Day 3, Part 1: Breakfast with the Princesses!!

On our way to breakfast (at Akershus in Norway @ Epcot), before the park opens..it was a neat time to see all of the buildings and scenery with literally no one (except the other breakfast goers) around!

Merry Old England!

Thatched Roof Cottages!!!

Before the pictures of breakfast, let me say it was so so delicious!! It was a buffet of fruits, breakfast breads, yogurt, and a bagel bar.  Combine that with a server bringing us as much as we wanted of bacon, eggs, sausage, grits, and gravy. We were stuffed! Which was good, because this was the day we used our Table Service meal for breakfast (since it was character) and that left us with 4 quick service meals for the rest of the day. Since we still had lunch and dinner to cover, we used what we'd learned the day before at Rosie's Cafe~which was that we could easily split one burger meal between Josh and I, and one chicken tender meal between Charlotte and Liam..and that covered us for lunch; and then we still had two quick service meals left for dinner at Epcot!  This day was a lot of park hopping, as Epcot didn't open until 11:00. So our day looked like: Breakfast at Epcot at 8:20, leave Epcot and go to Hollywood Studios for lunch and afternoon activities, a quick dip in the pool for an hour or so, change and head to Epcot for the evening, dinner, and the Illuminations show again! Okay, back to Princess Breakfast!!

Sporting a smooch from Ariel!

On the "Princess Parade" around the restaurant (which ran 3 times while we ate breakfast)

Aurora!

 



Ariel! Liam tried to speak to her while Charlotte was doing the princess parade, but he had just crammed a huge grape in his mouth! They are serious about staying in character, so she tried in her "Ariel" way to ask what he was saying, but it was just "wah, wonk smush" garble and it was Awesome!  It was probably a good thing, since I would bet money he was saying "you are a naughty girl and didn't listen to your daddy!" which is what we tell them about Ariel haha!!

Snow White! Charlotte's favorite princess right now ;)

As you can see, the Knight outfit didn't last long on Liam haha!

Day 2, Part 2: Hollywood Studios (take one)

After the pool, we took the boat to Hollywood Studios! The kids were really excited to ride it..and we were, too :)

 

On the boat!!

Great example of the detail and flowers and greenery everywhere..It's like, they do stuff or build buildings that serve No Purpose other than to be MAGICAL!! It is really awesome :)

Hollywood BLVD! Liam wore his Avengers outfit in a nod to all things Movie.

Such a cutie in her "CUTE" Tweety Bird outfit!

They had fun with all of the things from Toy Story while in line to meet Buzz and Woody!

Liam's face is awesome~it is pretty late at this point haha

Post-normal-bedtime-been-going-for-two-days smiles!

Daddy getting in on the crazy :D

Stinky Pete faces

Waving to the friends!!

Buzz and Woody!

The whole gang!  (Liam SOBBED his way out immediately after this, crying "I thought we were going to PLAY with THEM!!" it was actually pitifully sweet. :/

 

We also saw an Ariel Under the Sea live singing show that was very good! The kids did a dance show called Disney Rocks, the big kids and Josh rode a Star Wars ride I'm still hearing about: "we don't like black holes. Do you like hyperspace, mommy?" about one hundred times a day now, and we had dinner at Rosie's All American Cafe (which we ate at again on Tuesday..but more on that later) :D A great first of two trips to HS!!

The Beach Club Resort

I'm going to pause before Animal Kingdom and do a post on our Resort. We decided we will always stay at this resort..although in 4/5 years (our next planned trip) we will do one of the villas~not sure the "one room for all 5 of us" thing will work next time haha!

The Beach Club!!

 This is the walkway back from the buses (returning from Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom) to the hotel..not too shabby!

Where we filled our refillable mugs each morning and night and grabbed our "snack" breakfast (which was too big to eat at one time..better too much than not enough in this case, though!)

Gorgeous all the time, but esp at night!

Not our room, but it looked exactly like this.

the Ferry we caught to go to Hollywood Studios!! We sat inside and outside~it was really fun!

Overview of all the various pools we had access to, they were all great! A kids area that was huge, a lazy river, hot tubs, a deep area, and everything in between!

You see that big brown slide sticking out to the right of the mast? That was the three story slide you could climb up the pirate ship and slide down into the pool!! it was great! and one person at a time, so the kids when by themselves, and did awesome!! the boat itself is a small pool with two little mini-slides. We had fun here, too!

No one we know, but just to show the kids area (a horseshoe shaped pool that only went up to about 2.5 feet and was sand bottom (all of the pools were) with a big sandy area to play in!

 

We literally came here every afternoon except Thursday when we stayed at MK all day, and we made up for that by coming here Friday morning as soon as it opened until checkout! (since our 5 day passes ended Thursday)

 

**all images from this post pulled from Google Images** sorry, I never took my phone out at the pool!

Day 2, Part 1: Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom kicked off our Monday! We had a ball and did all sorts of fun adventures! We had the first of our character meals with Mickey and Friends at the Tusker House :)

Emory absolutely loved the Lion King musical show!! It was a family favorite with grown ups and kids alike. The costumes and singing were awesome!!

We took an epic safari ride (our only way of doing and African Safari..um..ever.) We had a 20 minute delay mid-ride because of some giraffes sleeping in the middle of the road the vehicles travel!

It was really cool to see animals this close.

