Sharing the Magic--One day MK/Dolphin/Magic May2nd sailing--no oinkoink! **COMPLETE** About This Page:

[abcangie87]

Our super-wonderful, highly anticipated, extremely fabulously planned out trip covered a lot of ground...so I'm posting it all here since it was mostly Disney cruise!

To set the stage for those of you who don't know it: We took a trip starting April 29th....travellers included myself, DH, DD5, DD1, my inlaws, and our friends who had two boys ages 3 and 5. We flew in and drove to Sarasota to spend about 24 hours there visiting family. Thursday afternoon we checked into the Dolphin and relaxed there for the evening. We had connecting room with my inlaws so we could put the baby to bed and hang in their room...where we were able to watch the Epcot fireworks from the window! However, I will start my "story" on our one day at MK...in a moment here...

To further preface the entire report-- you should know that we were on the Western Caribbean itinerary...however it was the first Disney itinerary that had a change to it because of the Swine Flu stuff. I found out (from calling DCL) on Thursday morning that our sailing was not going to go to Cozumel but instead to Nassau. So that in itself will make this a unique cruise report!

Our day at Magic Kingdom, Friday May 1st--DD1's first visit there, DD5's second visit there, friends' first visit there......

the BIG DAY. We were off to MAGIC KINDGDOM for the day. I was sooooo excited! I love MK. It was DD1 first visit to WDW and we were pumped. We got on one of the first busses and got there about 25 minutes before the park opened. We could tell it was going to be a hot day. We started the day off with our friends; and after the little opening-show thingy- it was off thru the gates, down Main Street, thru the Castle and onto FANTASYLAND. When you have little ones, it's best to head straight to Fantasyland and ride as much as you can back there before the lines get long. Dumbo is popular with the little ones and it doesn't have a fast-pass. So we rode Dumbo first, then the Carousel twice, bought some mouse ears, and rode It's a Small World. DD1 got to ride all of those with us. She LOVED "Small World." She was smiling, and pointing, and giggling, and clapping. It was so cute. DD5 was so excited to be there she was grinning ear to ear!

After a potty/diaper break, we took a few minutes to regroup. We were bound and determined to get a ride on Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain, but our friends weren't planning on heading that way (it was their first visit to WDW). So... Grandma and Grandpa took DD5 with the friends to Peter Pan, and DH and I headed over to frontierland with dd1 and our park passes to get fast-passes for those two rides. When we took DD5 to WDW when she was three, she was too short to ride Big Thunder Mountain RR and Splash Mountain...but now she is tall enough! We'd found videos of the rides on You-Tube so we got her a little prepared for them. She kept pulling this "I'm scared" crap but we wouldn't listen to it-- we just knew she'd love it once we actually got her on them.

I had the brilliant idea to fastpass them at the same time. Since we were having to do a baby-swap on them anyways...it worked out so great. DH, DD5 and I got fastpasses for Splash Mountain for us, and fastpasses for his parents on Big Thunder. Then the six of us went and asked the cast member for rider-swap tickets. They sat with DD1 while we rode Splash Mountain on our Fastpass...then when we got off they took their turn. Then we did the same thing on Big Thunder but in reverse order. As predicted--- DD5 LOVED both of them. (though she said she didn't want to go on them again right now, she enjoyed them and was laughing. Apparently it was enough excitement for the moment). She didn't want to get wet on Splash Mountain and fortunately she didn't! She will run thru the hose and get soaking wet in her clothes when we're watering flowers or washing the car, but she freaks out when she gets wet on a ride at WDW. Weird
While Gma and Gpa were finishing up on Big Thunder, we took off to tomorrowland to get lunch. They met us after. It was pretty crowded and we had a heck of a time finding a table. This is also where DD5 lost the aforementioned mouse-ears. She'd had them all of 90 minutes, and set them down, and then about 20 minutes later DH asked where they were. Long gone is where! Of course, Grandma bought her a new pair even though I said "Well I am NOT buying you another pair!" . Geewhiz.

We decided to head back to the hotel for a few hours. Everyone was hot and tired and DD1 needed a nap and to cool off. Baby was hot being in that stroller! We were reminded why we like staying at the Contemporary-- it takes about 5 minutes to get there as opposed to about 25 minutes to the other properties via bus.

To wrap up our day at Magic Kingdom--since we still have a seven-day cruise to talk about-- We went back that evening for a little while, rode Buzz and got a picture with him...rode Small World again...but found it a little too hot around the 5p.m. hour for Hannah. We'd gotten in most of the rides we wanted to, we were all fairly tired, so we just decided to go back to our hotel for dinner and to relax and walk around. I think we left the park around 6p.m. after a stop at the confectionary for a giagantic lollipop for DD5 who just "HAD" to have one. We don't tell our kids "no" very often on vacation....at home, yes...on vaca..not so much.

Here are a few pictures (If I can get them to load!)...DD1's first ride-Dumbo!... DD5's "first set" of MinnieEars for the day-looking all happy on small world. (humidity is not friends with our hair), and the girls with daddy on Buzz.

Hm I'm having trouble figuring out how to put the picture right in the post and not as an attachment. Help?

