Santa

Our next door neighbors have a little party every year and Santa is there!!! Cameron asked for a blue bike and some treats.  (He is very into candy right now).

Art of Animation Resort

My last post on Disney 2012 is about our resort.  We stayed at the new Art of Animation Resort.  It was awesome.  The resort just opened this summer so it is still immaculate, (though we found all of Disney very clean) and does not have the feel of a value resort.  There were two appealing factors about AoA for us:  the theme and the room layout.  The rooms are suites throughout most of the resort. This meant that instead of cramming in to a typical hotel room we had two full bathrooms, a separate bedroom, a sitting area and a dining area.  The dining table was a murphy bed (this is where Cameron slept at night) and we didn't even need the sofa which also converted to a bed.  This also meant that during afternoon nap Cameron could be in the bedroom allowing Mike and I use of the kitchenette, television and door in case one of us needed to step out.  It worked like a dream for us.  We could easily have fit another child or two.  With a little packing effort we could have fit 3 more kids.  The resort has 4 areas each designed around one of Disney's popular films.  We stayed in the Cars section and it was very well done.  The life sized characters outside were very fun and the inside decor was cute too.  A somewhat unexpected plus was how good our food court was.  We ended up eating at the hotel a good deal more than we anticipated and this had a lot to do with good choices in addition to convenience.  The Nemo pool looked AWESOME though I must say it was a little cold during our trip (and we were obviously a little busy) for a swim.  We did use the smaller Cars pool for a short dip one afternoon and it was fun too.  The resort also had a gift shop and an arcade which Cameron loved.

Disney Day 6/7: MVMCP and goodbye

Tired of hearing about Disney yet? We weren't tired of being there yet! We spent Friday morning at Hollywood Studios again since we'd only gotten a half day on Sunday.  We went back to our early morning plan having gotten to bed early on Thursday.  We arrived at the park for opening and thank God we were there early because for some unknown reason they opened the park early.  We were part of the crowd (okay it was the whole crowd) RUNNING for Toy Story.  The boys got in line and I got in the fast pass line. After securing fast passes I joined them in line and we all got to ride together.  Cameron LOVED this ride.  After Toy Story we enjoyed some "breakfast" (if cinnamon rolls and chocolate croissants count) at Starring Rolls and picked up a chocolate peanut butter cupcake to take home for later.  (It could easily have fed 4 adults and was delish!).  Basically the morning consisted of riding Toy Story twice more, once with our passes and once after a 90 min wait.  Mike took a ride on Rockin' Roller Coaster while Cameron and I were in the Toy Story line and then we grabbed lunch at 50s Prime Time Cafe.  Our waiter Mark was hilarious and the fried chicken was delicious.  After our meal we booked it back to the hotel to rest and get Cameron down for a good nap since the real highlight of the day was yet to come: Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party!!! After C's nap we headed over to Magic Kingdom and met up with our friends the Pecks! It was super fun to have another family to hang out with at this point.  The evening was a lot of fun.  We got our special wristbands and had free reign of the park as they ushered the rest of the day's guests out.  We caught the show at the castle and Liz and I ran half a marathon sprint to try to find the cookies and hot chocolate that our tickets provided.  (We literally went to like 5 places and ended up having success all the way over in Adventureland near Aladdin.  Then I totally put on my New Yorker big girl shoes and elbowed us back to our families in front of the castle in time for the show.)  Cameron had so much fun with Maddy and Camille who were both super sweet with him.  We all rode tons of rides includng a few we hadn't gotten to yet like the Haunted Mansion (look Mommy there are a lot of ghosties!) and our standby faves the teacups and carousel.  We let the daddies take a turn on Space Mountain too.  Of course we watched the parade with Santa and fireworks as well. At 11:30 we finally called it a night promising a crying Cameron we could ride Peter Pan tomorrow.  

The next morning we finally felt done with Disney (the stainful bag drop situation at the hotel did not help) but we had promised Cameron another ride on Peter Pan, I wanted to visit Main Street for some treats and we had one more meal left and a reservation for it.  So after packing up the rest of our bags, and finally getting them checked in to bag check we headed back to Magic Kingdom for one more go on our favorite rides.  We had lunch at Liberty Tree Inn which was delicious and grabbed lots of delicious Mickey treats from The Confectionary. Finally it was time for goodbye to Cinderella's castle and back on to Mickey's Magical Express for our trip back to the airport and back to reality.  

