Disney World!!

This is going to be a long one so you might want to get comfy!

 We had been counting down the days and finally it was time for our vacation to Disney World!  We had 6 day park hopper passes and stayed at Port Orleans French Quarter so we were so excited about all the fun we were going to have and we most definitely did!  Although somehow 6 days still isn't enough time to enjoy the resort and see everything at all 4 parks (we didn't do the water parks).

 

We had several of us who went with us: Nana, Papa, Grandma, aunt Connie and aunt Andi.  

 

Grandma and Andi had an adjoining room with ours so that was really nice.  My parents and Connie used their trailer and stayed at the campground on the Disney resorts which was really nice as well.  After raving about Fancy Pants, the first thing we had to do was go for the pony rides at the campgrounds.  They told Olivia she was riding Cinderella's pony!  She was really excited about that and loved the pony ride!

 

Then it was time to head to the Magic Kingdom!!  I couldn't wait for Olivia to see Cinderella's castle!

But did you know that it is also Belle, Sleeping Beauty and Tiana's castle?  At night they do a light show on the castle and according to Olivia when the castle is yellow it is Belle's castle, Tiana's when it is green, Cinderella's when it is blue and of course when it is pink it is Sleeping Beauty's.  I've been to Disneyland and Magic Kingdom several times and all along I always thought it was just Cinderella's castle.  Good thing after all these years Olivia was able to correct me!

 

They actually do all sorts of neat light shows and projections on the castle at night which was something new for me to see!

 

 We also enjoyed several rides, the electrical parade and the fireworks show the first day!

 

While sitting on daddy's shoulders of course!  She actually alternated between papa and daddy.  Papa took the electrical parade and daddy took the fireworks.

 

 By the end of the first day we were rolling Olivia out like this!  I wonder if she knew we still had 5 more days of this?!

  

That wasn't the only time we found Olivia like that!  It seems a sleeping beauty costume would have been more appropriate!

 

The next 5 days were spent doing just about everything we could!  We rode tons of rides!  Olivia's top 3 (in order) were...

It's a Small World.  But since we have gotten back from Disney she has told me the magic carpet ride was her favorite and she keeps singing "A Whole New World."

Dumbo...

 

Then the tea cups!

 

There were other favorites of course too.  She loved the Peter Pan ride, carousel, train rides, Winnie the Pooh and all similar type rides.

However, there were some rides that Olivia didn't particularly care for.  It had been awhile since I'd been to Disney World and the only thing I remembered from the Movie Ride at Hollywood Studios was the Wizard of Oz Scene so I completely forgot about the entire interactive gun shooting scene and somehow we missed the ! on the map that meant this ride could be scary for kids.  Oops!  So Olivia spent that entire part of the ride with her hands over her eyes and her head buried in me.  It was actually really cute because I'd never seen her get scared of anything before.

 

After the Movie Ride, she was a bit hesitant about some of the other suspense type rides like the Haunted Mansion and the Nemo Ride.  The Nemo ride had more to do with the dark waiting area and the Nemo show we had seen a previous day so we instead rode her favorites some more! 

Another ride that Olivia particularly liked was the Carousel of Progress.  This ride normally would not have been very entertaining but Olivia loved the dog that was in every scene and her commentary about the dog made it all very entertaining!  And of course the Safari ride at Animal Kingdom was another big hit!

 

This gorilla was literally posing for pictures!

  

And since Lions are Olivia's absolute favorite animal, she got a stuffed lion who got to wear her Minnie ears since wearing Minnie or Mickey ears are a must when going to Disney World!

 

Animal Kingdom also had lots of cool characters that Olivia got to meet and have sign her book.  They have the cutest autograph books with a place for the photo next to the signature.   

We met Pocahontas...

 

And some characters from Winnie the Pooh!  For some reason Olivia didn't want to go up to Piglet though and she loves piglet.  Pigs are her second favorite animal (coming in really close to her lions) so I was confused as to why she didn't want to see him.  I thought maybe she was tired but she had the chance another day as well and still didn't want to.  I'm still confused by it because she absolutely LOVED every character she met!  

Winnie the Pooh...

 

Eeyore and Tigger!

While at other parks, we spotted more characters as well.  Much by my surprise, Olivia was way more excited than I would have imagined to see the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland and she remembered exactly who she was!

 

But that didn't compare to the excitement she had when we met these 3 ladies (little did she know she was having breakfast with them the next morning!)

 
But one of these princesses was clearly her favorite and she wasn't afraid to let the others know!

 

In case you couldn't guess...it is Belle!  She couldn't stop staring at Belle and talking about her to the Aurora and Ariel!  Sadly, almost every picture with Belle came out blurry!  So if anyone else has good pictures on their camera PLEASE SEND THEM TO ME!!

  

But I managed to get lots of good pictures of her with Aurora!

 

I was pretty sure no other character would get her this excited but I was wrong.  She was absolutely THRILLED to see Minnie Mouse!  Not so much Mickey though.  She clearly has favorites and isn't afraid to show it.  Sure she loved seeing Mickey and having him sign her book, but she would not stop holding on to Minnie.  She was the happiest girl on earth (especially since this was right after seeing the princesses and we had a fast pass which meant we only waited about 5 minutes!!)

And of course Connie and me HAD to get a picture too!

We also saw Cinderella's Fairy Godmother outside of Cinderella's castle...

And Tinkerbell in Pixie Hollow!  Tinkerbell was another favorite!

 

And a favorite of mine as well :)

 But the fun didn't stop there!  There were tons of shows!  

