Friday, June 7th: We flew out of George Bush Intercontinental airport at 10:00 AM. It was Jordan, Rachel and Joshua's 1st time flying. The little ones did extremely well. They weren't scared and their ears didn't hurt. We landed in Orlando about 1:30 PM their time. And we began the first of many, many, many bus rides. We took the Disney Magical Express bus from the airport to our resort. The nice thing was that we didn't have to go to baggage claim. Our luggage was transported directly to the resort. We stayed at Art of Animation resort in the Lion King family suites. Scot and I had our own bedroom and bathroom! The table in the room folded down into a bed that Rachel and Joshua slept on and the couch folded out into a bed that Jacob and Jordan slept on. We also had a mini kitchenette with a refrigerator and microwave. We explored our resort after we got there because it was so cool! With Little Mermaid rooms, Lion King rooms, Finding Nemo rooms, and Cars rooms.
Saturday, June 8th: Today was our day at Magic Kingdom. We pretty much managed to do all of Adventureland and Frontierland before lunch, which included Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, Swiss Family Treehouse, Enchanted Tiki Room, Magic Carpets of Aladdin, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Splash Mountain. When we sat down to lunch at Pecos Bill restaurant, we had not even been at Disney World for 24 hours. Scot and I looked at each other and said it felt like we had been here a week! 17 years ago it wasn't this hard. Our old bodies were not hacking this frenetic pace very well.
We managed to squeeze in the Haunted Mansion and It's a Small World before a massive monsoon storm blew in. When we came out of the It's a Small World ride, it was raining pretty good. We only had 2 ponchos with us so we ran to the restaurant next door and had to go out the back door so we could go to the restroom. We ended up getting trapped in the restroom by flood waters. The storm got so bad: it was pouring and the wind was blowing super hard. There was terrible lightning and thunder. We were standing in ankle deep water while it was lightning so we had to retreat into the bathroom and the flood waters were coming into the restroom and rising. Scot went across the street to buy us some ponchos and the water was up to his knees! So anybody who wants to know - Fantasyland does not have good drainage! We were actually kind of scared. We managed to get back in the restaurant until the storm slowed down, but boy was it a packed house of people like sardines. We were trapped by the storm for almost 2 hours!
After the storm slowed down we were able to finish Fantasyland, which included the Carousel, Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan's Flight, Mickey's PhilharMagic, Journey of the Little Mermaid, Dumbo, and the Barnstormer with little to no waiting. Then we rode the railroad back around to the front of Magic Kingdom and headed to our reservation at Cinderella's Royal Table in the castle. We pretty much stayed wet all day so we were soaked and looked like wet dogs when we were at the dinner.
Sunday, June 9th: We finished what we hadn't done at Hollywood Studios and at Magic Kingdom. So we started our day at Hollywood Studios and started by watching the Star Wars parade. It was so crowded at HS on this day because it was the last day of four weekends of Star Wars. Most of this day was not very enjoyable because of the massive crowds. We did Tower of Terror, Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, The Great Movie Ride, Studio Backlot Tour, Honey I Shrunk the Kids Movie Set, and Extreme Stunt Show. Then we left and went to Magic Kingdom, had dinner and then did Tomorrowland, which included Astro Orbiter, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, Tomorrowland Speedway, Space Mountain, People Mover, and Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. While the big boys and Scot did Space Mountain, Rachel, Joshua and I had a blast at the Dance Party that was going on in Tomorrowland. We danced with Pluto, Goofy, Chip and Dale, and Stitch. I literally danced with Goofy. He grabbed my hand and was spinning me around and twirling me. I had 2 bags on my shoulders and a plastic Cars holder that was flying around while he spun me and was hitting me and probably hit him. I had bruises the next day from it - lol! Then we got to catch the last Main Street electrical parade and had perfect seats and saw the whole thing. Another long, exhausting day!
Monday, June 10th: We went to Animal Kingdom this day. We did Dinoland USA first, which included the Boneyard playground, Dinosaur the ride, Primeval Whirl and Triceratop Spin. Then we headed over to Asia where Scot and big boys did Expedition Everest, we ate lunch and did Flights of Wonder. Scot got picked as a volunteer to go up on stage with our camera and take a picture of an owl swooping toward his head. It was pretty cool! We did the Jungle Trek and then waited in line over an hour for the Kilimanjaro Safari. It was torture! While we were on the Safari, it started to rain again. We thought it was part of the ride at first. The rain was never without lightning and thunder which shut rides down. So our fast pass for Kali River Rapids couldn't be used because the ride shut down. We had to go back later after the storm passed to ride it. While it was storming we did the Festival of the Lion King and the Exploration Trail. Because of the way Animal Kingdom is laid out we kept having to go back to Discovery Island in the middle to go where we needed to go so we did so much walking! My body decided it did not like what I was doing to it and decided to wreak havoc on me with female problems. We had reservations for Hoop Dee Doo Musical Revue at Fort Wilderness Campgrounds. We had to ride a bus to there from Animal Kingdom, then get on a different bus to take us out to Pioneer Hall. We probably spent an hour on buses trying to get there. We get all the way out there and then the problems started. We couldn't leave or get anywhere fast since we had these reservations, so I dealt the best I could. The dinner show was great and lots of fun, but we were getting worn down.
