Derksens Do Disney – Part 1

We decided to do Disney’s Magic Kingdom park on the Monday after we arrived (less than 48 hours after we landed) due to Magic Kingdom’s Christmas hours.  4 days of the week they close early at 7:00 and have Mickey’s Christmas Party, which is a separate paid event and costs almost as much as a full day at the park.  So, we wanted to pick a day where the park was open until 11:00 p.m. and decided on the Monday.  We picked our FastPasses almost a month beforehand, which worked out well!  I have to split this into 2 blog posts because of the amount of pictures I took! 

When we got to Magic Kingdom, it was sunny with a high of +31.  By about 10 a.m., the kids were already complaining about the heat.  Thankfully, it clouded over, plus when waiting for a ride inside a building, there was air conditioning, so it was all good.

It really was a dream come true to be able to take our kids to Disney World!  I thought we wouldn’t be able to afford it until our kids were teenagers but God blessed our finances abundantly this year with all of Jared’s overtime and my baby-sitting.

We took the ferry into the park and the kids all got “1st Visit” pins.

 

The first and only time I’ve been to Magic Kingdom was almost 7 years ago in January, so it was neat to see it all decorated for Christmas this time.

This was the only family picture we got taken on our trip as both Jared and Blake don’t like taking pictures or being in them.

Blake really wanted to go inside of the castle, which I wasn’t even sure if you could.  We walked around to the back of it and to our surprise, we discovered Cinderella in there!  We actually had a FastPass to see her but were able to change it since the line-up was so short!

The wait time to meet Elsa and Anna was 60 minutes (there were no fastpasses available for them) and I asked my kids if they wanted to wait that long to meet them.  To my surprise they said, “No. We want to go on rides.”  So, on we went.

Mickey’s Philharmagic 3D show was one of my favorites of the day (and also Jared’s favorite).

Blake is timid when it comes to rides, but we got him on Thunder Mountain Railroad because he couldn’t really see the roller coaster before we got on it!  That was one of 2 rides that day that we waited about 45 minutes for.  The rest of the rides either had shorter line-ups or we had FastPasses for them.

Popsicles in the morning to help cool them down a bit

“Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid” was Haley’s favorite ride of the day.

Disney does everything so well, including their landscaping!

We just happened to stumble across a show when walking by the castle!

I liked the buildings in Frontierland

A splash of color

We went on Splash Mountain after lunch, which ended up being Blake’s favorite ride that day.

The Festival of Fantasy parade was one of my highlights of that day!  I enjoyed seeing all of the characters, the beautiful floats and the music!

 

I was PUMPED when I snapped a picture at the perfect moment and captured the dragon breathing fire!

I was so thrilled, I had to get Jared to take a picture!

The last float of the parade

Disney’s Magic Kingdom adventures to be continued…

First Full Day in Florida

The first few days were the hottest of our trip.  On Sunday, Nov. 8, it was 31 Celsius outside (88 Fahrenheit).  The kids walked outside in the morning, when it was about +25 and Haley immediately said, “It’s too hot.”  We had just come from 0 degree weather, so it took some adjusting.  Besides a very hot morning at Disney, I don’t think they complained about that for the rest of the trip.

We stayed at a Day’s Inn our first night (Saturday) as our resort stay only started on Sunday.  This was the view from our hotel room.

  

The pool area, which we didn’t use, as we had to check out by lunch time.

We had a car rental booked, with free cancellation.  A few days before we left, Jared checked the prices and for only $30 more, we were able to get a mid-sized SUV!  Jared was able to pick from a wide variety and ended up picking a Dodge Journey, which has an optional 3rd row.  For most of our trip, we stuck Blake in the back row so that he couldn’t bug his sisters, which made travelling more peaceful.

I had done some research online since I knew ahead of time that we had to check out of our hotel by 12:00 and couldn’t check into our resort until about 4:00 and I found out that there was going to be a Fall festival at Lake Eola in downtown Orlando, so we hit that up.

 

I loved the huge trees!  You can see the kids off to the left.

Lake Eola in the middle of downtown Orlando.  There were vendors set up all around the lake selling food and things to buy.

I thought it was so cool how the roots were sticking out of the water!

The kids were quite fascinated by this!

We found an area where the kids could play.

There were swans on the lake, which added to its charm.

Apparently there is a nightly light show involving the fountain, but we didn’t stay that long.

Kiera’s first purchase with her birthday money was a garland headband thing.

This building is the Four Points by Sheraton

The Orlando Eye

We booked our resorts with the certificates that Jared can buy through resortcerts.com that go on sale periodically for $209 US, which includes a 1-week stay at any of their resorts around the world.  Jared can buy for anyone, in case there’s someone who is interested!  Last year, we went to Iowa and this year we picked Florida.  We got a beautiful, spacious 2-bedroom condo which we greatly enjoyed!

The kitchen even had granite counter tops!

The kids’ bedroom

The master bedroom (the only thing we didn’t enjoy was our super hard mattress)

The spacious ensuite with a separate toilet room

We had our own door to the balcony

All of the towels and even the Kleenex was folded all fancy

Our view from the balcony…I didn’t get tired of it.

The front of our condo building.  We were on the 2nd floor and thankfully there was an elevator, as dragging all of our luggage up and down the stairs would not have been fun, as we discovered when we stayed at the Days Inn!

I loved all of the different plants!

The view of the back of our condo (our balcony is hidden behind the red and green tree) from the the pool area.

We enjoyed the pool before supper, then hit up Denny’s.  I had a chicken vegetable skillet which was delicious and then we picked up some groceries at
Walmart before calling it a night.