Disneyworld!

After working on Joe for years, I finally convinced him to take our family to Disneyworld. We went last weekend for 5 days, and had a wonderful trip. We wanted to go before Nate turned three so that we wouldn't have to pay for his park admission and so that we could stay in one hotel room without paying for a suite.
We stayed at the Port Orleans Riverside. The nice thing about staying on Disney property is that you can ride their buses from the airport to your hotel and then from your hotel to the park every day so you don't have to rent a car. It was nice to not have to worry about one more thing. Joe and I had been to the Magic Kingdom before, but we had never been to any of the other parks. We spent one day in each park and two days in Magic Kingdom. We decided that our best bet to get the most out of every day was to set an alarm and wake up early and be at the park when it opens, so that is what we did. Then we would ride a bunch of rides in the first 2-3 hours of the morning before the crowds got too busy. After that we would ride less busy rides and watch shows and take it a little easier. Overall, the lines weren't too bad. There were some really busy days in the parks, but we got to see and ride everything that we wanted to, so that was good.
When it rained or there was a ride that we could get wet on, we had ponchos that we pulled out and we were never miserable because we were all wet.

We went with Adam's best friend, Jack's family. They only have the one child so it was nice to have extra adults to watch the kids or ride rides with them. Jack's grandma and cousin also came too. They were great company and humored us on our frantic hurrying to all of the rides.

What the Disney dining plan gives you is a counter service meal each day (like fast food in the park) and a sit down meal each day. They had several of the sit down meals in which the Disney characters would come around and visit the tables while you ate. We did two of those, one had Mickey and Goofy and Donald Duck, the other was the Cinderella characters. I really liked the food and it was nice to not have to wait in line to see the characters, they came to us. The kids really enjoyed it.

(It was the end of one of our early rise morning and Nate had lived the day fully as you can see from his shirt).

Nate didn't get to ride on all of the rides, but there were a lot of rides that he could ride on. He would often ask us to ride again, but unfortunately, we didn't always have time to do it again.

His favorite ride was Winnie the Pooh in Magic Kingdom.

The parks all also had 3D shows and the kids enjoyed watching them. Some of them were really well done- this is at the Bug's Life in Animal Kingdom.

One of the nights we got to eat at the "Sci-Fi Diner). We all had seats in a car and we watched movies on a drive-in type screen. The kids really enjoyed it.

These last pictures are of the character dining with the Cinderella characters. They were well done. The evil step mother played her part very well. She would order the kids to "come here," then sneer at them and talk rudely to them. When they were done she told them to "go away."

The sisters were funny too, they were pretty bratty and also a little ditsy.

Seriously, look at that smile:

Ellie with Prince Charming

Cinderella was very pretty and very sweet.

Then they had a royal ball and Cinderella and Prince Charming danced with some of the people there. Our table was right by them so Ellie got to dance with Cinderella.

When she was done dancing with Ellie she asked Michael if he would dance with her. This is the response she got:

Of course after we all started laughing he hammed it up:

We had a fantastic trip, and even Joe had a great time (he dreaded it for a long time before it happened). It probably was a lot due to a great travel agent, if you want her info I will forward it to you. I can't wait to go again in a few years.