Disney World 2013: Day 1

I know that I've been MIA - obviously vacation was a HUGE part of the reason for that! We left for our Disney World vacation on September 21st after a day full of sports.  We stopped overnight in South Carolina and made it to Orlando the following afternoon.  We spent Sunday exploring our hotel and getting settled, and we finally made it to the Magic Kingdom on Monday, September 23rd.

That's right, the first day of our Disney World vacation was our seventh anniversary.  To celebrate the milestone, I ordered shirts for Brian and I to wear to the Magic Kingdom.  My shirt has the names of all of the princesses, and his has the name of their princes.  Precious and adorable, I know.  I'm just happy he went along with it when I surprised him with the shirts on Monday morning while we were getting dressed!  Paired with our happy anniversary buttons, we were perfectly matched for our anniversary.

I've always read that the very best thing you can do to avoid crowds when you go to Disney World is to walk in and turn left into Adventureland instead of heading into Tomorrowland.  That is never in the cards for us on our first visit!  As soon as our kids hear the words "Disney World" they see themselves walking right on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin and the People Mover!

 We read that Space Mountain was going to be out of service for some of our trip but we were still surprised when we rode through that section on the People Mover.  It's typically pitch black (and always makes for good naps for little ones.  Amazingly enough, Hudson and Finley are both 13 months in the photos), but it was completely lit, and we could see everything!  Kind of amazing to get a glimpse of it!

 We were able to test the new MyMagic+ system while we were on vacation.  I will probably bore you with my review of it at some point, but one thing that I liked was that we could reserve Fast Passes for 3 rides per day in advance.  On our first day I had already scheduled Dumbo, Enchanted Tales with Belle, and the Journey to the Little Mermaid.

Dumbo was all Hudson talked about, so he was definitely ready to climb on board!

We had to stop and take a picture of this girl in front of Rapunzel's tower.  She LOVES Tangled!

 At this point it was raining lightly, but I'm not kidding when I tell you that we were about to get drenched. We road Big Thunder Mountain and then realized we had a surprise fast pass to meet Mickey Mouse, so we booked it over in the rain.

 As you can see, we didn't let the rain dampen our spirits at all.  It was a little chilly, but who doesn't love meeting Mickey Mouse!?

 It was still pretty rainy when we were done with Mickey and Pluto, so we decided to take the train around the park a few times to stay dry.  Plus, every one in this house loves train rides!  

 It was on this trip around the park that we discovered that lines had gotten short and people were leaving.  We decided to take full advantage of the lack of crowds and jumped off the train in Fantasyland.  We road the Barnstormer roller coaster over and over again.  The kids love it!  In just a few hours we were able to ride things it may have taken us all day to do if there had been lines - Big Thunder Mountain Railroad again, Splash Mountain (we were already soaked), and more People Mover and Buzz.  Plus, we still had to visit Belle's Enchanted Tales.  Poor Reesie.  Honestly, there was a huge mistake made (by Disney) with our Magic Bands, otherwise I may have moved that to a different day.  She was able to be in the "tale," but she was soaked and freezing.  But it helped her play her part pretty well - she got to be Maurice, soaked and freezing in the Beast's dungeon!

We spent a little time on Main Street that night, and then headed back to the hotel.  These kids definitely needed a hot shower and some Disney movies before bed. I loved that our hotel room actually had two bathrooms and a couch/living area for us to hang out in.  This pulled out to the bed that Reese and Wyatt crashed in every night!