MAGIC KINGDOM- Day 5

Our fifth and final park day was at Magic Kingdom.  The weather was warming up and it was going to be a beautiful day!  We got up extra early to rope drop the extra magic hour.  I would say we were in the first 150 people there that morning.  We scanned in and they held us right at the tunnel.  Then they let us down Main Street.  We headed to Tomorrowland.  We wanted to ride Space Mountain and didn't have fast passes so that was where we were headed. Hope and I got in line first while Patrick and John took the kids on Buzz Lightyear.  When we got to the queue for Space Mountain the posted time was 50 minutes.  We waited maybe 20. 

The guys decided they didn't want to ride Space Mountain so they headed to Tomorrowland Speedway and we caught up with them right as they were getting in the cars so we snapped some pictures of them.  

Barrett thought he was big stuff getting to drive.  AveryAnn was killing me in those sunglasses. 

After that we headed to the Tea Cups. 

These girls had the best week together.  They were so dang cute!

The girls wanted to ride the Tea Cups again so we did.  I can't remember what the boys did.  After the Tea Cups we headed back to Buzz Lightyear so we could all ride it again before the wait got crazy.

It'd been a long week. ha!  

After Buzz we headed to the Barnstormer.  My kids are not thrill seekers.  We told them it wasn't really a roller coaster, and to me it isn't.  Their opinion was very different.  They were so excited until we started going and then they both cried the entire time.  I'm not sure if that makes us good parents or not but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

After Barnstormer we decided to grab some snacks.  We had about 28 snack credits left on Friday so we tried to burn through as many of them as we could.

AveryAnn and I rode Dumbo and Patrick and Barrett went to ride People Mover.  

After that we used our first fast pass on The Voyage of the Little Mermaid.  I got to ride with both the girls and they were so dang cute!  Madelyn became my little buddy this day and I loved it!

After Little Mermaid we rode Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.  Barrett didn't want to ride it so Patrick and I rode.  We laughed so much!  

We had some time to kill before our lunch reservation so we headed to Prince Charming's Regal Carousel.  Sweet times all four of us together.

 Our lunch reservation was at Be Out Guest.

We had dinner here last trip and I loved it so much.  They changed the dinner menu though and I didn't feel like it was worth two dining credits so we tried lunch since it's quick service.  I'll be honest, I didn't love it for lunch.  We made the mistake of not mobile ordering and probably waited 30 minutes just to order.  I felt like the order process at the kiosk was complicated.  

The Master's Cupcake topped with "grey stuff" was worth it though.  I love this restaurant so much for the atmosphere but I don't think i'll do lunch again.  I want to try it for breakfast. ( I actually had breakfast reservations booked for an upcoming day trip to see my niece in the parade but the trip got cancelled).

While we were at lunch I decided to cancel our fast pass to meet Mickey so we could get more fast passes.  I was able to snag one for Aladdin. 

There was a photo pass photographer right outside Be Our Guest so I wanted to snap some pictures since we were all dressed in our Beauty and the Beast gear.

I love these people so much.

After this we headed to Adventureland to hit Aladdin and Pirates, I'd hoped we could do Jungle Cruise too but the wait was too long.

We also went up in the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse.  Then we headed to Haunted Mansion.

While we were in line I grabbed fast passes for the girls to meet Rapunzel and Tiana.  AveryAnn is very into Tiana so she was so excited! 

Tiana was beautiful!

Gosh, I seriously can't get enough of these sweet pictures.

I hope these girls remember this trip forever! 

Headed to meet the boys and head to our last dinner.

Our last dinner was Chef Mickey's. 

We were all exhausted by this point in the week.

(If I had this to plan again I think I would have stayed at the park and then made brunch reservations on the day we left for Chef Mickey's.  The way we did it was fine but I wish we could have stayed at MK longer Friday night and I like breakfast more than dinner at Chef Mickey's).

