I had hoped Olivia would nap but we missed her nap-window during the room chaos so we quickly unpacked, changed and headed to Magic Kingdom! We had a few hours in the park and it was a great way to kick-off the week. Since we were on vacation, why not throw all cares to wind and get ice cream?! Olivia was a ticking time-bomb with no nap and having been woken up around 4:30am so the ice cream was our way of trying to 'control' her.
After our treat, we were ready to tackle some rides. We started off with the Indy 500 cars and Liv remembered that she could "drive." Duane took the car in front of us and took a few pictures. I was laughing way too hard as Liv cackled out loud each time our car jolted left, right, left, right. The Barnstormer "roller-poster" was next and we did a ride share so each of us could take a turn riding with her. I think she could have ridden that ride all day, every day!
Our next stops were Ariel's Grotto, Mickey's 3D PhilharMagic show and then it was time for our dinner reservations at Liberty Tree Tavern. Duane picked the restaurant and guess what the meal was? Turkey, roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, etc. Olivia ate a little and then all of a sudden she asked to sit in my lap. Before Duane could sign the bill, she was asleep on my lap. This is a rare occurrence so we knew she was wiped out!
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| passed out in the stroller as we wait for our bus |
Day 2
The key to riding all the rides with short lines is to arrive at the parks before they're open to general ticket buyers. If you stay at a Disney property, you can take advantage of bonus park hours. The first hour is typically pretty quiet and then you don't have to use your FastPass. Unfortunately, we overslept on Friday and we didn't even wake up until 8am! After a quick breakfast in our room, we headed to Hollywood Studios. With our FastPass, we rode Toy Story Mania, watched the Disney Jr. show and then it was already time for our character lunch at Hollywood & Vine. Liv must have been hungry because she started out being more interested in the food than the characters!
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| the Princess having breakfast in bed |
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| couldn't get out of her seat for Doc McStuffins, she had a plate of food afterall! |
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| again, watching all the action from her seat and plate of food |
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| after some food, she finally got out of her seat and danced a little bit |
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| SO excited about the chocolate covered marshmallow |
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| notice anything in this photo? One of her teeth is covered in chocolate and she kind of looks like a little pirate! |
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| Liv in her Anna jammies and her big bed! Notice the princess pictures? |
Magic Kingdom day! We started out our day in Fantasyland (again) and took advantage of being in the park an hour early than normal opening hours. Since we had this advantage, we rode Peter Pan's Flight, It's a Small World, Prince Charming's Carousel, met Rapunzel and Snow White, rode the tea cups, Dumbo, the Barnstormer (2 more times), Indy 500 cars and then it was finally time for lunch.
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| Cinderella's glass slipper |
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| "talking" to Rapunzel....mostly it was just Liv nodding her head at everything Rapunzel said to her |
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| "talking" to Snow White....again, more nodding |
Since we had a big night ahead of us, we went back to the hotel so Olivia could nap in the room. I sat in the sun for a little bit while Liv and Duane rested. We surprised Olivia with an Anna dress and told her we were having dinner in Cinderella's castle - she was very, very excited! The dress turns her into quite a little princess and she gets a little bit of an attitude.... After dinner we watched the Electromagic Parade from the castle and then called it a day.
Day 4
Thankfully, we remembered we didn't have park passes for everyday of our vacation! Once we realized that, we decided to pick a hot, sunny day and spend it at the hotel pool. It's been a really, really, really long time since Olivia has been swimming (last "summer" was nonexistent up here in MN so we didn't get out the boat) so we weren't sure if she'd enjoy it. Boy were we ever wrong - she was a fish by the end of the day! She was really apprehensive at first and would only hang onto Duane, then he decided to try out the baby pool with her. She took all of her princesses with her and they all "swam" in the baby pool. Once that got old, they headed over to the big pool. I asked Liv if she wanted to try out the waterslide and she immediately said, "Yes!" She went down the slide twice, loving every second, but then declared she needed a snack.
