Disney: Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios

With each Disney trip we do, we learn and adjust and sometimes try things differently.  On all our previous trips, we have had 4-5 days of exploring the parks with one full day for each of the 4 parks and sometimes an extra day to go back to Magic Kingdom.  This time, with our shorter time frame as we couldn't leave for Florida until after Staley's quiz retreat on Saturday and had to be back for Staley to attend school and go to her choir concert on Friday, we decided to condense our Disney park days to 3 days, but with the park hopper option so we could visit more than one park each day.  We all really liked this freedom and felt like we accomplished a lot even though we did not have full days at each park.

We started our first day at Disney's Animal Kingdom.  The day was rainy all day, but rainy and 60's beats snowy and cold any day of the week.  It never poured, but just lightly drizzled throughout most of the day.  A few things got cancelled or abridged due to the rain, but it otherwise didn't really affect our enjoyment of the day.

We were prepared with our ponchos and excited to start off our fun day.  Since we were not staying on Disney property, we were not able to take advantage of Early Entry for this day, but we got to the park by 7:30 for an 8:00 regular entry time.

There are line skipping options you can purchase, and I had purchased and made some reservations for rides at Disney Hollywood Studios in the afternoon/evening as well as for the individual ride Flight of Passage for the girls and I. Otherwise, our plan was to hit all the other Animal Kingdom rides early in the day before the park got too busy.

We started our day with no waits at Navi River Journey followed by the safari as a family.  Then the girls and I headed over for Expedition Everest while Briggs and Zach walked around to look at animals.

We walked right onto Expedition Everest.  It was a first time for both girls on this roller coaster, and they both really liked it.  (We were stalled at the top of the first big incline for about 5 minutes.  Both girls thought it was just building suspense as part of the ride.)  When we got off the ride, the posted wait time was still really low, so we got right back in line to do it again, but by this time the line was a little longer and wasn't really moving.  We quickly found out that the coaster was temporarily not running, so we cut bait.

The girls and I had our Avatar Flight of Passage Lightning Lane, so we made our way over to Pandora land for our ride. Flight of Passage is probably my very favorite ride at Disney World.  And Pandora Land is one of my favorite Disney lands.  (Although Cars land at Disneyland is hard to top.)  Disney knows how to do themed design, and I love just walking around Pandora land.

While the girls and I did our roller coaster and Flight of Passage, Briggs and Zach wandered around, looked at animals (the paroon shark catfish was a favorite), and got some frozen lemonade...that tasted just like lemonade, but frozen.

Staley had a school group project where they were making a commercial for Gatorade.  Since her group was working on the project while we were gone, Staley's job was to take pictures and videos around Disney with her Gatorade to put into the commercial.  So now we have a whole assortment of Disney pictures featuring red Gatorade...so you are ready for any adventure.

By mid-morning, we had ridden all the rides we wanted to at the park.  The only other ride available was Dinosaur, and none of us really wanted to do that one.  So we walked around, took pictures, and checked out some of the shows.  We were really excited about the bird show, but it was cancelled due to the rain.  However, they did bring out 2 parrots that entertained us with some amazing talking, singing, and animal sounds.  We all loved the new Finding Nemo show.  It was all the same songs as the Finding Nemo, Jr. show that the kids had been in, so that made it extra fun.

We also made it through the 4D show 'It's Tough to Be a Bug.'  We have tried to watch that show on at least 2 or 3 different trips, but one of the kids has always cried, and I've had to leave the theater with them.  I'd never seen the whole thing, so I finally got to experience it...even though Briggs still wasn't too excited about being made to sit through it.

By lunchtime, we had done most of what we wanted to do at the park.  We grabbed some lunch at Flame Tree BBQ, which was really yummy, before we said good-bye to Animal Kingdom and headed over to Hollywood Studios for the second half of our day.

I had bought the Lightning Lane Multi-Pass for our day, primarily because Hollywood Studios has lots of big rides that get long lines throughout the day.  I was able to book 3 rides a few days before our trip with the hope that I could pick up a few more once we started to redeem our pre-reserved rides.

Our first pre-reserved ride was Alien Swirling Saucers.  Not really anyone's favorite, but we needed to ride it (or at least badge into it) in order to open up our options for other rides later in the day.  Adelie and I were the only 2 that chose to ride, but we enjoyed ourselves.  And then I was able to start making and modifying our Lightning Lane reservations for other rides.

