vacation-part2b

Since Brent was in conference and I'm not crazy enough to take all the kids into a park for rides alone, we headed to DowntownDisney for shopping. Bennett had asked incessantly about shopping at the Lego store there and I'd put off buying stuff in the parks that we'd have to tote around all day by saying we'd shop in the big store in DD. So we did.

There was also a huge Maleficent dragon outside the Lego store, but I didn't get a picture of it.

The best place to get real time with characters is dining. We were fortunate to be at a resort where Cinderella and her posse dined each evening. And Mary Poppins, Alice and the MadHatter, along with Pooh and Tigger had breakfast there each morning.

was there any question that she'd have to dance with Prince Charming?

a little bit of a comical side note -- everything you read tells you to book your dining reservations 180 days in advance. I don't like that for many reasons, the biggest being, what if we are in line for a great ride or are just not hungry -- at those prices somebody better eat a bunch. So, Brent contacted the conceirge for us to get some dinner reservations. He, without laughing out loud, said there were no reservations that evening in the entire park/resort. Many of you know me well and know stuff like that only fuels my determination (not necessarily a good character trait). Anyway, we promptly walked to the restuarant at our resort soon after Brent had finished his conference for the day. We asked for a table and were given a pager with a 45 minute wait. No biggie since it was technically still the "early bird special" hour. We had fun in a shop and looking at our photopass pictures until the pager went off and we were seated for dinner.

AND FINALLY

It was the first Star Wars weekend of the summer. (we honestly had no idea until right before we left town.) And on this weekend the new/remodeled Star Tours ride opened. Our buddy, JMc, whom we spent the first part of vacation with, worked on this stuff for months. Apparently, as he told us, he used our family as an example several times when someone would say, "the moms don't get into it," or the like. Now, since we knew the day would be crazy Brent agreed to get up early, go to Hollywood and get fastpasses for the family. Well, that didn't work out just right. Lucky for us the ride honors the "rider switch" when your family has a member who is too small to ride -- it let's the one left behind with the small fry go through the fastpass line when the other family memebers are done. So, Bish, our peanut, was too small for this ride even though (through his tears) he tried the Jedi mind trick on the cast member, saying, "You will let me ride this ride." They must have been Toydarians bc they claimed the Jedi mind tricks didn't work on them, but it ended up that everyone (but Bish) got to ride by days end. I suppose this is a big deal bc it was opening day.

some characters we got to see walking around, and some we stood in line to meet and get autographs


some we took pictures OF bc the lines were very long (and got shots of other people's kids)

and some we just accosted and snapped a picture with
this is for all the Star Wars fans (if the Toydarian remark wasn't enough):
Jedi wave of the hand - "the droids you are looking for are not in this trash container."