Archive for the ‘Disney World’ Category

While at Epcot we came across their phone booth and the kids had no clue what it was, which made me feel old.  We had to explain that people didn’t use to have cell phones and if you wanted to make a call when you were out and about you would have to look for a phone booth!  So of course they had to have their picture taken with one.  LOL

Well, our vacation of 2010 is now over and I’m happy, but yet sad at the same time.   Happy because even with the kids fighting from time to time we did end up having a fun time with no mishaps  like years prior.  (ER visits & returning dinged up van’s.. all different vacations)

Disney was fun, but I do have to say that the magical spark was out of our kids eyes this year which was a bummer for Paul and I.  Last year when we went all the characters were real.. this year they told us it’s just a person in a costume.  Since we met most of them last year we were able to skip that part.  They still were able to meet Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger while Katie also got to meet Ariel & Cinderella’s fairy god mother!

Florida was colder than last year and last year was chilly.  The day we arrived it was in the 60′s or low 70′s and we were able to swimming in our private pool since it was heated, but from then on it was to cold to even think of going swimming, which was a major bummer as the kids LOVE to swim.

As you had read earlier we had gone to Epcot and had a good time there.  The following day we ended up going to Animal Kingdom and I would have to say out of those two parks, Animal Kingdom is our least favorite.   We always say to ourselves that since the park closes early we should be able to stay all day, but last year and this year we ended up leaving way before the parade even happens and we did everything.  What was cool (besides the weather that morning) was we got there when it opened and hurried over to Expedition Everest where there was only a “5″ minute wait.   It did seem like awhile for Katie & I, but I think that’s because we had no clue what car they would be in.  All of a sudden there they were coming down the big hill.  I asked Kevin if he wanted to go on it again as there still wasn’t a line and he said NO!    So we started walking away and we asked him again if he would want to ride with me this time and he ended up changing his mind and said he would!  So we hurried back and seriously… Kevin and I walked right on the ride!  We didn’t have to stop until the lady asked us how many.. I said 2 she said line whatever.. I’ll say 3 and all we had to do was wait till the next car showed up because there wasn’t anyone in front of us!    I’m so glad Kevin was a trooper and rode it again for me so I could experience it, but I  knew there would be no way he would want to do it again.  LOL     Since there STILL wasn’t much of a line Paul ended up riding it again.. this time by himself.   We never would of dreamed we (as a family) would of rode that ride 3 times in the first 1/2 hour of being at the park.  I still think the cold weather had something to do with it… so because of that, I would welcome the cold weather any day.

That night Grandma & Grandpa A ended up driving up and spending the night with us so they could go to Magic Kingdom with us the following day.   Once again we got there right after the rope dropped and hurried over to Buzz Lightyear since that’s Kevin’s favorite ride.  We were first in line (or so we thought.. now looking back there had to of been people inside already) and ended up waiting 20 minutes for them to open the ride.  The guy working would come out and say just one more minute then go back inside to come out and just put his finger up.. one more minute.  Then he finally came out and said the ride would be closed and to come back later.  Paul and I went to Space Mountain then while his parents took the kids on the mini race cars (putt putt type cars).   I knew they re-did space mountain so I was anxious to see what was different.  While they added things to do while you wait in line (Thankfully it was still early so we had no wait) the only thing I thought I noticed different on the ride was it was jerkier than normal and to me I was quite bored on it.  I remember last year Paul and I saying lets quick go again (great thing about getting there early morning.. you can get back on rides right away) but this year we said lets go.   By the time we left there, people were going into Buzz Lightyear so we went to the racetrack and got Paul’s parents and the kids and off to Buzz we went.

We got in line and waited to of got stopped right in front of Buzz (right before you get on the ride) because once again the ride had stopped.  This time I swear we waited at least 45 minutes for the ride to resume.   By the time we finally got on the ride and was done, the lines to all the other rides had grown in length which was a bummer.  We still had a good time though and was so glad Paul’s parents could once again enjoy it with us since that will probably be our last time down there for quite sometime.

