Suzy Q Homemaker

The tidal creek beside our beach house had a frequent visitor.  If you look closely, you can see a white crane fishing off the dock.

High tide was certainly a sight.  Standing on a beach walkway, the crashing of the waves was hypnotic.

Shells are always such a treasure when beach-combing.  We all brought home quite a collection!

On Wednesday, we went to Hollywood Studios with plans to hit the Tower of Terror and Aerosmith Rock & Roll Roller Coaster. Both Aiden and Corey went on the Tower of Terror, but they both decided that it was not for them. Jamie and I did it twice! Immediately after going on, it started pouring rain again and we took shelter under the Fast Pass overhang. The kids were pacified with Mickey Ice Creams.

Unfortunately, it’s been so long since I’ve updated about Disney, I can’t remember the order of things we did! I’m pretty sure we had lunch and played on the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! playground for a while.

Then it was off to wander around and find rides to ride. Corey was looking forward to the Aerosmith ride, but as soon as it was over, he burst into tears because it was so fast and went upside-down. I didn’t know that was going to happen, but being the roller coaster addict I am, I LOVED IT.

We decided that it was time for something that all the kids could do, so we got fast passes for Ariel and then went on A Great Movie Ride. Corey and Aiden liked it, but it was too dark and scary in some parts for Tamara’s boys. Voyage of the Mermaid was great for all the kids, though. Personally, I wasn’t impressed with the singers (and neither was my sister), but the puppets were cute and I liked the bubbles that came out of the ceiling.

The main goal of Hollywood Studios that day was to find Mater and Lightening McQueen. Did I mention we had seven boys with us? Obviously, that was what we needed to do. OH! I forgot to mention that we finally found Corey some Mickey ears after the mermaid show.

When we arrived to see Mater, it started raining, so they had close the line! So, we decided that we’d pass the time on the Backlot Tour. Here are some highlights:

Walt Disney’s Private Jet!

It had stopped raining and we snagged a place in line for Cars! While standing in line, though, it started raining again and they rushed us through. We did a ridiculous exchanging of cameras between families. Simon, as you can see, was terrified yet again of these characters. In his defense, the engine noises were pretty loud.

At the end of the day, we ate a delicious dinner at a little family diner. I’d like to note here that Simon was asleep the entire time we ate. This was the first time he napped, and it was glorious.

After dinner, the kids went back with Tamara’s crew to their resort and Jamie and I were left to our own devices. We weren’t sure what we wanted to do, so we started off at Magic Kingdom. There, we rode a couple things we didn’t get to on Monday. Once the park was about to close, we decided to go over to Downtown Disney and shop a little. Jamie had to buy a sweatshirt cause it was FREEZING COLD! Then we stopped by member services to see if our vacation package covered Pleasure Island. It did!

So we headed that way. We really didn’t know where to go because neither one of us felt like dancing. The only place that was interesting was the Adventurer’s Club, which turned out to be the best thing about Pleasure Island. Jamie and I are now members and I’d tell you all about it, but it’s just not the same as actually being there.

By the time everything was starting to close, we thought we would still be able to get back to our Resort, but then we realized that our keys were in the diaper bag…at Tamara’s! So we had to hitch a ride with Disney police back to their resort (all the cabs were gone).

Thus ended our Wednesday adventure! We crashed on Tamara’s pull-out couch.

You thought I’d given up! You are wrong!

Tuesday was the Animal Kingdom in our Disney adventure. Only this day, we decided just to sleep until we woke up instead of trying to be anywhere “on time.” We ended up getting to the Animal Kingdom park around 10:30-ish, which was about the same time as Tamara’s crew.

The sky looked pretty ominous, but we weren’t going to let it drive us away! When we entered the park, the boys got to meet Flick from “A Bugs Life” and the bears from “Brother Bear.” Chip & Dale were out front too but they had already gone to their next gig by the time we were done waiting in line for the bears.

First on the agenda for Animal Kingdom was to go on the safari ride before it started raining. The wait wasn’t too terribly long, and the ride was pretty cool. At one point, a white rhino came out of the bushes and walked in front of our car. Corey thought it was hilarioius.

Here are pictures from the safari:

After the safari, our groups separated so we could eat lunch. We went to DinoLand where we had the biggest cheeseburgers in the world and then we went to ride some rides. Simon was happy to finally get on a ride instead of being trapped in the stroller.

These are from the TriceratopSpin:

The ride was really loud, so Aiden kept his hands over his ears almost the whole time.

It started raining while we were in DinoLand and after we were done there, we met up with Tamara’s crew to go ride the Everest roller coaster, which Corey liked so much we went on it twice!

The highlight of the day was getting caught in a torrent of rain. We went inside the nature thing where we could look at snakes and the on-site vet clinic. There were a couple characters there, too.

Since it was pouring down rain, we decided to call it a day and go back to our rooms to get some dry clothes. Dinner plans were for Planet Hollywood. The thing was, it was sooo late by the time we got there that all our kids fell asleep at the dinner table. All SEVEN BOYS were passed out. Jamie and I were going to let Tamara take them all back to her room and go out by ourselves, but since there were only four adults to seven sleeping children, we decided to go out the next night instead.

