smartestnumber5
<font color=blue>Then it's just a fun time<br><fon
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2006
After getting back from the park we stopped in at the food court to have a snack. We discovered the awesomeness of the sundaes at Pop --sure it was no dole whip or ice cream cookie sandwich, but the sundaes half the size of your head are still a pretty good snack/dessert option. (I'll leave the details to the dining reviews though).
GF said that we could go swimming when we got back to the room, but we were only there a few minutes when collapsed onto the bed. She asked if we could go swimming later and I said of course and then she fell asleep for the next three hours. From the moment her head hit the pillow I pretty much knew that there was no way we'd end up going swimming that day; she was going to sleep until dinner.
I've probably mentioned before that GF has sleep apnea (not enough air gets into her airway while she sleeps so she doesn't sleep normally--never, ever gets any deep sleep). She has an apnea mask which takes care of it now, but she still has sleeping issues--a lot of trouble going to sleep at a reasonable hour at night even if she's been tired all day long. I, on the other hand, am more like clockwork--after a few days of getting up at a certain time my body kind of adjusts to it and I wake up at that time without an alarm. And generally I can go to sleep at will pretty easily--so it's pretty easy to arrange so that I go to sleep around 8 hours before I have to get up. GF is pretty jealous that I sleep so well. At Disney, though, GF sleeps just as well as I do--she is just completely out! And it doesn't matter if she slept 9 hours and took a 3.5 hour nap--she's still like a rock! Seems to indicate that at home maybe she needs more physical activity so that she's tired at the right time at night.
I watched some tv (lifetime movie network I believe--man the cable is bad at WDW) and eventually I figured I might as well nap too. We woke up around 6 pm and then headed out at 7pm for dinner at Boma.
Dinner was pretty quick. We had an ADR for 8pm but got seated around 7:45. We left AKL around 9pm and were trying to decide what transfer point would be best. An MGM bus pulled up and I thought that MGM closed at 8pm that night, so I wanted to check and see if we could still transfer there. The driver said yes so we got on. There were only about eight more people onboard--two families it seemed. The driver proceeded for first drive to Animal Kingdom (which had at that point been closed for 4 hours I think) and drop some people off . After that there was just one other family left. We were in the back of the bus and they were up front and there were two children (one maybe 10 and the other in his early teens) who were standing and holding onto the handrails and seemingly enjoying swaying about. GF kept scrunching her nose and saying she smelled fart. I said maybe it was her but she assured me it wasn't . A few minutes later she elbowed me and gestured toward the front of the bus. I missed what was going on but she told me that one of the parents said to the younger child, "I thought your stomach hurt?" and the child replied, "It did, but then I farted a lot and it felt better"--guess we were downwind .
We assumed the bus was on its way to MGM during all of this, but the next stop was at All Star Sports . We were totally confused and worried that we wouldn't get where we needed to go so I went up to check with the driver that he was indeed going to MGM. He said he was. I realized that I really should have asked if could take us right to our resort which it seems is what he was doing with the other folks. Oh well.
We arrived at MGM--must have been 9:30ish at this point and I thought we should be able to quickly get on a bus since it was an hour and a half after closing. The driver actually didn't enter the bus loading area but dropped us off before that--guess he was done for the night or assigned to go elsewhere. So as we started walking over to the bus area I started noticing lines--many, many lines filled with many, many people waiting for buses. Why are there so many people so late after closing I wondered.
I still don't know what the answer was, but I suspect that I was wrong about closing time. Either that or it must have been the Fantasmic crowd, though I just can't believe that the Fantasmic crowd could have been that huge. we made our over to the Pop bus stop and found a big line. The entire queue was full and the line was extending all the way down past a 2nd queue.
Well, we knew that would take quite a few buses, so we thought we'd sit on a bench and wait for the line to clear out a bit. Well we sat and we sat and people just kept on coming. A few buses came, but not nearly as many as one would have expected given how steadily more people were entering the line. While we were sitting on a bench we started noticing that there seemed to be one queue in front of us that never had any buses stop there. Pop was like #9 and this was queue #8. I got up to check what the sign said for that queue but found it blank. As I was looking around I realized what was going on--the line for Pop was actually covering not just one full queue (#9) and extending all the way down the path, but that line had also been routed through the #8 queue . The line was actually twice as long as we'd thought .
