Our Disney Trip: A Few More Days

Our late night at the Christmas party was not a great recipe for getting to our park early the next day.  We were heading to Animal Kingdom.  I love the feel of this park and still feel like there's more to it that we haven't experienced.  Maybe after our next trip, I'll feel like we've fully experienced it all.

Originally I had hoped to get to Animal Kingdom when the park opened to ride the new Pandora ride that we didn't have a Fast Pass for.  However, we decided that bouncing our kids out of bed early after they had the latest night of there life might not be the best idea.  We all slept in and got to the park by 10:00, just in time for our safari.

The safari was a big hit with everyone. Briggs loved that we were riding on a big truck, and the girls had a great time trying to spot all the exotic wildlife.  I found it all very educational and enlightening.

After our safari, Zach took the kids to walk along the Gorilla Trail to see more wildlife while I took advantage of a short single rider line to ride Expedition Everest.  Staley wanted me to try it first to help her decide if she wanted to do it.  After my description of the ride, she decided against riding it.

Love the guy in the front row.

We enjoyed a DELICIOUS quick service meal at the Harambe Market.  It was by far the best quick service meal we had.  Briggs and Adelie didn't eat much of their chicken skewers, but Staley polished off hers and some of her siblings' too.

That meal got enthusiastic thumbs up from 3 of us.

After lunch, Briggs and Zach took a few spins on the Wildlife Express train while the girls and I enjoyed 'The Festival of the Lion King' show.  By the time the show ended, Briggs had fallen asleep.  We came across Baloo and King Louie with no wait so we quickly met them before heading off to enjoy Kali River Rapids.  Staley and I rode first.  Using Rider Swap, Staley immediately did it again with Zach and Adelie while I hung out with the sleeping boy.

Staley was excited to tell Baloo and King Louie that she had been in 'The Jungle Book' play.

Briggs woke up in time to enjoy a mid-afternoon treat.

Once Briggs was up, we enjoyed ice cream treats while walking around more of the park.  We explored the new Pandora area, which is visually amazing.  We posed for a family picture with the Animal Kingdom Christmas tree on our way out of the park for an early dinner.

Pandora!

Every park was decorated and festive.

Our dinner that night was at Ohana at the Polynesian resort.  The kids didn't love the food, but Zach and I thought it was AMAZING!  We ate so much.  I was enjoying the meal so much that I didn't care that Briggs only ate some bread and then just played with his cars at the table.

His cars kept him occupied so I could focus on enjoying the incredible food I was eating.

After dinner, we then headed back to Animal Kingdom so Zach and I could ride the Pandora Flight of Passage ride.  I thought it was AMAZING and was so glad I had gotten Fast Passes for us to do it.  On the other hand, it made Zach motion sick and he felt lousy for the rest of the evening.  In retrospect, I should have just done it twice...once for each of us.  :) While Zach was busy getting motion sick, I took the kids to watch the night time show (which, yes, made Briggs cry).  We weren't in a great viewing area, but were able to see most of it.  Once we met back up with my motion sick husband, the park was closing so we headed back to the hotel.

Hollywood Studios was our Thursday plan.  This is the park that we can cover pretty easily in a day, so we let the kids sleep in a bit and got to the park mid-morning.  We started off with the Frozen Sing-along show.  Briggs was initially worried about this one and didn't want to stay, but once it started, he enjoyed it.  This isn't my favorite show, but it has amusing parts and I love when Elsa makes it snow in the theater.

There are not a lot of rides at this park that my kids want to do, so we spent a lot of our day watching shows and meeting characters.  We saw the Beauty and the Beast show, which everyone enjoyed.  Since Briggs didn't want to see the Little Mermaid show, Zach and Adelie went to that one while Staley, Briggs, and I went to Disney Jr.  Briggs loved the Disney Jr. show.  He was dancing and clapping.  I was so glad we had found a show that he fully enjoyed from beginning to end.

Hanging out before the Disney Jr. show

We met lots and lots of characters at Hollywood Studios.  Many of them had little or no line, so we took advantage and filled up on character interactions.

Briggs was most excited to meet Cruz.  He thought it was great that she revved her engine and talked.  There was never much of line to see her, so the girls met her at a different time and then Briggs and Staley came back one more time towards the end of the day to meet her once more.

Briggs was a little unsure about Pluto...

but was all about Olaf.

