Holleywood Studios - That's a wrap (almost)

Well, it’s our last full day here.   Today we planned to spend our time at Hollywood Studios right after breakfast at the Grand Floridian hotel and resort.  This was another character meal that we had signed up for.  I do have to say, that in my opinion this resort didn’t measure up to the Disney “Magical experience” we’ve seen almost everywhere else.  This wasn’t just in one place either it was spread wider than this.  It was from the monorail at this stop, the meal check-in counter and even a character during breakfast.  I guess it was just an off day.  Oh well, I’d just suggest another resort – everywhere else we’ve experienced was really good. We did have some awesome parts to.  Alice really tried her hardest to get Dawson into a picture that he was not wanting to be in.  Her and our waitress both were really good.

We arrived at Hollywood studios and made our way in to start looking for a photographer to take that picture with us and that big Fantasmic hat behind us.  Well, it started to rain – and luckily it was that infamous Florida rain where it rains for 10 minutes and then stops.  It sprinkled here and there after this, but nothing really substantial that would prevent us from enjoying the park.  I am so thankful that the rain that we thought was headed our way never materialized.  We were able to have a great week.

Most of the day was seeing shows and not a whole lot of rides were ridden today.  We really only rode on one ride which was Danielle’s favorite ride – Aerosmith’s Rock and Rollercoaster!  She and Noah went on this ride while Sam, Dawson and I sat through a Disney Playhouse show.  This was a great time spent by all.  Noah and Danielle loved the ride and Sam and Dawson were dancing, clapping and joining in where they could.  For the Disney Playhouse show, we all had to sit on the floor with our legs crossed.  This was fine for the first few minutes, but you know you’re getting a little older when it just plain hurts when you try to get up from here. 

One show that all seemed to love was the Indiana Jones stunt show.  The boys really loved this and this was included in each of their favorites for the day.  I was kind of surprised as Dawson hates loud noises and as you can guess, this had some loud explosions.  It really was pretty neat and at a few points during the show, you really felt like you were in the movie.  This was really pretty neat.

The other huge event for the day was seeing Chip and Dale.  Unknown to Danielle and I, this happens to be Dawson’s favorite characters.  I may have mentioned that Noah started to get passionate about trading the Disney pins, but I think I failed to mention that Dawson started to get into this a couple days later.  Lo and behold – he started collecting – or asking for – Chip and Dale pins.  This is how we learned of his interest.  Well, we saw them today and they were GREAT with the kids.  Really played with them well and spent a lot of time with us even though there was a line of kids waiting for their picture to be taken.  We had bought Dawson some little stuffed Chip and Dale animals and he just had to show these to the characters.  Seeing this, I think, prodded them along to see how much Dawson loved them and so they spent a little more time with them.

Outside of another show or two and several more character pictures - the day was over.  Nothing too exciting.  It was off to a campfire with smores at the Wilderness resort where we were staying.  This was fun, but uneventful.  The most fun was seeing Sam dancing to the music all by herself - then to spice things up, daddy had to join her in doing the hokey pokey.  We all had fun.

The last thing to note about the day was that “boys will be boys”!  Noah took a tumble at the end of the day.  After being told not to climb on something, he continued to climb on a steal pole and fell.  He scrapped his cheek right next to his eye and his eyebrow swelled up etc.  We’re very lucky that he missed his eye the way he fell and we believe he’ll be fine given a little time.  He did tell me after that he learned his lesson. 

We leave for home tomorrow, but we did buy an additional ticket so we could go back to Magic Kingdom.  We missed one whole area in here and the kids have so many rides that they just love in here.  I was amazed at how cheap the tickets are at this point.  They were only a little more than $5 per ticket.

We get home late so I may have one last post for tomorrow.  We’ll see how it goes.  We both look forward to reading the posts that you all write here, so please drop us a note with your thoughts!



A day fit for a princess!

This was the Big Day for Samantha!  The plan was to get to the park a little early, enjoy a few rides or shows and then go to breakfast at Cinderella’s Castle with the different princesses from Disney.  Well, we also thought that things would plan out well as the park opened an hour early for the guests staying on-site.  Well, they had cranes up last night, working on the castle and something happened where the power had gone out due to the construction.  With this, most…well, I say most as I’m guessing something must have been running although I don't know what…of all the attractions were closed down.  We were a little frustrated as we had made it a point to get up early and get to the park early.  Although we didn’t make it there by 8:00, we did get there before the general public at 9:00 – but nothing was running even up until 9:30.  Trust me when I tell you we all could have used the extra hour of sleep.