I went back to the bench to tell GF what I discovered--she was disbelieving at first. We began paying attention to what the other queues lines looked like. The ones we could see from where were sitting--mostly deluxe resorts--looked nothing like the Pop one! We'd never seen the bus situation anywhere near this bad. Was Pop just crazily booked compared to what it had been like during free dining in 2006?--I don't remember it being anywhere near that bad then. Or maybe they just cut the bus service since then? I did notice that the All Star lines across the parking lot had the same thing going on--taking up two queues--and might have actually been a longer line. GF and I waited a little longer thinking we could spare our feet and just sit while the line cleared out, but it soon became obvious that the line was never actually going to clear--the buses just were not coming fast enough to make much progress. Eventually we began to see a little bit of progress--the line was mostly contained by just the 2 queues and not extending down the path that much anymore--we decided we'd better get up and take a spot in line. A few seconds later a family walked by us and I heard some talking about Pop. They'd walked right past the entrance to the line because the entrance was so far away from where the actual queue was. Like thousands of people before them who'd we witnessed do the same thing, they turned around and walked back a bit and looked confused as they took a spot behind me. One of them asked if this was the line for Pop and when I confirmed that it was, one of the family members expressed outrage at the length of the line. I informed them that this was the shortest the line had been in at least a half an hour!
Luckily the line moved faster than we thought it would. I do think, though, that it was one of the longest lines we waited in for the whole trip. It's pretty sad when the lines for the bus are longer than the ones for the ride. The transportation situation just was not great this trip--we had a few problems the last few trips, but this time it seemed like anytime before noon and anytime after 2pm the buses were standing room only. I think we're going to have to think carefully about the possibility of renting a car in the future--not an expense we really want to take on, but we might have to. I just can't imagine what it's like for people with children. I mean I dreaded getting on the bus because it so often meant standing in line in the direct sunlight sweating and feeling like dying before even leaving the hotel! I can't imagine doing that while holding a toddler and pulling along a diaper bag and stroller . Everytime I see parents of young children in WDW I feel so old and tired and lacking in stamina--if GF and I feel like collapsing after 3 hours at a park, how could we possibly take a child around WDW and survive?
GF said that we could go swimming when we got back to the room, but we were only there a few minutes when collapsed onto the bed. She asked if we could go swimming later and I said of course and then she fell asleep for the next three hours. From the moment her head hit the pillow I pretty much knew that there was no way we'd end up going swimming that day; she was going to sleep until dinner.
I've probably mentioned before that GF has sleep apnea (not enough air gets into her airway while she sleeps so she doesn't sleep normally--never, ever gets any deep sleep). She has an apnea mask which takes care of it now, but she still has sleeping issues--a lot of trouble going to sleep at a reasonable hour at night even if she's been tired all day long. I, on the other hand, am more like clockwork--after a few days of getting up at a certain time my body kind of adjusts to it and I wake up at that time without an alarm. And generally I can go to sleep at will pretty easily--so it's pretty easy to arrange so that I go to sleep around 8 hours before I have to get up. GF is pretty jealous that I sleep so well. At Disney, though, GF sleeps just as well as I do--she is just completely out! And it doesn't matter if she slept 9 hours and took a 3.5 hour nap--she's still like a rock! Seems to indicate that at home maybe she needs more physical activity so that she's tired at the right time at night.
I watched some tv (lifetime movie network I believe--man the cable is bad at WDW) and eventually I figured I might as well nap too. We woke up around 6 pm and then headed out at 7pm for dinner at Boma.
Dinner was pretty quick. We had an ADR for 8pm but got seated around 7:45. We left AKL around 9pm and were trying to decide what transfer point would be best. An MGM bus pulled up and I thought that MGM closed at 8pm that night, so I wanted to check and see if we could still transfer there. The driver said yes so we got on. There were only about eight more people onboard--two families it seemed. The driver proceeded for first drive to Animal Kingdom (which had at that point been closed for 4 hours I think) and drop some people off . After that there was just one other family left. We were in the back of the bus and they were up front and there were two children (one maybe 10 and the other in his early teens) who were standing and holding onto the handrails and seemingly enjoying swaying about. GF kept scrunching her nose and saying she smelled fart. I said maybe it was her but she assured me it wasn't . A few minutes later she elbowed me and gestured toward the front of the bus. I missed what was going on but she told me that one of the parents said to the younger child, "I thought your stomach hurt?" and the child replied, "It did, but then I farted a lot and it felt better"--guess we were downwind .
