Disney Hollywood Studios

Day 6 - Disney Hollywood Studios (formerly known as MGM). This was the boys favorite park. It had the perfect combination of rides, characters and shows that they liked all of. They liked the other parks too, don't get me wrong, but this one had more of their favorite characters in it. This was my second favorite park. Something about it reminded me a lot of Magic Kingdom... I guess walking into it, down a street... I just love that atmosphere. As soon as we got there, we parked it in front of the big hat & watched the High School Musical 2 show. It was good & I was jammin out and singing along with the songs. Then we headed to see The Little Mermaid and then to see Playhouse Disney Live. This was Kensley's favorite thing of the whole week I think. As soon as we got to the area, Quincy from Little Einsteins and Handy Manny were out signing autographs. The boys got excited about that. Kensley ooohed and ahhhed at them because she watches it daily on the Disney channel. She also got to meet June from LE and she really liked that. We were on the front row for the Playhouse Disney Live show (which wasn't the best seat by the way). They were playing the music from all the shows while everyone was coming in and she just danced her little heart out. A woman beside me made the comment that it was worth the price of admission into the park to see her dancing and having so much fun. Everyone watched her and thought she was so cute. I'll have to post a video clip of her soon so you can see how cute she really is when she's boogieing.

We had lunch and then parked ourselves in the patio area of the restaurant to see the parade. We got the tail end of it just as it was going through the doors to the backstage and again, not the best seat in the house. Most everyone was finished performing and just walked past us. The girls walking with the floats did a little dance number at the end. Then we rode the Star Wars ride... it took a lot of convincing for Carter to get on it. We high tailed it to the last stunt show. That stadium was packed. It was a really cool show and the boys loved it. We got to see the Power Rangers after that... they met the red one and the white one. That made their day and if you ask, they'll say that was the best part of the trip. We played on the Honey I Shrunk the kids movie set and saw the Muppet 3-D show which was really cool. I forgot how neat 3-D stuff is. We saw another 3-D show at Magic Kingdom that was really good. We finally got to ride the Rockin Roller coaster which was the best coaster I've ever been on...0 to 60 in like 10 seconds, really. Carter wasn't big enough to ride it, so we didn't even bother, but Chandler rode it & loved it. Finally, we had to do the Tower of Terror and after a lot of coaxing, convinced Carter to ride it. What the heck were we thinking? I didn't even really want to ride it, but how could I be that close and pass up the chance to say that I did it. I sat out with Kensley for the first round and had a neat conversation with a Dad and his 2 year old daughter that were from London. (*** That's one thing that really amazed me was the diversity of so many people here. I know I talked to so many people or asked if they were waiting in line and they would just look at me. Probably because they didn't speak English.) When all of them came off the ride, Carter was crying. I swear, we've ruined him for life...Space Mountain, Atlantis, Tower of Terror. No one wanted to ride it again, so Corby mustered it up enough to go again with me because he wanted to hear me scream. Thanks hun! Scream I did. I came off that ride with a sore throat. I held on for my dear life and literally came out of my seat with every drop. (For those of you who don't know about this ride, it's an elevator shaft that free falls, shoots you back up a few floors, falls again, and that same thing over and over. ) We ended the night watching Fantasmic which was a fabulous lights show.

I was sad to be finished with all the parks, knowing we had to return home the next day. I soaked up as much as I could as we were leaving. I turned around, took in a big breath and hoped I would remember for a long time how much I enjoyed the week. As much as I was sad to leave, I was kind of glad as well. We were all exhausted from such a busy week and it was going to be nice to go home and sleep in my bed (the beds were horrible at this place). I'm working on writing up some info about our trip...stuff that I've collected from various people, websites and books that helped me a ton. If you've never been or haven't been in a long time, there's A LOT to know to make the most of your trip. I'll be happy to share it with anyone.


at the Entrance to the park


A Star Wars ship/thingy outside the ride


Us at the set of Playhouse Disney Live

Kensley meeting June from Little Ensteins

Red Power Ranger... these dudes didn't talk, but they whopped and flapped around some moves. The boys thought that was so cool. Most every picture after these includes some kind of Power Ranger pose.

Me & Kensley did this ride at least 10 times (from the Honey I Shrunk the Kids set)

The best coaster on the planet... Jammin out to Aerosmith!

