The day was finally here! Our flight left bright and early at 9 am Sunday morning. We arrived in Orlando at 12:20 and hopped on the Magical Express bus and made our way to our resort, the Polynesian. We did have to wait about 20 minutes for our bus to leave, but I think it was worth doing that in order to not have to rent a car. It was also so nice that we didn't have to mess with our luggage at all once we got to the airport. Instead our bags were waiting in our room when we got back from Hollywood Studios that night.
Our room was ready when we arrived so we were able to make a pit stop there to drop off our carry on bags and also put away our groceries that I had ordered to have delivered. We picked the Polynesian because with 2 small kids I knew being at a resort on the monorail was my number one priority. Out of the 3 on the monorail, our travel agent recommended this one because of the close proximity to the Travel and Transportation Center that takes you to Epcot. After staying for the week, I truly think our resort was the best in terms of location. The monorail to MK and the other monorail resorts was directly in front of our resort and the walk to the TTC to catch the direct monorail to Epcot was only about 5 minutes. We did have to take a bus to Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, but we would have had to do that no matter which resort we stayed at. I'm just glad we didn't have to take a bus every day!
After talking with lots of people, we had decided to rent a double stroller for the kids for the week and this may have been the best decision we made the whole time we were at Disney. I really have no idea how kids of any age can walk that much! My feet were tired at the end of each day, I can't imagine having kids try to walk that much. It also helped move us around the park so much quicker too. And since we were on the monorail, the days we went to MK and Epcot, we were able to just push the stroller directly on to the monorail. That came into handy one night when Evan had fallen asleep in it.
I really went back and forth as to whether or not we should get a park pass for the day we arrived or not. In the end, I decided we should. I had heard great things about the Fantasmic show at Hollywood Studios, but couldn't find a way to make it fit in our schedule. Going to Hollywood Studios on our arrival day solved that problem. We got to the park around 3:00 and we grabbed some lunch first thing at Min and Bill's. Since we were only at the park for a few hours, I was able to really take advantage of the fast passes. I had booked fast passes for the Frozen Sing Along, Star Tours and Fantasmic. I thought the sing along was super cute and both kids loved Star Tours! Fantasmic started at 7:00 and it may have been my favorite night time show (followed closely by Wishes at MK). Even though going to the park was really tiring on our travel day, I'm glad we pushed through and went just to see that show alone. We got back to the resort around 8:30 and unpacked a bit before heading to bed.
Now get ready for picture overload! We took almost 900 pictures while we were there and I want to make sure I can get as many as I can in our blog book, so bare with me. I actually didn't take too many our first day.
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| Disney, here we come! |
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| On the Magical Express |
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| We made it to Hollywood Studios and the kids enjoyed an ice cream Mickey bar. |
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| In front of Rockin Rollercoaster. Em was sad she wasn't tall enough for this ride. Next time. . . |
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| Before our trip, we bought the memory maker. They had photopass photographers setup all over the park that would take our pictures. Then they would link them to our magic bands and they would show up in the app to download. I'm so glad we did this. After this day, I really started seeking out these photographers so we'd get lots of family pictures. |
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| Each photographer did "magic shots." They would usually just tell us to pose a certain way and then when the pictures popped up in our app, we were able to see who or what they added. It was just something fun to see when looking through our picture. |
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| Waiting for Fantasmic to start. |
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| Back at the hotel in their Mickey PJ's. |
And just for my notes, here's a quick recap of our day:
Hollywood Studios
- Late Lunch at Min and Bill's
- Frozen Sing Along (fast pass)
- Star Tours (fast pass)
- Fantasmic (fast pass)
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