Oh Disney World…can I come live there always where everything is about magic and making dreams come true??
For the last two years, Greg ran away back to the world of education. After finally finishing and completing his Masters Degree, our company presented him with a nice little travel voucher to go anywhere that we wanted to go. At first we considered going somewhere new and exciting…After all the places to go, we realized the most fun and exciting place was…Disney World…well…not really but we really wanted to thank our kids for the sacrifices and hard work that they put in during this time and we figured that the best place to do this and have a great family vacation was actually Disney World. We knew two things…we wanted to go for a little longer time frame to see everything and also we wanted to go during the holiday time to see their Christmas decorations including the castle…
And the lifesize gingerbread house with store inside it…
And the themed trees at each park…
As it turned out, my mom and brother’s also decided that they wanted to come and celebrate. Besides taking trips to see relatives, we never really took family vacations growing up so it was really exciting to have everyone take a trip together. They joined us for the first 5 days and then left us to enjoy the rest of the trip with just our kids. Although there were a few tears…all in all it was a great trip. Here’s a little run down of all that we did day by day…get ready…this is going to be a…..Very…..Long…..Post…..
Thursday November 26th-Thanksgiving Day
Thursday we skipped the traditional waking up, watching the parade on tv, cooking all day routine for Thanksgiving…instead we got up bright and early and took off to the airport to get on our flight to head to Florida. Chris had flown in the night before so that we could all fly together. Of course the airport can always make your trip more interesting and we had our fare share of fun at the airport starting with getting all of us through security. I love watching people roll their eyes as Greg and I hold up the line to get all three kids and our stuff through the line.
Really I think we do a pretty good job and have the kids trained quite well on how to go fast and do what you are supposed to do.
After getting through security, we had the pleasure of changing gates about 4 times. So much fun!
After finally boarding we all split up into our seats-Chris, Taylor and Alyssa…Greg, Kyle and Tracy (Kyle’s girlfriend)…and then me, my mom and Kaylie.
Those of you that know my mom, you know she hates to fly and panics at everything…those of you that know me, you know I have no tolerance for things like this! So needless to say, it was quite amusing for us to be sitting together. We did get through the flight just fine and once we landed we hopped right on the Magical Express to check in to our hotel-Port Orleans Riverside.
Mom and I checked into our rooms and we walked the very long windy path to our neighboring rooms. We were welcomed to the rustic atmosphere we would call home for 10 days.
We quickly put down our things and headed to Magic Kingdom. First on the agenda was eating…our first experience using the Disney Dining Plan…lets just say we did not go hungry during our trip. That night we made it on several rides including Pirates, It’s a Small World and the Haunted Mansion.
At about 10:30 we were ready to call it a night and went back to the hotel.
Friday November 27th
Some how every time we go to Disney , our first full day always ends up being Epcot.
Greg and I have developed quite the system and are experts on figuring out how he can go and collect all of the fast passes while the rest of us ride on one of the smaller rides. We got to the park right at opening and as soon as they let us in, Greg was off to collect fast passes for all of us at Soarin’ and we all went to ride The Seas With Nemo and Friends.
After that ride we spent quite a bit of time in the aquarium…there were some interesting things in there…just ask Chris about the dolphins….Moving on…after that we went over to Club Cool where we introduced the family to soda’s from all around the world. Let me tell you, some countries have no business making soda!
After that the kids played in the Innovations Building and learned about saving money.
Believe it or not, by the time we were done with this, it was already time for lunch. We had a sit down meal at Coral Reef and it was probably one of our favorite meals and atmosphere’s. We got to watch a sea turtle swimming around the whole time.
After lunch it was time to hit up our favorite ride Soarin.
From there we did some shopping, went on Living with the Land, Test Track and Mission Space. If you ever go to Epcot..I suggest you go on the “less intense” version of this ride as anyone in our group will tell you…it was really intense!
The rest of our day and into the evening was spent walking around some of the countries before enjoying dinner in China.
Not such a great dinner for more reasons than the food but that’s okay! After that we bundled up and found a spot to watch Illuminations.
I know we’re from Colorado and we were in Florida but it was COLD!! After watching an amazing water, laser and firework show we stopped by Spaceship Earth and then it was back to the hotel to get some rest.
Saturday November 28th
This was our full day at the wonderful Magic Kingdom.
As soon as you walk in, you realize just how grand everything at Disney is. It is really like walking straight into a movie and feeling like everything is happy and wonderful! Just stop to talk to some of the characters or watch a parade and you’ll see just what I mean. Stops before lunch included the Swiss Family Treehouse, Splash Mountain, Aladin’s Carpet Ride, meeting characters-Woody, Jessie, Lilo and Stitch, The Enchanted Tiki Room, and the Jungle Cruise.
For lunch we sat down at Tony’s Town Square which is themed after the restaurant from Lady in the Tramp.
After lunch we did Splash Mountain again…against Kyle’s wishes. We got him on so that we could get a picture of all us going down the mountain only to find out afterwards that the camera was not working…Kyle was pretty angry for awhile that afternoon. He did go on Thunder Mountain which turned out to be fine.
We also enjoyed watching Mickey’s PhilharMagic, and riding Snow White, Space Mountain and Goofy’s Barnstormer.
From there it was already getting dark and it was time to sit and get ready for the Spectro Magic Parade and Wish’s firework show. Greg and I sat to save seats while the rest went to ride Peter Pan. Like last year, all the kids except for Kaylie fell asleep. Taylor and Alyssa have yet to see this show.
Maybe if we go again, we will sleep all afternoon until it is time to go to the parade.
Sunday November 29th
We have officially decided that Hollywood Studios is not our favorite park at Disney.
