Order Horizon

An entire mall of gift shops

Yes, it’s made of entirely of normal sized Lego™

The trip up to the Land of Disney consisted of everyone except Tim, Sarah’s husband, heading up in our van (Tim had to work). We dumped all of our luggage in his car so that we could fit all of the children. I personally think we should have gone with the luggage but you know how moms are. Both of them wore black that day so we had the “MIB” — “Moms In Black”. They didn’t think it was as cool as I did, but you know how moms are.

The boys had much fun in the back, although Wolf hung out with his mom a bit when the rest of them got too rowdy. Eventually, around 4 PM, we arrived at our hotel near Orlando. For reasons that were never explained to me (you know how moms are) we stopped first at a hotel, then had to go around to a set of pseudo-cottages. The MIB took the van while I was forced to head off in to the wilds with the children (I thought it was on the off chance a kid or two would get eaten by alligators, thereby saving a good chunk of ticket money, but neither of the moms seemed much put out when we all arrived intact). The children didn’t understand it either, but only a moderate amount of “because the Moms said so!” was necessary to get the caravan on the path. I swear, we must have walked easily 3 or 4 hundred feet without rest before we found the main office to await the MIB. It was brutal, but the kids held up well — not one mention of cannibalism for survival.

After settling in to our temporary residence, we headed out to Downtown Disney for what the children really wanted — gift shops. The MIB wanted to head out for the princess store with Alice, but the boyen spotted the fact that there was a Lego™ store and it was on the way to the Princess Primping Palace, so that’s where we went first. The MIB did manage, somewhat later, to extract Alice and do some princessy things there while the boys and dads hung out in or near the Lego™s. Corwin got some Star Wars kit, Charles got a Sponge Bob Emergency Room kit and Alice a box of generic Lego™s because it was in a pink box (give that marketing guy a raise!). There was a three piece string band playing, with groovy minimalist electric violin and cello, the latter of which I had tried to convince Charles to demand from Mom. Even seeing it in action didn’t work. I suppose I will have to try hypnosis instead.

We headed back to get some dinner, after which we let Corwin and Bear head out on their own, with a promise to check Corwin’s cell phone for messages every now and then. They were supposed to answer it but the ambient noise level was so high that hearing the ring was problematic (which the MIB didn’t believe until they tried to call me and I couldn’t hear my phone either). The rest of us kind of wandered around for a while until we got tired, retrieved the older boys, and headed back for some sleep and the culmination of Alice’s entire life, a visit to the Magic Kingdom and the Disney Castle.