Our Disney Trip

Our trip to Disney was amazing! We spent eight days in Florida and they were wonderful, magical, fantastic.
 I didn't tell the kids that we were going. To clarify, Chloe knew that we were going, but she didn't know when. On that morning, we woke the kids up and told them we were going to Disney/Florida now!


I had our bags packed and ready to go. Walter arranged for a limo service to take us to the airport. It was Roman's first ride in an airplane. He was so cute.


We actually took several different modes of transportation that day. The limo service and plane ride were the first. When we arrived in Orlando, the airport is set up with a monorail that takes passengers between the main terminal and various satellite terminals. We picked up our rental car and drove to our resort. At the resort, we picked up our golf cart and rode down to the recreation area and took out a pair of canoes around the area.

The canoes were a nice start to our vacation. We stayed in a cabin at Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort. The resort is really a place to bring your camper or tent, but they also have little one-bedroom cabins with a full kitchen. We called it "princess camping." They had all kinds of out-doorsy activities like canoe rentals, fishing, campfire songs (complete with marshmallow roasting!), and of course, a Disney swimming area.
The next day, we did Hollywood Studios. We did the Lot Tour, got our Fast Passes to see Ariel, and then trekked it back across the park to see the stunt car show (that was Walter's favorite part).

 

Roman's favorite part was when he finally got to meet Lightning McQueen and Mader. He got his photo taken with the Cars and the only way we could pry him away was to bribe him with something from the souvenir stand. When we were leaving that area, a band had set up camp in the street and played a bunch of cool covers for various rock songs. We stayed a few minutes and rocked out, but started to head back to our cabin when thunderstorms started to roll in. We ate at the resort restaurant and finished with campfire songs and roasted marshmallows (in the rain).



The next day, we had breakfast reservations with all the Disney princesses at the Akerhaus in Epcot. Chloe finally got to meet Cinderella live in person! All the princesses wandered the dining room and talked to all the little girls and signed their autograph books. Chloe was so excited, she couldn't speak (well, at first, her mouth was full of food).


My sister and her fiance joined us in the park that day too. We stood in line for about an hour to get photos and autographs from all the Disney characters. The kids were troopers in the line and all smiles when we finally got to see Mickey Mouse.

We strolled around the park for the rest of the day and made our way to The Seas, where Roman saw Crush from Finding Nemo.  Everyone else went to get a table for dinner, but Roman and I wanted to stay a little longer to look in the aquarium. Then, he and I busted it over to Japan where Walter, Jen, Ed, and Chloe were waiting. After our yummy dinner, we watched the Illuminations Parade, one of Walter's favorite parts of the park.

We took the Disney bus back to our cabin and Jen and Ed got a cabin next to ours. We had planned to put the kids in bed and then stay up and have a drink with them, but we pretty much crashed right after the kids did.

The next day was my sister's 30th birthday. After we were up and moving, Ed came over and asked me to grab my camera. He was going to give Jen her present - an engagement ring! I felt so honored that I got to be there for that special moment.

The Magic Kingdom was awesome. My mom was even able to come out and spend the day with us too.

So, we were coming up Main Street and popped in an art gallery. We bought a cool inpirational poster for our cubicles back at work. As we were looking around, the shop attendant occupied Chloe with some crayons and made her the "Artist of the Day". We saw a really cool painting of Donald Duck that I thought would look cool in our new house :-) 

We caught the Disney photographer a couple times as we got toward Cinderella Castle. We detoured over to Tomorrowland and rode the space ship ride when Jen, Ed, and my Mom called to say they were in the park. We met up with them and headed around (not through) the castle to Fantasy Land. Ed got us a bunch of fast passes and we spent a large part of the day there. Walter stood in line for about 45 minutes with the kids to ride the Dumbo ride.

Before dinner, we made our way to Frontierland and had dinner. Homestyle food - all the mashed potatoes and gravy I could eat! After we ate, our path was blocked by a parade. There's always a parade at Disney! We got turned around trying to head back toward the exit, but once we got back to Cinderella Castle, we were intercepted by another parade! This one was interactive and we all found ourselves in the street dancing! Chloe had been so patient all day. She kept asking to go into Cinderella Castle, so once the finally had it open to pedestrians, we took her through. For those of you who don't know, it's not like a castle that you can walk all through. It's really just a tunnel that leads to Fantasyland. There is a restaurant in there, but we weren't going to eat. Chloe was VERY disappointed that she didn't get to see Cinderella at the castle, so we had to take a moment to stop Chloe's world from crashing in. I don't think the others realized what was going on with her, but I had to make up a quick fib and told Chloe that Cinderella was helping Tinkerbell get ready for the fireworks show. That was her job was to help with breakfast at Epcot and help with fireworks at night. She seemed content with that, but she was wary.

The kids were starting to get tired (and so were we), so we made our way back down Main Street. All day, though, we kept thinking about that Donald Duck painting we saw earlier that morning. What the Heck, we thought. So, we stopped back in the art shop one the way out and had Donald shipped back to our house.

    

The next morning, my mom brought Christmas to our cabin before she and Ed and Jen checked out. We cleaned up a bit and headed out to our last park, Animal Kingdom. Now, we were told to go straight to the safari ride and get a Fast Pass, but when we got there, we really didn't need it.  We walked right on!  We were really hot after the safari ride. Those Mickey-shaped ice cream pops are obligatory, aren't they? The kids made a wonderful mess with them and after we cleaned up, we walked some more.

We spent a lot of time in a kiddie area where the kids could run around, but I think by that point, we were really theme parked out, so we made our way to the exit, had dinner, and hit the pool. (We caught a second wind and tried to catch the fireworks at Magic Kingdom, only to remember that we didn't have the Park-Hopper option on our tickets and couldn't get in.) So we hopped back on the boat lift and watched what we could see from the beach at the campsites.

We checked out on Monday and drove over to Jen and Ed's place. They made a wonderful dinner for us and we watched a movie projected outdoors on the side of their house. That was pretty cool. Jen let me hijack her washing machine, so we had fresh laundry to wear. Tuesday, after a hearty breakfast, Jen and Ed sent us on our way and we drove out to Daytona. We got a hotel on the beach and immediately went out to put our feet in the sand. It was so relaxing and wonderful. I took deep breaths of the salty air and opened my ears to the sound of the seagulls. The kids were amazed to see how big the ocean is. Bad mom, I know, but we forgot to put on sunscreen, so when we started to feel the heat, we reeled in and went out for dinner. We ate at the Ocean Deck right on the beach.

 

On Wednesday morning, we woke up and visited "our" Waffle House where Walter and I had breakfast every Saturday during college. We took the kids to campus and to score some new schwag from the bookstore. We strolled down to the flight line and sat by the fence for a bit. Roman was really sad that he couldn't actually ride in one. Maybe next time, I told him.

So, that was the end. We loaded up in the rental car and headed toward Orlando Int'l Airport to fly home. We got there really early, so the kids had fun wandering (running) around between the various terminals. And when we returned home, we were already talking about "next time".