In any case, Sam got all dolled up for meeting the princesses.  She had on a gorgeous pink gown and couldn’t wait to see Cinderella and Snow White.  Well, just take a look at a picture of my little princess with Cinderella for yourself….

See what I mean?  In any case, we had breakfast in the Disney Castle where Sam had the most enjoyable time seeing and meeting four other princesses besides Cinderella.  There were Snow White, Belle, Ariel and Sleeping Beauty (I hope I’m not the only one who forgets her proper name).  During the breakfast, all the kids received either a princess wand or "for the knights among us", a sword.  Then both the princesses and the knights received a “wishing star” for a ceremony they had where they would wish upon a star.  The whole meal was pretty fun.  Danielle and I liked this one particularly well as we were able to eat our breakfast easily without worrying that a character would come up while we were away getting our food.  They kind of held the princesses off for a little while so that everyone could get a good start on eating – at least that’s how it seemed to us.

Now Snow White took a shining to Noah.  She chatted with him and gave him a great big kiss.  Noah was somewhat embarrassed by this though and a little after she left, he wiped it off.  Well, he didn't get away with it.  Later, during the wishing on the star ceremony, Snow White's spot to show everyone what to do, was right near our table.  She did happen to notice that the kiss was gone from Noah and so she planted another right on him.  Then after they all made a wish, she told Noah that her wish was that he would never wash that off his forehead.  He once again was slightly embarrassed.  As soon as she left the table, he was quick to want to wipe the new one off.  As he didn’t want to hurt Snow White’s feelings though – he left it on until we left the castle.  After about five minutes, we told him he could wipe it off – and he didn’t waste any time.

Just a side note, Sam was really upset when it was time to leave.  She was okay the we were done eating and okay that we wouldn’t see any more princesses – but she was crying because she wanted to see Cinderella’s bedroom.  Not quite sure why, but we had to endure the crying / frustration and continual request for this viewing for longer than Noah’s torment.

One ride that we had taken was the “Tea Cup”.  You may recall this ride.  It was a lot of fun when you were younger, but as one gets older, it affects you differently and it gets harder to “enjoy” the ride very much.   Well, these smaller rides that spin quite a bit have not been my favorites for some time – but I thought maybe I could ride these once again.  Not a great idea.  I reminded myself that I don’t like the small rides like this any longer.  I rode with the boys and Danielle rode with Sam.  We spun that Tea Cup hard. Yeah, I felt a little queasy for a while.  Turns out all the kids loved this ride and tried to get us to let them go on it again.  Lucky for me we did do this ride before breakfast and we had to make our way to the castle so a second trip around the Tea Cup was kind of out of the question.  (I guess lucky in another sense also – I didn’t eat before the tea Cup experience …)

Noah was initiated into the world of Space Mountain.  He loved it and this ended up being what he loved the most today.  Of course Danielle is super excited as her favorite ride is the Aerosmith's Rock-and-roller Roller Coaster – which is planned for tomorrow.  Now since Noah loved Space Mountain, she’ll have someone to ride with her a million times if they could.  I would myself except I’m not a huge roller coaster fan and someone also needs to watch Sam and Dawson while she rides.  Works out for all of us!

Dawson’s favorite for the day was the Buss Light-year ride where we rode around in cars shooting things with our laser guns.  Samantha, her favorite thing today would have been meeting Cinderella, but her most favorite ride was Dumbo - the flying elephant.  She was really upset when we didn’t ride that ride a second time.

We did get done a little early compared to the other nights, but would have liked to have done one more thing tonight.  Oh well, hopefully tomorrow will be a good day also.  Looking ahead, there seems to be a majority of what we want to do that will be good for the whole family.  These last few days we’ve needed to leave Sam with one of us while the others rode something, more often than we would have cared to.  Tomorrow it should be less.  Although we have had the melt downs from each of the kids at different times and different levels for a variety of reasons (my favorite so far is wanting to play horse shoes or with a hula hoop instead of looking for a new ride to go on) the day was pretty good and they days seem to get better from one to the next.  To put things in perspective – Noah said yesterday and again today when we were done for the day “It was a good day today. No one got lost!”  And that is the truth!

