Me And My Boy Take 2 - Day 4 Walmart, Hollywood Studios & AKL

[meandmyboy]

Friday 14th November - Day 4 Walmart, Hollywood Studios & AKL

Jacob woke me at 5.40am this morning! I was gutted as I had been sleeping really soundly up until that point. I sent him back to his bed and managed to doze until 6.30am at which point we got up. I got ready whilst Jacob watched the Disney Junior channel. We don’t have Sky at home so he never gets to watch these programmes but he was soon a big fan of Doc McStuffins, Jake & The Neverland Pirates and even Sofia the First! He also watched Octonauts and Chuggington which he watches at home on Cbeebies, and found it hilarious that the characters all sounded different (they had been re-voiced with American accents for some strange reason).

We shared a yummy oatmeal and raisin cookie for breakfast, leftover from our Earl of Sandwich meal yesterday, and then left the room just after 8am. It was a bit of a dreary start to the day - cold and rainy and overcast. As we were headed to Hollywood Studios today but it didn’t open until 9am and our first fastpass wasn’t until 10am I decided we should go to Walmart first. The journey was fairly straight forward - I’d worked out the route using my Mapman map (which is brilliant and meant I didn’t need to use my satnav once on this trip) but I hadn’t realised that I would hit a toll as I exited the road near Vineland Avenue. It was an unmanned till and I was 25c short...I simply had no other coins so I just had to drive off! This set off the siren and lights flashing on the toll booth and I felt like a right criminal and started worrying what Alamo might charge me for all of this! Incidentally, later this day I found out that someone had got a hold of my credit card details and was trying to use them to buy various flights around the world so my credit card company after checking with me they weren’t legitimate charges had put a block on my card. A bit of a pain for it to happen whilst on holiday but I had all my money in cash and on my Fairfx card so it didn’t actually affect me, and it meant that whatever charges Alamo might have wanted to charge me they couldn’t as the card they had on file had now been cancelled!

We got to Walmart and I stuck Jacob in a trolley so I could browse in peace without having to keep one eye on where he’d wandered off too! I had bribed Jacob with the promise I’d buy him a diecast of Chug from Disney’s Planes if he behaved himself, but I left the toy shopping until the end of our visit and started off with a nice look around the clothes, art supplies and food sections. I love browsing in the supermarkets and I'd seriously be the size of a house if I lived in America with all the amazing food options they have.

I bought three multipacks of my favourite American candy bars - Paydays - some Christmas chocolates, including Ghiradelli squares in special Holiday flavours and some sweet flavoured Pringles. I also bought some candy corn as I’ve always wanted to try this! I added a big case of bottled water to our trolley too so I wouldn’t have to use snack credits in the parks and checked out the price of melatonin tablets for a friend. Then we hit up the toys. I found Jacob a Chug toy but then he saw the fire truck from the Planes 2 film (Ryker?) and suddenly wanted that instead. I said we’d price check it as I wasn’t sure how much it was. I also found Thomas Take and Play trains for bargain prices but restricted myself to buying just one train (as I already had another four in my Amazon.com delivery which had arrived yesterday!).

Finally we had a browse round the Christmas decorations but didn’t see anything I fancied, so we went to the check out and I decided to buy the fire truck Jacob wanted. Then we headed back to the car. It was still looking pretty miserable weather-wise and I thought we should probably pop back to the hotel to get jumpers/raincoats but I knew it would be such a faff walking back and fro from the car to the room at Jacob’s pace so as we were about to pass Hollywood Studios on the way back to our hotel I thought stuff it so we headed into the park instead.

We parked up in Film27 and were lucky enough to be on the end closest to the trams. By now the rain had stopped but it was still overcast and a bit chilly. We just missed out on the first tram but another came along quickly and we were on our way. Got through bag check and into the park by 10.15am. Our fastpass for Little Mermaid was valid until only 10.20am so I made Jacob rush over there. When he found out where we were going he started to whine as he is scared of Ursula (and loud noises). I reassured him it would be okay and told him to put his hands over his ears if it was too loud (which he then did the whole way through the show!). I think he enjoyed it though. Our next fastpass was for the Indiana Jones stunt show which we didn’t do last time, but Jacob didn’t want to do it and I thought perhaps he wouldn’t enjoy it as I knew it would be noisy, so decided to give it a miss.

Jacob asked what was through the building next to us which was the Animation Center. We never went there last time but when he heard you could draw the characters he wanted to go...so we did! We had a brief look around the gallery and Jacob recognised some background scenes from the Winnie the Pooh movie, then we sat and waited to be let into the animation class. Whilst we waited Jacob enjoyed trying to guess what was being drawn on the overhead screens. Eventually we were allowed in and everyone had to vote between drawing Piglet, Eeyore or Tigger. Jacob really wanted to draw Eeyore so we both voted for him, but Tigger won with a large majority vote. Jacob couldn’t reach the paper from the seat so he sat on my knee and shared my paper. We both had fun drawing Tigger and Jacob made everyone in the class laugh when he kept talking loudly saying how he’d wanted to draw Eeyore not Tigger and how his picture was rubbish because it was messy! I thought his looked really good though and was also quite pleased with my end result. The class was good fun and not something I expected to be able to do whilst Jacob was still so young.

After the class we had some fun playing with the colouring screens and then had our picture taken with Sorceror Mickey.

By now I felt it was time for a restroom break but trying to get Jacob to go for a wee was like pulling teeth - he was trying to open the door, screaming, crying, and I ended up getting mad and started shouting at him. It was just rubbish. In the end I had to threaten him with the loss of his newly bought Disney fire truck if he didn’t go, and then of course it turned out that he did in fact need a wee. Aaaaarrrggghhhh!

