Saturday

Could the week be gone already? What we didn't get packed Friday night, we scrambled to get organized and put away early in the morning. We met Steve and Danielle for an early breakfast at the Whispering Canyon Cafe'. It's a comedic service of sorts... the waiters make a very dramatic deal out of simple requests... say asking for Katsup. They jump up on a chair and make a very big announcement that you need Katsup... and other customers come running from random tables. In the end, you could end up with +10 bottles of Katsup on your table... then you just need to wait to hear the call to run them somewhere else. It's fun, and everyone gets a big kick out of it. After breakfast we saw Eric and Jodi and the boys off to the airport.

We got our bags together and checked them to the airline right at the hotel. It's a fairly convenient process and it's nice not to have all your bags on the way over to the airport. After this, we checked out of the room. We didn't have to be back to catch the bus until 1:30, so we went back over to enjoy Magic Kingdom for the rest of the morning.

Owen and I at the carousel.

Pooh's Honeypots!

A shot of the castle from the side. It's a random view that doesn't have any other structures in the background. It kind of makes the castle seem alone in the woods...

Owen's last ride on the boat shuttle. Land Ho!!!

I like to take pictures of flowers when we're travelling. Ok... so Orlando isn't quite as exotic as the Caribbean, but they had some nice flower beds in front of the hotel. Here's a few shots I got while waiting for the bus.

Owen crashed on the bus on the way over to the airport.

And here's our little man boarding the plane.

We had a nice uneventful flight back to Baltimore, landing around 7:30. After stopping at Great Grandma's and Aunt Pat's to pick up Bailey, we arrived home around 10:30. Sunday morning after less than 24 hours, Owen asked when we could go back to Mickey's house....

Friday

Friday was our last full day at Disney. We started the morning with a quick family get-together with our ears in the lodge main hall for a group picture.

After this, we had breakfast in the lodge and made our way over to Epcot for the morning. We walked through the World Showcase stopping to ride the Grand Fiesta Tour in Mexico. After this we went back over to Future world and rode through the Journey Into the Imagination and waited in line to ride the Nemo and Friends ride again, which Owen just loved. We met Dave and Linda for lunch at the Coral Reef Restaurant, which is next to the aquarium. Most of the dinner seating has a great view of the sea-life through huge viewing panes. Owen was mesmerized by the turtles and big grouper swimming by.

After lunch, Allison and I were able to ride "Soarin" thanks to Dave and Linda for watching Owen. This is one of the most popular rides in Epcot and we were surprised that even the fast past route took us almost 40 minutes.

Later in the afternoon, we rode the bus over to Downtown Disney to do some shopping and walking around. Here's Owen having fun on a little train ride there.
There's a positively gigantic Disney store here (who would have thought?)... like sheep we find ourselves drawn in and spend money shamelessly. In the Once Upon a Toy store they have a wide variety of Mr. Potato Head pieces and kits. I filled up my bag of requisite goodies and came back with outfits for "Darth Tater", Incredibles and Buzz Lightyear. I think we have about 8 heads and probably close to 20 outfits now. I had to make a stop at the big Lego store because Owen is just starting to get interested in them. He was completely sucked into this place because they have displays with just about every truck, car, bus, tractor and construction equipment that you can build with Legos. We left with a construction set for Owen and a Formula 1 logo set for me!

After a full day we made our way back to the lodge to start getting stuff packed up and organized to go.

Thursday

Thursday was a low-key morning. We slept in a little and had a leisurely breakfast at the concierge foyer. Here's a picture from the seating area on the 7th floor. The main beams are pre-cast concrete made to look like a log structure. They built around the concrete skeleton with natural wood materials. Some are cosmetic and some are load bearing, but the visual impact of everything together is quite spectacular. This main building we stayed in was modeled after the historic Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone National Park.


The remainder of the morning, we spent over at Hollywood Studios again. Our primary objective was to get to see the Lights, Motors, Action! Stunt show. Before that we stopped by the Drew Carey "Sounds Dangerous" show. Most of it is in the dark and you wear earphones as they tell a story through sound. I'm pretty sure Owen was bored by it, but I thought it was fun. After that, Owen was slowing down so Allison walked him around in the stroller and I rode Star Wars ride, which is an older platform motion ride, but still a good time. Here's Owen napping before the stunt show.

The Stunt Show is a great time if your kids are into cars and noise and explosions. Owen got a huge kick out of it, and I thought it was very entertaining. Make sure you don't miss it if you visit.. After, we rode the Backlot tour and Owen was intrigued by the movie set cars and planes and especially a small yellow submarine.. I can't recall what movie it was used in, but oh well.

Here we are with Mike Wazowski! Owen has been really into Monster's Inc. in the past few weeks, so this was a big hit.

