mom23boyz
Wishing I Had a Magic Wand
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2004
- Messages
- 481
Cast of Characters
Me (41) Dis Board Junkie who would rather spend time planning trip than cooking dinner.
DH (41) Funder of trip and generous earner of frequent flier miles to get us there appreciates all the Disney planning, not so thrilled with the no dinners thing.
DS (10) Thrill-Seeker very excited to be going to the World. Been twice to Disneyland and loves any ride that goes fast, high or upside-down.
DS (8) Drama King charming child who loves meeting the characters, thinks hes a thrill-seeker (but is still a little frightened of upside-down) and may blow a gasket at any time. Been to Disneyland once.
DS (4) Binky Boy Happy to be going anywhere the family goes, as long as hes with Mom. Still needs a binky at night, but will assail brothers with full blows when provoked. Also been to DL once.
Trip Dates: 1/7/05 1/15/05
Monday, January 10th
Dawn of another beautiful day in Orlando. We cant believe our luck with the weather. This morning the boys are all signed up to do the Pirate Cruise at the Grand Floridian. Im excited just to see this hotel. We eat our hotel breakfast and are on our way by 8:45. Drive and park at GF and head into the lobby. They still had their Christmas decorations up, but not the gingerbread house. CM told me they were coming down that night. The hotel is beautiful and we enjoyed walking down past the pool to the marina. Several other families are already there checking in and Thrill-Seeker observes that most of the kids are pretty young. Prior to this, he had already been complaining that he was too old and didnt want to do the Pirate Cruise, so now hes got some justification. We check in at the window and are told well still be charged for him because we didnt cancel 24 hours in advance. I could see that there was no way we could make him go that defiant, determined look had appeared on his face and a scene was about to erupt if we pushed, so we ate the $29.
Drama King and Binky Boy are quite pleased to go and they get all set up with life vests and red and white striped pirate hats with Mickey ears on them. We wave good-bye and theyre off. Now DH and I had been looking forward to this 2 hour respite from the kids with a plan to sit and drink coffee in the beautiful Grand Floridian, but now we have Thrill-Seeker with us so the plan changes to monorail over to the MK for DH and TS to ride Space Mountain and me to shop (Im not entirely unhappy with this). Im alone in the MK for the first time ever and wander up Main Street and then past the Castle and into Liberty Square. Im just trying to soak it all in as much as possible. I buy a Christmas ornament and an advent calendar for next year at the Christmas Shop and then cut through to Adventureland and get myself a Dole Whip. Meet up with DH and Thrill-Seeker and take the boat back to GF to collect the other two.
We are packed up and ready for an afternoon at Blizzard Beach probably as big a highlight for our kids as any of the parks. On my list of souvenirs is some new beach towels, so we hit the gift shop first and each kid picks out a new one, and of course get more pennies pressed and I found a BB charm. We score a couple of chairs on the beach at one end of the wave pool and all three boys head out to play in the waves while DH orders us each a beer now we are relaxing. We can sit and watch them, but dont actually have to go in thats heaven to me! After awhile, Thrill-Seeker and Drama King each decide to hit the slides. We did a waterpark vacation this past summer, so they know the drill of doing a slide or two, then coming to check in with us. In this way, they can be independent, which is half the fun. Binky Boy still requires supervision, so after another 30 minutes or so of wave action, I take him up to Tikes Peak for the little kid slides, which he loves. I need to mention here that only Thrill-Seeker braved Summit Plummet and was quite proud of himself. From where we were sitting, we could actually watch him go down that was fun!
Around 4pm we head back to the hotel to relax, change and gear up for our next outing Fort Wilderness and the Hoop De Doo Revue. Both boys had read about this in their books and were excited to go. By the time we parked at the campground, it was dark. We hopped the bus to Pioneer Hall and tried to see what we could along the way. DH and I were both impressed with the idea of the cabins and would have liked to see them in the daylight, but we never made it back there to do it. We were early for our 7:15 showtime, so we got some drinks and sat in the rockers on the front porch of the tavern. The boys ran over to play at the playground and a man sitting next to us pointed out that the trees above the playground were filled with peacocks! There must have been about 20 of them never seen anything like that. We have one peacock in our local zoo and Ive never seen it in a tree.
Showtime comes and we all file in. We are seated in the back, probably because we made our PS late, but our row of tables were taller than all the others and we sat on high stools, so we could see everything really well. The kids loved the show and we enjoyed the ribs! Back on the bus and home in the car. We are totally wiped out and plan to sleep in a little tomorrow.