Now I just have to get the Lion King song out of my head and hope the tune from Winnie the Pooh doesn’t take it’s place again.  I know what you’re thinking – “It can’t be worse than the “It’s a small world” tune.  Well, that ride has been shut down for renovations so at least it's not filling in any gaps.

Hollywood Studios and Aerosmith – here we come!!

Epcot - Wednesday

We slept in!

Our first thing to do today was go to a character lunch at Chef Mickey.  This, once again, was a lot of fun.  The kids had a small breakfast at the room as our lunch was scheduled for just about 1:00.  Again, pictures and autographs were well received and the kids are starting to eat a little more than the did the first time we saw characters.  The first time they really only ate a little cereal.  The excitement took over.

Pluto was here!!

After breakfast – Epcot here we come!   We got there kind of late, but we had fun all the same.  Before I talk too much on the things we’ve done – I have to say something about a new … almost passion for Noah.    That would be pin trading.  We bought him some starter pins to trade with others and he loves going up to anyone that works there and looking for a pin to trade with them.  If none of this makes sense to you (As it didn’t to me before this trip) just let us know and we’ll have Noah give you a 45 minute lesson in pin trading as he does with each person he stands next to in line for rides.  (Or the boat, the tram or anywhere else he finds a person who might be a captive audience.)  It's really kind of fun to here him teaching others the little tid bit's we've learned along the way.  The whole pin trading thing can be really fun and he loves it.  I think it makes his vacation all by itself.  He has been getting to the point each day where he uses up all the pins that he is willing to trade and we have to buy more pins that he is ok to get rid of through the trades.  He has learned how to find the somewhat more valuable pins - kind of.

The favorite for the day was Mission Space for Noah.  He road this one twice – very little wait time.  Dawson loved Soarin’ – the ride where you go through the clouds.  He had to do this ride twice also.  For Sam, she was a little mixed.  Her favorites were between seeing Daisy Duck along the sidewalk where she got her picture taken with Daisy and the boat ride that we took to the breakfast. 

Tomorrow we’re looking forward to our breakfast as it’s perfect for our little princess.  We’re going to a breakfast with all the Disney Princesses and Sam will be dressed up in a pretty pink gown and other fancy stuff.  She’s going to Love it ----- I hope.  In any case, we’ll chat with you again soon!

Tuesday - What a Day!

Where should I start?   The short version … day started at 7:00am and ended about 1:30am.  If a picture is worth a thousand words – these should say about say it all.

Starting the Safari day at Animal Kingdom

Ending the day at Animal Kingdon

To explain a little more, we spent the day at Animal Kingdom.  We started with a Character Breakfast which was very well received by all the kids.  After not having any fun (well, not to the extent they thought they would at Disney) at Downtown Disney – they were really surprised with the different characters we saw here.  On the way in, they saw Donald Duck, and even got a picture with him.  Inside while we were eating the Mickey shaped waffles etc. they were able to say hi to Mickey, Goofy and Daisy Duck.  The kids were all a little upset that Pluto wasn’t there though.  We just helped them by saying maybe later they’d get to see him.  Sam’s favorite part of the day was when Daisy was dancing around the restaurant and Daisy took Sam by the hand and they led the whole dancing train through the restaurant.  They did the dance line for what seemed to be five minutes – pretty fun for our little princess.

After breakfast we took a safari which they all really loved.  If you aren’t familiar with this ride, it is set up just like a safari would be in Africa.  Dawson is our little animal lover and he was more than thrilled with this ride.  You ride a large truck and they drive you through an animal preserve without fences etc.  Again, just like in Africa .  Dawson’s highlight of the day was a certain part of this ride where we “saved a baby elephant from poachers in the area.”

One part of the animal kingdom adventure that was fun for the kids was learning how to track down animals based on their tracks and droppings.  Come to find out, this was actually Noah’s favorite part of the day – he really loved this learning exercise.

We found the poop - it's Rhino poop!

