Day 3, Part 2: Hollywood Studios (take two) & Epcot

So, apparently, we had so much fun at Hollywood Studios that we didn't stop to take any pictures!! But what we did do was have a great lunch at Rosie's Cafe, see the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, ride Toy Story Midway Mania (using the fast pass system, which is great but we barely needed due to the time of year we went and using TGMike's suggestions of ride order), See Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage, and go to the Fantasmic interactive "movie" show!! It was a blast!!

 

Our evening included another hop over to Epcot! (our resort was a 5 minute walk along the waterway pictured below)  This was our view as we came through the gates of Epcot each time: the beautiful scenery, water, and a view of "France"  :)

 

Mary Poppins in England!

On the bridge headed towards France and Itlay

Perhaps my only in person view of the Eiffel Tower ;)

Too Cute! This was my screen saver for a while :)

That is my first babe. Look at that beauty.

My two handsome Hunks!!

Off to check out where we would eat the next night in Itlay!

Kids were fascinated with the fountain in France.

View across the water..

Our spot to watch Illluminations before the sun set

Hopefully we'll see this in person one day!

 

Since we'd had a lighter lunch and dinner, we thought this was a good night to splurge on a French dessert..it was RIDICULOUSLY good~adults split something amazing called a Napoleon and the kids had a chocolate mousse. :)

Home sweet home every evening!

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!