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| getting her sea legs in the baby pool |
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| here she comes! |
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| snack time after the slide |
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| taking a breather while Duane ran back to the room for drinks |
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| our little fish swimming around, thanks to the lessons from her Daddy! |
We ate lunch and then Olivia asked to go back into the pool. She swam some more and then it was time for her nap. We had hoped she would nap at the pool but the music was pretty loud and she was having trouble settling so she and Duane went back to the room. I went back to the pool near our building and laid in the sun some more. Our hotel had a boat that would take people over to Downtown Disney so we hopped on that in the evening. If you have kids, I don't recommend Downtown Disney; there are only stores and restaurants there and I think it's completely overrated. We had a quick dinner and decided to call it a night. Once we got back to our room, though, Olivia asked to go back to the pool. Duane couldn't say no so off we went!
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| waiting for the boat |
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| standing in line for the waterslide |
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| watching for the light to turn green so she could take her turn down the slide! |
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| Snug as a bug in a rug! |
Day 5
Animal Kingdom Day! Since we had a leisurely day before, we decided to be up early and at the park by 8am. Again, this gave us the advantage of riding the rides and not having to use our FastPass before the majority of the crowds arrived. We headed straight for the Safari ride and were able to walk right onto one of the jeeps. Liv's blood sugar must have been low because she was kind of cranky during this ride....spoiled much? (How many kids have done this ride 2 times before they are 4 years old and are grouchy?!) Anyway, Duane and I enjoyed ourselves and we got to see all the animals.
One of the park employees saw us aimlessly wondering and talked us into doing Rafiki's Expedition (or something like that) - she said we rode a train to it, there's a petting zoo, etc., etc. Umm....waste.of.time. The petting zoo consisted of goats and we can see those at the MN Zoo. We tried it but I don't think I'd ever do it again.
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| on the train (which was the best part) |
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| being my little girl and complaining about rocks in her sandals! :) |
With our FastPass, we headed straight to Finding Nemo - The Musical. Olivia was really ennoying it and then halfway through, she was getting antsy. Sure enough, she needed another potty break. Ugh. By the time I took her and we got back to our seats, it was about 2 minutes from being over. I don't think she even noticed.... She made a deal with us that she'd nap in her stroller and she did! Duane and I parked the stroller right in front of one of the doors to a gift shop so she could have an air-conditioned breeze (it was the hottest day of the week!). We each had an ice cream treat and split a Coke - it was definitely needed! Once Liv started to stir/wake up, we headed out of the park and took a bus to Epcot. With the promise of a popcicle and a ride, Olivia was up and ready to go! Our first ride at Epcot was the ride in the big ball and she really liked it. Her favorite part was at the end when they take photos of each person on the ride and superimpose them into a video. She laughed and laughed and laughed!
Epcot isn't the greatest for kids but they do have some fun places to stop and see. It took her a few minutes to warm up to the water fountain but then it was hard to pull her away!
Wondering into the countries, we quickly jumped on Donald's ride in Mexico and then walked over to Norway. We saw where Anna and Elsa have their character greet and we also saw the ridiculously long line. I talked to some random people and heard over and over that the wait for them was about 3-6 hours. Seriously. Olivia saw them through the gift shop and that would have to do (or so we thought)! We had dinner in China and then headed back to the hotel. Duane and Liv got in the pool once more!
Day 6
Epcot and Magic Kingdom and Epcot (again) Day! The weather for this day wasn't going to be nice so we knew we had to pack a lot in to make it worth it. We arrived at Epcot really early and went straight for Soarin'. Sadly, Liv was too short so Duane and I did a 'ride share' and one of us stayed with Liv while the other rode. Liv was bummed she couldn't ride and kept saying, "I'll just sit on your lap." I wish it could have worked that way! Next we did Nemo's ride, Talk with Crush and some Imagination ride. The weather was holding out so we decided to walk into the countries again. I picked France for our lunch and it was probably the best meal all week! If you go to Epcot, you must go to the deli in France - their sandwiches and desserts were AMAZING! Liv specifically asked us to take her picture and we wouldn't deny her that.
