Sunday, June 10, 2012

Headed Home


I think this was how we all felt after a great week at Dis.ney World!


Saturday, June 9, 2012

Last Day at Dis.ney World

On our last day, we opted to spend more time at the MK again.  We got their early so that we could be there for the official park opening.  Carter and Callen enjoyed seeing the characters ride in on the train and   dance to the music.




Once we could enter, we headed straight to Pixie Hollow to meet Tinker.bell, who was the one person we wanted to meet but had not yet gotten to see.  We waited just a little bit and then it was our turn.

After we left Pixie Hollow, we headed to the Pirate ride so that we could do that again for Callen--she loved it!

Then, on to Splash Mountain.  Nick managed to convince Carter to ride again!  This was right after the plunge down into the briar patch...Carter and Nick are in the back of this log. {sorry, my camera settings were off!}

We spent the day riding our favorite rides at MK and enjoying our last day in a somewhat leisurely manner.  This was by far the busiest day in the parks of our whole trip, but, then again, it was a Friday, so I am not totally surprised.

Taking a pic with Zurg after the Buzz ride.

We stopped for a late lunch at Casey's Cor.ner and there was a tall table available, but we could quite figure out how to the children would manage to eat.  Turns, out the window sill was just the right size! {don't worry...Callen didn't eat the food that is on the actual sill!}


After lunch, we asked Carter and Callen if there were any other rides they wanted to ride...it seemed they preferred to play in the fountain!  It was hot, so I can't say I blame them!

We headed back to the hotel to take naps, and when they woke up we let them pick which evening activity they wanted to do again {we had done all of them by this time}.  They picked Fatas.mic at Holly.wood Studios, or as they called it, "Mickey saves the Day!"

We headed over to Epcot for a quick dinner in Morocco and then walked over to Holly.wood Studios.  We grabbed our light up toys, got some ice cream for a snack and then headed in to enjoy watching Mickey save the day again!


 They loved it!  After Fantas.mic, we headed to Epcot because they were having Magic Hours.  We rode the Nemo ride a few more times and then decided to head back to the hotel...exhausted and thrilled by a wonderful week at Dis.ney World!

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Epcot!

We started our fourth full day at Dis.ney with another pre-park opening meal at Aker.shus with the princesses.  When we first walked in, the children were able to take a picture with Belle.  They loved that she called them "teacups" and as you can see, they were awed by her.  The official pic with Belle had them actually looking at the camera!


We also got to see Cinderella again.  We were right by the door where the princesses entered the restaurant, and Carter got so excited for Callen when Cinderella came in!  He was urging her to get up to meet her.  Precious!


This was the first time we got to meet Snow White...apparently she isn't included as a princess at Cinderella's Castle.


And Ariel...Callen's favorite; can you tell?


 Aurora too.  Aurora led the parade and they had a blast marching around the restaurant.


We finished breakfast still a little before the park opened, so we took pictures by some of the great plants shaped like characters.


The children and I headed first to the character spot to meet and take some pictures with the characters, while Nick headed over to grab some Soar.in' fast passes.

 


Once we finished taking our pictures, we headed over to meet daddy and then ride the Nemo ride a few more times...{we had already hit Turtle Talk with Crush the day before}.


After that, we made it over to Soar.in' for our FP time and then hit the Living with the Land ride.  Then we left and did several other activities and rides in Future World.

By shortly after midday, we were ready to head back to the hotel for naps to gear up for a busy night.  We opted to skip lunch in favor of an early dinner at Tep.pan Edo--a hibatchi grill in Japan at Epcot.  The children loved the entertainment and the wait staff even made child-friendly chop sticks, so they loved eating with those!  {aside:  the food at Epcot was the BEST... we at there probably 4 times...several times just to eat and head somewhere else!}

After dinner, we were excited to see some favorite characters had been created in the plants.  We had to take a picture!




 After dinner, we headed to the Magic King.dom to take in the electrical parade and the Wishes Fireworks show.  They enjoyed a mickey ice cream bar while waiting on the parade.  They LOVED the night parade!

We moved our location after the parade so we could have a good spot for the fireworks.  They waited so patiently before the fireworks show!



The children loved seeing Tinkerbell fly from the castle and seeing all the beautiful fireworks!  Of course, the bus on the way home from the fireworks was packed and our children were worn out.  It was a great, busy day, and we were ready to get a good night's sleep in anticipation of our last day in the parks!



