Team Groves are Florida Bound! October 2017 Day 7

[berniegroves]

Day 7:
Thursday 12th October 2017
Magic kingdom, pirates league and be our guest

I had to drag myself out of bed this morning as we were once again making the trek over to magic kingdom. Oh how I love this park! But I do hate the faff of getting there!

We managed to chase the kids around and succeeded in getting them fed and dressed and looking fairly presentable. We were slightly late leaving the villa but even so we were pulling into the magic kingdom carpark at 8.30am.
A little later than I’d hoped but perfectly respectable.
I took a photo of Simon paying the parking attendant because he always makes me do it. I’m so socially awkward that even this minimum amount of interaction stresses me out! He’s been known to join a longer queue just so it’s on my side!

But today the one on his side had no queue at all so he had no choice.

We parked in Simba and walked over to the TTC to get the monorail. We were entering the actual park at 9am.

We walked up Main Street and through the castle out into Fantasyland.

Our first stop today was the carousel as the kids had both asked to go on it. So on it we went. There isn’t much to say about this. It’s a carousel, albeit a very very pretty one.
Both Miley and Grayson loved it and that’s what counts.

We decided to go and meet Elena and Cinderella whilst we were here, so we joined their queue at about 9.30 and we were entering the room and meeting the first of the two princesses at 9.50. So a 20 minute wait which is the longest I care to wait really if I can help it.

Elena of Avalor was up first. We loved this meet and greet and thought Elena was lovely. I really think they’ve done an amazing job with her dress! It’s so beautiful! And they had smaller versions in the shops for kids, i was really tempted to get one for Miley because they were so pretty; and we don’t have any shop bought princess dresses!
Both Miley and Grayson had fun talking to her and she loved that she had her own page in their autograph book.
She was a big hit!

Cinderella was up next and she was a big let down after the fun interaction with Elena.
We’ve always had really lacklustre meets with Cinderella, is it always like that because of her personality? Or have we just been unlucky?

The kids came away happy enough, but Elena was the clear favourite from the two!

We spent 5 minutes looking in the gift shop as Grayson had spending money burning a hole in his pocket! He wanted a set of Elena figures so we said we’d come back and get them later if that was still what he wanted at the end of the day.

We had a fastpass for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad that we were keen to get to. But on the way over there we bumped into Mary Poppins with no queue at all. So it would have been rude to not stop and say hello.

We have never had a bad meet and greet with Mary Poppins. They are always so much fun and she really interacts so well with the kids (I guess she should if she’s a nanny!). She also commented on her autograph page in the kids books which they were pleased with. She asked if I made it and said I was a very clever mummy - well thank you very much for saying so Mary Poppins! :-)

We all came away from this interaction with smiles on our faces and feeling very pleased that we had been lucky enough to catch her with no queue.

We now made a very quick dash around to big thunder mountain railroad which we caught just before the end of our fastpass time and luckily we only had a 5 minute wait before we were on, yippee.
This ride was once again a big hit with both of the kids.

After this we walked back around towards Pirates of the Caribbean and we took the kids into the toilets to get changed. They were both booked into the Pirates League at 10.30 so we had then put on their respective (home made) outfits.
Mileys mermaid dress ended up being too big for her which was a pain! But she wanted to wear it anyway and she did look adorable. Bless her heart.

But I was super pleased with how Graysons pirate outfit turned out as I’d not made anything like that before.
Incidentally since the holiday this is his most worn outfit. He will randomly go upstairs and put it on all by himself!

Anyway, outfits on and we went and checked in.


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[berniegroves]

... continued from above...

So it was Mileys birthday whilst we were in Florida and it was Graysons birthday a week after we got home. Initially I’d wanted the holiday to cover both their birthdays. But when pricing up flights it had been over £1000 extra to be there for Graysons birthday. So we had to miss it. To make up for that, we allocated him today as his celebration day and the Pirates League was his birthday treat.

Miley wanted the mermaid makeover and Grayson chose his pirate makeover from the options available. They then did a little ceremony where Grayson got given his pirate name;

**Benjamin Gunskull**

And a little ceremony was done for Miley too. But from memory I don’t think she got given a mermaid name.

We then went through to the main room and waited for their names to be called. Grayson was collected by a female pirate and then a male pirate came to collect Miley.
I could see Miley was worried about this initially but she found the male pirate funny in the end, but still didn’t relax enough to actually speak to him.