Some basic rules to live by.

And of course.. Mr. James P. Sullivan.

We met up with Princess Jasmine (aka Marissa) and Danielle over at Animal Kingdom and spent some time walking around before our grand gathering dinner. Here's Owen and the princess!

Here's Marissa, Owen and I playing on the drums they have setup right inside the Africa section of the park.

We met the rest of the family for the Grand-gathering kickoff at the Birds of Flight Stage. Here we met our guide, and learned how to say hello in Swahili...... "Jambo!" After that we started the evening with an extended Kilimanjaro Safari ride. After the ride, we followed our guide into the Tusker House restaurant where the group was served buffet style while they played traditional tribal rhythms. After dinner, they brought some exotic animals by for the the kids to see up close. Here's Owen with a small ball python. It wasn't moving much, so he kept asking it it was alive... He wouldn't touch it, but was very interested.

The tarantula got quite a bit more interaction. He asked the handler a lot of questions, one of which was "can we take it out of it's cage?"

As part of the gathering dinner, some characters came by. Here's the family together with Timon & Rafiki.

Owen with a rice shaker!

After everything was done, it was a little after 9. Animal Kingdom closes much earlier than the other parks around 7pm, so park employees escorted the entire dinner group out of the very quiet park. After having been there during the day with so many people it was almost eerie walking out with no-one else around. On a random and interesting note... it was a very big week at Animal Kingdom because it was the 10th anniversary of the park's opening. We didn't see her in person, but Jane Goodall was there for an event, so there was an unusually high number of school groups and park supporters there during the week.

Wed

We started Wednesday out with a grand gathering breakfast at Tony's Town Square on Main Street in Magic Kingdom. After we finished, we Tony himself came out and sang songs for the kids, anniversaries, birthday's, and of course.... the chicken dance! Here's Allison and Owen flapping in style!
It was a nice suprise for Mickey to show up shortly thereafter for family pictures. Here's most of the gang with the mouse.

As part of the grand gathering, we received pins that acted as fast passes for Mickey's PhilharMagic. Again, Owen was a little frightened by the 3-D images, but it was an impressive show with sights, sounds... and smells! Here's a shot of the castle on the walk over. Typical weather for our entire stay!

We spent a lot of time around Fantasy Land again because it was a favorite of Owen's. Here he is riding on my shoulders... he kept trying to use his hands to "steer" me where he wanted to go. If I didn't follow his prompting, he would grab my ears and yell out.. No Daddy! Over this way!! I couldn't stop laughing.

Here's Allison and Owen on the Small World boat. I'm not sure who's more excited?!

Wednesday afternoon, the wives and kids went over to Animal Kingdom for a safari and Dave took Steve, Eric and myself over to Kissimme Airport to Warbird Adventures. We took turns on a 30 minute experience in T-6 Texan's. The Airforce and the Navy used this aircraft as a trainer for fighter pilots in WW2. It was an amazing experience. If you were up for it, and I was... the pilots would complete an acrobatic manuever, explaining all the steps, and then let you fly the plane through the same routine. Loops, barrel rolls, tip-overs. It was an awesome experience. We each received a DVD of footage compiled from several in-plane cameras as well as a roll of still shots from a wing mounted 35mm. Here's a link to a wiki site on the planes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-6_Texan

If you're ever in the area, I would recommend this for anyone that doesn't have a fear of flying...

When we got back, we had a quick dinner and went back over to Magic Kingdom so Owen could ride the Dumbo Ride. The lines in the morning were way too long for him to sit through. It was much better in the evening. Here's Owen and Isaac waiting for their turn.

After Dumbo, we managed to get another run through Small World, the Teacups, Pooh's Honeypots & Peter Pan's flight.

Tuesday

Tuesday we didn't have a group breakfast planned, so we took advantage of this and slept in a little. We made our way on the bus over to Animal Kingdom in the late morning to see all the critters! The way into the park is an open walkway of animal exhibits, and we spent some time watching all the animals. Owen liked the pink flamingos, but I'm not really sure what he thought of the bats. Yes, this one is about 18" tall or more.... A large fruit bat variety. They look like small foxes with wings.

The "big kitty's" were of great interest to Owen's alter ego....

We watched "It's a bug life" in the tree theatre. Owen was fairly frightened. Hopefully he'll get a bigger kick out of it when he's older.

We were fortunate to catch the family of monkeys out and were able to watch them swing around their habitat. One of the keepers was answering questions and Owen asked her why the monkeys swing around... to which she responded that their arms are so long, that their knuckles would drag on the ground if they walked around on their feet. Owen's response was "Oh, yeah".

After this, Owen was melting down a little, so we stopped by the Aisan restaurant for lunch and had a fantastic meal.

