I am going to start with a recap of stuff I don't want to forget and what not and am backdating this post to the day we left for Disney. This post is more for me, so I'm sorry if it is boring, but it's my blog!:)
We left on Saturday morning and 9hr45min later pulled into the grocery store near the condo where we were staying. After loading up on lots of food for breakfast, snacks for the parks, several nights of dinners to be eaten at the condo and lunches for each day at the park, we finally checked into our condo at Windsor Hills in Kissimee, FL.
The place was perfect!!!!!!!!!!!!! We had 3 bedrooms, a full kitchen, enough space and then some and a washer and dryer! The complex also boasted an amazing, resort-like pool with water slide, playgrounds, wildlife conservation areas and a gym, however, we did not even have time to see these amenities much less use them! I think, to be honest, we'd have to stay at least two weeks to do everything that we would want to do. But, we did a lot while we were there!!!
I did not want to plan every second of our days while we were there, but had a general game plan for each day after talking to several "expert" friends that had been recently. Our schedule was as follows:
Saturday - drive all day:(
Sunday - 1/2 day at Hollywood Studios and 1/2 day at Animal Kingdom
Monday - Magic Kingdom
Tuesday - Epcot(we had our only scheduled meal with the princesses that morning) - we didn't think we'd spend the entire day here, but we did.
Wednesday - Magic Kingdom
Thursday - drive all day:(
The weather was amazing while we were there with the highs being low-mid 80s and the lows in the mid 60s.
Each day we left our condo by 7:45am and were at the park gates, waiting to be let in, by 8:15am. The gates did not open until 9am, but we took this time to get maps, the Times for each park to know when things were happening and apply sunscreen. We found at Hollywood Studios they ended up opening the gates early at about 8:45am(not sure if this is normal or not!) and if you have a breakfast reservation even if it is not until 9:30am, you can still get in at 8:15am like we did at Epcot. Being early at Magic Kingdom means you get to watch Mickey and other characters come in on the train and open up the park! So, in my opinion, arriving early each day was well worth it!
Every evening, we left the parks about 5pm. This gave us time to either come home and get dinner made or grab something on the way in and still have the kids to bed by 7/7:30pm each night! The only exception was on the last night we were there, Wednesday night, we stayed at Magic Kingdom to watch the electric parade and fireworks and didn't get home until almost midnight!
We are most definitely a ride family! We enjoyed the shows we saw and all the characters we met, but were hands-down most drawn to the rides!!! All of us!! Here are the favorites:
M - Ferryboat
Me - Space Mountain
S - Splash Mountain
C - The train that went around Magic Kingdom
We did, however, meet lots and lots of characters - although not all of them. S's favorite was Jessie from Toy Story and I think C's was Stitch even though he has no idea who Stitch is. They just seemed to hit it off and it was the only character that really got a genuine, good smile out of him!!
Our must-haves on the trip were lots of water, a double stroller, wipes and hand sanitizer! We went through a gallon of water plus 6 bottles of water plus the kids' cups of water each day. We also finished off a pack of wipes and a pump bottle of sanitizer in four days.
Each day we brought our stroller packed with a cooler stored under the bottom for lunch, a very large shoulder bag that we kept hung on the stroller with snacks and wipes and other necessities, a backpack that M wore with tickets and diapers and phones and money and a full head to toe change of clothes in large Ziploc bags for each kid(which we did end up using on the last day so I was very glad I did this!), a camera and the waters stored under the stroller. We left everything with the stroller while we went on rides except the backpack that M kept and the camera that I kept. It worked out great!!
We left a little before 10am on Thursday and arrived at our house at 8:30pm. It was a long ride home but the kids did really, really well!
We loved our trip to Disney and made lots of memories while we were there. A few years down the road we will hopefully get to do it all over again!!!!!!!!
Here are the kids with their new Jessie and Woody dolls getting ready to start the long drive back!
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