Magical Mickey Birthday Bash - 5reikids does Disney (sans 2 kids!)

[strollerfreak]

We had been waiting until the perfect time to take our kids to Disney. We are a frugal family and with 5 kids, that makes Disney a tough cookie to crumble on a shoestring budget! We also knew that our only daughter was getting to the age where the princesses were going to quickly become passe' and we wanted her to get to experience the Princess fun before she outgrew that wonderful age. Yet at the same time, we wanted our kids to be old enough to actually REMEMBER their first Disney trip...I mean if we're gonna shell out that kind of dough, I'd like them to remember at least SOMEthing from it, right?!

So waaaay back in July I happened to be putzing around and took a gander at the Disney website and clicked on the dining reservations tab. Oh, CRT would be fun to take my DD to...OH! There is an 8:35am seating for 2 available...ON MY DD'S BIRTHDAY!!!! I had heard that CRT was next to impossible to get once you crossed that 180 day threshold practically, so I called my husband and told him that I was booking breakfast for my daughter & I with the princesses and "thatifwedecidelaterwe'renotgoingwecancancelit" and hung up the phone. So. We had a breakfast reservation and no vacation planned....and that was the start.

For the next month or so, my husband & I would discuss the if's & when's of the possibility of this trip. Finally at the beginning of August he gave the go-ahead and I started my in-depth research here on the DISboards and with my Disney experienced Mom-friends and others. By mid-August I rounded up my info, gave it to my hubby and he gave me the go ahead to book our trip.

Since we were going to have 5 people going (we decided to leave the 4 & 2yo at home with Grandma to make this a stress free vacation, and to make it easier on our wallet) we knew that our room/resort options were going to be limited in our budget range. At the last minute Disney offered the free dining plan during the week we were shooting for, and it wound up being a better deal for us to upgrade to Port Orleans - Riverside (so we had that trundle!) than it would be for us to have a Suite at one of the POP/ASResorts. Not only would we get the full dining plan instead of the QS dining plan, but we would go from a value resort to a moderate resort as well. When all was said and done, even with a preferred room at POR it cost us less than what we were going to pay at POP/ASResorts. (Can't remember which one it was that we were originally looking at now.)

Once things started arriving in the mail I decided that this trip was going to be a surprise for them...we had been telling them for so long that there was no way we could afford to take them all to Disney, that it would be perfect to surprise them with this trip!

So stay tuned...does the secret stay a secret or does it get blown out of the water?

 

[strollerfreak]

The week before we were scheduled to leave for Disney I knew our kids still had no clue of the impending Disney trip. I started rounding up the laundry, and since the weather here in Michigan had turned cold I had gotten out long pants & long sleeve shirts, but I had yet to put away the shorts & t-shirts as my older two boys play jr. football and they were still wearing them to practices. However, I did wash their laundry and secretly squirrel away all their warm weather clothing and only give them their cold weather stuff to put away after it was folded. They never noticed.

Score: Sneaky Mom 1 Kids 0

I also had bought my daughter a gently used bike, but I had a friend of ours pick it up, and then I was supposed to go pick up the bike from their house. Of course the day I'm supposed to go pick it up my oldest child decides that he is too sick to go to school. Argh! But I'm Sneaky Evil Mom, so I tell said child that he can stay home sick from school, but that he is to stay in bed, and if he needs something he is to call me.

Score: Sneaky Mom 2 Kids 0

That Friday I had made plans to pick up homework for my #2 & #3 kids at their school. I had forgot that they were off school that day for teacher in-service. So I took the 2 youngest with me, and told #2 & #3 that I had to go up to their school to do paperwork and that I'd be back in 20minutes. (Kid#1 goes to a different school.) Ran up to the school and picked up the homework packets that their teachers had prepared for them.

Score: Sneaky Mom 3 Kids 0

Saturday we all went to Grandma's house to hang out at her house. We hadn't spent time with them in a few weeks and we figured this would be a good way to ease the two younger kids into the Camp Grandma routine. Much to our surprise, in the afternoon my 4 year old asks my husband, "Can I stay at Grandma's house?" my husband promptly replied, "How long do you want to stay at Grandma's?" "6 days" says the 4yo. Perfect. Excellent. Then my "mama's boy" 2yo pipes up, "I stay wif Gramma too!!!" Really?!?!

Sneaky Mom WINS!!!