 

Some favorites being The Little Mermaid, Disney's Playhouse and Beauty and the Beast of course.  The Finding Nemo show seemed to be a big hit as well until the end when Nemo and his daddy went off in separate directions which made Olivia sad.  We looked over and her bottom lip was sticking out with a tear trickling down her cheek.  I'd never seen her get sad at something like this before!  She also started to get sad during Beauty and the Beast when the Beast almost died but then he turned into a prince and all was well again!

Olivia also saw her first 3D show which was Mickey's Philharmonic Show and she was too funny jumping back and trying to grab the things coming towards her.  But then we saw the 3D Bugs Life and she wasn't too thrilled with realistic looking bugs and water spraying and no longer wanted to wear her "magic glasses" for any 3D shows.  Instead she had her lion wear them and she watched the show without them.

We also enjoyed dancing in the street where Olivia was my partner in a dance off.

 And we danced with Pluto!

We ate lots of ice cream!

 Made souvenir coins at just about every store at every  park and put them in a book!

We admired the art in Cinderella's castle!

 

We went country hopping at Epcot.  We waited until later in the evening to go and ate dinner by snacking at all the different places.  We also had to try drinks at the different places!

Since there were other adults there, Olivia stayed with Nana and Papa the night of Epcot's late opening so the rest of us were able to enjoy margaritas and big kid rides that night!  We actually got to ride a lot of the bigger rides through out the trip since there were so many of us to do the swap off and we definitely relied on the fast passes a lot through the trip!

 

 We made wishes in wishing wells.

 Retook certain pictures.  Someone must have hijacked the police car since the 90s!  And mom had no idea I wasn't looking at the camera until after they got home and waited for the pictures to get developed since they sure didn't have digital cameras then!

 

 Olivia even managed to make the bus rides to and from the parks entertaining by making silly faces!  She loved the bus and always insisted that she had her own seat.  Several night she was passed out on me for the bus ride home though!

 

 We cooled off from the hot afternoon sun in the pool.

 Olivia LOVED going down the slide! 

 The maids at the hotel made a hammock for Olivia's stuffed animals.

 

 And left cute towel animals.

 

 We were part of the audience for the American Idol Experience and Olivia kept saying she wanted to go on stage and sing!  She really enjoyed this show and wanted to make sure Tinkerbell could see as well even in the box still.

 The honey I shrunk the kids playground was a big hit as well.  We visited this twice!

 

 I was singing in the rain...

 

And Olivia started a new fashion trend by wearing Minnie ears around her waist.

 We took line pictures.  Olivia also entertained us in lines by dancing and twirling her princess costume when wearing one.

 

There were lots of games to play.

 One of the games was The Great Piggy Adventure!

 She was sad when she had to give up the piggy though.

While Olivia played games, we got to ride a segway.

Olivia took a break from the stroller and pushed Connie around.  We actually had to visit the first aid twice at Epcot early in the day.  The first time for Connie to get her foot wrapped which she hurt by getting out of the bed.  I guess sometimes it is just safer to stay in bed!  Then later in the day Olivia got her first bee sting on her finger.  It started swelling pretty quickly so we rushed her over there and they put some lanacane magical medicine on a band aid and everything was better.  The swelling took 2 days to go away but she never complained.  Instead she showed everyone that she had a bee sting!

 Olivia was too young for the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique (you have to be 3) but we already had several princess outfits so I had fun making her over for some of the days there.  She absolutely loved this and couldn't stop twirling around in the dresses!

Olivia was Cinderella...

 

Tinkerbell...

 

 And Belle!

 When I was finished getting her ready, she always ran to the mirror to check herself out!

 

She even found a mirror in line for Dumbo to stare at herself!

 

And of course, I saved the best for last.  The princess breakfast!  If you have young kids and go to Disney, I recommend doing a character meal for whatever character they may be in love with.  It was a lot of fun.  We did Akershus Royal Banquet Hall at Epcot which is located in the Norway Pavilion.  I might not recommend staying at Magic Kingdom until after 10am the night before if you have an 8am breakfast planned however. Luckily the excitement of having breakfast with Belle, Aurora, Snow White, Cinderella and Ariel was enough to perk up a non-morning person like Olivia!  We did all take long naps that afternoon however!

When we walked through the doors, we were so excited to be greeted by Belle!

Afterward we were seated and got started on our breakfast.  It started off as a normal breakfast and then Olivia looked over and saw several princesses around the room making their way to her!  At that point, she was excited!  And done eating!  She insisted on getting out of her chair and didn't get back in it while we were there.  I am really wishing we would have thought to take video of Olivia with the princesses because the pictures just don't capture how excited she was about this!

Cinderella was the first to visit!

Then she kept watching as the princesses made their way around the room.  She actually managed to not tell any of the princesses here that Belle was her favorite. 

Next up - Snow White!

Then Aurora!

And last was Ariel!

They had a princess procession and Olivia walked around with Ariel for it. 

Then Ariel walked her back to the table afterward.

This was definitely a vacation full of fun and memories!  I can't wait until we go back again although I'm sure it will be some time.  And if you have made it this far and still don't feel like you've seen enough pictures then here is the link for the ridiculous 400+ pictures that I took while we were there! 

I asked Olivia yesterday what her favorite thing about Disney World was and she said the Princesses.  Then she said the rides and started singing "A Whole New World."  Then she said Magical Animal Kingdom which meant both Animal and Magical Kingdom.  So I'm glad to hear that she enjoyed her 1st trip to Disney World!

And for fun, here are some pictures from my first trip to Disney, which was actually at Disneyland and I was just a couple months younger than Olivia on her first trip!  This was back in the good old days when the characters roamed the parks and you didn't have to wait in line to see them!