Disney-Disney-Disney

We left for Disney bright and early on Saturday morning, January 10th. We decided to drive to cut down on expense since we would have had to rent a car in Florida anyway. Plus it was easier to bring all our food rather than to try to shop down there. If I had to shop there, it would have mean endless phone calls to local grocery stores and calls to manufacturers once we were down there. We traded our timeshare for the trip, so we had a full kitchen. We were able to have breakfast and dinners in the apartment and pack our lunches for the parks.

We arrived at our “mid-way” hotel in Georgia in approximately 12 hours. The girls are used to 9-10 hour drives to and from my Sister’s, but the last hour or so of this drive was tough on them. Add to their frustration the fact that we were only in Georgia and not at Disney World yet. They were happy to be out of the car, but were pretty wound up, so we had to split them up in bed and we each got to sleep with one of them. Sunday we arrived at the resort in the early afternoon. So we had plenty of time to unpack and settle in.

Monday we hit the Magic Kingdom for the day. J and I took the girls and Maddy to visit the Princesses, Fairies and Mickey. They loved every minute of it. The girls had been so excited to see the princesses and they were not disappointed. Nothing beats watching your children meet their favorite people face to face. Unfortunately, Alysa ended up with a fever mid-day and slept on Jerome while we waited for the Princesses. She did perk up as soon as she saw them, but once we were done visiting, she was done. I had Motrin with me in Florida, but not in the park. My Mom was having back pain, so she went back to the room in the afternoon and took Alysa with her. She napped, while we took Kayla on rides. We stayed that night for the light show parade and the fireworks. Kayla, who is sensitive to loud noises wasn’t too thrilled with the fireworks but didn’t want to leave either. She’s a trooper.

We didn’t eat at the park on Monday, we had breakfast in our apartment, packed lunch and my Sister brought dinner back to those of us that had not taken a break to go home in the afternoon. I will have more on meals there tomorrow since Tuesday was our breakfast with the Princesses. But I will say we had a reaction-free trip. And regardless of meals that was no small accomplishment. People had told me there is ice cream everywhere. Which there is, but when it’s in the upper 50’s in Florida and so many people are bundled in hats and gloves, there aren’t many eating ice cream. Our biggest obstacle was the popcorn and boy was it everywhere. Wipes were our friend – the stroller, rides, etc. I even had some “cast members” ask if there was a problem when they saw me wiping down the rides before I let Kayla get on. They, of course were wonderful when I explained the situation. The popcorn was evil to me on two fronts. The first is for the obvious – it’s a big danger to Kayla and it is dropped EVERYWHERE (does anyone know how to put food in their mouth and not on the ground?)! But the second was my insane craving. All I wanted was to chow down on a container of popcorn, which of course I never got a chance to do. So I left for home with a craving that just won’t go away…

But the most important thing was that she had no reactions – it was a huge relief to me and for that alone, I consider the trip a major success!

Here are some of the highlights from our 1st day.

Here is our 15 passenger van filled from bottom to top...