And he wasn't at all worried about meeting the Army man who was walking around outside the Toy Story ride.  Go figure.

While we were finishing up at the Disney Jr. show, Adelie met Jake from 'Jake and the Neverland Pirates.'

Briggs and Zach met Chewbacca while the girls and I were riding the Toy Story ride.  Just like when he was an infant, he loved Chewbacca.

And Zach took all the kids to meet Kylo Ren while I was riding Rockin Roller Coaster.

The kids wanted to meet Buzz and Woody, but the line for them was always really long.  While Adelie and I were riding Toy Story Mania (for the 4th time of the day), Staley and Briggs were watching Buzz and Woody meet people through a window.  One of the Disney cast members came out and asked if they wanted to meet Buzz and Woody.  They said yes, so the cast member walked them right in the back door to meet them.  It was a highlight!  (Of course, Adelie was so disappointed that she had missed out.)

The only ride the kids wanted to do at this park was the Toy Story Mania ride.  Briggs did not want to do it, so we were able to use Rider Swap so the girls got to each ride it twice, once with Zach and once with me.  I had fast passed Tower of Terror for all of us on the off-chance that anyone other than me wanted to do it.  However, a few of the elevators for that ride were down and the Fast Pass wait was about 45 minutes.  Because of this, they gave us all a free fast pass to use for any ride at any time.  Staley didn't want to do any more rides, but Adelie wanted to do Toy Story Mania again.  With Rider Swap, Zach and I both did it again with Adelie.  She was loving it, and was getting really good at it!!

I had wanted to do both Tower of Terror and Rockin Roller Coaster.  I was not willing to wait 45 minutes for Tower of Terror, so I used my free fast pass to ride Rockin Roller Coaster.  And even though Zach wasn't interested, I got a rider swap and rode it again.  

So fun!!

 Our lunch was just a quick lunch of burgers and nuggets at Backlot Express.  Not impressed.  For dinner, we had reservations at Hollywood and Vine.  This was a holiday buffet where we got to meet Goofy, Mickey, Minnie, Daisy, and Donald.  The buffet was fine and the characters were fine, but I wasn't overly impressed with any of it.  I find character interactions a little more difficult when the characters don't talk.  Even though it didn't seem overly crowded, the characters didn't spend much time at our table.  The kids were excited to meet them, but it wasn't one of my favorite character meals.

I did enjoy that the characters were all dressed in their Christmas finery.

Briggs was in the bathroom when Daisy came to our table.  She came back for a quick picture with him when he got back to the table, but she was all business.  She spent the least time with us.

Briggs did seem to enjoy all these characters.

When asked, Briggs tells people that his favorite character to meet was Mickey, so I'm glad we got to meet him twice.

I had hoped to see the Fantasmic show, and we even got a special Fantasmic package with dinner so we could get good seats for the show.  However, I showed the kids part of the show on You Tube and they all agreed it looked too scary.  (We have a very low "scary" threshold in our house.)  We instead gave away our Fantasmic tickets to another nice family who seemed very pleased.  We tried to go see the Indiana Jones stunt show after dinner, but Staley and Briggs both got scared during the first scene.  Zach and Adelie stayed to watch the show while the rest of us walked over to Sunset Boulevard to listen to Christmas music, watch the Christmas light show on Tower of Terror, and experience a little more Disney snow.  We left the park right before the night time shows and fireworks started.

Posing in the "snow" 

It was another full day of family fun.  I felt like we were really hitting our stride, and it was hard for me to believe that we only had one day left of our vacation.

Our Disney Trip: The Next Two Days

Our next day was our Epcot day.  We got there right at park opening again, hoping to fit in a ride or two before our breakfast reservation.  Unfortunately, our day at Epcot was the last day for the Food and Wine Festival there.  I'm not sure if it was the festival or the beautiful weather or just bad timing, but Epcot seemed very crowded and it took us a long time to get through the lines to even enter the park.  By the time we got in, we didn't have time for anything other than making our way over to Norway for breakfast.  Luckily it's a big place, we had strategic fast passes, and were able to have a great day despite the crowds.  The weather was beautiful, and we started off our day with a princess breakfast at Akershus where we met Belle, human Ariel, Cinderella, Aurora, and Snow White.  Unlike our Happily Ever After dinner, the food was better than I remembered and our princess interactions were so good!  The girls had cards for all of the princesses we met, and each princess spent a lot of time at our table with us.  I truly think the cards were such a great way to enhance the character interactions.  I wish it had been my idea.  :)

Belle meets all the guests at the door, so she was the princess we spent the least amount of time with.