We had a great dinner though and it was nice to all eat the last meal together.  We didn't do everything together the whole trip and it was nice to split up but it was also nice when we all got to be together.

 It was sweet night to end the week.

We slept in a little on Saturday and then got up and packed up to head home.  We still had a ton of meal credits so I went to food court and got us breakfast.  Then we went back and used all 20+ snack credits to buy goodies to bring back.  We made good time traveling home.  

It was a really fun, special week.  I know it will be a while before we get to go back and the kids will be so much older.  It's all so bittersweet!  I wish we could go back this year.  I feel like our kids are at "their" perfect ages for Disney.  Tall enough for everything they wanted to ride but still loved the magic of the characters and the dark rides.  It was truly a magical week.

That's not to say everything was perfect because it most definitely was not.  But looking back I have such great fondness for the week we had together!

ANIMAL KINGDOM- Day 4

Our fourth park day was Animal Kingdom.  I was so excited to see Pandora and ride Flight of Passage.  I was also excited because I felt like we'd done a great job with our fast passes this day!  We had fast passes for Flight of Passage, the Safari, and Everest.  We were able to ride Navi River Journey at rope drop with no wait.  The kids loved it.  After that we walked toward Africa for rope drop again, (the first rope drop was just for Pandora).  So we were able to ride Navi before the park even technically opened.

We headed to Gorilla Falls and did the bird watch area.  Some of the kids were more into it than others. 

We walked by the Hippo tank.  We couldn't see it very well though.  

We got the kids the Wilderness Explorers books and they were so into it.  

It was so much fun watching them get so excited about earning badges.

We took the train out to Rafiki's Planet Watch.  We earned more badges.

Barrett was so into it!

We made it to the "Affection Section" (petting zoo).  We didn't get to stay as long as the kids wanted because we had to make it back for our Safari fast pass.

The Safari was a huge hit as always.  

After the Safari we grabbed some lunch before our Flight of Passage fast pass.  We ate at Flame Tree BBQ.  I got the BBQ fries and they were delicious!  After lunch we headed back to Pandora to ride Flight of Passage.  I was so excited to ride this ride.  Hope and I rode together first while the guys stayed with the kids.  It was amazing!

While the guys rode we took the kids to earn more badges!  Barrett could have done this all day long!  It started raining while the guys were on Flight of Passage but we had one more fast pass for Everest.  So we threw on our rain gear and headed to Asia.

John and Hope rode first while we stayed with the kids.  Madelyn had been singing her little heart out and we had the rain cover on the strollers well at some point the singing turned into crying and I had no idea.  When I finally realized it her Wilderness Explorers book was in a puddle soaking wet and she was devastated.  I felt so bad because I had no idea how long it'd been in the puddle.   After they rode John rode it again with me since Patrick didn't care to ride.  After Everest, we decided to call it a day because the rain did not appear to be letting up.  We had early dinner reservations at 'OHANA.  (We found out later that Kylie Jenner and her family were at Animal Kingdom the same day but we didn't see them.)

We decided to grab a group picture in front of the Tree of Life before we headed out.  We just had to laugh because the weather had been such a crapshoot the whole week.

John and Me on Everest!  It was so much fun, even in the rain.

We left the park and headed to the resort to change into dry clothes really quick before we went to dinner.  We took the bus to the Magic Kingdom then hopped on the monorail to the Polynesian.   'OHANA was our favorite meal from the last trip.  The food was great this time but our server wasn't and it was so disappointing. We enjoyed it though.  After dinner we headed back to the resort for early bedtimes so we could rope drop our last day at Magic Kingdom and early morning magic hour.