After Animal Kingdom closed for the day, we went back to the cabin and took a slight nap.  I say “slight” because it wasn’t more than maybe 45 minutes to an hour.  The kids wanted to play – or fuss for 30 minutes because they didn’t want the nap.  In any case, when all was said and done, we headed back to Magic Kingdom for “Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween.”  This was pretty fun. Everyone was dressed up in costumes and surprisingly, there were more adults dressed than kids.  Everyone was going around getting candy and riding the rides.  I have to say, the lines – or lack of – was awesome!!  Many very popular rides – Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean and Splash Mountain among several others had no lines.  You just walked right on.  If you wanted to ride the ride a second time – you just stayed in your seat.  It was really great for Disney.  They also played great spooky music throughout the park all night long.  It was really cool.  All the kids had their pictures taken with many characters throughout the day and of course I had to give in and have my picture taken also.  Just like I had to buy a hat the first day, I felt obligated to have my picture taken also – so I got pushed into having my picture taken with Jasmine from Aladdin.   Oh well, what we must do to keep the family happy. 

Noah loved the roller coaster Splash Mountain, although when asked if he wanted to ride it a second time, he chose to get out.  Being the kind hearted person that he was, he covered  with the excuse that he wanted to make sure that mommy was able to get to do a ride and didn’t want to use up our time on this ride again.

Sam and Dawson loved the ride Peter Pan.  This one we all did ride twice as it was the last ride of the night at midnight.  Again, it was a lot of fun all dressed up.

I almost forgot – we all loved the Lion King show.  Noah was chosen to be the leader of our part of the audience. That kid has no fear and loves to be the center of attention!!  The show really was good, however, the baby girl missed it.  She slept through the entire thing. (of course – why would we think anything else? At the real bedtime – she opted to stay up even longer than anyone else!)

Great day – but super long!

We made it!

What a day we have had! It started by getting up at 3:00 am to make our flight at 6:30 Monday morning.  The kids did great!  They were perfect little troopers getting out of bed and making it to the car when asked.  They were just so excited to ride an airplane I think and also the fact that they were awake before the sun was.

The adventures all started with the airplane ride.  While some of us caught up on some much needed sleep...



Others of us used the time to try something new. 





I can only wonder if Sam would still sleep as good as she did if she knew Noah was flying the plane.

We finally got into the resort and found our cabin.  The kids were loving the lizards and horses  - we just needed to head off toward Downtown Disney for the day.   This started off pretty good and as we were hungry we aimed straight for the T-Rex restaurant.  As Disney would have it though, right inside the gate was a store with the ever popular design your own Mickey Mouse hats.  Of special note was the hat that Sam found for herself.  She found a pink mouse ear hat that says "Disney Princess" on it.  Of course, no princess hat would be complete without a veil off the back and a jeweled tiara up front!! Sam was right in her element with this new crown! Yes, everyone but daddy got a hat here. Each of the hats matched the personality of the owner perfectly.  There just wasn't a perfect match for Mark -  but we're not giving up hope on the Mickey Mouse ears for the one who needs the sun protection the most.  We'll look again tomorrow.

We made it to the restaurant and after a little coaxing, the kids did great.  They loved the loud Dinosaurs and meteor shower here.

Legoland really showed off Dawson's creative side. He created a Lego car that raced other cars in several races and he Won every race!  Congratulations Dew!

After some misc shopping for Disney trading pins and just looking around (which the kids were quickly learning that Downtown Disney wasn't their favorite place) we headed back toward our cabin to see if our luggage had arrived and to get ready for dinner with a couple of friends that live down here.

We met Craig and Lynn and had a great conversation and watched as the kids really warmed up to each of them.  The last time we saw them, we were pregnant with Dawson but all three kids acted totally like themselves when they saw them.  Of course, it helps when the adults interact with them so easily.  (I'll spare you the Mickey ears picture Craig!) 



After dinner and a great conversation, the cast member mentioned that there were fireworks at the beach that we could go see.  We all ran out as we heard them from where we were and saw just the last few that were going off as we reached the beach.   The kids then had a blast running up and down the docks with Craig.  I was really surprised when they kept running back and forth as it was about 9:00 at night by now and they all had only taken a small "cat nap" during the day.  I had thought that they must be running on empty, but when I saw that they were running like this - I remembered all the deserts they had and understood where this energy came from.   At about this point, Dawson just stopped in the middle of a sprint and stated "I'm running out of energy."  I guess the sugar rush was now over!