All the characters at the Fantasmic Show

Sorcerer Mickey at the end of the show

Magic Kingdom again

Day 5... back to the Magic Kingdom. I was looking forward to coming back to the MK to see the rest of the park. We had another full day and it was full of fun. The park was packed this day because they had Extra Magic Hours where the it was open longer. The crowds hadn't been bad at all the whole week until this day. It was shoulder to shoulder for most of the day. ** Avoid these days if you ever go, I knew better, but it just didn't work with our schedule.** We ventured through Adventureland, Frontierland and the rest of Fantasyland. Poor little Carter was scared to death to ride anything. We couldn't hardly even talk him into some of the little kid rides. He rode 2 rides in 2 days that scared the life out of him and wasn't about to take a chance of doing it again. We tried hard to get him on Splash Mountain, but no chance. I don't particularly care to walk around wet, even if it is hot, but the ride looked like a lot of fun and when they all came off, they had just a few small wet spots on them. Ah, not too bad, we don't get that wet I thought. So we traded off the child swap and me, Corby, Chandler & my mother-in-law went back again. Not so lucky this go round. Just as we came down the big hill, the splash was big, but didn't really come into the boat. Okay, safe. However, as we were rounding the curve to go into the tunnel, a boat was coming down. Just as we were about to go into the tunnel, SPLASH.... huge soaker! We were all wet...no, soaked... from head to toe. I really didn't care because we were laughing so hard.

We got to see the Dream Along With Mickey show in front of the castle. **Note the woman standing up in the middle of this picture. Everyone around her was sitting down probably 10 or more rows back. Here's this woman on like the 2nd or 3rd row standing the whole time. Hello? Are you aware that EVERYONE around you is sitting down and your are blocking the view? Apparently not.


Pics from Adventureland

These 2 were a hoot & Cpt. Hook got a kick out of the fact that Chandler was wearing his Pirate gear as well.

A quick glimpse of Cpt. Jack Sparrow from Pirate of the Caribbean. This guys looked, acted & sounded just like the real one!

Timon from the Lion King



I got the kids Mickey Ears and had them embroidered with their names on them. It was pretty much a waste of money because none of them would wear them and it's not like they are going to now that we are home. But it's the memory of having them to treasure. Everyone's gotta have Mickey ears don't they?


The boys with Pluto

Kensley with Fairy Godmother. ** This was funny... towards the end of the night, we were getting autographs from whoever we could that was standing around. We pulled the boys to her since the line was really short. When we were walking away, Carter looks at me & says "Who was that Mommy?" I had to look at the autograph book to make sure because she was a real person, not the animated "fat" one in the movie.

I was a little disappointed that I didn't get my picture with Cinderella or one of the princesses. That was one thing I really wanted to do, but those lines were so stinking long. I don't know how many times I walked up to get in line for a character and the nice "cast member" would walk in front of me & say "i'm sorry this line is now closed, they'll be back at (time)". I got so sick of hearing that. I swear over 1/2 of the autographs I went to get, this happened.

I was really sad to leave the park and just stared at the castle as we rode the monorail out. They do need to have some kind of system where you don't have to break down your stroller to get on the tram. If you've ever been with a kid, you know what I am talking about. Usually, Kensley was asleep at this point. It was so frustrating with all the chaos of trying to hurry to get a seat and getting all the stuff out of the bottom of the stroller and throwing it into a row and cramming the stroller on your lap because 5,000 people all want on the same row you are sitting in. If they didn't have you break down the strollers, you would have to wait an hour to get to your car, so I do understand, I just didn't like it at 11:00 at night.

Sea World

*I forgot to mention yesterday that we thought Chandler was lost one day at Magic Kingdom. Talk about a heart attack. We were leaving the afternoon parade & there were people scattering everywhere. Corby was going to go get fast passes for a ride and the rest of us were heading toward another ride and we would just meet him there. Corby went on & the rest of us stayed at this shelter to refill water bottles. One minute we were all there, then the next minute Chandler is gone. I almost panicked and was on the verge of tears. There was about 10 minutes (probably not that long but it seemed like forever) that we couldn't find him. I called Corby to see if he happened to be with him. For some reason his phone wouldn't ring down there, so I had to leave a voice mail & wait for him to call back. He ended up running after Corby down a bridge but Corby thought we knew he was with him, but no one did. We could have ringed Chandler's neck, but I'm glad he wasn't lost somewhere. Needless to say, we all had a "talk" with him before we went to the next place.

Day 4 & 5... Sea World. We spent 2 days here because you paid for one day & got in the second day free. It was a really neat place. They had some great shows & we saw all of them. We got to feed dolphins, pet stingrays, see all kinds of sea animals and rode a few rides.

The kids on Shamu... this is probably my favorite picture of them of the whole week.


The real Shamu.

The dolphin show where they did all kinds of tricks & flips in the air.

The cast from the dolphin show.


Feeding the dolphins.

All of us at the botanical gardens in the park.


Trying to get a picture of the boys in front of the Clydesdale horse, but Carter is tired of having his picture made... as you can tell.

