Disney

We just returned from 10 days in Florida. The kids had to practically drag me and Mario onto the plane to come back to Arizona. The kids grow very attached to each place we live while Mario and I always keep our focus on our favorite place, Florida. Well, Hawaii wasn't bad, but who can afford to retire there? We left when it was almost 100 degrees here in Tucson and we returned to the 60's. Apparently we came home the right day because friends tell us it was 96 degrees yesterday.

It will have to take separate entries in my blog to put all my vacation pictures. So today I will start with our four days at Disney World. Even with the half price military discount, Disney was still expensive. But we had a great time with my parents, Charlie, Melissa and her kids. We did discover that my twins have missed out on some classic Disney movies like Pinocchio. They had no idea who several of the characters were at Disney. They didn't even know Lion King until a couple weeks ago. I figured out why. We had all the Disney movies on VHS up until the boys were born. We switched over to DVD, and got rid of all the VHS. I didn't occur to me that they had never seen these movies since I never bought or rented them on DVD.

We started out by visiting Hollywood Studios (I know it as MGM). Mario, Eric, Erin, and Zachary enjoyed all the big, scary rides like Tower of Terror. Nathan and I enjoyed the less adventurous stuff. The highlight of his day was getting his picture taken with Winnie the Pooh. Everyone attended the car stunt show, Indiana Jones stunt show, and Beauty and the Beast. I loved the shows. That evening, Melissa and I took Nathan and her boys to downtown Disney to visit the Lego store. The rest of the clan spent a couple hours at Epcot. Apparently they weren't too interested in the "educational" park because they didn't want to go back another day.

The next day we went to Magic Kingdom. Nathan kept true to his word and headed straight for the Winnie the Pooh ride. The rest of the family headed to Space Mountain. Nathan eventually became brave (with a little bribery...like a new Pooh Bear to replace his worn out one) and tried Space Mountain and LOVED it. It was fun to be able to go with Melissa, Justin, and Max. Unfortunately the lines got long in the afternoon. Since they had only one day, Zachary, Grandma and I left in the early evening and headed to MGM so Melissa and her kids could see the cool shows too. By the end of the day, I had such bad blisters on my ankle that I had to walk barefoot. Apparently we were so busy that day, that we didn't get hardly any pictures.

Day 3 we went to Animal Kingdom. That may have been my favorite. It was very hot but the park had a lot of shade. It had a roller coaster that everyone tried to get Nathan to go on. But he wouldn't budge. We went on a water ride similar to the Conga at Busch Gardens. We didn't tell Nathan about the drop, but he actually loved it and went again with us. We got soaked but it was a lot of fun. The lines for the rides were very short. That always makes for an enjoyable visit to a theme park. I made my family pose with Mickey Mouse. This may be the picture on our Christmas card this year.

We had to choose one park to repeat on Day 4. I didn't really care for Magic Kingdom, and Mario and Nathan were the only 2 that wanted to go back there. So we went with the majority and went to MGM. There we tried the Toy Story ride that is so popular that you can barely get fast passes for it. When the park opened at 9 am, I think about 90% of the people ran to that ride. It was a carnival style ride and we loved it. Zachary bought Nathan some Winnie the Pooh lollipops and you can see how excited Nathan was when Zach gave them to him.