Today is my birthday and what better thing to blog about on my birthday than DISNEY DAY!?!?!? I mean it’s only my absolute favorite blog topic 🙂
We spent 5 nights in Orlando and only spent one day at the parks. And honestly? It was great!!! While I’m super, super pumped about spending four days at the parks in Feb for Britt’s first trip, we had a BLAST being down there and not even going to Disney! Zach, Kye and I headed out first thing to make it to the gates in time for the show (my favorite thing) and I left feeling okay about Britt being back at the town house with Casey and Jordan. I knew she was in SUCH good hands and that they would have a SUPER fun day together! Casey sent me all these pics from their day and I thought I’d share them first 🙂
They kinda had a “copy day” to what we’d done as a little family the day prior. When staying at such an awesome place, why leave? I still gave them her car seat as you never know but they didn’t even end up needing it! They swam at the pool that morning then went back to Banana Jacks for dinner that night! It was cute to me b/c they went up in the play place with her b/c they were too nervous about her going alone. I think when they do become parents someday that they will be freaks like me hahaha at least I’ll have company 😉
Is this not the sweetest thing EVER????
Britt was a little angel for them which made me feel very proud! I think she enjoyed all the attention she got by being with them alone 😉 And, I need to add, that Jordan did beat Zach’s high score at the basketball game. Although he didn’t provide any type of photo proof…
While I love going to Disney anytime of the year, the crowd levels always tend to be the lowest in September. I think our level for the day was a 3. Sept is a good time to go just for that reason alone, but I’m NOT a fan of the fall decor at Disney. I think growing up as a Seminole I just don’t like orange very much? We arrived at the gates mega early and were able to take some cute pics while we waited for the opening show to start.
We stopped on the way for Zach to grab some breakfast!
I wrote this on Instagram but it’s SO true: what is better than Christmas morning? DISNEY MORNING!!! I seriously get that giddy little girl feeling while waiting for the park to open. It’s my favorite thing FOR SURE. Knowing that we have an entire day of magic ahead is so exciting 🙂
I ran to use the bathroom and bumped into Robyn!!!
Watching the opening show is my happy moment. I get goosebumps and usually shed a tear or two. For real. Call me lame, but I can’t control it! I just love it! And hearing “Zippity Do Dah” made me totally think of Britt. It’s her favorite song and I know she will LOVE getting to be there and hear that over the loud speakers!!!
I really, really want to be “the family” who opens the park someday. It’s a goal! I was hoping that maybe Zach would surprise me for my 30th birthday and have that be my gift haha. But turns out you can’t pay to be the family. It’s all (semi) luck! I’ve started doing some research about how to make it happen and it is something I def wanna attempt to do someday. Although I don’t know if it’ll be anytime soon as getting to the gates that early would make for some sleepy/grumpy children! It was obvious that the dad in this family was the big Disney fan. He was grinning from ear to ear and his kids didn’t care one bit about being up there haha!
Again thinking of Britt when I saw her favorite princess: Snow White!
Kye loved seeing Peter Pan!
I’m all about making a mad dash to the rides as soon as the park opens…but I am also all about looking halfway decent for our castle pictures. So I like to go ahead and get them out of the way right when we get in the park.
We will be going to Belle’s Storytime FIRST for a long time to come. We lucked out this time and the cast members were in some meeting or something and didn’t get the call in fantasyland to let down the ropes. So we were still among the first people into Fantasyland, even after our stop for the castle pics! We only had a few minute wait for Belle!
I know some families shy away from the spotlight. One thing you will learn about us in this post (if you didn’t know it already) is that we are not one of those families! We love interactive type “rides” and always want to be part of any show if possible. We’ve done Belle’s Storytime before and had a feeling that every time we do it, Zach will get chosen to be a soldier. And this time proved our theory correct! What made it SUPER special though was Kye getting chosen as Beast!!!!
He looks so nervous
Getting ready for his big moment!
This time I intentionally did not want a part in the show. I wanted to be able to watch Kye and not have to be nervous about my own part 🙂 I’m so thankful I could just enjoy him participating. It was so so cute! Here’s a video of his big moment. He was SO in awe of Belle that he forgot to roar 😉 I asked him later why he didn’t roar (thinking maybe he was shy since it was a decent amount of people) and he said “Belle was too pretty”
Zach plays his role so well 😉
I knew Kye would be roaring at Belle during the story…but I totally forgot that the Beast got to DANCE with Belle at the end!!!!!! It was the SWEETEST thing watching him sway with a princess!!!
