Disney World

Disney World Photos

We took our biggest family vacation ever November 9th through the 14th. It involved ten months of planning, an airplane, a week long stay in the biggest hotel accommodations, and four super-charged day at various Disney World parks.

Air travel
Ansley's last airplane trip was at four months when she came with me to visit family in Portland. Hailey and Emberly had never ridden before. It was interesting riding with three young children in coach. On the way there, we were lucky enough to have an entire aisle to ourselves, complete with an empty seat next to both Michael and me, so Emberly had two seats to choose from. The benadryl worked like a charm and she slept almost the entire time on Michael's lap. The way back was a booked flight, so no empty seats, but Emberly still slept for most of it, and spent the rest of the time getting passed over the aisle between Michael and me. Ansley and Hailey had their little backpacks full of dollar store treasures, activities, and snacks, and didn't complain once.

Hotel
We stayed at a Disney deluxe resort, which is the nicest accommodations available on Disney property. Our room was really a house. It was 2400 square feet, two stories tall, with a living room, kitchen, laundry room, three hotel-sized bedrooms and four baths. The standard price for this house was way way beyond our price range, but we discovered that you can pay a Disney vacation club member to use their points, and that is much much more affordable. These houses are very popular, apparently, and we were lucky one was open for the week we wanted.

We met our good friends the Mings there. They had one bedroom, we had another, and Hailey, Ansley, and Vivian enjoyed sleep-over style status in the third room.

Transportation
One advantage to staying on Disney property is the transportation. They have a very slick operation at the airport that gets you on a bus that drops you off at your resort. And buses drive from the resorts to the various parks every day. They say it is every twenty minutes for each park, but we discovered that sometimes their drivers got off schedule and you'd see two buses at the same time going to the same park every 40 minutes instead. That said, it was still worth the perk of no rental car, no parking and riding in on the golf cart hassle, etc.

Dining
The other advantage to staying on Disney property is you can opt for the Dining plan. You pay a flat fee per adult and per kid per day of your hotel stay, and get that many sit-down and fast-food meals, plus snacks. It more than paid for itself, partially because the food is so outrageously expensive there, partially because we made reservations at the most expensive options available. I also brought a whole pantry worth of snacks and convenient breakfast items, because we chose the non-breakfast dining plan, and I knew my kids would want more than their one allotted snack a day. As it turned out, we had 21 leftover snack points when we checked out, so we just went through the little store they had by the check out desk and loaded up on stuff to eat on the plane.

Strollers
The parks have very easy to push (even with all three of our kids in it) plastic molded strollers available to rent. They are expensive and it adds up (about $15 a day for a single and $30 for a double), so if you have a small child who rides in a stroller anyway, bring your own. Also, they are hard molded plastic and not comfortable to sleep in. Emberly refused to sleep in ours, and caused us a lot of cranky baby stress. The Mings would lend us their stroller when their baby wasn't in it, and she sometimes slept in it (and sometimes there was just too much excitement to miss by sleeping). The big stroller does come in handy for pushing the elementary school aged child who has just gotten tired of walking for hours and hours.

Sunday: Downtown Disney
After we settled in on from our flight, we caught a boat ride to Downtown Disney, their shopping strip area. We ate dinner (we made reservations for every sit down meal six months prior) and then hunted down adult-sized Mickey and Minnie t-shirts. We had purchased the kid shirts at the Disney store before we left, and wished they had adult ones, but the selection for grown ups was poor. I had read somewhere to buy all your clothes and toys at the Disney Store ahead of time instead of the park, and boy, was that good advice. The items for sale at Disney World were almost identical to the ones in our local mall, but at three times the price. If they had the right adult tees at the Disney Store, we could have saved twenty bucks per shirt. I was very glad I had packed surprise Minnie mouse dolls and princess barbies. It gave the girls something to remember the trip by without being painfully expensive. We also bought autograph books and personalized mouse ear hats at Disney World, two great souvenir ideas. The girls picked pink mouse ear hats with little tiaras and veils. Very girly. And they filled up their autograph book almost to the very end, mostly because we went to so many character meals (SOOO much better than standing in line for a character meet and greet). I like that their books have a slot opposite each page for a picture, because we have some great photos to put in them posing with each one.

Monday: Magic Kingdom
We toured Mickey's and Minnies house and rode all the classic rides like tea cups and dumbo. And some of the cool ones like Space Mountain. Ansley is a regular thrill seeker. I am more of a wimp than she is, although that's not saying much. At two or three in the afternoon, we took a bus back to our hotel and put kids down for naps. We had problems getting on a bus in time to make it back to our dinner reservation, but everything turned out okay in the end. We ate at the Crystal Palace and met Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet and Winnie the Pooh. Emberly went berserk over the characters, and kept throwing herself at them with gusto. Poor Tigger. Emberly's body slams were right at crotch level, and he had to protect himself after the first onslaught. The food at Crystal Palace was very good, and the bill made us happy we had the dining plan.

