Disney World 2015! - Magic Kingdom Monday

Because I am apparently a farmer at heart I was up around 5am the next morning. Seriously, I could NOT go back to sleep. So I dinked around on my phone for a while and then showered and dressed and enjoyed the nice weather out on the patio. Eventually everyone got up, dressed, fed, and we were out the door!

But first we had to ride the shuttle. Shuttle riding is something you become an expert at when staying at a Disney resort. (At least at one not on the monorail.) We had to take the shuttle everywhere, and it was usually a good 15-25 minute ride each time. Fortunately, our kids got pretty used to and adept at this.

We finally pulled up to the Magic Kingdom and there was much rejoicing! And much cuteness from my boys.

We worked our way in, used our MagicBands (and scanned our fingerprints so no one else could steal our bands and use them), picked up a stroller, and were on our way! (We rented a double stroller while there. Totally worth not having to drag one on the plane or on all of the shuttles. Pricey, but worth it. And we got the double because even though Cole is almost 6, he got tired.)

First, we had to take the obligatory picture in front of the castle. Because that is what you do when you go to the Magic Kingdom. It's the law.

Also, Tess decided to do her thing. For most of the pictures. TenaciousT indeed.

We decided to use the PhotoPass service. At certain popular spots in all the parks there were "professional" (I used the term loosely because, while the majority of the photos were great, some were... off) photographers who would take your picture. Then you'd scan your Magic Band and your pictures would be connected to your account, where you can download them later. It cost extra (of course it did - this is Disney we're talking about), but we decided to do it because I wanted photographic evidence of having actually been there. (I'm always behind the camera on other trips.) Did I mention you also get all the pictures that are taken on the rides? You know, the goofy ones of you screaming down Splash Mountain and the like? You do. You just go up to the monitor with your picture on it and scan your band. So easy! And so worth it.

What's the first ride you go on when you go to the Magic Kingdom? It's A Small World, of course! Lance and the older boys say that's because you want to just get it out of the way. I say it's because It's A Small World is classic Disney; a tradition; and a great way to start your kids on Disney rides.

Cole was impressed.

Tess was enchanted.

Josh sat up front with Lance and Spencer and made snarky comments that I'm glad I couldn't hear. It was a bonding moment for all.

I had to take a picture of the hippo because the Jungle Cruise ride was closed and this was the closest I was going to get to an animatronic hippo all week. *sob*

After It's A Small World we hit another classic - The Haunted Mansion. The kids enjoyed all of the entertainment while we waited in line. (It wasn't too long.) I thought it might be a little intense for Tess; she sat with Grandma Susie and me. But she rocked it! She loved that the pretend ghosts were having a birthday party. Lance got to hear a little Colelish: when the elevator went pitch black Cole exclaimed "Oh! I'm blind!" When the lights came back on he proclaimed he was no longer blind. Phew.

I'm a little fuzzy on the order of the rides we went on after that. We went on A LOT. We rocked FantasyLand and TomorrowLand.

We saw the Laugh Floor show, where Uncle Kyle was "that guy". (A running gag in the show.) It was pretty amazing - animated monsters interacted with the audience. It was a big thumbs up.

And we went on the Prince Charming Regal Carrousel, which amazed me because it was Tess who insisted on going. This is the same girl who flatly refused to get anywhere near a moving horse on the carrousel at the Children's Museum!

She adored it, even though we had to wait for 10 minutes for it to get started. Sheesh.

This was for Mickey's PhilharMagic show, which was in 3D and pretty entertaining. Cole jumped out of his seat the first time the 3D took effect!

For one year straight 3-year-old Cole watched Dumbo every single day. So of course we went on the Dumbo ride. The Dumbo ride is just flying around in a giant Dumbo. But the wait? Awesomesauce. You wait in line for a bit and then get a pager. While you wait for the pager to buzz, your kids can play in this big, really fun indoor playground. The kids LOVED it!

I got to ride with Josh - he controlled the lever that made us go up and down. He liked being down - I liked up. We compromised and went up and down a lot.

Tess was pretty stoked.

Later in the day we went on our first "coaster" - the Barnstormer. Cole was pretty excited. (So was I - hence the crazy eyes...)

We later split up because we had a FastPass (which is like a reservation so you don't have to wait in line) for the Seven Dwarves mine train, which Tess was too little to go on. Grandma took her on the train to try to get her to nap and we hit a few more rides, like Under The Sea.

We shopped a little and I modeled some oh-so-attractive princess Leia Mickey ears.

I reeeeallly wanted to meet Gaston because I heard he was a hoot to talk to, plus he's my favorite Disney villain. But he wasn't there when we checked. So we had some pictures taken.

Then we rode the mine train, which was pretty fun.

