There and Back Again

Well, I'm home! Lemme tell ya, it is soooo good to be back. I never thought I would be so happy to sleep in my own bed, feel the cool Oregon air or not have to worry about airports and packing.

But I will say this; going to Walt Disney World was, perhaps, the best Disney vacation I have ever been on. We got Fast Passes for every cool ride and rarely waited in line. We merely walked on. For those of you who haven't gone to Disneyland or Disney World in a long time, a Fast Pass is a ticket you're given by a computer that "waits in line" for you. So you put your Disney park ticket into this machine, and it gives you a Fast Pass, that tells you to return to the ride say after 1pm. Any time after 1pm, you can get on the ride through the special Fast Pass line and walk right on. No standing in line! You cannot get on the ride right away, since you are still "technically" waiting in line, but you're not "in" the line. You're free to go do other cool stuff. It was flippin' sweet.

The longest line we ever waited in was 20 minutes, which is nothing in a theme park. We literally had a blast riding all the rides many times. :D

We went to the Magic Kingdom twice, Epcot twice, Disney MGM Studios twice, and Animal Kingdom once. Seven days of vacation goodness. The other three days of our vacation were "free" days, days we took off to go swimming in our vacation home's pool and BBQ with our friends. We went with two other families, some of our best friends and their kids. It was a lot of work keeping track of all the kids, and we even lost one! (don't worry, we found him) But as hectic as it was, we had a BLAST.

The Magic Kingdom is like a bizzarro Disneyland. Things are the same, yet different. Rides aren't where they're "supposed" to be, therefore it's a little unsettling. But once you get used to it, it's awesome. There's no Matterhorn in the Magic Kingdom, but there is Cinderella's castle (as opposed to Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland), and their fireworks show was to DIE for.

Epcot (which used to be an acronym, but isn't anymore) was a super-fun place. Walt called it the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow, I believe, or EPCOT for short. He originally envisioned a perfect place for people to live with "tomorrow's" technology. Or something. LOL It's nothing like that now. Just another park with the cool "Spaceship Earth" big silver ball in Future World. We had so much fun here. Spent a day doing Future World and a second day doing the tour of the countries of the world around the lake. They have a fun drinking game you can play in these countries. (Yes, you can buy alcohol in every park BUT the Magic Kingdom - Weird for Disney, I know) Anyway, you literally "drink around the world". You buy a drink in each country, a beer from that country. Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Morocco, Germany, Norway, Mexico... There might be more countries that I missed, my memory ain't so good.

DH and his friend Kevin did every country. Many people drop off after Germany, because they're so drunk by then. DH and Kevin made it to Mexico, the last country, and they were so roaring drunk, that I'm not sure they remember much of Illuminations, the cool fireworks show over the lake. LOL

Animal Kingdom was awesome. It's a huge zoo slash amusement park with a lot of rides and things to see. In fact, the day we went, we hardly saw any animals, because we didn't make it over to the zoo section! We went on the African Safari ride which showed a few animals, but other than that, we were stuck in the attractions section. :P But we had such a good time regardless. And the Tree of Life in the middle of the park is AWESOME. Got great pics of that.

Disney's MGM Studios was great as well. We spent two days there because we didn't get to see everything. The Tower of Terror is a sweet ride, and so much more than merely being dropped in a free-fall elevator. The Rockin' Roller Coaster was totally cool, too. A coaster themed to Aerosmith's music. It's only one of two rides Disney has that actually goes upside down. The other one is the ride in Disney's California Adventure in Anaheim. I don't remember the name of that one right now... We saw a few great shows and had an EXCELLENT seat for the parade here. We were at the end of the parade route, so as each character was leaving the parade, they stopped and interacted with our kids. Our kids pretty much exploded. LOL

We don't have our pictures uploaded yet, but I'm sure I'll be showing them off as soon as we do. :) I also have many other great stories, but this is just a general over-view of what we did. I found out I have a weakness for Disney pins. Pin trading is very lucrative at Disney. I don't trade them, but I do like to look at them all, and I even bought a few. More than a few, actually. :P But they're all awesome.

Anyhow, I'll be back to post some pictures and maybe tell you some stories later. Woke up at 7am this morning expecting it to be 11am. HELLO JETLAG!! LOL I'm still tired.... ZZZZZ

~~Becka