Saturday, November 8, 2008

Biggest Kid of All

It’s almost time for school to start back here in South Florida. I can hardly believe it. Summer break just went fast this year and I didn’t do all the things that I had wanted to do with the grandkids. I usually have Nana camp the last week before school starts and all six are here most of the week at least during the day. Some of them stay overnight as well.

At any rate, it’s usually a lot of fun and we don’t have any specific schedules. We swim and go out for lunch and sometimes to the Science Museum or to the movies. This year just didn’t work out and I’m starting to realize that I miss it. I did spend a lot of time with them earlier in the summer and I’ve had them a day here and there so it’s not like I haven’t seen them for sure. But the Nana camp was sort of tradition.

Almost as soon as school was out, we took two of our grandsons, one seven and one five to Epcot for a couple of days. We had a blast. It was already hot so I didn’t want to spend all of the time in the parks so I made reservations at the Beach Club which is about five minutes walking distance from Epcot and a short boat ride from MGM or Hollywood Studios as it’s now called.

We’ve stayed at the Beach Club before and it’s a nice hotel with a good restaurant with a character breakfast and a really good seafood buffet with buckets of clams. The pool is the greatest with a huge slide and a sand bottomed pool with a lazy river ride. I found it to be the perfect spot for summer at Disney. Most important, the hotel has a terrific arcade. This is of course, a necessary amenity with kids even at a Disney resort.

Our schedule was to be flexible but pretty much go to MGM the day we arrived and then Epcot the next day. I figured if we went early to the park and did all the rides and attractions that we wanted to do that we could go back to the hotel and spend the afternoon at the pool. MGM was great. We did all the things we wanted including the new attraction Toy Story Mania which was the most fun of all to me. You ride through and try to shoot the targets as they pop up. Actually you don’t shoot so much as you pull a little rope thing. It’s in 3-D so you wear the glasses and it’s a real hoot. I wanted to do it again but unfortunately we had waited for an hour and didn’t want to stand in line again. It’s a new attraction so the wait is long and we’d gotten there too late in the day to get a Fast Pass. So we went on to other things. We watched the High School Musical show which was really fun and we watched the parade and saw Star Wars characters and Power Rangers so the boys were quite happy. I forgot that the Greatest Movie Ride was a little loud and scary because of the Alien monster that reaches down from the hole in the ceiling into the car so the boys didn’t like that quite as much. They’re young though, no permanent damage. We had dinner at Hollywood & Vine which has a pretty good buffet with lots of variety. The boys were happy because there was pizza and chicken fingers and ice cream. We liked it because there were salads and salmon and ice cream. All over the park there were skits being performed and we stopped to watch one that was hilarious about some city street workers and their boss getting voted back in as President of their union. It was very entertaining.

We headed back to the hotel and had planned to go to the campfire on the beach and make S’Mores but opted for the pool instead. These particular grandchildren are used to going to bed pretty early which has been a wonderful thing for my son and daughter-in-law but we wanted to stay out later and they were definitely up for it. They had so much fun in the pool and we ended up staying until about 10 o’clock. They had been up since pretty early so I knew that they had to be tired but they were troopers and didn’t complain at all. Going to bed wasn’t a problem either. I think that they were asleep before their heads hit the pillows. What angels they had been that day. I can’t imagine how they could have been any better behaved.

Next morning right on schedule they were awake at 6:00 am but they got their Gameboys and played until I felt like getting up. We had a quick breakfast and headed out for Epcot. Getting there at opening we knew that we could get on Test Track right away and then we wanted to go to Soaring so my husband the boys took off for Test Track and I went to Soaring to get Fast Passes. I don’t really care for Test Track so that worked. We managed to do everything we wanted by lunchtime and after eating, we walked back down to the hotel and hit the pool. What an enjoyable time we had. The entire day was great. We ate the Seafood buffet that night and then went to the Arcade where we managed to spend about $40.00 and two hours. After ice cream at the Ice Cream shop next to the Arcade, we were exhausted and wanted to go to bed.

I realized that we had been running so much that the boys might not have done all their daily bathroom visits so I told them that I’d like each of them to sit quietly on the toilet when we got back in the room to make sure they didn’t have any stomach problems later. The five year old is a real comedian and most of the time doesn’t mean to be. He was the first to go in the bathroom and after about five minutes, I called in to ask how he was doing and the door opened and there he stood completely naked. I started to laugh and he looked at me and very seriously said, “What? I get naked you know.” Then I needed the bathroom. I laughed so hard. Apparently, I missed the fact that when he goes to potty he removes all of his clothes. It made for a good laugh for his nana for sure.

We had a fun time at the character breakfast the next morning. Who doesn’t love Goofy and Minnie and Chip and Dale all dressed in their surfing clothes? Then it was time to pack and head home. This was a fun, fun trip and I can’t wait to do it again. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m the biggest kid of all on these trips. M-I-C-K-E-Y- M-O-U-S-E.



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