#mcdanfamloveswdw: Day 4

Posted on June 2, 2015June 2, 2015 by mommyinthemidwest

ICYMI:

Click HERE to see the photos we shared on Instagram from our trip.

Shew, I’d planned to lump these posts together, 2 days at a time but once I start rambling, I can’t stop and before I know it the post is already too long covering just one day. What is wrong with me? I just love Disney and I want to remember the details!

Saturday, May 9th. We were up and at ’em at 630am in order to make it to our 8am dining reservation at Tusker House, located in the Africa section of Animal Kingdom. We arrived at Animal Kingdom around 730am before being escorted through the completely empty, very cool looking park.

{side note}: See how I have my fit bit around my tank top strap? Yeah, that’s because it doesn’t work when pushing a stroller. This was a constant annoyance during our vacation! The main reason I bought the dang thing and it ended up being a hassle.

I was so excited to try Tusker House – they offer plenty of American breakfast fare with lots of additional African dishes we had fun sampling. The set up and the atmosphere in the restaurant was beautiful.

First ones in the restaurant!

Jungle Juice was a treat! Orange juice, Guava Juice, and Passionfruit juice – it’s delicious. I don’t know or care how much sugar we consumed during this meal.

The bad things about character breakfasts… the kids are so excited for the characters to come to the table that they have a hard time concentrating on eating. Understandable. Buffet style is awesome for value (hello, all you can eat!), convenience, variety, and all taste preferences…but if you are gone from your table to fill up your plate when Mickey comes around, you have to wait til he makes it back (or ask your server to have him make a special trip – they will). Also, the character interactions happen so fast and I am still slow and unsure when it comes to manual settings on my camera so I just turned it on Auto or no flash and there is a lot of blur in many of the pictures. One other note as far as pictures at character breakfasts are concerned – the table are close together and I had to spend a lot of time trying to crop other families out of our special moments. All in all, it’s still a super fun experience and just seeing how excited the kids were to have the characters come to us was worth any of the hassle involved. I made the mistake of saying “we’re going to eat breakfast with ___” (fill in any character’s name), which made Dexter think that those sweet, huge stuffed animals were actually going to sit down with us and cram donuts in their furry faces. He was a little disappointed but understood once I explained.

Something that is extra awesome about early character breakfasts waaay in the back of the park is when breakfast is over, you are already in the back of the park. Breakfast ended for us right around 9 (park opening) so we rushed right over to Expedition Everest. We hadn’t made FastPass+ reservations since the boys couldn’t ride it. But wait.

I went first and walked right onto the ride with no wait. As soon as I returned, Ryan did the same. I was standing outside near the Standby entrance when I noticed the measuring device. I looked at Theo then back at the measuring thingy. Then said “oh my God!!” Theo and Dexter asked “what!?” 20 times as I practically ran, dragging them over. I told Theo to get measured and guess what? He hit that 44″ mark, no problem. You guys, I had a major moment here. I was ecstatic on one hand because he was ecstatic and dying to ride Everest. With me. I was freaking out because I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that my sweet, tiny, innocent, little bitty baby boy was BIG ENOUGH to ride a BIG roller coaster. It doesn’t go upside down and there are far scarier rides at non-Disney parks. But for Disney, for me to have not expected it, for him to be so excited, for me to be riding a big roller coaster with my little (but apparently not so little anymore) son…I had a moment. Proud, sad, excited, and full of adrenaline, all at once. We quickly dragged the strollers into the gift shop so we could greet Ryan as he exited the ride. Theo and I both were blabbing about it before he was even within earshot and Ryan had the same reaction that I did. We rode it and HE LOVED it. He talked about it the entire trip and STILL talks about it every time we talk about our trip (he subsequently rode Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom and loved it as well). One of our favorite family moments on this trip, for sure. What a great start to our day!

As was the case in every park, the free play/exploration area was a hit. Ryan and I had fun too – I wish this was our backyard!

The Tree of Life. My little thrill seekers love adrenaline rushes that come from exciting rides but they did not like It’s Tough to Be a Bug inside of the Tree of Life. Too many unexpected interactive elements combined with darkness. We loved finding animals “carved” into the tree.

Ryan had a daily date with slushies. Obsessed.

Playing the drums. We loved the Kilimanjaro Safari, as usual.

