Florida 2012 with the Wade Family Part 1

This year we decided to do a big family vacation with Nick's side of the family.  We have done weekend trips together with them, but we haven't done a family vacation for that length of time since we have been together.  They went to Hawaii the week before I met him (I was bummed I met him to late for that one), but since then we haven't been able to coordinate every one's vacations and life events.  So when we began thinking about what we wanted to do Disney came to mind because Kenan and Easton were starting to ask to go there(thanks Disney channel and the hundreds of commercials I see lately).  We also wanted to go to the beach if we were going to go to Florida, so a combo trip is what we came up with.  Five days/four nights in Disney and three days/two nights at the beach in St. Augustine.

Our immediate family decided that it would be best if we drove through the night on the way down to Disney since it would be the kids first major road trip and we wanted to shorten the amount of time they would think they were in the car.  The problem with this was that our Disney stay didn't start until Sunday because of the dates the free dining plan was available and we didn't want to arrive that morning with no sleep and have to go to a park.  If we arrived Saturday though we would have to book a separate night for a hefty price and we didn't want that.  So we decided to still arrive Saturday, but stay off property for one night at a close hotel.  The rest of Nick's family drove part of the way Saturday and finished the drive on Sunday.  They didn't plan on doing a park that day so they didn't need to get there as soon.  We planned on leaving at 10:00 so the kids would be nice and tired and hopefully fall asleep immediately, but we ended up leaving closer to 11:00 pm.  I know many people would say their kids had already been asleep for hours, but ours are night owls so it worked great.

Ready to go

Dad and the kids

Mom and the kids

So, I have decided if we have anymore kids we will have to invest in a cargo carrier for the top of the van.  Even though we have enough seats for everyone, we were a full vehicle with just three kids let alone more.  There is so much stuff you have to bring when traveling with young kids to keep things running smoothly.

The kids did great with driving through the night.  They were excited so it did take them a little bit to fall asleep, but after that they slept until the sun came up which was about all we expected for the evening duration.  I drove the first leg and it was tough.  I knew Nick wasn't as good at night and I wouldn't sleep anyway if I was worried about him so I might as well.  At one point I called my sister in California because I knew with the time difference she was probably still up and she talked to me for about an hour.  That really helped rejuvenate me for a couple more hours.  I felt good about making it to Georgia before switching with Nick.  When the kids woke up a couple of hours later we needed to stop for gas so we got breakfast at a Burger King because they had a play area.  It was nice to let the kids run for a bit before getting back in the car.

We continued on into Florida where we stopped one more time at the Florida welcome center. From there it was a little under three hours to Orlando. I am pretty proud to say we made it to Orlando with three kids and only three stops. We couldn't have timed it better because check-in at our hotel was 3:00 and we arrived a little after 3:00. The hotel was a couple of minutes from Disney and was called the Seralago. It was an older hotel, but had two pools, a hot tub, playground, and was only $55.00 for the night so it was all we needed. We had decided to not do lunch so we cleaned up and walked over to the Red Lobster that was right by the hotel. Not a local place we had intended to do, but we were hungry and didn't want to venture far. After that the boys wanted to swim so we headed down to one of the pools and played on the playground, swam, and took a dip in the hot tub. Bedtime came early for our family that night because Nick and I were exhausted and we wanted to get going early the next morning.

Sunday morning we woke up and ate breakfast at the hotel before heading over to our Disney Resort, Coronado Springs.  We decided when we chose Disney that we wanted the full experience which included staying on property and getting the dining package.  Luckily they had extended the free dining package to the week of spring break if you stayed in a moderate resort.  I loved the look of the Coronado, so that was our choice.  We will totally do the resort and dining package again the next full Disney trip we take.  It was a great way to go and so convenient for a family.

After checking in at the Coronado, our first park was Animal Kingdom.  Although I would consider it a glorified zoo, we had a great time and there are a number of attractions not at your typical zoo along with a handful of rides.  Since we were by ourselves at this park our biggest problems with doing the rides or attractions was height restrictions and having to choose who got to go and who stayed with the smaller kids.  The whole week Kenan only wanted to ride with Nick, so if he was the only one tall enough to go Nick was the one who got to ride.  I tried to do the rider swap a few times, but he didn't want to go with me :( We could have stayed at Animal Kingdom longer because we were enjoying ourselves and had a few attractions yet to try, but we wanted to get cleaned up for our first dinner so we left around 5:00 to go back to the resort.

My cousin's wife Alicia made them these shirts for the trip

This was a highlight of the day.  They also met Donald as well.

Our first dinner reservation was for the restaurant O'hana at the Polynesian Resort.  I highly recommend going there.  The food was family style and awesome and we also had good entertainment luau style.

