Disney: Day 2/Morning

I want to go ahead a apologize for the obscene amount of pictures that are going to be in these posts! I really do promise that I’m trying to narrow them down as much as possible!!

Monday was our first Magic Kingdom day. Gray woke Chris and I up around 7:30. We got ready for the day, then woke the kids up. Usually they are up VERY early in the mornings, so it was obvious how tired they were for us to have to wake them! They got up and got going rather quickly though.. they were SO excited! We made it to Magic Kingdom around 9am.

Pin Trading is a big deal in Disney. I had several people tell me to get the kiddos pins to trade. So before we got started on all the action, we stopped by a gift store and purchased our pin trading essentials. They each got to pick out a lanyard and the pins to go on it.

LK chose a cute little red Minnie Mouse polka dotted lanyard and then filled it up with sweet pins. She got Mary Poppins, Ballerina Minnie, Cheerleader Minne, Marie from Aristocats, Alice from AIW, Cinderella’s carriage, and OF COURSE.. Stitch as Elvis! 

They got those cute “1st Visit” buttons when we checked in!

Ethan chose a Star Wars lanyard that included the big round pins: Hans Solo, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and a Storm Trooper. Then he got to choose 3 more so that he and LK would have the same amount. He chose a Jedi Mickey Mouse, a Mickey skateboard, and (much to his Daddy’s delight!) a Mickey Cubs pin!

G liked the pins!

He let Chris wear the Cubs pin!

We had to stop for a photo op in from of the entrance sign!!!

(side note: they have professional photogs who take pics at certain picturesque spots around the park. they are all loaded onto a “photo pass” card and then you can purchase them after your visit. I have ordered a cd of all of our photo pass pics, so I’ll do a separate post with all of those when they come in. this was one of the photo pass spots!)

     

I LOVE it!!! We made LOTS of memories!!!

Main Street USA!

Our first stop was to visit Minnie and Mickey!

        

We LOVE Minnie and Mickey! I felt like a little kid again! I remember when I was little you would have to search all over the park to find characters. Now, they have designated areas for them! MUCH easier!! Now, they do place characters randomly throughout the park still.. so there’s still that little bit of excitement when you stumble across someone unexpectedly!

         

As soon as we walked outside from visiting Minnie and Mickey, we ran into this cute guy!

PRECIOUS!!!

        

THEN, we happened to run into this lovely lady.. or should I say, fairest of them all?! :)

After all the excitement of seeing several characters, we ended up smack dab in the middle of a parade! I think it was called the Move It and Shake It Parade?? I could be wrong about the name. It was really fun though! And this was all just within the first hour!!! It was incredible!!

     

The parade passed our area so we started to head down Main Street. We were FINALLY able to see the castle! It was everything LK dreamed it would be!!

We ran into the parade again. It had gone down Main Street and stopped in front of the castle. Once it stopped the characters got down and danced in the streets with the kids. It was so fun to watch!!! Of course, mine were right out in the middle of the action!

We walked through the castle and ended up in Fantasyland.

Ethan just had to give the beloved Excalibur a tug!

Then they all had to try!!

Our first ride was Prince Charming’s Carousel. Gray LOVED it!!! Chris got a pic of him riding it on his phone. I’ll have to post it later. He got to sit on his horse by himself and giggled the entire time!

This is the best picture I got of them riding it! :( I was blocked by too many people!!

Next up, Mad Hatter’s Tea Party!!

Chris got them spinning super fast! They had a ball!!

       

LK and I rode a Snow White ride. It was really sweet! She loved it!

 

Chris took LK and E on It’s A Small World while I stayed with Gray. He was napping in the stroller. (He did GREAT napping in the stroller!!! We LOVED our City Mini!!)

       

Ethan just had to try out the Race Track. He even got to drive his own car!!

Chris’ reaction to his driving! Good thing it’ll be a while until he’s old enough to do it again!! ha!

My sweet boy!

      

We all wanted to go on the Winnie The Pooh ride!

E showing off his driver’s license

      

It was such a cute ride!!!

We had lunch at a place in Tomorrowland, then decided to head back to the resort to rest. We had dinner reservations at the restaurant at our resort and we had already decided that we wanted to come back to the Magic Kingdom later that evening. Several people had told us to plan two days for the Magic Kingdom. I am SO glad that I listened to their advice. It took us nearly 1 entire day just to do Fantasyland!!!

Of course, we all had to get Mickey Ears!!!! Gray was not too fond of his!! ha!

Next up is a post to finish out our first day…..

Disney : Day 1

OK.. it’s going to take me SEVERAL posts to get in all things Disney! I still haven’t even made it past the first day of editing pics! But, I’ve had several people hound me for pics so I better get started!! (ahem, JENNIFER!! I AM ON IT!) ;) So here you go:

Day 1

On Saturday morning, I finished packing and ran one last Target run before we left. I also tried to get the house as clean as I could. At least the kitchen and living room. I really didn’t want to come home to a dirty house!!

I think everyone in the family came by to give the kiddos one last hug and even a few more spending dollars! THEY ARE SOOO SPOILED!! It was very sweet though! We finally got out of Memphis around 3pm and headed to Nashville. We got into Nashville around 7pm. Gray made it till just an hour outside of Nashville before he needed a break. We stopped for a diaper change and quick bottle, then got back on the road. He did great!!! Chris and April had dinner waiting on us and it was delish! Candice was there too and we were able to talk weddings and I even got a sneak peek of her wedding dress! She is going to be a stunning bride!!

