Our Year at Disney!

If you follow along on our Instagram account or you know us in real life, you've probably noticed that we've spent an awful lot of time at Disney World this year. A LOT. After Christmas last year, we took some money that we'd been saving and purchased four annual passes for our family to try it for a year. A lot of thought went into this decision for us. First, we I knew that we wanted to go back to WDW in 2017. We also knew that, for us, it was only a 4 hour drive to Orlando. It's also just 2 hours from where we stay at the beach and we wanted to try day-tripping it from there. I had the opportunity to go on a girls' trip this year in addition to our family trip. And my kiddos are the PERFECT ages for it. SO. Just before New Year's Eve last year, I hopped online and purchased our passes. I'm going to share a series of posts with you about our trips AND what we learned while Disney-ing for a full year. Our passes were 13 months so we walked into the park on January 14, 2017 and they expire on February 14, 2018. We went into it thinking we'd take several trips down, but wound up going WAY more than we planned. Are we renewing? No. I'll tell you why in a later post. Did we have the best time? For the most part, yes! Was it magical? Some of it! I can't wait to share everything!

SO...first things first. Do you have QUESTIONS for me? About Disney? About trip planning? About annual passes? I would love to answer your specific questions! Tell me what you want to know!

Animal Kingdom!

Our third and final day at Disney we visited Animal Kingdom! It had extra magic hours in the morning that began at 8 and we arrived around 8:30 to take advantage of that. The wait was MUCH shorter to get in here than we'd seen at Magic Kingdom and Epcot. We decided to take it easier on this day and enjoy the park a little more. I have a tendency to GO when I'm in the parks and try to do it all. I took a deep breath on Monday and decided to let it go and enjoy! And we had THE BEST DAY. {Lauren - 1, Anxiety - 0...on this particular day. HA!}

First stop was Starbucks! Woohoo! I realized that my Starbucks gold card worked in the parks so I need to send a big shoutout to all of my sweet little baby students because I was gifted several Starbucks gift cards over Christmas and I was so excited to grab my coffee without spending anything! #littlethings 

After I got my caffeine fix, we headed off to Kilimanjaro Safari. If you've never been to Animal Kingdom, we HIGHLY suggest that you go straight to this ride when you arrive. First, it gets crowded later and second, the animals are WAY more active in the morning.

After we did this we stopped by to see Tarzan {Will wasn't scared this time! Tarzan is his favorite movie, but last time he was freaked out!}.

At some point in the morning we had a FastPass for The Festival of the Lion King. This is a MUST DO for our family. We triple heart love FOLK. It is Eddie's favorite thing at Disney and he is not a show guy. This time, for the first time ever, James got picked to go down at the end of the show and participate. WHEW! He was so excited. Will said that was the worst part of the whole show. Hahahaha! I wish I had the longer video of James marching, but it's on Eddie's phone and it's time to wrap this thing up!

We stopped and got some tree pictures {front and back of the tree} as we were walking through the park...

Because the boys were SO mortified about meeting Ariel on Friday night, we decided to embarrass them again. This time, we got into the line to meet Pocahontas but we didn't tell them we were meeting her. Mwahahahaha. Once they realized where we were, Will was DISGUSTED. He said he absolutely wasn't doing it. We weren't going to force them into it, but we told them both that we wouldn't get their autograph books signed for them. {Autographs are a hot commodity around here.} She was AWESOME. She asked James if he liked to climb trees {Will should've piped in here because he's the tree climbing KING, but he didn't} and asked him to show her his muscles. HA! She totally impressed them by knowing their names without asking {DISNEY MAGIC!}. I think they've decided that princesses aren't THAT bad, but I don't think they'll be begging to meet any. {Eddie has tried to explain that when they're 18 those princesses are going to be really cute.}

Next up was Dinosaur {we were a little bit all over this park just because we were trying to hit our favorites} in Dinoland. Last time, the boys were scared during Dinosaur, but proclaimed it their favorite ride in AK. This time, James loved it {of course}, but Will HATED it. Can't please them all, I guess.

We stopped for lunch after Dinosaur and tried Flame Tree Barbecue. It was pretty good food overall and we enjoyed it. The ribs were excellent and James and Eddie really loved their chicken. The barbecue was just barbecue. Nothing special. The fries and sauce were also really good. Will had a hotdog. He has no taste.

While we were wandering around the park, we decided to try out Wilderness Explorers this trip. IT. WAS. SUCH. A. HIT. They give out these workbooks that kids use all over the park to earn sticker "badges" for different things. James absolutely LOVED this. If you have young kids, it is a great activity for the park. We didn't even complete half of it so we'll keep them for next time.

{Will is SO contrary. I'm not going to smile since you asked me to.}

James spent some time dancing in Africa while Eddie and Will were stopping for a potty break.

We went on Kilimanjaro one last time before heading out...

After stopping to potty one more time, we stopped for a picture with Miss Bunny {we had to ask who she was...she's Thumper's girlfriend!} and we headed for the car.

On the car ride home, we stayed updated on Baby Liam. He joined us at 4:30pm on Monday on our way home from Animal Kingdom. We still had about three hours to go when he came so we hurried home and I jumped in the shower and then headed up to meet him! Squeeee! I'll share some baby pictures soon, too.

Our trip was SUPER quick, but full of fun. I asked the boys tonight at supper if they could go to ONE park, what would it be and Will said Epcot and James said Animal Kingdom. I think Animal Kingdom is probably our family favorite. Magic Kingdom is just a MUST do park for Disney, but if we could only do that and one other we would definitely do Animal Kingdom.