Disney in June, with a 4 year old, oh the heat and tantrums!

[StarWarsMom06]

Hello, Tantrums you say? You are in the most magical place on earth, how could anyone have a tantrum at Disney. The heat And Humidity will make anyone from 4 to 90 cranky! We took mid-day naps/breaks to try to curb the tantrums. This was our 3rd trip to Disney World as a family from June 26th to the 30th.

Boy have things changed since last year! Last year my DS refused to do anything, NO rides, fireworks, or shows! He only wanted to meet characters, so that's what we did.

Before we get to our report lets introduce the Family!

I am the mom of the house, I have a full time job but on the side I love to sew. I made all of headbands and my sons shirts for this trip. In general I LOVE Disney, I have been going since I was 2, so that's been a while. Lets say I am in my mid 30's.

My DH (in his high 30's )is a full time teacher and is a Disney "newbie", this was his 4th trip all with me and because of me! We have been married for 11 years and enjoy traveling a lot!

My DS is the 4 yr old referenced in the title , this was his 3rd trip. He was 2 years old when we first took him to Disney, his love for Darth Vader and Star Wars in general started at 2! He has now graduated to superhero's, good guys and loving to flirt with the princesses! Oh I am going to have my hands full with this one, he loves attention and he get it everywhere we go!

Our trips to Disney have all been in June, as it is the easiest way for us to travel with out all of the holiday crowds. Boy is it HOT though!!! Don't let anyone fool you, it is HOT in June, you know you are in Disney when you have a full sweat going on at 10am haha.

Lets start this trip!

We drove straight through from PA to New Smyrna Beach Friday night the 24th, we arrived around 12:30pm on Saturday. We stayed at the Beach until Monday, it was great to relax from that drive. The best thing we invested in a leap pad for our son, he can play games, watch little videos, etc. But the best part of travelling at night, he was asleep most of the time. He only woke up for the last 4 hours.

We stayed at Bay Lake Towers, we rented points from the DVC Rental Store. This is our second time renting from them and staying at BLT (no not the sandwich haha). We love staying here because it is on the monorail, its a 5 minute walk to MK and the views are great. We rented a Lake View studio, it had a queen bed and a sofa pull out bed. The studios in BLT are much smaller than most of the other studio rooms through the DVC club. Yes you do get a good deal with renting points, the down side? You don't get daily mousekeeping (I really could of used clean sheets, I missed that part). However, there are laundry facilities that are included, if you are in a studio you do not have washer and dryer in your room. But if you stay in a 1 bedroom or larger they do have a washer and dryer and full kitchen in the room. I know, I know who wants to do laundry or cook on vacation?!

We had the deluxe dining plan, yes it is a lot of food, however it is really nice to sit down. We structure it to do two meals a day. I will review what restaurants we went to in my days breakdown. Because of the way we structure it, we actually save money on our food. Last year we saved $380.00, yes we do order the most expensive items most of the time.

Memory Maker, this is absolutely worth the it! We got so many candidate pictures that we would not have gotten on our own. Last year we had over 350 pictures, this year we had 510 pictures!!

As I said in the beginning my DS only wanted to meet characters last year, so I had my touring plans, that I used from Kenny The Pirates website ready to go. I did book fastpasses, but didn't think we would really ride any of the rides. I also used the crowd calendar that Kenny offers, that is free, but the subscription to his site is under $9.00 for a year and worth it!

This year I carried a cross body purse it was great we had our fan, water bottle, autograph book inside and it wasn't too heavy.

I will now break down the days, hope you stay along for the ride!

 

[StarWarsMom06]

Monday- Arrival Day!! We went to the Magic Kingdom, I knew it would be busy, it usually is on a Monday. We watched the welcome show at the castle it was cute, then rope dropped to meet Merida. She was a delight and my son had a good time. We decided to go grab a snack at the Cheshire Cat stand, we had a frozen lemonade and a cat tail. Oh was that yummy, soft chocolate pastry with pink icing on top.

Our first fast pass was to Peter Pan, my DS said he would ride as we had watched videos on youtube and he was a "brave boy." He did pretty well on the ride, positive so far! Oh yeah the problem we ran into, when we went to buy our snacks earlier our magic bands did not work, so we paid out of pocket. After the peter pan ride we went to guest relations to see if we could get this fixed. They were able to link our dining plan, so that was a positive and we would deal with the rest later.

We met a couple other characters then headed to our 2nd fastpass Toy Story Buzzlightyear Ride. Well we got on the ride and my DS immediately ducked down under the bar and the attendant said "he has to sit up or I have to stop the ride." We were able to talk him into sitting up but he tucked his head into my husbands shirt. Halfway through the ride as he was peeking, he all of a sudden grabbed the "boom boom gun" as he calls it and "got the bad guys." As soon as we got off the ride he wanted to do it again, ok looking better! We then went on the Jungle cruise and that was enjoyed by all.

At this time we had a 12:00pm reservation to the Kona at the Polynesian. This was our 3rd time there, we loved their food in the past. This will probably be our last time dining here, they changed their menu and all of our favorites were gone. The food was still good, but will probably try a different restaurant.

After our lunch we did had booked the DVC tour, we received 3 fast passes a piece and a
$50.00 gift card for doing the tour. No we did not sign up but the information was really good.

We got our text that our room was ready, oh wait we received 2 text messages that two rooms were ready. Off to BLT to see what was going on, the gentleman at the front desk was really helpful. He was able to fix our room situation, and reimbursed us for the snacks we paid out of pocket! This is why we love Disney!

We were on the 7th floor overlooking the lake, we had a great location, not far from the elevator that dropped down to the catwalk to the Contemporary.

We decided to stay in for a while until Dinner time, we went to Chef Mickeys at 7:30pm. The food is uh, ok, what are you paying for? The fab 5! and for the $130.00 we paid we defiantly got our moneys worth with Minnie's interaction with my DS. We had brought pictures from last year with the characters for them to sign. Minnie knew exactly where we had taken the picture, she took my son by the hand and signaled for me to follow. We went down and she completely recreated the picture. Then she preceded to spend more time with my son! The other characters were great as well, but we really loved Minnie.

As we were all exhausted we walked out the restaurant and were able to watch the new fireworks show from the balcony at the Contemporary! Overall we had a pretty good first day!

 

[DeterminedOne]

Trying to figure out why this is on the Completed Trip Report Board. Just an oversight or is my device acting up?