We finally made the 12 hour trek from our house to Orlando last week. My mother in law lives in Orlando, and we've been wanting to get down there, but it just seemed impossible with the small ones to survive a drive that long! However, the kids were as good as gold, and we made it with only two short stops to eat each way! Wow!
On the way down, I showered them with NEW.STUFF like Disney pez dispensers, Search for object books with magnifying glasses, magic ink books, candy, snacks, and the Game boy I had put away for about a month before our trip! On the way back I was far too tired to care, made absolutely NO forages into the back of the van, and they did just as well as on the way down with only endless DVDs for entertainment. I was VERY pleasantly surprised!
We spent the first couple of days of our trip at my MILs house, where the kids swam in her pool, played Wii, played with the dogs, rolled the pool table balls into finger-smashing games they made up as they went along, and spent hours creating new potato-head families out of the kit Grandma bought them from Costco.
On Tuesday, we went to downtown Disney to shop and look around, and bought the boys their "build your own" lightsabers. They were thrilled, and actually Ryan may have been more excited than they were! Olivia chose a princesses toy kit as her souvenir, and in light of their renewed love of potato heads, we filled a box with Disney-inspired potatohead accessories (like a Peter pan hat, Mickey ears, and the piece de Resistance- Ariel hair and mermaid bottom- HILARIOUS!).
Our trip was packed to the brim and we literally ran from park to park with the kids strapped in the strollers. Wednesday morning we checked in to the Grand Floridian hotel and I swear that is the cleanest hotel ON EARTH! The monorails were down, so we took a ferry from our hotel to the Polynesian for our character breakfast with Lilo and Stitch, Mickey, and Pluto.
Entering the Magic Kingdom was truly magical, and the kids were besides themselves with excitement! Olivia's favorites right now are Tinkerbell and Ariel, although since our trip, Cinderbella is making some swift strides! We rode tons of rides and stuck around that night for the parade and fireworks.
Thursday morning we headed back to the Magic Kingdom to finish up, then dashed over to Hollywood Studios for our character lunch with The Little Einsteins and Jojo and Goliath. The rest of that day was pretty laid back, and there wasn't terribly much for our kids to do at that park.
Friday morning we set out for Animal Kingdom, where we checked out the Lion King musical, the safari that was chock full of wildlife, a walking tour of animals, and A Bug's Life.
Another jog to catch transportation to Epcot where we had dinner reservations at the Biergarten German restaurant and hung around for a few rides and the Illuminations fire and fireworks show.
We were EXHAUSTED by the end of the trip, but it was definitely worthwhile and magical for the kiddos. We can't wait to go back!
