Ringing in the New Year-Disney Style!

Four days after Christmas we headed to Orlando for a week! This was a bit of a impromptu trip. We booked it about a month out. If you know Disney, you know this is LATE! haha! Thankfully, I'm a pretty adventurous person so it didn't bother me. We were still able to get really good dinner reservations and most of the fast passes we wanted! We are rope drop people anyway so the ones we didn't get we knew how to be able to ride!

The first day we spent some time at Disney Springs! We rented an AirBnb this trip and it wasn't ready so we had time to kill! Side note-we rented the house because a last minute trip with a big family is pretty much a no go at Disney! It ended up saving us a ton of money and was great! We also drove for the first time and I THOROUGHLY enjoyed having our own vehicle and not relying on Disney transportation! AMEN!

Our first park day was spent at Animal Kingdom! This is my favorite park! The rides are amazing and the park is beautiful! We arrived at the park about 5:45 am for a 7am rope drop! We didn't have a fast pass for Flight of Passage so we had to be there unless we wanted to stand in line for hours! The rope dropped and we RAN like crazy people. We didn't have to wait at all and were already off the ride by 7am! :) By lunch we had rode everything in the park, because everyone else was in line for flight of passage! Boom shakalaka! We had a reservation at around 4 at Tiffins-we didn't enjoy it. Gasp!

The next morning we were at Magic Kingdom bright and early! Mia was PUMPED  because she was finally tall enough for Splash Mountain! And she loved it! We spent most of the day to the left side of the park because we had two days planned at MK. We had a dinner reservation very late-like 9pm-at Jungle Skipper Canteen! This was our first time to eat there and it was FUN and the food was tasty!

The next day was spent at Epcot! Everyone said this was their favorite day! And it went by the fastest because we were having so much fun! Soarin' is one of our favorite rides! We rode Test Track and everything we could squeeze in before the World Showcase opened! 

First thing's first-a margarita and nachos from Mexico! We explored a bit after that and waited for our Lunch reservation at the Nine Dragon's restaurant in China! It was meh BUT BUT BUT-If you know me you know I'm obsessed with looking at cast members name tags to see where they are from and our waitress at the Nine Dragon was FROM THE SAME CITY IN CHINA MIA IS FROM!!!!! So exciting! The waitress kept saying she was so happy!

The rest of the day we explored around the different countries and had the best time!

The next day we went to Hollywood Studios. This day killed it for us. It was INSANELY crowded because of the new Rise of Resistance ride. If you don't already know, you HAVE to be at the park an hour before it opens so that you can be INSIDE the park when it does open to be able to MAYBE get a boarding pass for this ride. Y'all. I've never been around that many people at one time IN MY EVER LOVING BORN DAYS. It was too much. Disney REALLY needs to fix this! We were able to get a boarding pass and rode the ride around 10:30. We arrived at the park at 5:45 am. It opened at 7. We were able to ride Slinky Dog while we waited on our boarding group to be called so that was good! Rise of Resistance was pretty fun, I have to admit that. But, that being said....this crew will not be doing all that again. One and done. Thank you. We waited about 3 hours for the other Star Wars ride-Millennium Falcon and I LOVED it! We rode most of the other rides also-Josh's favorite ride is there-Rockin' Rollercoaster. He ended up not riding because the wait was so long. Reece and Griffin braved the line and had fun on it! :) Overall, not a great day. haha!

OH! We also ate at the Sci-Fi Diner. It was not great and we are pretty sure Peyton got food poisoning there. He didn't feel well the rest of the day and threw up that night!

That brings us to our last park day! Back to Magic Kingdom! It was the BEST DAY EVER! Peyton was thankfully feeling better and we made the most of our last day!

We rode everything we wanted to ride, including Splash Mountain AGAIN 😂 Hey, we were drenched from the rain so we figured why not! haha! We had a dinner reservation at Be Our Guest that night. It was delicious and we rode the 7 Dwarfs Mine Train to end the trip after that! None of us wanted to leave. We always have the best family time in Disney! 

Spring Break in Disney: Days 7 & 8!

On day 7 we made a trip back to Magic Kingdom! I mentioned in the other MK post that we spent that day in one half of the park-this day we did the other half! I don't remember the order of riding things at this point but I know we rode everything we wanted to plus we rode Splash Mountain for the third and fourth time that week! haha! We rode Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, Dumbo, The Barnstormer, The Ariel Ride, Peter Pan's Flight, It's a Small World, Haunted Mansion...pretty much all the things. And, we caught the parade!