Liam waving "Hey, Giraffes!!"

She basically had a huge meltdown and then fell asleep for the rest of the safari. Oh well, at least she's been to the NC Zoo!!

There were a bunch of baby elephants! Cute. :)

Excited to meet some characters! Daisy came by while the boys were at the buffet line.

Liam LIKEY dessert ;)

MICKEY!!!! Liam doing a pat down it looks like haha! ;)

I'm sure he will have something to say about this later..

The girls!! We modeled Dinosaurs (Liam), Minnie Mouse (who we also met at lunch, not pictured), Giraffes, and Zebra print in honor of our visit to the Animal Kingdom :)

 

After this we headed back to the Beach Club for some swimming in the sand bottom pools, 3 hot tubs, and giant slide from the "pirate ship wreck" It was an amazing pool complex that the Yacht and Beach Club Resorts share. We went swimming and then got dressed for our night at Hollywood Studios!

Day 1, Part 2: Magic Kingdom & Epcot

We got checked into our room and of course headed straight for Magic Kingdom!! It rained while we were getting settled, so we made our first Disney purchase of...ponchos. Thanks to the 2012 DNC in Charlotte, there were no ponchos anywhere I looked haha! So we grabbed some and followed Tour Guide Mike's advice to head straight to Dumbo as our first ride..which we all got to go on! There is a video somewhere and if I can find it I'll edit this post. 

Before I dive into our schedule, I wanted to mention that we got the Park Hopper tickets which allowed us to go to as many parks as we wanted to each day..This usually worked out as one in the morning, and one in the afternoon or night..So, our first day we did Magic Kingdom until right after lunch, came back to the room, went swimming at our awesome pirate pool, got cleaned up and headed to Epcot where we had dinner reservations and plans to watch Illuminations light show (which we stayed for 3 times over the week~the kids, Liam especially, loved it!)  We had done a good bit of research and used a website called Tour Guide Mike to assist us with planning what rides/restaurants, and it was invaluable. We only had to wait for a couple of rides or characters for more than 10-15 minutes, and we loved the restaurants he recommended. It was absolutely worth the $15 one time subscription!!

Okay, so On to Magic Kingdom! We were in the rain, but didn't care, we were so happy! We got to see Main Street, USA all decorated for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween which was starting our last night there~the decorations all over the parks are incredible~no detail too small! And the beautiful Fall colors were just really well done. While walking down the main drag, we saw a singing/marching band!

This perfect baby was an angel all week. I can't even describe her!! She napped for the first two hours after she rode Dumbo and we took turns taking the kids on other stuff~ Josh and the kids did the first real roller coaster: the Barnstormer, while I nursed Emory (*The Baby Centers are a lifesaver if you have babies or even just little kids!! I will talk more about these during Animal Kingdom b/c that was the best one), rode the Tea Cups, saw Mickey's PhilHarmonics interactive "movie", rode Cinderella's Prince Charming Carousel, and a new trial interactive show they were testing for the expansion (Ariel and Belle) parts of the new Magic Kingdom.

Liam was "other castle items" during the Belle show

Seeing Belle for the first time

a really cute and beautifully done Belle "show"?

Riding "the Many Adventures ofWinnie the Pooh" after lunch at the Pinocchio Village Haus: where our meal plan went a long way!! *Let me stop here and explain our meal plan: each person (Emory excluded) had a refillable mug, a snack, a "quick service" (think more than a food stand but less than a fancy dinner) meal, and a "table service" meal (think fancy dinner).  Each (kids included) meal included a drink, entree, and dessert! It was a ton of food and we were so impressed with all of them except one poor choice on our part where we ignored TGMike.. (don't eat at Japan for a quick service meal..)  We also did two character meals to eliminate some of the lines for meeting characters around the parks, but I'll touch on those as they happen. Just mentioning them here because they use a "table service" which by default made our other meal on those days a quick service choice.

First family pic with the famous Castle!!! Ponchos were off for the rest of the day!

Merida was our first character we met! I was very impressed with how long she and all of the other characters we met spent with the kids, talking to them and not rushing us off at all. It was great!! She looked and sounded Just Like Merida!!

Someone didn't make it to dinner awake ;)  Notice the scuba mask and shark shorts for our first table service meal at Coral Reef in Epcot!

 Every table in the restaurant has an incredible view of...

a gigantic aquarium with sharks, rays, and fish a plenty!! (as a non-seafood lover, I was happy to knock this one out of the way first, but it was great~I had a delicious steak dinner and got to enjoy watching my family have a ball with the fishtank. We were also happy to not be right beside the tank b/c even though everyone is looking at the fish, I bet it feels like they are looking at you! lol

 

After dinner but before the light show started, we toured around the Future World Showcase a bit. This was the only time we visited this area..it probably had the least to offer our crew at this point.  "The Land" is a weird 80s mall looking thing with a food court and some boring boat ride about farming that scared Liam a bit b/c it was simulating a very dark rainstorm at the beginning, and the kids and I rode an airplane/hanglider simulation ride called Soarin' that was really cool.

Waiting for Illuminations to start!!

Our champ babe. She loved this whole week because she was held so much!! Josh and I split the time with her in the Beco carrier (although it looks like only he held her! Ahem, he just didn't take any pictures when he had his hands free like I did, wink wink! ;p)