Lessons learned at Disney World--part 1

This past week was B's spring break, so we took the opportunity to drive down to sunny Florida and visit the mecca of princesses, monsters, space heroes, and pirates. We wanted one last family vacation with just four of us and we had a blast. Here are some of the things I learned along the way. Keep these things in mind: I'm 7+ months pregnant, Andrew has a bad back, and we were traveling with a 6 yo boy and a 3 yo girl.

*Mapquest estimates for travel times do not apply when you're traveling hundreds of miles to a hugely popular spring break destination during Easter weekend. Our drive was supposed to take a little under 10 hours. And we usually BEAT the estimate that Mapquest gives. Oh, no. Not this time. We took 13 hours driving down and just over 12 hours coming home. That's a lot of time in the car! Traffic was heavy most of the way and we ran into construction both ways.

Yea, this looks like a parking lot, but it's actually a freeway!

*Portable DVD players are worth every penny. I checked out a bunch of new movies from the library before we left and the kids were PERFECT for all 25 hours in the car. Amazing what a little electronics can do for a seemingly difficult trek. Loved it!

*My kids rock! Ok, I knew they were pretty good kids, but this trip really helped me see how truly amazing they are. Whitney would remind me every morning to put her eye drops in. How cute is that? On the one morning that I forgot, she reminded me at the park, "Mom, we didn't put my drop in! We need to go back to the hotel and put it in." I assured her that it would be ok to wait until the next day. (The dilation was still very effective.) The atropine drops have been much harder on me than on her. It broke my heart to see her watching the shows and parades while

winking her left eye

because it was too blurry to see out of. But she didn't complain. Not once! Amazing.

Brandon got some sort of stomach virus or food poisoning while we were down there. He threw up several times and hardly ate anything. He lost four pounds. (Lucky me, I found them!) Poor little guy just hung in there, though. He didn't whine or complain. Just made sure to let us know when he couldn't walk anymore because he didn't have any energy. And he even got his throw up into a proper holding container all but once. Pretty good for a 6 year old. I felt so bad for him that he couldn't have the perfect experience down at Disney, but he hung in there.

Always had to keep the barf bag handy.
Just in case.

*When you pull up to your hotel, if the brand name is covered over by a big white plastic sheet and it has been re-named since you booked it, RUN!!! We decided to stay off Disney property in Kissimmee at a Best Western that I booked through Hotwire. When we pulled up, this is what the sign looked like:

Very suspicious.

I think there were good reasons why Best Western withdrew their name from this place. It was a dump. Thankfully, the majority of our time was spent away from the hotel. It was not a fun place to be--very noisy outside, broken toilet that kept refilling its tank every 30 minutes ALL DAY EVERY DAY even when we called maintenance twice to have it fixed, broken sink, room right by the stairs, loud neighbors.....Could've done without that.

The sad thing is, when I was talking with Andrew about it, I'm not sure if I'll do it differently next time. It was really affordable and when you're staying somewhere for 7 nights, a relatively small difference in price really adds up. We're such cheapskates. You get what you pay for.

*Never EVER at any cost eat at Cici's pizza buffet. We had only eaten there once before. It was probably two or three years ago. Andrew got very sick to his stomach the next day and has never been back. But it's so affordable and the pizza's pretty good, so we gave it a try again while we were down there. I convinced Andrew that THIS Cici's was in a different state and everything, surely he wouldn't get sick again. WRONG. He started throwing up that evening and felt terrible the whole next day. He had to miss out on going to Animal Kingdom while I took the two kids. (Although he felt bad for leaving me with both kids for the day, he was OK with watching cable TV all day since that's such a luxury for us.)

*If you want to know how to park thousands of cars in the smoothest & most efficient manner, how to make a line look shorter than it really is, OR how to make people pay outrageous prices for novelty hats or other unnecessary items, consult DISNEY.

*Even if you don't plan on attending a parade that's going on in your park, you still need to know when they are happening or you get stuck behind mobs of people and can't get to the ride/show that you were hoping to see. Very, very frustrating.

*A 7 month pregnant woman and a 3 1/2 year old girl have about the same size bladder.

Who knew?

This made bathroom stops very convenient.

*A meal served in the shape of Mickey Mouse is always more fun to eat.

Yummy!

*If there's a really short line for a ride you've never heard of, it's probably worth giving it a try. We had a couple of very pleasant surprises. In Epcot, we tried "Living with the Land" purely because it had no wait and we loved it. We went back for a second round. At the Magic Kingdom, we had a similar experience with the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. Cool ride for the whole family with no wait.

*At Epcot, there is a place called "Club Cool" that is the best deal in any of the parks. Free pop. Woo hoo! I don't usually drink pop, but even I was excited about it. It's sponsored by Coke and has samples of different Coke products from around the world.

Most of them were really good, but I don't know how anyone in Italy can drink the "Beverly." It was the most disgusting drink I've ever tasted. Nasty. You should try it just for the dare factor, but make sure you just take a little sip.

*If you've been wanting to go on an African safari, but it's out of your price range, go to the Animal Kingdom and try their safari ride. It's amazing! One of my favorite attractions of the whole week. My camera did a crappy job taking pictures, but here's one little sample of what we saw.
Rhinos right in front of us. We actually had to stop the truck and wait for a little while for them to get out of our way. How cool is that?

*At Animal Kingdom, don't miss the bird show, Flights of Wonder. We all loved it! I didn't get a pic of our favorite performer, Pogo the cockatiel. I think he got more laughs out of the kids than anything else all week.

I've never seen a bald eagle this up
close and personal before. Wow.

Stay tuned for more lessons, photos, and commentary soon.