The next day we decided to try MGM (Or now known as Hollywood Studios) and thankfully I read up on it the night before.  We once again got there at rope drop and rushed to Toy Story where we got our fast passes first and then started waiting in line, but I didn’t think we would have enough time to get over to the Jedi Training so we left to head over there.  I was hoping Kevin could participate in the training, but the line to be in it was long already so not only did we have to wait the 35 minutes for that show to start, but we also had to wait till the next one started an hour later.  I can say I’m glad we did though because Kevin had so much fun up there, let alone fighting Darth Vader and “winning”!!   Plus had we not of done it when we did, he wouldn’t of been able to as it ended up raining about 30 minutes after we got done with it.   After Kevin’s show we went back to Toy Story and that’s when it started to rain so we went and watched the Ariel show.    By the time we were out of there it was raining pretty good.  I was glad we had gotten the poncho’s out and covered our strollers with them so they were dry.  After Ariel we went and watched Indiana Jones, when on the Star Wars ride and then had lunch.  By that time we were so cold and wet we thought forget it and went home for the day.

The following 2 days we went back to Magic Kingdom as our kids just love riding the rides.   In the afternoon though we finally let the kids run around on the boat in toon town and they had such a blast.    Then they just HAD to go to the other kiddie area with the playground equipment.  Since the lines were long everywhere else (they always are in the afternoon) we just let them run and have fun.   After that we went to Tom Sawyers Island (which we had never done every year going there) and the kids just LOVED it there and was wishing their cousins (Carl, Alicia and Justin) could of been there shooting the “bad guys” with them.    We did stay all day (just after rope drop.. rope drop happened as we were waiting for the monorail) until the fireworks and let me say… it was FREEZING that night!  It was so cold during the spectro parade that afterwards we ended up going in the stores just to try and get warmed up a little.  (That’s with the kids wearing 2 sweatshirts and a coat.. we didn’t want to haul our winter coats with us all day so that’s why we wore layers instead)    We always tend to watch the fireworks outside the park by the ferries and I noticed they were starting to board once the fireworks were going off so we quick go on the ferry and what surprised me was a lot of people went to the front of the boat while we stayed in the back so we could watch the fireworks while going across the water.  The only bummer thing is we docked right before the grand finale went off so we did miss parts of that.   But at least we were already in our warm cars while everyone else was making their way our of the park!

The next day when we arrived at Magic Kingdom we ended up splitting up for the morning.  Paul and Kevin did their thing, while Katie and I did ours.  It actually worked out the best as Kevin can ride things Katie can’t.   That way she doesn’t have to wait for Kevin to get done with his things, plus we can ride the Pooh ride over and over again along with Peter Pan, It’s a small world… etc.     By the time Katie and I got off the Haunted Mansion I noticed Kevin’s stroller sitting there so we ended up waiting for them as we knew they would be coming out anytime and we were suppose to hook up in a 1/2 hour anyways.  

Another surprise ride that we enjoyed that we hadn’t rode before was Carousel of Progress.  We had rode it the day before and it broke down due to someone in another another room had tried to walk out during it.   (Paul didn’t mind as it was dark and he could rest his eyes)   So in the afternoon we rode it again kinda hoping the same thing would happen so we could rest some, but this time it didn’t.  The kids and I still had fun watching how so much had changed in the last 80 years or so.  

We still had one more day at Disney, but since the weather forecast said it was to be rainy and cold again we decided to leave a day early and head over to Orange Beach to spend a week there with them!    That will have to be another post though as I better get working on my grocery list since Paul is now up.  Before I can go grocery shopping we have to pick my car up from my parents house. (we parked it in there garage so when we didn’t have it sitting in our driveway while we were gone and we could drive right into our garage then)

I am so excited as our big vacation in February that I can’t get it out of my mind.  I pretty much have everything all planned out and things are reserved!  Now it’s just a matter of sitting back anxiously for February to get here.