This was our third Cinderella interaction of the trip, but the girls were still just as excited to see her.

Briggs didn't want to leave his seat or stop eating, but he was happy to smile with the princesses when they posed with him.

Ariel posing with her card from Adelie.

Aurora reading her card.

After a great breakfast, we walked out to find a strangely short line for the new Frozen Ever After ride.  Although we had a Fast Pass for later, we jumped in line and rode the new ride with a very short wait time.  Briggs didn't care for it, but the rest of us enjoyed it.  I was excited about riding it again and was surprised when the girls didn't want to use the Fast Pass for a chance to ride it again later.  (Although at our Fast Pass time, the Fast Pass line was as long of a wait as when we rode it stand-by earlier.)  While in Norway, we then popped by to see Anna and Elsa.  We had great interactions with them, and they may have been some of Briggs' favorite characters.  He seemed more comfortable with them than anyone else we had met.

More cards made for more great conversations with princesses.

Briggs was very happy to pose with Elsa...

...and Anna.

After our morning filled with princesses, we spent the rest of our morning walking through the different countries and exploring.  Briggs LOVED the model trains in Germany.  We watched them for a long time.  The only way we could coax him away was with a little gelato snack break.

Watching the trains

Snack break

After our snack, we made our way out of the World Showcase to use our fast pass to meet Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy.  When asked, Briggs always said he was most excited to meet Mickey, so I was excited to give him the opportunity.  He really enjoyed meeting Mickey and Minne, but was pretty scared of Goofy.

Briggs was very comfortable with Mickey and enjoyed showing him the Lightning McQueen car he had brought with him.

Briggs was okay with Goofy as long as he was being held.

My top goal for our Epcot day was to ride Soarin, which was closed for refurbishment on our first Disney trip.  We didn't have a Fast Pass for it, so when I saw that the line was only estimated at 40 minutes, it seemed like the right time to try it.  I took the girls with me to ride it while Briggs and Zach played outside.  Well, 70 minutes later, we FINALLY got to ride.  I loved the ride, the girls liked it, but that was by far our longest wait of the trip.  I would have loved it a lot more at 40 minutes.  Because we could use the Rider Swap, Zach got to ride it later in the day without the wait.  The girls could have ridden with him, but they both chose not to do it again.

Waiting and waiting and waiting...

After Soarin', we rode the Nemo ride (which was another ride that made Briggs cry) and then did Turtle Talk with Crush, which we hadn't done last time.  HUGE hit with all the kids, and us too.  We then had dinner at the Coral Reef restaurant, which we really enjoyed.  Staley chose it as her favorite food of the trip this time.  The food was very good and the atmosphere with huge aquarium tanks in the dining area was amazing.  

Nothing like watching sea turtles, sharks, and exotic fish swim by while you eat.

We finished off our day with a few more character interactions and walking around Epcot at night.  The kids wanted to meet Joy and Sadness, but when we got there and saw that there was literally no line to meet Baymax, the girls met him as well.  (We have never seen that movie and know nothing about Baymax, but Adelie was VERY interested to see what he felt like.)  Briggs wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

I love this picture of Adelie.

The girls with Baymax

We took a happy picture for Joy and this sad one for Sadness.  I love that even Briggs got in on the sad face.

I had hoped to make it late enough to watch the Illuminations night show, but we decided that a late night might not be the best idea since we were going to have a late night the next night.  I'll just have to put the Illuminations show on my list for our next trip.

We did not have to get up early on Tuesday, so we all were able to sleep in. We had planned a leisurely day of play at our resort to rest up for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party that night.  After getting up and ready, we headed to Disney's Boardwalk resort for our Bon Voyage breakfast with Rapunzel, Flynn Rider, Ariel, and Prince Eric.  The food was good and we enjoyed our interactions, especially with Flynn Rider.

I love how Disney doesn't miss the details.  The powdered sugar Rapunzel sun on my pancakes was just the start.  The pastries were shaped like suns or sea creatures, the waffles had Ariel's face on them, and the fruit was served with little swords to eat with.  The kids LOVED the little swords.