[mcc0313]

What a great day at MK...love the pictures. Can't wait to hear about the cruise.

[chezp]

What a great day at the Magic Kingdom!

[HeatherD]

What a great day! Can't wait to read more. Regarding posting the pics into the text, there is a thread in the WDW TR forum, called How to Add Photos to your TR. You will be limited to 5 doing it that way, but it's better than nothing! (And it's how I've done it, so far). You can also upload photos to photobucket or something like that - then you can post more than 5 since you are linking to another website, rather than the attachments.

[Colexis Mom]

Great start so far!! Just click on your photo, copy the URL, and then edit your post and paste the URL where you want it to be in the text (use the mountain/sun icon in the toolbar to insert it and paste the link in the pop up window).

[belle0517]

Great start! Can't wait to hear about the cruise!

[abcangie87]

Let's get this cruise started....
______________________
Saturday May 2nd was the big day for us to get on our cruise! The girls were up about 7 a.m. The bell-guy came and got all of our cruise bags (except the carryons we were keeping with us) at 8a.m. We wandered over to a neighboring hotel (The Boardwalk, a DVC property) and ate some yummy stuff from a bakery outside on the Boardwalk. It was a relaxing, perfect start to the day. We had until about 1130 till we caught our bus.

The drive to the port was a little over an hour. DD1 finally fell asleep about the last 30 minutes (she is a wiggly fighter when she is on your lap and not wanting to go to sleep!). The EXCITEMENT we felt when the Port came into view and we could see the Disney Magic was wonderful. Ahhh it made us so happy -it'd been a year in the making! Since we had checked in at the hotel, and our bus was not one of the first ones to arrive at the Port, we were able to get right on the ship. It was so exciting to hear them announce "Welcome on their SECOND DISNEY CRUISE!...." We were just giddy. Our staterooms were ready so we ditched the carryons and went for some lunch. We had enough time to do a little exploring, tried to let DD1 relax for awhile, worry about where our bags were (two of our suitcases were quite slow in arriving outside our room, one being so late we asked our host to go look for it!).

At 4p.m. we had to report for the safety drill. . Thank God for pacifiers--that's the only thing that kept DD1 from having a big fit as she was wedged into a child-life-preserver and she was HOT!

Afterwards we ditched the lifevests and went up for the sail-away party. It is a jammin fun time where we all partied down, got our groove on, and listened to the only-on-Disney-cruise line horn belt out the tune to "when you wish upon a star..." as we sailed out of Port Canaveral!

We were at dinner at 545. DD1 was so tired, but she did pretty good. My last suitcase-- containing my makeup, had arrived about 30 minutes before we left for dinner- thank goodness! I don't remember what I ordered that night, but it was fabulous. I didn't eat a single thing on the ship that was less than fabulous. We put Hannah to bed shortly after dinner (since they take about an hour to get thru).

At this point, I will wrap up this post by saying, Thank God we had DH's parents with us who had a connecting room. It would have been hard to get thru bedtimes without having their room to escape to.... we would get DD5 in her jammies and have her go to their room and relax a little bit, then we'd get DD1 tucked into her pack-n-play, pull the curtain between the girls' sleeping area and ours, and sneak into their room. After about 20 minutes, once we were sure dd1 was asleep, DH would take DD5 over and tuck her in. Then he'd chill on the balcony of his parents' room with his dad while mother-in-law and I watched tv, chitchatted about the next day's events, or I went off to explore or do something. If we didn't have their room connecting to us, then DH and I would have had to quietly just be in our bed too with the lights off!

Editing-trying to get these pics in. let's try this...
DD1 - love this pic and the sweet little look of excitement in her face...and her reflection in the window..


There is one pic where DH is holding DD1 in her lifevest and you can't even see her-- but here you can -


Finally-- DD5 partying it up at the Sail Away Party-- the look on her face I think is worthy of a disney advertisement When she wasn't on daddy's shoulders, she was dancing with mommy. We like to do the Cupid Shuffle

[HeatherD]

Glad to see another update! Are you posting in the quick reply down at the bottom or are you going into "Go Advanced"? Advanced gives you more options, with attachments being one of them...

Also, is your last name Cangie? If so, do you have relatives in Las Vegas? I grew up with some Cangies in my neighborhood....

[belle0517]

Great update!

[abcangie87]

Originally Posted by HeatherD

Glad to see another update! Are you posting in the quick reply down at the bottom or are you going into "Go Advanced"? Advanced gives you more options, with attachments being one of them...

Also, is your last name Cangie? If so, do you have relatives in Las Vegas? I grew up with some Cangies in my neighborhood....

Ah-- I'll try that on my next post...hopefully coming tomorrow!

Nope my initials are ABC and my first name is angie, hence the abcangie

[DyanKJ130]

Great start! Sounds like a wonderful time so far! Looking forward to more

[rlb38]

Great start! Looking forward to the rest even if you don't figure the picture thing out!

[abcangie87]

alright I got a few pics added to the post from earlier today- so scroll up and check them out!

[chezp]

What a wonderful update.

[belle0517]

Great pictures!