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Trip Report

This is my third trip to Disney with my girls (6 and 8).

TRIP #1 - The first trip, we just wandered around the park in awe and saw what we saw with no plan at all. The focus of that trip was autographs – the girls LOVED the characters, so we stood in lots of lines to meet everyone we could.

TRIP #2 – I have gone from a casual tourist to a TOUR GUIDE NAZI. I have done my research and found websites, guidebooks and have written every detail I think I need in my notebook. We followed the guides in the Unofficial guide, which work very well to avoid lines. The only problem is, I became stressed out about following the plan and was not very nice to be around.

The girls wanted to see the parades, so we made sure to see every parade in every park. The parades were all great, but I found out why in my 6 trips to Disney, I have never managed to see a parade. I hate to have to be scoping out a place to sit 30 minutes before the parade starts. But we did it and it was worth it!!

So now I hope to have learned from my last 2 trips and can find some happy medium!

DAY 1

Day 1 was our travel day. When the girls woke up, they knew that “today is the day”, but they had to go to school first – our flight was not until 5pm.

Bailey, (my 6 year old, who always wants to sleep 5 more minutes) woke up singing, “zippity doo da”. When I asked her who she was and what did she do with my real Bailey, she told me she just “couldn’t help singing!” It was very sweet!!!

The girls went off to school and I did my last minute things.

DH and I picked the girls up at school at dismissal and headed to the airport.

The flight was uneventful – got to Orlando at 10pm – got our car from National. National was very easy - no shuttle to the car lot. You just walk across to the garage from the baggage claim.

We checked into Pop Century and found our room. I didn’t request a specific building because I didn’t know what would be better – close to the Main Hall – close to the pool – further away from the crowds and noise???? So, when in doubt, I let them decide for me!!!

We were in the 70’s building (is that right? The one with the giant Mickey on the phone? Why don’t I know this? How old am I?) At first I was disappointed that our building didn’t have any cool icons like the bowling pins and the cell phones. It took a little while to realize that those ‘walls’ were 8 track tapes!

I was also disappointed at first, that our building didn’t have a pool. But since whenever we were at the pool, we wanted to be close to the Main Hall, it didn’t really matter. We hung out at the flower pool and it was very convenient.

This was our first ON SITE trip to Disney and we all enjoyed the resort, the giant icons, and I especially loved the words on the buildings!!!!! But other than that, there wasn’t any Disney Magic for me there. No towel sculptures – no balloon animals – nothing special at all. Maybe it’s only for the guests of the Moderate and luxury resorts?

Everyone was sleeping by 1am except me. Being the obsessive planner, I needed to make a plan for our first park day!!! We originally planned on going to Epcot, but I wanted everyone to sleep in, so I thought maybe a water park would be a better choice since they open later.