So Saturday evening rolls around and we give Grandma the bag we had packed and brought for the younger two boys, and head on back to our house. My husband and I quickly get the majority of our scavenger hunt clues ready (including bringing in the "new" bike for our daughter that had hidden in our spare car for 5 days, LOL), and excited to surprise our kids in the morning we headed to bed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf23r8qKGMA&feature=share

 

[strollerfreak]

So I left you with the video of our kids finding out that we were going to Disney. Now let me remind you that we've been drilling into our kids heads that we couldn't afford to go to Disney for their entire lives. Which is why they were so confused and bewildered when they figured out the clues and just kind of stood there in shock and awe. LOL

After they came around, and went to the basement to get their suitcases (which were already packed and waiting for them...nothing like hiding stuff in plain sight!) the boys both had their last football games of the season. Our younger son's team was undefeated for the season, and stayed that way. Our older son's team hadn't won a game yet, but that last game things started to come together and they ended up with a tie game. Our son plays safety and had so many tackles it wasn't even funny...he was fired up! Towards the end of the game, he had wound up on the bottom of a pile-up and was taking his time getting off the ground, so my husband in his ever so encouraging way stands up and shouts (they play at the local HS field which is a HUGE stadium) "IF YOU DON'T GET OFF THE GROUND YOU AREN'T GOING TO DISNEY!!!" to which all of his coaches and lots of the parents started laughing.

Which takes me to here...

Day 0 (Saturday - Travel Day)

Our flight was scheduled to leave Detroit at 5:20pm, so after watching both boys football games, we hightailed it back home so Reilly (Reikid#1) could shower and then took off for the airport. We arrived at the gate with about 20 minutes before we were to start boarding...not really enough time to grab something to eat, and we had to talk to the gate attendant to try and get us seated somewhat together since we had 5 stand alone seat when we printed off our boarding passes, so we just hung out at the gate. Quickly it was time to board though, with Reigan (Reikid#3, our daughter) & I sitting together, and then Bart, Reilly & Reide (Reikid#2) sitting somewhat together a few rows ahead of us. Reigan worked on some of her make-up work for school and then asked to watch part of a movie.

I read one of my library books and it was all good. Once we landed in Orlando we decided to get something to eat at the airport since we didn't know how long it would take for our bus to actually get us to the airport. I was bummed because it was Sunday so the Chik-fil-a was closed in the food court...and actually most of the places were either closed or closing and it was just barely 9pm! After eating some Panda Express from what they had left, we headed downstairs to where the Magical Express buses were and checked in.

We got on the bus at about 9:45...

and arrived at our hotel around 10:15.

After checking in, we got lost on our way to our building. It's a big resort and we stayed in the Alligator Bayou section which isn't "neat & orderly" as to where the buildings are so we kind of got turned around. Finally made it to our room some time between 10:30-11pm.

The kids were wound up still but SO TIRED and we finally got them to sleep around 11:30 and we crashed shortly there after just after midnight. Of course part of the problem was that we were waiting for the bellhop to deliver our Garden Grocers order. We had called within 5 minutes of arriving to our room since it was all our breakfast for the whole week and we knew we didn't want to wait around in the morning to have it delivered! They accidentally grabbed the wrong order, made it to our room, realized it was the wrong order, went back, got the right order and then had to make other deliveries as well, so it took over an hour to get it...which normally I wouldn't care about...but it had been a LONG day and we were more than ready for bed!

 

[strollerfreak]

Day 1 - EPCOT (Monday)

Bart had threatened the kids within an inch of their life that they were NOT to wake us up before 8am. They really did pretty good, and it was a few minutes before 8am that we could hear them rustling around in their beds. Since we didn't have ParkHopper tickets, I had researched which days were forecasted to be better crowd wise and then picked what days we were going to do what parks, and then made dining reservations after that. So, since Monday was the only "green" day out of the whole week for EPCOT, Monday it was. After we putzed around in the room getting dressed and eating some breakfast, we grabbed our stuff and walked over to the bus stop by our room. (We paid for a "preferred" room so that we wouldn't be 53 miles from a bus stop or the main building...since we were planning on using the buses for all our transportation, this was well worth it.) We noticed that they had two bus stops, one for Magic Kingdom & Hollywood Studios, and one for EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, Blizzard Beach & Downtown Disney. What we failed to notice was that the buses said where they were going on the front of them, and since Bart was ON THE PHONE (grrr...but it was for a good cause, though at the time I didn't know that!) we wound up on a bus that was going to Animal Kingdom. Ooops. The driver told us that he was headed to All Star Sports, and then EPCOT if we just wanted to stay on the bus. (Thank You!) So with a longer than usual ride, we eventually made it to EPCOT. After making it through the turnstiles and the bag check area, we headed over to The Land pavilion and grabbed FastPasses for Soarin'. Since we were in there, we also rode the Living with the Land boat ride thingy.

