Magical Memories!

So we are on the cheap, cheap, cheaper than cheap kind life style now…and we’re rockin’ it! For lunch at Disney we packed our own food from home. Zach made himself some sausage balls and brought some chips (and yes, his own bottle of mustard).

For Kye I packed peanut butter crackers, string cheese, applesauce, watermelon, a “veggie drink” (pureed carrots in a squirt type form…he LOVES them) and milk. 

For myself I brought two granola bars and some peanut butter (the Sparks were for later!). Disney gives FREE cups of ice water so we stocked up on that and enjoyed our lunch together! The environment was special enough, our meal didn’t need to be 😉 Also I wore my charm necklace that day with Kye and Britt’s initials and bday charms on them…I wanted to feel like Britt was with us in spirit haha. I really missed her a LOT that day and kept mentally planning out her first trip next year 🙂

Since our agenda got switched up when Kye decided not to participate in the Pirate’s League we just headed back to Fantasyland to kinda “reset” the day and go about our regular ride routine in order to make sure we saw everything in a timely manner but also with the least amount of walking possible for my foot 😉

I’m hoping they do something more to incorporate Tangled into the park? It’s def one of my favorites!

Dumbo was our first stop! We were semi-hoping Kye might just forget about it but when we asked him what he wanted to ride first, Dumbo was it 🙂 Zach rode in the Dumbo in front of ours so he could get pics of us. Zach actually was the one who multiple times brought up when Britt comes and how it will work out where we can each sit with one kid during many of the rides 🙂 It will make it more fun for both of us to ALWAYS have one of our smiling kids beside us 🙂 

This is my “please God don’t fall out” face 😉

We survived!

Up next was one of Kye’s favorites, The Barnstormer! While waiting in line we could see the choo-choo as now none of Fantasyland is blocked off from it. Kye told us on the last visit that he doesn’t wanna ride the choo choo again because there are more fun rides to ride (agreed!) but he did look a little bit sad watching it go by! He still said he didn’t want to ride it though…guess he’s growing up!

Why ride the choo choo when you can ride a roller coaster?

The rode it twice, shocker 🙂 

I LOVE THIS. 

You can just see his little mind thinking about all the fun stuff coming up next!

Phillarmagic Time!

A random guy offered to take a picture for us with our glasses so I offered to take one of his family. I think he thought I was an idiot for wanting a picture of us like this? He said “Family Christmas Card Photo Right?” Um…no dude! Of course I was all on a big Disney high and was so crunk and was like “3d glasses pictures are a Disney tradition MUST!” haha I’m lame 😉 And I wish I was on his family Christmas card list to get their awesome 3d glasses photo 🙂 You can see my crunkness…I mean those tilted glasses are rockin’

It’s so neat to me to see how much Kye has grown through our experiences at Disney! I remember our first visit having to stand beside him to hold him on the horse and now he runs and climbs up it by himself and I never even have to touch him the entire ride!

I think now that he’s into the thrill rides, some of his old favs have become boring. He got SUPER silly to make it more exciting 😉

Zach found the ride to be riveting, obviously

I LOVE the classic Sword in the Stone picture opportunity 🙂 It is just DISNEY ya know? Kye hadn’t ever seen the movie and asked me about the sword and where it came from so once we got home I pulled out the movie for him to watch and he loved it! It reminds me of Ryan, a good friend of ours, as it was his favorite Disney movie ever. I NEVER hear people talk about that movie? But Kye thinks its awesome too 🙂

I think it’s hilarious that Zach has always hated It’s a Small World and yet Kye loves it! He specifically asked about it and was eager to ride. It is a fun ride and it’s one of those where you can find something new and different every time you ride! It was def time to Spark It Up for us so we mixed up our Spark with some water bottles we brought while waiting in line for the ride (yes, I had a medical pass…but I STILL waited in line! It doesn’t always get an advantage!). 

Zach took this…I’m assuming b/c one of the girls looks like she has a stache?

After It’s A Small World we went and rode the Jungle Cruise and watched Country Bears Jamboree. The past TWO times we’ve come to Magic Kingdom Kye has asked about riding the Liberty Square Riverboat. I, myself, don’t ever remember even riding it? Since he has been SUPER into the Mighty Machine movies lately he saw a boat similar to it on one of his movies and asked about riding it next time we went to Disney World. Did I want to ride? No. Did Zach? HECK no. But it made sense to go ahead and do it on a day where we weren’t in a big rush and didn’t have anyone else with us. So we lucked out and Country Bears got out just in time for us to hop on the boat. This was the thing Kye was most wanting to see…something about how the boat moves? I dunno?

It was 2:30 when we got on the boat. Kye’s typically napping from 1-3 and we hadn’t gotten ANY sleep the night before so he was pretty tired. And the boat ride was SO BORING. Thank the LORD Kye said it was super boring too. And we were stuck on it for close to 30 min. Torture! It was a good chance to bust out some snacks though. I packed a quart size baggie of snacks and Kye kept eating and eating and eating ALL. DAY! Hilarious 🙂 Normally I’m not big on allowing my kids to graze (they eat at their set eating times) but it’s Disney. It’s about the MAGIC and if part of that for Kye is eating snacks all day, then that’s fine by me!

BORED.

He even admitted he never wants to ride again 🙂

After the boat ride we wanted to pop into the best Pin shop on property (which is in Frontier-land). Kye traded a pin with the cast member there and then picked out his pin for this trip to add to his collection! 

I said “get a picture with her!” and she didn’t pay attention haha

Daddy found an FSU Mickey! Duh!

The boys wanted to ride Splash Mountain again so we headed back over there and had to cross over the 3:00 parade (Celebrate a Dream Come True). We lucked out and were able to still walk down the street as they were closing it behind us. I joked with Kye that everyone was lined up on the street to see us so we both were being silly and waving hi to the crowds 😉

Last Chance Exit!

