Sprinklings of Pixie Dust by Beth H.
by wiewora
May 2001

Sprinklings of Pixie Dust  (An Abbreviated TR)

Players -
Beth (me); the Mom
Gary; the Dad
Molly; the 13 year old daughter

I wanted to share some of the good times my family had when we were in the World last May 20 - 28 (2001). We went down for the Florida State Homeschooling Convention, as we do most years, and of course, we combined the convention with some time at our favorite place. I might have presented a more detailed trip report, but there was some confusion between Molly and I about who would be doing the writing, and in the end, it just never got done. Nevertheless, it was a special trip, and so it doesn't go completely undocumented, I offer these memories.

Magical Memory #1 - The Big Surprise:
We are veteran Fort Wilderness campers, having stayed there lots of times in our pop-up camper. We love FW, and as usual, we took the pop-up for this trip, too, but Gary and I managed to pull a really good one over on Molly by surprising her with 2 nights at the Animal Kingdom Lodge at the beginning of our trip. Molly is one smart cookie and *very* hard to surprise with anything, but we did it! She, of course, assumed we would be heading straight to Fort Wilderness, like always. (In general, we're just too cheap to stay anywhere else ;) )

Having spent the night en route in Ocala due to a late start the day before, we pulled onto WDW property about 10 Monday morning. Gary, as per our sneaky plan, says, "Why don't we drive by the Animal Kingdom Lodge before we go to Fort Wilderness just to have a look around, since it's probably too early for our campsite to be ready anyway." Molly, being the smart cookie I told you she is, knew that we wouldn't be able to get in, due to the closed resort policy that was in place at the AKL at that time, and of course, told Gary as much in no uncertain terms. He just kept on with the dorky dad routine, and maintained that it was worth a try. Major eye rolling was going on in the back seat. When we pulled up to the guard shack and Gary said we were there to check in, Molly was shocked (*shocked!*) that her dad was lying just to get in to see the resort - it still hadn't occured to her that we could actually be staying there. When it finally began to sink in to her that that was what was really happening, a grin spread across her face like you wouldn't believe - it was a fabulous reward for all the sneaking around we had to do to pull it off.

We stayed in a savannah view room on the Zebra trail, and we really, really loved it. This was a major splurge for us, but we were so very glad we had done it. We were a little concerned after all the reports we had read about how small the rooms were, but we didn't have a problem with that. The room was gorgeous. All the cast members we encountered there were very enthusiastic, friendly, and helpful. They truly seemed to be as excited to be working there as we were to be staying there. We were way into animal watching off our balcony, and also enjoyed just exploring the resort, which is very very beautiful. Am I gushing? (You don't have to answer that.) We ate at Mara 2 or 3 times during our stay, and had dinner once at Boma. Mara was fine, but to be honest, I think I prefer the food courts at the All Stars. Boma, however, was terrific. We all really enjoyed the chance to sample some more exotic stuff without the fear of commitment. (In other words, there was regular stuff to eat there, too, just in case!)

After a couple of days, we were a little sad to check out and head over to FW, but as I said before, we really love it there, so we were content to have had our short time with the wonderful AKL.

Magical Memory #2 - The Great Pin Moment:
Ok, maybe this one should have been under the whole AKL thing, but it was such a great and unexpected thing for Molly, it deserves its own place in this report.

Our trip just happened to coincide with the official Dedication of the AKL, and when we arrived on Monday morning, we were informed that we were invited to the ceremony in the lobby the next morning, which would feature some performers from the Broadway cast of the Lion King. (The current edition of the Disney Magazine has a photo of this event, on the Backstage Pass page.) This sounded too cool to miss, so Tuesday morning found us milling around with the crowd and all the TV cameras in the lobby, waiting for the action to begin.

Molly is a big-time pin trader (at least, big-time considering the fact that this was only the third time she'd been to WDW since the Millenium Pin Trading thing started). She can't compare to some of the locals or the "Pin Sharks" of course, but she has quite an impressive collection for a kid who just started out 2 trips ago. About 10 minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start, she spotted a CM with a pin lanyard on and approached him to see what he had. She was wearing a couple of her own lanyards, and after a few moments of the two of them comparing pins, he said that he could see she was a serious pin trader, and asked the 3 of us to follow him over to a desk that was a little bit out of the way. When we got there, he introduced himself to us as Norm Nobles, the General Manager of the AKL, and proceded to give Molly a complete set of the 5 Opening Day pins that were given out to the first guests at the AKL, along with their own lanyard. Now, we had read about these pins on RADP, and knew just how coveted and special they were, so this just completely blew us all away. Molly couldn't believe it, and neither could we! Now, just picture this - this is the General Manager of the resort, 5 minutes before this huge media event is about to go off, taking all this time to spend with this kid who just approached him to see his pin lanyard, and then giving her this very valuable set of pins just to make her happy! Let me tell you, it worked. What a classy guy, and what a classy place the AKL is.

