Disney World - Part 1

Simply the MOST magical place on EARTH!

I find myself daydreaming about our trip and wishing we were back there frequently. We went for 5 days in October and had the best time!

Let's start at the beginning.....My 1st trip to Disney World was for my 5th Birthday. I do not remember much BUT I do remember the feeling of magic and just happiness, and well Dumbo (can't forget Dumbo) Fast forward to adulthood...I always knew I wanted to take my child to Disney on their 5th birthday. So it was set before Brae was ever even Brae. Who knew that 5 years would just fly right by and before I knew it Brae was 4 and getting closer to 5 and I needed to get planning.

We knew we wanted to go on her birthday week which was challenging considering her first week long school break was the week before her birthday week. Bummer....BUT we decided since she was only in Pre-K that just this once we would pull her out of school and continue our plans to be there on her birthday. We had our dates October 15th-19th (the 18th is her birthday).

My next step in planning was to look for deals...and wow...Disney is expensive and there are SO many options....it kind of got overwhelming. Wow. I read blogs, do's, and don'ts.....I was torn between having a completely planned vacation and just going with the flow. I decided to wait to book our trip until Disney came out with their Fall specials which didn't come out until August....talk about feeling like I was waiting until the last minute. But let me tell you, not jumping the gun played totally in our favor and without going into too much detail one day Mike was talking about our plans to go to Disney at work and some amazing person from Mike's work had the hook up at Disney and passed along this hook up to us. This hookup was totally unknown when Mike was talking about it, but turned out to be a God send. It is amazing how that happens. They saved us at least a thousand dollars if not more. Yes, that much... and we were able to go without dipping into our savings which made us feel eaiser about going.

So it was set. We were GOING....we got reservations at Pop Century Resort which was one on the value resorts and I continued to read read read ALL about Disney. Although it was later (you can make dining reservations up to 180 days before your visit...DO THIS) than I wanted I was able to score reservations at 2 sit down restaurants. One was at a character dining for breakfast (Donald, Mickey, Daisy, and Goofy) at Tusker House in the Animal Kingdom and one for a princess dinner (Cinderella, Price Charming, Step Mother, and Step Sisters) on Brae's birthday. We decided on only doing 2 because we had no idea what to expect with the food, some people Mike and Brae are picky and spending over $100 on a meal that they didn't love was a little troubling. Also you have to schedule these into your park schedule and it gets to be again overwhelming so 2 worked for us.

Before we knew it October 15th was here and we were off (4am). It was a great drive and we got there by 10:30am. But we were exhausted. Getting up at 3 to get dressed and out the door by 4 was good because we got there in great time, but we were tired. Lesson learned.

Our plan was to hit a park that afternoon to make the most out of our time there. We decided to go over to Magic Kingdom and do some exploring. We rode a couple of rides (It's a small world and magic carpets) but it was crowded and we were trying to get our barrings. We got back to the room and decided to Google if there was a Texas Roadhouse near to go eat at (there were a lot of really great restaurants only 10 minutes from our resort). We were really glad we did this!!

On Tuesday we got a late start due to our hookup. I would not recommend getting late starts, but we had to go with the flow and we did and it was fine, but GO EARLY. We did some exploring around Pop Century Resort and ate a good breakfast there. Around lunch it was time to head to a park and we decided to go back to Magic Kingdom because it was the one day we could stay and watch the electrical parade and the Fireworks due to Mickey's Halloween Party that closed the park early 3 nights we were there. We got to the park right in the middle of the day which is the busiest time. Our schedule went something like this
Fastpasses for Mike to go on Space Mountain later in the day
Tomorrowland Speedway
Tales with Belle
Ariels Grotto
Food at a quick service (surprisingly good)
Regal Carrousel
Pirates of Carribean
Space Mountain (for Mike)
Carousel of Progress (for Brae and I) then we all went again
Buzz Lightyear (Brae wanted to shoot)
Barnstormer Coaster
Dumbo
Electrical Parade, and Wishes Fireworks show
Whew.....what a day that was and that was not even all we wanted to do. Once we fought the crowds back to our bus we made it back and ended up splitting a cupcake for supper and hit the sack HARD.

Next part, coming soon!