Both pirates spoke to the kids as they did their make up and had some funny jokes which made us all laugh. Halfway through they told the room that it was Graysons birthday and so all the pirates sang an awesome birthday song to him. I wish I’d been able to film it as it was fab, but I literally cannot remember a word of how it went. Grayson just sat in his chair grinning to himself the whole time!

I’d assumed that Miley would be finished first but Graysons pirate make up apparently didn’t take long at all and he was the first one finished. It was announced to the room that Benjamin Gunskull was all ready.
We took a photo of him with his pirate make up artist at his request. She really was fab and did such a good job with him.

Mileys took longer and the guy had to work a bit harder as Miley was totally silent the entire time bless her. He was really trying to make her laugh.
He asked if she wanted glitter on her forehead and she nodded. He said great, that he would get the dragon boogers out to put on her head.
Her face was priceless! She really didn’t know whether to believe him or not and she clearly didn’t want dragon boogers on her head.
I couldn’t help but laugh. But the guy didn’t hesitate and just carried on and applied this glitter to her head. It was so funny. And even now, 18 months later, this is one of the things she will tell people about her mermaid makeover, that she had dragon boogers on her head!

When Miley was finished the guy gave her a ‘magic’ bracelet and hair clip and then she had Grayson were told to stand next to a door and wait for the signal that they could go through.
Within that space of time Miley managed to break her bracelet! I mean seriously! It had literally been less than 2 minutes!
The guy saw and just brought her over another one; bless him.

When it was time we went through to the next room where the kids had to find some hidden treasure. This was cute and a nice little touch.

We then finished up in the final room where we paid and were given a certificate with Graysons pirate name on.
I did think it was off that they didn’t have an alternative for the mermaids. Surely it would have been easy enough to do.
I’m sure we aren’t the only family who have had kids doing each of the experiences and they then come out with different keepsakes.
It wasn’t an issue and Miley certainly didn’t say anything. But I just thought it would be nice for both the mermaid and pirate packages to end the same way.

Anyway, This whole experience was fantastic. They attention to detail was amazing and all of the adult pirates did great jobs with the kids and made the whole experience very immersive. Whilst we had been waiting for Miley to finish her makeover some of the adult pirates had been running away from Grayson. Each time they walked in the room they would say things like ‘oh no! He’s over there again! Look, let’s walk this way and maybe he won’t see us!’. They really hammed it up and Grayson totally went with it and started chasing after them! It was hilarious as they didn’t break from their characters for even a second, so Grayson was convinced they thought he was some big scary pirate called Benjamin Gunskull! Magic!

We were really pleased we had booked this and would definitely do it again without a doubt.
Mileys mermaid makeup was really really pretty and was actually really impressive.

Graysons pirate makeover was fab and the effect they had created in such a short space of time was genius! He really did look like he had a beard and he had many many many comments from people as he marched around the park for the next few hours!

It all only took 30 minutes, so we were out at 11am.
We got the kids to have some Photopass photos done outside before their makeup could get ruined. I love these photos.

We then went in to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and did that all together. Miley wasn’t a huge fan as it’s dark and she had no idea what was coming next and there are obviously some skeletons etc. But overall she was okay. Grayson obviously loved it!

We had a lunch ADR at Be Our Guest but had time for one more ride, so we walked over to the Little mermaid ride.
During the walk Grayson fell asleep in the stroller, so I took Miley on the ride.

I think they did a nice job with this ride although I feel it could have been a bit longer. I love the under the sea scene with all the fish dancing!

After coming off here we walked around and joined the ADR queue for Be Our Guest. We had to wake Grayson up at this point which never goes down well! Our ADR was for 11.50 and that is the time we joined the queue.
We didn’t end up getting seated until 12.20! The queue took SO long. And it was so narrow and confined. Not fun at all, Grayson started to get stir crazy as he was so confined and Simon started to get really grumpy that we were in the longest queue of the day for a lunch that we had booked 6 months in advance!