Here's a very rare sighting of the squinty eyed popcorn eater.

After lunch we caught up with Danielle and Steve and Grandma and Grandpa. Shaun was sleeping, so Grandma watched Owen and Luke in the Dinoland playground while us grown up kids took Marissa on the Mt. Everest rollercoaster!

Later in the afternoon, we watched the Birds of Flight show in the ampitheatre. It's a great show and they do some neat routines with talking, picking thrown objects out of the air, and the traditional "fly into the audience and take the dollar bill". I've always thought Toucan's were really cool birds and this one was no exception. It was good news to learn that the Bald Eagle was recently taken off the endangered species list. What a beautiful bird.

Here's our tired little animal at the end of a long day.

Dave and Linda arranged for babysitters for all the kids for the evening so we could enjoy a relaxing adult dinner at the Artist Point restaurant in the Lodge. Some of us behaved, and others chose to tell lies about liquidating assets to buy a RV and become wandering nomads. Dinner was great and we laughed a lot. After finishing, we all went over to the Magic Kingdom to ride Space mountain and several of the other coasters.

Monday

Monday morning, we went over to Hollywood Studios with the entire family for a character breakfast at Hollywood & Vine. The characters from the little Einstein's and JoJo's Circus were there to meet the kids. Owen was very excited and came right out and told June that he loved her!

Leo was a big hit too, because he wears glasses, just like Owen. They proudly compared specs and high-fives!

Owen loves Goliath and gave him a big kiss on the nose. Yeah, our child was the one trying to pull his tail too...

After breakfast, we went over and saw the Playhouse Disney Live show... it was very energetic and the kids all enjoyed it. They did short stage routines with puppets characters from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Handy Manny, Little Einsteins & My Friends Tigger & Pooh. After the show, we went over to the back of the park to see the Muppet 3D show and visit the Toy-Story characters. Owen was a little freaked out about the 3D trickery. Thankfully, he got over that by the time we waited in line for Buzz & Woody. Owen loves Buzz Lightyear, and got a big kick out of seeing him! The Green Army man was an unexpected hit too...

At this point, the kids just needed some time to run and play so we killed an hour in the "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!" play area. They have a great network of tunnels, slides and climbing systems. Cousin Marissa was a big help on the climbing nets with Owen, and they ran through the tower several times together. Cousin Shaun is closing in fast in the background..

Here, Owen is "cleaning" his glasses in the spray from the big gigantic sprinkler.

After grabbing a quick lunch, we headed back over to the Lodge for a quick nap and a swim in the pool. There were two families of little ducks wandering around the pool area and Owen had a blast watching them waddle around and swim.

We went to Epcot later in the afternoon and spent a lot of time walking around looking at all the flowers in bloom. "The Sea" exhibit was awesome for Owen and I think he would have spent all day here if we let him. We rode the Nemo ride, and saw the Turtle Talk with crush and it was pretty fascinating. I think they must have a combination of human interaction and several pre-programmed routines to correlate the questions and Crush's location on the screen. We didn't see it twice, so I'm not sure what may or may not be repeated. The audio/video sync on his voice reminded me more of Mickey's Clubhouse than a Pixar feature, but the kids didn't notice and most of the adults were laughing with the humor. Whoever is managing the response content, must be pretty quick, and creative.

The aquariums are beautiful and full of a huge variety of ocean life... Turtles, Dolphins, schools of fish, sharks, etc... Owen kept running from pane to pane pointing out all the creatures and calling them by name. It was really neat to see him so animated.

Owen was really interested in "Bruce" from Nemo for some reason and pointed him out every time he saw him. They have the "myne myne" birds out in front of the building making noise every few minutes and we had to watch them for a few cycles too.

We had a busy evening with the entire family at the grand gathering dinner. The hosts played a little bit of a cheesy comedy routine, but all in all, it was entertaining. After dinner, we moved to a reserved location on the lake with a great spread of desserts to watch the fireworks show.

Sunday

Sunday was our first full day at Disney World. We had an early morning Character breakfast with the entire family at Chef Mickey's in the Contemporary Resort. Here's Grandpa walking from the boat launch with Shaun and Owen.

And the whole crew.....Owen with Donald...

After breakfast, we rode the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom, where we spent the day again. Here's Owen hanging on in the monorail car...

Here we are walking on the barrel bridge on Tom Sawyer's Island...

We broke up the day with a nap session back at the resort to recharge a tired little boy.

Owen loved the carosel....

Buzz Lightyear....

the train, Pooh's ride, Small World... well, pretty much everything. Here's Allison, Owen and Shaun on the teacups...

During the day, Owen was obsessed with pointing out the monorail's every time they went by, which proved very amusing for everyone.