We were up BRIGHT AND EARLY on Sunday! Wet had to be at the airport at 6am. Surprisingly everyone was quite easy to wake up. (maybe DW had something to do with that!) ;) Both kiddos looked adorable rolling their little suitcases into the airport.

         

         

The plane ride was very short. Only an hour and a half! Gray did great! He slept for the first half of the flight then played with LK and E for the second half. I was worried how he would do. LK and E LOVED the flight!! I think Ethan was almost more excited about flying in an airplane than he was about going to Disney World! ha!

We packed their backpacks full of crayons, coloring books, LK’s iTouch, the iPad and books to read.

We got into Orland around 10:30 and quickly made our way to the Disney Transportation area. We signed up for their complimentary shuttle service to and form the airport. It was called “Disney’s Magical Express”. We didn’t have to worry about our luggage. They took care of that for us and it was delivered to our room. HUGE relief!! We only had to wait about 20 min and we were on our way to our resort!

We got there early in the day with the hopes of going to one of the parks, but unfortunately that didn’t work out. We ended up having to wait about 4 hours for a room to be ready for us! :( It was the only part of the trip that I was disappointed in!! After 4 hours of sitting in the lobby and walking around our resort area, the kiddos were getting restless and we needed our luggage for dinner. Chris got them to just give us a different room. We finally got our luggage around 6pm and had to RUN to get on a bus, then a monorail for dinner. I’ll get into that in a min though.

While we were waiting, we saw people riding around on these bikes… Chris and the kids decided to give it a try! HOW CUTE ARE THEY??!!! LK totally busted Chris out though and said, “Daddy had to stop like 3 times to rest!!” hahaha!!

We had dinner reservations for 7pm. Our luggage didn’t get there till 6pm, which meant that I had to very quickly get everyone changed and then on a bus to our destination. With this being our first day in Disney, we really didn’t know how the transportation worked or how long it would take to get anywhere. The first bus that came was one to Epcot. What I did remember from my past trips is that you can take the monorail from Epcot over to the Magic Kingdom and the resorts surrounding the lake. Our reservations were at 1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian next to the Magic Kingdom. So, we hopped on the Epcot bus, RAN to the monorail, then took the next monorail over the Grand Floridian. We ended up being 20 min late for our reservation, but luckily they held if for us. At this point, I was just ready to cry b/c the entire day had been such a mess. Once we got seated at dinner though, all worries went away and we all just enjoyed our evening!

LK saw Mary Poppins while waiting to be seated!

Everyone was EXTREMELY tired by this point!!

Still smiling though!!

Well, almost… ;)

Our reservations were at 1900 Park Fare. It was a character meal. I wasn’t 100% sure which characters were going to be there but I knew that it was going to be geared toward LK’s liking. I was right!! It ended up being Cinderella, Prince Charming, along with the Stepmother and Stepsisters! LK was in awe! Her sweet smile completely made for all of the craziness we went through to get there! I would have run 100 miles in high heels jus to see that smile!

The Prince introducing Cinderella

LK was beside herself to see the Prince! She was speechless, if you can believe it! This girl is NEVER speechless!

Look at that shy little grin! LOVE it!!

DREAM COME TRUE!!

Even Gray was a little fond of Cinder-Elly!

I was VERY impressed with the step sisters.. everyone was very much in character!!

At one point they put on dancing music and guess who got up to waltz with Cinderella…. that’s right! She was soooo excited!!

The stepmother!

Ethan was not into anything going on at all! He could have cared less about the characters! ha! Not to mention the fact that it was about 2hrs past his bed time at this point AND he had been awake since 5am… poor guy! However, he definitely perked up when we realized that he could eat an entire plate of gummy bears and Mommy wouldn’t say No! There were definitely no food restrictions in Disney World! They could eat whatever they wanted, no bed times, and they never got a NO answer for anything! This trip was ALL ABOUT THEM! That’s the way DW should be though! :)

As you can tell, he definitely enjoyed his desert!

LK gave the meal a thumbs up!

Even Little Man held out through the entire meal!!

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The boys on the monorail.

After dinner, we walked around the Grand Floridian, which was incredibly gorgeous, and walked down to the beach and boat marina. It was dark and chilly, but still breathtaking! You could see Cinderella’s Castle all lit up and they were showing a movie outside in the courtyard area. Once we left the Grand Floridian, we went back to our room to rest up for our first official day at the parks!! Monday was our first Magic Kingdom day!!

More posts to come…

Reality

Hi Y'all!!! I promise that I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth! We have just returned from THE MOST MAGICAL PLACE ON EARTH and I am still stuck in vacation mode! We got home late Friday night and I spent most of the weekend doing laundry and cleaning the house. It's amazing how long it takes to do an entire week's worth of laundry for 5 people!!! This week is Spring Break and it's been almost 80 degrees every day, so it's almost as if we're still in sunny Florida having a blast... minus Mikey Mouse and 200,000 people though! ;)

I promise that I will post pictures from our trip soon, but I took over TWO THOUSAD! YIKES! It may take me a while to get them edited!!! Until then, here's a few off my phone! We had the most amazing time!!! It truly was the best 6 days of my life. Seeing these sweet smiling faces every day was the best thing in the world!

G had the best time! I was worried how he would react to the characters, but he LOVED them!!!

These two had the time of their lives! They even rode Splash Mountain (Ethan did it twice!) AND Tower of Terror!!! I have the most awesome kiddos!

We never waited more than 20 min in line for a ride! It was a great week to go and the weather was amazing!!! 80's and sunny everyday!

The Little Man got enjoy a few items that are not on his usual daily menu.. but, hey.. who doesn't want Mickey Mouse Ice Cream Ears for lunch??!! ;)