Disney World, Here We Come!

We feel so blessed to have been able to spend a week in sunny Florida enjoying all the magic Disney had to offer a couple weeks ago....here's a brief rundown of our time away....

We arrived in Florida on Saturday afternoon. We got checked in to our hotel (Disney's Pop Century Resort) and headed out for Downtown Disney where we were bombarded with shops, shops, and more shops...we enjoyed a dinner at Planet Hollywood and then looked around at all the retail establishments. Downtown Disney is home of the LARGEST Disney store EVER (we literally had to use our cell phones to find each other a couple times), and also home of the Lego store, which was Connor's favorite.

We arrived back in our hotel room, tired, but happy, only to find that our luggage had not yet been delivered to our room (this was part of our package deal...our luggage was to "magically appear" in our room 3-4 hours after our arrival...I know, I know, anyone with half a brain could smell trouble brewing with a promise like that!). Thankfully, we had packed an extra set of clothing for everyone, so all was not lost, and the kids got to enjoy some time in the pool with Daddy while Mommy worked on tracking down our bags (thankfully, we were able to round up almost all of them with a couple hours' work). It wouldn't be a family vacation without some sort of hiccup like that, right?

Our first day at the parks was spent at Epcot. We learned that this isn't the greatest park for little kids (funny how they don't really care about cultural diversity). We enjoyed ourselves, though, with the highlight of our day being our Princess Storybook Lunch...Kylee got to meet Belle, Jasmine, Ariel, Aurora, and CINDERELLA (who only occasionally stops in, so we felt pretty lucky). This sounds like a dream come true, but Kylee was pretty overwhelmed by the princesses, so all the pictures we took were of her glued to me (as you can see here with Cinderella):

Epcot is also home to "The Seas" where they have some great Finding Nemo themed attractions that the kids liked. Connor snapped this photo of us:

We also became familiarized with the Florida rains...it poured for about two hours in the middle of our day. It didn't stop us from exploring, though, and we concluded our day by watching the Illuminations fireworks show (which again, terrified both of our children, but was quite amazing to Brandon and I). Here is a picture of Connor in front of "Mission: Space" with the infamous Epcot Space Mountain ball behind him. I love this shot...

Our second day was spent at the Animal Kingdom, which was cool. We started the day out with a character breakfast where we got to meet Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto. Again, the kids were completely terrified, so the pictures are interesting. Doesn't it look like we're having the absolute time of our lives?!?!?! ;)

Our favorite part of the Animal Kingdom was the Kilimanjaro Safari that we went on, where we got to see lots of exotic animals and enjoy a ride in a cool-looking jeep. :) We took in several animal shows and the kids had fun "digging" in an dinosaur boneyard. Here's Connor doing his best dinosaur impression for the camera:

The next day was spent at MGM studios where we got to meet Lightning McQueen (again, completely terrifying for our son, thus the family picture).

This was a fun day filled with lots of character sightings (our kids really did enjoy seeing the characters from afar) and lunch at Pizza Planet, the restaurant from Toy Story. We also got to see a live re-enactment of a movie stunt sequence filming, which was awesome. Connor loved watching all the cars, jet-skis, and motorcycles race about and was also impressed by watching a stuntwoman being set on fire (the older male in our family also would call this show a highlight of our trip, too). :) We got to see a parade that featured some Star Wars characters, and then ended the day with Fantasmic, which was awesome!

This picture doesn't really fit anywhere, but I thought it was hilarious. Here's Kylee trying on a hat:

Our two final days were spent at the Magic Kingdom, which was the best part of the trip for all of us. The kids especially loved the Winnie the Pooh ride and Peter Pan's Flying Adventure. Connor and I got to ride on Dumbo together, and Kylee and I got to attend Storytime with Belle. We rode the teacups as a family and then Connor and Daddy rode together in a racecar and CONNOR got to drive. They issued him a "driver's license", which he thought was the coolest thing ever!! We ended our day with yet another character meal with Winnie the Pooh and friends (because our children enjoyed them so much!):

They say that Disney is the happiest place on earth....we laughed often about how almost every family we saw during our time in the parks had either a child screaming (sometimes two!), sleeping, or parents that looked completely exhausted (we took our turns with all of these things, too). It was sensory overload for our little ones (and their parents, admittedly), but overall, an experience we wouldn't trade. Here are our brave little road warriors hanging out in their stroller...

It wasn't fun to think about coming home, but at the same time, it was really nice not to have to share double-beds anymore!! We've gotten settled back in and have had fun listening to the kids talk about what they enjoyed during our vacation (ironically, they will tell you that they loved meeting the characters...go figure!). :)