Heather/Dopey Challenge – 1/4/18-1/10/18 – Day 6

Tuesday 1/9/18
We got to Magic Kingdom about 8:00, totally on purpose since we wanted to have breakfast there. We felt a twinge of sadness walking in since we wouldn’t be back in 3 weeks, but a whole 3 months! ???? Kathy had gotten a gift card from Starbucks and wanted to use it for breakfast. After eating we browsed the Emporium a bit before watching the Welcome Sow. I do miss the old Welcome show but also understand whey they do it the way they do now. Much less crowded and hey, they can make some sales before the park opens! We checked in with Heather to see if it was ok to rope drop HM before they got there and she said sure! We did that and they got to the exit of the ride just as we were walking out! Perfect! We had time before our Big Thunder FP so we all decided to ride Jungle Cruise. We had a great cruise with a great skipper! We then used our Big Thunder FP for Kathy’s second of the trip! We got some Dole Whips for a snack on the way to Pooh. We walked over and got some great pictures of Heather and me in front of our ride before Team Pooh Tigger rode Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh together! It was great! Heather and I rode in front of the hunny pot while Kathy and Ryan took the back. We had the bestest time! We even held our hands in the air while bouncing with Tigger! We took the long, sad walk down Main Street and said our goodbyes with lots of hugs at the train station. Thankfully we would be seeing them again in April or it would have been many many more tears. I’ll tell you what, seeing and meeting Heather for the first time face to face, this trip with them couldn’t have been better. Everything was exactly as it is when we interact here or FB or text, we may not be blood but we truly are brother and sister and I just can’t express my love for her and frankly my admiration for her completing the Challenge enough. We were now the last of everybody we had met left at WDW from Marathon weekend. We had noticed that Peter Pan was down the first time we walked through and we still had a bit of time before our FP so we saw Philharmagic. When we got out it was still down so our FP had become a wildcard. We used it up on Kathy’s favorite, Haunted Mansion. I then scored a FP for Test Track for later that afternoon! We enjoyed a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream from Sleepy Hollow for lunch before saying our goodbyes to Cinderella Castle and the Magic Kingdom and making our way out to Epcot.

We got to Epcot and had a bit of time before Test Track so we went to the Visa Meet & Greet and then a stop in Club Cool. I think the pineapple drink from Greece(?) was my favorite. We used our TT FP and made a car with the sole goal of more power. Well our car ended up winning! I was able to get a 5th FP for Spaceship Earth for after dinner. We started around WS counter clockwise from Canada. We hit perfect timing to catch most of a British Revolution show. We were relaxing on the curb when a magical moment happened. There was an older lady in a wheelchair enjoying the show with her family. We could tell she was loving the music and perhaps reliving a bit of her youth. When they started to play Twist and Shout she got up out of her wheel chair and twisted as best as she could, through the whole song! We gave her a thumbs up leaving and she returned it. These are the moments that make Disney, and more importantly life, so special! We stopped in France to check out the food in the café, man do we need to eat there sometime! We saw part of the Japanese drummers and Mariachi Cobre in Mexico before stopping for a dinner of nachos Lagoon side. There we saw a couple of people trying to find a table as we were close to finished so we invited them to sit with their food at our table. We found out that they were a mother and son from not too far north of us in Michigan and that he is planning on running the Dopey next year! So we told him all about Heather and how proud we are of her! It was a very nice conversation with pleasant guests! We stopped to see Joy and Sadness where we found out Spaceship Earth was down and had turned into a wild card. This was a happy accident as we used it for the new Mission Space Green. I never thought I’d get Kathy on it but I did and she liked it! She said she’d like to ride it again next time! She’d pay more attention to the video next time too since she was concentrating on her duties. It was a great use of FP too as both sides were long waits in standby. We slowly made our way out to pack for tomorrow. ☹

Steps: 23,000
Miles: 10.3