Stopping at Starbucks for chai is a fun travel tradition and Cam has a special place as Mom's helper now..he goes in with me and gathers 3 sticks..one for each of the little kids to have! We finally remembered to take a picture of this :)
We had a good night's sleep in Valdosta, GA and woke up to a hotel full of teens on a college tour which made getting breakfast quite interesting :) We began our final leg of the trip to Disney with only 4 hours to go...I couldn't contain my excitement and each time we made a rest stop I found myself unable to resist the urge to tell cashiers (and other people who probably didn't really care to know...) that this was THE DAY I was going to see MICKEY and it was a GREAT day. The kids will tell you that after so many hours of gloomy weather the day before, we literally crossed the Florida state border and the sun shone through the clouds..it was kind of amazing!! We enjoyed the drive and seeing all of the orange trees along the way (a first for all of us). We decided to stop at Golden Corral about a 1/2 hr from our vacation home since we hoped to go right to Magic Kingdom and just see what we could before it closed that evening.
(Rick laughs about this picture because I was very tired and a bit frazzled and said "kids ...say Cracker Barrel"..they too began to laugh because clearly we were at Golden Corral.
I could barely contain myself as we approached Magic Kingdom..I kept telling myself that I'm an adult and should act like one..but I really found myself ready to break out into the "It's a Small World" song right then and there! Really..it was magical..we all kept thinking..we finally made it ...after years of planning and thinking and praying some day we could go there...we were finally HERE!
The next few hours were amazing as we entered the Magic Kingdom just in time to walk up to see the afternoon parade!
We then spent the next 6 hours riding as many rides as we could! Our family favorites were: Buzz Lightyear, It's a Small World, the carousel, Peter Pan's Flight, Mickey's Philharmagic and Winnie the Pooh. We also enjoyed the Liberty boat and the Hall of Presidents. We quickly figured out the FastPass system and used it as often as possible. We decided to try to watching fireworks from the back of the castle which allowed us to be away from the crowds..although the special overall view wasn't as great from there it was a wonderful way to enjoy the fireworks (with headphones to block out some of the noise) without tons of people and then we could enjoy the extra hour afterwards to ride a few more of the rides. We had very short waits in line but those were still challenging for Corey and Cam so we decided that the next day we'd have to have a better plan.
Chels got over her 11 years of fear of Winnie the Pooh..she rode this ride back in 2001..the only other time we went to Disney and was terrified :)
PS I think I might have ADHD because I could not focus on anything else but the fact that Cinderella's castle kept changing colors!!!!!!
What a magical day it was...we still felt like we were in a dream..and couldn't believe we were finally here!
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