Disney World Part I

Here it is, the much-anticipated entry about our recent trip to Cinderella’s house.  I think rather than make one huge entry I’ll break it down, the thought of recapping an entire trip in one sitting makes me sweat. 

Last fall when the 2012 Mizzou football schedule came out Jeff asked if I’d be interested in going to the game in Orlando against Central Florida, I knew that this would be my only chance to get to Disney World so I said yes immediately.  I wasn’t as excited about the football game, but figured if that’s what it took to get to Disney I could do it.   We didn’t do anything as far as planning for a few months, I began to think it wasn’t really going to happen and then he brought it up again thinking maybe he’d ask his parents if they wanted to join us.   When Clare first asked GG if she wanted to go to Cinderella’s house she said yes, but again we didn’t do much planning.  Thankfully, after talking more about it GG took the lead on planning and after weeks of talking about it the day finally arrived for us to travel to Orlando and visit Cinderella and Minnie. 

GG and Pawpaw were so excited about our trip that they flew to Denver so we could all be on the same flight, I’m not sure who was more excited, Clare or GG.  Jeff and I were also pretty happy, we knew that Clare wouldn’t be interested in us so we would have 3.5hrs on the plane to just sit and relax, it was wonderful.  GG had a whole bag of surprises for Clare on the plane; Clare had so much fun sitting between her GG and Pawpaw playing.

Clare had her surprise bag from GG unpacked before we took off. 

The $1 hairbrush was a huge hit. 

We arrived in Orlando late Wednesday evening, we were all pretty tired but needed to wrangle our 7 pieces of checked luggage, 3 carry-ons, car seat, and stroller to the rental car before we could rest.  Greg did a superb job of arranging the official Disney vacation rental car, a Chrysler minivan.  We loaded up the van in no time, after deciding a dark grey van was better than the baby blue one, and headed towards the exit.  It wasn’t more than 10 car lengths before Greg announced that the ‘low tire pressure’ light was on.  So, what did we decide to do?  Yup, that’s right, we parked the minivan in the ‘luxury car’ section, unloaded and chose another van, this time white.   It wasn’t until we got to where we’d parked the first one that the ‘low tire pressure’ light came on, this time we decided to just go with it, maybe they all say that. 

Navigating a new city in the dark is extra fun, thank goodness for the iPhone Google maps; I believe we only made two wrong turns on the way to the hotel.  Once we arrived Greg and Jeff went in to check us in, it was far too humid and we were too packed in for the rest of us to get out.  After what seemed to be forever they came back out with our keys to room 2134, now we just had to find building 2 and a parking space.    The room was great, it was a 3 bedroom 2-bathroom condo, and Gail did a great job finding us a place to rest our heads.  Clare had some dinner at 10pm and went to bed without protest, after not napping all day she was exhausted. 

Once Clare was in bed Jeff and Greg headed out to find something to eat, it was all Gail and I could do not to fall asleep, thankfully they returned with their hotel convenience store loot before our heads hit the pillows.  We all enjoyed our dry turkey sandwiches with pretzels and chips, and all agreed that it was probably better than a pizza hut pizza that was the other choice 10 minutes before they closed. 

We didn’t really have a plan as to what we were going to do each day, which was nice and made it a little less stressful.  While we waited for our men to return with food Gail and I discussed our plan for Thursday and figured it might be best to not go straight to Mickey’s house and let Clare get back on schedule a little bit.  This turned out to be a good plan since she woke up at 7am and was asleep in the car by noon and still took a 3hour nap at the hotel after we got back.  While Clare napped Gail and I convinced Greg to take us to the Vera Bradley outlet, he was a real trooper and squeezed the Chrysler into a tiny parking spot while we loaded up on Vera. 

Clare enjoyed getting ready with GG in the morning, she sure wouldn't learn how to do her hair from watching me!

When we go back from Vera Clare was up and ready to go swimming, so off to the pool we went.   I’m pretty sure Clare would say the pool was one of her favorite parts of the trip, every evening she would strip down and put her swim suit on before one of us finished asking her if she wanted to go swimming.  Typically Jeff isn’t real excited about going to the pool, but the 1000% humidity and 90 degree temperatures turned him into a pool loving guy. 

We all called it an early evening on Thursday, Gail and I decided we should head to the Magic Kingdom early Friday morning, everything she had read said to get their early and go until the youngest one crashed, so that was our game plan.