Disney World: Day 2 -- EPCOT and Wishes

I didn't want to make any big plans (like breakfast reservations) for our first Disney day. Like I mentioned before, our bodies were two hours behind. I didn't want to have to set an alarm or feel like we were needing to rush on our first day, I knew our excitement would be enough to get us going at first. I wasn't counting on Autumn waking quite so early, however. Our room was cold and she doesn't use blankets plus she wasn't wearing socks, I think she was just chilly. I put her in bed with Jason and I and she went right back to sleep.


But then I was up, so I hit the showers to get ready for the day. And my noises eventually woke the others. So we dressed and ate some of the breakfasty foods I'd brought (Pop Tarts, mini doughnuts, bagels, granola bars...) and headed to Epcot.

As an interesting side note, the last time Jason was at Epcot was with his late best friend, Mike (whose initials he has tattooed on his shoulder)...and the day we were there was Mike's birthday. Aww. :(

Epcot was my favorite park the two times I'd been before at 15 and 23...but I knew it wasn't going to be very interesting to my small children so I thought it'd be a good place to start on a lazy morning. I didn't want to start off with a bang at a more exciting park and then try to get them excited about Epcot later, so we started there.

The boys were very excited about Test Track but there wasn't much else they were particularly looking forward to at good ol' Epcot.

We started with the Seas with Nemo since it was something all 5 of us could do at once:






Not long after that we headed to Soarin'. We had done it a couple of times before at California Adventure but this was the first time Dalton was tall enough. I was the lucky parent to go with him and his face was priceless. His little mouth open in a giant smile, looking over at me to see if I was enjoying it as much as he was. So precious.

When it was Jason and Easton's turn to ride, Autumn and Dalton had some snuggle time:




The kids and I went to ride the boat through The Land while Jason ran for some Test Track Fast Passes:


And then the boys very favorite characters had not too long of a line. Waiting in line:


However, Autumn did not want to hug them. But the boys were rearing to go. Such a fun time interacting with Chip and Dale:

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We didn't collect any autographs on our two Disneyland trips, but I knew this time they would like that. However, I didn't want autograph books. I did that before and I never looked at them again (but also I was 15 so that may have been part of it ha ha ha). Anyway, I thought an autograph mat was a fun idea so you can see that's what we did.









And they paid a non-threatening visit to Autumn in her stroller as well which we all enjoyed:


He's kissing her hand!




We headed off somewhere else after that...


We did lunch at Sunshine Seasons which was a mistake...plus we waited too long and the kids were grumpy. And then didn't really eat. Oh well.

We went over to Universe of Energy for the 45 minute "ride"...hoping Autumn would sleep. Here we are waiting for it to start:


Autumn loaded up with her paci and Cuddles for naptime:


And it worked!


And Dalton got off at the end and said, "Well that was dumb!" (See, this is why we started with Epcot). ;)

We had dinner reservations at the Wilderness Lodge at 5 so before leaving Epcot we made sure to do Test Track, we never set foot in the World Showcase this visit:


We had Fast Passes for Test Track so Jason and Dalton went first...and then it took too long, even with the passes, and I had to tell Esaton that I was really sorry but he wasn't going to be able to ride it then...that we'd try something to come back that night... He handled it pretty well. But I felt absolutely awful. All day that's all he wanted to ride and we kept saying, "Yeah, later..." "later, bud". :(

So we made a mad dash for the bus to the Wilderness Lodge and ran to the Whispering Canyon Cafe which I thought would be fun for the kids but they didn't appreciate it too much. Easton did enjoy the bottomless milkshakes (so did J and I!) but "had a bad eating day" because he wasn't a fan of his dinner too much as well. Poor guy. Dinner took longer than expected so Easton and I couldn't head back over to Epcot before we needed to be at Magic Kingdom for fireworks.

In fact, we got our dessert to go, made a run for the ferry to take us to Magic Kingdom and by the time we got in, the Main Street Electrical Parade I was counting on seeing was nearly over. :( We didn't make it too far down the street in the hour before Wishes (the fireworks) were supposed to start:


We enjoyed the pretty lit up castle:


And Wishes:


And then we turned back around and headed out of the park for the bus to French Quarter for the night. We discovered our Mousekeeper had left us some little birds/bunnies (we weren't entirely sure) in a nest:


And then it was bedtime which didn't take long:

Disney World: Day 3 -- Hollywood Studios

We were looking forward to our Hollywood Studios day more than we were for our Epcot day. We were excited to wear our bowling shirts. Excited to check out the new Star Tours. Ready for another round of Toy Story Mania. Hopeful to get the boys into the Jedi Training Academy show. Anxious to check out the Indiana Jones and other shows...

And so it began.

We got a slightly earlier start that morning. I think J ran for some beignets at the resort's food court with some of our dining plan snack credits for that morning's breakfast. He brought them back to the room and Dalton ate a bagel while the rest of us ate the beignets and headed to the bus stop.