Truthfully, I don't think we could have asked for a better vacation!

Maddy and Camille

Matching giant lollipops

This last pic is of C and his "magic wand".  It is actually the inside of his light up balloon that we had to get rid of.  Mike took it apart, rescued the light up part and told C that Tinkerbell had brought him a wand.  He loved it. 

Disney Day 5: Animal Kingdom

We spent the 5th day of our trip at Animal Kingdom.  We had a late character lunch scheduled at Tusker House so we weren't in a big rush to get to the park.  This day proved to us that our strategy of arriving early was the way to do things.  We waited longer for the bus and the park felt very crowded when we first arrived  The weather was overcast and chilly.  We grabbed fast passes for the Kilimanjaro Safari and headed down the Pangani Forest trail.  They have an amazing gorilla enclosure and we saw a whole family of gorillas having breakfast.  The Animal Kingdom really is like a super cool zoo.  What is especially amazing is the number of each kind of animal.  Sure most zoos have a giraffe and a couple of elephants and two zebras, but to see what amounts to a whole herd of each is pretty cool.  Also there is staff everywhere who are extremely knowledgable about the animals.  After the safari we saw the bird show (okay) and had some delicious egg rolls.  We saw the Nemo musical which was very cute and walked over to the Dinoland part of the park.  Cameron liked this a lot.  There was a Triceratops ride which I will call Dumbo 3 and some carnival games.  There was also a playground type area called the Boneyard which Cameron really enjoyed.  After this we headed to our lunch at Tusker House.  It was a buffet but had some different things than your typical Disney fare like carved meats, a hummus bar etc.  Mickey, Daisy, Donald and Goofy were there.  Again, I can't reiterate how great the characters are.  Our lunch was at the very end of the lunch time and the parade was approaching, handlers came around to make sure we had met everyone.  When Goofy arrived at our table Cameron was in the bathroom with Mike so Goofy sat down with me and waited.  They could have given a reasonable excuse that Goofy had to get ready for the parade and Cam would never have been the wiser, but they didn't want him to miss his chance.  After lunch we skipped the parade and let Mike ride Everest.  We ended up being at the park almost until closing (4:30) and spent the evening having dinner at the resort and playing in the resort arcade which Cameron loved.

Please excuse the quality on these photos.  I was so tired of hauling the big camera everywhere around my neck (I certainly wasn't going to leave it in the stroller which we kept parking) and I just needed a break.  The day of the safari probably wasn't the right day.  

Disney Day 4: Magic Kingdom (again!)

We spent Wednesday at the Magic Kingdom again.  When we left the park on Wednesday we had only done half the park so we wanted to revisit the rides Cameron had loved but also see what we had missed.  We got up nice and early and were at the park for the opening.  Mickey and the gang arrive on the Walt Disney World Railroad and welcome everyone to the park.  We had a reservation to have breakfast at the Crystal Palace with Pooh and the gang but we had some time to kill so we let Cameron re-ride some of his favorites; the carousel, Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan.  We had Mickey waffles and omelets while Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eyeore visited with us.  After breakfast it was off to Adventureland where we climbed the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, rode on one of Aladdin's Magic Carpets (otherwise known as Dumbo 2) and went on a Jungle Safari.  We found out Cameron was actually tall enough to ride Big Mountain Railroad so after showing it to him and confirming he wanted to ride Daddy took him for his first BIG roller coaster - he loved it!  We stopped for hot dogs and cotton candy at Casey's on mainstreet and headed back to the hotel for nap.  Later after a quick dinner at the hotel we came back to the Magic Kingdom to see the Main Street Electrical Parade and the Wishes Fireworks.  I would say that the afternoon parades are cute and a nice way to wave at the characters but the nighttime parade was truly awesome and Wishes was the best of the fireworks shows we saw.  After the parade the park quieted down a bit and we had promised Cameron a few more rides so we stayed late and rode all of his favorites a few more times.