We ordered the following for lunch:
Me: Croque monsueir sandwich
Miley: Grilled cheese
Grayson; Meatloaf
Simon: Roast beef sandwich

We also ordered juice for the kids and fountain drinks for me and Simon. And we ordered the following cupcakes:
Grey stuff cupcake
Chocolate cupcake
Strawberry cupcake

We sat in the main ballroom as I knew Miley wouldn’t like the west wing and the portrait gallery just didn’t appeal.

Simon and I took it in turns to go and get some drinks and our food arrived really quickly.

Unfortunately standing in the queue for so long had kind of broken Grayson and he just wasn’t cooperating at all. I can’t remember specifics of what was happening but I remember he got a bit tricky. Then Simon got super grumpy with him because of it. Poor Miley was then overwhelmed because both Grayson and Simon were grumpy. I ended up feeling sad as I had been really looking forward to this ADR for 6 months now and I felt like it had been ruined by the moody boys in our family!
I went and looked around the other rooms and then took Miley to have a look as well and then Grayson. Simon was still moody and not really speaking.
I took very few photos and the ones I did take were decidedly dodgy!

I don’t know if everyone had gotten a bit ‘hangry’ as we’d had to wait a lot longer than we’d anticipated. But overall the meal was a bit of a disappointment and we were finished and out by 1.15pm.

It was such a shame as I remember my food tasting really really good, but I was so emotional that I lost my taste for it.
This was probably the only real low point during the holiday for me, so I can’t complain. But I wanted to include it as I think it’s unrealistic to get through three weeks of such a busy, hot and tiring holiday without any family tiffs! This was ours.

I’m really torn about whether to try again on our next trip.

Also looking at the photos from lunch we had clearly popped back and bought Grayson the Elena toys at some point as he is playing with them at the table.

We all tried to shake off the lacklustre meal and headed around to our next fastpass which was meeting Ariel.
We walked around and scanned in and got in to see her at 1.30pm.

She was really good with the kids and made comments about pirates and then talked to Miley about being a mermaid and asked if she’d made a deal with a sea witch to get her legs. It was a lovely meet and greet and the kids had a lot of fun.

We knew it would be time to head out of the park soon as it was very hot and the kids were flagging. Pirate Grayson took a nap at some point but I cannot figure out when this was.

We started to walk in the direction of Main Street but made a few stops along the way.
We had a quick spin on the teacups and then a quick whizz around on the Tomorrowland Speedway. Both of which the kids enjoyed greatly.

We left the park and headed back to the carpark via the monorail. From there we headed black to the villa, with a quick pit stop at Publix.
We were home by about 4pm, the kids then relaxed and played for the rest of the afternoon.

We decided to just order a Pizza Hut takeaway tonight as we were all tired and just couldn’t face the drive back to to the 192 again.
The food arrived quickly and was good standard pizza fare. We all enjoyed it, I’m sorry there aren’t any photos! Oops.

The kids were in bed at 7 and asleep by 8pm.
I was in bed by 11pm.

[kadypants]

The Pirates League looks fab! Some lovely photos too!

[summersun]

fab report x

[TC Devon]

I do love these photos of Grayson as a pirate. He is proper in role is nt he 😀 as always Miley looks lovely.
I really wanted my two to do the mermaid and pirate sessions but neither were fussed. I’ve got zero chance of N wearing make up or getting into character!

Think we might book BOG when we go back. Is it quick service or have I imagined that?
X

[berniegroves]

Originally Posted by kadypants

The Pirates League looks fab! Some lovely photos too!

See more...

It really was a great experience and was a highlight of the trip for us all. We would recommend it.
Both kids have asked to do it again next time.

Originally Posted by summersun

fab report x

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Thanks

Originally Posted by TC Devon

I do love these photos of Grayson as a pirate. He is proper in role is nt he 😀 as always Miley looks lovely.
I really wanted my two to do the mermaid and pirate sessions but neither were fussed. I’ve got zero chance of N wearing make up or getting into character!

Think we might book BOG when we go back. Is it quick service or have I imagined that?
X

See more...

It’s a shame they don’t want to do it as it was so much fun. Even Miley being as shy as she is enjoyed it. They’ve asked to do it again next time but Miley wants to be a pirate.
Yes Grayson fully commits to a role! Haha!

BOG is technically quick service. You order at a booth and then sit down and they bring the food to you. But you get drinks etc from drink stations and choose your own table etc.

[Lisa29]

Another lovely day. We have the pirates league booked this year for the mermaid package.x