Cate's dreams come true

I guess what they say is true, dreams do come true at DisneyWorld! We were all heading over to do the Jungle Cruise one more time when we heard a man ask if "this is where Ariel is going to be". After talking to the woman at the entrance to the line we found out that Ariel and Eric (from the Little Mermaid) would be coming in 30 minutes but if we wanted to see them we had to get in line right away. They only let the line get to a certain length before they close it off. Apparently (we are total rookies at the waiting in line to see characters thing) they close the line before the characters even arrive. Also, there seems to be some way of knowing what characters will be where and when but we never figured it out (or even tried to figure it out). Since Aiden wasn't at all interested in doing the Jungle Cruise again we decided that the girls would wait while the boys went and did the ride one more time. We waited for a half and hour and I found out how obsessed people can get with the character meetings and autographs. The little girl ahead of us was an only child with an autograph book FULL of signatures. They had a plan all worked out ahead of time. The dad would go to the character greeting spot, wait in line and then when the mom and daughter finished with one character they would run and meet the dad. As soon as they got there he was off to wait in the next line. YIKES! Anyway, Aiden and Cate were thrilled to get to meet Ariel and Eric. In fact, Cate ran right up to Eric and hugged him first. He said he was excited because he never gets the first hug.




Cate's love for Ariel and Eric has only grown since meeting them IN REAL LIFE and she still talks about it all the time.
It was totally worth the sweaty hot half hour wait!