On to Epcot
Me (41) Dis Board Junkie who would rather spend time planning trip than cooking dinner.
DH (41) Funder of trip and generous earner of frequent flier miles to get us there appreciates all the Disney planning, not so thrilled with the no dinners thing.
DS (10) Thrill-Seeker very excited to be going to the World. Been twice to Disneyland and loves any ride that goes fast, high or upside-down.
DS (8) Drama King charming child who loves meeting the characters, thinks hes a thrill-seeker (but is still a little frightened of upside-down) and may blow a gasket at any time. Been to Disneyland once.
DS (4) Binky Boy Happy to be going anywhere the family goes, as long as hes with Mom. Still needs a binky at night, but will assail brothers with full blows when provoked. Also been to DL once.
Trip Dates: 1/7/05 1/15/05
Monday, January 10th
Dawn of another beautiful day in Orlando. We cant believe our luck with the weather. This morning the boys are all signed up to do the Pirate Cruise at the Grand Floridian. Im excited just to see this hotel. We eat our hotel breakfast and are on our way by 8:45. Drive and park at GF and head into the lobby. They still had their Christmas decorations up, but not the gingerbread house. CM told me they were coming down that night. The hotel is beautiful and we enjoyed walking down past the pool to the marina. Several other families are already there checking in and Thrill-Seeker observes that most of the kids are pretty young. Prior to this, he had already been complaining that he was too old and didnt want to do the Pirate Cruise, so now hes got some justification. We check in at the window and are told well still be charged for him because we didnt cancel 24 hours in advance. I could see that there was no way we could make him go that defiant, determined look had appeared on his face and a scene was about to erupt if we pushed, so we ate the $29.
Drama King and Binky Boy are quite pleased to go and they get all set up with life vests and red and white striped pirate hats with Mickey ears on them. We wave good-bye and theyre off. Now DH and I had been looking forward to this 2 hour respite from the kids with a plan to sit and drink coffee in the beautiful Grand Floridian, but now we have Thrill-Seeker with us so the plan changes to monorail over to the MK for DH and TS to ride Space Mountain and me to shop (Im not entirely unhappy with this). Im alone in the MK for the first time ever and wander up Main Street and then past the Castle and into Liberty Square. Im just trying to soak it all in as much as possible. I buy a Christmas ornament and an advent calendar for next year at the Christmas Shop and then cut through to Adventureland and get myself a Dole Whip. Meet up with DH and Thrill-Seeker and take the boat back to GF to collect the other two.
We are packed up and ready for an afternoon at Blizzard Beach probably as big a highlight for our kids as any of the parks. On my list of souvenirs is some new beach towels, so we hit the gift shop first and each kid picks out a new one, and of course get more pennies pressed and I found a BB charm. We score a couple of chairs on the beach at one end of the wave pool and all three boys head out to play in the waves while DH orders us each a beer now we are relaxing. We can sit and watch them, but dont actually have to go in thats heaven to me! After awhile, Thrill-Seeker and Drama King each decide to hit the slides. We did a waterpark vacation this past summer, so they know the drill of doing a slide or two, then coming to check in with us. In this way, they can be independent, which is half the fun. Binky Boy still requires supervision, so after another 30 minutes or so of wave action, I take him up to Tikes Peak for the little kid slides, which he loves. I need to mention here that only Thrill-Seeker braved Summit Plummet and was quite proud of himself. From where we were sitting, we could actually watch him go down that was fun!
Around 4pm we head back to the hotel to relax, change and gear up for our next outing Fort Wilderness and the Hoop De Doo Revue. Both boys had read about this in their books and were excited to go. By the time we parked at the campground, it was dark. We hopped the bus to Pioneer Hall and tried to see what we could along the way. DH and I were both impressed with the idea of the cabins and would have liked to see them in the daylight, but we never made it back there to do it. We were early for our 7:15 showtime, so we got some drinks and sat in the rockers on the front porch of the tavern. The boys ran over to play at the playground and a man sitting next to us pointed out that the trees above the playground were filled with peacocks! There must have been about 20 of them never seen anything like that. We have one peacock in our local zoo and Ive never seen it in a tree.
Showtime comes and we all file in. We are seated in the back, probably because we made our PS late, but our row of tables were taller than all the others and we sat on high stools, so we could see everything really well. The kids loved the show and we enjoyed the ribs! Back on the bus and home in the car. We are totally wiped out and plan to sleep in a little tomorrow.
On to Epcot