Tuesday, June 11th: Today we went to Epcot. We started out getting our fast pass for test track. Then we went to The Seas with Nemo and Friends and Journey Into Imagination with Figment. Then we went to the World Showcase and made a stop at the Japan store where I watched a lady make amazing candy from scratch right before our eyes. Then we went to Mexico where we ate lunch in the rain. Gotta love the rain (of course, with thunder)! Then we went on the Three Caballeros ride in Mexico. Then we wandered back toward the boat dock in Morocco stopping at shops along the way. Lost Scot several times so I gave up trying to keep up with him and went to wait for him at the Japan store again. After we left World Showcase we went to the Disney Visa photo spot where we got a free photo with Minnie Mouse and Goofy! Then while boys did Mission Space I took Rachel and Joshua around to interactive displays in Innoventions. We all rode Spaceship Earth and then did the Test Track and had to run to get to our reservation at Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary resort. What we thought would be a quick trip ended up taking 30 - 45 minutes so we were 25 minutes late to our reservation. Luckily, they hold your reservation for a half hour. We rode so many different types of transportation on this trip: plane, tram, shuttle, bus, boat, ferry, monorail, and train.
At Chef Mickey's we had a character dinner with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy and Pluto. Our table was by a window with a view of Cinderella's castle so we saw fireworks while we ate. Good times!
Wednesday, June 12th: We were planning on going back to Magic Kingdom to do a few more things we hadn't done (Scot hadn't gotten to ride Splash Mountain; We wanted Rachel to get to meet the fairies; and Scot wanted us all to go to Country Bear Jamboree), but Scot's body decided it didn't like what he was doing to it and he had stomach problems all morning. So this ended up being the day that the kids finally got to swim in the pools at our resort. We had 3 different pools so they wanted to try each one: Little Mermaid (Flippin Fins) pool, Finding Nemo pool, and the Cars (cozy cone pool).
After swimming and when Scot felt better we went back to Hollywood Studios (again) to try to do the Toy Story Mania ride (which had a 2 hour wait all the time). We hadn't been able to get fast passes and weren't going to stand in line for 2 hours. And we also had a reservation for dinner at the Hollywood Brown Derby which came with special seats for the Fantasmic show. We didn't get there in time to do Toy Story Mania, so we rode Star Tours again, saw some characters, and Jacob and Jordan rode Rock 'n' Roller coaster again. The fancy food at the Brown Derby was not exactly our cup of tea, but that's okay we just wanted to have good seats for Fantasmic. But low and behold another storm rolled in and the lightning caused the show that we had the seats for to be canceled. We fought this huge crowd to get into the stadium and then at 9:00 (showtime) they said it was canceled. There was a 10:30 show, but no guarantees they were going to have it and no guarantees we were going to get our seats again. Joshua was scared of the sneak peak fireworks they gave us before canceling the early show so I took him and we went back to the resort early. Scot, Jacob, Jordan and Rachel stayed and saw the show at 10:30. Joshua and I watched a video of it on YouTube. Lol!
Thursday, June 13th: Today was putt-putt and water park day. But first we decided to try one more time to do the Toy Story Mania ride. We had sent Jacob and Jordan to Hollywood Studios on Wednesday with our Key to the World cards to get fast passes, but because we weren't checked into the park they couldn't get them for us. Of course, Jacob and Jordan's cards were the first ones they put in the machine so it printed fast passes for them so they couldn't get fast passes for any other rides. So we were trying to get to the park at opening so that we could just stand in line, but hopefully wouldn't be 2 hours long. We got to the park and what happened? Jacob's card got left in one of the boys' pockets from the day before and was all the way back at the resort. We made the boys go back to the resort to get his card and we went into Hollywood Studios to do the ride because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to do it. Poor things. They really didn't care about that ride so they met us at Blizzard Beach when we finished. We played a round of putt-putt at the Winter Summerland putt-putt at Blizzard Beach and then went to the Blizzard Beach waterpark. We had a lot of fun there.
After we finished everything we wanted to do at Blizzard Beach we decided to go to Typhoon Lagoon, the other waterpark. We had to get on a bus to a resort and then ride another bus to Typhoon Lagoon that also stopped at Downtown Disney. We spent an hour and a half on the stinking bus! We didn't get to Typhoon Lagoon until 6:00 and they closed at 8:00. And (here's a surprise) another storm had blown in and the entire waterpark was shut down due to lightning. So we went in and ate dinner waiting to see if they reopened. They opened all the rides back up at 7:00 and most people had left the park so we had one hour to try and do everything we wanted before they closed at 8:00 and we pretty much did. Then we went to Fantasia Gardens to play another game of putt-putt. We had to ride a bus to a special resort that the putt-putt was next to and to get home we had to ride a bus to Downtown Disney and then switch buses to get on one to take us back to our resort. Another long time on the bus. We were pretty sick of bus riding by the time this trip ended.
Friday, June 14th: Time to go home! :-( We packed up, checked in with the airline at the resort, went to Downtown Disney where we had a reservation at T-Rex restaurant but we didn't make it in time. Did some shopping and got completely overwhelmed and lost in the ginormous World of Disney store. Then headed back to the resort to get picked up by Magical Express and taken back to airport. The one thing that was frustrating the whole time was no cell phone reception so we constantly couldn't send text messages, calls didn't go through or got dropped, or the wi-fi connection got dropped. You are definitely out of touch with the real world at Disney World. Even with a few bumps along the way and Murphy tagging along for much of the trip, we still had a great time and made lots of memories!
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