Back from Our Visit with Mickey

We are back from Disneyworld! We had a fun time. Although the 11-hour car ride in the rain on our way down there was not how we envisioned the trip would start. But thankfully that was the only rain we experienced during our trip. We did, however, have weather ranging from super duper freezing cold all the way to shorts & t-shirt weather.

We started our trip off by going to EPCOT on Monday. I had read somewhere that when you have little kids, it is a good idea to go to EPCOT first. Since this park can be kind of boring to younger kids, their expectations will be set pretty low, and by the time you get to the Magic Kingdom, they are blown away. So we followed that, and I think it worked. They have several new attractions at EPCOT since the last time we went. We loved Soarin, Test Track, and Mission Space. Liam fell asleep on the boat ride in Living with the Land – this was only the first of many rides he would fall asleep on.

On Tuesday we went to the Animal Kingdom in the morning. We rode on the Kilimanjaro Safari (which Liam fell asleep on) and Josh & I went on Expedition Everest. That was a cool ride, but this was just about all we did there. I don’t think we need to go back. We hit the Magic Kingdom for the first time Tuesday afternoon/evening. We had tickets to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, which I think would have been super fun, if it had not been 32 degrees outside. We had a great spot in front of Cinderella’s castle to see it get lit up, and then we got a good spot to watch the Christmas parade, but we had to leave after the parade was over because it was too cold. We all had on multiple layers and were still freezing.

On Wednesday morning we did the Magic Kingdom again. We took the afternoon off because we had reservations for the Spirit of Aloha Luau back at our resort (the Polynesian). It was good food and a fun show, but we don’t need to do that again either.

On Thursday morning we went back to the Magic Kingdom again (this park has by far the most for little kids to do, so we wanted to spend most of our time there), and we made our first trip over to the Hollywood Studios in the afternoon. Josh, my mom, and I rode on the Tower of Terror – now that is a scary ride! And we had dinner reservations at the 50’s Prime Time Café. It was cute – like being in the 50’s in “mom’s kitchen”. But I think we could pass on dinner reservations again too. Our reservation was at 5:40, but they told us when we got there that it was not immediate seating…well, then what is the reservation for? I didn’t understand that. We walked through the Osbourne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights there once it got dark. That is a definite must-see if you are down there in December. The lights were AMAZING, and there was snow being blown onto the street (just like they had done on Main Street during the Mickey Christmas party, but it seemed like there was more snow for the light display at Hollywood Studio). They had music playing, and every so often the lights would blink & twinkle with the music. It was so worth seeing. And again, Liam slept through it all.

On Friday we had to head back to the Hollywood Studios in the morning because we just couldn’t get everything done the previous day. We hadn’t ridden the Rock & Roll Roller Coaster yet, or had a picture taken with Little Einsteins, Lightning McQueen, and Power Rangers. We also wanted to do the Buzz Lightyear 4D midway ride thing. We had looked into it the day before, but the wait was 110 minutes (by far the longest of any ride in any park we had seen – most rides had wait times of 5-15 minutes, with a few at 30 minutes), and they had already given out all of the Fastpasses for it for the day. So as soon as they opened on Friday Josh hustled back there to get us all Fastpasses so we could ride it – it was very cool. I’m glad we got to go on it, but I wouldn’t have waited 2 hours to ride it. We also got to ride the roller coaster – that was also cool. If you haven’t been on it, think Space Mountain, but faster, darker, and with loops. We went back to the Magic Kingdom in the afternoon for our last few hours. We had pretty much ridden everything we wanted to ride at least once, so we asked Zachary what he wanted to ride again. The first thing he said was the train, which we were going to ride just before we left. We asked him what else, and he said “the ride with the nice ghosts” – aka, Haunted Mansion. ??? When we had ridden that the first time, we told him the ghosts were nice so he wouldn’t be scared. I don’t think he was too scared by it, but when it was over, I asked him if he liked it and he said “not really”. So it was funny that was the first thing he wanted to ride again. And now if you ask him what his favorite ride was, he will say the monorail, and if you ask him what else, he’ll tell you “the ride with the nice ghosts” – not Dumbo, or the race cars, or the train…the Haunted Mansion.

We left early on Saturday because Josh’s parents and our nephew had to be dropped off at the Atlanta airport by 3:30, and with our 11-hour drive down, we had no idea how long it would take us to get back. Thankfully it only took us 8.5 hours, which is about what we had originally planned on. It was a great trip, and I will try to have some pictures very soon.