Living thru my kids--Meador family TR

[ammeador2]

Hello all and please be patient with me! I have never participated in a TR before so I will give this my best shot!! In May we booked our trip to WDW and it felt like it WOULD NEVER get here! But sadly, it has already came and gone!

The travelers were myself, my DH and DD Emilie (3) and my ds Aidan (19 months). We stayed in the CBR in Trinidad North and our original plan was to stay for 4 days and then go to the beach.

We left out of Evansville, IN on Fri Aug 22. We were flying and we have to drive up to Indy which depending on traffic is close to about a 4 hour drive. Our flight left out at 5 pm but Indy is an hour ahead of us so we had to leave our house at 10:00 am at the latest. My poor DH had to work the night before so I had as much of the car packed that I could, he came home and was able to stuff the strollers in the trunk and then we left. About half way there the kiddos were hungry so we stopped at good old McD's. I could not believe how busy that place was. I think the whole town of Sullivan was in the same place at once. It's was nuts! Luckily 2 construction workers were nice enough to move to a smaller table to we could all sit together. After lunch were back on the road.

We got to the airport about 2:30ish we had to find a place to park and then get the car seats, strollers and luggage out of the trunk. That was the fun part! I didn't think that were ever going to make it to the bus stop. So we finally get on the bus and head to check in gate for Air Tran. We decided to check our luggage outside and the staff asked for my id. I didn't have it! I searched high and low and I could not find my Id anywhere! I didn't have my license, my Sam’s card; I had nothing with my picture on it!

I was about to cry. We were so far from home at this point that there was no way to make back to get my driver's license. I am frantic at this point all I could think about was how I am going to ruin my family vacation if they won't let me board. The staff at the airport was very nice, I had to go thru more security screenings, while my poor husband had to have all of our stuff plus our 2 kids go thru security. Our trip was not starting out well. However, I must say DH was a saint. He wasn't upset with me or anything!

Finally we are through all of the security check points and we just waiting to board the plane. I made a quick phone call to my mom to see if she could find my license or passport and then overnight it to me at the hotel.
We are on the plane and it was very noisy and we hit a little turbelance thanks to Good Ole Fay. That was the kids fave part of the plane ride! They kept saying "Do it again!"
Our plane landed at 7:00 pm and we deboard and we are searching for the Magical Express. No one at the airport is very helpful at all. We have 2 kids, 2 strollers, 2 carseats and a couple of carry ons. And we could not get anyone at the airport to help us. My poor DH was so tired he's already been up not for 24 hours, but still very patient. A man that was going to WDW as well, offered to help up out and it was greatly appreciated! We checked into the ME and then waited in line to board our bus. By know DH and I are worn out! The backs of our legs have big bruises on them from the strollers hitting our legs while we are trying to get through the airport. All I wanted to was get to the hotel and try to relax!
We got to the hotel about 8:30 or so and we checked in and a bellman was nice enough to take our stuff so we wouldn't have to drag it around anymore. My kids for the most part being great considering their ages and all the travelling we had done so far today. We got to our room about 9ish got our luggage and tried to unwind.
I decided that I was going to look for some food! I was starving! So I went to Port Royale food court and I had to WAIT FOREVER for cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets. People that ordered after me are getting their food and I am still waiting but I see my food on the counter. I was not happy! The girl behind the counter wasn't very friendly either. After I got our food I headed back to the room and found my kids sound asleep! So, DH and I ate and went to bed ourselves. The next day we were headed to MK and I knew that we had a very busy day ahead of us!

 

[ammeador2]

Day 2:

Today we went to the Magic Kingdom. We let the kids sleep in ate breakfast in the room and then went to the bus stop. We arrived to MK about 10:30 and the kids were in awe. I too was a little kid again. My one and only trip to WDW prior to this vacation I was a teenager and didn't care for it too much! Don't flame me, I was 16 and was with my parents and I didn't enjoy like I would have had I been younger.

Right after we walked in we spotted Pinocchio and Gepato. I thought my DD's head was going to explode. She got so scared! And we were no where near them! I finally got her to relax and we kept walking. It started getting really hot! So we went to the Haunted Mansion. This was DH's fave ride as a child so he wanted to see if it was like he had remembered. The kids weren't to thrilled with the whole ride, but they made it! After this ride we went to the Harbor house to have a quick lunch.