After all that messing around our fastpass slot for Toy Story Mania was now up so we made our way round to there - surprised to see a queue for the fastpass entrance! It wasn’t a long wait though and we were soon on the ride which Jacob loved! It was such good fun.

By this time my tummy was rumbling as we’d not really had a proper breakfast and by now it was gone 12pm, so we walked around to Pizza Planet. I was going to stop for photos with Mike & Sulley (but Jacob said he wouldn’t have a picture with them as there wasn’t a Monster’s Inc ride) and Lightening McQueen and Mater (but Jacob was scared of their engine noises) so we didn’t do either. There was a bit of a queue at Pizza Planet but it moved quickly enough. I had pepperoni pizza and pumpkin spice cupcake with a root beer whilst Jacob had cheese pizza, chocolate milk and a cookie. Good healthy stuff!

By the time we’d finished our lunch it was 1pm so I thought it was a good time to leave and go back to the hotel for Jacob’s nap. Near the exit I stopped to look in a shop at a Christmas ornament that had caught my eye in the shop window. I really liked the look of it but at £50 I was not sure, so I left it. We then got a quick photopass picture taken with the Mickey hat in the background before heading out of the park.

We missed the tram by seconds so had to wait for the next one, but luckily that one left promptly. Once back at the car we drove back to the hotel and brought the shopping up to the room. It was just after 2pm by now and Jacob actually fell asleep without much fuss (except he kept on asking if the sound of people flushing their toilets was fireworks for some weird reason!). He’d been nodding asleep in the car on the drive back so I wasn’t surprised. He woke just before 3.30pm - I’d been reading on my iPad and catching up with email and after waking Jacob played on his iPad whilst i wrote up my trip notes.

We left the room just after 4pm and drove over to Animal Kingdom Lodge to check out the animals and have dinner at The Mara. Our hotel was really close to Animal Kingdom so it wasn’t a long drive. We parked up and walked into Jambo House. This was my first visit to AKL and I loved the look of this resort - I wish I could afford for us to stay here! We walked through the lobby and out the back to look at the savannah and animals. Jacob loved seeing and counting the animals and some were quite close to the fences so we had a really good view. We got chatting to a cast member who was telling us what the animals were and then asked us where we were from. He asked if I’d been to Disneyland Paris and then he told us how to find the other savannah area. So we headed back through the lobby and took the lift down to the pool/restaurant area. We wandered around to look at the flamingos and other animals but it was really starting to get dark by now. We’d passed the children’s playground so I said Jacob could stop for a play but soon it was almost too dark to see him though so we made our way back towards the restaurants.

I have to say Boma looked rammed and was really hectic, in comparison The Mara was quiet and much calmer and we had no problem getting a table. I went for the bacon angus burger and fries with a coke and zebra domes and Jacob had chicken nuggets and fries with a chocolate pudding and apple juice. Jacob wolfed his fries down but then started messing around with his chicken nuggets and ended up dropping three of the nuggets on the floor. This made me cross so I told him he couldn’t have his pudding and we left with him crying

By the time we got to the car he was fine and when we got back to our hotel room he enjoyed watching Abney & Teal on the iPad for a while before bed. This evening he settled down fairly well apart from a minor bit of messing around, and me telling him I didn’t want to hear another peep out of him. Funny thing was when he woke up in the morning the first thing he said to me was “I went straight to sleep with no messing about and any more peeps didn’t I?”!

[Guest]

I know what you mean about Walmart I need a whole extra suitcase for goodies we buy to take home !

In all the years we have been going we have never five the drawing class think now dd6 is old enough she may enjoy it

We are going to Saana looking forward to walkibg round AKL again one of our favourite resorts

Looking forward to your next day

[WileyCoyote]

Oh a great day,apart from the loo trauma, it must be hard for you but you seem you have so much patience , bless him. Those tolls are a pain, I must admit I always set the satnav now to avoid them after we got an extra charge a couple of years ago. Not so good about the credit card fraud though. Hope that was all sorted ok. AKL sounds so lovely too.
Hope the little fella sleeps in tomorrow ! I did like his " no peeps " comment the next day, must have made you laugh .

[sheluk]

Really enjoying your report and an excellent tiger!

[meandmyboy]

Originally Posted by DisneyMadFan

I know what you mean about Walmart I need a whole extra suitcase for goodies we buy to take home !

In all the years we have been going we have never five the drawing class think now dd6 is old enough she may enjoy it

We are going to Saana looking forward to walkibg round AKL again one of our favourite resorts

Looking forward to your next day

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I did actually end up buying an extra suitcase! Oh you must try the drawing class it was such good fun. I was so pleased to get to do it as I thought I'd need to wait until he was a lot older before he'd be up for it.

Originally Posted by WileyCoyote

Oh a great day,apart from the loo trauma, it must be hard for you but you seem you have so much patience , bless him. Those tolls are a pain, I must admit I always set the satnav now to avoid them after we got an extra charge a couple of years ago. Not so good about the credit card fraud though. Hope that was all sorted ok. AKL sounds so lovely too.
Hope the little fella sleeps in tomorrow ! I did like his " no peeps " comment the next day, must have made you laugh .

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God the loo trauma continued throughout the holiday and was one of the most stressful parts of it. Every toilet break felt like a battle! Yep credit card all sorted as soon as I got home and at least a little bonus was avoiding any potential toll charges/fees!

Originally Posted by sheluk

Really enjoying your report and an excellent tiger!

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Thank you!

[roxie2001]

Fantastic drawings of tigger by both of you. We haven't tried the class at hollywood studios, but they have one in disney quest, so joined in that a couple of times.

[Pavilion1983]

Another great day