was unbelievably crowded, especially in Fantasyland, where you could barely push your way across the street. We expected the crowds in October to be less than during the summer. We later were reminded that it was Columbus Day weekend, which means nothing to me, but many schools and some businesses are on a three-day weekend for Columbus Day. It was also a Sunday, so maybe we should have planned to go on Tuesday.
Eldest daughter says she enjoyed the Dumbo ride, but next time would choose instead to ride the Magic Carpet ride in Adventureland. It's the same ride, basically, but the lines are shorter for the Magic Carpet ride. Even Dad rode that one (for some reason, three of us squeezed onto one carpet. Some strong magic, indeed!)
We had lunch at Pecos Bill's in Frontierland, which was basically just a hamburger joint, but they had a great "works" bar, including freshly grilled onions and mushrooms. The big girls split a double cheeseburger, which was plenty of food for them. The grownups got single burgers (cheapest menu item) with carrot sticks instead of french fries. We had a virtual salad from the works bar of shredded lettuce, tomatoes, onions and mushrooms. Youngest had a cold chicken dinner with fries, all of which she spurned. We ended up carrying most of it around in our cooler for the rest of the day. (We eventually threw it away just before we left for the beach!) The place was very crowded, and we were unable to find a table in the air conditioning, so we eventually settled for a small table outside. It was in the shade, but still hot. We were accompanied for lunch by a large, white, stork-like bird who apparently had developed a taste for french fries. The girls thought it was very cool.Afternoon found us wringing wet from the heat and humidity, and we started to frequent the indoor shows. We visited Mickey's Philharmagic, which we all enjoyed. It's a 3-D movie (you are issued polarized 3-D glasses on the way in, which don't give you vertigo like the red/blue variety). In addition, your other senses are stimulated with smells (apple pie!), lightening flashes, puffs of "wind", and splashes of water at appropriate times in the 'story'. We all agreed that this was the one attraction worth doing again.
We also took in the "Enchanted Tiki Room" show, which was an animatronic musical review featuring parrots and other birds, including a "Tiki God". Number-one-daughter was creeped out by the animatronics. But the air conditioning was wonderful. The show included a number of recognizable voices, including Phil Hartmann and Don Rickles in the pre-show warm-up, and Gilbert Godfried reprising his role from Aladdin. The walls came alive at one point, when integrated totem poles started singing doo-wop tunes.
Mom really liked the "Small World" ride. Arby thought it was like a bad experience with psycho-active mushrooms.
After visiting the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, we stumbled upon a parade in Frontierland where all the princesses and many other characters drove by in huge plastic bubbles (a la Pope-mobile). I allowed seven-year-old to view the show on my shoulders. Man was I sore afterwards - but it gave me an excuse to fire up the jacuzzi again!
We rode the train around the park, and stopped to play at the play area next to the train station for just a little while. We also visited "Minnie's House", which was somewhat bizzarre.
Four-year-old kept asking when Cinderella was "going to be home". We finally made it to the afternoon "Cinderellabration" show. It was a play, ostensibly detailing the Cinderella story immediately after the "happily ever after" cop-out ending. We witnessed a re-enactment of the coronation of Cinderella as Princess of Charmingland, and all the other Princesses were invited (including Jas-a-min from Arabia, Snow White, and even Ariel from the ocean depths). The kids and mom really seemed to enjoy this, but eldest angel was getting tired and was less than patient with the grown ups who kept standing to block her view (especially Mr. Black-haired dude in the black shirt who had apparently lost the ability to bend at the waist).We went around the castle after the show to research having dinner in the castle. Well, it turns out that you need to make reservations way ahead of time to do that. So, we discussed it for a while, and decided to head back through the castle and down the steps to Futureland, for a ride on the Buzz Lightyear ride. At the bottom of the steps, Elzie noticed that our family was one short. Seven-year-old had grown bored with the discussion and her attention wandered off before the conclusion. Somehow she didn't make the trip through the castle, and when she found herself alone, she had no clue where we were headed. We had been herding these kids like border collies all day, and it was only inevitable that one would slip through. Elzie tracked down a uniformed security guard and explained the situation. I retraced our steps up to the Cinderella restaurant, hoping that middle child would take that route. I didn't find her, but when I returned to the castle, she was there with the security guard and Elzie. What a relief! She had wandered off toward the carousel, started crying, and caught the attention of a kind park patron who handed her off to a cast member. Elzie found her walking back to the castle with this large, black man named Sydney, snatched her and hugged her, then hugged Sydney, then hugged the security guard. She was hugging everyone in sight. Libby got a hug from her Dad too. Unfortunately, the experience didn't sharpen anyone's desire to remain unlost, and we had to redouble our efforts to keep track of the brood for the rest of the evening.
After that, we ventured to Futureland to ride the Buzz Lightyear ride. The kids were wearing out at this point. This was another opportunity to enjoy air conditioning. The ride itself was something about shooting aliens with laser cannons or something like that, but I do vividly recall that the air was nice and cool.
It was time to start thinking about dinner - it was past 7:00 by now, and the kids were tired and hungry. Eldest developed a "leg cramp", and I had to go in search of Tylenol for her. All of the "real" restaurants had run out of seating by this point in the evening. If you go, and you plan to eat at a sit-down restaurant for dinner, make plans well ahead of time. Nobody had shared this bit of a posteriori knowledge with us, so we had to settle for a small cafe table on main street. We ended up eating hot dogs and ice cream while the sun set and we watched the parade up Main Street to the castle. (There was a chinese place up the steps from us, and the food actually looked pretty good, but nobody was in the mood for chinese after last night's fiasco.)
We weren't right on the street, but we had a pretty good view, and Elzie decided that we were also in an excellent position to view the upcoming fireworks, as we had a clear view of the castle. So we camped out at that table for the next two hours, just resting, relaxing, eating junk food, and waiting for the fireworks show. We practically had to force the kids to stay there - they had had enough and were hot and tired and ready to head for home. "Sit down here and eat your ice cream!"
Cinderella's castle was lit with colored flood lights for the parade, and the lights kept changing hue throughout the festivities. The floats were all lit up, so it was easy to spot them from our viewpoint. After the parade, we sat and waited for at least 45 minutes for the fireworks show to start. Just before 9:00, Elzie decided she had to have some popcorn, so she left with the eldest. Of course, the show started while she was waiting in the long, slow-moving popcorn line. She missed a good 15 minutes of fireworks - I couldn't believe that she was missing it after 1.5 hours of fending off people wanting to steal our chairs, here I was sitting there during the show not using them. Anyway, she did eventually make it back to watch the show.After the fireworks, everyone did the same thing as us - headed for the exit. We turned in our stroller, and headed for the Monorail. The line was UNBELIEVABLY long, and we were sure we were in for a two hour wait. We were all very impressed with the organization and speed with which everyone was loaded into the train and whisked away. It wasn't a bad wait at all.
Finally, at around 11:00pm, we made it back to Grande Vista. Everyone slept long and well that evening, as we had planned nothing but relaxation for the following day.
What did we do on Day 4?...
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