EPCOT- Day 3

Our third park day was EPCOT.  On our last trip our EPCOT day was somewhat of a disaster planning and weather wise and we actually loved the park way more than we had anticipated so we knew we wanted to spend as much time as possible in this park.  The weather was supposed to be a little warmer but also maybe rain some.  We had fast passes for Frozen Ever After, Mission Space and Figment.  We knew we wanted to ride Soarin' so we planned to ride it a rope drop.  We left POP right at 7:30, we were in line to get in the park by 8:15, lined up for rope drop by 8:45.  Once the rope dropped we headed straight to Soarin'.  AveryAnn just barely made the height requirement to ride.  So all four Horton's boarded our flight.  I wasn't sure how the kids would feel about the ride.  It's not really scary but it can be somewhat intense.  

AveryAnn hated it and cried nearly the entire ride.  Barrett said he liked it but didn't need to ride it again.  Patrick loved it (this was his favorite ride from our last trip so I knew he would). The line was still really short when we got off so I rode again with Jackson because he wanted to ride it again and I didn't get to really enjoy my first ride since AveryAnn was so upset.

Our first fast pass was for Frozen.  The wait to meet Anna and Elsa was less than 30 minutes So we decided to jump in that line before our fast pass. Well it ended up being closer to 45 minutes.  But it was worth it!

AveryAnn was just speechless.  It was so funny!

I just loved all the character interactions! 

After Frozen we headed to our Lunch reservation back at the Land building.  We had lunch at Garden Grill with Mickey, Pluto Chip & Dale.  

AveryAnn was cracking me up so much!

We missed our Mission Space fast pass because of lunch. (I didn't do a great job scheduling fast passes and meals.) After lunch I think we rode Nemo and Friends with the Moore family before our Figment fast pass.  I love the Nemo ride and the kids did too!  

After we rode Nemo and Figment we were going to wait to meet Wreck It Ralph.  But the line was not moving and it was hot so we decided to go walk around the world showcase instead.  I was in a bad mood at this point.  The day was not going how I envisioned it and I was not handling it well.  I think at one point I told Patrick lets just go back to the hotel.  It started to sprinkle rain and it was cooler than it was supposed to be.  I was just having a pity party.  There was a snack I wanted to get in France so we headed there.  I ordered it then realized it wasn't a snack credit on the dining plan.  Then I came out of the shop and AveryAnn had to potty so I didn't even get to enjoy it while it was warm.  At this point I was really done.  

We met up with John & Hope and walked some more.  I got a margarita at the margarita stand and was feeling better.  Ha!  We headed to Spaceship Earth. 

We'd never ridden it and it was slow and John thought the kids would like it. 

AveryAnn loved it!  She said it was her favorite ride.  

After Spaceship Earth we headed back over to Nemo and Friends to ride it with John and Hope.  While we were parking strollers I snapped some pictures of us with the Spaceship Earth ball.  There's so much construction at the entrance of the park we didn't get a good shot when we came in.

I love this one of the cousins!  The girls got matching Elsa dolls.  They really enjoyed getting to be together so much, it was so sweet!

I have this same picture of Barrett from our last trip.  It makes me smile so much!

We also did Turtle Talk with Crush.  AveryAnn got to ask Crush a question and it was so funny.

I tried to take as many pictures with the photo pass photographers as I could.

The Maxwell's headed back and we decided we were going to get a quick service dinner in the world showcase before we headed back.  Jessica and I had Mexican, the boys had Chinese.  It was a good time.  We walked back International gateway to ride the skyliner back and we noticed it was not moving.  So we snapped a picture with the Eiffel Tower. 

 

When we realized it didn't look like the skyliner would be running any time soon we headed to the bus stop.  (this would prove to be a huge mistake)

We were able to snag a picture with the ball before leaving!

We got to the bus stop and waited forever for a bus.  Probably an hour.  We were all about to lose it.  We ended up having a pretty great day but that ending almost ruined it for me.  All in all I'm still not pleased with how I planned this day but we made the most of it!  One thing I'm so mad I didn't do (that I fully intened to do) was get the kids passports to get stamped in each country.  Especially after seeing how much they enjoyed the wilderness explorers the nest day in Animal Kingdom.