With all of the hustle and bustle I have not had time to blog much. I apologize. I hope you all haven't given up on me. I thought I might do a recap of our trip to Disney. It was MAGICAL!
When our trip began, we were a bit worried that we wouldn't make it there. The weather all around us was not looking good. We left Lanesville just as the rain started, but before it turned to ice. We traveled to Davie's near Columbus, OH. Nothing was falling from the sky there....yet. We picked her up and went to a hotel right next to the airport. It worked out great. We didn't have to get up quite so early to travel an hour to the airport. We also didn't have to worry about the snow they were predicting. They took us right to the airport and let us let our van at their hotel free of charge. They even had a free hot breakfast! Luckily it was not snowing, raining, or icing when we left Columbus. Later my brother called us to make sure we had made it out of there. It started to ice around 3:00 p.m.
Our first stop after we got registered into our hotel was the Grand Floridian. This is one of our favorite spots. We stayed there on our honeymoon. It is so beautiful. We were going to have lunch there at the Grand Floridian cafe. The big highlight of stopping there was to see the life sized gingerbread house! It was amazing! The decorations overall were just amazing. We had a lovely lunch. I had crab cakes and french onion soup. It was very nice. The atmosphere at the Grand makes everything seem a hundred times better in my opinion.
From the Grand we took the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom. We had tickets for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. As we were entering the park we ran into Jenny, a girl from Ben's class. We are always amazed when we run into someone there that we know. We had their pictures taken in front of the train station, along with one of our family with Davie.
We were instantly amazed at the beautiful decorations when we entered the park. There was not a place on Main Street that wasn't covered with decorations! We headed over to Adventure Land to see if we could catch a few rides before the party began. The Jungle Cruise had a wait, but we walked right on to Pirates of the Caribbean. We just love that ride. We didn't spend much time trying to get on rides. We were there for the Christmas festivities, and knew we would be back another time to take in the rides.
After Pirates we went to stake a spot to watch the lighting of the castle. We were told this was something we didn't want to miss, and it was great information! It was on of the most beautiful things I have ever seen! We couldn't walk away! We just stood and stared for such a long time. It is amazing what Disney can do!
We then went to the Christmas store to purchase the special merchandise that you can only get while at the party. We got pins, an ornament, and matching shirts. There was quite a line to purchase our items. While we were in the area, we walked around to fantasy land. The park was a bit crowded by now. We noticed a short line for It's a Small World, and hopped on. Why is that line always short but the line to Peter Pan is always miles long?
We walked around letting Ben get some autographs, and had some free hot chocolate and cookies as we saw Woody and Bullseye. It was a nice rest before we headed out to see the fireworks show at the castle. On our way there, we saw the PERFECT spot to see the parade from. There is a brick ledge in front of the Hall of Presidents. There was a place to sit and perfect viewing. Davie and I stayed behind there while Rich and Ben went to see the fireworks show. It ended up that we could see the fireworks as well as they did, we just didn't get to see the castle as they covered it with snowflakes and made it green to look like a Christmas tree.
The boys headed back to us as soon as the fireworks were over and we sat and waited for the parade to begin. It was really a great parade. Quite long actually. I had thought the parade at the Halloween party was a bit short, but this was not at all! My camera battery went dead half way through the parade. I was so sad. I did get a couple of pictures though.
After the parade we headed to Casey's for a hot dog. We had gotten a bit hungry since lunch. We popped in the Emporium to look around a bit more, and headed back to our room somewhere around midnight.
What a full day. My head was swimming from all the beautiful sights we had taken in! What a magical day!
