BSC Super Special #1: Baby-Sitters on Board!

I guess because this is the first book that's not part of the regular series, AMM didn't quite know what to do with it yet. She probably just wanted to do a fun vacation book that broke the formula. Anyways, because of that, this book doesn't fit into the continuity at all. It's published after Stacey moves and Mallory joins the club, but within the book, Mallory is still very much a charge and Stacey is still around. They say it's summer vacation, but even if it managed to be magically squeezed into their already full summer before the 8th grade, that still wouldn't fit because they mention being in the 8th grade already. So I'm reading it now, right before Stacey moves.

Front Cover: It's the baby-sitting adventure of a lifetime!

Guess who's going on a dream vacation? The Baby-sitters, of course!

Back Cover: Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, Claudia and Dawn are the luckiest baby-sitters in the world. This summer they're going on the greatest trip ever: a plane ride to Florida, a boat trip around the Bahamas, and then three days of fun - in Disney World!

Of course they have a million adventures. Claudia gets notes from a mysterious "Secret Admirer". Kristy, Mary Anne and Stacey make some unusual new friends. Dawn has her first real romance. And they still have time for what they like best of all - baby-sitting!

Super Special Gimmick: creating a memory scrapbook for their parents

So Mr Pike wins a contest at work for an all-expenses paid cruise and trip to Disney World for his whole family. Of course, with so many kids, he decides to hire Mary Anne and Stacey again (since they worked out so well in Sea City). When fancy rich Watson Brewer finds out, and furthermore finds out that Kristy has apparently never even been out of the state, he arranges for the whole family to go on the exact same trip, plus Claudia and Dawn too, so they don't feel left out. Thus begins our story.

Kristy: is an absolute nightmare. She's sharing a room with Claudia and Dawn. Kristy is messy and Dawn is super-neat, but Kristy goes out of her way to goad Dawn. She purposely leaves stuff lying all over the place (not just clothes, but food wrappers too) and does so staring pointedly at Dawn, just to watch Dawn get upset. Dude! It's not that hard to clean up after yourself! You don't have to fold your clothes asap, but you know, maybe contain your mess to one corner of the room? Anyways, her storyline mostly consists of being a brat to Dawn and befriending this old guy, Rudy Staples. Rudy's wife just died two months prior, so he's on the trip to do something different and try to forget about his troubles. He's pretty miserable though. Kristy distracts him and they end up hanging out a bunch. Rudy says that Kristy's the granddaughter he never had (he has six grandsons) and she says that he's like the grandfather she never knew. It's kinda cute, especially how Kristy keeps joking about setting him up with Nannie.

Dawn: meets a boy named Parker Harris, who's all mysterious and sketchy about who he's travelling with. It turns out he's on the trip with his dad, his new stepmom and his two younger stepbrothers who are 8 and 5 years old. He's all bitter about the divorce, the remarriage and the new family, but Dawn convinces him that the boys can't be brats because LITTLE KIDS ARE AWESOME! They end up spending an afternoon together at Disney World and Parker in the end warms up to them.

Mary Anne is baby-sitting for the Pikes, and while going around on the ship, she meets a girl named Alexandra Carmody, who is a couple of years older. When Mary Anne asks who she's travelling with, Alexandra says no one, and that she's an orphan. Later though, Mary Anne runs into her again, and Alex says something about her brother, leading Mary Anne to suspect she's lying. Eventually Mary Anne finds out the truth (from Mallory): Alex is on a trip with her younger brother and her two parents, who are famous singers (I keep picturing Donnie and Marie Osmond... except, you know, husband and wife, not brother and sister haha). Alex just likes lying because it's fun and it makes life interesting. Well, Mary Anne feels duped and decides that Alex is not a very nice girl and that she doesn't want anything to do with her anymore.

Mallory is still very clearly a charge in this one, despite being 11 years old, and decides that she wants to be a spy like in Harriet the Spy, which she apparently just read. Mallory doesn't really do anything interesting, other than discovering the truth about Alex. She also thinks she's found a stowaway on board (we see him pop up periodically in other people's chapters) and she thinks she's seen Spider from the band Insects on the ship. All in all, it's a really boring plot.

Claudia has a mystery admirer. She keeps getting all these notes and gifts explicitly saying that she has one. Finally, Stacey thinks she's spotted him, and Claudia goes running after him. She ends up bumping into this guy, Timothy, who suggests that maybe the admirer is just shy, and offers to help Claudia out. They start to hang out and hit it off, but Claudia feels guilty that she's ignoring her admirer (who continues to give her things). It's pretty obvious that her admirer is Timothy. Anyways, eventually we learn that not only is Timothy Claudia's admirer, but he's also Alex's younger brother. He also enjoys spying on people, which explains why everyone in the book keeps finding him hiding around the ship, thinking he's a stowaway.