Magical Memory #3 - the Fright:
We were at the Magic Kingdom (this may have been during E ride night, but I'm not sure). When we visited the Haunted Mansion, one of the CM's started following very closely behind Molly, attempting to scare her. You know, the thing where you walk so close behind a person, matching their footsteps so that they don't know you're there, and then suddenly they turn around and there your face is right in their face, and it scares them silly. This was a complete washout as far as scaring Molly, because she knew he was there the whole time. (I told you she was a smart cookie.) However, Gary saw it happening and in turn, got in step right behind the CM, the same way he was doing to Molly. The CM never saw it coming, and it worked like a charm on him - he turned around, saw Gary's face right in his face, and he was just so "got". It was truly beautiful. This poor guy let out a shriek, clutched his heart, and you could tell his legs got weak, because he went all wobbly and started to slide down the wall before he got a hold of himself. You may think that he was putting on an act, but if you had seen it, you would be as sure as I am that he was truly frightened. This was an unbelieveably sweet moment. I'm always a little nervous about the Haunted Mansion CM's sneaking up on me and scaring me like they love to do to people, but I never even thought about being able to scare one of *them*! It was hilarious, and I'm laughing out loud again as I sit at my computer writing about it all these months later. We all were wiping tears from our eyes, we laughed so hard.

As we left the HM, Molly commented that now she'd had really cool stuff happen to her, and Dad had his cool thing, so now I was due for something great to happen to me. As it turned out, she was right :)

Magical Memory # 4 - the Hot Seat
It's probably not too hard to guess that my cool thing turned out to be anding in the Hot Seat at Who Wants to be a Millionaire - Play It! I was not looking for this to happen. As a matter of fact, the first time we had attended the show earlier in the week, I purposely held back a little from answering the questions too fast just to make sure I didn't get picked. Not that I thought I was so great - I just *really* didn't want to be up there. The second time, however, I kind of forgot about that and just tried my best to answer the questions like everybody else, and to my very great surprise and shock, there popped up my seat number at the top of the board, so down to the Hot Seat I went, my heart pumping a mile a minute. I was surprised at just how nervous I really was. I mean, Gary and Molly and I are all musicians and actors, and I've been on lots of stages before doing stuff that was much more difficult than this, but I still felt like a quivering bowl of jello. So much so, that when the hostess asked me what was my favorite attraction at WDW, after my 30 something trips there, I honestly couldn't think of *any* attraction at WDW, let alone choose a favorite, so I just blurted out "How about Who Wants to be a Millionaire - Play It!" Of course, she responded with something about kissing up to the host not helping me win the game.

Have you ever wondered what you'd be thinking about while the host makes small talk with you up there in that chair, in front of that audience? I can tell you that all I could think about was the lipstick smeared on the front of the hostess' teeth. I had the most intense urge to tell her to wipe it off, but I managed to surpress it and get on with the game. I felt like I must have looked terrible with my theme park hat hair, but my family later assured me that I looked good (yeah, I know, what else were they going to say, but it still made me feel better, especially when Gary chose the adjective "graceful" to describe me in the hot seat. Major brownie points to him!)

As far as the questions, I really don't remember most of them, except one about what kind of animal is a wildebeest (cattle), and the one I missed, which was the one right after the 1,000 point level, where you win the 5 pins and the baseball cap. It was, "What does the French phrase, belles lettres", mean. Now, I knew this - no, really, I did! It was just that the translation they had chosen was "sophisticated literature", and I felt like it ought to be either "beautiful literature" or maybe "good literature", so I used my first life line to see what the audience thought. They chose "love letters" by a large margin. I almost went against them and chose the right answer (no, really, I almost did!) but I knew that the audience is almost always right, so I went with them, and that was the end of my time in the hot seat.

I was immediately led off stage and taken to a small room where a CM took down some information from me which was entered in a computer database (apparently they keep track of this info in case you're ever in the hot seat again), and then I was given my prizes - the 5 pins and the baseball cap. The cap, I must say, is really, really ugly, but the pins are just about the coolest things going! Molly, the real pin trader, is naturally quite jealous ;)

Despite my nerves, I managed to really enjoy this experience, and my favorite memory from it is looking up into the audience and seeing Gary and Molly beaming with excitement and pride for me! (I truly do have the world's greatest family.)

Naturally, there were lots of other little things that made this trip special, but the number one thing, as always, was just being together in WDW. It's a complete getaway for us, and we're looking forward to our next family trip back to Fort Wilderness in January of 2002. This will be a slightly different experience, because although we didn't know it at the time, that trip in May was to be our last time camping in our pop-up, since we decided this summer to sell it and are now the proud owners of a new 27 foot travel trailer. Maybe this time we'll manage to keep notes and actually write a *real* trip report.

Thanks for reading.

Beth H.