Tuesday, June 5, 2012

And, Back to the MK

Wednesday, we slept in a little bit and still managed to make it back to the Magic King.dom right at 8:00am.  We had changed our plan a bit...we planned to be at Hollywood Stud.ios on Wednesday morning, but we had ticked off so many things there earlier in the week, that we opted to go back to the Magic King.dom instead.  We walked in and headed straight over to meet Mickey before the lines got too long.

Two littles bright-eyed and excited to meet Mickey!

5 minutes later, we were meeting the Mouse!

And a family pic, too, of course!

From there we headed to Adventure.land.  We road the Pirates of the Carib.bean ride again at Callen's request and piddled around a bit trying to decide where we wanted to go next.

As we walked from Adventure.land towards Frontier.land, we noticed that it was almost time for some of our favorite characters to come out.  Since there was only one other person in line, we jumped at the chance to meet them quickly!

Waiting for, as the cast member put it, Andy to open his toy box.


Finally, it was our turn to meet Woody and Jessie!



Lots of Love from the Willis children!  



Blowing kisses to Jessie!


  
It was so great to see the children get so excited over the characters and princesses the other wanted to see.  It was truly sweet!

After Carter opted to skip Splash Moun.tain this time, we hopped on the train and rode from Frontier.land to Fantasy.land.
 We road all of our favorites again in Fantasyland, the teacups several times, of course, and then headed back over to Tomorrow.land to ride the Buzz ride and see if we could meet him!

We did a quick change for Carter--he insisted that if Callen got to meet Cinderella dressed the same, then he got to dress the same as Buzz for that introduction!

 Playing with the space ranger map while waiting on Buzz

Finally, he is here.


Nick and I swapped out riding space moun.tain while we were over in Tomorrow.land, and then we wrapped up our day at Magic Kingdom to head back for some naps.  We had learned on Tuesday that we might be able to have a little longer nights if we built in some time for naps.

After both children took pretty good naps, we headed over to Epcot by boat and grabbed some dinner.  Then, we tried out some of the rides at Epcot--the Nemo ride was an easy favorite of the children--and enjoyed a sucker {and some beer for the adults!} while we waited for the Fireworks!

We enjoyed our preview of Epcot as we were headed there on Thursday!

Monday, June 4, 2012

On to Animal King.dom


We started our Tuesday off with another pre-park-opening breakfast in the Animal King.dom at the Tusker House.  We got to meet and take pictures with Donald on the way in and while we were yumming up our breakfast and drinking our jungle juice, we go to meet Mickey, Daisy and Goofy too!


Goofy really does like to be silly!  He kept covering up Callen's face
After we wrapped up breakfast with a parade around the room led by Goofy, we once again were in a prime spot for the hot ride:  the Safari!

We hopped on the first truck of the day and headed out to see some beautiful animals.  We had barely gotten out on the path before we were stopped in the road by a giraffe eating her breakfast.  We got to wait patiently and watch until she'd had her fill and moved on.

as we drove past her...
We saw ostrich eggs just dropped in the middle of the grass alongside the road...there were several piles of these!

The rhino seemed to be posing for us as we drove by!



I really loved the hippos...I should have had Nick take this picture since he is taller, they were all laying on top of one another and were just snoozing.
After the safari, we headed over to the Kali River Rapids.  Carter and Nick were the brave ones who rode...  {and got soaked!  Luckily, they had plenty of time and sunshine to dry!} 
....while Callen found her own way to get soaked!

From there, Nick and I took turns riding Everest.  Carter was tall enough, but we had heard from one of his friends at school that Everest might be a little scary for him, so we opted not to push it.

We went to see if we could catch the next showing of the Nemo and Friends show, but we just missed it, so we spent some time in the dinosaur area {can't remember what it is officially called}.  We rode the Triceratops ride about three times since there was no line and then we waited to see Goofy and Pluto.
 Pluto kept trying to get Carter to give him five and then he would pull his hand away!  Carter and Callen thought it was hilarious!  Looks like Goofy's seen it before.


 After visiting with Pluto and Goofy, we finally made it to the Nemo show.  From there we headed over to Camp Mickey to see the Lion King show.  I was so glad that we saw the characters at breakfast...the lines to see them were super-long!  We enjoyed the Lion King, headed back towards the middle of the park to grab some lunch and then headed home to let the kiddos rest a bit before heading back out.

We had planned to have them have a  little down time and then we were going to hit the fireworks show at Epcot.  However, they didn't sleep much and when we began to head over to Epcot about 6:00, Carter asked if we could stay so he could go to sleep!  We grabbed a quick dinner and headed up to an early bedtime.