As you may know, I was really hoping this post would be about the new Walt Disney World MyMagic+ system. We missed random testing in our resort by 1 month! Darn! We did use RFID cards, the park WiFi, and the My Disney Experience app which was nice but I’ll talk about that in a future post. Instead, I’m going to tell you how Disney cast members saved our trip.
We started with 2 near perfect days at Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom after a long but fun 2 day drive down to Orlando. My 30th birthday was the next day and the trip looked to be going into the BEST TRIP EVER category. The night we came home from Animal Kingdom, I didn’t feel right and spent a couple hours nervously wondering if I had gotten food poisoning. I had in fact gotten sick and that night and my birthday were spent in our room recovering. I slept most of the time while my husband cared for our sons and he even lied to me that our infant boy was ok when he was having a less severe version (thankfully) of what I had.
Somehow, we still convinced ourselves that it was food poisoning and ventured into Hollywood Studios the next day. We were very wrong and my oldest son and husband had their turn coming. But it was way worse for them and they ended up in the ER together for meds and fluids. Seeing my 3 year old getting an IV put in was so very sad. We were supposed to be on rides or taking pictures with Mickey. My poor boys.
Fortunately, the trip to the ER helped immensely and it was the best thing we could have done for them. We were told to watch our 3 year old’s temperature and bring him back if he had a fever because his white blood cell count was very high. Well, he got a fever. We spent the next afternoon/evening in the ER again. It all turned out ok and it was just his body fighting off the virus, but it was a little scary for a while there with all the tests going on.
At this point, I didn’t care if we ever made it back into the parks but my husband was determined to redeem this trip. The next evening after a day of rest, we headed back to Hollywood Studios and made a beeline for the Disney Jr. Live Show. We were 3 minutes late and this is where the first little bit of magic happened. I looked at the cast members and told them about our last 4 days, how we missed so much and it was our last chance for our son to see the show. They immediately told us to follow them and we were taken through the back into the show that was already in progress. Our son ended up not being up for it and we left early, but it was so nice to have a break given to us. We had a few more disappointments that night but we were celebrating our 12th dating anniversary and tried to keep positive.
We named the last day “Redemption Day” and headed to Magic Kingdom. We stopped a cast member and started asking him about strategies for seeing as much as we could and explained what had happened. He started explaining how he had been there 20 years and he wanted to make the rest of our trip as magical as possible. Out came a booklet with “coupons” we could use to get absolute VIP entry into any attraction we wanted to. He hands us a few of them made out to us and a current FastPass for the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin ride and I give him a huge hug.
The rest of the day was a dream. We left Magic Kingdom for a few hours and went to an amazing dinner at The Yachtsman. Then we headed right back and stayed until close at 1 am, going on all the rides we wanted to go on and more.
We were checking out the next morning when I got a call from the front desk that there was a package waiting for us. Here’s where I broke down and cried. Our 3 year old, Cole, was in the ER when we were supposed to be at The Pirates League for his appointment to be made into Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. We had canceled too late but they happily took off the automatic charge for missed appointments. And they did way more than that. When I picked up the package, it was the whole entire Jake outfit with accessories and a note from the “Captain” wishing Cole well. They also included a Jake doll for him. I lost it in that gift shop, let me tell you.
Disney Magic exists. And it saved our trip.
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