The good news for our Hollywood Studios day was that I was able to reserve most of the rides we wanted by the time the day was through.  The only bad news for the least patient member of the family was that most of our return times were later in the afternoon/evening...which meant we had a few mid-afternoon hours to "kill" where we weren't riding rides.  Waiting to ride favorite rides can be hard!

We filled our waiting hours with meeting characters and watching shows.  We started off with Muppet Vision-3D and met a few favorite characters.

We met Ariel from the live action movie...

Olaf...

and Chewbacca.  We got really good at taking off our ponchos and putting them back on as we had to remove them for every character and indoor show that we attended all day.

We did luck out with a low wait time for Rise of the Resistance in the mid-afternoon.  (This is the one ride at Hollywood Studios that is not included in the Lightning Lane Multi-pass.)   Briggs did not want to ride that one, so Zach and the girls rode it first and then we used rider swap so I could ride it later with Adelie.  Briggs and I initially thought we'd ride Toy Story Mania while the girls and Zach rode their ride, but soon realized that, despite a low-posted wait time, we were stuck in a not-moving line.  After waiting for 15-20 minutes with little progress, we decided to move along.  (Patience isn't my strong suit either.)

We met up with Zach and the girls for an abridged (due to rain) version of the Indiana Jones stunt show.

Then while Adelie and I rode Rise of the Resistance, Zach, Staley, and Briggs walked around Star Wars land, took pictures, and got us dinner from Woody's Lunchbox.  Yummy grilled cheese, brisket, totchos, tomato soup...but the highlight was the homemade pop tarts for dessert.

As later afternoon and evening descended, it was FINALLY time to start redeeming our ride reservations.  Using Lightning Lanes, we rode Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, Toy Story Mania, Slinky Dog Dash (X 2 for Briggs with Zach's Lightning Lane), Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, and Smuggler's Run (for Adelie and I while Briggs and Staley did Slinky Dog, and then for Zach and Briggs while the girls and I did Rock 'n' Roller Coaster.)  The only ride I was unable to secure with Lightning Lane was Tower of Terror.

Zach has always struggled with motion sickness which has limited his ability and enjoyment of some of the rides at Disney.  Staley has motion sickness wristbands that she used to use for car rides that seemed to help her.  Zach decided to give them a try and found that he could do way more rides with less adverse effects because of them.  Smuggler's Run was one of the rides that previously made him sick that he was able to do without difficulty this time.  And although initially hesitant, Briggs loved the ride!

The girls and I did Rock 'n' Roller Coaster twice (using Zach and Briggs' Lightning Lanes and single rider) at the end of the night.  And Zach and Briggs ended the night doing Smuggler's Run, Toy Story Mania again, and then Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway again.

We had hoped to watch the Fantasmic show to end our night, but it was cancelled due to the rain.  Staley and I had also wanted to ride Tower of Terror.  We checked out the line at park closing to maybe do it as our final end of the night ride, but it was still prohibitively long.  One of the cast members noted that one of the elevators was down, so they were only operating at half-capacity which is why the lines were ridiculously long all day.  Instead of jumping in line to wait, we just walked back to meet up with Zach and Briggs.

At the end of the day, we had successfully done almost everything we wanted to do in both parks.  We opened Animal Kingdom, closed down Hollywood Studios, and made sure to get over 30,000 steps.  At Disney, if we walk less than 15 miles a day, it doesn't even count.  Staley and I finished off the day back at the Airbnb by running a wet mile in order to keep her streak alive before taking warm showers and heading to bed.  What a great first Disney parks day!!

Disney: The Beginning

Life is busy.  Winter is long.  We had a small window where dance, EMS drama, and volleyball had all just ended and track had not yet begun.  Although Zach is not always a fan of taking the kids out of school for vacations, I provided some compelling arguments (like...I really want to go, and it's warm there).  After giving it a little thought, he agreed that going to Disney again was a fantastic idea, so we did.  And not to toot my own horn, but it really was a fantastic idea.

We found some cheap flights on Southwest, so we headed up to Chicago on Saturday afternoon for our evening flight from Midway to Orlando.  We just brought carry-on bags this time and enjoyed the freedom of not waiting at baggage claim.  Our flight had plenty of open seats, so Adelie and I took advantage of an open middle seat between us!

