In early October, we took the girls out of school for a week and flew to Florida! Dan is so busy managing school building renovations during the summertime, he can't take a whole week off. So for the past few years, his headmaster has agreed to let him take a week off in the fall instead. We love traveling when it's not so crowded and hot, so it's worked well for us.
We flew into Orlando, but once we arrived, we drove straight to Clearwater Beach! We booked a hotel that was a couple of blocks from the beach, and spent as much time as possible in the beautiful, clear, warm ocean and the hotel pool.
This is Dan's happy place. He'd move to Clearwater Beach in a heartbeat!
We spent one night at the beach, played in the ocean and pool again the next morning, and then headed back to Orlando.
We stayed at the Disney World Pop Century Resort, which was really cool! It was our first time staying at a Disney resort, and there were some good benefits that we took advantage of. There was a skyliner that we could take from our resort to other Disney resorts, and busses provided free transportation anywhere on the Disney property. So we were able to walk around their gorgeous properties (some of them are very high class and expensive!) and dine in some of the other resorts' restaurants. During the month of October, Disney World allowed Disney resort guests to enter the parks a half hour before opening time. That extra half hour really paid off when we visited the Animal Kingdom Park!
After we checked into our hotel room, our first stop was one of the resort's large swimming pools. The theme of the Pop Century Resort was the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s decades, and the décor around the buildings was really fun.
They also had huge Disney character statues!
We rode the skyliner that evening to Disney's Riviera Resort so we could eat at the Primo Piatto Italian restaurant.
Our hotel had a murphy hideaway bed, which the girls were very excited to discover - and sleep in!
The next morning, we got up bright and early to arrive at the Animal Kingdom park a half hour early at 7:30. We were able to jump right on the most popular ride there, Expedition Everest, which was an exciting way to start the day.
As soon as we got off the ride, Hallie said "I want to ride that again!!" So Dan took her again since Emma and I weren't up for that wild ride a second time.
Our next stop was the safari ride, and we were so glad we rode it in the early morning because the animals were super active!
Then we watched the "It's Tough to be a Bug" 4D movie
The girls' favorite part of Animal Kingdom was the dinosaur excavation area. There's a fun playground area with caves, dinosaur bones, and slides.
They also have a big gravel pit with dinosaur bones to uncover. The girls played and dug there for at least an hour.
The new show at the Animal Kingdom featured huge character kites that were pulled by people on jet skis. The stadium wasn't covered and the heat was almost unbearable during the show, though.
At the Tree of Life, they had an interesting bird show with dozens of parrots flying overhead and landing all around us.
Since it was Disney World's 50th anniversary, they had special golden statues featuring iconic Disney cartoon characters, like this Bambi and Thumper statue.
By 1:00 that day, we'd done everything we wanted to at Animal Kingdom. We weren't really interested in staying there for the rest of the day, so we decided to upgrade our tickets to Park Hopper tickets so we could visit Epcot for the rest of the day.
It was the best decision, and we filled our afternoon and evening with fun rides and shows at Epcot!
Epcot was the only park where they had characters. We weren't able to get close to them or hug them, but it was fun to see them around.
The girls were excited to see Elsa and Anna!
They each had different favorite rides at Epcot, but they both agreed that they loved the ride "Soarin'"! We made sure we rode it twice before we left.
There was a "Finding Nemo" section of the park with an aquarium and displays. For some reason, they were thrilled about being eaten by Bruce the shark.
There was a brand-new "Ratatouille" ride, which you had to make a reservation to ride. Since we didn't get to Epcot until around 3:00, we thought there was no way we'd get on. But Dan signed us up in the virtual queue on the Disney app anyway, and we got on the ride an hour before the park closed! It was really well-done, and we were happy we got to experience it.
We stayed at Epcot until the nighttime show ended, so it was a very full day.
Hallie summed up how we all felt at the end of our 14-hour day.