Thankfully back in June I had reserved our mini van rental.  Here I thought maybe it was to early, but I knew if the prices dropped I could always change our reservation.  I’m so glad I did that because since then the price of van rentals have doubled!  I couldn’t figure out why since I had heard that the travel industry was getting hit hard, but then I found out that with car rentals they can increase their prices because they cut their fleet in half!  It’s all supply & demand… if you don’t have many vehicles, but you have the same number of people wanting them then you can increase your price.  Now a hotel room can’t do that as they will always have a set number of rooms.  It’s not as if they can just get rid of a floor or two of rooms. 

Our plans are to leave on Friday when Kevin gets out of school and drive straight through.   Last  year we made it just about there before we found a hotel and the only reason why we did that was because we had found some good hotel deals in Orlando, plus we weren’t scheduled to be in our rental until the following day.   Since I know we can do a straight shot I ended up booking our rental that way.  I just hope we have no issues along the way.

I also have the kids pirates costumes bought for the Pirate League that we will be having them do.   In case you haven’t heard of the Pirate League it’s a pirate make-over that is done at the Magic Kingdom.  They have two different packages and really the difference between the two is the more expensive one comes with a costume and you can get more pictures after your child (or you) is done with the makeover.  But for the price I just couldn’t justify going with the bigger package and thankfully was able to find a jack sparrow costume for Kevin at a garage sale for $5 and Katie a really cute girls pirate costume at amazon.com for $12!   So they will still be able to experience the whole process and feel like a pirate while Mommy & Daddy can save a few dollars.

Oh I can’t wait… only 4 months, 2 weeks and 4 days and we will be in Florida anxiously waiting till the following morning when we can go to Disney World!

As you can see by my previous post we once again will be heading down to the Orlando area this upcoming year. I always assumed that we would just do Disney like he have the past couple years, but now Paul and I are rethinking things due to having some of our friends tell us that Sea World, Busch Gardens and Universal Studio’s are fun as well and we should really do those. So now I’m not sure where to go.

Yes, we have done Disney, but we honestly have never done it all yet and I’m sure we could go all 6/7 days there and not get bored, but by looking at the other websites they look like fun too.

So here is my question for my readers. If you were going to the orlando area with a 4 & 6 year old, where would you go? Is Busch Garden more for the bigger kids? (Katie is only 37″ right now)

Any advice on ANY of the parks would be greatly appreciated!

I’m so excited since I just heard back from the owner of Srub Jay Villa  (the vacation rental we stayed in this past February when we went to Disney) and his home is available for next February when we will be going!   We had only rented from one other owner down there before and this house (layout, furniture and pool) was so much nicer even though both homes were in the same development. (Sandy Ridge)

If you are heading down to Disney and are debating on where to stay (On site or off) I’ll just give you some of my reasons why we enjoy staying off site. 

The first time Paul and I went to Disney it was the first year we were married and we ended up staying at the All Star Resorts since they were the cheapest and was in our price range.  While it was nice having the magic of Disney all the time, I just remember the rooms being on the small side.  It was fine for it just being Paul and I, but thinking of having 2 little kids in the room with us just made me claustrophobic.

Since every year my parents end up renting a condo in Orange Beach and I know how nice it is to have that extra room I started looking for a house, villa or condo to rent.   Our first year we didn’t do so hot as we ended up getting scammed by Jorge Gomez (You can read all about that here) but we did end up finding a nice 2 story house for less money that we were happy with.  Then last year we were going to try and book it again, but because I was booking in advance (the last time it was a couple weeks before we went down) she wasn’t able to match the price from the year before so we decided to start shopping around.

After looking through tons of houses on all the vacation rental by owner sites (vrbo, homeaway) and contacting quite a few owners we ended up deciding on Scrub Jay Villa.  I can honestly say I was a little nervous about the whole thing before we got down there thanks to the scam from the year prior, but once we got to the house and the key did end up working everything just went perfectly! 