So, so precious
He was so in love with her he didn’t want to leave her side!
His special bookmark from Belle 🙂
Usually we aren’t the type of people who really look at all the special things around the park. We are the type who rush to the next ride 😉 But I know that life at Disney will never be this “easy” again for a long, long time. We just have one kid and he’s old enough to be patient and is easy to manage at the park. So I tried to soak it all in a little more this time since from now on, we’ll always have two kids along! I did tell Zach that I think it’d be fun someday for just the two of us to go again together as I’d love to just take my time and REALLY look around. Try to find hidden Mickey’s. Wait around to meet some characters. See the details and experience fully the magic of the park!
We did check out the Be Our Guest restaurant as I’ve heard it’s amazing. Zach was in a great mood and even suggested us eating there for dinner! I checked it out and they didn’t offer walk-up dining at dinner. Oh well, maybe someday!
Last time I had my medical pass but this time I didn’t have one. I also just sucked it up and wore sneakers the entire day. And now, with my recent news, I know I’ll be sneakering it up at Disney for a long time to come. Without the pass we did experience longer wait times than we did last trip. But, that wasn’t all negative. It was neat to get to walk through the new Little Mermaid ride and check out the little details in the waiting area. Of course, our wait was only like 5 min but we still got to see it all on our way in!
We headed over to do the rest of Fantasyland: the carrousel, Peter Pan, Phillarmagic, Dumbo, Barnstormer and It’s a Small World! If you’re going to the park on a level 3 or lower day I really don’t think you need a hardcore itinerary. We just go straight to Belle then work our way through the rest of Fantasyland. I do recommend hitting up Peter Pan quick as it is usually our longest wait time of the day. If we think about it next time we talked about grabbing a fast pass on our way to Belle and then riding Peter Pan last in that land 🙂
While riding the carousel we saw a little show going on at the Sword in the Stone. We raced over to it as soon as we got off but didn’t catch it in time. It was neat though! Cast Members were all dressed up and presenting certain children with the stone and their chance to try to get it out. Kye, legit, tried and tried to pull the sword out of the stone 😉
We had a couple character run-ins on this visit. No, we don’t try to spend time with them. We say hey and keep on movin’ haha. I do think the characters add so much to the parks and I hope that we eventually get to a point where we visit so often that we’re not in a rush to get things done and are able to visit more with the characters. Although I think we’ll always prefer character dining over waiting in long lines for meet and greets!
Handing the camera over to Zach always results in some interesting shots: random ones that I delete mixed in with some cute ones, some super close up ones, and then a few that are just precious!
You can tell my favorite thing about riding Dumbo is checking out the views of the park 😉
Up until now Kye has always been an “easy” driver. We go up and we stay up. He hasn’t ever done the whole up and down and up and down thing before: until this visit. Ugh it made me feel SICK!
Yes, they rode it twice 😉
Hahahaha Poor Kye!!!
For the first time EVER we had a decent wait for Phillarmagic. We always get in right away but this time we happened to get there right as another show was starting so we had to wait through the whole show for our turn. Kye was hardcore about rocking those glasses the entire time though!
For me this is SO TRUE! I cannot stand cruises…well, expect for It’s a Small World 🙂
Pretending to be asleep b/c the ride is so boring haha. I love how Kye is still trying to peak b/c regardless of what he says now about it, he still loves it and didn’t want to close his eyes and miss anything! I’m ready for Britt to come next time so I can have someone to ENJOY my favorite “boring” rides with 🙂 We WILL be hitting up the Tiki Room even if these lame boys have to wait outside haha
We were lunchy and decided to find a place to sit and eat. I wore my colors on the this trip with my Advocare cooler 😉 What what! As usual, we packed all of our lunch food and took advantage of the free ice water cups at the restaurant. And yes, you can eat in the restaurants with your own food! As long as it’s the counter service type places, they don’t mind at all!
Kye has mentioned lately wanting to do the Stitch Ride and the Haunted Mansion. I figured now was a good time to test run them both with him b/c when we come back with Britt we really won’t be able to do them with her. Well, she actually might be able to handle Haunted Mansion. It really isn’t that scary! I showed Kye youtube videos of both rides and told him the day of that we didn’t have to ride them if he changed his mind. With Haunted Mansion I was really only concerned about the beginning portion when it gets completely dark. People always scream and yell and make it silly/scary fun but I could see that scaring him. So I talked to him a lot about that and Zach and I both talked about how he can scream when that happens too so it will be silly and fun! When we walked by the ride we asked if he wanted to do it and he said yes so we went for it!!!