After that we went to Future World and got in line for Space Mountain. Reide & Reigan liked it...Reilly hated it. (Which was to be the theme for the whole week...LOL) Then we went over to ride the Tomorrowland Speedway. Reide & Reigan got little driver's licenses from the lady that was doing the loading/unloading of the cars. Reilly was bummed that he didn't get one. Then we went on The Seas with Nemo & Friends and did the Turtle Talk with Crush. Rockin' Reilly wound up being one of the kids that Crush talked to! I tried to video it on my camera but didn't press the right button...I have a love/hate relationship with the video feature on my camera. LOL After that we headed over to the Innoventions building because the boys wanted to do the Kim Possible Adventure and that's where you got the "kimmunicators" at. We wandered through there, and then found the Kim Possible booth and got our "assignment", we were supposed to start in Italy...which was about the furthest start point you could get. By that time it was about noon, and we had reservations at Le Chefs du France at 1:10, so we decided to just start making our way towards France. I had printed off some Letterboxes that had been planted in Epcot (one for each country!) and we stopped and picked up Canada before we ate. We also tried to get the UK one, but it had gone missing. When we arrived in France, there were some guys doing a balancing act out in front of our restaurant so we stopped and watched them for a few minutes, then I saw out of the corner of my eye someone dressed in pink. It was Princess Aurora! Yippee!!! I told Bart to take the boys and check in for our reservation and Reigan & I would be right back. I pulled her off to the side, and pointed to Aurora, and asked her, "Who do you see?" Her eyes got all big and she looks at me and says, "It's Sleeping Beauty!! Princess Aurora!!!" so we went over there and Reigan got her picture taken with Aurora, and Aurora asked if her fairy god-mother was going to make her a 7-layer cake for her birthday. (not so much! LOL)

After we got a couple pictures, we headed back over to Le Chefs...Bart & the boys were just coming back from somewhere and the maitre'd (don't know how to spell that!) called our names and we walked right in! Couldn't have timed it better! Since we were on free dining, I ordered the Prix with French Onion soup, a Ham & Cheese sandwich and Chocolate Mousse. Bart got the Prix with Lobster Bisque, Macaroni & Cheese (not Kraft dinner!) and Chocolate Mousse. Bart wound up eating my French Onion soup since I didn't like the flavor of cheese that was in it. My toasted Ham & Cheese was good, but sooo much more than what I needed. I only ate about half of it and was over full. When we were finishing up our lunch Remy (from Ratatouille) came around. I had planned our reservations so that as long as he was working he should make it to our table while we were eating, and apparently I planned well! The kids had fun talking to Remy & his handler, and then when Remy moved on our dessert came shortly there after.

After lunch we headed back towards The Land as it was time for our Soarin' FastPasses. We had no idea what Soarin' was going to be like, just that all of our friends had told us "AS SOON AS YOU GET THERE get a FastPass for it." As we got to the ticket taker in the FastPass que, Reilly decides that he needs to go to the bathroom and he needs to go NOW. So my husband takes him, and the other two kids & I get in line. We figure we'll meet back up after the ride. Now I need to mention, the smell of The Land pavilion had been irritating my stomach every time we had went in there, so after our heavy lunch and then that smell, it didn't surprise me that it upset his stomach too.
So we get off Soarin' and my kids & I use the restroom, and we sit down on the benches there and wait for my husband & oldest kiddo. As we're sitting there, I'm thinking, "They need to be done soon or I'm gonna have to get out of here. Yeeeccch." and my phone started buzzing at me with a text message letting me know where my hubby was. Met up with him, and told him we needed to get OUT of that building or it was going to make me sick to my stomach. Once we were outside, my oldest again started complaining that he didn't feel good. I told my husband that if he needed to use the bathroom again that he was going to have to take him. So they went BACK inside...
After coming back out, we walked over to Test Track, where he needed to use the bathroom AGAIN. Grabbed FastPasses for Test Track and then decided that it would be a good idea to head back to the resort and take a break for a while since the oldest wasn't feeling well.

This time we got on the right bus and made our way back to our hotel room. When we got there, we found this little guy on our bed.

The kids were excited to see it, but sadly that was the only towel animal we got all week.