Enjoying the noodles

My sister in law Tina and I learning a Hawaiian dance

After dinner we headed back to get some sleep because Magic Kingdom was next on our list and our plan was to be there from 9 am- 11pm.  We had high hopes.  Well we didn't make it at 9, but we arrived at Magic Kingdom around 10.  The whole time in Disney we rode the buses and it was nice to not have to drive.  At Animal Kingdom we had just brought our double umbrella stroller for the two youngest, but we decided to take the single umbrella to Magic Kingdom as well in case Kenan wanted a break.  Good thing we did because he used it a lot that day as well as the rest of the week.  Magic Kingdom was a blast.  For some of the attractions we hung out as a big group, but for the majority of the day we split into smaller groups.  Even though we had to wait 30 minutes or so for a number of rides it didn't seem that bad.  As the day went on we realized we weren't going to hit everything I had hoped for.  We decided then that we would come back Wednesday instead of doing Hollywood Studios.  This helped keep us from feeling rushed.  It was nice that Easton could ride a lot of the rides along with a large quantity of the rides being family ones we could all enjoy.  Kenan's favorite was Space Mountain.  We even bought the picture of our ride because his expression in it is priceless.  For dinner that night we met up with everyone at The Crystal Palace, a fancy buffet with character greetings.  The kids got pictures with many of the Pooh characters here.  Although they are not huge pooh fans, they just thought it was cool meeting any Disney characters.  After dinner, Nick's brother's family decided to go back to the resort while we continued on at Magic Kingdom.  It was the perfect time to ride on the attractions because the lines had diminished significantly and we were able to quickly ride some we hadn't made it to yet.  Our night ended shortly after the fireworks around 10 pm and we were beat.  I was thankful that so far Langston and Easton had been able to nap in the stroller for a good amount of time which enabled us to enjoy the parks as long as we did.

In front of the castle

All the kids wore Mickey or Minnie shirts at Magic Kingdom.  I even made a Minnie hair clip for Langston.  I never do characters, so this was big.

I love that Easton is trying to do Eeyore's ears

Ally, my sister in law's daughter, her boyfriend Keaton, Tina and Gary, and Mike and Pam

Tuesday we decided to sleep in a little so we didn't get to Epcot until around 11:30.  First on the agenda was finding a restaurant to eat at.  This wasn't easy considering the choices and the large number of people we had deciding.  We ended up going to a couple of different places.  Our group settled on Chinese.  After Magic Kingdom, Epcot was nice because it was relaxing.  We didn't rush around trying to get on certain attractions, but instead wandered through the different countries of the world showcase and rode a few things that had short lines.  There were two rides at Epcot we had wanted to do that we didn't get to, Soarin and the Nascar Test track.  The fastpasses had already been given out for the day by 2:00 when we went to get them and the lines for normal wait never got below 90 minutes.  Dinner was at Coral Reef where we got to sit in front of a huge aquarium and see fish and sharks swim by.  There was even a group of divers swimming in the water at one point.  After dinner we continued to leisurely enjoy the park until it closed with a cool show in the middle of the lake.  By time we left all three kids had fallen asleep in the strollers.  The long days were catching up.

In Norway attacking the troll

In Mexico greeting Donald after riding the three caballeros boat ride

In front of the World Showcase

The last day in Disney Gary and his family stayed at the resort and hung out because they hadn't wanted to go to parks every day, while Pam and Mike joined us for another day at Magic Kingdom.  Since we had already been on Monday we were more relaxed this time around.  We enjoyed the breakfast buffet at our hotel with the family that morning and then arrived at Magic Kingdom around 11:00.  The bummer of the week occurred shortly after arriving in Magic Kingdom, I lost my camera.  If I had not just uploaded all of my pictures of the trip so far the night before I would have been devastated.  Instead, I was upset but didn't let it get to me.  We finished up riding some attractions we hadn't gotten to on Monday and really enjoyed the day.  From there we left to head to Downtown Disney for dinner at Wolfgang Pucks.  This was a stressful trip.  Since the buses just pick up for downtown Disney at resorts we took the monorail to the nearest resort to catch a bus.  This took only 5 minutes so we thought we were doing good on time, wrong.  A bus for downtown Disney took 30 minutes to arrive and then it had to stop at another resort before heading that way.  Once there we got off at the bus stop farthest from Wolfgangs(I had asked someone to avoid this and they told us wrong)and had to take the ferry across the lake.  By the time we arrived we were almost an hour later than our reservations.  Thank goodness the other half of our group had gotten there on time and the restaurant had held our reservations.  I was a bit frazzled, but dinner was awesome and it was all good.  We ended the evening by going back to the resort and enjoying the pool and hot tub, something we had not been able to do much of because of our busy schedule.  The next morning we ended our stay at Disney by having the breakfast buffet again with the family and packing for our beach part of the trip.  For the first trip to Disney with the kids I couldn't have asked for a better experience.  The kids ask daily to go back because they had such a good time.