You see, I thought Jamie set the alarm and he thought I set the alarm. Neither one of us did, but we got up anyway, excited to go to the Magic Kingdom!! Did I mention I’d never been to Disney World? I may have been more excited than Corey.

We ate breakfast at our resort, which was a little overwhelming because there were so many people and like ten different lines for all the different breakfast options. In addition to trying to figure out what we were doing because it was our first time using the Disney Dining, Corey kept asking 39284723984723 questions, Simon was mad cause he was in the stroller, and we hadn’t had any coffee.

But we survived. Then it was on to catch the bus for Magic Kingdom! The buses were Simon’s favorite part of the entire vacation.

We didn’t have an agenda when we got to the Magic Kingdom, except to eat lunch with Tamara’s family. So we grabbed a map and headed off toward Adventureland where we all rode Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride.

Here is a picture of the boys on a fire truck. It was pretty random, but we figured out later that it’s part of the Main Street Parade. Simon was mad that he didn’t get to sit on it.

We met Timon and Rafiki in Adventureland. Timon kept running away and his “handler” had to go catch him. Corey thought it was hilarious, and then it was even more hilarious when Timon was picking his nose and wiping it on Corey’s shirt. No joke! I have pictures of it but I took them with my film camera.

The Pirates of the Caribbean ride was really cool. Aiden thought it was a little scary at first, but ended up loving it. I was amazed that the robot Jack Sparrows were so realistic. It was pretty creepy.

Lunch with Tamara was fun. There were all these ducks waddling around between the chairs cause we were sitting outside and they were quacking at us to drop french fries. And because we were eating at this hot dog place, a ragtime pianist played while we ate. I was the only one who clapped when he was done.

I can’t remember what we did after lunch! Maybe it was then that we rode Pirates. uh. I know that we stopped to change Simon at the Baby Care Center, which was AWESOME. They had private rooms for nursing and a little room with a TV for the older kids. It was so nice, even if it was sponsored by a formula company.

In no particular order, here are other things we did/rode:

Went to Mickey’s Toon Town to find Mickey, cause it was the one thing that Aiden wanted to do most. The line was SOOOOO long (of course), and Simon was losing it, but we finally got to meet Mickey and that made Aiden’s day. You can see Aiden’s pics on the Disney Photopass website, but I have to invite you. For some reason, I can’t link you there.

Tom Sawyer Island was fun for the older kids, but not so much for Simon because we had to carry him (we didn’t have his harness).

It’s A Small World, the boys LOVED. It was also nice to sit down for a few minutes. Then we went on the train that goes all the way around the park. Again, it was a chance to rest our feet.

From Magic Kingdom, we took the ferry to the transportation station to take the monorail to Epcot where we had dinner reservations. I finally got to nurse Simon on the monorail, so that was good.

We didn’t do much before dinner except send an email postcard and ride The Seas.

Dinner was…interesting. The food was good, but our server sucked. He kept saying “perfect” in response to everything and then he screwed up the check. Simon was so tired that nothing was making him happy. I gave up at one point, telling Jamie, “I’m done,” but he didn’t take the hint and Tamara offered to take Simon outside for a few minutes. Then I cried a lot and by then dinner was over anyway, so yeah. Not so much fun.

I was happy to go back to our room and crash. We made sure to not set the alarm so we could sleep as long as necessary.

Ok, so the boys had absolutely no idea where we were going. Corey knew we were going somewhere far way and that there was a bag of special snacks to eat on the way. That was about it!

Saturday night, we managed to pack the van almost all the way, with the exception of one or two bags, that way we could just hop in and go. Good in theory! There were several small things to do before we left, but we manage to be on the road by about 10:00 a.m.

Except.

About 20 minutes into the trip, I realized that I had left my license in the printer (I had to make a copy of it for the competition). We turned around to go get it and THEN we were on the way!

The drive was relatively uneventful. We stopped in Savannah for lunch, where there was no changing station, so I had to change Simon in the van. That was the last place we had cell phone service, too. Simon really didn’t appreciate being stuck in the van for so long, and about 15 minutes outside of Disney World, Aiden had to pee. We stopped at a gas station, where he promptly jumped out of the van and peed in the grass right in front of the highway!

So that was nice.

Once we were back on the road, we told Corey to start looking for signs to see if he could guess where we were going. I’ll let these pictures speak for themselves:

Needless to say, they were all excited. Even Simon, who had absolutely no idea what was going on. But the boys were cheering, so he didn’t want to feel left out.

We stayed at the Pop Century Resort. It was pretty cool! Our room was a quick walk from the main building where there was a gigantic quick service food court, arcade, and gift shop. Also included was free bus transportation to any park and back. Sweet!

We didn’t do much of anything when we got there except change Simon’s diaper. We took a bus to Downtown Disney so we could eat dinner at the Fulton Crab House (delicious but EXPENSIVE! (it wasn’t on our dining plan, but we budgeted a few dinners into our spending money so we could enjoy some good food). Simon had pretty much lost it by then and we were all ridiculously tired.

After dinner, we walked around a little and bought Corey a stuffed Mickey that he wouldn’t stop talking about. While in the store, Corey handed Simon a tiny stuffed Mickey that he promplty put in his mouth, so we had to buy that too. It was all good.

We went back to the room and crashed to get ready for the Magic Kingdom.