Trying to work these blog updates a little quicker so that I'm not playing catch up on 3 months worth of updates at once, so we'll see how that goes. Could mean shorter videos too. So, the big update this past couple weeks revolves around a visit from Grandma and a related trip to Disney World. With Disney this close to us, you can't help but take advantage and try and get there as much as possible. We have the trip down to a single day visit at this point. Leave the night before, get a reasonably priced hotel room (easily can find something for $35-50 a night) and visit Downtown Disney for dinner, and hit up the park first thing in the morning. We have our timing down perfectly so that when we visit the Magic Kingdom, there's simply nobody there (attendance levels have been 15-25% of normal levels on our last two visits) which equates to unlimited rides. We literally run out of desire to continue getting on the same rides over and over again. That's getting the most value for your dollar.
This time down, we stayed at Disney's All Star Sports Resort. Wow, was that a mistake. This place was a complete and utter dump. Which was crazy considering we were on Disney property. Expected a whole lot more. While the rooms were only about $70 a night, the room was so tiny that you had to turn sideways to walk past another person between the beds, and the bathroom door literally missed clipping the toilet by about 1 cm when it swung open. And if claustrophobia didn't do you in, there was the issue of cleanliness, or lack thereof. This place was filthy. When we checked into the room, there was a half drank Gatorade bottle on the TV, a used soap in the shower, and hair all over the sheets and blanket. I'm not anywhere near the stickler on this stuff that Antoinette is, but this was pretty nasty.
So we get back to the room and notice all of this stuff at about 11 PM at night. The kids are exhausted since it is now 3 hours past their bedtime and we are pretty beat too. We notice this nastiness everywhere and call the front desk. The response is some lady that sounded like she was half asleep who after 10-15 minutes of sitting on hold finally tells us there's another room we can use that's an upgrade over what we're in. Then she tells us to pack our stuff and lug it across the resort to the next room. No help. No cart. No anything. So at about midnight at this point, we are wandering in the dark across the resort looking for another building with half asleep kids in our arms, luggage getting dragged behind us, etc. When we finally enter the room, an upgrade it definitely was not. Same room, same setup, same everything. No Gatorade bottle, no used soap, but still with hairs all over the bed clothes. What a joke. So we sucked it up, dealt with it, and promised ourselves we'd never be coming back to this place again.
In the morning, we packed our stuff up, loaded up in the cars, and headed to the Magic Kingdom. Once at the Park, we got situated, jumped on the tram, and headed to the monorail station. The boys has never been on the monorail before. We'd always taken the Ferryboat over, so for my two train obsessed kids, this was a great experience for them.
The trip to Disney was pretty similar to the last couple trips. Obviously the rides don't change much, but they did open up a new section of the Park called Fantasyland. There's a couple new rides including the Little Mermaid, so we took the boys on that ride which is just a riding clam shell that seems like it goes underwater. Didn't care for it much, but the kids liked it, so perfect.
There were some other highlights of the trip. The boys had a chance to ride on their first roller coaster. The Barnstormer isn't a real roller coaster by adult standards, but for a 2 and 4 year old, that sucker is like the Magnum XL 2000 in Cedar Point. I've never been on the ride before, but I figured if they let 2 year olds on the ride, it must be pretty relaxed. Nope. That thing was flying around some pretty sharp turns and the kids were a little freaked out on that ride. Well, welcome to the world of the roller coaster, boys!!!
We also took the boys into some Beauty and the Beast "ride" because we'd never been on it before. What a mistake. This thing turned out to be a hands on play with the characters of the movie. The whole time Billy is sitting next to me telling me "Dada, can we leave. This ride is a stupid ride." I second that opinion, Billy, but we need to ride it out. Let's just say we won't be going to that one again anytime soon.
A couple other quick notes:
For the first time, I got a chance to get on Space Mountain. Fantastic ride. Antoinette's Mom took the boys so that we could get on and there were basically no lines, so we went straight to the front and it was by far the best ride in the Park.
The boys were just a hair too small to get on a couple of other rides like Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain. Maybe next time.
On a final note, right at the end of the trip, we happened to stumble into some kind of a DJ Party that was going on with a bunch of characters from various shows. Light show, fog machines, and dancing with Goofy, Stitch, and Doug (the dog from Up). The boys had a blast and we practically had to drag them away from the party to head to the exits at the end of the day. It was also an opportunity for Antoinette and I to relax a bit while the boys got out there and danced up a storm.
Overall, it was a great trip and we're glad we had a chance to take it, but I think its safe to say that we are about Disney'd out for awhile.
Anyway, I'll get a video up there in a couple days.
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