Disneyworld 2009 Part III

After our morning spent at the Magic Kingdom park, we decided to head to Epcot. Here's the kids in front of the giant 'globe' (I'm not really sure what to call it, so please forgive me, all you Disneyworld historians out there! :)

Since it was later in the evening and only a few hours to close, we decided to head for the 'The Seas with Nemo' ride, which was quite cute. Here are the kids posing inside a shark's mouth right outside the Nemo ride--one of Disney's many picture opportunities.

After that, we walked around the 'World Showcase' (a section of the park portraying different countries of the world). After we ate in the Moroccan restaurant, we headed outside for Epcot Illuminations, a spectacular outside show on the water with fireworks and lasers. Once the fireworks show was over, we headed home from the park on one of the shuttle buses taking us back to the resort. Unfortunately, at one of the 10 stops in our resort our bus broke down. To try and save time, we decided to walk back to our room--I mean, how bad could it be?! It was really amazing how spread out our resort was, because not only did it take forever, but we were truly lost! After searching for awhile, we finally found our room and crashed for the night.

The next morning we got up and headed to the Animal Kingdom park for our character breakfast at the Tusker House restaurant (and yes, I did double-check my blackberry to make sure I had the correct date! :) Here's the kiddos outside the park.

Once inside we passed by the Tree of Life garden which housed the most incredible looking man-made tree that I had ever seen. In all actuality, I'm not sure if I've ever seen another man-made tree, but it was really amazing! Not only was the tree very intricately made and detailed, it was also huge!

After the tree of life garden, we headed over to the Tusker House restaurant for our character breakfast. For starters, character meals are worth their weight in gold. I really liked the concept of them, because not only are you getting a nice meal, the kids get to meet several characters and have them sign their autograph books and take pictures and you don't have to stand in line! There are several different character meals at each of the parks and at every one, you get to meet different characters. For this particular meal, Mickey, Donald, Daisy and Goofy came around to each table and meet and greet everyone. Here's the kids with each of the characters.

After the kids got to meet each of the characters, the waiters handed out African-themed instruments to the kids and they got to dance around the restaurant playing instruments while Goofy danced--it was a lot of fun! After our breakfast we headed off to see the rest of the park.

More to come in the next post...

Disneyworld 2009 Part II

The first morning (after our plane trip the night before) that we spent in Disneyworld was a little chaotic (thanks to me!) Since I recently acquired a new Blackberry for Christmas, I decided to put all of our reservations for Character meals on it. However, after we made it to the Animal Kingdom park for the Character breakfast that I thought we were supposed to be at that morning, I realized I was a day early for our reservation. Oops! Since Jason was none too happy to be at Animal Kingdom our first full day and not the Magic Kingdom, we got back on the shuttle bus and headed to the Magic Kingdom. (Nothing like an extra 20 to 30 minute bus ride in the morning when you are eager to be somewhere ;)

Anyway, once we got to the Magic Kingdom , we were off...here's some pics of the kids in front of Main Street. I love that the kids didn't even get out of their strollers for the picture. Oh well, I'm just glad we had the strollers to begin with--a necessity at Disneyworld for two small children, if you ask me!

At Downtown Disney, I had purchased the kids some Disney autograph books so they could have them sign their books when they met them. It was so cute to see the kids meeting each of the Disney characters. They really thought that they were real! Here's the kiddos meeting Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Pluto (just Ashlyn), and Chip n' Dale.



After standing in line to meet characters, we headed to the 'Winnie the Pooh' ride, the 'Peter Pan' ride (one of my favorites) and the 'Its a small world ride'. I kept laughing during 'Its a small world' ride, because Layton kept saying "I'm scared, I'm scared". I think he thought the ride was a little creepy with all the animated dolls singing 'Its a small world' again, and again, and again...I'm sure some adults would agree with him too. :)
After some of the rides, we headed to Mickey's toontown fair to see where Mickey and Minnie lived. Here we are outside Minnie and Mickey's houses.

After visiting Mickey and Minnie's houses, we headed back over to 'Goofy's Barnstormer', a kiddie roller-coaster, that Jason and Layton went on. Here's a picture of Layton and Jason before Layton's first slightly anxious, but overall enjoyable roller-coaster ride.
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After a few more hours in the park, we headed home for a much needed rest and headed to Epcot for the rest of the evening. More to come in the next post...

Disneyworld 2009 --Ashlyn and Layton's 1st trip

Since its been almost two months since my last post, (you're not really that surprised, are you?) I decided to fill you all in our most recent, exciting happening...we just took the kids for a weeklong fun-filled trip to Disneyworld! Actually, we got back about two weeks ago :), but believe me when I tell you, I feel slight overwhelmed trying to post about our trip. We did so much during our trip, I don't think I can even remember everything that we did. However, I will try to post a few of the highlights and remembrances of our trip.

First of all, Layton was seriously afraid of our plane ride to Disneyworld. This was quite a surprise to us all since Layton has flown several times since he was 4 weeks old, our most recent uneventful plane trip being in September. Its amazing how your child's awareness can change so suddenly. We think he suddenly realized how far up in the sky an airplane is--not too comforting for him. Anyway, after taking off in Houston, landing again in Jacksonville, MS (?) and taking off and landing again (remind me never too book anything that is not non-stop again!), we arrived in Orlando.

Since we have two small children, we decided that we would try to stay in a Disneyworld resort, the Caribbean Beach resort. I will say that it was very nice to not have to drive to get to all of the parks. We took shuttle buses to all of the location, which was nice to have (although a few times after a long wait to sit on a crowded bus, I was wishing we stayed at a monorail resort!) The weather was fantastic while we were there--about 70 to 80 degrees with a nice breeze. The parks were a little more crowded than I expected. It turned out that the state of Louisiana had closed schools for that week (Mardis Gras week), so we had a few more crowds than we expected, but overall it was very pleasant. Here's a few picture highlights of our trip once we were in Disneyworld.

Here's a picture of the kids after designing their 'Mickey hats' our first night at Disneyworld. Since we didn't get to our resort until after 6:00 pm, we decided to start off our disney vacation at Downtown Disney (one of the parks) to do a little shopping. What was amazing was how cold it was our first night there--poor Jason only had on a t-shirt and shorts from our plane trip there, so he was freezing. I don't think it was enough to motivate him to purchase a $50 Mickey Mouse hoodie (yes, the prices were just that expensive!), but he was pretty close to it!

Here's some neat pictures of some of the sculptures behind the kids outside the Lego store at Downtown Disney. No, your eyes are not deceiving you--those sculptures are made completely out of legos. Amazing, isn't it?!
I just noticed Ashlyn's expression in the 2nd picture--Ha! What a goofball!

After a pricey meal at the T-Rex cafe, we did some more shopping and then headed back to the hotel for our first full day at Disney. More to come in the next post...