Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Disneyworld Recap - Day 1 & 2

I need to recap our Disneyworld trip while it's still fresh in my mind.  I never want to forget anything about this amazing trip!

I figured I'd break it up into 2 or 3 posts and try not to bombard each one with a zillion pictures... that's going to be hard

Anyhoo - let's get back to day 1.  We had a 7am flight which meant we had to wake the kids up a little after 4am.  They were suprisingly in great moods or else they were just so out of it they didn't care to be cranky.  Either way, their pleasant attitudes definitely helped the mood stay fun!



Brayden & Ella made sure to rip off their last chain before we headed to the airport.  I have to admit, I was a little nervous with traveling with 3 small children, but it really wasn't too bad.  The hubs was in charge of carrying luggage and I was in charge of the kids. 


This was the kids' first plane ride and they did awesome! As soon as we landed Brayden wanted to know where Disneyworld was. Kids, they have no concept of traveling :)

We hopped on board Disney's Magical Express bus (which was free because we were staying on a Disney resort) and off we went to Animal Kingdom Lodge - Kidani Village (I plan on doing a separate post about our stay here at some point)



Our room wasn't quite ready when we arrived so we quickly changed in the bathrooms, picked up our double stroller that we rented, admired the wildlife roaming around the resort, and off we went to catch a bus to to Epcot.

I had never been to Epcot so I was really excited to see the giant golf ball up close and personal :)



We ordered Disneys' Memory Maker before our trip and I'm so glad we did! There are Disney photographers standing around ready to take your picture and once done, they scan your magic band and boom your pictures are available to download immediately (I'll also share more about this later)

With the memory maker are things called "magic shots" where they can add some extra *magic* to your pictures.  Pretty cool if you ask me!


The first thing we did at Epcot was go to our 1st FP+ which was The Seas with Nemo.  It was something we could all do which was cool. Next we did Turtle Talk with Crush which was an interactive viewing with Crush the turtle.  The kids really enjoyed it but I kind of dropped the ball and didn't show them the Finding Nemo movie before we went so they didn't know who anyone was but they didn't care.

After that, the hubs and I grabbed a yummy beer and gave the kids a soft pretzel and walked around until our next FP+ - which was Soarin.



After that we made our way through the countries - it was so cool to see all of this.  Epcot is definitely more of a grown up crowd feel compared to the other parks but the kids still had a great time.

It was the Flower & Garden festival while we were there and we saw so many awesome topiaries! (Thanks to the memory maker, I got these awesome pictures since my Iphone would never do them justice)










The hubs and I were really enjoying Epcot :)  



We took a picture any time we saw a Disney photographer.  Hey, gotta get your money's worth!



We headed to Morocco to meet Jasmine & Aladdin and while waiting in line Ella had an epic meltdown.  Screaming, crying, screaming & crying.  We just let her work through it but she still had tears when it came time to meeting the duo.  Brayden on the other hand, was sooooo excited to meet them, especially Jasmine.  She's one of his favorites.




After meeting Aladdin & Jasmine, we headed to our dinner reservation at Akershush Royal Banquet. This was a character dining where a good amount of princesses would be.  I had to book this reservation 180 days in advance!

The food was kind of blah, but we weren't there for the food, we were there for the princesses! And oh my how the kids loved them, well, except for Avery :)





                    


                    

After dinner, we originally had planned to stay for the fireworks, but the kids had been up since 4am mind you, so we had to go. I was sad but I totally knew it was the best decision. Back to the resort we went where we had the worst check in imaginable, but finally all was good and everyone was sleeping within seconds of getting their pj's on.

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Day 2 was our Animal Kingdom park day.  I was up before everyone to make sure we were all ready to go on time to get to the park when it opened.  I know this was vacation, but you really had to kind of be on a schedule if you wanted your day to go smooth.




This is the tree of life - we learned it has 8,000 branches!



The Disney guy said, give me your best ROAR - looks like my family needs to work on this :)


We headed straight to Dinoland which is the area geared towards really little kids.  We went on a few rides as a family, then the hubs and Brayden went on Dinosaur...



We were big on taking ride selfies :)



Here's the pic we got from the ride Dinosaur - it's hard to tell but Brayden's eyes are shut.  He was absolutely terrified on this ride.  The hubs said it even scared him a little! Imagine Jurassic Park right in your face... not the dinosaur scene I thought it would be, that's for sure! When they were done, Brayden came running out crying and gave me a big hug and told me he was NEVER going on that ride again. LOL



While the boys were on the ride, me and the girls hung out :)


love these two!!
               

We then met Goofy & Pluto.  These were the first "bigger" characters Ella met and also the first that don't talk, so she was a little nervous at first.


But then she started warming up :)


More magic shots :)



Love this guy!


We saw a super cool Lion King show and after that we did an awesome safari.







We left Animal Kingdom early, around 2, and went back to the hotel to swim.  This park usually closes the earliest anyway and we had done just about everything we could for our age range.  We really enjoyed this park!!


I'm so glad I built in swim time into our itinerary.  That may sound funny to some, but alot of people don't really swim and hang out at the hotel in Disney. They go hard, staying at the parks from open until close.  I knew going in this wouldn't work for us so I based our days around pool time, and the kids (although not knowing any different) were grateful for that


I can't handle the cuteness of these two!





Miss A was just too adorable in her swimsuit and she was loving the water!



After swimming, we all bathed and showered and went to eat dinner at Sanaa, a restaurant in our hotel.

Love this expression!

We then headed outside for a family pic and wouldn't you know, everyone is looking!!

Everyone seemed to get much better at their ROAR face :)

We then hopped on a bus to Downtown Disney, which looking back, we really could have skipped. I selfishly wanted to go check it out and do some shopping, but would later realize everything they had downtown, they had in the parks, especially Magic Kingdom

We still had fun eating ice cream, for the 6th time that day :)


Next I'll recap our 2 days at Magic Kingdom!!


1 comment:

  1. LOL to the “roar” shot at Animal Kingdom! I can’t believe Brayden went on Dinosaur! What a brave little boy he is!! Tim and I went on it and loved it but it’s definitely a scary ride. How was Sanaa? We thought about eating there, but didn’t. (I don’t know why.)

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