2012 Days of Sunshine: Days 8-10

This is the last post about our vacation... I promise. :)

On Friday, June 8, we went back to Magic Kingdom. It was a perfect way to bookend our trip, by starting and ending there!

To begin the morning, we ventured by bus over to Epcot so that we could ride the Monorail to the Contemporary Resort for our breakfast reservation at Chef Mickey's. We had such a good time at this character breakfast! Although we were tucked at a table in an odd little alcove that had a wonderful view of a fire extinguisher, we still had photo opportunities with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto. The breakfast buffet was divine -- everything from Mickey-shaped waffles to omelets, hash browns to quiches, cereal to crepes. Yum!!

After breakfast, it was just a short walk over to the Magic Kingdom. This was the only day we didn't make the "rope drop" when the park opened (except for the mixup on Wednesday), but we were all okay with that as we had spent one day there already. There were definitely some attractions on our "hit list" for the day, but otherwise we were without "The Plan" -- the only plan being to stay to the end of the fireworks that night, rain or shine not! All of us were a bit tired, but at the same time ready to give it our all and enjoy our last day.

Here's what we did on our final, full day at Disney World's Magic Kingdom:

• Peter Pan's Flight
• Small World (ugh... not my favorite, but a "must" while you're there supposedly. One time of getting stuck on this ride for 45 minutes at closing time will cure you of ever wanting to be on this ride again! That happened several years ago to me on a visit to my bro and sis-in-law, while we played at Disneyland one day.)
• Mickey's PhilharMagic
• Prince Charming Carrousel
• Tried to pull the Sword out of the Stone
• Mad Tea Party (teacups)
• Barnstormer (Toben's first ride on a roller coaster) -- At this point, the rain started falling and really didn't stop for the rest of the day, except for small periods of time. This is also about the time that I stopped taking pictures... My camera rode safe and dry in my backpack after this.
• Ryan, Pop, Caleb and Logan went to Stitch's Great Escape while Mom, Toben and I went to Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor (it was POURING out!)
• Buss Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin
• PeopleMover
• Disney's Carousel of Progress
• Mom and Pop took Toben to Country Bear Jamboree, the Liberty Square Riverboat, and to watch a parade while Ryan and I took the older two boys on Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
• Dinner at Columbia Harbour House
• Haunted Mansion
• Shopping
• Wishes fireworks show (A beautiful fireworks and light show! Unfortunately, due to all the rain that day, Tinkerbell didn't 'fly', boo!)

The whole crew at Chef Mickey's!

Remember how Toben was terrified of the characters? He still was -- but we found that by giving him my mom's camera to take pictures of the characters, he wasn't afraid. Whatever works, right?

Dancing with the music and all the patrons at the restaurant! Notice the sticker on his arm? Those were temporary tattoos that I found to put on the boys with a contact number for us if they somehow got separated from our group. Great for peace of mind!

This makes me laugh. I LOVE everyone's expressions - the boys are T.I.R.E.D. and Ryan and I are "c'mon, it's our last day - let's give it all we've got!" We carried the boys quite a bit this day. Also, can you see how dark the sky is? This was at about 10:30am.

Proof that we did, indeed, get properly serenaded in It's a Small World. Now you're singing the song, too. :)

Logan's pose of the day!

I think he's "excited"!! Spin those teacups, Pop!

And now for the iPhone pics... Soaking wet after riding Splash Mountain - Caleb's favorite ride of the week! Notice Logan's pose again... :)

We opted to give the boys one major sugar high to keep them content and awake for the fireworks. At least the rain was washing away the stickiness!

Out of order here, but whatever. :) The boys' first up close look at the Monorail

Cruisin' on the Monorail

Saturday and Sunday were spent driving back to Texas, as we had family (Ryan's mom's side) gathering to honor his precious Granny's life. We made it home safely through torrential rains along the Gulf Coast. The boys were excellent travelers, and we couldn't have asked for them to do any better at this time in their lives.
We are looking forward to going back to Disney someday. It was such an amazing time for us!

2012 Days of Sunshine: Day 7

And now we're on to Thursday, June 7th! (one of these days I will finish writing about our vacation...that we returned from a month ago)

We went back to "The Plan" for Thursday, and headed back to Hollywood Studios at (the correct) opening time, 9am. Ryan again went straight back to Toy Story Mania to get Fast Passes for us, while the boys and I made a beeline for the Jedi Training Academy sign-ups. While waiting in line, Logan decided that he'd rather not participate in the Jedi Training, so we just signed Caleb up for the 12:50 showing.

(A little note on "The Plan": I had signed up for this fabulous program, RideMax, back in May. RideMax truly does seek to maximize your time at attractions and minimize your time waiting in line. It's filled with tons of tips and tricks -- such as, when waiting in line for The Pirates of the Caribbean, and you can go either right or left in line, go to the left for a shorter wait. This was true of It's a Small World, too. Cool stuff. Anyhow, I organized our days at Disney based on projected crowd levels and what we felt like the boys wanted to do. On the days that we followed "The Plan" we had great success -- it was so nice to leave an attraction and not look around at each other, asking "where do you want to go next?" Yep, I'm a total Type A. It's okay.)

Here's what we did at Hollywood Studios this day:

• Studio Backlot Tour
• Toy Story Mania
• The Great Movie Ride
• lunch at Backlot Express
• Jedi Training Academy
• Lights, Motors, Action! Stunt Show (It started raining while we were at this show, and the rain really didn't let up the rest of the day. It was also while we were here that Ryan got the phone call telling him that his sweet Granny had just passed away.)
• Beauty and the Beast - Live on Stage show
• shopping
• Dinner at 50's Prime Time Cafe

We had intended on staying at Hollywood Studios for their Fantasmic! fireworks show at 9pm, but the rain just wasn't letting up. It also prevented us from seeing some other attractions, like the Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area. We were soaked, and all of us were starting to get a bit cranky. After dinner, we went back to the resort and called it a night a bit early. It was back to Magic Kingdom for our last full day at the parks, and we were hopeful for a great day!