Not worth waiting in line for 75 minutes fun, but FastPassing and waiting in line for 5 minutes? Totally fun!

I have to admit, you feel totally superior to those schmucks waiting in line when you use your FastPass. That said, when you're the one waiting in line you totally glare at those FastPassers. (You only get 3 FastPasses a day. You can get more after you use your 3, but they're hard to come by.)

Spencer's having a great time - and so is Cole. Look at the joy on that boy's face!

Nobody wanted to wait with me for Gaston again, so they all went to get ice cream while I waited in line. They said they'd bring me mine, but 20 minutes later I was with Gaston and no ice cream. I felt kinda dorky being by myself, until I decided to tell him the truth: my family obviously had their priorities messed up because they wanted to get ice cream instead of meeting him!

Gaston completely agreed.

And then we posed. Because that's what you do with Gaston.

He was a pretty awesome Gaston.

What a fun job! (p.s. Those muscles? Kinda foamy... hope I didn't ruin the magic for you there.)

I finally made my way back to my boys to find this. Cole devouring his ice cream cone, and Uncle Kyle stepping in to save Cole from himself.

Cole took a chapter from Uncle Kyle's childhood playbook and decided to eat the bottom of the cone. Why do kids do that?!?

We dinked around the rest of the afternoon. We had some time to kill before dinner, but not enough time to go back to the resort. We went on the People Mover (it does what it says!) and Stitch's great escape (lame.), and even the Carrousel of Progress (unintentionally funny). Lance lost his hat and it was sad.

But then it was time for dinner at CINDERELLA'S ROYAL TABLE. That's right - we ate INSIDE of the castle!  We were all tired and hot and cranky, but meeting Cinderella herself? Magical! Tess was enchanted!

It's not every day you meet a princess. She also complimented the shirts I had made for everyone. She's always been my fave.

So dinner was this fancy affair, with fancy food and fancy tables and fancy waiters. But what do they do first thing? Give each little girl a magic wand and each little boy a sword.  GOOD HEAVENS!! You can imagine the time we had trying to get them to behave themselves. Luckily, we were not alone in this endeavor.

I wish I had better pictures of the inside of the restaurant. Oh well. It was very Disney-esque.

At first Tess didn't want to wear her princess dress, but once she saw Cinderella and then saw all of the other little girls with their dresses on it was a done deal.

This was a character dinner, which meant that the princesses came around to each table, signed autographs, and took pictures with each child. Because we had to sit at separate tables (they didn't seat more than 6 and we had 9), we have 2 sets of pictures with each princess. Lucky us.

Snow White had a crazy high pitched voice, just like in the movie. I don't know how this gal did it. Kudos to her!

Tess even gave her a hug!

Cole was hangry and not interested in princesses. Josh was, but tried not to let it show.

Doesn't this look like Sleeping Beauty is sneaking up on Tess? I love it.

Tess is now obsessed with Sleeping Beauty and claims to be her every day. I think it's the pink dress.

 
Cole actually deigned to get in a picture with Sleeping Beauty. Maybe because she's blond. (He likes other blond people.) ((Cole is awesomely quirky...))

Ariel was fun, but Tess didn't believe she was the Little Mermaid because "where is her tail"?

Jasmine had quite the outfit. I'm glad Tess doesn't want to be her!

Even uncle Kyle got in on this one!

During the meal we had a wonderful waiter named Fernando who was from Naples. (Who knows how long he had been away from Italy, but he played up his accent to his advantage!) He called Tess "principessa" the whole evening and was wonderfully patient with the kids. The man knew how to do his job well!

Tess having a look over her kingdom.

Dinner was really good, and for dessert I had their famous "The Clock Strikes 12" chocolate mousse dessert. It tasted as good as it looked!

After dinner Lance decided to go check the lost and found for his hat. We waited for a bit and then decided to leave and get a shuttle. Problem was that it was almost time for the fireworks show. (And by almost time I mean it was in an hour.) People start waiting for that parade and show so early! It was next to impossible getting out of there - it felt like we had escaped!

We all got home, tired but happy. Everyone who works at Disney tells you to have a "Magical Day". We did.

Disney World 2015! - Getting There

So I didn't drop off the face of the earth - I just went to DisneyWorld!  Woo-hoo!!  It was great, but now we're all suffering from post-vacation blues. Those are the worst. The kids want to be entertained all the time and I am feeling very put out that I actually have to cook and clean for my family again. *pout*

I will ignore the cooking and cleaning for a bit to do a bit-o-blogging about the trip.  First things first: getting there.

We left on the morning of May 3rd. I have to admit that flying on an airplane wasn't nearly as exciting this time around because we had just done it two weeks before. Fortunately, the kids were happy to learn that there were no layovers and the flight would last less than two hours. This was good, because Cole was crazy-go-nuts, saying wild and crazy things in *Coleish and having zero patience when it came to waiting in line.

