Disney World - Part 4 "Where Dreams Come True" - April 2018

Saturday, April  6, 2018

Day 5  - Magic Kingdom - "Where Dreams Come True" 

For our last day in the park we decided to go to Magic Kingdom as a “catch all” day to do any of the things we didn’t get to do on the first two days.  Plus, this is where the girls really wanted to be the most. We got up early and were on the bus by 8 am.   All our east coast family that joined us in FL also came to the park that day.   We had quite a group!  It was so fun.

 Madison, James, Pentti, Erek, Laci, Brian
Amy, Maija, Laurie Landon, Kiely
Elin, Anikka 

We split up after meeting at the entrance to the park.  The best part about the park first thing in the morning is that there are no lines for any rides.  I took my littles to the kid rides and to meet characters.  

Everyone else headed to Tomorrow land to do Space Mountain.  They were able to ride it twice with no lines.

 My girls and I walked right on the Spinning Tea Cups.

Then walked right onto Dumbo.   

We went on the carousel

 and then went to meet Rapunzel and Tiana.

The girls wanted to meet Minnie Mouse so we were waiting for the Minnie and Daisy character meeting right as they opened at 9:30.   We were pretty close to the front of the line and got right in.   We met:

Daisy Duck

Minnie Mouse

Donald Duck

Goofy

All four characters in about 15 minutes.   So within an hour and a half of being in the park we were able to go on 3 rides, meet two princesses and meet 4 characters.  Very successful start to our last day!

We had a fast pass at 10:30 to go to Belle’s Enchanted Tales.  

I had thought that we were going to meet Belle and have her sign our books and take a picture.  But, we were in for a surprise and had a really fun experience.  We got to go into Belle’s house, through the magic mirror and into the Beasts castle to surprise Belle and perform a little play with Belle and Lumiere.   

Elin was Mrs. Potts and Anikka was a dish.  It was really fun way to meet a princess.

 We met up with all our family to have lunch (there were 13 of us!) then we all went our separate ways again to ride different rides.  

My crazy brothers (who are all wet from Splash Mountain)

The Bakers went to Splash Mountain and we took the girls (and Aunt Amy) to meet Tinkerbell.  

We left the park that day at 2 pm with plans to meet back up with everyone after dinner to see the fireworks. We went back to our resort, went swimming with the cousins and had dinner at the resort food court.

We met up back in the park at 7 pm.

 My girls wanted to see Tomorrow Land so we went there first.  We were waiting in line to do the People Mover and the rain clouds started coming in fast. We got really lucky and happened to be under a covering when the sky felt like it exploded with rain.  It was a huge windy rainstorm (and I didn’t bring our rain jackets L).  We had just gone up to the 2^ndlevel of the People Mover ride as the rain got really bad so luckily we were protected from it. 

Raining, raining, raining.  My girls are nervous.

By the time we got off the ride, the rain had stopped.  

We then went to Fantasyland to ride Small World 

while waiting for the fireworks. This time we were closer up and had a better view of the castle.   The fireworks were just as good as the first time. It was a little different experience being closer to the castle and we all enjoyed it.  

At the very end Tinkerbell (a real person) flies from the top of the castle back to Pixie Hollow near the entrance. The first time we saw the show I saw Tinkebell but the girls missed her.   So this time we were careful to watch for her.

This was Anikka’s face when she saw Tink (Aunt Laci spent more time watching Ani’s reactions…she took all these fun pictures).

Exactly 2 minutes after the fireworks stopped, Anikka fell dead asleep on her Dad’s shoulder.  So, we had to make our way out to the bus and back to the resort.

We stopped for one last picture to show how tired were.  We couldn’t convince Elin to do her tired look.

We had such a magical time at Magic Kingdom.  I felt like we made the most of our 3 days there and did almost everything that we wanted.

 A couple of random notes about our trip:

-We debated on the cost of staying at Disney resort or a vacation condo.   In the end, although it was more expensive, we decided on the Disney resort because we wanted to go all “Disney” for this trip.  Plus we could use the Disney transportation and wouldn’t need to rent a car.   We rode buses to and from Disney places everyday that we were there.  Most times we waited only 5 minutes for a bus to come. Once we waited maybe 10 minutes. The Magical Express from the airport was also great. They even take your luggage off the luggage carousel and deliver it straight to your room. I had no complaints with our whole Disney experience and I am glad we stayed at a Disney Resort.

