I was trying NOT to cry when Brother left as we dragged our 1⁄4 ton of stuff to the lobby, but I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Em rubbed my leg and said “I know Wobin, I miss my brother too.”
When she said that, I really started to cry. Scuba Steve hugged me and told me we would just start over saving again and come back next year.
And stay as long as we want to and NOT leave on a Friday when we still had two days off from work. He thought we were leaving early because I had to work on Saturday.
Ah, yeah, I’d leave Disney a day early to go home and deliver pizza. Couldn't let people go hungry, could I? I sunburn slapped Scuba Steve just for being that dumb.
Commando Nikki, Beatlebum & I went to the front desk to check out while Scuba Steve and Em sat in front of the TV in the lobby with the luggage. Chuck & Dave were on TV and Em was very excited about that. She tried to get some other kids in the lobby to come over and see Chuck & Dave in action.
Beatlebum buried her head in my shoulder and asked me to please buy some Chip & Dale videos for Em before we ended up banned from Disney forever.
After I checked us out and paid the bill, (ho-my-gawd, how many ride photos did I buy?!?) we dropped our luggage off in the luggage holding room. Commando Nikki didn’t want to waste what little time we had left riding a bus so she had already called for a cab and was holding the door open when I turned around.
Did you know you can save 4-5 valuable minutes by cab?
We climbed into our waiting cab and Em started shivering. “B-b-boy, its-s p-pretty c-c-chilly in here.”
The driver had the air conditioner on full-blast and it was cold. For the first time the girls didn’t scream about skin-to-skin contact.
When I had spoken to my mom back in Maine earlier that morning, she was scrapping frost off her windshield. I was more than happy to be in a chilly cab.
We arrived at TTC for our final monorail ride. Em wasn’t happy to hear that it was the last ride and started to cry. I told her it wasn’t her last ride forever, we’d be back. When we stopped to get off she hugged the center bar inside the car and said “I love you monorail, I’ll see you again soon. Wobins’ bringing me back at Christmas next year.”
Yep, you bet.
Santa’s got a lot of over-time to work this year.
Scuba Steve loves the train ride around the park and we hadn’t done that yet so that’s the first place we went. He wasn’t happy when we got off at the first stop in frontier land, but we needed to get fast passes for splash mountain and the girls were ‘starving to death and wasting away to nothing’ according to them so we were going to Peco Bills too.
I don’t think we ever ate so fast in our lives.
Commando Nikki inhaled her food and started throwing stuff away before we were even finished. Scuba Steve had his sandwich half way
into his mouth when she started grabbing for it to throw it away because OBVIOUSLY he was finished and we had to go.
Scuba Steve gave her the power-pinch of a lifetime. You just don’t take food out of a mans mouth.
EVER!
I wanted the girls to see the Country Bears Jamboree and we had time before our fast passes for Splash Mountain were due. This is where I discovered either I or Scuba Steve were in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. He asked me what this ride was going to do.
What are you talking about? This is a show, not a ride and we have been here before. I see the bears every time I come to Disney. You have been to Disney with me before; we got married here, so I know we saw the bears.
It was Scuba Steve I married here, wasn’t it?
While I was insisting he had been here before and he had gone crazy, and he was insisting that he hadn’t and I was the crazy one, I could see out of the corner of my eye a little girl about 7 yrs. old and her brother about 5 yrs. old were standing at the pressed penny machine begging their mom for some quarters. Mom was fresh out of quarters.
Commando Nikki taught me something that day.
She went into the camera bag and took out enough quarters for both of them to get all three pressed pennies. Commando Nikki leaned over and said something into the little girls’ ear. The little girl ran back to her mom, all excited jumping up and down, saying “Mommy, that girl loves me and its Disney day today!” The mother tried to give Commando Nikki the dollars in exchange for the quarters and Commando Nikki said “Nope, enjoy the pixie dust.”
I learned that if you’re not looking, Commando Nikki will rob your camera bag and give away all your quarters.
No, I’m kidding.
I learned that I have the coolest kid in the world. She said to the little girl “Love ya, mean it and have a Disney day.”
“Got to drill it in them while their young.” She told me.
When we went inside to visit the bears, the girls were stomping their feet and clapping their hands and Scuba Steve suddenly remembered Max the moose head on the wall.
He was the crazy one not me.
I already knew that and am relieved that it was Scuba Steve I married after all.
We left the bears and went on Splash Mountain because it is always a good idea to get your jean shorts soaked before you get on a plane and fly to a state that is scrapping frost off their windshields.
Why ease yourself back into the cold weather if you don’t have to?
We made one more trip on HM just to make Em mad by having the ghost sit on her, because that was as close as I was going to get to IASW and then it was time to go.
**SOB**
Commando Nikki & Beatlebum stood in front of the partners’ statue looking back down into Main Street. They just stood there with their eyes closed, holding hands listening to the music and smelling the sweet smells that always linger on Main Street.
They were going to cry, so I was going to cry and Scuba Steve hates to be around a lot of crying, emotional girls, it makes him nervous so I had to do something.
Standing in front of the partner’s statue, looking down into Main Street to the left on the corner is the Hershey ice cream store. I personally have proven that it is impossible to cry and walk while eating a hot fudge sundae waffle cone.
While we were walking to the buses for the last time, Em stopped, turned around and yelled back to the MK “Good-bye Tinkerbell! I’ll miss you!”
Commando Nikki & Beatlebum both yelled back “Love ya, Mean it!”
Okay, you can cry while walking and eating a hot fudge sundae waffle cone, but at least you have a napkin handy and can hide behind the cone.
This was the only time during the entire trip my crew sat quietly and behaved while we were on the bus heading to POR for the last time.
Where the magic was definitely over.