But the bus to the Studios wasn't running too on time. So we didn't get to Hollywood Studios for "rope drop" (park opening) like I was planning on. The boys had really wanted to do the Jedi Training Academy. When we were last at Disneyland, they would simply pick a few eager looking children from the audience but they've since changed and kids 4 and up can sign up to be in the little show but you've got to sign up early. So as soon as we got to the Studios and got through getting all our bags checked at security and such, Jason and Autumn made a run for Toy Story Mania Fast Passes for later and the boys and I dashed about trying to find where the Jedi sign-ups were and I was completely fretting that all the slots would be gone for the day (because that happens every day about half an hour after the park opens).

Finally we found where to go and, despite being a tad behind schedule, we were able to secure 2 spots for the boys in the 5:30 show. Woot! Woot! I was so relieved...they'd been talking about this for over a year and a half now! They asked each boy how old they were, if they could follow directions, if they could be safe onstage, and if they were afraid of the Dark Side. Both boys responded appropriately.

Jason called at that point making his way back across the park and let me know Pluto and Goofy were greeting families nearby so we hopped in line. And the boys made plans for the day:



And this is also when we first started getting attention with our shirts. All day we got lots of compliments, questions on where we got them, on where other familes could "get something like that"... The characters and cast members were especially complimentary with the costumed characters pointing at the shirts and giving me big thumbs ups. :) Or acting out their questions of what us nice Toy Story characters were doing with a "bad guy" like Zurg. Good times.

Oh yeah, and we posed with Pluto and Goofy.








We wandered over to Tower of Terror after that. The boys were wanting to ride for each of their first times. We'd watched the ride on YouTube a time or two to get them ready for the "scary" parts of it and I knew Easton would love the actual "drop" parts of the ride. We got a rider swap pass which, if the lines aren't too long, are better than a Fast Pass because one of us can ride with the two boys and then switch spots and the other of us can ride...with the two boys again! So Autumn and I stood outside the haunted hotel for a very long time:


And she danced and sang like a princess which means she waves her arms about and sings, "I know you...I once upon a deeeeem":




Finally the guys show up and I was video-ing thinking the boys would be all a'twitter about the experience but they were a bit shell-shocked still. They said they liked it...but they did not want to go again with me. Since I've ridden many times in my life, I was willing to skip this time so that the family could continue on to something else. So we did.


We headed over to some more character greetings:



(That's Handy Manny for those of you that don't watch Disney Jr.)

Autumn was so brave (for her) and walked right up to Mickey!


She even hugged him!


The boys too, of course:




We love Mickey!




This picture is likely the one I'll put in the autograph mat frame:


Then we were on to things like shows (like Indy):


And rides like Star Tours which isn't the same twice so we rider swapped again (poor Autumn is too short) and the boys rode with me and then had a completely different experience with J:


Meanwhile I hung out with Baby Fett:


And then all the kids wanted to pose on the speeder bike outside the ride:






We did some lunch at Starring Rolls which I had been very excited about their giant cupcakes I'd heard about. I ordered the Butterfinger one for my dessert (did I mention yet that the dining plan included your meal, a non-alcoholic beverage, and a dessert?) Had we not been on the dining plan, we woudn't have paid for so much desserts and drinks so really it's not always a "savings", ya know? Sure our counter lunch was over $40 before we handed over our dining plan card BUT, had we not been on the free plan, we wouldn't have come near the $40 for that lunch anyway as we would've had water and skipped dessert. But Jason got a sushi box and a brownie. I got a delicious ham sandwich and the Butterfinger cupcake (soooooo good).

We did some more things...like our FastPass time came around for Toy Story Mania...a ride we've loved at Disneyland and we have it on the Wii.




The boys asked if they could ride together. Awww.


So Autumn rode in the car with J and I:


We met one of the green army men from Toy Story after we rode:


The boys are trying to salute but it's so bright, as you can see:


We were able to catch the Pixar Parade "Countdown to Fun" which was fun and we got to see most of our favorites:












Wanting to pose:


We were able to sneak in the car stunt show featuring McQueen before we needed to report for Jedi Training:






Autumn conked out during the show, despite the noise:




And we saw a lovely rainbow from our seats, without any of the rain:


Autumn stayed asleep in the stroller with Jason while the boys and I headed to report for the show. We needed to be there half an hour in advance so we had a bunch of time to kill and the boys were anxious to get going:






Finally it was time to go and they lined the kids up and led them out. Look how excited they are!


There they go!