The boys adored Animal Kingdom. Dinosaur was a favorite ride – we went on it twice. I think I enjoyed the Finding Nemo show and Ryan enjoyed Flights of Wonder more than the boys. We all got lucky on Kali River Rapids – we were refreshingly splashed but not soaked like the other half of our boat. We shared treats. We were hot and tired and decided to call it a day a couple of hours before the park closed. We missed the Lion King show (but saw it last time) and the Maharajah Jungle Trek (in all the times I’ve been to Animal Kingdom, I’ve never done this). More swimming at the hotel on Saturday night to ease into Mother’s Day on Sunday morning!

See, I’ve done it again. Up next – a day off from the parks, a little break from being on the go. We had a nice relaxing Mother’s Day.

xo,

~C~

#mcdanfamloveswdw: day 3

Posted on May 31, 2015May 31, 2015 by mommyinthemidwest

ICYMI:

Click HERE to see the photos we shared on Instagram from our trip.

Click Here if you missed Day 1.

Click Here if you missed Day 2.

Day 3: Friday, May 8th.

It was cheaper to buy a 7 day Magic Your Way ticket than a 5 day hopper so I decided to try it. Last time we stayed 8 nights and had a 4 day hopper – it was nice to have so much rest time and the boys definitely needed it at ages 2 and 3. My downfall is always that I want to see and do it all. I remember feeling like we were so scheduled and hurried to get everything in that it was hard to feel relaxed. My thought process with the 7 day (non-hopper) pass was that we would feel better about leaving earlier in the evening if the boys were wearing down. We’d be able to spend more days at Magic Kingdom and even check out our favorites more than once. Explore the parks at a more leisurely pace. Take our time to smell the roses (or stare at fountains or wait in line to meet characters, etc). I had a bucket list in my mind of things we had never done and/or things I didn’t want to leave without doing at least once. The first thing we did Friday morning was climb aboard the train at the Main Street Train Station and ride it around the loop. If I’ve ever done this before, I don’t remember it. We all enjoyed it – a relaxing way to start a very fun day.

I used my prime lens Friday. I didn’t want to carry a big camera bag around to I made the decision to commit to a lens for the whole day. The prime lens gets great shots with amazing bokeh in certain circumstances but it just isn’t as versatile, especially when shots are taken in close proximity. Letting cast members or other people take pictures with the prime lens sounded like a disaster to me so I didn’t even try. People love zooming in and out and the prime lens doesn’t. I enjoyed getting pictures of some smaller details. I wish I had time to just stroll through WDW with my only objective for the day to take a million photos. I could have a lot of fun!

Two fun and important things I wanted to make time to do (which are often overlooked) were Swiss Family Treehouse and Tom Sawyer Island. Both are areas where kids (and adults) can run around, climb, explore, and imagine. These two attractions were highlights of our day and we spent quite a bit of time on Tom Sawyer Island. I can’t believe I’d never checked it out before. There was barely anyone else around. It felt like we had the place to ourselves and that we had been transported to another place and time.

Swiss Family Treehouse:

Ryan wearing his Genie shirt on Magic Carpets of Aladdin Ride…how cute.

Dole Whip, baby!

Splash Mountain:

So thirsty. I’d love to know how many gallons of ice water we chugged on that vacation.

Playing pirates outside of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Tom Sawyer Island:

After 3 days of Dexter begging to swim and it being obvious that these boys were exhausted from 3 days of nonstop action, we called it a day at 6pm. We jumped on the next bus back to our resort. We knew we had an early morning Saturday for our first of two character breakfasts so we ate dinner, swam a bit, turned in early, and slept like rocks. Dex was one happy boy. He’d live in a pool if he could!

Up next – Animal Kingdom & breakfast with Donald and the gang at Tusker House.

xo,

~C~

#mcdanfamloveswdw: Day 2

Posted on May 26, 2015May 26, 2015 by mommyinthemidwest

Click HERE to see the photos we shared on Instagram from our trip.

Click Here if you missed Day 1.

Day 2: Thursday, May 7th. My 35th birthday!

