HOORAY FOR DISNEY!!! PART 1

DAY 1: HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS AND MAGIC KINGDOM

OK...So I thought about cramming the whole DisneyWorld blog into one set but what fun would that be.  You cannot describe your children's first run at the most adventurous place in the world in just one blog.  So this may take 2. :)  Let's start by prefacing that we have a 5 year old and almost 4 year old who have been looking forward to this trip for so so long.  Mom and dad have been excited as well, but really more excited to see it through their eyes.  And oh what a blast it was! So here is a recount, as best I can do, of our wonderful 2011 summer (first trip) to Disney.

We were blessed to go on our adventure with the Clarks and their twins who are all but blood related to us.  They have family in Orlando and Linc's dad actually works for the park driving a ferry boat.  So we were very excited to be heading down with folks who knew the lay of the land.  We drove all Friday and spent all Saturday at Linc's parents house.  The kids were so wired and so pumped to be there, but I thought they did very very well. On Sunday, we headed on over to the park to check into our hotel and thanks to Linc's dad Ed, we had the opportunity to go into a couple of parks that day. YES!!!

We began with Hollywood Studios:

As we entered, they were just beginning the Star Wars parade down mainstreet.  So we were already in a little bit of a pickle because we needed to get strollers but Caden wanted to see the Stars Wars folks.  Let me side bar and say this.  If you ever need to challenge and work on communication in your marriage, go to Disney.  It will force you to.  I will be honest and say that we were not always the best with each in other in how we communicated or what we wanted to communicate, but I assure you that you don't make it through any of those parks without communicating. LOL.  So strollers are good and we head towards Beauty and the Beast.  Our very first experience and show of DisneyWorld.  Laura Grace was captured.  It was so wonderful to watch. You could just see the amazement in her eyes and we knew that this was going to be so much fun!!!

We then rode the Tower of Terror.  This was pretty funny because we had no idea how the kids would do.  I have a couple of pics of them towards the end and a video that is hilarious.  Caden jumps off loving it, but when asked if he wants to ride it again, he responds with "Not right now or I will throw up!!" LOL
We walked around a little bit more at Hollywood Studios but didn't ride anything else.  We decided that we needed to go nap in order to survive a little bit of Magic Kingdom that night.  So we headed back to the hotel.  We stayed at All Star Sports Resort.  Very cool place and would recommend it to any folks thinking about going.  We rode buses all week to every place we were going and it was just a pleasant experience.

So nap is over and it's time to experience Magic Kingdom for the very first time as a family.  It was very very cool.  We took pictures out front and then I wanted to get the perfect picture of Lala seeing the castle live for the very first time.  I think I did a good job.  How bout you?

Since we came in to Magic Kingdom kinda late, we were limited to what we were going to see and do that evening.  We decided to head over towards Splash Mt and Thunder Mt.  Great choices.  The kids loved Splash Mt, yet I will say that Lala was not a fan of the characters in Splash Mt. Caden and I somehow ended up on the front of most every ride we rode, which had it's advantages and disadvantages.  I don't know if being soak and wet would be considered an advantage. :)  The best pic from this ride is at the very end, after the big waterfall and the ride is pretty much over.  Shannon goes to take a pic of her and Laura Grace and Lala sees a character behind the camera and freaks!!! This is one of our favorites of the trip. Bahaha!!

We then rode Thunder Mt and that was it for ride riding that day.  They enjoyed Thunder Mt as well, but you had to make sure you kept an arm around them so they didn't go shooting out the side on the twists and turns. :)  Then came a defining moment of Disney for our kids.  As we began to move towards the exit, it was firework time.  They were captured and just stuck in amazement watching the fireworks over the castle and then they did a light show on the castle which was unbelievable.  I will have to say that I was pretty captured as well.  It was a wonderful moment.

The end of day 1 had arrived and I knew what was coming.  The 3 year old was whooped and ready for the bed.  The 5 year old (boy don't forget) was just getting started.  He was ready to go see this and that.  Ride this and ride this.  Meet them and him and her.  It was not stopping time in his brain.  So I pulled him aside and we had a daddy-son talk about how much more time we had to do so many more wonderful things, but if we were exhausted without rest, we couldn't do any of them.  Needless to say, if you look below, you will see the before and after of that conversation. :)  Day 1....good times.