Made me think of Britt as it’s her favorite song 🙂

This time I went to the SECOND bridge so I could snap a better picture of them when they came down the mountain. Oh my gosh. It took FOREVER. Disney was just having an off day that day. Thunder Mountain had to close. We were on a couple rides that had some difficulties and stopped (Buzz was one of them later that day) and Splash Mountain was straight up struggling. I was with some other women waiting to take photos and the ride seemed to stop for LONG periods at a time. I was a little worried about Kye being stuck up there! 

When they finally came down it was funny because the lady I was with thought Zach was her son in law b/c they both had on red shirts, the same color hair, a similar hair cut, and were taller. She was all excited and took pics of Zach and was waving at him before she realized they were waving at ME and not her 😉 

While we beat the parade coming to the ride, we caught it trying to leave. Which I didn’t mind AT ALL. Zach isn’t a parade person so he was annoyed. But I took the time as an opportunity to see some of our favorite characters. Lucky for Zach we were at the very end of the parade and were some of the first people allowed to walk on the street, basically walking behind the parade as it ended!

Eric, Ariel, and The Beast!

Ever sense our trip last September to the park, Kye has been talking about the “spaceship ice cream.” He saw a picture of his particular ice cream and he really wanted to have it next time we went. When it was time for us to stop for our traditional Orange Fanta Float snack…Kye was CRUNK about getting to eat his spaceship ice cream. It’s something he has talked about so much for so long. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by “spaceship” but when we stopped at a cart to buy it he knew exactly which one was THE one! You spend all kinds of money to take your kid to Disney and what’s the most magical part of his day? The $3 ice cream 🙂

Probably my favorite picture of the day…he was SO excited for that first taste and he said it was “awesome”

I know I go on and on about these orange floats we get. HERE is where you can get one! It’s at Sunshine Tree Terrace (the ONLY place in the park where you can get ’em done RIGHT) and it’s very close to Pirates 🙂 It’s called a Orange Fanta Float and its, well, amazing!

Like Father, like son. One of Zach’s fav things about Disney is his treat too 🙂

Also last trip Kye was disappointed that we didn’t ride Aladdin’s Magic Carpet. That was a MUST do on our list for this trip. Is it my personal favorite? Um no. But Kye has talked about how we forgot to ride it last time (actually we didn’t forget…we just didn’t want to walk ALL the way over to it when it’s not that great of a ride!) so I wanted to make sure he got to ride this time. Can you tell he was excited?

We all three rode this one, usually I sit it out as I don’t like heights.

Thankfully, Kye has a pretty steady hand with the driving and pretty much likes to just go up as high as he can and stay there. Not a lot of up and down so it was smooth sailing for me!

Watch out for the spitting camel!

A quick stop on the way to Tomorrowland for a castle pic!

This is NOT posed! Zach just happen to snap the camera at the right second. I get pretty emotional about Disney and something about being at the Castle is just so special. I think Kye “gets it” b/c when we took the pictures Kye said “I love you so much Mommy!” it was just very, very sweet and his appreciation for that day was very pure and precious 🙂 I love my sweet boy!

Waiting for Monsters Inc!

Buzz!

Zach balled out, as usual

Our picture haha I thought it was so funny how Kye was just looking off at something?

Kye LOVES running up to Zurg at the end and telling him “We beat you Zurg!”

After Buzz we headed over to ride the cars. Last time Zach drove with Kye and I just watched, but this time we all three decided to drive 🙂 Kye and I rode together and Zach drove his own car. Kye was excited to do the steering and I controlled the pedals. Um…remember how I mentioned that Disney was havin’ an off day? Well our car was HORRIBLE. Zach, thankfully, was behind us and had to literally push us back into our parking spot! They ended up taking our car out for repair right after our turn haha.

Very serious about his driving!

Looking back at Daddy!

We went back to ride Buzz Lightyear one more time after finishing up with the car racing…Love my intense face 😉

By the time we finished up with everything it was around 6:00 and we planned to go hardcore Disney ALL DAY. We had the goal of getting the most out of our one day at the park so we were going to be there from the time they opened, until the time they closed! 

The park didn’t close that night until 10:00 and it was only 6:00 and we were done. We talked about eating dinner then going back and re-riding stuff but then Zach had a good idea. Why not park hop? In order to save money I had gone ahead before this trip and bought Zach, Kye and I 10 days EACH with the non-experiation option and included park hopper option for each ticket. We know we are going for 4 days next year when Britt goes for her first trip and we knew we’d be going 2 days this year so I knew we would need 6 days total each within the next 12 months. I ended up being able to get the 4 extra days each for only like $30 a ticket b/c with Disney tickets the price per day goes down with the more days you buy. Anyways…I said all of that to say this: we had the park hopper option on our tickets 😉

Even though we had park hopper on our tickets for Kye’s first trip, we never have taken full advantage of it. We talked about it and decided, why not? It was a bonus Disney day and we had seen all we wanted to see so it made sense to park hop to another park and check out what they had to offer. We have never gone to Epcot. Like, legit, I know NOTHING about that park. But I have heard they have a better fireworks show than Magic Kingdom and knew they had a Nemo ride so I suggested going there. And Zach agreed so we decided to go for it! Live it a little on the wild side 😉 

We headed to the exit of the park and got stopped by, another, parade (this time it was the Move It! Shake It! Celebrate It! Street Party on Main Street). We caught the very end of it and got to see Woody!!! It worked out great! 

We said good-bye to Magic Kingdom for the day and headed on to our next adventure 🙂 It was already SUCH a great day and only continued on into a great night!