A few months ago, I found out I had to attend a conference at Disney World, so naturally, we couldn't pass up an opportunity to make a vacation out of it and take the boys for the week. We had a great time!
We live about seven hours from Disney, so we decided to leave bright and early on Sunday morning. We were on the road a little before 8, and a few restroom breaks and lunch later, we pulled into our resort, the Yacht Club, a little before 4 pm. I'd be lying if I said we weren't nervous about the long drive with the boys, but, y'all, they were so good! I don't even think we heard "when are we going to be there?" until we had made the turn onto I-4 near Daytona, which was only about an hour from Orlando.
The boys were so excited to be staying at the resort. It cracked me up how cool they thought the ice bucket was! When we travel, especially with the kids, we usually stay in a house, and when we have stayed in a hotel with them, I guess we haven't pointed out the "cool" stuff. It made me smile!
After our luggage made it to the room and we took a breather, we caught the bus to Disney Springs [formerly Downtown Disney]. The boys were really excited to go to the Lego Store and had a blast making their own race cars and racing them. We walked around a while and grabbed a quick bite to eat at Earl of Sandwich before going back to our resort.
As soon as we got up Monday morning, we rode the bus to Magic Kingdom. I really wanted to catch the opening show, but unfortunately, even with the first bus to Magic Kingdom, we made it a few minutes too late. The first ride we decided to do was Peter Pan's Flight. Choosing that ride for our first one was a great decision.
We also were able to hang out with my cousin Tammy and her son Cole on Monday. They live nearby, so it was great to be able to see them. I enjoyed catching up with her and the kids had fun playing together.
We spent the whole Monday in Magic Kingdom. Before heading back to the Yacht Club, we watched the Celebrate the Magic and the Wishes Nighttime Spectacular. Both of these shows were great!
On Tuesday, we decided to go to Hollywood Studios. Unfortunately, K.C. woke up feeling bad and got sick that morning. Kevin stayed in our room with him while Kaden and I rode the bus over to Hollywood Studios with hopes that K.C. and Kevin would join us.
The first thing we did when we got to Hollywood Studios was line up for Jedi Training. They let a limited number of kids train to be Jedi Knights each day, but before being "chosen," you have to wait in a really long line. We stood in line for over an hour, and thankfully, about five minutes before we got to the front of the line, K.C. and Kevin made it so that K.C. could go through training too. Our show wasn't scheduled to start until 5:10, so we had the whole day to explore.
There were a few fun Star Wars attractions we enjoyed. Kaden and Kevin loved the Star Tours ride (K.C. and I skipped this one since he hadn't been feeling great and opted for a funnel cake). We watched the Lights, Camera, Action Stunt Car Show, which in my opinion, is one of the most fun shows.
After lunch, we went to the Indiana Jones show. It's another of my favorite things at Hollywood Studios.
At 4:30, we took the boys to get ready for their training. It's really cool how they let the kids parade in their costumes to the stage for the Jedi show. Once there, they were each given a light saber and taught how to use it. Soon, Darth Vader and Darth Mal appeared and they battled the kids.
We rushed to catch our FastPass+ at Toy Story Mania as soon as our knights were finished. That ride was fun!
We were also able to make it to a showing of Fantasmic which was awesome!
The night ended after we watched the Star Wars fireworks. Of all the firework shows at Disney, we all enjoyed the Star Wars show more than any others. I'm not even a Star Wars fan (though I'm having to learn all about it thanks to my boys) and loved it. There's just something about that music that's thrilling!
We had a great first few days at Disney. I'll recap the second part of our trip later this week.
