THE BEST WEEK LONG BIRTHDAY PARTY EVER!!! The best part was we were all together! Trip Report: Sept 7th - 17th, 2008 **Updated 10/3** About This Page:

[I_am_Annie]

Fri., Sept 12, 2008
Mickey’s Not So Scary Hallowe’en Party

Murphy’s Toddler Law

The toddler’s determination to avoid naptime is directly proportionate to the degree of need for naptime to happen.

Naptime will happen when the toddler decides its naptime. Which will be exactly 10 minutes before you are due to leave for somewhere or have dinner.

This was the only day we decided to take an afternoon resort nap break. We left the Animal Kingdom around 1:30 pm and returned to the French Quarter to “ensure” that Aaron had a good nap so that he would enjoy the Hallowe’en Party.

As you can probably guess, that’s not what happened.

Aaron fell asleep about 20 minutes before we were due to head over to the Magic Kingdom for our 4:30 ADR at Liberty Tree Tavern. The Brightside of this was that at about 20 minutes is when we’re used to moving him into his own bed in the evenings so we knew that he would survive the transfer into the stroller. Bad news was that we couldn’t take the stroller onto the bus with him in it. So we’d have to carry him onto the bus and hope he stayed asleep.
Thankfully (for this reason) the bus was late. And, also thankfully, Aaron managed to stay asleep the entire bus ride and only woke up when we tried to get him back into the stroller at the Magic Kingdom and make our sprint to the restaurant. This gave him a good hour or so of a nap and it worked out perfectly. But it could have been so bad! (Needless to say, we didn’t take another return-to-the-resort-for-nap break the rest of our vacation. Aaron sleeps so well in our stroller that that seemed to work better for us.)

We arrived at the Liberty Tree Tavern about 15 minutes late for our ADR. When I went to the podium, I apologized and was a little perplexed by the host’s attitude. He was totally unimpressed and devoid of any personality. He immediately put me on edge and I didn’t know what to do. It was about this time that I noticed he was in make up. And costumed to look like one of the ghosts from the Haunted Mansion. It was also about this time that he must have noticed the confusion I felt because he pointed out the make up on his face and said “Pay attention. Pay attention to my face. Now go sit over there and wait till I call you.” He played his part REALLY WELL!

I left Marc with the buzzer and off I went with Aaron to change him and put his costume on before we were seated. (Being that he was still groggy from his nap, I had to carry him up the stairs. WOW! That was a workout!)

No sooner had I come out of the washroom with our “Mickey Mouse” than Marc was at the bottom of the stairs telling me that our table was ready. Once we were seated, Marc asked me if this was a character meal because he saw Chip ringing a bell in the dining room while we were in the bathroom. (It seems I had forgotten to mention that) I nodded my head yes.

And as if on cue, Chip came dancing around the corner. Hilarity ensued for the remainder of the meal with Goofy, Minnie, Pluto and Dale all making repeated appearances at our table. Aaron was however decidedly the worst behaved that he was the ENTIRE time on the trip. I’m not sure if this was due to the child at the next table who was in the throws a 40 minute long screaming fit, or because his nap had energized him enough that he wasn’t interested in sitting for supper. Or, in retrospect, it might even been because he was expecting as much action as there was at Tusker House in the morning. I don’t know.

Eventually, he did calm down some. (With the help of Goofy who was spending a lot of time talking to the (invisible) baby in the highchair.) It was difficult to pay attention to the food. But, I will tell you that I do remember that it was all AWESOME and our server (who had been serving there for many, many years) was fabulous with Aaron and just plain good at her job!






Once we were done, it was time for the party to begin so we were off to do some trick or treating and do a couple rides.

Our first ride of the evening was Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I waited outside with Aaron while Marc rode first. While he was inside, Aaron (who was people watching and looking for more Mickey confetti) ran over to me and said “I want to ride Pirates mommy.” He must have overheard someone else saying it. But it struck me as funny and I started to laugh. This drew the attention of the CMs at the entrance of Thunder Mountain and I explained what he had said and that he was only 2. Thankfully, they chuckled too because I was beginning to think they thought I was a crazy person!



Marc came off the ride and ecstatically proclaimed that there was no line up and that he was able to pick his seat. He also said that the CMs said that that was most likely how it was going to be around the park all night!
And it was! It was almost like having the entire Magic Kingdom to ourselves. We were able to walk on any ride we wanted without a wait (we did Fantasyland in its almost entirety in an hour and a half. We didn’t do Snow White).





(Waiting for Philharmagic. Marc wanted to show how many people there were around.)

And we were able to find a spot on the curb in front of the castle for the parade with only 10 minutes to spare. It was like a dream. After the parade, we headed over to Space Mountain, and there was a bit of a wait there. By this point, Aaron had fallen asleep and I didn’t feel like riding Space Mountain because I wanted to be sure to get into the Haunted Mansion during the party (It seemed fitting). (The Haunted Mansion had been closed earlier in the evening when we’d tried to ride it on our way to Fantasyland.)

Perhaps the funniest thing that happened to me that night (or even on the trip) happened while I was in the Haunted Mansion. Knowing we only had about 20 minutes till the ride shut down, Marc (being the dashing gentleman that he is...) let me go first.

Once again, I was able to walk right on to the ride without any wait. I wished we had gotten there earlier though because they had actors perched up on the hill surrounding the house chattering with the guests. It was really cool and I would have liked to watch a bit longer than I did. But, its a good thing I didn’t because had I, I don’t think I would have gotten on the ride.

And then, I wouldn’t have gotten to spend 10 minutes in the dining room observing everything while they CMs tried to find the “playful ghosts that had disrupted our ride.” At first I thought that perhaps the stop in the dining room was part of the refurb. But, once the recording about the ride being stopped played again, I knew that we were stopped. So I took the opportunity to examine and appreciate things. But, as time went on, I began to think about how long I had been on the ride an how the party was getting ready to end. I wondered if Marc would have to leave without me. And I felt bad that he wouldn’t be able to get on the ride that night as well.

They did eventually get the ride going again and soon enough I was back outside where Marc was talking to one of the managing CMs about merchandise for the party. Turned out that her father had worked in the Haunted Mansion and we discussed all of the things that I had noticed in the dining room, as well as a few other things that her father had told her about the HM too! She then told us to head over to Main Street so we could pick up some of the exclusive park merchandise. (She also offered to hold anything specific we’d seen too. But, we hadn’t been in any stores.) On our way from the mansion, we stopped to have our picture taken with the Doom Buggy. Then we were off to the Main Street Emporium where we picked out a pin and a photo frame.

Then it was back to the resort for some much needed shut eye because tomorrow was my birthday and we had BIG THINGS PLANNED!