Logan posing on the Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader hospital bed (?) from the end of Episode III

Toben... "Anything you can do, I can do better..."

All the boys in front of our favorite ride, Toy Story Mania!

Just before getting off of TSM. It's a horribly blurry photo, but I love it.

Caleb donning his Padawan robe prior to Jedi Training!

Caleb learning proper handling of a Light Saber

The guy in the black getup... I forget his name...

Caleb dueling with the dude in the black suit. Caleb's instructor said "The force is very strong with this young Padawan."

Caleb ducking one of Vader's swings

Lightning McQueen made an appearance at the Lights, Motors, Action! Stunt Show.

The entire wait staff and host staff at the 50's Prime Time Diner were totally in character. This dude sang Happy Birthday at the top of his lungs, horribly off key. It was awesome.

Walking around in the rain all afternoon will make for one hungry little guy.

The boys had asked for these R2-D2 steins the whole week. What's a vacation without a little splurge here and there?

A Moment...

playing around while waiting on a client's arrival
i do believe the hair will go shorter
ha - that's random
my to-do list is growing, and i'm fighting it
do i stay busy
or do i let it (mostly) go
wishing for a day of solitude and productivity
and cupcakes

2012 Days of Sunshine: Day 6

Wednesday. The day that could have been so much better, yet we still had fun.

I royally messed us up on this day. Because the forecast called for A TON O' RAIN, we I decided to change up our plans. "The Plan" called for us to spend today at Epcot, but since we had done some exploring there the night before and we were to go there again this evening for dinner, we I chose to start off at Hollywood Studios. I'm not entirely sure what my reasoning was for that anymore, or how I convinced the other reasonable adults in our troupe to go along with me... Sigh.

Anyhow, what I completely overlooked was the Extra Magic Hours schedule for the day. Extra Magic Hours are times set aside at each of the parks for them to either open an hour early or stay open several hours past closing for guests of Disney resorts (of which we were included in this group). I had been advised to avoid parks that had EMH because of the extra crowds in attendance, and so had devised "The Plan" based on which parks had EMH the day before. (Does that make any sense?) In theory, crowds would be less at a given park the day after they held EMH.

Well, let me just say, that theory was proven true in our case.

We arrived at Hollywood Studios at opening time, 9am, or so we thought. In actuality, they opened at 8am that day... which meant the "hot ticket" attractions we were really hoping to experience already had wait times of over 90 minutes (Toy Story Mania) or were completely booked (Jedi Training Academy). So, what to do?? We threw "The Plan" out the window for the day and did what we could.

It ended up being a lot of fun, and I'm probably the only one bothered by how it all went. We still had a great day, and made some great memories -- in the end, that's really what matters! Type A Personality, take a back seat! I am so thankful, so very thankful, to have a husband and parents who are willing to go with the flow (props to my Pop, whose nature is not to 'go with the flow' (Tree? I'm Apple.) yet he did a great job of it on this day!).

Here's what we did on our (first) day at Hollywood Studios:

• Star Tours
• taking photos as Storm Troopers
• Disney Junior Live show
• Lunch at Pizza Planet
• Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular Show
• Toy Story Mania (Ryan went straight there once we entered the park to pull Fast Passes for us! Yay!)
• Mickey Mouse ice cream on a stick before leaving to have some quiet time back at the resort

It started raining on us as we left Hollywood Studios, and was raining fairly hard when we got back to the resort. We had dinner reservations at The Coral Reef in Epcot that evening, so after drying off we loaded up in our van and headed over to Epcot. We decided to go a little early and try to see a few more attractions prior to eating, but since it was raining (and Toben fell asleep on my shoulder) we spent most of that free time in a huge gift shop. The big boys found hats they really wanted and we found a few other souvenirs we'd had our eyes on for a couple of days.

After dinner at The Coral Reef (which was a nice meal, but not one of our favorites), my folks took the boys to a couple more attractions at Epcot while Ryan and I took off for a little date night. Ryan had purchased tickets for us to see The Blue Man Group for my birthday back in April, and the date on the tickets was finally here! We drove over to the Universal Studios parks and had a wonderful time at the show. Sadly, the Blue Man Group wasn't IN the parks so we couldn't sneak over to Harry Potter world before or after the show. That's for another trip, I suppose!

Making R2 Units at the Droid Factory after riding Star Tours

Two happy Jedi Padawans and one not-so-happy, reluctant tagalong

Walking in Main Street America

One of the few family photos

The Disney Junior show

Dancing at the end of the Disney Junior show

We had desserts with every meal. Hey, it was included on the meal plan...didn't mean we finished them every time. This one, however, was devoured by the boys! A chocolate cupcake with peanut butter-chocolate frosting, topped with a chocolate Darth Vader head... at Pizza Planet.

The Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular Show. Fun show, although they had several 'technical difficulties' during this presentation! You can see dark clouds forming in the skies... so long to a rain-free day.

C-bug boarding our favorite ride, Toy Story Mania!

You can't go to Disney World without having a Mickey Mouse ice cream on a stick! Believe it or not, this was our one and only time to get this yummy treat.

We had a little time to kill before our dinner reservations at The Coral Reef at Epcot, so some souvenir (and hat) shopping was done!

"Arrr, Matey!"

Caleb pretending to be R2-D2 :)

Date night for Ryan and me! After dinner, Mom and Pop took the boys to The Seas with Nemo and Friends at Epcot before heading back to the resort while Ryan and I drove over to Universal to see these guys. What a FUN show!! Highly recommended!!