I called and cancelled our Garden Grill reservation when we got back as well. Between the late lunch, the upset tummies, the early (for us, 5:35) timeslot, and the smell of that building we decided we'd just wing it later. After about an hour and a half of downtime, resting and/or working on homework, the kids decided that they wanted to go check out the main pool.

After an hour in the pool, the kids were shriveled up like prunes and getting cold so we coaxed them out of the pool, headed up to the room and got changed back into our clothes. We headed back over to the bus stop and got on the right bus this time and headed back over to EPCOT.

We headed straight for Test Track since it was time to use those Fast Passes! Since my hubby is an engineer (for Ford though) and I'm a CPST (carseat tech, but I too have an engineering background) we thought it was a GREAT que to stand in!

All the kids liked this one, and as soon as we were done we decided that we'd ride it again after we ate some dinner.

We decided that Mexican sounded good and since there was also another letterbox in Mexico that I could pick up we headed over that way. It was starting to get crowded since IllumiNATIONS was that night, but we were blessed when another family actually chased us down to give us their table right at the Hacienda de San Angel Inn counter service area.

The Nachos were HUGE...and tasty! I shared mine with Reikid#2 and both of us were full afterward. When we finished eating we cleaned up our area and then snagged another family that was looking for a table and gave our table to them. (Disney Karma right? ) We went and found the Mexico letterbox and then headed back over to Test Track. We walked in and they promptly closed the ride line down about 10 people after us. Yaaay! Since we actually had to wait in the que this time, my husband and I used this time to teach our kids about the different areas that they had test procedures set up to demonstrate along the way. If we're pulling them out of school we gotta do something educational right? We make our way back up to the loading platform and now it's our turn!

When we come out of the building on the speed section we can see the IllumiNATIONs fireworks going off!!! How cool!

So we jump off the ride at the end and hightail it to the exit since we know that means that the park is closing and we don't want to wait forever for a bus.

The next day is green for Magic Kingdom so that's where we are headed in the morning...

 

[joy13]

I'm here

 

[kimmylaj]

loved your video, cant wait to read more. i love reading about kids first trips

 

[strollerfreak]

Tuesday had been a no parks green day, but Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom were both yellow. I figured we were going to want two days at MK and I was right!

Tuesday I climbed out of bed before anyone else was up, got dressed, and gathered my daughter's birthday present that I had packed unwrapped and all my supplies into my backpack and headed to the Lobby. I had purchased a Disney Parks Cinderella dress for my daughter on eBay back in August, and had cut wrapping paper to the correct size & brought it along with a box & a roll of tape so I could wrap her present once we got there. (I am an efficient traveler! LOL) Once in the lobby I wrapped her present, then asked at the guest services counter if I could have the present delivered to our room later in the day with a note from Cinderella telling her that she was invited to breakfast at the castle on Wednesday morning. They said that they would take care of it so I headed back over to the room to see if everyone was rolling out of bed yet.

When I arrived back at the room everyone was up & at 'em, so I quickly grabbed a donut to eat and we gathered the kids and headed out the door.
The kids told us that they wanted to ride the monorail so we figured it would be good to take a bus to EPCOT and then ride the monorail from EPCOT to MK.

As we walked up to the bus station, the EPCOT bus was just pulling away. My husband joking said, "Hey there goes our bus!" and then meandered over to the bus stop to wait for the next one. Little did he know that was to be a reoccurring theme throughout our trip. When the next bus got there we all got on and we arrived at EPCOT shortly. We made our way up to the monorail station and had no trouble finding an empty car. We arrived at the ticketing & transportation center and realized we could take a ferry or the monorail over to MK. We took some pictures at the T&TC and then the kids decided that they wanted to take the ferry over to the MK.

We've ridden the hydro-jet ferries to Mackinaw Island before and we were hesitant to ride on the upper level where the kids wanted to ride, but since it was their vacation we obliged...and it turned out to be fine. This ferry doesn't go nearly as fast as the Mackinaw ones do!

I had decided that since we were going to do two days at MK that we would split it up into the two sides of the park; Tomorrowland & Fantasyland one day and then Liberty Square, Adventureland & Frontierland for the other day.

Today was to be Tomorrowland & Fantasyland.

We stopped just inside the gates and Bart took a picture of the kids and me.

Then we were moving on! We had fun things to do! No more taking boring pictures now!

But I did snag this one as we were walking up main street...