Emilie had a BBB appt at the castle at 12:55 so we headed that way and got her checked in. We brought her Cinderella dress from home. I checked her in, Aidan checked out all the cute princesses. He's a little flirt! I took Emilie back to get her changed into her dress. Emilie and I were waiting for her name to be called when the Fairy Godmother came in. Emilie got to excited! The Fairy Godmother had to leave and Emilie chased after her, calling "Fairy Godmother", she stopped in her tracks turned around and gave Emilie the biggest hug and told her that in just a few moments she would be turned into a princess. Emilie was just thrilled!

Emilie's name was called and she got to meet her Fairy Godmother in Training. Her name was Ashley. She was just wonderful! I was afraid Emilie wouldn't sit still, but I was pleasantly surprised!

 

[mkycrzy1971]

Wow...what a way to start vacation! I am so glad you were allowed on the plane without your ID...at least you did not have to go back home. We love POR....it is so peaceful, especially in the early morning hours. Sooooooo....did your mom find your ID and send it to you???

 

[ammeador2]

Wow...what a way to start vacation! I am so glad you were allowed on the plane without your ID...at least you did not have to go back home. We love POR....it is so peaceful, especially in the early morning hours. Sooooooo....did your mom find your ID and send it to you???

Yes she did! $20 and I got it by Monday! I was really lucky! I am so happy they let me slide. I wonder if this happens often!

 

[ammeador2]

So, after BBB we decided to get Emilie's pic taken at the studio. DH and Aidan stayed behind, he wanted to people watch in the shade and they went into shops and had some boy time. While we were waiting for Emilie's photo shoot, Pinocchio and Gepato came skipping through, this too scared Emilie. I was really starting to worry that she was going to be like this with all characters.

After her pics, we back to find the rest of our family. He had a great spot in the shade to watch the parade and then the rain came! And it rained and rained for about an hour and half. Cleared the park out! We stayed put and went into shops and then put the kids ponchos on and kept on walking. Then it started to cool down, it wasn't so hot anymore but the park was practically empty!

Later that day we had dinner at CRT. Emilie got to be Princess of the Day. I was so excited for her. She was just thrilled. She got to meet Cinderella first and they had their photo taken together, then she got to lead the rest of the people up the stairs to dinner. Our table was decorated with Pixie Dust. Our server was excellent. His name was Alexis. He really took great care of us. My DH is very picky so he kept bringing out diffrent things for him to try! I was impressed. I thought the food was good and this was a great experience for us.

After dinner we were able to walk onto many rides with no wait. We rode the Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, Magic Carpets, Philharmagic, and many others.

Emilie wanted to meet some more characters so went to Toon Town. She wanted to meet the princesses so we were waiting in line. This was a 45 min wait! No big deal, what else are we going to do right?

A CM came up to us and told my family he needed to talk to us. I am freaking out! I asked him if we did anything wrong, he replied with "come over here ma'am and I will tell you what you did wrong!" He took us out of line and walked us over away from the other guests and said "your daughter is the perfect Cinderella and I don't want her to have wait in this long line, I am going to walk you and your family through the back." This was not a "Year of a Million Dreams..." But this made our day. My husband and I were so excited and we felt really special.

The princesses loved Aidan too. They kept kissing his head. He was a little shy! The photopass photographers took some great pics of this. I will get those posted when I get the cd!

After this, we headed back to the hotel. We were beat! And we had a busy day at Epcot planned.

 

[mkycrzy1971]

Mom saves the day...or trip Thank Heavens!!! By-the-way...both of your children are absolutely darling!!! And the CM was correct...Emilie does make the perfect Cinderella Okay...hanging by the edge of my seat for more...

 

[aksunshine]

Awww, Melissa! You didn't tell me about the ID mishap! I love the picture of Aidan and Emilie with the big cheese. Tell Emilie I said hi!!!!

 

[ammeador2]

Awww, Melissa! You didn't tell me about the ID mishap! I love the picture of Aidan and Emilie with the big cheese. Tell Emilie I said hi!!!!

I will tell her. She wore her Minnie Mouse hairbow you made her for school pic day.

She wants to play with Isabelle. You guys need to come down soon, or we need to come up when you get your lights turned back on!

 

[ammeador2]

Day Three:

Our day for Epcot we had an early breakfast reservation at Akerhus. Emilie's hair still looked perfect from BBB the previous day so I let her keep it up. She wore her crown and her hot pink Minnie Mouse dress. She was ready to meet the princesses.

At Akerhus, the breakfast was great. Breakfast is DH's fave meal of the day so he was in heaven with the bacon and eggs. The kids enjoyed the fruit as well as the bacon, eggs and sausages and I loved the potatos! They were fabulous! We got to meet Snow White, Aurora, Jasmine, Mulan, and Belle.