Dan and Hallie were up early the next morning, so they rode the skyliner to check out Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort. Dan took this pretty picture of her in the early morning light.
When they returned, we all walked to our resort's restaurant and discovered Mickey Mouse waffles, which are seriously addictive!! We let the girls swim in another of our resort's pools that morning (there were 3 pools total), while Dan and I relaxed in the lounge chairs. We needed to recoup from walking 15 miles the previous day.
We wondered next door to the Art of Animation resort to see their spectacular decorations, like these statues of Ariel and Flounder from "The Little Mermaid".
They had characters from the Pixar movie, "Cars".
This section had statues of characters from "The Lion King" cartoon, and when the girls came upon this cave scene with wooly mammoth bones, they pretended to be lions and climbed there for almost an hour!
They loved these "Lady and the Tramp" statues
We visited the 3rd swimming pool at our resort that afternoon, which had flower-shaped water sprayers. They had laundry facilities beside the pool, and Dan took care of washing our laundry while the kids and I played.
Our only complaint during our stay at the Pop Century Resort was that a pipe above us leaked, causing a section of our ceiling to swell and drip water into our room. Normally, Disney is really quick to take care of its customers, but we had to talk to three different workers at the resort to get it taken care of. They thought they fixed the problem, but the water began dripping again, so they gave us a new room. We were grateful this happened on a day we were hanging out at the resort, and not at one of the parks!
The next day, we arrived at Magic Kingdom a half hour before the park opened. We expected to be able to walk right onto a ride or two like we had at Animal Kingdom, but when we got to the most popular ride (The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train), the line was already over an hour long! So we rode other rides, but later in the day the Seven Dwarfs ride had to be shut down. We were nearby when they re-opened the line, and we ran over there to get on line before it grew long again. We absolutely loved our day at Magic Kingdom - it's the one Disney park that keeps our whole family entertained all day long.
At the park very early in the morning!
The girls still adore "It's a Small World."
We noticed that they've changed some scenes at rides like Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean recently.
Teacups
Carousel
Aladdin's Flying Carpet ride
The girls drove us around on the Speedway for the first time and LOVED it!
Their very favorite ride was Splash Mountain, though. They were willing to wait on a long line to ride it a second time that night, right before the fireworks show started.
While they rode Splash Mountain again, I reserved space in front of the castle and waited for the fireworks to start. They ran back after their ride and pushed through the crowds to find me, and made it about 5 minutes before the show started.
It was spectacular, as always!
The following day, we spent the day shopping and dining at Disney Springs.
First stop was Rainforest Café
We enjoyed the rainforest sights and sounds over lunch.
Then we souvenir shopped at the Disney and Lego stores
We decided to get on the wait list at the T-Rex Café, and discovered that they had a dinosaur excavation play area for the kids! It was a fun way to kill time during the wait.
Emma watched the Rainforest Café volcano "explode" from the ledge of the T-Rex Café.
The food was similar between the two restaurants, but we preferred the ambiance of the T-Rex Café over the Rainforest Café. There's a giant squid suspended behind Emma.
Hallie's backdrop is the "Ice Cave" with dinosaur fossils.
As we sat at our table, we were overshadowed by an enormous wooly mammoth, that occasionally moved and trumpeted!
The highlight of our meal was the "Chocolate Extinction" dessert. It had large fudgy brownies and scoops of ice cream (enough to feed a family), and in the center was a jar of dry ice that created a steaming volcano effect. It was so cool!
The next morning, we left Orlando and drove to Apollo Beach to visit Dan's cousins, Darcy and Larry. Darcy showed us their local beach and observation tower.
Then we stopped at a playground with a great splash pad.
At Larry and Darcy's house, Larry showed us the beautiful boat he refurbished.
He also showed us his other boat that was out on his dock, but we didn't have enough time to take it out on the water that day. We spent one night with Larry and Darcy, then headed to the airport the next morning.
We had a great week and made wonderful memories!
