We're Back!

We came home Sunday evening. We had a great time. It was exciting and exhausting! We did 4 parks in four days. Our days started out catching our bus to the park between 7and 8am and getting back to our hotel between 9pm and 1am. We saw just about everything we started out to see and more.

We left at 3:30am on Wednesday the 7th. When we landed we took a Disney transportation bus to our hotel and our luggage followed. We were able to check in early. We left for Animal Kingdom at about 11:30. The first thing we did was Kilmanjaro Safari. It was truly amazing. It really had the feel of an African Safari. This was the only attraction or ride we ever had to wait for. There was a mix up with my friend's son and his handicapped pass at this park. We later found out we should have never waited to get on, but after standing and waiting for an hour and a half to go on the safari I must admit our trip wouldn't have been the perfect trip it had been if we had to wait for everything we wanted to ride. We wouldn't have seen most of what we did. The wait would have been too long. Every other park we were able to walk up to and get on any ride all 4 days. Even sold out rides are open to handicapped children and adults. Disney really makes trips special for anyone with a handicap. We went and saw "It's Tough to be a Bug" in 3D. What fun! the show was great. Seeing the tree if life was something too. The carving was unbelievable!

My friend's son loves parades so we made sure we saw every parade at all the parks and the fireworks. This park had Mickey's Jammin Jungle Parade. We video taped all the parades. The characters and floats were so much fun. They have special seating for anyone in a wheel chair, so we always had front row viewing which was great.

We then were heading to Downtown Disney for the night. We had a bus driver tell us the "easy" way to get there. Lets just says none of us had ever walked that much in our lives! I am sure we ended up walking about 5 miles between actually getting to downtown Disney and then realizing we were on the wrong side of town! Had we known the bus system better (or at all) we would have known a bus runs from one end of town to the other, but it was our first night and we walked. After walking a couple of hours we decided on The House of Blues for dinner. Great food and we were all just so happy to sit! After that we all went to Disney Quest. We stayed until it closed at 11:30pm and then found our bus to go back to the hotel. The whole bus system is great and free when you stay at a Disney resort. We could go to any park or resort for free. The buses ran about every 15 minutes so we never waited too long.

Our hotel was so cute! We stayed at the music resort. They had a movie and sports resort in our complex also. We were told there were 25,000 rooms available in Disney. Our room was about a half mile from the lobby.

Thursday the 8th was our big day. We were out of the hotel by 7am and off to The Magic Kingdom! I was just as excited as the kids. My friend and her family had been there before so they knew where to go. We saw so much that day I asked younger son to help me remember. We did It's a Small World, Peter Pan Flight, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear's Ranger Spin, Snow White Scary, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (which my friend told me was a nice train ride not a roller coaster!), Jungle Cruise, Mad Tea Party, Tomorrowland Transit Authority, Swiss Family Tree House, Cinderella's Golder Carousel, the 3pm parade and the parade and fireworks at 9pm. What a day! Unfortunately younger son and I had to go home right as the 9pm parade was starting he wasn't feeling well. I think it was the lack of sleep, but older son taped the whole thing. We hardly ever went to bed before 2am. We were all so excited. When older son came back to the room that night younger son was already sleeping for awhile, so we ordered a pizza from the lobby and hung out bugging my friend next door until all hours!

Friday the 9th was MGM. It is smaller then the other parks so we had no problem seeing everything by early afternoon. They force me and older son on the Tower of Terror. I am glad to be able to say I did it, but the picture they took as we were falling 13 floors says it all :) Then my friend's son and husband went on the Rock n Roll Coaster. Then we went to my second favorite attraction. The Greatest Movie Ride. It was 22 minutes of riding through movie sets and characters since movies began. I loved it! Then The Star Wars Tour. It was a flight simulator. Next came a very fun lunch. I picked the 50's Cafee. I though burgers and milkshakes 50's theme. I was a little off :) It was a 50's theme, but it was mom's kitchen! All the seating was set up as a 50's kitchen. They have 50's looking tv's through out with clips from shows from the 50's. Our server put the silverware on the table and told us to set the table, take off our hats at the table, elbows off the table, and eat all our vegetables. It was all comfort food no kid friendly food. Well, no food our kids eat :) I asked if they had mac and cheese or grilled cheese, The waiter did bring my friend's son some mac and cheese and told the rest of us to eat what's on the menu :) After we were done eating the waiter came over and asked if I like planes or trains. I said trains. He yelled for every one's attention and told everyone to say "choo choo" as he picked up my fork and veggies left on my plate and said "chugga chugga... everyone in the restaurant said choo choo as he feed me my veggies I had left! Well that made the kids day! They thought it was hysterical! Then we park hopped to Epcot to do half of the World Showcase and then stay for IllumiNation Reflection Earth. The fire works were beautiful!

Saturday the 10th. We were up and out early heading back to Epcot. We did all the rides first. We did the Test Track, Mission Space, Soarin (My absolute favorite ride! I would have come to Disney just for this ride!), Living with the Land Boatride (amazing greenhouse and fish farm), and The Seas with Nemo and Friends. I have to back up and talk about Soarin. It was a free flying hang gliding ride 40 feet in the air with breathtaking visits to Yosemite and redwood forests. The views you see on this are unbelievable. You truly feel like you are flying over and with many views and objects. I wish I could have done this over many times, but it was already closed to all except handicapped because of the volume of people in line and the fast passes already given out. If you are every in Disney this is a MUST see. Then after a quick lunch we went to see the second half of the World Showcase. This is the reason I wanted to come to Epcot for so long. I just couldn't believe I was there the whole time I was walking around looking at all the world! It was all I thought it would be.

Saturday late afternoon my friend's mom and sister met us at our hotel. They live two hours away from Disney and the came with her sister's daughter and a friend. They were in between the boys ages and had a ball together. We went back to Downtown Disney and the kids headed off to Disney Quest for the evening and the adults went to House of Blues again for dinner. We had a great steak dinner and ended up heading back to our hotel and sitting around the pool and having a lot of fun catching up and talking. The kids stayed downtown until about 12:30. Older son ended up meeting the girls at 1am, but younger son was too tired. They hung out by the pool until 2:30 when he walked the girls across the lot to their rooms and finally went to bed.

Sunday the 11th our last day. We all hung out around the pool. My friends family stayed until we got on the bus to go to the airport. They thought the flat travelers we so cute. We all took pictures with them around the pool before we had to go. We had a 5:05pm flight back that was very full. We were happy to get home and see Milo. My niece was so nice to come stay with Milo while we were gone.

Since we have been home except for downloading and picking up pictures we have been home. Today younger son had band and older son is back in class, but he is off work this week so he is very happy about that. Any guesses on how many pictures we took? :) I was deleting each night as we went and still ended up with over 1400 pictures! Older son ended up with over 500. When I downloaded I ended up weeding out some more pictures. I ended up with 1218 on the computer and printed out 532 for our photo album. I went back through them today and sent them to a local store that will put 500 on a CD so I picked out 1000 to put on two Cd's. I just went through older son's and ordered 40 of his. I will put a couple up here and put a few on Flicker too. Older son recorded all the parades for my friend's son and fireworks along with some of our daily fun. We ended up with 5 and 1/2 hours of video too.

All in all a great vacation! I wish we could do it all over again, well after my feet stop hurting!

Glad to be back!