Yes, I did say surprise. That was the difficult part, planning birthday surpirses from 1100 miles away and keeping it a secret with FIVE children in the loop (okay, I guess baby girl doesn’t REALLY count since she is only 4 months old and cannot talk). It was difficult but not impossible.
A couple of days later, I started thinking that this really was a HUGE birthday and I really wanted to make a big deal about it. I mean, seriously, how many people get to celebrate their 40th birthday at WDW with their family and closest friends? So, I started doing some research online to see what else I could find. My first stop was obviously the Moms Panel. I submitted a question to see if they had any ideas as to what to do for a 40th birthday celebration. Unfortunately, the request forms are word limiting,and because of this I was unable to include that we had already made dining reservation (as we were on the dining plan and had made those reservations five months earlier). So, it was a bit disappointing when I did in fact receive a respone that advised me to make dining reservations at his favorite restaurant. Back to square one….
![]() |
Grand I |
The next day I called WDW-PLAY (yes, I know I waited yet another day, but I couldn’t make the reservations while DH was home…). After explaining my situation with the wonderful cast member on the other line, she began looking to see what might be available for that day. If you are unfamiliar with the speciality crusies, here’s the low-down. Basically, Disney has a couple of boats, in various sizes and capacities, that take you around the Seven Seas Lagoon (near Magic Kingdom), Bay Lake (near Magic Kingdom) or Crecent Lake (Epcot). You can rent these boats by the hour, for however long you’d like. Most people rent them for viewing fireworks on special occasions (weddings, birthdays, marriage proposals..etc). There are endless options, from just a basic drive around the lagoon to adding a hot meal, complete with butler service. You can even have them pipe in the sound from the fireworks show, usually for an additional fee, depending on which boat you choose.

You may be wondering why we did not just get on the boat at that time. Well, here is the deal. Like I mentioned before, you book by the hour and on the Grand I, the hour is quite expensive. Your time starts when you get on that boat. Since we were somewhat early (we were to meet the boat at 8:15 so we could be out on the water for wishes), I did not want to get charged extra. So as the rest of my party went along to “find the beach”, I ran back to the boat, just to double check that we were in the right place. At the boat, I asked the VERY VERY helpful captain if he was waiting for us…he checked and double checked and said
“no”. After talking a bit….I was at the wrong boat (duh, okay, I DO know the difference between a yacht and a pontoon, but with all the excitement and sleep deprivation…….well, I guess the birthday balloons confused me). He made a few calls and told me the yacht would be waiting for us at the far end of the pier. Since it was getting close to the time. I quickly found the rest of our party and we made our way to the other, and very VACANT side of the pier. Panic!! I rushed back to the other boat to find the VERY VERY helpful pontoon captain and told him the boat was not there. He quickly called David, one of the CM in charge of the Marina who met us on our empty side of the dock. While David made several calls to find locate Grand I, time was ticking down to the start of “Wishes” and DH was becoming more and more annoyed because we were waiting at an empty dock. Thankfully, baby girl was a bit fussy and so he was walking with her, trying to get her to sleep. After a few calls, the captain of the Grand I said he had already picked up his party at the Polynesan and they were out on the water. Um ..No! We were sitting right there……
![]() |
DH and a sleepy Baby Girl aboard the Grand I |
Leave a Reply