The first place we headed to was Space Mountain! I remembered riding it when I was at Disney in '96 with my high school band, and I figured we might as well start off with a doozy if we're gonna start off with anything! So we grabbed a fastpass for it, and also got in line. The oldest was whining that he didn't want to ride it, but we overruled him and told him that he was going to ride it once...if we came back to fastpass it and he didn't want to ride it then then he didn't have to. The younger two thought it was ok, though I agreed with them that I didn't like it when I was completely in the dark and we were moving. After the ride the oldest told us that he was NOT going back on that ride.

We figured we'd better do something tame after that, so after making a pit stop at the bathrooms, we headed over to Tomorrowland Speedway. Reigan decided that she wanted to ride with Dad. Reilly was tall enough to drive himself. Annnnd....Reide was irritated that he had to ride with me. The kid drove 40mph go-karts this summer in a racing class, but couldn't drive the Tomorrowland Speedway by himself. The lady that was loading the cars grabbed my camera and took pictures of all of us as we were getting ready to roll out.

As we were rolling out we figured out WHY he couldn't drive by himself! The gas pedal on those things were so hard to push down he couldn't get it pushed down far enough to drive up & out of the loading area! So for the rest of the ride, I pushed the gas pedal and took pictures while he drove.

Rubbin' is racin' right Mommy?

When we came back into the loading area the lady that helped us in gave the kids little driver's licenses. Reilly was irritated that he drove by himself and that he didn't get one. Such is life buddy...such is life.

We decided at that point that we were ready for lunch. So we decided to just hit up Cosmic Ray's for counter service. I had the Pulled Pork (which was pretty good for theme park food) & french fries. Hubby had rotisserie chicken and green beans. (He said his was alright, but that mine was better since he tried a bite of mine.)

After lunch we started wandering towards FantasyLand but we stopped when we saw Rapunzel! There were two princesses that my daughter wanted to meet on this trip, Rapunzel & Tiana...so this was a "must do!". So while Reigan & I stood in line for Rapunzel, Daddy & the boys went back to the Speedway and rode it again.

Finally it was our turn!

We had gotten the idea to bring a photo mat to have the characters sign from another DISboard'er, and I missed the money shot of Rapunzel acting silly with it before she signed it for us.

After Rapunzel we met back up with Daddy & the boys and headed into Fantasyland where I insisted that everyone ride on Dumbo. I mean isn't that a required ride for all Disney Noobies? I got to ride by myself, Reigan rode with Daddy and the boys rode together.

When the kids had acquired their flying elephant licenses Reigan insisted that we ride the carousel. Yippee. They tend to make me nauseous but again, their vacation! (Though we did veto the Tea Cups and told them that we were NOT riding those.)

We picked out our horses...

....and I'll pick up here when I get back from getting a kid from school!

 

[strollerfreak]

Ok...back from the school run of the afternoon! ...So we left off picking our horses on the Carousel.

My husband was just as THRILLED to be riding the horsies as I was...

So he decided to pose for the camera instead...

Not one to be outdone, I posed for the camera too...but that picture is on his memory card and not mine. Too bad for you! Let's suffice it to say that when I sat down and saw that this was my horse's number...

My husband said that it was only fitting...and that apparently Disney was trying to tell me something. Luckily for both of us, that carousel was the shortest carousel we've ever ridden. I think it only went around 3 times and was done.

Then the kids all tried to pull the sword from the stone...

But apparently none of them are the heir apparent to merry olde England.

Then I realized that a letterbox that was on our "to do" list was practically right in front of us, so we put on our super sneaky stealthy moves and found it without anyone being the wiser and stamped in on the steps of Cinderella's castle.

We then walked over to the It's a Small World ride, where totally intending to torture my children, we got in line. Quickly though my husband realized that if we wanted FastPasses for the Peter Pan ride that NOW would be the best time to grab them, so he got out of line with all our Keys to the World and went and got them and came back while we were still waiting in the queue.

After thoroughly torturing my husband and children with the creepy doll/kids and the annoying song (The sound system that isn't as tinny as I remember from when I came as a kid in the mid-80's) we went and grabbed a couple bottles of water and then went back across to the Peter Pan ride even though our FastPasses weren't technically "good" for another 35 minutes.

We knew that we were about ready to be done at the park for the time being, so we decided to ask if we could use them early, otherwise we were just going to take off. Luckily the CM at the entrance told us, "We're not that busy right now, go ahead."...so on the Peter Pan ride we went. Earlier in the day we had seen the wait time ranging from 40-60minutes. We were SO glad that we did NOT wait to ride that ride...so not worth that wait time.

As we headed out of the park we decided that we were going to have the Photopass photographer at the end of mainstreet take a family picture of us...but after realizing that there were probably 6 other familys standing there waiting for the same thing, we decided to just do a camera swap with another family that was doing the same thing and also had a Canon camera.