We assumed the bus was on its way to MGM during all of this, but the next stop was at All Star Sports . We were totally confused and worried that we wouldn't get where we needed to go so I went up to check with the driver that he was indeed going to MGM. He said he was. I realized that I really should have asked if could take us right to our resort which it seems is what he was doing with the other folks. Oh well.
We arrived at MGM--must have been 9:30ish at this point and I thought we should be able to quickly get on a bus since it was an hour and a half after closing. The driver actually didn't enter the bus loading area but dropped us off before that--guess he was done for the night or assigned to go elsewhere. So as we started walking over to the bus area I started noticing lines--many, many lines filled with many, many people waiting for buses. Why are there so many people so late after closing I wondered.
I still don't know what the answer was, but I suspect that I was wrong about closing time. Either that or it must have been the Fantasmic crowd, though I just can't believe that the Fantasmic crowd could have been that huge. we made our over to the Pop bus stop and found a big line. The entire queue was full and the line was extending all the way down past a 2nd queue.
Well, we knew that would take quite a few buses, so we thought we'd sit on a bench and wait for the line to clear out a bit. Well we sat and we sat and people just kept on coming. A few buses came, but not nearly as many as one would have expected given how steadily more people were entering the line. While we were sitting on a bench we started noticing that there seemed to be one queue in front of us that never had any buses stop there. Pop was like #9 and this was queue #8. I got up to check what the sign said for that queue but found it blank. As I was looking around I realized what was going on--the line for Pop was actually covering not just one full queue (#9) and extending all the way down the path, but that line had also been routed through the #8 queue . The line was actually twice as long as we'd thought .
I went back to the bench to tell GF what I discovered--she was disbelieving at first. We began paying attention to what the other queues lines looked like. The ones we could see from where were sitting--mostly deluxe resorts--looked nothing like the Pop one! We'd never seen the bus situation anywhere near this bad. Was Pop just crazily booked compared to what it had been like during free dining in 2006?--I don't remember it being anywhere near that bad then. Or maybe they just cut the bus service since then? I did notice that the All Star lines across the parking lot had the same thing going on--taking up two queues--and might have actually been a longer line. GF and I waited a little longer thinking we could spare our feet and just sit while the line cleared out, but it soon became obvious that the line was never actually going to clear--the buses just were not coming fast enough to make much progress. Eventually we began to see a little bit of progress--the line was mostly contained by just the 2 queues and not extending down the path that much anymore--we decided we'd better get up and take a spot in line. A few seconds later a family walked by us and I heard some talking about Pop. They'd walked right past the entrance to the line because the entrance was so far away from where the actual queue was. Like thousands of people before them who'd we witnessed do the same thing, they turned around and walked back a bit and looked confused as they took a spot behind me. One of them asked if this was the line for Pop and when I confirmed that it was, one of the family members expressed outrage at the length of the line. I informed them that this was the shortest the line had been in at least a half an hour!
Luckily the line moved faster than we thought it would. I do think, though, that it was one of the longest lines we waited in for the whole trip. It's pretty sad when the lines for the bus are longer than the ones for the ride. The transportation situation just was not great this trip--we had a few problems the last few trips, but this time it seemed like anytime before noon and anytime after 2pm the buses were standing room only. I think we're going to have to think carefully about the possibility of renting a car in the future--not an expense we really want to take on, but we might have to. I just can't imagine what it's like for people with children. I mean I dreaded getting on the bus because it so often meant standing in line in the direct sunlight sweating and feeling like dying before even leaving the hotel! I can't imagine doing that while holding a toddler and pulling along a diaper bag and stroller . Everytime I see parents of young children in WDW I feel so old and tired and lacking in stamina--if GF and I feel like collapsing after 3 hours at a park, how could we possibly take a child around WDW and survive?