My plan was to get as much of Fantasyland done between 9 and 10 o’clock, then head to Frontierland and Adventureland before our lunch break back at the Polynesian. Dumbo was first on our list, but the line was already showing a 30 minute wait, since our breakfast had taken a little longer than I’d planned. At that point, we should have turned around and headed for the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, but I got a little mixed up, so we went to Peter Pan instead. I was so discombobulated, we walked right up to the “handicapped” entrance, forgetting that I wasn’t planning on taking Christian on this ride. (There’s no way to slow down the moving sidewalk like there is on other attractions, so getting him on this one would be too difficult; plus, there are no accessible pirate ships.) I sent Rick and the girls on the attraction, which left me some time to walk Christian around Fantasyland.
First, I turned around and took a photo of one of my favorites:
Then, we walked down toward the stroller parking area to the left of Small World.
We chatted with a CM there which we would see at
iasw later on.
Next, we headed back to PP, and since I could still see my family waiting in the queue, I knew we had a little more time, so we kept walking.
Christian is a magnet for sweet, caring CMs, so when we were down near Winnie the Pooh, a man named Eduardo came right up to Christian and started talking with him. He was funny; he had a really thick New Yawk accent, and told us all about how he used to work with special needs kids for the Special Olympics, and he could be around these special kids "24-7." He got right down on Christian's level, and talked to him about all the stickers on his wheelchair tray.
I told him that Christian gets the stickers when he takes the attendance down to the office at school. Christian is very proud of this assignment, and always smiles when I mention it to people.
It was another really memorable interaction, and I remembered to give him a CM thank you card this time.
We said good-bye to Eduardo, thanking him for his kindness, and headed off to our appointment with a hunny pot. The stand-by time was already 20 minutes long, but we learned something important about riding this attraction with a wheelchair bound companion: you go to a special entrance, wait for the accessible hunny pot to arrive, and get right on! I took Christian, and the girls went with their dad, since there is only one seat in the accessible hunny pot.
At the end of our first adventure, they asked us if we wanted to ride it again, so off we went a second time! Since there was no one either ahead of us or behind us, I took some photos with my flash on.
Here is how Christian felt about his adventures.
