Disney Day 1!

As most of you know, we just got home from an amazinggg trip to Disney World!! I just LOVE that place. We already can't wait to go back! We had amazing weather, and everyone was healthy and happy! Could not have asked for more!

I plan on posting about each day, and then a wrap-up post on our favorite things/tips. So, for those of you who are anti-Disney, things may get a little boring around here for a while!! ;)

We were SO lucky that we were gifted our trip from all of our parents for Christmas. We realized we really wanted to go back to Disney, and they all thankfullly obliged. :) Thanks to a generous Papa, Grandma and Grandpa, Hannah, and our sweet travel agent, we actually had a TON of gift cards to take with us. We told William about our upcoming trip, thinking he would forget all about it. Wrong-o. Every single day, we heard, "Going to Dinney Whirl? See Mickey? Hug Mickey? See Minnie? See WoodyBuzz?" We were so glad when the day actually came to make his little requests actually happen!

We went to church on Sunday morning, and I just had to include this sweet nametag that Susan drew for me during Life class. :) I LOVED it! She was so excited for us. After church, we took Riley to PetSmart to be boarded. William hugged her goodbye, and then as soon as we got in the car he was wondering where she was. Poor thing. I begged Robbie to let us take her to the Disney World boarding place, but he wasn't having that! ;)

We left around 3 in the morning Monday morning. Robbie likes to leave in the middle of the night, and he is ok with driving, so that is fine by me! Mama spent the night with us, so we just hopped up and showered, and hit the road! I hoped William would fall back asleep, but nope! He was up and begging for pretzels at 4am. We stopped for breakfast around 7, and kept on trucking. Finally, around 1, we saw the glorious Walt Disney World sign!!! We were SO excited!!

Our fearless driver! He drove the entire way!

We are HERE!!!

We stayed at the Pop Century Resort. Since Hannah didn't go this year, it wasn't quite as economical to stay at an Art of Animation suite, so we just got two rooms at PC. It was great, though! They gave us adjoining rooms with mama, and William slept in his Pack n Play every night in her room. Since we got to check in early, we had a few hours to unpack and relax before our dinner reservation at Chef Mickey's. William kicked back and was excited to see that Disney shows were on every channel! ;) We are SO glad that we didn't have any sickness this time. Last year, we were worried about William with his HIGH fever.

We had reservations for dinner at Chef Mickey's. I was so excited!! I could not wait for William to be able to hug Mickey and Minnie. I was just so scared that he would be afraid when he saw them (he was a little nervous last year, so we avoided characters). We had to catch a bus from our resort to Magic Kingdom, and then ride the monorail from MK to the Contemporary resort.

Riding the bus!

William's first time on the monorail!

Gorgeous view as we pull up to the Contemporary!

The monorail goes right inside! Loved it!!

I will post more details about it later, but we took advantage of the Memory Maker! It was so nice to just get our Magic Band swiped after taking pictures with a Disney photographer. We stopped for a picture whereever we saw one! This was our first pic - walking into Chef Mickey's. William was beside himself with excitement. (Even if he doesn't look like it!)

Chef Mickey's is a character buffet.  Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, and Donald Duck come around to each table. William was a little nervous when he saw Pluto coming towards us, ha. Luckily, he came around and was SO excited. We got some great pictures with all five of them. We had been warned that the food wasn't all that great, but I thought it was okay. The nice thing was, William was free since he is under 3, and he still got to eat off the buffet! His favorite was mac and cheese shaped like Mickey! SO much fun, and I kept telling William that this was just the beginning of seeing characters all week long!!

Goofy LOVED Nana!

After dinner, we decided to go to Downtown Disney. We didn't get there last time, and Robbie really wanted to look in a couple of the stores they have. I think the largest Disney store in the world is there? It was HUGE. Poor William just couldn't hang anymore, and passed out as soon as we got to DD. We just bundled him up and kept shopping. I got his Buzz Lightyear Mickey ears in a shop, and I hated that he missed the Mr. Potato Head section of the store. It was huge and we made sure to pick out lots of fun accessories for him. :) We were so exhausted when we got back to the resort around 11. We needed to rest up for our next day at Hollywood Studios!!!