First scared face: Kye did his pirate face 😉
Haha they have SUCH tiny mouths!
Kye enjoyed the ride!!! He wasn’t scared at all about it. Being an off-season time to visit the park we did hit a few glitches during the day and that ride was one of them. It got stuck for a bit which kinda freaked me out to be honest. I get a little claustrophobic and I felt that feeling of “omg i gotta get out of here.”I do think being stuck kinda bothered Kye too. It’s one thing to not be scared when you’re constantly moving but we were trapped watching the same creepy ghost lady over and over again. I feel like we have a special bond with her now 😉
We skipped out on the choo choo and the steamboat this time. We never plan to ride the boat again but will do the choo choo in Feb. Britt is ALREADY talking about it! If you ask her what she’s going to ride at Disney she says “choo choo!” So that will be back on our must-do list and I’ll need lots of snacks for it as my little boy who used to love riding the choo choo now says it’s a baby ride.
We watched the Country Bears (totally a fav! and they all look so nice and new!) and went and picked out Kye’s pin for this trip. He decided on a Splash Mountain one since it’s his favorite ride 🙂 He also did his pin trading in the same shop and got some super random one?
Next up was Splash Mountain time! The boys went to get in line and I waited on the bridge to take their pictures. Of course I got to talking to these older ladies and time passed and passed. I saw that the ride stopped several times and I decided to head back and just wait for them at the photo viewing area. I got there and waited and waited and I kinda got nervous b/c it seemed like it’d been a long time. I decided to go back to the stroller and wait as I was worried we had gotten separated. LUCKILY I ran into them!!! Turns out Splash Mountain had lots of issues and had a mega long wait time because of it so they got fast passes for it and headed over to Thunder Mountain Railroad instead. Um. It was Kye’s first time riding that one and I missed it!!! He LOVVVVED it though (no surprise) and was happy as could be and wasn’t upset at all about the Splash Mountain issue! I’m just glad we all found each other!!!
I know this is shocking but we’ve NEVER had to do a fastpass before. If the wait time is less than 25 minutes you’re better off waiting in the line than doing the fastpass so it’s never been an issue for us. I do feel like the new way they are doing fastpass and allowing people to book fastpass times prior to arrival and such is making the wait times longer on the big ticket rides. I know some people love the whole fastpass concept but I don’t. At all.
Yes, I know I’m a HUGE planner but when I get to the park, I don’t like to have to watch my clock. When we did the Pirate’s League for Kye (well…when we almost did it) we had an appointment time for it so we had to keep an eye on the time and ended up being super early to our appointment b/c I was so worried we’d be late. I didn’t fully enjoy myself b/c I was too worried about our time! Fastpass is the same type thing for me. I don’t like to have to even look at a clock during our day!
Since we had the fastpass for Splash and there wasn’t anything left to do in that area we went ahead and headed over to Pirates 🙂 He is a pro at the pirate face 😉
We did check out the new Pirate adventure type thing they have set up where you get a map and clues to go on a hunt around the park. It looked really fun and I did see a few kids around the park collecting their clues! Another one of those things that takes up a lot of park time but would be a fun experience 🙂
Another issue with fastpasses is back tracking. At that point in the day my feet (actually just my one FOOT) were hurting. I didn’t really feel like hiking it back over to Splash Mountain. We decided I’d just wait for them and sit on a shady bench and enjoy myself 🙂 I kept all the stuff and they went and had guy time together! I did walk through a few shops and that’s another thing I’d LOVE to do. Just have a Disney day for SHOPPING. Gah, such cute stuff that you can’t get anywhere but at the parks! I could have spent a fortune 🙂
For this trip we made an excellent investment. It’s a GAME CHANGER for me for hot weather, especially at Disney! It’s called Frogg Toggs Chilly Towel and it’s AMAZING. You wet the towel (which doesn’t feel like a towel at all) and wring it out then it stays cool for hours and doesn’t drip at all. It also soaks up your sweat! It was HOT that day and I was 100% sure my hair would be a sweaty mess pretty quickly and that I’d be rocking a pony tail by lunch. But I used this towel and was SHOCKED when I’d go to the bathroom and see myself. My hair still looked good and you couldn’t even really tell I was sweaty at all!!! This is a MUST HAVE Disney item in my opinion!!! We bought one for Zach and I and I plan to go ahead and get some for the kids too 🙂
When they got back it was SNACK TIME!
