Magical Moments

Marc's parents live in Florida, so ever since the birth of Alia they have been encouraging a trip to Disney World. We finally went, taking advantage of the awesome free dining plan offered for Disney hotel guests in the off season.

We flew into Orlando on Sunday, and as soon as we'd checked into our hotel we took the Disney shuttle to the Magic Kingdom. First we ate dinner at Cosmic Ray's, then we started wandering around the park trying to decide what ride to go on. The first ride we passed was Winnie the Pooh, and I wanted to take Grant on it since he's so into Pooh lately, but there was a 20 minute wait. It was the first ride we'd passed, so I didn't know if that was long or not. As we were briefly deliberating over whether to get on or not, a girl walked up to us and said she'd like to give us a magic moment and let us go to the front of the line. She was being completely earnest, but I didn't know whether to trust her or not. I asked her if we had to buy something or listen to a presentation, and she looked at me like I was crazy. So we really did get to go to the front of the line (actually we went in the fast pass line, for those who know what that is) and enjoy a magical moment for our first ride of the trip.

Soon after that we went on Dumbo, which I had heard is one of the all time favorite rides of the preschool set. Not so for Alia. She was sitting in a Dumbo (pink, of course) with Karen, Mike and Grant were in the next Dumbo up, and Marc and I were ahead of them. We had just buckled in, when I heard Alia crying and saying she didn't want to go on the ride. I didn't want to force her to do something she didn't want to do, so I got out and went to get her out of Dumbo. As I was pulling her out, Dumbo started to take off. Mike, Karen and Marc gave me a hard time for the rest of the trip for my over-reaction and near decapitation of Alia. Although, in my defense, we were way clear of Dumbo by the time he really took off. Alia went on all other rides without fear--Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Railroad, Soarin--but she never did want to go on Dumbo.