Days One to Three

To preface this, Lynn left a comment on my last post telling me in no uncertain terms that she wanted to hear the "rest of the story" on the trip.  :)  I thought about it after emailing her back, and realized that this is basically my journal that I share with you all...so I better detail it here as well.  So thanks Lynn for gently SHOVING me in this direction.  :)

Because of the type of photographer I am, some of these days are less photo(y) then others.  I don't take photos of the front of rides, or people in front of things, etc.  Just the way I am.

So...

On June 3rd we left our fair city and travelled to Calgary, Alb because that is where we were flying out.  We have this thing that we always do, where we build in a day just in case our vehicle doesn't make it, so we stayed at the Port O'Call Inn.  We have AMA so we got a really good deal on staying the night and we got to leave our van there for 2 weeks no charge. 

June 4th we flew out. 

We flew to Dallas, Texas where we discovered much to my M's dismay that they don't serve "McChicken's" at McDonalds.  They had a "Southwest Style Chicken Sandwich" but it was more expensive and according to M, less tasty.  :)

We re-boarded our plane and flew to Orlando, Florida.  We arrived at 11:40pm and caught the "Magic Express" to our hotel.  (We stayed on site at the "Port Orleans Resort, Riverside"  It was cheaper for us to stay on site)  We arrived and got all checked in and finally settled in our room at 1:20am.  Blissful sleep!

June 5th

It is 92 Degrees F today with a 34% humidity.  (that is 33C )  All of our breakfasts were eaten at our hotel's Quick Serve restaurant and were all delish.

We went on a hunt for first visit pins.  We wanted the boys to be able to wear them.  We finally found them later in the day, but we searched for a while.  :)

Our hotel had a boat ferry service to Downtown Disney and we decided to take the boat over to walk around and explore.  (remember all transport from hotels on site is free)

As we walked around we discovered our boys didn't bring belts.  Not such a big deal for my middle son, but my two with no butts had troubles keeping their pants up.  We found a little place that custom made belts and got them all three some fun belts.  K chose one with music notes and G&M chose pirate belts.  Such a great indicator of who they are!  :)

Some of the places we visited were:

The Lego store where they had displays made entirely from Lego.  There was the sea monster I showed you before

And the Dragon from Sleeping Beauty (I think)

Some with scenes from Snow White, Woody from Toy story, and a few others.  The place I was most thrilled about was the little kiosks that you could make your own person with the parts provided.  There were lots of little details and you could make any Lego person you wanted with them.  :)  We visited a toy store that had a huge kiosk with parts for Mr. Potato Head.  You could buy one for $20 with as many accessories as you could stuff in a box with him.  They also had a kiosk for making your own custom Light Saber.  We had fun poking around these custom places.

We visited a really cool store I wish I would have spent more time in...it was called LittleMissMatched.  They sell everything mis-matched.  I bought some pretty cool socks there.  They sell their packs of socks in packs of 3 and they are all co-ordinating but mis-matched.  They only ship to the US though (as I sadly found out) so I have to see if my aunt (who is visiting soon) will allow me to ship to her!  :)  K found some "boyish" socks and picked them up too.

There were some cool giftshop/restaurants there as well.  As I said before, we ate at the Rainforest Cafe where the animals moved and made noise.  (M had to make sure they were "robots right Mom?!")  We sat by the elephants and had a great show each 15 min and hour intervals that they did their thing.

There was another place that was Dinosaur themed.  My G really wanted to eat there, but he was outvoted.  :)  He and his brother M got to pick a geode and crack it there though.  That was cool.  They had this little machine type press thing that you put your rock into and you cranked it until your geode broke in half.  They both got some pretty cool crystals inside their rocks.  (and only spent $8 on them!)

After we finished at Downtown we took our boat back and were tired.  As we came up the ramp from the boat dh saw a surrey and wanted to maybe come back and do that later that night.  I was all for riding it, but didn't think I could make it back after a rest!  So we took it out right away.  For $24 you could rent a 4 pedal (6 seater) one and have it for a half an hour.  The guy told us that the trail they had took 15 min to bike around so we could do it twice.  Being the kind of guy my dh is, he took that as a challenge.  Needless to say, we did the first loop in 11 1/2 min, and the second in 10!  I told him I was done and we were returning the bike!  :)

One thing our resort had were these "mini" pools for every three or so buildings.  I liked how it was still a decent size and not as crowded as the main pool.  We swam after our bike ride in our mini pool and had a blast splashing around.  Lots of the people were getting in and saying how cold the water was...we hopped in and it was like taking a bath!  The air was so warm all the time (the coldest it got at night was 82F - 27C) that the pool never cooled off. 

We finally collapsed into bed and were ready for the next day.  (next time)

Cheers