The Mouse’s House

Soooo, Walt Disney World!  I don’t even know where to begin!  There’s so much to tell and oh my goodness the pictures.  700+ pictures that I deleted down to about 300+ pictures which I edited and saved and printed and e-mailed and Facebooked.

Now it’s time to blog, yo.

First off, let me just say that my kids are amazing.  We closed down every park we went to.  Emma never used a stroller…her little legs were so tired by the end of the week but she walked her little heart out, everywhere we went.  Sure, there were mini meltdowns…somtimes even from the kids! But overall, everyone was very well behaved and we had an amazing time.

We were all over The Magic Kingdom on the first day.  We seriously had to have walked back and forth through that park at least 20 times.  It’s amazing though that we didn’t even cover HALF of the stuff there was to do.  Emma was all about the carousel and It’s a Small World.  She was also fairly disappointed about how short the roller coaster rides were.  That lady is a daredevil!

Jacob on the other hand looked a little green around the gills after the 30 second Goofy “roller coaster”. He insisted, though, that he wanted to try the bigger rides.  His exclamation after Big Thunder Mountain Railroad? “I almost peed my pants, but I DIDN’T!” Can’t ask for a better endorsement than that!

We did the Haunted Mansion (Dave’s pick) and Country Bear Jamboree (my pick). While Dave still  loves The Haunted Mansion, The Country Bear Jamboree just doesn’t hold the same luster as it did when I was 8.  Oh well, the kids seemed to like it!

Next up was Epcot.  I was really looking forward to it.  It ended up being our worst day.  I guess you can’t force a little culture and World Showcase on kids that only want to do STUFF.  I was happy to slow the pace down.  They were not.  Which led to several melt downs.

There were some good points during Epcot, though.  We got to meet up briefly with our neighbors who were in Epcot on the same day we were.  And we got to ride Soarin’.  That was truly a fantastic experience and as close as I’ll ever get to hang gliding.  It was breath taking and freeing and amazing.

Hollywood Studios gave Magic Kingdom in my opinion.  We ALL had a blast that day.  There wasn’t any one thing that made it awesome, it was just an all around great day.  The highlight, though, was definitely my death defying daughter.

O.K. Maybe not death defying, but certainly brave as crap.  She rode The Tower of Terror.  I wasn’t entirely sure they should have let a 4 year old on a ride called The Tower of Terror, but she wanted to do it.  But it’s really hard to explain “Well, honey.  Are you sure you want to?  It’s a 13 STORY DROP with only a LAP BELT to hold you in!”

So away we went.  And away we dropped. And bounced. And dropped again. And bounced. And dropped again.  A total of 4 or 5 drops when it was all said and done.  But the Wonder Emma never cried, screamed, or passed it.  Admittedly, it wasn’t her favorite. But I know adults (ahem, my sister) who passed on their chances to go on that ride.

My mom and dad drove down from Ohio and joined us for the last two days of parks.  They were able to come with us to Animal Kingdom and a 2nd day in Magic Kingdom. The kids loved having them there, definitely. And they were gracious enough to watch the kids one night so that Dave and I could get out to Downtown Disney.  Thank you, Mom and Dad!

There is so, so much more that happened. But this post is already 10 times longer than I usually write. I think I’ll just keep those memories tucked away for another day.

I think the fact that Jake was talking about our NEXT trip to Disney as a good indication that THIS trip was a success!