I chose May 2015 for this trip for several reasons. February would have been nice but I was afraid of flight delays since Indiana winters historically reach a level of extreme misery during February. Ice, blizzards, and sub-zero temps are nice to get away from, but what if you can’t? Ideally we would have waited until September because crowds and rates are lower. Summer is not on my WDW radar because of the heat, crowds, and rates. With Theo starting Kindergarten this fall, I decided to follow my conscience and avoid going in September. I’m not personally against taking your kids out of school for vacation, but part of me feels guilty for thinking about it. Especially right after school starts. February, too unpredictable. September, school’s in. Those two times also have the lowest resort room rates. Next best option happened to be May. School’s still in session so the crowd levels are okay. Bonus – Dexter’s birthday, my birthday, and Mother’s Day all fell within a week. Sounds like a heck of a celebration to me. Why not? All in all, it ended up working out well for lots of reasons.

I had never been to EPCOT during the Flower & Garden Festival so I was excited to see all of the character topiaries and flowers in bloom.

Both boys were big enough to ride Soarin’ and we all loved it! Unfortunately we only got to ride once because the wait times were long by the time we were able to get back to it. Soarin’ is my favorite attraction at EPCOT and I was excited to learn that additional capacity is being added. We used a FastPass+ on Test Track and we couldn’t get one for each attraction. Test Track was a big hit, too. I rode with Dexter and he said “mommy, pretend this is the batmobile and we’re going back to the Batcave, okay!?” See, he’s not ALL Disney.

I had to take this picture because I knew it would perfectly represent Dexter in every single line. Theo was kind of following his lead here, but we could barely keep Dexter off of the railings, ropes, or chains in queues. He is such a busy body and has so much energy. When he’s not tired, he has to be moving. And guess what? When he’s tired, he has to move even more. “Dexter! Get down!” We must have said that 100 times a day.

So pretty! I need the landscaper that designed this to come to my house.

Kidcot stop in Mexico as we entered the World Showcase. They still have these puppets or fans or whatever you want to call them.

Tradition! We got a picture with Donald in Mexico last time so we had to recreate the memory.

First souvenir purchase! Dexter picked out this elephant in China and so cleverly named him …. Ellie. Yep. He carried him around and slept with him every night. It was cute, cute, cute.

Hurrah for short lines to meet cool characters!

Between France and the UK lies a walkway to the Boardwalk and Yacht & Beach Club Resorts. One thing I knew I wanted to do for my birthday was to visit Beaches & Cream, a full service restaurant and soda and ice cream shop within the Beach Club Resort. We opted to eat outside and daydream about staying there one day while eating our Mickey mini kitchen sink sundae. It was DELICIOUS and gone in about 5 minutes. Perfect break in the middle of a fun but long day on our feet.

Back to EPCOT for a little browsing.

They had a Monsters University themed playground set up for the Flower and Garden Festival. Out of all the fun attractions, sights, sounds, and tastes – some of the boys favorite things at the parks were the play areas where they could run, climb, and act like little boys.

Before our trip, I shared on The Affordable Mouse my concerns about Theo poo-pooing on our fun by constantly worrying and thinking about what souvenir he was going to get and when. Well…we had to have a little talk at EPCOT on day 2 of the trip after I’d heard him ask the same question one too many times. We had talked about it before our trip but he just couldn’t help himself. What did he want? A little $6 mystery pack of tiny characters…which happened to be the same pack he got a year and a half earlier. I thought he’d blow up but he had a great attitude and said you can’t have too many Ursulas, Oogey Boogeys, or Scars. I wish we’d bought the darn pack first thing. The rest of the trip, he was really good about it.

Dexter and water…oh the boy loves water. At Disney World, there is water everywhere! We made a lot of pit stops to look at various fountains, waterfalls, creeks, lagoons, lakes, and canals. I had to remind myself over and over that this is his vacation and this is what he loves.

Tradition of trying all the sodas from around the world at Club Cool.

Dexter’s second souvenir closely followed his first. He had to have a stuffed Bruce (from Finding Nemo). He loves water and he definitely has a thing for sharks! Earlier in the day when we visited The Seas, we hunted and searched all of the aquariums for sharks with no luck. I finally asked a cast member who pointed us in the right way. He was mesmerized! I’m not sure when this love of sharks happened, but it was cute. So later in the day when he asked for Bruce, we talked to him about it – told him he couldn’t get souvenirs every day – he understood. He still wanted Bruce. He got Bruce.

After a long day, the buddies were tuckered out. I tucked them in and ended my birthday with a big smile on my face. When you check in, a cast member will ask if you are celebrating anything. If you are, they will give you a pin. I got to wear a pin on my birthday and had a lot of fun hearing “Happy Birthday Candice!” all day. I’d recommend celebrating your birthday by embracing your inner child to anyone.

~C~