Back in November Ryan and I had been tossing around the idea of going to Hawaii with my Dad. We both love it there and thought it would be fun to take a trip with the boys before the new baby came. The more we thought about it though and envisioned the 8 hour plane ride and 5 hour time change, the more we agreed a vacation closer to home might be better.
What better vacation closer to home than a Disney vacation?? Not only would it be so much fun for Ryan and I to see how things have changed from when we were younger, but the boys would have a blast! They love the classic Disney characters and how cool would it be for them to see them live in person?
I consulted my resident Disney expert, my sister Sarah, and began my planning. Thank goodness I had help to steer me in the right direction because planning for Disney is seriously overwhelming, especially for a first timer. Dining reservations open 180 days prior to your visit and fast passes are 60 days. I was already well within the 180 days so I did my best to get open reservations at the places we wanted to eat. It was a lot of checking and rechecking to see if things opened up, but thankfully my patience and perserverance paid off and I was able to book most everything I was hoping for.
Then came fast passes. Not only do you need to know what park you will be at on a given day, but you need to know what rides you want a fast pass for and what time you want to go on them. Basically I was planning out the bulk of our vacation 60 days in advance. Don't get me wrong, the fast passes are totally worth it! And it is actually nice having an agenda to guide the trip. I say guide because we didn't follow everything to a T. We switched up some fast passes the day we were supposed to use them based on the rides the boys liked and didn't like. We also liked Magic Kingdom so much that we decided to forego our visit to Animal Kingdom on the last day of our trip and visit Magic Kingdom one more day instead.
Maybe it is because I am a planner by nature, but as overwhelming as it may seem, I fully loved the planning process and it made everything so much more fun to look forward to. Plus we didn't really have to think about a lot when we were actually on vacation. We knew when we should be where and we went with it. For the amount of people visiting on a daily basis, Disney has everything so organized it is incredible.
But enough about the planning, let's get into the fun part...the actual vacation. We woke the boys up extra early this morning and headed to the airport. They were a little groggy, but nothing the promise of meeting Donald and Minnie couldn't cure. And although Owen had been on an airplane when he was a baby, this was the first time they were both old enough to be aware of what was going on so they were excited for the plane ride as well.
After a 3 hour plane ride and a short bus ride from the airport, we arrived at our hotel.
We checked in, ate some lunch and were ready to head to the parks
(complete with Star Wars Mickey gear of course).
No comments:
Post a Comment