Our trip to FL

We flew down on Friday, the 4th (We took Jim out of school for the day so we could fly at ideal times!). We drove up to BWI, a little worried we weren't going to make it past security since Ben didn't want to tell the TSA guy his name, but he finally said it and we were to our gate. We got some lunch and the boys enjoyed watching the plane show out the window.  No problems with the flight down there (one slight problem - all the stations on the plane weren't working right, so Jim was a little bummed he couldn't watch the sports channels!). We got our luggage, and since I did online check-in for our rental car, we got to walk down the aisle & pick whatever car we wanted!  Of course the boys picked an American car, a Dodge Journey, and we were off to the hotel.  The parents were all there & checked in, waiting for us.  We had pizza for dinner that night & took a walk around the place checking everything out. And then it was off to bed to rest up for our first day at Magic Kingdom!!

On Saturday, our first full day there, was a park day!  Mark did a great job planning everything out - which helped us ride all the rides we wanted to by 2:00!  We got an early start, and we were riding up in the monorail just as Mickey was pulling up on the train.  It definitely helped to have an early start to the day, as we walked up Main Street and over to the Buzz light Year ride, and pretty much walked right onto that ride with not much of a wait.  We had planned out all our Fast Passes, but since we had an early start to our day, we ended up switching them all around, which really helped minimize our wait times!  Here's a list of the order of rides we did on Saturday:

Buzz Light Year
Tomorrowland Speedway
Attempted little mermaid but it was closed down
Peter Pan (longest wait!)
It's a Small world
carousel
Goofy's Barnstormer
little Mermaid
Ice cream break
Mickey's Philharmagic
People Mover
Winnie the Pooh

Lots of fun on our first day there. Both boys loved the Buzz light year ride, Ben loved the race cars, and neither were a fan of the rollercoaster (Goofy's ride). Walking out of the park we did catch the end of the parade in front of the castle & watched that. Ben loved seeing Pluto - I loved seeing his face light up when Pluto came by on the parade. As we were walking out Main Street was pretty packed as they were having a Cubs parade, but we made it out, took the boat to the parking lot, and got to ride the caterpillar (aka the tram) to our car.  For dinner we sat by the pool & ordered from the restaurant.  The boys walked around in the water and played some video games in the activity center. We thought they would crash after such a busy day, but they had a ton of energy!

Sunday we did Downtown Disney & a pool day.  We walked around downtown Disney (I guess now it's called Disney Springs, spending time in the Lego store, watching the amphibian cars, and picked out a souvenir (which was a process but Ben got a Car and Jim a new Lego set). We tried to get lunch at Earl of Sandwich but the place was packed!  We ended hooping to a brewery and eating there!  And Jim lost his 2nd tooth!!!!  It was super wiggly and I wanted to pull it out for him but he wouldn't let me. He went to play some foosball and when he came back to the table he looked at me and goes "my tooth is gone!"  We think he swallowed it!  After lunch we went back to the pool. It was a little chilly,  it the boys had fun swimming!  After that we walked to the basketball courts for some b-ball!  And just did dinner in the restaurant at the hotel. A good way to spend our Sunday!

Monday was another day at Magic Kingdom, with the 8 of us!  The boys enjoyed riding the caterpillar again, and then we took the boat to Magic Kingdom and hopped on the train to start our day!  Splash Mountain was the first ride of the day and we had no wait at all, which was great!  It was a great idea to get to the park as close to opening as possible!  (It was an earlier opening day, 8:00) but we were there around 9ish. The boys did not love that ride. Ben was more concerned about being wet, even though we didn't get that wet!  And neither loved the hill, but I'm glad we went on it!  Ben wasn't a huge fan of the darker rides, but all in all it was a fun day!!!  The list of rides from our 2nd day were:

Splash Mountain
Pirates of the Caribbean
Tiki room show
Shooting Arcade
Tom Sawyers Island
Country Bear Jamboree
Swiss Family Treehouse
Ice cream snack
Haunted Mansion
Carousel
Popcorn snack
Buzz Light year
Walking out - parade & dapper Dan quartet

We caught the end of the parade again as we were walking out. And Ben again got very excited when he saw Pluto!!  We took the monorail back to our car & ended the day with dinner at the hotel restaurant.

Tuesday we went on an air boat ride.  The place was about an hour away, but they had a cute little animal park so we got to walk around that for a bit and check out some of the animals.  The boys really loved the boat ride!  We were successful and got to see a couple alligators on the ride, as well as a bald eagle, which was pretty cool!  The ride may have been their big highlight of the trip!  After we got back from that we spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool!  It was a little chilly again, but still had a fun day!  Played some poolside bingo, and enjoyed some ice cream.  Tuesday night was beer tasting night, so the boys hung out with Grandma in the activity room and playground while the rest of us did the beer tasting!  Followed by dinner at the hotel restaurant.

And then it was back home on Wednesday. Got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and had a good flight back to BWI. We did hit rush hour traffic on the drive home, so that slowed us down a bit. But all in all we had such a great trip!!!!