Stacey is baby-sitting for the Pikes, and while going around on the ship, she meets a family with a sick little boy named Marc. Marc has a weak heart, and thus is confined to a wheelchair most of the time. He can technically walk and stand and everything, but he's not supposed to, because it aggravates his heart. He also carries around an oxygen tank. Marc's parents are understandably very protective of him, but they loosen up enough to allow Marc to become friends with Margo and Claire (he's 7 years old like Margo). Eventually they confess to Stacey that this trip is kind of a just in case thing: he's about to undergo a serious operation that will allow him to have a normal life... but there are some serious risks. Stacey is sad, but tries to keep up appearances for the kids. After the trip, we find out that Marc pulled through spectacularly and is on his way to becoming a typical active kid.

Karen gets three chapters, and we basically learn that she's a spoiled brat with no consideration for others. I can't tell if she's a typical 6 year old, or if she really is particularly annoying. Anyways, in her first chapter, she and Kristy and David Michael and Andrew are headed to the pool, but she forgets her earplugs. She promises Kristy that she'll go back to the hotel room and straight back to the pool without getting lost. Well, she doesn't get lost, but she does get distracted, and manages to convince the cruise to charge her dad for a manicure and a soda. In her next chapter, she goes on the Haunted Mansion ride, and is convinced that she legit picked up a hitchhiking ghost. She then blames the ghost for her actions in her last chapter, where she announces at breakfast to their entire reserved dining room that it was her birthday, all so that the Disney characters and everyone would pay attention to her.

Byron gets a couple of chapters too, which is totes random. It's mostly about how he's read Treasure Island, and how he tries to convince his brothers to read it, but of course, they hate reading, so they don't. But the cruise is playing the movie, which the boys all see and love, leading them to trying to find hidden treasure on their trip. They find what they think is a treasure map, but it turns out to be Dutch instructions for a copying machine.

Random Thoughts:

• Another weird thing about this Super Special that's different from the later ones: there are no illustrations. Instead, we've got these pictures that look more like drawings. The later ones have actual illustrations that look awesome!
• It's fun reading this book so soon after having visited Disney World myself. I have never been on a boat cruise though.
• I do not remember reading this at all. I mean, I remember Parker, but yeah, that's about it. I had no idea that this book had anything to do with Disney World til I re-read the synopsis at the back. I don't think I owned this one as a kid, or if I did, I must not have re-read it a lot. 
• I would not want to have been the girls on this trip. I went to Disney World with friends, and we had 7 days to look at everything, and still we were exhausted and cranky and missed out on a few things. The girls kept getting stuck with kids (or in Stacey and Mary Anne's case, it was their job to be with the kids). I would've liked to have seen a chapter from Sam or Charlie.
• They mention chocolate sodas in this one. I remember when I was little, reading the Little Sister books, Karen was always mentioning them. She would get them as a treat when out on the town with her parents or Kristy. I remember thinking they sounded gross, but mostly being confused by them. Then they mentioned them here too. Was this an '80s thing? A Connecticut thing?? I still don't know what the fuck a chocolate soda is (I think it's club soda/seltzer water with chocolate ice cream? like a Coke float??) and they still sound gross to me haha
• The name Parker Harris has always stuck with me since reading this book, and I definitely used it a lot when writing fiction in elementary school and high school and even now haha
• While I don't believe it's fair for Parker to hate his stepbrothers, I hate the idea that Dawn is like, "They can't be bad: little kids are great!" Dude, he's 5 years older and 8 years older than them. I wouldn't want to hang out with them either. Plus, he went from being an only child to suddenly have two children as siblings. I feel for Parker.
• I always assumed that Marc was on the trip because of the Make-A-Wish Foundation (or something like it), but it seems like the trip was something his parents were able to do on their own. 
• If I know anything about a manicure (and really, I don't, but let's pretend that I do), between that, the soda, and actually going to the hotel room, we're looking at about 2 hours of Karen being missing. Of course, we know she must be somewhere on the boat since the boat hasn't docked yet, so her being missing isn't really the issue. However, 2 hours is still a long time, enough for her to get into serious trouble. Serious stranger danger trouble. If I were Kristy, I would have sent out a search party for her. Or at the very least, called back to the cabin and tried to find my parents.