The house was so much nicer as there wasn’t stains on the carpet, nothing was broken (one of the blinds were broken in the previous house) and the layout was so nice as 3 out of 4 bedrooms were away from the living room.  So we could stay up at night watching tv and we wouldn’t be keeping the kids up, but yet they were close enough where if they yelled for us we could hear them.

What was really funny was that the countertop in the kitchen was the exact same as ours at home and the carpet was the same carpet that is in Kevin’s bedroom!  So it honestly made it feel like home away from home.  The kitchen had pretty much everything you would need!  All I had to do was go to the grocery store to get some food in the house while Paul and the kids enjoyed swimming in the pool!

The pool and spa was so relaxing.  The first couple days I’ll admit the water was a little chilly, but that was just do the cooler than normal temps in Florida.  Once we put the solar cover on and the weather got warmer the pool warmed right up and we all enjoyed going swimming.  Especially me as there are no neighbors in the back yard (just woods) and the houses next to us didn’t have anyone in them as well, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing me in my swimsuit.  ~wink~

The big bonuses of why I would rather stay in a house/villa/condo over staying on site is because with houses not only do you have LOTS more room, but you have a full kitchen (not just a microwave and dorm size refrigerator) where you can make meals and save some money and also a washer & dryer so when your clothes get dirty you can just throw them in the wash, therefor not having to pack as many clothes! 

 For those who don’t know where Sandy Ridge is, we just LOVE the location!  It’s actually in Davenport which I’m sure scares some people away because it sounds far, but it’s honestly only 10 minutes away (just the next exit) from the Disney exit on I-4!  What’s nice and the reason we are thrilled with that location is you don’t have to deal with all the stop and go traffic like you do with 192.  There is only 2 red lights between the house & I-4!  I will admit that once you do get off at the Disney exit to get to the magic kingdom’s parking lot can take another 10 minutes due to the slow speed limits on site.

All I know is after staying in a home off site and having the extra room and privacy for the same price or cheaper than staying on site or even in a hotel I know what we always will be doing from now on!

I know it’s a little early, but I’m already dreaming about our vacation to Florida and Alabama.   All four of us can’t wait to go to Disney again, but we have heard some good things regarding Busch Gardens.  One of Paul’s friends went to Busch Gardens and didn’t up liking it so much that they never did make it to Disney.

Have you ever gone to Busch Garden’s with little kids?  I went online and it seemed like most of the rides seen to be for older kids.  Kevin & Katie will be 4 & 6 (they are on the shorter size for their age) and I keep wondering if it would be worth our time to go there or not.  Do they have a lot of stuff for the little kids too?   Would you do 1/2 Disney, 1/2 Busch Gardens?  Or would you just do Disney?  Or maybe pretty much all Disney and 1 day of Busch Gardens?  Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

WOW! It’s been that long since I’ve blogged about anything! OOPS! I’m sure most of you (at least my family members that I haven’t called) are wondering how our vacation is going. Things are going pretty good!

Last Tuesday (Has it already been a week since we left!) we left after Kevin got out of school and drove down to Goshen to visit my Aunt Margo. Usually we take a different way, but this year I thought lets take this way so we could visit her. Now I know why as there was a big pile up on the expressway we usually take and we would of been stuck in that big mess.

After visiting with my Aunt for awhile we hit the LONG road for our next destination.. Macon Georgia so we could visit the Museum of Aviation. Kevin fought like crazy on going to sleep as he didn’t want to miss a thing. Katie did too, but thankfully they did sleep for a couple hours so I could get a little sleep. We finally arrived at the Museum, but Kevin wasn’t to interested. I think it was because he got spoiled at Kalamazoo’s Air Zoo. That too is a air museum, but it also has some rides for the kids to ride on and he was in the ride mode as our next destination was Disney!

We arrived in the Orlando area Wednesday night and spent the night in the hotel and then arrived at our villa rental on Thursday!   I was very surprised on how nice it was as the pictures did not do it any justice.  Since we did arrive before noon we decided day 1 of Disney was in order and off we went!

