Friday, the final day

Our final day was at Blizzard Beach waterpark.  It was great!  The kids really enjoyed it as did we adults.  There's a little kid play area that had about 3 lifeguards, so one of us could stay with the little kids and the other take Carter on the waterslides.  There was a tobbogan one that Carter was excited about, but at the top got nervous, so we watched a group go down and decided to try it.  It's like the slide at the fair and you go down on a foam sled, head first.  I thought it was a little fast, but at the bottom Carter wanted to do it again, right away!  Because he is smaller, he didn't go as fast. I started down after him and flew right by him!  We also did the family tube ride with him, which was fun.

The late afternoon and evening was spent in Animal Kingdom where we ate at the Tusker house, which featured African food.  Yum!

We probably could have spent more time at Animal Kingdom.  Paul and I went on Everest while the others watched the parade and then went on Dinosaur as well at the end of the night.

Then we headed home for the long flight home.

Thursday at Hollywood Studios fka: MGM; Evening at Halloween Party

Thursday we headed to Hollywood Studios and started at our favorite place to eat, the 50s Diner.  You may ask what' so special about it.  The waitresses are "Mom" and remind you to keep your elbows off the table and she bragged about my eating the green beans to the gal at the table next to mine, who hid hers under a napkin.  It's just a fun place to eat with good food.  Our waitress was from Eastern Washington and got the kids these Buzz Lightyear clip on lights!

We waited in line for about an hour and a half to try the new Toy Story 3 Midway games ride...

Then saw the Playhouse Disney show and met Handy Manny

We watched Muppets 3D

and that night went back to Magic Kingdom for Trick or Treating, a parade, fireworks & seeing characters in their costumes...

Paul was Harry Potter, Carter the Bee, Henri the Chicken, Erin the Nun & Valerie the Chili Pepper.

Disneyworld, Wednesday at Magic Kingdom

We were back at Magic Kingdom Wednesday morning for a Character breakfast at Tony's just inside the main gate (Tony's is where Lady and the Tramp had their date of spaghetti).  Henri's already figured out there's a person in there and squats down to look into the characters' mouths to try to see the person inside.  Stinker.

Then we headed to Adventure & Frontierlands, which we did not get to on Monday, finishing off at the barnstormer in Toon town.


Carter decided he liked the Haunted Mansion, esp where the ghosts hitchhike out with you.  He hated Splash Mountain, in fact I think he actually cried on it. 

Later we took just Carter back to the park and he did the "big" stuff with us, Thunder mountain railroad, etc. and we say a bit of the Wishes fireworks and the Electric Street Parade

Tuesday at Disneyworld-Epcot

So Tuesday we went to Epcot.  First thing we found Daisy Duck near the entrance.

We started off in Future World and went to the Sea section for the Finding Nemo ride. The kids enjoyed that, so then we headed next door to the Land section to see Soarin' the glider ride over California.  Since Henri and Valerie were too little, I took them to get lunch in the pavilion and Paul took Carter on the ride, then we got a child swap pass so I could do the ride while Paul and Carter ate.

I'll take a second here to note the timing of our trip was in part due to the fact that this particular week, Disney offered a free Disney Dining Plan.  The plan means for each night you book (in our case 6) you get, for each paying person (so, for us, 2 adults, one child) a sit down meal, a quick serve meal and a snack.  However we felt about the resort, we loved the dining plan, esp for free!  Each meal for an adult included an entree, a beverage & dessert.  For a child it included an entree, 2 sides and a beverage.  An example of what we could get for a meal would be our first night's quick service meal at our resort... Paul got a small pepperoni pizza, a Powerade & an apple pie a la mode (which we split) I got a big turkey leg with cornbread, potatoes and corn, a drink & 2 scoops of chocolate ice cream (which the kids split) the kids meal was a personal cheese pizza (sliced in 4) and a baggie of grapes and one of carrot sticks.  The boys split the meal (Henri and Carter eat the same amount) and then shared our chocolate ice cream. We ate and ate and still ended up with a sit down meal for each of us we didn't use.  Snacks could be a beverage, a freeze beverage, a popcorn, an ice cream-anything under $4.  My tip for the dining plan, though, is to make reservations for all your sit down meals before you go it is quite difficult to get a reservation at a reasonable time when you actually get there.  You can make reservations up to 6 months in advance.  Special meals like character breakfasts only count as one sit down meal.  They are about $50 per person if you pay for them outside the dining plan and you need 8 people to book some of them.  Dining at Disney is expensive, and it was so wonderful to just order whatever meal we wanted and not have to worry about it.

