December 9, 2019-Dennie's December Dash to Disney

(click here for today's pictures)


When we were going to bed last night, we were a bit concerned about Campbell’s cough. Now, she has been coughing since Thanksgiving and has even been to the doctor once. We don’t normally sleep in the same room as here so we were a bit worried that maybe she does cough all night long, which was the reason I gave her some cough and cold medicine.

I am not sure if it was the medicine or the inhaler, but once she went to sleep she didn’t really cough at all. She did, however, not sleep very much. Robby saw that she was awake at 5 this morning. Now, we are wondering if the meds we gave her caused her to not be able to sleep! She seemed well rested though so all was well this morning.  

The only problem we encounter in a hotel room is when there is no sink outside of the bathroom. That does slow us down immensely. We were able to press on though, and everyone did get their teeth brushed before breakfast.

The car was actually loaded before we started eating our breakfast. There was no gravy for Robby, but they did have the pecan twirls that I loved so much as a kid. However, I couldn’t get my people to eat them-I don’t know what I have done wrong as a parent.

In the car, we listened to our Kingdom Keeper book. It is about some kids trapped inside of Magic Kingdom. After a while of listening, we then passed out ipads for some quiet time. Our first stop was at the Florida state line. When we don’t have huge slushy drinks in our laps, we seem to be able to drive a bit further.

We stopped again for gas. Robby had to send an email so while he worked on that, I made lunches for everyone. We can finish off a can of Pringles in no time flat. We used to only buy turkey, but now most everyone likes ham better. And you would not believe all of the different kinds of cheese that we have with us on a trip-American, Swiss, colby jack, and pepperjack. Everyone seems to have their own favorite. That is fine though because it makes our car lunches seem a little bit special. 

I am not sure of the exact time that we made it to our hotel. It is near by one of the offsite hotels that we have stayed at before. It has two double beds plus a set of bunk beds which were quickly in high demand.

Robby did some work, and soon we were on our way to Animal Kingdom. The big 5 rode Primeval Whirl (which has become a seasonal ride and wasn’t open during our early November visit) while Whitman played in the Boneyard area. We did some shopping for Traci-actually bought an ornament and broke it all within 10 seconds. They were gracious and let us have another one so all was well. For the rest of the night, I did carry around a huge box stuffed with tissue paper to cushion that ornament from future falls.

Next up was our fastpasses for Dinosaur and Everest. At some point, Robby, Whitman, Keaton, Campbell and Graham rode the Kali River Rapids. They got a little bit wetter than the kids last time-actually they were almost soaked! Then we tried some chicken fried rice from Yak and Yeti. We supplemented that with bbq mac and cheese from Flame Tree. We ate all of that while we sat at a pavilion along the water watching the River of Light night time show.

When we had finished our supper, we headed to the River of Navi to use those Fastpasses. It was an interesting ride-pretty amazing that they can do all of that, but just a simple boat ride. Now the goal was to ride Avatar, but even at the end of the day the line is just too long. 

The plan is to come in February for closing to jump into the line. That will be much more doable when you have not already driven for 5 hours earlier in the day. We did quite a bit of pin trading on our way out of the park. We actually did so much pin trading that when we were done trading, the Everest line was short.

We hustled over there to ride it one more time. It feels super different in the dark. Then we walked a mile to the car-probably not a mile. Whitman did say that his energy percent was getting low so good thing we finally made it to the car. 

We had to stop at Walmart on the way to the hotel. This was unlike any Walmart we had been to-aisles and aisles of Disney stuff. No surprise, but we were quickly sidetracked from our “lunchables and sunglasses” list. We left with a magnet, album, 2 Disney water bottles, and an ugly Christmas sweater. The sweater wasn’t Disney, but Reagan has felt like she has needed one for years, and this was the first one that she has liked. 

It took almost forever to leave the Walmart. When we did, we zoomed right back to the hotel and started on showers. This is maybe only our second trip where we have brought an air mattress with us. I think it will come in pretty handy for at least one Dennie this week.

The kids started on showers while I pulled out cookies and a drink for our midnight snack-well, it wasn’t exactly midnight. It was nearly 10 when we did finally get our snacks! Then it was to bed for this crew-tomorrow will be another busy day.

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