Family Vacation - Part 2: Disney World

After spending a few days in Siesta Key, we packed up the car and hit the road. Destination: Disney World! We had made plans to drive to Orlando and spend one day at Animal Kingdom and one day at the Magic Kingdom. The thought of going to Disney was a little overwhelming in itself, so I was fortunate to get some help with the planning! A friend of a friend is a Disney Travel Consultant. She essentially helped us plan our whole trip. Originally, we were going to use Rob's Hilton Points and stay off property, but she convinced us to stay on property and even sign up for the dining plan. In the end it just made sense and I am so glad we decided to stay on property. She was great resource and extremely helpful. She helped us with our hotel reservations, character meal reservations and gave us lots of good tips along the way. If anyone is interested in her information, let me know and I will pass it along. A few weeks before our trip, we received all of our travel documents in the mail, as well as our Fast Pass wrist bands. These bands were pretty cool. They were our park tickets, the fast passes, the key to our hotel and we could also use them to purchase anything in the park! They were each personalized with our names!

On Tuesday morning, we woke up early and got ourselves ready to make the 1.5 hour trip to Disney from Sarasota. It was a quick, smooth ride. Our first stop was to check into the hotel. The kids loved it immediately. It was right up their alley. We were staying at 'Pop Century,' which had a sports theme. Everything was in bright, bold colors and they had two pools. One was shaped like a flower and the other shaped like a bowling pin. Even though we had two action packed days ahead of us at the theme parks, Leah couldn't wait to take a dip in the pool! We got to the resort around 10:00 am and luckily our room was ready for us. We checked in, stopped at our room, look around the resort and then were on our way to Animal Kingdom!

 Welcome to Walt Disney World

 Pop Century Resort

 The kids so excited to be at Disney

Doing some hop scotch while waiting to check-in

 More hop scotch fun!

 Mickey towel at check-in

We decided to do Animal Kingdom on Day 1 since it is a smaller park and we weren't going to be there the full day (since we just drove in that morning). We had a great time at Animal Kingdom. We walked around for awhile and just soaked everything in. It was pretty hot outside, but luckily there were lots of shaded areas. 

We had a character lunch planned and the kids were so excited. The lunch was at the Tusker House (and was part of our dining plan). It was buffet style, but there were some pretty good options. While we were eating, Donald, Daisey, Pluto, Goofy, Minnie and Mickey were making their rounds stopping at each of the tables. We bought Leah an autograph book, so she was sure to get a picture with each of the characters, as well as their autograph.

After eating, we had a fast pass to go see Finding Nemo, the musical. It was pretty good and both kids enjoyed the show. We checked out DinoLand and road some rides and also did a meet and great with Pluto and Goofy.

 Finding Nemo, the musical

Quick break for a lemon chill!

Our last Fast Pass for the day was the Kilimanjaro Safari Tour. (The fast pass is really cool....our wait time was less than 20 minutes). This was by far my favorite thing at Animal Kingdom. It was a 30 minute tour on a truck that took us on a safari. We were able to get very close to the animals. There were over 30 different kinds out in the wilderness. We saw everything from giraffes, to elephants, to lions, to cheetahs, all kinds of birds and plenty of other animals. At one point, we could practically touch the giraffes. It was cool and scary at the same time. Both kids really liked this attraction.

It was such a fun day at Animal Kingdom. For our trip, I also purchased the "Memory Maker" card. Basically throughout all of the parks, there are photographers around taking pictures. When you have this card, you have access and rights to all of the pictures they take. It was cool because we were able to get tons of family pictures, without having to worry about asking a stranger to take our pictures. Once we got home, we went to the website and were able to download all of the pictures. Here are the ones from Animal Kingdom!

After a fun filled day at Animal Kingdom, we decided to head over to Downtown Disney. It's a fun little area with lots of restaurants and shops. We walked around for a bit. We wanted to take the kids to the T-Rex restaurant (it's owned by the same people that own Rain Forest Cafe) and it has a fun dinosaur theme. Unfortunately, it was a 2 hour wait and I knew the kids wouldn't make it. We ended up sitting outside an Irish Pub/Restaurant. It was fun. We walked around some more before turning into the hotel. 

We went back to the hotel to gear up for Day #2 at the Magic Kingdom! More to come!