Emilie and Jasmine (this was Aidan's fave princess. He kept blowing her kisses but wouldn't take a pic with her)

Emilie and Snow White

Emilie and Mulan

Emilie and Aurora

After breakfast we wandered around waiting for Epcot to open. Once everything opened we just wandered around trying to decide what we were going to. Emilie wanted to meet Mickey so we went to stand in line. No short cut for this one, we had to wait it out. Lots of cute photopass pics as well, man can't wait to get that cd!

Family with Minnie

We wandered a little more, we saw Belle and Beast, didn't get a chance to meet them! And then we found a little corner with a jackpot of characters. Aidan passed out in the stroller so I took Emilie to meet them. She met Gideon (drunk cat from Pinocchio), Lilo & Stitch, and the Penguins from Mary Poppins. We took a lot of great photos. After I took the pics I was checking them to make sure they were all up to our satisfaction. and they were wonderful..or so I thought.

 

[ammeador2]

So, I was super excited to show my DH the pics of Emilie that I had just taken. So we ran back over to France and saw him and Aidan sitting under a tree with all the beautiful purple flowers. So we join him and I start showing him the pics. My camera says.."FILE ERROR" and there is a blank blue screen! For 30 pics plus some video!! I was really ready to cry now. We tried everything we could think of, and some of the pics we took earlier that day at breakfast were there, but everything else was gone. Even some of the BBB pics were gone. I couldn't use that memory stick for the rest of the trip. Thank God I decided to grab an extra one on our way out the door.

We just walked around Epcot some more, just trying to take it all in. We did do the "Honey I shrunk the audience.." we weren't too impressed with this one. Emilie said the mice scared her! And I lost my sunglasses. Darn the luck.

The kids did get to meet Goofy, Pluto, Mickey, Minnie, Chip, and Dale. Emilie loves Chip and Dale but I think this may be related to her loving Alvin and the Chipmunks! lol.

We headed over to the Nemo ride and the ride was down, so we decided to see if we could check in early for our dinner at the coral reef. We got a table next to the glass. It was great! I had requested a diver and we got that as well. The diver swam up with a sign that said "Emilie and Aidan, Have fun in Disney! Love Mickey" Emilie was thrilled and Aidan didn't know what to think about the diver! I'm just happy he didn't get scared. He loved watching the fish! We had special menus that I had made up, different one for my DH than the ones I made up for the kids. This was a nice surprise for them.

I wish I had some pics of this, but camera wasn't working!

After dinner, we ran into Mary Poppins and Alice. Emilie thinks Alice is very silly.

We decided to head back to the hotel, we had another busy day planned out for tomorrow.

 

[ammeador2]

The kids were worn out from the day before we just let them wake up whenever..we didn't have any big reservations for the day..well other than a late lunch at the Garden Grill in Epcot. So we decided to head over to Hollywood Studios.

We had a mission for Hollywood Studios...The new Toy Story Ride. We made a beeline there and got into line. The wait was about 20 mins or so. We had so much fun!! We deperately wanted to ride this one again! But when we finished riding the wait was 50 mins! Crazy!!

Emilie wanted to meet Woody and Buzz so we went to get in line..and waited about 15 mins and never moved. So we said forget it! She loves those little green aliens from Toy Story. She follows me around the house saying..."you've saved my life, I'm enternally grateful!" We saw some army men and then decided that we needed to head towards Epcot. We did not want to be late! And everyday that we stayed at Disney the LONGER we had to wait for a bus!!

We hoped on a bus and headed to Epcot. We checked into the resturant and waited for our table. I have motion sickness since I've became a mother...wonderful the way your body changes! And I was using those motion sickness patches. It was time for me to change patches so I took the old one off. I didn't bring the new one! opps! I totally forgot this resturant rotates! It's a slow rotation but enough to make you a little . Thank goodness I made it! DH started feeling a little .

The resturant wasn't very crowded so the kids got a lot of character time. Which Emilie loved this..and poor Aidan got picked on a lot by Chip and Dale! By the end of this visit Aidan started to feel a little better around the characters.

Doesn't it look like Aidan is getting choked by a chipmunk?!

Poor Aidan they would come up behind him and rub his head and he would laughing so hard (he thought it was me) then they would lean in give him a kiss and then Aidan would growl. It was so funny!

 

[The Moonk's Mom]

Your kids are so cute! It looks and sounds like you were having a great time...hey what's a vacation without some mishaps!