We drove to Midway while listening to our book on tape.  ('The Day the World Came to Town' was our audiobook of the trip.)  We had dinner at the airport food court.  The girls and I enjoyed some yummy grilled cheese (or ham and cheese) sandwiches we had remembered from a previous trip while Zach and Briggs tried out a Mexican place.  Our food was better.  

Everything went smoothly (except for a little snafu with the rental car place, but it got worked out).  We got off our plane, grabbed our rental car (the last non-electric car on the lot), and headed to our Airbnb in Davenport while I put in a grocery delivery order for the next morning.  With each trip we take, things get easier as we figure out what works for our family.

We did have a bit of a pre-trip illness scare as Adelie woke up the day before our trip all congested with a fever.  She missed school that day, but remained fever free most of the day and never really felt bad.  By the next day, she was feeling fine except for a little congestion.  I was so thankful!  And she was extra-happy that she was the one chosen to have her own room at the Airbnb to keep her germs to herself.

Our first day in Florida was a rest day, so we had the morning to just hang out and enjoy our Airbnb.  Staley and I went for a run in the sunny morning warmth, and then Zach went for a run once we got back.   Our Airbnb was about 20-30 minutes (with traffic) from the Disney parks, but it was in a nice quiet neighborhood, had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, full size laundry, and a good-sized pool. 

The kids spent the entire morning in the pool.  Briggs was the first one up and was in the pool by about 8:30 in the morning with the girls joining him after Staley's run.  The pool was nice and warm, the sunny skies were inviting, and I even enjoyed an hour or so of relaxing in the pool after my run too.

After our relaxing morning, we cleaned up for a trip to Disney Springs for lunch.  I had made reservations at the T-Rex restaurant since I thought one member of the family would specifically like it.  It's like the Rainforest Cafe, except dinosaurs.  We'd been there on a previous Disney trip several years ago, but I felt like it was worth revisiting now that Briggs was older.

The atmosphere is cool with animatronic dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals all around.  The ice age cave might have been my favorite room.  The food was good (nothing too memorable, but good) and the atmosphere fun.  All in all, a good first Disney meal.

After lunch, we enjoyed the AMAZING 70-degrees and sunshine day by walking around Disney Springs.  We popped into a few stores, but generally just enjoyed being out in the nice weather that we had so sorely been missing.

Briggs would have liked to go into the Lego store, but there was a pretty substantial line to enter the store, so we just enjoyed the Lego creations that were adorning the outside of the store instead.

We walked around enough to work off some of our lunch so that we could make room for...

Salt & Straw ice cream.  We experienced it in Downtown Disney at Disneyland last summer and were excited to have another opportunity to try it.

The ice cream is really good, and they have a variety of unique flavors.  Although the family settled on things like Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons and Double Fold Vanilla and Salted, Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, I branched out with the Salty Donut Guava and Cheese ice cream.  It was all delicious, although we agreed that we might still like Uncle Bob's better.

We finished off our day with a quick trip to a nearby outlet mall to stop in the Disney Character Warehouse, check out a few more stores (for the girls and Zach while Briggs started to lose patience with the whole shopping thing), and then back to the house for a snack-y dinner and an episode of 'The Magic of Disney's Animal Kingdom' to get us in the mood for our park day the next day.  We were in bed early so that we could be up and ready to hit the parks early for a full day of Disney fun!

Happy Birthday, Briggs!

It's official.  Every person who lives in our house is double digits.  As hard as it is to believe, Briggs is 10 years old!  I love the ages that my kids are now.  They are independent and funny and capable and truly fun to be around.  But as I reflect on Briggs now and how I love where we are at as a family, it's also time for me to look back over the years and reflect on all the fun stages (and sometimes not-so-fun stages) that we've gone through to get where we are now.

Snuggly...

short-fused...

creature of habit (hand socks, anyone??)...

train-loving...

funny...

sweet...

silly...

loving...

resourceful...

creative, smart, goofy, friendly, enthusiastic, incredibly awesomely wonderful.

So many phases.  So many memories.  So many things to love about these years of watching Briggs grow up.  I am so proud of the boy he is and can't wait to see the plan that God has for him.