Quick Downtown Disney and first day at Epcot - my favorite park!

So I mentioned in the last post that I was going to post our first day pics at Downtown Disney and I realized that I didn't take very many pics that afternoon.  We headed out from our resort on the boats to Downtown Disney and went to Splitsville because the girls love it.  It is tons of fun bowling with dance music in the background and drinking!  Emma decided she didn't want the rails, and was kind of pouty at first because it was kind of hard, but it was amazing how quickly she adjusted to the bowling without the rails.  Here are a few pics of our Splitsville trip.

Okay, so this is one of my favorite pics of the trip;  if I had an infinite amount of money, I so would have bought these Princess Leia (sp?) ears for Katie.  Emma actually got a caricature of her as Leia before we left.  I will try and get a pic of it later.

Headed back to the hotel after some shopping and eating.  Here we are relaxing before our first day in the parks:

So the next morning, which happened to be my birthday (hence the pin on my shirt), we headed out to Epcot - my favorite park.  Notice the girls and I have cute little shirts that we made ourselves.  (Thanks for the idea Julie J).  Here we are waiting in the lobby about to head to the bus:

Waiting for the bus:

So we headed out for the park opening and hit a few of the big rides like Soarin' and Mission Space.  Once we had a little break that morning, we headed straight in to meet Mickey and friends.  We didn't even have to wait.  Here are some great pics from those meet and greets:

After that we headed to Test Track which is an entire family favorite.  We have a challenge to build the best car.  This trip Katie and I were a team and Daddy and Emma were a team:

Waiting for Spaceship Earth:

So we like to meet ALOT of characters when we head to Disney.  The girls and I could wait for ever to meet the perfect princess.  Mark may not share our enthusiasm, so I captured this picture when the girls and I were in line to meet Mary Poppins - my favorite!

At this point in the afternoon, it was pretty hot and Mark and Katie rested for a bit, while Emma and I waited in another line to meet Tigger and Pooh:

One of the things the girls and I discovered last trip was getting Henna tattoos in Morocco.  Here we are getting another Henna tattoo:

And this was a FOREVER line in Morocco: meeting Aladin and Jasmine.  Once we got up there, they did visit for a bit with the girls:

I did get a lot of great pics on the trip but the next two are a couple of my favorites.  Love this one of Mark and the girls, and I love the one Katie took of Mark and I:

Riding the boat back to Future world:

So that night we celebrated my birthday at the Garden Grill in The Land at Epcot -one of my favorite character meals. The characters come around a lot, and you get lots of time to spend with them.  Here are pictures of our meals, including the special birthday cake at the end:

Mickey Ear Sangria:

I love Mark's face in this picture - like: "very nice, but I'm really tired!"

Okay, so that's the end of the first full day at Disney.  It was hot and exhausting but lots of fun.  We did better the next day b/c we actually took a break in the middle of the day, rested and when back to the parks.  It was a great birthday for me, and I appreciate my family putting up with it for me.  See you tomorrow!

Disney Family Adventure - the Journey

The Carroll's have adventured yet again to the Happiest Place on Earth - aka My Happy place: Walt Disney World.  I think our Disney trips are numbered.  Not for me, mind you, but I think I can only ask Mark to go so many times.  We have a great time when we go, but it is an exhausting trip in July and it did seem extra hot this year.  Needless to say, I was ecstatic the entire time, no matter how much blood, sweat and tears was shed.  Just like the last time we went, I will try and post in terms of the days.  My first post will log "the journey".

Our Magic Bands arrived about 3 weeks before we left.  This is Disney's new ticket method and it also opens up your room doors.  You can also book your Fast Passes for rides in advanced and it all triggers back to your (truly) Magic Band.  This is also how you see your Photo Pass Pictures, which I will probably do as a totally separate post.

They do not come with the cute Mickey stickers;  I found someone on Etsy who makes these.  They had our initials and names on them:

I definitely don't think I am the only one excited about this trip:

The traditional count down calendar:

Who's excited now?

So I tried to take pictures at each state line or rest stop, and they really did not come out.  When we finally made it to the Florida rest stop, as per tradition, we stopped for the free orange juice.  I like this picture of Emma and I but it took Mark about 20 minutes to take it (don't get me started!)

So this year we drove about 8 hours to Lake City and stopped.  I great choice b/c they had a million places to eat by our hotel, and we only had about 2 and a half hours to Disney.  Here are some pics from our hotel there:

So I was basically "too excited to sleep" that night and bounced out of bed the next morning ready to get to DISNEY!  Here Emma and I show our excitement to hit the road:

One of the other cool things about all this Disney technology is that you can receive a text when your room is ready and go straight there.  I got a text that morning that our room would be ready when we got there and we didn't even have to go to the lobby to check in.  How cool?  When we got to Disney around 11:15, since we already had our Magic Bands, we could go straight to our hotel room - and it worked!

When we got there, Mickey had a little surprise for us - a cool ice chest with some yummy treats inside:

We stayed at Port Orleans French Quarter, which was great for this Louisiana family.  I picked it because it is the smallest of the moderate resorts, and you don't have to wait hours for a bus.  When you go to Disney at one of the busiest times of the year, you have to do some wise planning!  It was also really nicely landscaped with lots of trees and shade.  I will post some pictures when I get to the end of the roll.  Here are a few of our room:

So we decided to go to Downtown Disney that day and rest of for the parks tomorrow.  I will post our shopping pics in the next post!

Quick Beach trip June 2015

Katie and Emma and I took a quick trip to Perdido Key last week with one of her friends and her mom (who happens to be one of my coworkers). I didn't take many pics but the weather was great and we had a great time.