The same thing happened with my old camera. I was so mad!

 

[mommylovesdisneymore]

What adorable pictures!!

 

[ammeador2]

I never thought that could happen! I mean it's digital you're not supposed to loose everything! I called Sony when I got home and they tried to help me..that of course didn't work so they gave me another number and that company said for $500 they may be able to recover those pics! Those pics are priceless but I can't swing that!

Your kids are so cute! It looks and sounds like you were having a great time...hey what's a vacation without some mishaps!

The same thing happened with my old camera. I was so mad!

Thank you!

What adorable pictures!!

 

[ammeador2]

Ok so we are still in Epcot we finished our late lunch and then found some characters. I was really hoping that we might be able to salvage some of the pics we lost by finding those characters but no luck. Emilie got to meet Donald, Baloo and the mice. We took some pics got some autographs and Aidan took a nap.

Tonight Aaron and I had set up a babysitter thru KNO. I told them while making the ressie that a younger college student or a grandmotherly figure would do fine for my kiddos. We get back to the hotel I make sure everythig is in order before the sitter comes...kids are bathed and are playing and we get a knock at the door. Josie our grandmotherly babysitter is in our room. She was nice but kind of odd. As she was talking to us a storm started coming thru. Josie told us a jillion times that Orlando, FL is the lightning capital of the world...this became my DH's quote of the week! My kiddos did really well with her. I would do this again.

DH and I grabbed our ponchos and went to Hollywood Studios. I was dying to ride the Aerosmith Coaster. I love roller coasters! and I wanted DH to see the ToT. It was pouring! Thank goodness it was EMH!! We were able to walk onto many rides with no wait. It was great! We wanted to do Toystory Mania but the darn line was still too long! I think everyone headed there sicne it was raining!

We ate some dinner at PizzaPlanet. That was fun, didn't have time to play any games tho. Ah well maybe next year.

He then headed over to Rockin Rollin Coaster (is that even the name of it?!) the line was sooo long! Then a man came up to us and asked if we had fastpasses? I said "no" and he said" here take these. My kids are chicken and they are refusing to ride and I don't want these to go to waste." THank you!

I loved that ride! That was great! I was truly impressed with that coaster. After that ride it was time to catch the bus and head back to our room.

Did I tell you that my DH was having such a great time that he and I talked it out and decided to cancel our beach plans for 2 more days at Disney?! We were going to stay our last 2 nights at POP but after seeing that line at the bus stop there was no way I could do it. I know there are a ton of busses but there were so many people! We we opted for CSR instead.

Back to my story..we get back to our room. The kiddos are fast asleep. And DH and I had a great time together, oh and No one got struck by lightning!

 

[The Moonk's Mom]

Phew...I was sweating the whole lightning thing!!!!

Glad you got dreamed by a fellow guest...cool!

 

[ammeador2]

Too funny! If we were struck by lightning that would swear off Disney for my whole family!

 

[ammeador2]

This day we went to Animal Kingdom. This was my first time to this park and I did not realize that the park closed at 5!! We got up early so we could get our things packed. Orginally we were going to be leaving for the beach today. But since we decided to stay we had to get things packed and ready for the bellhop to take our things over to CSR from CBR. After he came to pick up our million bags!! We headed over to the bus stop.

On previous days, there were a ton of AK buses, today there were hardly any. I bet we waited 40 minutes for a bus! Thank God we didn't have any ADRs. Some other people at the stop did have ADRs so they called the hotel several times to complain about no bus! They say to allow 1 hour for travel time, in this case you needed to allow more than that!

Finally the bus comes and it's standing room only. The bus stops at one of the water parks and a couple of people get off and even more get on! It was crazy!

We get to AK at last! We really wanted to the safari we stopped for some fastpasses and then went to grab some lunch. We went to Pizzafari. I had a sandwich it was very tasty! Dh had pizza which was good. Emilie got the PBJ and didn't like it but she did eat 2 bags of grapes! Aidan was just being mean.

So we headed over to the KS fastpass line and we didn't have to wait all. This was great! My kiddos loved this!! Here are some pics of the animals we saw.

Elephants

More Animals

After this we did some wandering around and we met a CM that started talking to my daughter. The CM comes up to me and says "Excuse me, do you have goats at home?" DH and I started laughing and we said "no, we don't why?" Apparently, the CM asked Emilie if she shared her yard with any animals at home, and she replied with "yes, we have goats at home!"

It was funny!