Disney World: Part 1

We're back!!

It's hard to believe that a trip we'd been planning for close to a year has come and gone, but we are back at home after returning yesterday after a whole week at Disney World. As expected, I took a ton of pictures plus we have a bunch more taken by Disney photographers--hence the reason for splitting the posts about this trip into two parts. And they'll still be long :)

We left last Saturday morning with a very excited little girl who was also feeling nervous about flying for the first time. I was too--I wasn't sure how she would do on the flight and just crossed my fingers that she liked it, didn't get motion sickness, and didn't have ear issues. Thankfully she was just fine; she held our hands from the minute we got on until the plane lifted off the runway and then she let go and announced how much fun it was, and that was the end of the airplane fear. Also, the giant bag of gummy bears we let her snack from helped.

We had a nonstop flight and arrived thirty minutes early (score!). We hopped on board the Magical Express bus and went to our hotel--the Caribbean Beach Resort. It's on Disney property so we were able to get buses to and from the parks and airport as part of our stay.

We didn't go to any parks the day we got there since we figured that would be pushing the limits of everyone's energy and patience levels after traveling all day. We had our first special dining experience that night, though, at Chef Mickey's. Apparently this place is a must-do because we had to get reservations months in advance. I'm glad we did because it was a great introduction to Disney World and Charlotte was SO excited to get to meet some of the characters. It set the tone for the next day and made her look forward to our first day at Magic Kingdom even more.

Our first day at the parks was Sunday, at Magic Kingdom. We took a bus there and I'm glad we chose that park as our first one--it was far and away the best of the four and the most exciting for Charlotte to see. They don't call it "Magic" Kingdom for nothing.

Her reaction to seeing the castle the first time:

On the way to the castle a Disney photographer took some photos of her (and added a cute little Tinkerbell effect):

We had breakfast reservations inside the castle at Cinderella's Royal Table. This place is harder to get into than the White House--you have to make reservations six months in advance or forget about getting a table. Thankfully our travel agent handled this for us because Charlotte got to meet Cinderella, Ariel, Snow White, Princess Aurora and Princess Jasmine all during breakfast--pretty much the princess jackpot.

We spent the better part of the day here--until late afternoon. There are people who probably think it's crazy that we consider "spending the day" to mean 10am to 5pm, but after a full day of travel followed up by a day of walking around in the Florida sun with one person under the age of four and another person 7.5 months pregnant, that is definitely a day. Our last stop this day was to visit Tinkerbell:

The rest of the day was spent back at the hotel at the pool, Charlotte's most favorite spot in all of Disney World.

On Monday, we went to Epcot. Epcot...was not my favorite place, mainly because it's just not designed for kids under about age 8 or 9. If Chad and I were there alone my opinion would probably be different, but there just wasn't much there that appealed to Charlotte. Also, by this time she was headed for full blown Disney meltdown and we were dealing with some major over tiredness and the beginnings of a nasty cold. Yay. We spent maybe 4-5 hours at Epcot before heading back to the hotel for some more pool time.

The next day, Tuesday, my parents left for home so we said goodbye early that morning. We decided not to go into a park as planned an instead do Downtown Disney and keep things as relaxed as we could since we had FastPasses for Charlotte to meet Elsa & Anna that night (past bedtime).

Downtown Disney was a neat place--it's mostly just shopping and restaurants but there's plenty to see and it's just a nice area to walk around in. We visited the Lego store and had lunch before Charlotte crashed and Chad walked her sleeping self around for almost two hours (hallelujah, finally a nap!).

When she woke up she talked her Daddy into going into a store and then this happened:

We headed back to Magic Kingdom that night--our passes to see Anna & Elsa stared at 8:20, so by the time we got to the park at 8pm it was already past her bedtime. But that evening ended up being one of the nicest ones of the whole trip. Seeing Magic Kingdom at night is so cool and Charlotte loved meeting the Frozen princesses and riding the carousel at night. We got to see some of the parade while we were there, too, plus walking around was much more pleasant in the cooler evening than during the hot and sunny afternoon.

So there's the first half--back tomorrow with the second half!

~Stacy