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| napping in her stroller |
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| the promise of a snack will cheer this girl up in no time! |
There was a parade at 3pm so we walked around until we needed to find a place to stand. Thankfully, the rain kept everyone out of the park and we found a great place to stand and Liv had a front row view. All of the princesses were in this parade - even Anna, Elsa and Olaf!
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| see the little hand in the bottom right-hand corner? that's Liv's! |
Once the parade was over, it really started to pour! We headed to the exit and wouldn't you know, we got to see the end of the parade all over again! We dried off back in our hotel room and then it was time for Anna, I mean Olivia, to get dressed again for another princess dinner at Akershus House. Since it was so wet outside, I actually took her dress with us and made her wait until right before our dinner to get dressed. We did the ride in the ball at Epcot and then headed over to Norway. As we were waiting for our names to be called for dinner, Anna and Elsa came out of their little house and started to walk away. I yelled, "Anna!" and she turned and looked right at Liv and walked over to her! She gave her a little hug and said, "You have the same dress as me only you look beautifuller"! I could have cried - we were so lucky! (The "beautifuller" is from the movie, in case you're wondering why she's using bad grammer.) Of couse Liv's comment after that was, "Elsa didn't say hi to me." We can't win for losing with this one....
Dinner at Akershus was good but I thought the princesses were prettier and more authentic at Cinderella's caste. The food was better and you still get the "commenrative photo" with the experience, which is really nice to have.
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| notice the Anna doll? Duane loves his Amazon and ordered this doll and had it delivered to our hotel. Disney World doesn't have much of anything for FROZEN because it's so popular. She hasn't let this doll out of her sight since we gave it to her! |
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| Olivia finally met Belle! |
Day 7
Where else would we spend our last day but at Magic Kingdom?! (Us and everyone else that stayed indoors because of the rain the day before. The park was CRA-ZY!) The doors opened at 9am and we were there waiting. Our first stop was Splash Mountain for Duane and then we headed to Pirates of the Caribbean. Olivia didn't make much of the ride but made it clear that she did not want to ride it again. By this time it was around 10am and the lines were already getting long. For example, the Jungle Cruise was already at a 50 minute wait - even Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride was 40 minutes! Obvisouly we had a FastPass for the Barnstormer so we rode that again. I wanted to see the Carousel of Progress and we easily walked into that. I had to laugh out loud when I noticed the 80's kitchen had the same microwave that's in our kitchen! (If you've been to our house, you know we have an OLD microwave and can appreciate this.)
With our last table service meal, we had lunch at Tony's and we braved the cooler temps outside; Olivia really enjoyed eating outside and constantly kept asking if we could. A server chose her as the "junior chef" and they brought out dessert for her to make.
Our last FastPass for the day was for the Winnie the Pooh ride so we headed back to Fantasyland. We tried doing It's a Small World but the wait time was 60 minutes! Olivia wasn't too happy about us not doing it but we promised her we'd try again after her nap. One of our FastPasses didn't register when we used it so we just changed its time for It's a Small World later in the day. Liv napped in her stoller and Duane and I sat down and relaxed. She woke up in time for the princess parade again so we watched that. This time, however, it was so crowded and she probably didn't even see most of it. People are rude and will send their kids into any space that's remotely open; by the time the parade ended, there were 10 year-olds standing in front of her blocking the way. Good thing our time was coming to an end, I was starting to lose my patience. We used the FP for It's a Small World and then tried to walk our way back to Tom Sawyer's Island but Olivia asked for a popsicle and then Duane said he was done for the day. Last year we shared cotton candy on our way out of the park so we did that again. Olivia waved good-bye to Cinderella's castle and it was time to head back to the hotel. While I packed, Duane and Liv roasted some marshmallows and played on the playground.
Our trip was once again so wonderful and true to Disney - magical! Our hotel was wonderful, the weather was great, we were all healthy and we truly enjoyed every second. I feel like I've got a good handle on how to manage a trip to Disney World so if anyone is going and wants advice, let me know!
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| my favorite picture from the trip! |
AWESOME POST!! Sounds like a great trip.. I loved all the pictures!
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