Time to catch up. We had a great vacation in Orlando last month. We stayed at the Cypress Pointe Grand Villas Resort for a week using our timeshare points. It is quite close to Disney World. We had a 3 bedroom suite which we shared with Sam’s parents and his brother Charlie, Charlie’s wife Vanessa, and their 14-month-old son Diego. Charlie, Vanessa, & Diego live in Belgium right now so this was the first time we had seen them in almost 2 years and the first time we met our nephew Diego. It was great spending the week with them.
We arrived Saturday and got settled into our resort. Sunday morning our family foursome went to church with Christy’s cousins who live near Orlando and went out the lunch with them. We had a great visit even though it was short. We were glad to get to see them though since we were there.
We also celebrated Charlie’s birthday Sunday with presents and cheesecake.
We all got 5-day passes to Disney World to go to one park per day. We did the Magic Kingdom on Monday. We saw the Bear Country Jamboree (in memory of the one at Disneyland that we always liked) and the Tiki Room Under New Management (with Iago and Zazu and new songs), rode the Magic Carpets of Aladdin and Pirates of the Caribbean and then had lunch. It was neat to see things there that Disneyland doesn’t have and to compare differences in the attractions at both. After lunch we headed to Fantasyland and hit It’s a Small World, the Carousel, and Pooh’s Playful Spot, and took an afternoon ice cream break. Then we headed over to Tomorrowland for the Indy Speedway, Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, Carousel of Progress, and Tomorrowland Transit Authority. When we came out of Buzz’s ride it was raining pretty good so we tried waiting it out with the Carousel of Progress and Transit Authority. But it was still raining after those so we decided to head back to our “green building” (as Caleb liked to refer to it) at the resort.
Tuesday we went to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We got Fastpasses for Toy Story Mania then went for a Journey Into Narnia. Then we saw the Playhouse Disney Live on Stage show and Caleb got to meet June from Little Einsteins and take a picture with her. Caleb is really into meeting the characters. We ate lunch on Sunset Blvd, stopped to watch a demo by the Toy Story army men, then headed into the Movie Set Adventure play area for a few minutes before heading back to Toy Story Mania to use our Faspasses. Toy Story Mania was so fun! We wished we could do it again, but we really needed to head back and let the kids take naps. One thing I was really disappointed about was that we never found the Cars characters to meet and take pictures. The boys would have loved that and I think that is the only place to meet the Cars characters. After naps the boys went swimming with Grandma & Grandpa and Mom & Dad went out for the evening. We ate at Planet Hollywood and did some shopping in Downtown Disney.
Wednesday we didn’t get going as early and decided to go to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It made for a pretty short time at that park, but still fun. We took the train ride over to the petting zoo and then took the train back again. Then we went on the African safari ride and saw tons of real animals. We thought it was an even better view of the animals than at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego. We saw rhinos, hippos, antelope, giraffes, elephants, an ostrich, lions, crocodiles, flamingoes, a monkey, and more. We ate lunch at the Rainforest Cafe before heading home (the green building again) for naps. Caleb thought the thunder in the Rainforest Cafe was too loud and scary, but we all liked looking at all the fish in the many tanks. In the afternoon Grandma, Grandpa, Caleb, & Mommy went swimming in the volcano pool. Caleb loved going down the tunnel slides into the pool going under the waterfall in the pool.
Thursday we went to Epcot. We went on the Spaceship Earth ride up inside the giant ball, then split up for a half hour or so. Grandma & Grandpa went to Soarin’, Charlie & Vanessa & Diego got some breakfast, and the four of us went to the Epcot Character Greeting spot. We waited in line for about 20 minutes then got to meet, get autographs, and take pictures with Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Goofy, Chip and Dale, Belle, and Baloo. We generally don’t like to wait in lines for characters, but getting to see so many in a row made it worth it. Then we met back up and Grandma & Grandpa took the kids while the four parents went on Soarin’. After that we all went on the Nemo clamshell ride and spent a while looking at the fish in the tanks there. We walked around the World Showcase looking for a good lunch spot and ended up eating in “Mexico” all the way at the end. Micah loved the scaled down train set next to “Germany”. After a rest we played mini golf at our resort and went swimming in the volcano pool again.
Friday we went to Magic Kingdom again for our last day of Disney World. We tried a different schedule today and went to a mall in the morning to walk around and wear out Micah & Caleb so they could take early naps then go to the park after that. It worked out pretty well. We got to the park just in time to see the Dreams Come True parade which the kids liked because they got to see lots of characters go by. It was so cute to see Diego clapping for the parade. We went on the Jungle Cruise, the Carousel again, Mickey’s PhilharMagic show, Dumbo, The Barnstormer at Goofy’s Farm, the Disney World Railroad, and ate dinner on Main Street just before closing time.
Saturday morning after we packed up and checked out we spent a few hours at Downtown Disney before we had to go to the airport. We played with Legos at the Lego store, rode a little train ride, browsed the Disney Toy store, and had lunch at McDonald’s before going to the movies to see Wall-E. Then we had to go to the airport to fly home. We had a wonderful week.
Here’s all of us in our resort suite’s living room.