Disney Day 1 ~  The first thing we did was we took Katie over to the barber shop in the Magic Kingdom.  In case you don’t know.. there is a barber shop there and they will cut kids hair for $14 and adults for $17!  If it’s a childs first haircut (and it was Katie’s) then they give them Mickey Ears with the back that says First Haircut and also a certificate noting the first haircut as well (as well as wrapping the hair in tissue for you).  Then she ended up putting her hair up in a pony tail and added “pixie dust”!  (She even put some in Kevin’s hair too!)   The crowd level wasn’t bad at all as we didn’t have that many long waits.  The longest was Peter Pan and I think we waited about 40 minutes otherwise it was 10-20 minute waits if that even!

Disney Day 2 ~ We ended up going to Animal Kingdom this day as Paul’s parents were going to be coming up and staying with us for a couple nights and since the park closes at 5pm we thought that way we wouldn’t be missing anything.  We got there after the park opened and the crowds weren’t that bad either.  We didn’t have that long of a wait for the Safari ride or It’s a bugs life.  Other than that we really didn’t do many other rides.  We did see a lot of characters there and the kids got their pictures with them.   (Rafiki, Pocahontas, Jiminy Cricket, Mickey & Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Bear from Brother Bear)  We did learn one thing… our kids both love riding rides so we decided from now on we will just be doing the Magic Kingdom.

Disney Day 3 ~ Paul’s folks were staying with us and went to Disney with us as well!  Since they were there, Paul and I took advantage of it and while they took the kids on the Putt Putt cars, Paul and I went on Space Mountain!  Since it was early morning we were able to ride it twice before the line started forming.  The 2nd time riding it Paul got to ride in the front car and he said that was amazing!  The crowds were a lot busier on this day as it was a Saturday and the weather finally was warmer!  We ended up staying the whole day and watched the spectromagic parade and fireworks.

We then took a day off to go back to Magic Kingdom yesterday!  We couldn’t of done things any better yesterday except of gotten there when the gates opened.  We still got there early where we were just about able to walk onto the rides.  Then around lunch time we headed home for the afternoon.  When we went back we got to ride in the front of the monorail with the driver!  It’s just so much fun to ride up front because you can see everything.  By the times we got to Magic Kingdom people were already leaving and we once again didn’t have to wait that long for the rides we were looking to ride.  Instead of watching the night time parade we ended up riding more rides and what was really cool was we had just got on the Astro Orbiter when the fireworks started so it was cool to be flying in the rockets watching the fireworks!

Today was another day to veg around the house, but then tonight we ended up goign to the Cinderella Gala Feast at the Grand Floridian.  Can I just say I can’t wait to get home to download my video I took of the kids dancing with Cinderella, Kevin getting a kiss from Cinderella and then Kevin dancing with Drizella.  At least you will have something to look forward to now right??

I’m so excited!!  Last night I ended up finding the information I needed online which told me which days are typically busy at Disney World and I did some planning from there.  I then found out which two days would be our “it doesn’t matter what we do” days and ended up calling Disney this morning to make dinner reservations for the Cinderella Gala Feast at the Grand Floridian.

I had read earlier that they were upgrading their computer systems and wouldn’t be able to take reservations until October for next year, but I thought I would check today anyways.  I called and the first day I wanted was wide open and I could choose whenever we wanted to go!  I ended up picking the 4:30pm time as that’s when it opens and I would hope it wouldn’t be as busy so maybe the kids could get some more 1 on 1 time.

All I know is I’m excited right now!  Now I just have to find a cool invatation to mail the kids from Cinderella inviting us to come down to eat with her! 

Have you ever gone to Cinderella’s Gala Feast?  If so, how did you like it?

So Katie and I went out to get the mail and I saw a big envelope in our mailbox and I just knew what it was going to be and I was right!!  We ended up getting our Disney tickets in the mail today!!!  Kevin is looking through the Disney flier and is now more excited than ever to go back down!  All I know is it’s going to take forever for February to get here.