Disney - Beach Day/Downtown Disney!!

Midweek, we decided to take a much needed day off from the parks.  The kids were VERY excited to spend the day at the pool.  I don't blame them.  The pool area at our resort was fantastic!  A ton of intertwined meandering pools, a lazy river, many hot tubs, a couple water slides (good ones!) and a beach with sand and zero entry clearance.  There wasn't anything this pool didn't have.

 

SO excited for pool day -

 

We did convince them to fuel up first -

 

Coloring -

 

Pool time yet? -

 

 

 

 The kids played so well together but also made lots of friends along the way -

 Luke, mastering the lazy river -

 

Stop for lunch, poolside.  Loved the sand buckets the food came in -

 

 As you can see, the kids put them to good use in the beach area.  The sand was artificial sand, it was really pretty cool.  A pool with the beach feel -

 

Lots of birds around Disney.  A couple families hung around looking for dropped french fries and the like.  Mommy wasn't too worried about her little chicks getting stepped on although it was very busy.  We even saw them in the pool from time to time.

 

 

We felt like we hit the jackpot with the resort we stayed at.  We really loved everything about it. 

 

Paige in the beautiful lobby area.

We came home to lots of origami towel figures.  This was Eli's dad we figured -

 

This must have been Perry's friend.  I should have taken pics of the others.  The kids loved it. 

 

 Paige decided she wanted her nails done at the hotel salon.  She was so excited for this.  Of course the ladies at the nail place ate her up.

 

When the lady was finished, she said "do you have a flower or something you can put on?"  she's not pushy or anything.  So she got a little mickey -

 

She became a little high maintenance after the nails, didn't want to hold hands with anyone or go back into the pool.  High drama -

 

Once our day at the resort was done it was time to head to Downtown Disney to meet my godfather and his family for dinner.  Only problem was that it was POURING! to the extent that we couldn't even walk outside for a good hour we were stuck under the bus shelter.  The kids were such good sports about it.

 

The weather doesn't stay down for long, we were back in action after an hour or so and were able to enjoy all the fun things that Downtown Disney had to offer.  We thought this was a very fun little outside eating/shopping area.

 

 

 

The Lego store was great.  All the below are made out of Legos (except one!)-

 

Luke really loved making little Lego houses and cars and racing them on the track -

 

Yes, that is made of Legos too -

 

And Woody too -

 

Paige's favorite of the night was the DJ on stage doing instructive dance party moves.  As you can imagine, this was right up her ally.  She danced before ice cream and after.  I finally had to drag her out as the sun went down.  She would have stayed all night, I'm sure.

 

 

Loved sleeping with Eli and Daddy bought them each a mini version of their stuffed animals -

Disney - Magic Kingdom!

 FINALLY, we made our way to the Magic Kingdom.  Again, tried to get an early start knowing the kids would want to go back to the pool for the afternoon.  This became a trend.  They like the parks but after a while they started asking for the pool.  It was hot and they were typically ready to cool off and play after lunchtime.  Jay and I were not 12 hour in the park kind of parents.  We did 6 hours tops and we were outta there.  It worked out. 

First walk down Main Street and the castle -

 

 

 

 The Dumbo ride was the first ride for the day (or as Paige called it "Elli's Ride!")

It's a Small World ride which the kids surprisingly really liked.  They picked to do it again the second day.

We ran into the wicked step mother and step sisters.  I told Paige to ask them why they were so mean to Cinderella but she said, "No Mommy, that would be rude to ask!"

Of course the answers changed daily but one day Paige's answer to "which was your favorite ride?" was the carousel -

We saw a couple 3D movies throughout the week.  When we got home Paige said, "we should have kept some of those glasses and watched our TV at home with them, that would be cool"  She really loved the 3D effect.  She would spend the show grabbing for the air in front of her trying to catch whatever was coming her way, very cute.  This was a cute little Mickey show we stopped at in Tomorrowland.

We checked out Garcon's pub from Beauty and the Beast -

 

Time for a sweet treat -

We got to watch a bit of the show before lightning shut it down.  Lucky for us we were safely on the bus before it started raining.

 Luke picked his special gift at the Magic Kingdom.  Perry the Platypus.  Thinking this might have something to do with the fact that the animal he picked in school for his research paper was no other than the Platypus!

We had dinner at our resort.  A seafood buffet.  It was actually pretty good, by Disney's standards.  Paige LOVED picking from the "fancy" dessert table and both kids felt so grown up having kiddie cocktails.

Tonight we decided to walk all the way around the lake over to the Boardwalk area. 

Lots of fun things to do over there.  The kids trying to win stuffies -

Mommy got picked to be part of the magic show -



 

 

Disney - Animal Kingdom!

 

 For day two in the parks we picked Animal Kingdom.  Luke was especially excited about all of the animals. Despite our late nights, we got an early start and were there when the park opened. (something we did not do much considering how late we were staying out) 

 

We started with probably the coolest thing to do in the park, the safari.  We got in these jeeps and basically drove through a zoo.  Super cool!  We saw all kinds of fun animals.  I am happy to report that Luke FINALLY got to see a real live cheetah!  A couple of them were just laying down toward the back of an area when we drove through, a nice surprise after being disappointed in not seeing them in Cincy.

 

 

We went to a really cute little Lion King show that was very well done -

 

The kids were allowed to get ONE thing each for the week.  Paige fell in love with this Dumbo stuffed animal and throughout the day became more and more obsessed with it.  We explained she was using her one gift, she was in love and insisted we get this for her.  She named her Elli (as in Elli the Elephant - do not call her Dumbo please!) and surprisingly she did not ask for another thing the whole week even later in the week when Luke was shopping for his.

 

Parks were hot, lots of frozen goodies to keep us cool -

 

We did not do a lot of characters in the parks.  Mom and Dad were not all about standing in line and the kids, thankfully, didn't mind.  We ran into these guys so posed for some pics and got their autographs.

 

Lunch at the Tusker House with some of the characters.  

 

 

 

Uh oh, this is becoming a trend.  Don't let her fool you, come 10PM she is the Disney party girl -

 

Dinner at the resort, after a shower saw a really nice rainbow -

 

Outside and around our resort -

 

Every night our resort offered roasting marshmallows on the beach -