The park closed early for a special Christmas event, which we had tickets to. It involved snow on main street (fake soap bubble kind as it turned out), a special fireworks show, and really late closing. The best part was that the park was more empty and all the good rides had no lines. So Angelica and I took the babies home to sleep, and the Dads stayed and took the girls on several more rides until late into the night.

Tuesday: Epcot
The next day we slept in (very late) and rode a bus to Epcot. Epcot was a smaller not so busy park. The different countries were neat, but not something small kids would be interested in exploring, so we didn't spend too much time there. We rode the soaring and mission space ride, along with the nemo ride and the future something ride. We enjoyed dinner at Ashkeraus (or something like that), a Norwegian sit-down meal that had really small portions, but got us quality time with the very best princesses. Belle, Cinderella, Jasmine, Aurora, and the most elusive of all princesses, Ariel. The bill was astronomical and we had a big smile as we handed them our dining plan card.

Wednesday: More Magic Kingdom
This time, we returned with our princesses in full dress-up garb. The royal table breakfast inside Cinderella's castle is THE eating event at Disney world and sells out 180 days in advance, between 6 and 6:15am (when the phone lines open). It was amazing to be inside the Gothic style castle, and the food was superb (another kings ransom that made the dining plan a miracle). We met Cinderella, Jasmine, Aurora and Snow White.

After our very very nice breakfast, we went to the other part of Cinderellas castle for a little girl makeover in the Bippity Boppity Boutique (advanced reservations here were also a good idea). The fairy god mother hair stylists were so sweet and fawned on our little darlings as they gelled and tied up their hair, applied make up and nail polish, and generally pampered them in the way every grown woman dreams of. (Another tip: buy dress up dresses at home, not Disney World) They came out almost unrecognizable in their princessy fanciness. Ansley had a simple bun with a tiny tiara. Hailey had rainbow punk hair with french twists. And Vivian had pink punk hair with rhinestone mickey clips. They were so adorable all made up and in their sleeping beauty and cinderella dresses that groups of adults visiting from other countries asked us in broken English if they could have their picture taken with them.

We found a few more rides we had missed the first day, and planned on staying until the park closed at 7, but it rained in the afternoon, and was so relentless by 6 that everything was soaked. The first two days had been nothing but sun, so we decided to leave most of our rain gear behind (ha ha). The kids were tired, everything was wet, and we had done just about everything. So we called it a day and enjoyed a quiet evening at the hotel and early bedtimes.

Thursday: Hollywood Studios
Our last park day was Thursday, and, unlike Monday through Wednesday, we had left our park decision until the last minute. We had used up all our sit-down meal points, so we didn't have to worry about any dinner reservations, and we weren't sure if we would want another day at Epcot or the Magic Kingdom. Well, Epcot only took one day for people with small kids, and we had covered the Magic Kingdom well with two days. We were all very tired, so we opted for Hollywood studios, where there would be a lot of shows, where we would be doing a lot of sitting. We decided that would be better than animal kingdom, because we could always go to a zoo at home, but Broadway and Hollywood shows were not as easily available. We saw the Muppet 3-d show and the Indiana Jones stunt show and the best of all was the Beauty and Beast musical. It was so entertaining even the babies were mesmerized. And I love Beauty and the Beast anyway, so it was fun to hear songs I could sing in my sleep and watch all the neat dancing and costumes. I rode the tower of terror with Ansley, which she enjoyed, but which scared me silly. Ansley and the Dads rode the Aerosmith roller coaster while I watched a finally sleeping Emberly and Angelica took Vivian and Hailey to see the Little Mermaid show.

The Fireworks show at the end of the night was really cool. All the seats surrounded a lake with a mountainous island in the middle. Fireworks came out the top, boats with movie characters floated by, performances with Mickey and other Disney characters took place on the island, and in between each act, a wall of water would rise up and become a backdrop for a projection movie. It was the perfect way to end our entertainment stay.

Rides
Throughout all the parks, the best rides for me were the ones where all the seats were on a conveyor belt (or a boat in a slow moving river) and you went through nice and easy, sometimes up and down slopes, so it allowed lap babies like Emberly. She was mesmerized by the entertainment on these rides most of the time and really enjoyed it. There were a surprising number of these kinds of rides. Haunted mansion, buzz lightyear, pirates of the Caribbean, It's a small world, that future something ride, finding nemo, and probably a few more I can't think of right now.

This was definitely not a leisure vacation. But, then again, when you are with kids, no vacation is truly a leisure vacation. I like to refer to our trip to Disney World as the Mount Everest of family vacations. It was, as my mom likes to say, High Adventure. I would like to go back in say, five or ten years. But not really before that. I'm good for a while.