Back at our room, we asked the kids what their favorite part of the day was.  Noah said it was "racing on the peer with Uncle Craig."  Dawson said "everything" and Sam said that she loved the airplane ride.  We'll have to see how they do tomorrow.   We're headed off to Animal Kingdom for a morning breakfast with Donald Duck!!   Tomorrow night is "Mickey's not so scary Holloween". 

The announcement!

We finally let the kids in on our little secret. As we had waited almost until the last minute, we couldn't just blurt out that we were going to Disney World - so Danielle created some tickets and invitations written from different Disney Characters and dropped these in the mail box for the kids to receive.

After we had done most of our plans for the day, Saturday, Danielle mentioned that she thought she heard a weird mail truck, playing loud music, pull up and put something in our mailbox.  Dawson loves to get the mail so he readily wanted to go out and get the "mail".  As he was bringing it in, we asked Noah to help him with seeing who the mail was for - since he was playing his Nintendo DS though, he very begrudgingly agreed to help Dawson.   When he had the envelopes in his hand, he read the names on each and gave them out to each of them.  His attitude became a little more enthusiastic as they all had gotten some mail.

They went into the other room and we had them sit on the couch while they opened their mail.  The first thing they all pulled out was their ticket to ride an airplane.   If you ever saw the movie Polar Express, their tickets looked just like the ones in the movie that allowed each passenger to ride the train.  Danielle did a great job with the computer program she used to create these.  In any case, when they pulled these out, they all got really excited that they were going on a "train" ride!  As Noah is learning to read, we had him read his ticket and the excitement rang out as he pronounced "Plane ticket".  It might help to know that over the past month we've been warming them up by seeing if they wanted to ride a plane and when they said "yes" we'd build on the excitement or tell them if they were good - we'd ride on one soon.  Of course, using this we also offered up that we wouldn't go on the plane if they were acting particularly bad any certain day.

We moved onto the invitations and had Noah read his.  With a picture of Mickey Mouse on it, he read "Noah Stegman, All ...of ....us ....here .... at .... D....Di....Dis....ney....Disney  .....DISNEY!!!!"  When he then blurted out "WE'RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!!!!"  With this announcement to the world, there was dancing and screaming with excitement!!  From there we finished reading Noah's invitation and then we read Dawson's and Samantha's invitations.  They were so excited!  We video taped the whole thing and of course we had to have each of them give us their "Super Bowl win comment"   -  "I'm going to Disney World!" 

We have our tickets!  Can we go now?

We asked each of them who they would like to see when they are there and hopefully we'll be able to see one of their favorite characters.   On the top of Noah's list were Donald, Mickey and Pluto.  Dawson wants to see Goofy, Pluto and Mickey.  Sam's first pick was Snow White, than Mickey and Minney --- and all the princesses!   We'll see what we can do.

Checking the weather, it looks like scattered showers Wednesday through Saturday - so we can use any prayers to keep the sun shining while we're there.  Oh yeah, also so that we get up and to the airport in plenty of time.  Flight is early.  Chat with ya soon!

Before the trip!

As you may know, we have decided not to let the kids know that we are headed toward Disney World for a variety of reasons.  The main reason is that although it would be a lot of fun to see their enjoyment when they hear what we are doing and see their excitement rise for the month or so prior to our trip - we also have not looked forward to the inevitable "is it time to go yet?" unceasing question every day we would have heard it.  With this, we are waiting until the Saturday prior to leaving to let them know.  This will also help Noah not to have an excuse for getting in trouble at school while he is too excited to sit through class, counting down the minutes until he might see Buzz Lightyear in person!

Ideally this Blog will allow us to share each of our days excitement and traumas (It's a Small World is going to be closed while we're there.) with you and hopefully you'll feel some of our enjoyment through these postings - unless we're too tired to write a coherent blog for the day.

Just some foresight - we will be having character meals almost every day.  In addition to this, we will also be there while they do their "Mickey's not so scary Holloween."  So we'll be jam packed with things to do every day.  Stay tuned for some fun!