Disney World Just Because We Can!

Since we are SOOO close to Disney World, we decided to go ahead and get annual passes since we were already expecting a few visitors who would want to go and the idea of being able to head over to the happiest place on earth whenever I wanted sounded too good to pass up.  We got our passes when we went for our 5 day trip for my 30th birthday (which I will hopefully get around to back posting about in a few days) and I was eager to go back just for the heck of it.  I had heard that January would be a really slow time and even though we were there less than a month ago I told Reese that we would go during her Christmas break.  Today was her last day of vacation so I loaded the kids up and we headed off to Orlando this morning.  I have to admit that I was a little nervous taking the two of them by myself, I've done a lot of traveling by myself with the kids but theme parks are crowded and I was a little concerned that a lot of my time would be spent keeping track of them.  Luckily it went very smoothly and we had a lot of fun.

We left our house around 8:30 and got to the park at 9:30.  We didn't have to park very far away so we just walked to the monorail instead of breaking down the stroller to take the parking tram.  I was a little surprised how busy it still was when we got the gates of the Magic Kingdom, I had figured that since the park opened at 9 most of the traffic would've already been in.  It really wasn't that busy of a day but I had been expecting it to be a little less crowded than it was.  I didn't really have any plans for what we would do, I figured that since it was just the three of us I'd let Reese run the show and do what she wanted.  Nate has more issues with standing in lines than I do (especially when it comes to character meets) so I didn't care that we didn't have a plan.  

We went back to Fantasyland and she said she wanted to ride Peter Pan first so I grabbed some Fastpasses for the Little Mermaid ride and then we got in line for Peter Pan.  The line was already about 30 mins long, which is actually pretty good for Peter Pan, but after we got in line a man asked us if we'd like some fastpasses for it because they weren't using all of theirs..SCORE!  It was such a great start to the day to just step right on.  After that we went on It's a Small World which is Finn's favorite ride.  He's probably going to think we're lying about this when he's older, but he absolutely loves It's a Small World.  He gets so excited and animated about seeing the little animals and he really dislikes a lot of the other rides because they're dark and he gets really upset when we go on a ride that's in the dark. We went on a few more rides and then had our lunch while Reese and I discussed what she wanted to do next.  She was eager to meet some of the characters because we hadn't done much of that on our last trip so she chose to meet Minnie and Daisy (which was the longest line we waited in all day) and then we used the Fastpasses we hadn't gotten for Dumbo and we were glad we had because it was a 75 minute wait when we went to use them which is insane. 

By this time it was after Finn's normal naptime and he was starting to drift, which would mean no more rides, so we jumped on the Tea Cups real fast since Reese was so eager to ride them and they both loved spinning around so I was glad we did.  Then we went over to watch the stage show in front of the castle.  I had it all planned out and we had the perfect seats to watch the show and then we'd just turn around and a few minutes later it would be time for the parade.  Unfortunately, the sang one song for the show and then it was drizzling so they cancelled it which Reese was a little upset about but she handled it well and asked to go on one more ride.  She wanted to ride Pirates of the Caribbean, which Finn hates because of that whole dark thing, but I thought since he was asleep I might be able to carry him on no big deal.  That plan was a fail because he woke up while we were in line and was super happy but then got mad as soon as the ride started.  I'm hoping he gets over his aversion to rides in the dark soon, he's not afraid of the dark any other time.  We got off the ride just in time to walk over to the parade and watch it, which made Reese really happy, and then we headed for the exit around 3:30.

It was a good quick day and I was glad we did it.  It was nice to go to Disney World without feeling rushed to fit everything in to a certain amount of time, we just did what we wanted, went slow and had fun.  There will be a lot of Disney "just because" trips this year and I hope they all go as smoothly as this one did.

 Riding It's a Small World....sooo happy