Disney Adventures

So I figured I better write about our trip to Disney World before I start forgetting details about it! It's been such an exhausting month that the forgetting of details will probably start happening soon because there was just too much going on for me to remember it all.

The drive down went fine. The kids did really well with such a long (16 hours) drive. The promise of Disney kept the older two going, not to mention the snacks and portable DVD players.

We stayed at the Coronado Springs Resort on Disney property. It is really beautiful and we highly recommend it as a place to stay for anyone going to Disney. When we booked our trip, we did so through a special offer we had received through email to get their Quick Service dining plan for free. After the trip, we would be willing to pay for it to get it now that we have experienced how it works and seen how much food costs at Disney World. Very expensive. But the dining plan, while not cheap, does save money and it just makes your time there so much more relaxed. We didn't spend every meal trying to get the cheapest thing on the menu or sharing food or insisting the kids wait for a snack till we got to our hotel room. The plan included two meals and two snacks per person per day (except Tyler since he is under 3). At the end of our trip, we still had over 20 snacks left on our plan! And that wasn't because we had been frugal with them either! When we were hungry we got snacks. By the next to the last day we had realized we still had a lot left and at that point we started practically making the kids have snacks! But thankfully, they had a lot of packaged candy and snacks like rice crispy treats that are all sealed up that could be bought as a snack on the meal plan so before we left the park on our last day, we let the kids pick out candy and used up the last snacks we had left that way. They still have some of that candy left, by the way!

So while we were there we visited all four parks and were able to go to Epcot and the Magic Kingdom twice each. Mine and Paul's favorite park has always been Epcot but going with kids made the Magic Kingdom more fun than I had remembered (not that it hadn't been fun before, just not to the level it was this time). Riley was tall enough to ride every ride and before we went, she wanted to ride them all. She ended up riding all but one - the Rockin' Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith at the Hollywood Studios. That is one of my all time favorite roller coasters. She got in line with Paul to ride it but at the last minute changed her mind. Paul and I both took turns riding it though. It's still as awesome as it was the first time I rode it. It would have been even better if there hadn't been a lady on the ride as I was getting close to the front of the line who suddenly decided she was claustrophobic AFTER they had put the shoulder harness bar down and locked it into place. The workers had to call in two ride mechanics to shut it down just enough to get her out but not shut the whole ride down for hours. So that was quite an adventure for me. While I was witnessing all of that (where I stood in line I was able to see and hear the woman and all the workers as they dealt with that) Paul had taken the kids to another area of the park and got them some ice cream.

Part of Riley's fear of the Rockin' Roller Coaster may have been because she had just gotten off of Hollywood Tower of Terror with me, where she got totally freaked out. I love rides that drop like that but I think the set up of the ride (they do this whole Twilight Zone story before you get dropped and it was very spooky) may have made it all too much for her.

We took the kids to meet the characters while we were at Epcot too and that was really fun. Tyler was totally convinced they were real and was just enthralled by them. Riley got all of their autographs. We also saw Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, the Stepmother and Stepsisters from Cinderella and her Fairy Godmother all just in different spots around the parks and sometimes walking through the park. That was really cool, though we were never able to get pictures with any of them.

Our least favorite park was the Animal Kingdom. It's not that it isn't fun, but it's more that there just isn't a ton to do there and what there is to do isn't hugely special. It's also very hot there because of the even more tropical feel to the air because of all the trees they have there. It makes it even more humid than Florida is on it's own. We liked it ok but did agree that if we are able to go back to Disney World in the future, we probably will skip the Animal Kingdom and maybe do one of their water parks instead.

Our last day was quite an adventure too. We went to the Magic Kingdom one more time that day, with the plan to leave the park mid to late afternoon and start driving in the direction of home. We then would stop hopefully just inside Georgia and get a hotel room and then drive the rest of the way home on Saturday. All of that went just fine but when we went to leave the Magic Kingdom, we first stopped for a few souvenirs and that candy I mentioned before. While we were in the candy store, it started raining. Well I had planned ahead for just such an occurance since we were headed to Florida where it's not unusual for there to be rain showers every afternoon. I had brought ponchos for everyone. We had already used them once earlier in the week and at that point I had discovered that Tyler won't wear one so the other two kids and I put ours on, Paul used his to cover all our goodies in the back of the stroller and we put the sun canopy up over Tyler in hopes that would give him some protection. We weren't too far from the exit of the park so we set out to catch the Monorail to the parking area where our car was. By the time we got to the exit gates of the park, the rain was coming down in torrents. Paul started running to get to the Monorail station. Riley was running to keep up with him and Jake and I were running too but Jake was just too slow to keep up. He started hesitating, I think because with the hood up and with as heavy as the rain was he wasn't sure where to go. I had stayed just behind him to make sure I knew where he was so I just scooped him up and kept trying to run. My hood ended up falling off and that was when I realized just how heavy the rain was. When it's coming down hard enough to almost wash your contacts out of your eyes you know it's raining hard. I tried to at least keep up a jog but hey, when you are carrying a five year old, plus your own extra blubber, running isn't exactly a long distance option. Not to mention the ramp up to the Monorail station is quite an incline. So I ended up walking up it through the heavy rain till I got to where Paul was. Poor Paul and Tyler were drenched. My head was soaked from my hood falling off. But Riley and Jake were fairly dry, though a little shook up from the experience. We ended up stopping at a gas station on the way out of the park to change our clothes.

We really had a ton of fun and the rain thing at the end didn't change that at all. Since it only rained one other time while we were there I think it was a due a good hard downpour. The kids seemed to have a lot of fun going by how they talk about it now. Riley did great and had a blast the whole time. Jake is more of a homebody and did more complaining, plus couldn't step into sunlight without sunglasses on his face without having a small breakdown. But we were expecting this trip to have an element of work for us and not just fun every minute. That is a drawback of bringing very young kids to a place like that I think. But it was worth it for them to have the memories they have now. I don't think Jake will look back and only remember how bright the sun was. I think he'll remember riding his first bigger roller coaster (Big Thunder Mountain Railroad) and riding the race car ride with his Daddy. Tyler won't have any memories really of the trip but he'll have the pictures of himself there. Plus he was free so him not remembering doesn't bother us as much since we didn't have to pay for him to get in. :)