Kye helped me pick out a lanyard and first pin for Britt! I am thinking when we come in Feb I will do the whole “tinkerbelle surprises” type idea. Where I have a couple little prizes for the kids each day 🙂 I’m thinking I might not show them their outfits for each day either and surprise them with those as well!
YUM
This time Kye wanted to get the same thing we had! And I don’t blame him!!! It was MASSIVE though and took him forever to eat so we did say that next time we’ll be asking for an extra cup and sharing!
Last time Kye was disappointed that we weren’t able to ride the Aladdin Carpet Ride so we did that this time. I rode with Kye and we had SO much fun! There is a camel who “spits” on you so we kept talking trash to him and trying to avoid his spit. Of course we got hit which made it even more fun 🙂 It ended up being one of my favorite moments from the day!
With our camel “friend”
Another spitting one and Kye wanted to wait so he could get hit 😉
We headed over to Tomorrowland to finish up our day! Whenever we do Laugh Factory we always try to sit where we think we might get chosen from the crowd during the show. Get to answer a question, be part of a joke, we don’t care 🙂 None of us have ever been picked to participate but this time, not only did we get chosen, but Zach got to be “THAT GUY!” which was so, so, so awesome. If you’ve done the “ride” before then you know “THAT GUY” is the butt of every joke and keeps the crowd laughing. Zach, went above and beyond, of course! We had people coming up to us after asking if he had planned everything he did and if he was really chosen at random or not haha. Maybe he missed his calling in the comedian world 🙂 Some of his antics included pretending to bathe with his towel and taking off his shoe at one point haha.
He even got a special sticker at the end!
Cross is off the bucket list 😉
Kye and I always sit together for Buzz b/c Zach likes to take it super seriously haha. It was another ride that got stuck but I was just thankful we weren’t trapped in that tunnel portion. Omg I would have probably puked! Kye is getting better with his aim and he keeps telling Britt she will LOVE Buzz 🙂 We have a little tradition where we go up to Zurg after the ride and tell him how we defeated him!
I will always think of the Stitch ride as Alien Encounter. Which was SO scary!!! With the remodeling of it to make it Stitch, it’s so lame now. Zach and I were really hoping Kye would forget that he wanted to ride it this time haha. I honestly thought it would be more scary for him than Haunted Mansion. Majority of it is completely dark and it sounds like Stitch is all around you and spits on you, blows air on you, etc. Pretty creepy for a four year old! He insisted on doing it though but, thankfully, didn’t like it. We didn’t talk it up either in hopes that he wouldn’t ever want to ride it again haha. I think it worked as he said he wasn’t scared but he also said he doesn’t want to do it next time either 🙂
I opted out of driving the cars this time as I was hurting and had a headache and since one of us had to ride solo and I rode with Kye last trip, I figured I’d sit it out. Instead I went and looked up our options for what to do in a park-hopper scenario 😉 We are loving having Park Hopper Tickets!!! Zach did say that Kye’s driving skills have greatly improved so maybe I’ll ride with him next time!
We did one more round of Buzz (my face is awesome!) and called it a day!
On our way out we stopped by Guest Relations to get our tickets changed over. Awhile back we did the math and decided to buy 10 day park hopper tickets with no expiration. Yes, it was a LOT of money up front but it worked out to be super cheap per day and we know we will for sure use all 10 days no problem! Before I bought them I knew we had 6 park days already planned for sure in the coming year and the price ended up being where it was only like $35 for each extra day! I’ve heard rumors they may stop with the no expiration passes but if you call you should still be able to buy them. I HIGHLY recommend it!!! The only downside is you cannot lose your tickets haha so we got our paper ones switched over to the credit-card-style 🙂 While Zach was handling that Kye and I got to watch the end of the parade! We always tend to get lucky on catching parades!
Good bye Magic Kingdom!
We left the park at 6! I wanted to stay for the electrical parade and fireworks and all but we looked ahead to when we come in Feb and they will have the electrical parade then too but it will be early like at 7 instead of 9. So Britt will get to experience it too! Since Kye’s already done it before I didn’t mind missing it as long as we shook on seeing it next trip 😉 So off to Park Hop we went!
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Happy Birthday! All these Disney posts are making me really want to go, I lived in Daytona Beach for 15 years and I still haven't been..I'm thinking it is time!