We're Back! And We Made It Around the World in Only 1 Hour!

We finally made it home late last night from our Disney trip. It was definitely a wild roller coaster of a trip with lots of twists and turns with lots of happiness and smiles, tons of walking, lots of character hugging, one red-faced embarrassed mama, and lots of tears (some from Mom as well).

Before we left for the trip, I spent a hour or two a day pouring over a website I had found last summer called the disboards. Basically it's a message board where people go back and forth talking about Disney. Not too exciting for some people, but gave me hours of pure joy and lots of "bonus" information and tips on how to make the most of your trip. One of my favorite places on the boards, though, is the trip reporting section. I loved to hear stories from other peoples' trips and to drool over their pictures of their food. While I'm not brave enough to do a trip report on the boards itself, I thought I'd give my own trip report here on my blog just for the people I KNOW will care. So each day for the next four days, I'll report on a different day from our trip. That way I can share a little more about the craziness, along with lots more pictures than I normally would share!

So Saturday morning found us at a marvelous hotel in Macon, GA. We had gotten there at about 10:00 pm the previous night and, despite a whiny, crying son who insisted that we had to go all the way home so he could sleep in his own bed, had a wonderful and restful evening at this hotel followed by an equally nice breakfast the next morning. This will definitely become our normal go-to hotel on our trips to Florida from now on!

We finally arrived at the Pop Century Resort about 2:00 on Saturday afternoon. Disney offers several levels of their resort hotels and this one is considered a "Value" hotel. We kind of wanted a "Moderate" hotel (the next step up) because we had heard that these hotels are actually very motel-ish. However, after finding out that it'd cost another $300 to upgrade, we decided it just wasn't worth it. And we're all so glad we made that choice because we ended up LOVING our hotel. The room was small but no smaller than the hotels we normally stay in (we aren't "hotel snobs" and just try to stay somewhere clean and inexpensive), but the themeing of the hotel was so much fun filled with a gigantic four-story jukebox and gigantic bowling pins on our side of the hotel, and next to the bowling pin shaped pool.

We knew we didn't have much time to spare if we wanted to get to our first park of the day (not to mention our dinner reservations at the park) so we quickly threw our luggage in our room, loaded up the stroller and hopped on the next bus to Epcot.

We specifically chose Epcot because we knew we only had a half-day available and Epcot is our least favorite park. It's fine for adults and, although it has some great rides for the kids, the rides are, for the most part, not something my too-short son and too-nervous daughter will enjoy. So when we arrived, we headed straight for the one ride Ann Catherine was excited about - Living with the Land. At school, they've been studying plants and how they grow so we knew this ride would be perfect. Luckily, the line was only 10 minutes long and both kids LOVED it!

From there, we decided to hit the World Showcase. We really wanted to take the kids exploring around the world and, above all, wanted to enjoy the show in America. However, there was one little complication - something called the Food and Wine Festival. We knew it was going on but we weren't prepared for the crowds....or the alcohol-filled people stumbling around. OK - I know it's a Wine Festival, but you don't think of drunk people filling Disney either. While we didn't see anyone who was TOO drunk, the language flowed around us about as much as the wine did. And the crowds were so thick that we had a hard time staying together. There was no enjoying this World Showcase at all - especially when our little boy suddenly decided he was tired and hungry and had had enough. Right around China he decided to have a meltdown. And a major meltdown he had ALL THE WAY AROUND THE WORLD. We had a brief stop in America to see if we could find him a snack since our dinner reservations were still an hour away, but the temper tantrum got so out of hand that we had to pull off to the side and pray not too many people were watching. You know that awful parental feeling that every single person in the world is staring at you and wondering why you can't control your child. Yeah, we had that moment. And so we took off running around the rest of the world. We made it around the whole world in only an hour. I personally think that should be a record!

Luckily, back out in Future World, we realized that the crowds here were much smaller and there were a few places where Will could get out of the stroller and just run around and play. So we put aside the stroller and let the two kids run and play with the hands-on entertainment.

Luckily, that burned enough time before we had to head back to the Land pavilion where our dinner reservations were. We were able to get reservations at the Garden Grill where we ate some wonderful food and the kids were entertained by Mickey, Pluto and Chip and Dale (or "ChipandDale" for both chipmunks according to our son).

Fortunately, our dinner reservations were so late that, by the time we got out, it was pretty much time for Illuminations. Now here's the dilemma we had: we knew we didn't want to go back to the World Showcase but we missed the show last year and REALLY wanted the kids to see it. However, given Will's tiredness we decided it was best to try again next summer and head back to the resort. But as we were walking out, we realized that a mass exodus seemed to be going on. Apparently all the locals who had filled World Showcase so they could drink around the world decided that they were done for the night, which basically left an empty World Showcase. So we decided to brave it and headed over there. We found great spots and all of us absolutely loved the show. Well, almost all of us. One of us was sound asleep by this time in Daddy's arms.

Coming up tomorrow: Hollywood Studios and another meltdown along with a small lesson learned.