We had dinner at Be Our Guest! Best meal of the trip, hands down! I had the filet and it was perfect!

We planned to stay until the park closed because it was our last day...but that was going to be 11pm and I wasn't down for that. Lucky for us, they still did a fireworks show at 9pm so we saw it and then called it a day!

Day 8 was go home day. BOO. We hung around our resort until time to head to the airport.

We seriously had the most magical vacation! I love travelling and spending time with my people! In fact, I'm in charge of the next family trip....you'll never guess where we're going! :)

Spring Break in Disney: Days 5 & 6!

Back to the Disney posts! :)

Day 5 was our "break day"! The only plans we had were for dinner at Ohana! We spent the day at the pool and just hanging around resting! It was a much needed break from the hustle and bustle that Disney trips bring! If there is any way you can do this, I highly recommend it! Dinner at Ohana was pretty good. For some reason it was not as good as it was last time we ate there.

Day 6 was the day the grown ups had been waiting for...EPCOT! We spent the early hours riding Test Track, Soarin' and the Nemo ride. We were SUPER excited because somehow Mia grew an inch during the trip and was suddenly the required height to be able to ride! I have no idea how this happened but WE WERE PUMPED she was able to ride! Soarin' is one of our top fav rides! She loved it!

Then it was about time for the World Showcase to open! We spent the rest of the day exploring the different countries. We got matching henna tattoos, snacked, got pearls in Japan, had lots of fun with Mia in China, got STUCK on the Grand Fiesta Tour(where Brooks yelled to the staff, "Y'all really need to hurry up!" to which everyone applauded!) and we ate at San Angel Inn that is in the Mexican Pavilion.

That wraps up days 5 and 6!

Spring Break in Disney: Days 3 & 4

Disney day 3 was spent at Animal Kingdom! This is when I tell you how extra we are! hahaha! My kids haven't been to Disney since Pandora opened. Flight of Passage is one of my favorite rides EVER. We had a fast pass for it later in the day BUT I knew the kids would want to ride it more than once so we were at the park at rope drop and we had extra magic hours that day! We RAN to that side of the park and still waited over an hour! I was shocked at how long we had to wait but WORTH IT.

After that we rode Everest which is another fav of mine! Then it was on to the safari where we got to see the new baby giraffe! SWOON! So cute! Pretty sure after that we had lunch. It's all kinda running together at this point but we also rode the Dinosaur ride and saw It's Tough to be a Bug. We went to our actual fast pass for Flight of Passage and this is when Noah and Reece realized they could use the people in our party that didn't ride's magic bands and RIDE IT AGAIN. That's three times, if you're counting. Smart kids, I tell ya.

We had a dinner reservation at the Rainforest Café, we couldn't get a reservation at Yak and Yeti-which is MY FAV but Rainforest was really good!! After that my family stayed and everyone else dipped! That's something else about us all travelling together-if some of us want to leave or do something different it's totally fine. Whatever goes!

We rode several more rides including Primeval Whirl. That normally would have made me sick but I was laughing so hard at Griffin and Peyton I didn't. haha! Josh took the littles on the Triceratops ride while we were on that one-I think they rode it 2 or 3 times.

At this point the park closed in like 10 minutes. I noticed Everest had a short wait time. It was a good 10 minute walk to the ride soooooo we RAN like fire. We literally walked into the waiting cue and the cast members shut the doors behind us! whew. Riding it at night was super fun! You could see the park all lit up so it was fun to see!

We ended up being there for 14 hours! We were pooped but had THE best day!!

Day 4 was spent at Hollywood Studios!

We rode the Tower of Terror, Rockin Rollercoaster(Josh's fav!), Slinky Dog Dash, Star Wars, Toy Story Mania and we caught the Frozen show! We had lunch at Mama Melrose and it was SO FRIGGIN GOOD! Yummo! If you haven't figured it out, we are all about some food in Disney!

We had tickets for Fantasmic but my fam opted out and went back to the resort. We were exhausted-probably from the 14 hour day before! haha! We went to the camp fire at the resort and made smores! So fun!!

That's it for days 3 and 4!