Magic Kingdom

Day 3... Magic Kingdom. This was my favorite park. I understand why people say Disney is a magical place. As soon as I saw the castle from the monorail I got butterflies. When we walked into main street I stopped for just a second and almost couldn't believe we were there. Animal Kingdom was great, but this was the REAL Disney for me. We took the train to Toontown first in hopes to meet some characters and get some autographs. We did get to meet Mickey & Minnie, but the lines for the others were super long, so we decided to come back to them later. Plus, the boys could have cared less about meeting anyone. They just wanted to ride. I must say the whole Fast Pass & ChildSwap was an ingenious invention. I don't see why people would do it any other way. We figured out pretty quick the best way to utilize Fast Pass. We went through Toontown & Tomorrowland and part of Fantasyland that day. We had another day to come back, so I knew we would only see half of the park. The boys really liked Tomorrowland and I think we rode most everything there. All of us (excluding Kensley) rode Space Mountain. Carter liked it until he got off & thought about it more. That was the first of bad experiences for him. We saw the Monsters Inc show and it was hilarious! We saw the Dreams Come True parade at 3pm and it was so exciting to see all the characters. The park wasn't that crowded until it came time for the parade. I guess because they were all in one spot. That night we got to see the Spectromagic Parade which was really great! and even more crowded than the one before. Then the Wishes fireworks was super! It was the best fireworks show I've ever seen. It's amazing that so many people can be so quite. That was a really late night for us but well worth it. The kids were all asleep before we got out of the parking lot.



My in-laws & us with Mickey & Minnie


Carter with ice cream mouth

Kensley dancing at the parade (she danced all week)

Mickey at the parade

The boys with Buzz (notice facial expression "take the picture Mom... the line is moving")

Daddy & Chandler on the Buzz ride

I love this place... how pretty is that castle

Ahhh, Cinderella

Fireworks show

Main Street USA as we were leaving (look at all those people going in the same direction)

Animal Kingdom

Our first park visit was on Sunday and we went to Animal Kingdom. We got there around 11:00 so we had a early (very expensive) lunch at the Rainforest Cafe. It was a very neat atmosphere and the food was pretty good. I guess you pay for your surroundings at this place. They have a "rainforest rucus" every 20 minutes and that was neat to walk around & see what all the animals did. It literally looked like you were sitting in a rainforest. Anyway, we tried to hit as much as we could. With this being the first day, it took a little while to find our groove but we got the hang of it & made our rounds. We saw Finding Nemo: The Musical and it was fabulous... one of my favorite shows of the week. We hit several rides and then took a safari ride. That was cool. We ended the day with The Lion King show. We all enjoyed the day, but didn't realize the park closed at 6, so we didn't get to visit several spots we wanted to.

Carter asked all day if we could go home & swim in the pool. I had a feeling I would be hearing that a lot over the week and I did. I tried to explain that we were not there to swim, but to see Disney. He really didn't care what I had to say, he still wanted to swim.

Here's a few pictures from our day.
Coming into the park at the Tree of Life
Autograph/pic from Flick from the Ants movie
The boys infront of the Rainforest Cafe... i wish I had taken more pics of this place!
Beautiful view of Mt. Everest.... although we didn't get to ride this
Finding Nemo show
Kensley's fave thing was playing in these fountains
The Lion King show

We're baaaaaaccckkkkk!

We had SO much fun at Disney I just can't even begin to start describing it all. I guess it was... Magical! That's about the best I can do to wrap all of my emotions up into one word. I'll try not to make this post too long & I may just post about 1 park a day for the next week so that I can cram it all in. We left Saturday morning around 9am. The ride down wasn't so great. Carter doesn't do well with long trips. We got to Gaffney & he started "are we there yet". I knew we were in for a long day. We all rode in my in-laws van & the 3 kids were in the back seat together. Chandler was great.. no complaints. Kensley did really great with minimal fussing despite the fact that she only slept about an hour on a 10 hour car ride. Carter fussed the whole time. He wouldn't watch a movie, he didn't want to color or look at books, he didn't want to play his Nintendo... just complain. He had good spurts here & there, but was pretty miserable until we finally got to Orlando and started seeing signs. About half-way there the van broke down right before the GA line. Corby was driving and all of a sudden we heard a terrible noise & there was tons of smoke barreling out the back of the van. We pulled over on the side of the interstate in Coochahochawoochie... or something along that line (seriously, it took the roadside ass. woman about 10 min to figure out where we were)... and inspected the damage. Thankfully my father in law knows how to fix cars. It was the transmission. All the transmission fluid had spewed all over the engine, under the van & up the back. Thank heaven for GPS & roadside assistance. We got in touch with a local auto store & they brought us what we needed. We were stopped for a little over an hour & but got the problem temporarily fixed and prayed really hard we would make it to Orlando because there were no car rentals places open near us & the closest ones at the airport were all out of vans. Thankfully, we made it there safely & pulled in our condo at Emerald Island Resort at 9:45 pm. Everyone was glad to get there & pumped up so we didn't get to bed until really late that night. But oh what fun lies ahead. I'll post about our first park tomorrow. Right now, it's time for bed.