We just got home from our annual vacation to Florida and this year was extra-special as we took our children to Walt Disney World for 5 days. It was magical. We filled our days with all things Disney and had so much fun making memories.
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| On Saturday January 26, we left the cold winter weather and drove over 2 days (staying 2 nights in hotels) to Orlando, Florida. Packing for our trip is always a challenge but this year we were pleasantly surprised by how organized our van was when we packed it all in. It doesn't take long for the kid's seats to get cluttered though. Their backpacks were full of activities, books and toys and I had a special bag under the passenger seat that had surprises inside. We pack a lot of food for the first two lunches and then go out to a restaurant for supper. I think we have almost perfected the drive as we have done this 6 times already and plan on doing it for many more years. |
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| Once we arrived at Walt Disney World we surprised the kids with our resort. We stayed at the Art of Animation Resort in the "Cars" movie-themed area. Our room was all things "Cars" which is one of our favourtie movies. Life-sized versions of the characters were all over the resort area - above is "Mater the Tow Truck" and all of us. |
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| Yahoo - we arrived! We were following one of the many Disney buses. |
The Art of Animation Resort was amazing. We were very happy with our choice as there are so many to choose from around the Walt Disney World Resort area. This resort reflected the animation part of making movies and there were huge sketches and life-sized and larger replicas of characters from some of their best animated movies. Our suite had one bedroom, 2 bathrooms, a dining area, kitchenette and living room - perfect for our family of five. It had enough room to sleep 6 people comfortably and even another spot for a small child to sleep, so those of you with 5 kids, you would be happy in this room!
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| This was Alex's own space... a Mater-bed. During the day it was our table and at night it came down and became Alex's bed. Very cool!    This was the first of our experience with "character dining". We had supper at "Chef Mickey's" buffet restaurant and these characters walked around and greeted all of the guests. It was a lot of fun! After supper we went on the monorail and then watched the fireworks outside of the Magic Kingdon. This is when we discovered that Jean is petrified of fireworks. It was a beautiful show but we didn't enjoy it as much as we would have liked - poor Jean. Magic Kingdom:We had a four day pass to Walt Disney World. Of course day one had to be at the Magic Kingdom.  
The Magic Kingdom is truly a magical place. After we walked in we just had to stare for a bit and then we wandered to the newest part called Fantasy Land. Once there, we went to visit Ariel, the Little Mermaid. I will never forget Jean's reaction to one of her favourite princesses. As so many 4 year old girls are, Jean is a big fan of the Disney Princesses. We stood in a very short line to meet Ariel and were so excited... myself in particular! Once we got inside her "grotto" Jean completely freaked out. She refused to sit near Ariel, who was so sweet to us, so Alex and Grace had their picture taken with her and Jean stood with us in the background. I felt really sad for Jean but I guess she was just so "star-struck" that she didn't know what to do!
  The afternoon parade was so awesome. We saw so many Disney characters and the music was spectacular. 
Magic Kingdom is quite busy place, as you can see in one of the pictures above, but Disney has perfected the art of "people-moving" and despite the crowds at MK, we experienced it all and even enjoyed a break to swim in the middle of the day. We went on new rides, such as the Toy Story ride and going through the Little Mermaid movie and also went on the older rides such as A Small World and the Jungle Cruise. Jean's favourite part of the day was the Parade in the afternoon before we left to go swimming. The parades at Disney are absolutely amazing - musical and entertaining.
Epcot:
Our second day was spent at Epcot. At first I wasn't sure if we wanted to go to this park with the age of our children. I remembered Epcot from when I was a child though and wanted to go there anyways. One of my friends also recommended that is is a great place to visit with small kids children. It also had a great restaurant that hosted character meals with the Princesses so I made reservations and we planned on going. It was much less busy than MK so we felt we could just wander a bit more. It was a great day! Epcot has a nice area with the movie "Finding Nemo" as the theme. "The Land" was an area we really enjoyed with a great ride through the history of food production (as farmers, we just had to go and we all really liked it), a movie about the environment with the "Lion King" characters and my FAVOURITE ride called "Soarin". This ride was absolutely amazing where we felt like we were flying.... it was awesome. We were not able to get on a race car ride due a problem with the ride, which was a shame. We went back to our resort for a swim and came back to Epcot for supper with the Princesses. After supper we toured "Around the World". The kids were really tired by then so we were thankful for our double stroller.
    Animal Kingdom:
Our 3rd day was spent at Animal Kingdom. When we arrived we headed straight to the Safari ride, which was really great - an African safari ride. We had fun in Dinosaur Land... until the ride, which we didn't realize was so dark and scary, really scared Alex and Jean. They were done with rides after that one! We toured around some more - Animal Kingdom is a beautiful park.
 Downtown Disney:
Downtown Disney is filled with great restaurants and many, many stores full of Disney and other things. Our favourite store was the Lego store, which Alex was very excited to visit. All around the store there are huge lego statues (see above). We went to Downtown Disney twice for supper - once at Wolfgang Puck's restuarant and the next time at Portobellos Italian restaurant. Both were really great dinners! Strolling through Downtown was another magical part of Disney.
Hollywood Studios:
This picture was taken for Grandma Ann... who loves watching American Idol and we were so happy to take the photo when Carrie Underwood was talking on the big screen! Grace and I are big fans of hers!
 
By day four we were slowing down a bit. We slept in and had brunch and then went to Hollywood Studios. This park doesn't have as many rides for our young family and we missed getting on the Toy Story ride but it was a great place, nonetheless. We watched a few shows, another amazing parade, played in the "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" area (which our kids know nothing about that movie - it is from our childhood) and toured around the animation area. As with all of the parks, there is so much to see so we wandered around and took it all in. Since the kids were getting very tired though, we didn't do as much in Hollywood Studios as we would have liked. We'll come back there another day - another year!
  
Our Disney vacation came to an end but we still had more time in Florida. We left on Saturday February 2 for Ian's parent's Florida home in Port Charlotte (2.5 hours south west of Disney). We absolutely love it there - the kids really enjoy their time with Grandma and Grandpa, spending time playing mini-golf and swimming and Ian and I really love the atmosphere of the community where they stay. The weather remained just wonderful with perfect Florida temperatures. All we did was play games, swim, played a few rounds of mini-golf, eat, drink, sleep and walk. It was heavenly.
All good things must come to an end and that was true to our vacation as well. On Friday February 8, we left the Florida sun and started our trek home. The driving conditions were perfect (despite a nasty weather system heading through the northeast) and we arrived home in the afternoon of February 10. The kids were so excited to get back to school but the next day the buses were cancelled. We drove them to school anyways because they did not want to stay home (and the roads were fine).
I am so thankful to be able to spend this time with our family, travelling to a magical place. Not every moment went according to plan and not everything lived up to my expectations but there were so many things that exceeded my expectations. We made memories that will last us a lifetime and that is irreplaceable. Our world could change in an instance - our children are growing way too fast and the days fly by so I want to make sure I don't take anything for granted. Memories like these will live on in us and our children will remember their first trip to Walt Disney World but more importantly they will remember that we did it as a family - a very close family.
I look forward to many, many more family vacations.
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