-We walked and walked and WALKED on this trip.  Our average was 8-10 miles a day.  No wonder we were all tired.  We also learned that the crowds on the first two days we were at Disney were record breaking.  Even higher than at Christmas, which explains why we had to wait even for fast passes.

-I loved seeing the Princesses and other characters. They were always in Character and said fun things to my girls.  Anastasia and Drizell talked about Cinderella but said they were now nice to her because they had a change of heart.   Rapunzel talked about how she liked to paint with the ends of her long hair. Elin asked her where Pascal was and she told her that he was hiding in the flowers and that he preferred the purple ones. Tiana talked about making gumbo and how she liked it.  Tinkerbell called us “pixie friends” and said “fly on over here and hug me” to the girls. It was pure Disney magic.

Sunday, April 7, 2018

Disney Springs / Swimming

On our last day in Florida we had a rest day. 

We met up with everyone to go to Disney Springs for shopping and lunch. My girls had a gift card from Christmas and they waited all week to buy what they wanted for souvenirs. They each bought a Disney princess doll (Elin got Ariel and Ani got Rapunzel) and a stuffed animal. Pua the pig for Elin and Dumbo for Anikka.  We looked around Disney Springs for a bit, had lunch 

Me with my brothers

 And took the boat back to the resort.

 We met up with Erek & Laci to swim at the Port Orleans French Quarter pool.  

Uncle Erek & Ani

Laci and Maija

Ani

Ani

Elin

Erek

Ani, James and Elin having a "tea party" underwater

Uncle Erek even gave us a lift back to our building.

 After swimming we got showered and went to the Polynesian Resort for dinner at O’Hana with the Baker family.  O’Hana is a family style restaurant where they bring you all you eat noodles, dumplings, salad and different types of meat.  It was very yummy but a lot of food.

We had to say goodbye to all our family that night. We were leaving in the morning and the Baker’s were going early for their last day at one of the parks.  Pentti, Amy, Erek and Laci come over to our hotel to say goodbye to us.  

Baker cousins with the light up headboard in our room

We really loved having all of our east coast family with us on this trip.  

Monday April 8, 2018 - travel day/home to Seattle

We had such a great time it was hard to leave.   The girls loved our room and they were really excited that they got to meet every princess that was on our wall.

Our return trip home was mostly uneventful.  Elin got sick on the plane as we were descending into Seattle. This is her 3^rdair sick "event " so next time she will get Dramamine.   (In hindsight:  this also explains why she doesn't love roller coasters and rides with a lot of motion).  We were all happy to be home…we didn’t get to bed until 3 am FL time (midnight in Seattle).  

We had such an amazing adventure and it was truly the trip of a lifetime for our littles.

Maija

Disney World - Part 3 - Rest Day and Animal Kingdom ---April 2018

Thursday April 4, 2018

Day 3 - Rest day

 After two full days in the park we desperately needed a day off.   So on our 3^rd day we slept as long as we wanted and took time getting ready for the day.  What this really means is that my kids were up at 7 but we couldn't get them out the door until 9:30 am.

We took an Uber to Animal Kingdom Lodge for breakfast at Boma.  The girls had never used Uber before and were a little confused that a random person was picking us up to take us somewhere like a taxi.    But, they thought it was pretty fun. 

We took the bus back when we were done which takes twice as long and as we were waiting for the bus to come, Elin said  “can’t we just get an Uber?”   She learned quickly.

Boma is a breakfast buffet at Animal Kingdom Lodge. The lodge is enormous and gorgeous and honestly felt like being in Africa (James and I went to Africa in 2006). Boma had good food including Mickey shaped waffles.  The only problem,  it is a little expensive for people who don’t eat much. Our kids each ate a donut and a few strawberries….and some juice….for $15 each.   James tells people that we paid $15 for a donut.  We tried a lot of things and had a great breakfast.

After breakfast we went to the observation area to look out on the savanna and see the animals.  We were looking at the flamingos and Elin accidently dropped her sunglasses in the enclosure.  Luckily, we were able to get a staff member to retrieve them. This is what Anikka remembers most about that morning and she loves to tell people the story especially because it makes Elin embarrassed.  

The staff member told the girls about a craft they could do at the other lodge so we took a little shuttle there and they worked on building a “snack ball” for the animals on the savannah while they learned about conservation.  Then an animal keeper took the balls out to the animals.   We saw giraffes and zebra’s from the viewing area. The girls were given a giraffe bead for their efforts.

