Walt Disney World Trip Part 1

We got back late Friday night from a fun filled week at Walt Disney World. It was an awesome trip but so dang tiring. My grandpa invited my whole family to go but unfortunately my brothers and their families were unable to go. We would have loved to have them but we were still able to have a little fun. (BJ do you like my tribute?) We were gone 7 days. Two of those were traveling days and we hit all the parks on the rest of the days. Eric and I averaged about 5-6 hours of sleep a day and Josh and Lexie were averaging about 6-8 hrs a day. And then we would be at the parks the rest of the time. Our hotel was really nice but we were never there so we didn't get to enjoy everything about it.

Yes we make Lexie earn her keep. She pulled this all over the LA and Orlando airports. We were grateful that she wanted to but we didn't ask her to. Quite the contrary she would throw a fit if we took it from her. Hopefully this will bode well for when we travel with her in the teenage years.

This statue is in the airport at Orlando and Lexie runs up to it and says take my picture mom. She was so excited to see him and kissed him on the knee and said, "I will see you tomorrow, Goofy."

We left Sat. morning at 11. But that meant we had to get to the airport about 9am. My family stayed at a hotel the night before so we could get the parking there and Eric and I met them there at 8am. So our day started early. We made it through the airport line pretty fast. The only glich being that my dad's name is on the terrorist watch list, so we had to deal with that. He is one stressed dude while traveling, so having his name on the list isn't the best. There were 11 of us all together and I think Eric and I had enough carry-ons for everyone. The flight was 4 hours long. Joshua took a little nap and the rest of time did really well. We were very relieved. The flight was full (it being spring break) and so there was no where to go with him. We didn't get to our hotel until after 8pm. We were staying at a Disney World Resort (the Polynesian). It took a while to check everyone in and we barely had enough time to drop our carry ons in our rooms and dash down to dinner at 9:30. We were starving and tired but the dinner was awesome. We finally made it back to our rooms after 11 and got the kids to bed by midnight.

My first dessert using my Dining Plan. Boy was it ever good.

We stayed at the Polynesian Resort and it was beautiful. It felt like we were in Hawaii. The staff couldn't have been nicer. They gave us these laies when we checked in. Josh wouldn't wear his. This is about 9pm and the last time we had a meal was for breakfast that morning. Maybe that is why Lexie and Josh aren't smiling.

Our first full day was spent at Magic Kingdom. This park is pretty much Disneyland, just bigger scale size. We had a reservation to have breakfast with Tigger and Friends at 11am. Lexie was so excited to see all the characters. She barely ate anything waiting for them to come to our table. The nice thing about dining with the characters is each character comes to your table at different times and signs autograph books, takes pictures, and oohs and ahhs over the kids. It is very personalized and Lexie loves it. Fortunately each day of the week we dined with different characters. After our brunch at about 1:45pm is when we started to ride rides. I know I mentioned above that we went during Spring Break. If you ever decide to go to Walt Disney World do not go during Spring Break. It was so crowded. Lines were extremely long and people were actually waiting in them. Go figure. I guess they were trying to get their money's worth. We rode rides that had short lines or fast passes. It was fun comparing the different rides to those same ones at Disneyland. Lexie and Joshua both had a blast and were huge troopers the whole day, not really complaining or anything and and listening to us. We left the park at about 9pm to take the kids to get ready for bed. Some of us adults headed back out after we got them to sleep to ride the bigger kid rides. My dad was nice enough to stay back with the kids (he doesn't like rides or walking so he was more than willing).
Josh just sat in his high chair waving at all the characters. He didn't want to get out and go to them.

Another cool thing about staying at a Disney hotel were the Magic Hours. We were able to go back to Magic Kingdom and just walk onto rides that earlier were 2.5 hours long. Like Splash Mountain. We rode that ride at 2 and with our fast pass we had a 15 minute line. The standby line was 2.5 hours long. We rode it during Magic Hours and walked right on. It was great fun, and especially nice that we didn't have the kids with us. We had a blast and got back to our rooms a little after 3am. We were exhausted but happy.

A few side notes for future posts:

Fast Passes: You can get a ticket for a ride that will tell you to come back at so and so time and you pretty much walk right onto a ride. You get to take cuts in front of anyone who is standing in the regular line.

Stroller passes: This pass you ask for from the person at the start of the line. They give you a pass that lets three people on with it. These people get to go through the Fast Pass line. It is great because when you have kids that won't or can't ride a ride a parent stays behind but then doesn't have to wait very long to get on the ride when it is their turn.

We worked the system with these two passes usually enabling us all to ride each of the big grownup rides twice without waiting in line.

Magic Hours: When you stay at a Disney hotel they have this cool thing called Magic Hours. Each of the four parks is open either an hour earlier or stays open later for those only staying at the hotels. For instance Magic Kingdom closes at midnight. But those of us at the hotel could get little bracelets and we could stay until 3am.

Disney Dining Deluxe: Now this is one of my favorite things. My grandpa got this meal plan for us so we wouldn't have to worry about spending money on meals. What it is is that we could get 3 meals and 2 snacks a day per person. So my little family had 54 meals and 36 snacks. We could pretty much eat anywhere at all the parks. We could get a crappy $10 meal at the quick service places or go to a restaurant and eat there for $30. We didn't have to pay extra for the more expensive meals. Since it was Spring Break we were told when we booked our trip to make reservations at restaurants because there would be no room when we got there. We did this and it was fortunate that we did because there were no walk ins at the restaurants. We were able to go to a couple of different shows that were awesome and we had a character dining experience each day. And each meal you get all the drink you want, dessert, appetizer and main course. The snacks were great too because we could go anywhere and get most things that were under $4. We had a blast with that one. If you ever go to Disney World I so suggest going this route--it made the trip 20 times better.
It was so hot at Magic Kingdom. We rode Splash Mountain in the middle of the afternoon and we had gotten Fast Passes and the stroller pass so some of us were able to ride it twice without waiting in line. At Disneyland this is Lexie's favorite ride and she was so excited to ride it. It was our first ride of the day. I stayed with Josh and my grandpa the first time and when she come off of it she only had a few drops. Actually no one in that group was really that wet. Lexie was willing to ride it with me again. She sat in the front row with my sister Rose and my mom and I were behind her and my brother in law Mike was behind us. We so got drenched. Lexie was just dripping. It was hilarious to see her reaction. When she got SOOOO wet she just sat there for a minute with the water just dripping down her face. Mike got the least wet. I was glad to be wet because it was so hot but I don't think I ever actually fully dried off.

Joshua loves to dip his food. He will eat anything if he can dip it in something. Eric got the Artichoke Dip and Joshua just brought it over to him and was eating bread with it and sometimes just used his fingers.

After our dinner we were walking down Main St. and some employees asked me to jump rope. I seriously haven't done this since like high school if even that. I got to number 17 and was pretty happy with that. I was afraid I would screw up on the first jump.

I love the Disney World castle. I could stare at it all day. I can't express how pretty it is but I couldn't manage getting a very good picture of everyone in front of it. It was way too crowded and people were everywhere.

The end of the night for the kids. Lexie fell asleep with her hand in the fishies bag on the way to the monorail.