The girls, of course, had more cards to give to the characters we met.

Flynn was carrying his satchel, so Adelie asked him what he had in his satchel.  He showed them that he still had Rapunzel's crown in there.  The girls thought that was great.  He also put his card from Adelie into his satchel with the crown.

Rapunzel loved her card from Staley...and Staley loved watching Rapunzel read her card.

We saw Rapunzel and Flynn comparing their cards away from our table, and I think all the cards made their way into Flynn's satchel.

We met the same Ariel that we had met the previous day at our Akershus princess breakfast...and she remembered her card from Adelie the day before.  Luckily, Adelie had made multiple Ariel cards so Ariel got another one.

After breakfast, we walked along the boardwalk, took pictures,...

...and chased lizards.

We then headed back to our resort for a swim.  Briggs wasn't very into the swimming, so he and Zach didn't last long before heading back to our room for a nap.  The girls and I tried out two of the pools (Nemo and Little Mermaid), played on the splash pad, and explored the Nemo playground.  I had hoped to fit in a little family rest time, but that didn't happen.  We were having too much fun!

After swimming (and napping), we all got cleaned up, changed, and then headed to Magic Kingdom for the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party.  We got to the park around 4, ate an early dinner of hotdogs from Casey's restaurant on Main Street, and caught the Move It, Shake It Dance Party parade while we were eating our dinner.

The Christmas party has lots of special character meet and greets, Christmas shows, a special parade, and free treats.  What we quickly learned was that the special character meet and greets generally have very long lines.  And after a cookie and some chocolates, we didn't feel the need to fill our children full of junk just because it was free.  So we didn't take full advantage of all the special offerings at the party, but we enjoyed the magic of it nonetheless.  Staley was most excited that the Christmas party was scheduled until midnight, and she was bound and determined that she would stay up UNTIL midnight at the party.

My friend, Jenny, made the kids special shirts just for the Christmas party.

This was the only time on our trip where we wore long pants.  Lucky we were dressed a little warmer than usual since it ended up snowing at the party.

 

The party kicked off with an Anna and Elsa show where Elsa lights up the castle and makes it snow on Main Street.  Of course, Briggs didn't like it because of his aversion to night time shows, but I thought it was amazing!

We spent much of our party time taking advantage of the fact that there were basically no lines for any of the rides.  We rode lots of our favorite rides, as well as some new ones.  I walked right onto Space Mountain.  Zach checked out Pirates of the Caribbean.   We did Buzz Lightyear's Ranger Spin, the People Mover, Tomorrowland Speedway, teacups, Little Mermaid, It's a Small World, Peter Pan, and Magic Carpets.  Some of them we did multiple times.

It was fun to get to try out Space Mountain, but look how bored the people behind me look.

The Buzz Lightyear ride.  I love how you can only see Adelie's Minnie ears.

The girls had really wanted to meet Moana on our trip to Disney.  They were very disappointed to find out that Moana was not currently at Disney.  (Apparently the sea had called her away from Disney for awhile.)  When they found out she was making a special appearance at the Christmas party, they really wanted to meet her.  We went to find her at the beginning of the party, only to find a line that appeared to be a few hours long.  A nice cast member told us that the shortest line for Moana would be during the Christmas parade.  So when it was time for the parade, the kids and I watched it while Zach got in line to meet Moana.  As soon as the parade ended, Zach had made it to the front of the line and the girls got to check one more wish off their list.  What a great Daddy!!

I was sad that Zach missed seeing a great parade.  Even more so, I was sad that he missed seeing all 3 of his kids thoroughly enjoy a great parade.

The parade was full of characters, music, princesses, and Christmas cheer.  Think dancing reindeers, toy soldiers, gingerbread men, and Santa Claus.  It also did not feature any dragons or fireworks, so Briggs enjoyed it too.

Meeting Moana was a highlight for the girls.

We stayed at the Christmas party until almost 11:00.  The kids were all troopers, and Adelie was still not ready to head back.  By the time we got them in bed, it was close to midnight.

All the decorations and special events and icy magic and Florida snow was so festive.  Even though it wasn't even Thanksgiving yet, it was hard not to get into the Christmas spirit.  I'm so glad we got to enjoy the Christmas party, even if we didn't quite make it to midnight.