"I kept my eyes open the whole time!" - TRIP VIDEO LINK IN FIRST POST

[princess_momma]

Once we were outside EPCOT, the AK bus was waiting for us! Score!

We love Animal Kingdom and CANNOT wait for the new areas! The construction is quite noticeable though and definitely took away from a lot of the atmosphere. Oh well. At least it's temporary.

Hopefully it is high on their priority list to start fixing all the holes in the main walk way. Look, this one even had an alien in it!

Landon must still be looking for Stitch.

We headed straight to Dinosaur and braved the posted wait of 30 min...it was less then 20! So that was a nice little gamble.

I love Landon's face in this ride photo. Classic.

After some wonderful luck on our time rover seeing dinosaurs, we were eager to see what other creatures we could find, so we started hiking towards Mt. Everest.

Luckily, there was a photographer at base camp to capture our excitement on film!

We found the yeti! Everyone was pretty excited, but Landon was still pretty scared.

We decided to walk the Maharajah Trials and had pretty terrible luck. There were no animals out except for the komodo dragon. Apparently it was mating season for the bats, and they couldn't be out because they would get too aggressive. I don't know what the excuse was for the other creatures, but oh well. What can we do? Well, you can head back to EPCOT.

Once again, a bus was waiting for us. Once we got in the park, Pluto was waiting for us too! We always seem to meet Pluto here with no line the past few trips. It's marvelous.

And of course we had to dance with him!

We decided to jump on Spaceship Earth, since the wait is never long. I may or may not have judged someone in the FP+ line who said, and I quote, "Is this a ride?" Silly people in Disney.

We did have a 4th FP scheduled for Soarin'. (We scheduled this after Test Track before we left the park.) We couldn't use it though because the ride was down. We thought we would wait it out by going to Living With the Land, but of course that was down too. So we headed to France for dinner (see the report here) before heading back to ride Soarin'.

One of my favorite photo op's:

Luckily, Soarin' was back up when we made it back over to the Land. We sat next to this adorable family on Soarin'. I didn't even notice how the mom did it, but after the ride, the girl starts exclaiming "I got the golf ball this time!" The mom acted all cute and was trying to get her not to brag so much, and it was obvious that she puts a golf ball in the area under her kids seats to make the ride a little more special. It melted my heart!

We had a soothing ride on Living With the Land after that and then walked back to the Boardwalk for another relaxing night there! Another great day in the books!

 

[princess_momma]

BIG NEWS!!! We have TWO trips coming up this year!

First up...a weekend in July for Garret's birthday!! We will be staying at BAY LAKE TOWER!!! Lake view!!

So thrilled for that one! We will be eating at Via Napoli and 'Ohana! Hooray!!

And then, in October, we will be going for a week. I don't know where we will be staying yet. Ideally, it would be The Boardwalk again, but could possibly be Old Key West or Animal Kingdom Lodge. Depends on availability when I'm able to book THIS MONTH!! Woohoo!!

I feel so blessed that we are able to go twice this year! We probably won't be able to go in 2016, which is fine because we are trying to move to Florida. If we do vacation in 2016, it will probably be a Disney Cruise anyway! Big things on the horizon for us! Can't wait!

 

[Disneybuckeye]

Enjoying your report and congrats on two trips this year. We are headed out your way next weekend as we are spending a week in Vail to ski.

 

[princess_momma]

Enjoying your report and congrats on two trips this year. We are headed out your way next weekend as we are spending a week in Vail to ski.

I have been neglecting my TR for too long!! Hope your trip out here was fun! Can you believe I have never actually been skiing? And snowboarding only once? I hope you had a great time though!!

 

[princess_momma]

Today was probably the coldest day, but I absolutely could not veer from my planned out. I HAD to wear a dress because we were having breakfast at the Grand Floridian!! Our trip last year when we made it over to the Grand, I was wearing jeans and a "Finding Nemo" shirt. Definitely NOT fancy. So despite that cold, that was NOT happening again! And I'm so glad I stuck to it because I love the pictures we ended up with, despite how cold I felt the whole time!

And of course, we had to head home to the Villas! Love it here.

After snapping a few shots, we went back to the main building for breakfast at the GFlo Cafe. On the way, we found the gingerbread house! It was still under construction, but pretty close to being done.

To read all about our delicious meal at the Grand Floridian Cafe, click here!

With our tummies filled, we had to head back out into the cold and head over to the MK! And naturally, we had to stop for more pictures on the way. I actually had a jacket (I'm not entirely crazy!) and would take it off every time we stopped for pictures! Silly, but oh well.

Our next stop was the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse! We had never been here before but, in anticipation of our trip, Landon and I had watched it on Netflix and really wanted to see the house! It was great. I really enjoyed it and will definitely be back!!

After, we checked out the wait time for Jungle Cruise but decided to not ride at this time.

And now you can tell we are getting close to the end of the trip because my trip notes are way less detailed and just have what we did but no times or further explanations or anything. So bear with me!

We headed over to Splash next...I'm going to assume it was a walk-on, but who knows had a FP+ a little ways away and my notes say "change splash fp to space". That assumption was probably correct because it was probably way too cold for anyone else to ride Splash! Not us!

I make pretty sweet faces on rides. I promise I was having WAY MORE fun than my face would suggest.

We did have FP+ for BTMRR next and used that. This is when my notes say I changed the Splash FP to Space, so maybe it was just because the Splash one was sooner and we didn't want to wait around to ride Space? My notes never actually even confirm we rode Space, but I do have some pretty awkward photographic proof!

I am possibly talking. Landon...is...hmm...throwing his hand in the air like he just don't care? No idea. And Garret's smile looks fake. I'm so glad we have Photopass + to capture these priceless memories!!

Then we headed over to Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor - one of my favorites. I LOVE cheesy jokes and I LOVE Monsters, so it is perfect!! Every time I hope my joke will get used or that Garret will get embarrassed with his face on the screen, but it never happens. Alas, (earwax). Maybe one day. Here are 2 of the jokes that I liked enough to save:

Where do penguins keep their money?
In a snow bank!

What did the hot dog say when it won the race?
I'm the weiner!

After chuckling it up, with our favorite funny monsters, Landon and I headed over to the tea cups. Garret does not do spinning so I think he just sat near the exit and waited.

Landon made an unsuccessful attempt to pull the sword from the stone. Which is too bad because he actually knows and enjoys that movie!

Our next pictures shows...the backside of the castle. Ba-dum-CH! (Cheesy jokes...must have spent too much time on the laugh floor!)

Since we were in the area, we let Landon go on the carousel.

We were getting close to the time we had to leave for dinner, but did manage TWO more rides on Splash first. I love how dead it gets when it's chilly out! More Splash for me!

I'm holding my phone up in that one because I was video-messaging my friend the entire ride, because I'm a great friend like that.

Then I tried to video my boys but it didn't turn out. I always get too scared of getting my stuff wet that I duck and cover way too early and ruin the video! Oh well. Better safe than sorry.

We braved the crowds at DTD. It was seriously so crowded. I can't wait for Disney Springs...hopefully it's enough to absorb all those people! (But in reality, it'll probably just bring more!) Didn't help much that when we were there, walls of constructions were EVERYWHERE blocking so many paths.

To read about our Raglan Road experience, click here! The best part (not in the dining review) was that the kid's menu had little jokes all around the edge! My favorite?

What is out on the porch all summer and is Irish?
Paddy O'Furniture!!

And with a few too many cheesy jokes for one post, I'll end it here! (Because I have no other notes for the day! LOL)