On the bus ride home, Anikka fell asleep (it was 11 am).   Poor little one was so tired from all the walking and our late night in the park.

Back at our resort we spent the afternoon in our pool.  

My sister–in-law,  Laci, flew in that morning and my brother, Erek, flew in that evening from Kentucky.   They came to spend the rest of the weekend with us.  My cousin Keith lives about 45 minutes from Orlando.  Laci, came and picked us up at our resort.  Keith and his family picked up Erek and we all met up at the condo Laci & Erek were renting.  

We had a BBQ ...

Angie, Keith, Laci, Erek, Maija, James

Carson, Kale, Anikka, Elin, Ian, Ty

and swam in the pools at Bonnet Creek Resort.  

It was so nice to see family and to just have some time to hang out.

Friday – April 5, 2018

Day 4  - Animal Kingdom

James sister Laurie and her family flew in from Maryland early that Friday morning (5:30 am flight). We caught up with them just as we were getting ready to leave our resort. They stayed at the same resort as us.  So we all rode together to Animal Kingdom. My girls were so excited to see their cousins.

Erek and Laci met us at the park. Our first fast pass was the Festival of the Lion King.  WOW!  It is a show with songs and animals from the movie.  It is hard to even describe how amazing it was.   

Disney really knows how to make it worth your time and money.   Everyone loved the show.

 The area where the show was (Mombasa Marketplace) looked and felt exactly like it does in Kenya.  It was kind of remarkable.   We had a quick snack 

before going on Kilimanjaro Safari.  

The ride was great.  We went in a big safari open air jeep and there were lots of animals around.   I was surprised at how much it looked like Africa.   They even cut the trees to make them look like acacia trees.  

We saw lots of animals including giraffe, hippo, zebra, antelope, flamingo, elephants, lioness, rhino, and cheetah.   The kids had a great time. 

We stopped for lunch then headed over to Avatar: Flight of Passage for our final fast pass of the day.  

It’s kind of hard to describe this ride.  It’s not so much of a ride as a virtual experience.  

 I’ve never seen the movie (gasp!)  so I had no idea what to expect.  The ride makes you feel like you are riding on the back of a banshee.  You put on 3D glasses and the screen in front of you makes it look like you are flying on the banshee’s back through several different places.  You sit on a seat that is kind of like a motorcycle and a cushion comes up in the back to hold you on.  The seat moves up and down, back and forth, wind blows and at one part when we were over water there was a misty spray.  It was really quite amazing. 

 This ride was very concerning to Elin even before we got on it. She had no idea what to expect, neither did I.  We thought it would be fine because she had gone on the rollercoasters at Magic Kingdom with no problem.   Well, it wasn’t fine for her.   We convinced (basically forced her) to try it and she was very nervous.  Elin did OK until the images started and the first drop really felt like you were falling straight down.  She FREAKED out and started crying.  So, I had to hold her hand and I told her to just close her eyes and wait.   

Anikka loved every minute of it….she giggled and grinned through the whole thing.   She will tell you it was her favorite ride we did on the WHOLE trip.  She later told her Dad that she had to keep looking down at her seat to make sure it was still there.  

It was an amazing ride. I loved it but wish that I could have enjoyed it more fully.   My attention was divided between trying to enjoy the experience and trying to keep Elin calm.  It really wasn’t a good ride to take someone on that gets motion sick.  She cried for about 10 minutes after it was over. I had to find her a frozen lemonade to get her to calm down.

Aunt Laci saved the day while we were having a snack and got us fast passes to meet Mickey and Minnie! Anikka was really excited because we had not met Minnie yet and that was one of the things she wanted to do most. She had even saved the very first page in her autograph book to have Minnie sign it.

This was her face when she saw Minnie

While the girls met characters the Bakers and the boys (Erek and James) went to ride Expedition Everest.   

We met up with them afterwards and headed out of the park.  

By then it was already 4:30. We had planned to only stay until 2 ish.

Back at the hotel we had a quick snack and got ready swim with the Bakers.  My brother, Pentti, and his wife Amy (who live in Wash DC) had driven down that day and arrived at Erek & Laci’s condo.  The 4 of them picked up pizza 

and we had dinner at the pool at our resort.  It was so nice to see my brothers and their wives.  It had been about 3 years since I had seen any of them.  We had a nice time catching up.