More waiting for the show to start:


Jason and the sleeping Autumn were on the other side of the stage for video and picture taking:


And he took this one of me, hee hee:


The boys were so adorable in their excitment:


Waving over at Dad:




I got a few pictures as did the PhotoPass photographer (any pictures on the blog with the white border around them are from PhotoPass):
















Having a little trouble:










You have noticed there are no pictures of Dalton taking on Vader...turns out the little dude is afraid of the Dark Side and when they played the Imperial March and sensed a disturbance in The Force, Dalton bailed and ran for me at the end of the stage. They were ready for him, too, the guy who led the kids to the stage was to him faster than I was. He wanted to jump off the stage to me but they made him go around.

Jason was in charge of video so we have this collection of clips from their training. There are two views (mine and Jason's) of Dalton bursting into tears crying, "I don't want to do it!!!" and dashing towards me:

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In the end, Vader gave up and left when no one would join him on the Dark Side. The Padawan's were presented to the crowd:


They invited Dalton back on stage to get his certificate. Big brother checked in on him. <3



Silly goober:


We went to grab some dinner after that at Pizza Planet (which is the restaurant in the first Toy Story movie).


I was feeling a bit plagued by my recurring nausea so I didn't eat. But Jason and the kids did. And the staff there LOVED us. They loved our shirts, of course, and gave us a free water bottle because of that:


I changed in a $5 bill for some quarters and we let the kids play for a bit even though we were at Disney paying plenty of money to do other stuff:






There weren't many people in the restaurant besides us so the staff came to chat with us. One girl was from LSU! And another (who gave us the water bottle) was noticing we were big Toy Story fans but also that we had some Jedi. She asked which ride we liked more: Toy Story or Star Tours. Stupidly I said Star Tours because it was new to us rather than the Toy Story Mania which we'd done before. Well she gave us a "go to the head of the line" pass for Star Tours. However, there was never much of a line on Star Tours and there is an INSANE line all the time for Toy Story Mania. Oh well.

After dinner there wasn't really a line to meet Phineas and Ferb who we were SO excited to get to meet!






We all love P&F!


I had bought Dalton a Phineas and Ferb hat for the trip when it was on sale at the Disney store during the summer. I had the bright idea to get a fabric pen and have Phineas and Ferb sign Dalton's hat as a sort of souvenir for him:

(He took the signed hat with his "1st Visit" button pinned to it for Show and Tell on his only day back at school last week.)

We also got to see McQueen and Mater. Easton hugged McQueen, tee hee:




From there we went on to check out the Osborne Spectacle of Dancing Lights. Now this was new to me, I'd been at Disney for Halloween before but never when the Christmas decor was up...and the Osborne lights have only been at the Studios since 2007 anyway. But since this was going to be one of the few things new to me this trip, I didn't even look at pictures (beyond what they have on the Disney website) or video online. I wanted to take it all in there so that was nice. It's a bazillion lights set to music:










This tunnel of lights was probably my favorite part. It was so bright on that street from all the lights!




And it was "snowing" foam in the tunnel which the boys tried to catch in their hats:


Easton, Autumn, and I shared a churro as we walked:


We rode Star Tours again but didn't even use the pass because there wasn't a line and I was still kicking myself I hadn't answered with "Toy Story" if she was going to give us a skip-the-line pass.

After that we left The Studios. We missed a couple of the shows we wanted to see but planned to come back another day. We headed back to the hotel with plans to go for a short swim and we noticed our Mousekeeper had done another display:

(I left her a $5 tip and a note of thanks in the morning and she didn't do any thing else like that our whole stay! Ha!)

We'd also secretly bought Dalton a Flounder that day and presented it to him then:



Dalton loves Flounder and had been looking for a stuffed Flounder to buy with his own money, but the kids prefer smaller stuffed animals and all the Flounders we've come across have been too big to sleep comfortably with. This Flounder was perfect and he was super excited as you can see.

We changed into our swimming suits and headed down to the pool...unfortunately the slide was off for the night but Easton swam all around the big pool while I walked around the edge keeping an eye on him and Dalton and Autumn splashed around in the kiddie pool. We ended up in the hot tub for a bit and then headed back to the room for bed, hoping to fit in a swim another day when the slide was open as it was something we were really looking forward to this trip.

Bedtime!






Jason hopped in the shower and came out telling me his stomach was feeling a bit "unsettled" and that it was just bad pizza (I was wanting to blame the sushi box at lunch). I woke up several hours later to him throwing up. :( Poor guy...and he was more worried about the stress his potential illness was causing me rather than the fact that he felt like crap at that moment. Luckily it was just the one time and he woke up feeling just fine...but he's right...I was freaking out about the money we'd spent on the trip and how I was going to manage the park the next day with all 3 kids by myself and who was next and... ... Plus I knew he'd be worrying about me because he knew I'd be freaking like I was so I felt bad about that too. So, yeah, I was briefly a mess (a big mess) but luckily it must've just been a short stint of food poisoning that the kids didn't get and we were able to continue on with our trip and plans. WHEW!!!!