Martha's MeMoirable Musings: Our Walt Disney Trip 2014

Our last full day at Walt Disney World was scheduled to be a busy one. We had gotten our park tickets through a program called Disney Student Seminars. It is Disney's home school program. There were many classes we could have attended, but since we don't get to Disney very often, we elected to spend our park time doing rides and attractions. There was one mandatory class and i was looking forward to it. It was called Healthy Living: Living with the Land. A Disney gardener was going to be teaching on hydroponics growing and other unusual ways to have a garden. That class was being taught in Epcot, so we started the day heading there.

You might recall that we had skipped Mission: Space and Turtle Talk with Crush our first Epcot day, and the hope was to do those that morning as well. We had to be at the class by 9:30a, so we would only have time for one ride before that. I decided to send the older offspring to Mission:Space while I took the 7yo on Spaceship Earth again. Then we would meet up and go to the class. Good plan.

We left the campsite at 7:30am and in good time got to Epcot. We made our way through bag check and lined up right in front of the scanners to enter the park. So far so good!

We had plenty of time before park opening, so i was tacky once again and did the 7yo's hair while waiting for rope drop.

You can see how early we got there. It was practically deserted! But I had plans and wanted to be sure they worked out.

Finally, at a few minutes to 9am, when the crowd was much larger, they said we could scan our bands. First ones to scan! Firt ones to fail. :( At least mine did.

Remember how I said I had one day left on a ticket from January which was expiring 9/28, and then the 3-day hopper? And how I was very careful to use only that ticket on our Friday adventures at Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios? Well, because I had tied that ticket to My Disney Experience account for this trip - so I could book us FP+ all together for Friday - the scanner counted that Friday as one of my 3-day hoppers. That meant I did not have a valid ticket for Thursday, 10/2. Oh, and my older children had been at different scanners and were now in Epcot headed to Mission:Space, unaware that I was unable to even get in the park.

I was sent to Guest Services, with my 7yo, where the cast member explained to me in detail how this had happened and how sorry they were before finally telling me he was able to fix it. I did not throttle him. But I was tempted.

He finally worked it all out and told me I was good to go. I asked if i now needed to wait in the long line of people going into the park. he said just go back to the CM who had directed me to him. I politely but firmly walked through the line, talked to the CM, scanned my band and rushed for Spaceship Earth.

We had a fine time on Spaceship earth. I texted 19yo that we were a bit delayed, so she got her self a Starbucks while waiting for us.

The cup says Gaston because she was Disneybounding as Gaston that day.

We got to the class a few minutes late, but enjoyed the rest of the class. After class, we were ready to hit the parks hard for our last day of touring.

Quick picture in Canada.

We went to Turtle Talk with Crush and enjoyed that. Afterwards, we looked around the aquarium area for about 30 minutes. We all agreed we could spend most of a day there. But we had plans!

Some pictures in from of Spaceship earth.

Time to hop to the Magic Kingdom!

Quick change at the Ticketing and Transportation Center to another monorail.

We are there!

The bulk of our touring on Tuesday had been in TomorrowLand and FantasyLand. Today was scheduled to be in AdventureLand. We headed there. I had not told the offspring, but I was hoping to catch Peter Pan at his new Meet and Greet spot. My 19yo likes Peter Pan even more than Gaston.

Success!

Peter gave my 19yo a hard time about the time on her Magic Band. Apparently she had painted the wrong time on Big Ben. Not cool making my sweet daughter frown, Peter!

Signing autograph for 7yo.

Then we went back to Pecos Bill's for another late lunch.

From there, we redeemed our FastPass+ for the Jungle Cruise. I was worried that my earlier ticket trouble would mess up my FP+, but it worked just fine.

"There it is, Folks. The moment you have all been waiting for - the backside of water!"