But this was our day to go play there. First on the agenda was Rockin Roller Coaster which those who went on it loved!
We watched some lame thing on Journey Into Narnia: Prince Caspian then we went and took a drawing class on how to draw Mickey which was so much fun….well except for the lady that almost pushed me over and was cussing at me in some other language all because I asked her and her son to not cut in front of us while we were trying to sit together. Oh well, I went and told Greg all about her later only to find out that her husband was also standing there listening to me talk about how rude his wife is! Oops!
We watched Beauty and the Beast while Greg and Kaylie went on Tower of Terror where Kaylie decided she no longer liked it and cried!
We walked around a bit and let the kids play on the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playset before deciding we were done with the park and going back to the hotel to spend the rest of the afternoon playing in the pool.
After resting up, we all got dressed and went out for a dinner at Planet Hollywood at Downtown Disney.
FYI we took the boat from our hotel to Downtown Disney…and for anyone ever going I wouldn’t recommend this. It was cold, loud and took forever! But Planet Hollywood was fun.
The food was good, the music was good and all the stuff from movies was fun to look at. Another great day!
Monday November 30th
Happy Birthday Chris and Tracy!! These two lucky people had the pleasure of spending their birthday at Disney…not such a bad deal because this year Disney was honoring people who were celebrating their birthday there and they each got a $79 merchandise voucher. They also got to wear nice Happy Birthday buttons and be wished a Happy Birthday by every Disney employee who noticed it. Chris even got a free piece of fruit at the snack bar. This was our day to go to Animal Kingdom which ended up being perfect because it turned out to be Chris’s favorite park.
We started out by going to see the It’s Tough to be a Bug show inside the Tree of Life, then went over to the safari ride where we got to see all sorts of animals up close including a giraffe that walked right up to our truck and tried to eat something from the people sitting behind us.
We also rode Kali River Rapids, Expedition Everest and the Dinosaur ride.
We ate a place called Tusker House which was just okay and then we watched the Finding Nemo musical.
We spent a lot of time walking all the trails and seeing all of the different animals around the park. From there we went to Magic Kingdom to watch the Celebrate parade and then to the hotel and relaxed before us big kids went out for a night to celebrate Chris and Tracy’s birthday.
We went over to Downtown Disney and learned that most of their nightlife places have closed. We ended up sitting and watching some guy sing at House of Blues while chatting and having a few drinks…well some had more than a few which is why they were not allowed to have any more when they went over to Planet Hollywood.
All in all it ended up being a pretty early night considering.
Tuesday December 1st
This was the last day for the extended family to be with us. We all spent the morning shopping and walking around at Downtown Disney. After saying goodbye, we went over to the new T-Rex restaurant and had lunch. The kids enjoyed making new little friends in the build a dino shop.
The rest of the afternoon we spent in all of our favorite Disney stores. First the Lego shop where we packed a container full of random Lego pieces.
Then we went over to Once Upon a Toy where we spent a very long time filling a large Mr. Potato Head with Mr. Potato Head pieces and then packed a box full of My Little Pony accessories.
We also took the kids over to Disney Quest which is a big arcade with lots of interactive games and even a lot of old favorites.
This took us into the evening hours where we sat and enjoyed a meal at Cap N Jacks.
Wednesday December 2nd
This ended up being the warmest of our days in Florida so we decided to take the kids over to Blizzard Beach for a few hours to have some water park fun.
The girls and I stopped by to visit a few characters while Greg and Taylor went and rode their favorite roller coaster again. Then we got in line and waited to watch the big Fantasmic show.
After that show we walked further down into the park and enjoyed all the holiday lights in the Osborne Festival of Lights show.
Thursday December 3rd
There were a couple things left at Animal Kingdom to see so we headed back that way.
We rode the safari again and watched a Lion King show.
Before leaving for some more time at the pool, we ate at Yak and Yeti. After some down time at the pool we were headed back to Magic Kingdom for the big Very Merry Christmas Party where we enjoyed hot cocoa, sugar cookies and snow on Main Street.
We were able to hop on a few of our favorite rides again including Pirates, Thunder Mountain, Winnie the Pooh, and Goofy’s Barnstormer.
The girls and I spent some time meeting characters and touring Mikey and Minnies house while Greg and Taylor went back to Space Mountain.
We even got to meet some of the fairies including Tinker Bell before watching the big Christmas parade and firework show.
Disney loves parades and Fireworks!!!
Friday December 4th
Back to another full day at Epcot…only this time…it rained all day long. And I don’t mean it would rain and then stop and then rain again…no it rained the entire day. We really loved our poncho’s that day and I’m positive that Disney’s biggest merchandise seller is their ponchos. But the rain didn’t stop us, not even with our sopping wet feet. This was really our day of eating because it seemed like that was all we did. We felt like we were going from one place to eat to the next. Of course we had to get back on Soarin, then Greg and the girls rode the Mission Space ride again. Just an hour or so after having breakfast it was already time for our reservations at Teppan Edo
and then just hours after that we sat down to eat again at Chefs De France.
Saturday December 5th
Our final day in Disney…we were actually ready to come home…Not the “I’m so done with vacation” type of ready to come home but the “I feel like we got everything we wanted out of this vacation and it’s time to go home”.
After packing up all of our stuff we were headed back to Downtown Disney to eat and walk around before heading to the airport. It’s too bad we didn’t know before that we would sit at the airport for 5 hours…we would have gone to a park that day. But even with a major delay, we had a very wonderful family vacation and will have a ton of memories to share together.
Here are some pictures of some Characters that we met on this trip
Just to give you an idea of how tired we were at the end of the days
Some fun highlights of our trip
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