*Coleish is what we have taken to calling all of the crazy things Cole says. For example, his most recent insult is calling you a "Head Butt". No one has corrected him because this is way funnier. Plus, he's also taken to head butting people when he's being obnoxious, so it kinda fits. He also reads and hears a lot but doesn't quite understand it and so uses a lot of words out of context. When he's mad at me he likes to yell "That wasn't part of the deal!" and storming off. When he's really mad at Josh or Spencer he likes to yell "You're really IMPRESSIVE!!!" It's all pretty hilarious.

Anywho, the flight? Uneventful. Which is what you want when it comes to airline travel, amiright? Well done, Southwest.

So we land in Orlando and then have to hike across to the opposite end of the airport to get to our Disney Magical Express transportation. Fortunately, part of the service is them delivering your luggage directly to the resort so we didn't have to deal with that. We had to wait in line for a good 20 minutes, which Cole did NOT like, but once we were on one of those big buses all was right with the world.

We were lucky enough to be the first stop: Old Key West Resort.  First thing we checked in and got our MagicBands. MagicBands are AWESOME. Seriously, the best thing ever.

They're RFID bands that pretty much do everything: open your resort door, hold your FastPass+ reservations, let you into the theme parks, keep track of where your kids are, allow you to use PhotoPass, and even act as your credit card (you have to punch in a code, so no worries about losing it). Seriously - no more worrying about dragging around keys and credit cards and tickets and stuff! And they're cool. All the cool kids were wearing them!

I wanted to take a picture of them in their holder, but the kids were way too anxious. But here's a picture I stole from the interwebs - just imagine our names underneath instead. Disney does an awesome job making everything - even their MagicBands presentation - look so great. 

Then we hiked on down to our resort suite. (We were far too impatient to wait for the shuttle - plus we had been sitting down most of the day.)

We stayed in a 2 bedroom suite, and it was great. We really could have used another bedroom (kudos to Grandpa and Grandma for sleeping on the couch bed and for Tess sleeping on some cushions in our closet), so it was small, but still really nice. Of course, not nice enough for me to think of taking any pictures... growl... but that's what Google images is for, right?

All of the buildings looked pretty much the same. We were on the second floor on the right.

It had this great little kitchen and living area. I ordered groceries so we could make breakfast each morning, but ordered way too much food. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm still kicking myself over that.

It was pretty well stocked, although there were only 6 of everything and 9 of us!

The boys and uncle Kyle shared a room like this.

I couldn't find a picture of the master bedroom that I liked, but here's what part of the master bathroom looked like. There was a second part with a toilet and large shower, with an entrance from this room and off of the laundry room. Yep, laundry room. It came in sooooo handy!

We dumped our backpacks and decided to go find some snacks. Our building was right next to a smaller pool and a snack shack. The kids were in heaven when they got their own refillable Disney Resort cups and got to choose from a pretty great menu of snacks!

I should mention here that we were on the Disney Dining plan, which allotted one Quick Meal (think fast food), one Table Dining Meal (think nice dinner), and one snack (all sorts of stuff) for each person each day. It was great for many reasons, the main one being that you didn't really have to worry about feeding your family. You just used your MagicBand and BAM! Food.

After we refueled with things like Mickey Mouse shaped rice crispy treats, Mickey chocolate covered ice creams, strawberries, brownies, and nachos, we decided to head down to Downtown Disney. Downtown Disney is considered a Disney Park, but it doesn't require tickets. Basically, it's just a glorified outdoor mall.  We had fun window shopping and looking at all the crazy Disney stuff you can buy.

My kids don't usually like shopping, but they liked it here! (Just look how happy Spencer is!)

Eventually Grandpa ElRay and Grandma Susie met us and we headed out to our first dinner of the week at Raglan Road. It was very loud and very crowded. But there was entertainment: lots of Irish dancing and singing.

The kids even got to get in on some of the action.

The food was really good, too. Lance and I decided to split at 28oz steak. (You read that right - although there was a pretty big bone, so it was more like a 20oz steak. And Lance ate the majority of it and I ate the majority of the veggies that came with it. This is why we're married.)

The only bad thing I can say is that it was SLOOOOOOWWW. Our server was great, but I think he was partly to blame. We were there for over 2 hours. This amazing chocolate mousse dessert helped alleviate some of my irritation. (With the Disney dining plan you get a dessert with each meal. Yowza!)

We eventually made it back to the resort, where uncle Kyle was waiting for us. The kids were all super excited, but they were also super tired because it was way past their bedtime. (This would become the norm for the week.) We finally got everyone - including the adults - into bed.