So back to Tuesday....  after Soarin' I think Paul took the boys on another ride in the Land section(Living with the Land), we also did Mission:Space using the child swap option.  Paul and Carter did the green and Paul basically dared me to do the Orange which I was worried about, but it ended up being fine (Orange is a more intense version of the ride) then we met up with Paul's parents.  We were all in Epcot because we didn't get park hopper option (the option to go to more than one park in a day) and we all had dinner reservations at Epcot for Tuesday.  I'd tried to follow Kelli's schedule as much as possible as Carter loves to hang out with the girls, but we very rarely saw them.  Which is understandable.  Their kids are ages 8-13, ours are 3 months to 5 1/2, so we were on very different agendas and timetables.  Anyways, after we met up with them we headed for Test Track.  After waiting in line and going once with Carter, we found out that Larry was able to get fast passes because he was retired from General Motors who runs the ride!  How cool is that!  Apparently just show proof you work(ed) for GM and up to 6 people can go on the ride with no wait.  He did it with the girls later on and they were totally impressed :).

After that, we split up as they had dinner reservations in Italy an hour before we had ours in Morroco (the other half of Epcot is the world showcase with 13 countries represented).  We had no time to do the world showcase part.  However, with small children, I doubt they would have cared.  I would have loved to participate in the food and wine festival that was going on.  They had booths for virtually every country with tastes and wine samplings.  I would have used all my snack coupons right there!  However, we didn't get to do any of it because of the pace we had to take with little ones in tow.  Oh, well.  We also did not have for the Innoventions play area that I think the boys would have really enjoyed, it sounded like our Pacific Science Museum. 

We also were able to visit with the Characters in a wonderful, air-conditioned area called the Character spot..

After dinner, Carter headed off with Kelli, Paul's parents may have taken Valerie (I'm all fuzzy now!) anyways, we ended up with Henri and took him on Spaceship Earth, which he thought was pretty cool (the ride in the big silver ball).  Afterwards it was dark and he played with the stars on the pavement....

Disneyworld with 3!

This last week we've been at Disneyworld.  With all 3 kids.  I'm going to go over the trip in detail and share photos over this week and try to figure out how to tag my posts so others interested in going can read my experience and what worked and what didn't.  The ages of the kids are 5 1/2, 23 months & 3 months. We purchased 3 plane tickets/park tickets.  Valerie is breastfeeding, so we didn't have to do bottles or formula for her. We also met family there.  Paul's parents and sisters came with their families, so once we got there, we had others with us.

Let's start with the plane ride.  The kids did awesome.  We flew from Seattle to Denver (Carter sat next to a 16 year old and after finding out she was too young to have kids of her own chatted with her about Bakugan the entire flight) , changed planes (about 2.5 hour layover) and then on to Orlando.  We flew Southwest and going there went through Denver and coming home went through Nashville (Carter sat next to a woman who taught him how to do Sudoku and he ended up helping her with a couple of puzzles)-as close as direct as you can get.  We used the double stroller (in line, not side by side) for this trip.  As painful as it is to get a double stroller through security- we had to take the front snack tray off to get it through the x-ray machine and all kids had to come out of it-I'd definitely take it again. We also took the Ergo front pack.  Val fits in the Bjorn better at this size, but I can wear the Ergo loose and breastfeed in it and having the front pack for when we had to fold up the stroller during our trip meant I had two hands free for the other kids.  The only downside is that Valerie's neck flopped around a lot in it.