We also made a pit-stop at the mercantile for my daughter to get a Minnie Mouse stuffie and a Goofy hat for my oldest. Then we headed back out to the bus stop.

What we didn't realize was that there was a bus stop RIGHT AT MK...since we had come in on the ferry/monorail, we thought that we had to go back to the T&TC to catch a bus. FAIL. When we asked a CM at the T&TC she looked at us like we had three heads and told us that we needed to go BACK to MK to get our bus. Forget that...so we rode the monorail over to EPCOT and caught our bus from there. We were now WELL acquainted with the bus stop at EPCOT.

...and here I'll leave you hanging again as the bus garage just called and asked me to meet my kids bus at a different stop because the bus driver missed our stop...Just kind of seems fitting...LOL

 

[strollerfreak]

So...we left off getting the bus at EPCOT yet again...

Once we got back to our room, we were kind of bummed to see that the bellhops hadn't made "the delivery" to our room yet and it was nearly 5pm. The kids got to work on homework & reading. My hubby settled in to read, and I decided to go looking for a letterbox series that was supposedly planted at our resort.

As I headed out the door, I noticed a bellhop pulling up to our building on a golfcart, but didn't really think much of it. No sooner than I had made it over by the river, my husband called me on my cell phone to tell me, "You have a VERY excited daughter with a birthday present from Cinderella here." So I hoofed it back over to our room.

Then she started ripping into the present. And she was very surprised to see that Cinderella shops at Gymboree. (I reused a Gymboree box from this past christmas...LOL)

But she kept going...until she realized what it was that Cinderella sent her.

She was VERY excited to find out that she was going to get to meet Cinderella at the castle and eat breakfast with all the princesses...

Afterwards the kids got back to their homework, hubby got back into his book, and I did actually try to go letterboxing. After finding the general area where two of the boxes were supposed to be and getting carried away by mosquitoes and finding NEITHER box I gave up and went back to the room where I walked in and my husband promptly told me, "Holy Cow...you have like 8 mosquito bites on your FACE." Yeah. Thanks. Like I hadn't noticed? And those were just the ones on my FACE...we won't even mention or count the rest of them that I had acquired on the rest of my body in that mere 15 minutes I was gone.

Then it was time to head out for our dinner reservations...we had ADR's for Whispering Canyon Cafe at Wilderness Lodge. Friends of mine had recommended it and I actually wound up with two ADR's for the week for there, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. So we headed out to the bus stop and we can hear a bus pulling away. Yup, you guessed it...we missed our bus. Luckily there wasn't too much time between that bus and the next one to EPCOT where we were going to switch buses to get to Wilderness Lodge.

When we arrived and checked in they told us they were running a bit behind, so we went and checked out the gift shop, went to the bathroom and then our buzzer went off and our table was ready.

Our server came over and introduced himself to us and we gave him our drink orders...my husband and kids were THRILLED to find out that the milkshakes were included in the dining plan drinks and they all ordered one. Since I don't drink milkshakes I was left with the usual usual...and after being at MK all day all I really wanted to drink was water. So I told our server that I just wanted water...and he teased me that I could get anything to drink off that list for free and all I wanted was the normally free water? I told him then if that was the case I wanted the "expensive free water not that cheap stuff!" so this is what he brought me...LOL

After that they had the pony races...

And shortly thereafter our food arrived. My husband & I ordered the skillet which was YUMMY! (the brisket was my favorite!) and my daughter got the cheeseburger & fries. So of course she needed ketchup for her fries...so of course we got into the act and asked for ketchup...but not until it had made it's way to a table on the OTHER side of the dining room...LOL...couldn't have it coming from the table two tables away!! But of course we couldn't hog the ketchup for long...and then it was our kids turn to take the ketchup to someone else!

Then later when we were eating dessert we needed more ketchup...to build towers with...

And our waiter was so nice that he had Reigan sing happy birthday to herself!

http://www.facebook.com/v/2128862737195

Shortly thereafter we were ready to head back to our hotel, so we caught the bus back to EPCOT, and then literally jumped off the bus and ran over to the one that was waiting to head to POR. (Phew...for once we didn't miss our bus!)

It didn't take anymore than 10 minutes in our room for the kids to get pj's on and then they crashed.

Breakfast with Cinderella was going to come really early the next morning!

 

[joy13]

Great trip so far!!!! I love the video when Reigan says "There was a new bike in the garage" and then just keeps going -lol!