We brought lots of snacks for the plane (yes!) sippy cup for Henri and Southwest will put lids and straws on the drinks they bring you (yes!) We brought too many distractions/toys.  Carter was delighted with 3 new Bakugan and Henri was happy with some other little thing.  Just bring a new or favorite things next time.  I had a backpack stuffed with toys.  But then, again, my kids have longer than normal attention spans.  I also put the diapering stuff in a smaller bag so I could just grab that to the bathroom for diaper changes.  That worked out well.  I had am extra change of clothes for each. I'd use the toy room for having two changes of clothes.  Valerie had a blowout on the way home and Henri spilled his lunch chocolate milk all over him at the airport.

We got there about 6pm and headed on the Disney Magical Express to our resort, the Port Orleans-Riverside on Disney property.  I'd put their yellow luggage tags on our luggage so it would go straight to the resort, no need to pick it up at the airport.  BIG mistake.  We finally got two bags at 11:30 the third at midnight.  3 kids with no pajamas and exhausted parents from traveling all day. 

But the kids woke up Monday morning happy and ready to go...

Monday morning we slept in, then started off at Magic Kingdom around 10 or 11.  Since this is Henri & Valerie's first time, we figured we start with regular Disney.  Carter wanted to start off at Tomorrow land, so we went in the park and headed to the right.  We started at the speedway.  Since Valerie can't go on, we did baby swap. 

A little about baby swap.  If you have a child or children that are not big enough to go on certain rides, you all go up and you get basically a fastpass for the other parent.  The first parent and any kids big enough go on first and wait in the regular line, then the other parent goes on through the fast pass lane and any kids big enough to go when the first parent gets off the ride and can wait with the kids so basically you don't have to wait in line twice.  this means, the kids can go two times in a row, only waiting once.

A fast pass is a special ticket that gets you in a faster line for popular rides.  You use your park ticket to get them and you can only hold one fast pass at any time.  We have found if you go in the way off season as we have done the last three times (first week of December, second week in November, this, last week of October) that you really don't need the fast passes.  Also note that fast passes go, well, fast, so because we were heading to parks later to sleep in, the past passes were usually gone before we got to the park.

So Paul took the boys on the speedway.  Henri wasn't really into it, so Erin took Carter on with the swap pass. 

We then headed over to Toon Town thinking maybe Henri would enjoy the characters since so far he wasn't into the rides.  This is nervewracking, because, I don't know if anyone besides parents know, but children between the ages of say, 1 and 3 either love large, characters or hate them and run screaming.  We had no idea how Henri would react.  We'd been having him watch as much Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as we could to at least introduce him to the characters before we left.  Luckily, he LOVED them!  He ran up to each character and gave them big hugs and high-fives and fist bumps and we actually had to pull him away to leave (though he didn't cry, just waved to them).  In fact, by Wednesday he'd figured out there were people in the costumes and he'd crouch down to look in their mouths to see the people inside.

We met up with Paul's parents in Toon Town

We then headed to Fantasy Land.  All the guide books tell you to start at Dumbo with small children.  Well, Henri hated that too....

So, we tried It's a Small World.  It was slow and in a boat, both things we figured would appeal to Henri. Finally we had a winner...

So then we tried Peter Pan's flight because it's also in a boat!  After some lunch, we did Haunted Mansion with Carter with Nana stayed with the little ones; (Carter liked it) then headed back to the resort to go swimming & cool off.  Later that night.  Paul's parents took the smaller kids and we went back to Magic Kingdom with just Carter.  Another thing I was glad I'd brought.  A manual breastpump.  Portable, but useful.  Because it was hot, Valerie nursed way more than I'd expected (another must-have-nursing cover... keep it in easy reach at all times!) so it increased supply and since she's now mostly sleeping all night.  The pump was good for engorgement in the morning and also to have bottles for Paul's parents to take the little ones at night as the parks usually had extra hours in the evening for resort guests only.  We took Carter back for roller coasters. We hit Thunder Mountain Railroad (Carter liked it), and tried to do Space Mountain, but Carter was about 1/4 inch too short for it.  Plus, after seeing what he didn't like, we figured it was probably better he didn't ride it as it was probably too fast for him.  So we got a babyswap and Paul and I did Space Mountain.  They have a place to stay for waiting for the other adult near the photos from the ride.  We also got to see Goofy as well.

K, more tomorrow, but falling asleep now, gotta go.