Hollywood Studios

Today, I had my good camera with me, so we stopped for a picture of the big Disney World sign. The first day that we drove through, the Mickey Mouse had peeling paint and looked quite worn. I worried that Disney wan't all that I remembered it to be, and it was going to be run down and old. I also worried that we were really waisting a lot of money doing this. The next day, Mickey was all freshly painted. He had just had the old paint scraped off, sanded and prepped for a new paint job the day we first drove in. And I was relieved to see it was the same Disney that I remembered.....nothing ages at Disney!

The last of the 4 Disney World parks that we made it to was Hollywood Studios. It was so different than the other parks. We sat and watched a lot of shows, and rode a few rides.

We caught a street show starting up, and it was fun to see the guys continue in character, but pose funny every time someone snapped a picture.

Another "tourist " photo, just like everyone has!
I loved that the photographers didn't force us to buy their photos. They were willing to use our camera for pictures. You don't see that much anymore. You can't even get a picture with Santa these days without paying for their photographer to do it. I guess that is why people love Disney.

The kids really loved seeing the tricks of movie making when we went to the Indiana Jones stunt show, and the Lights, Action Motors stunt car show. They were both really fun to watch, and it was nice to start the morning off of our feet.

Amber and Brian really loved the Hollywood Tower of Terror, and Rockin'Roller Coaster.

The boys didn't want to ride either of those, and my head didn't feel good, so we took a minute to slow down.
I loved the Animation part of the park. I love the old classic Disney, as well as so many of the new animations, that it was fun to learn about how they are made, and how the characters are developed.

This is one of the gardens themed after a scene in Fantasia. Each of the mops is dumping a bucket of greenery and below each bucket is the same greenery growing. I would love to be able to have my garden look like that!

Just another favorite of the statues in the Animation Courtyard.

Recently, Zak has been in love with Handy Manny. We don't have the Disney channel, so I don't know where he has seen it, but he had to have this picture!

Another Animation favorite!

Again, we didn't wait in line to see Darth Goofy, and Storm Trooper Donald, but we had to snap a picture anyway.

One of the kids favorites (no line...just go play) was the Honey I shrunk the Kids playground.

As you walk in, you suddenly shrink down into the grass, and see all of the things that the little ants see.....
Or, the now, not so little ants!

On the Back lot tour, they show you how some special effects and scale models are used to make films. Then as you continue through, you see props from some of the films.
And to finish the tour, we then became part of the special effects!
A huge tanker truck exploded, and started to slip off the rocks
as a huge flash flood came down the hill at us

Les had heard about Jedi training camp from a friend, and was so excited to see it.
He was sure that he would get chosen. When he didn't, he was still very excited to watch.
We were right in the front row, and got to see Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Darth Mal, and the storm troopers up close!

And we had dinner in Pizza Planet from the Toy Story movie.

The boys loved the Muppet's 3-D Movie

I liked the Miss Piggy Statue of Liberty fountain

And this was another favorite garden statue.
Who doesn't love Snow white and the 7 Dwarfs?

We happened to be there on Star Wars weekend, which meant a lot more sightings of Star Wars characters, and when they weren't there for pictures, we took some anyway!

There were definitely things we liked and didn't like so much about each park, but they were all so different, that we never got bored.

EPCOT

On Saturday, we went to Epcot. It is the only park that we didn't have time to go back to twice. We ran out of time to see all of the countries, and Amber really wanted to go back and finish them.

A lot of EPCOT was about protecting our land, resources, and animals for the future. They have a boat ride that goes through their experimental greenhouses. It was very interesting, and fun to see.

This is a nine-pound lemon. /everything was grown up off of the ground. I was amazed at some of the plants we see all of the time (like pumpkins) that I thought had to grow on the ground to support the weight of the fruit, and they had them hanging in the air.

I found this hidden Mickey when I put my camera up to my eye. I couldn't see it with my bare eye.

I think these are cucumbers. They use a lot of what they grow to feed the animals it the parks, and to use in their restaurants.

We really enjoyed the Nemo show at Epcot. We were some of the last to be seated, and had really bad seats. Even Brian and I couldn't see the stage. We were pretty bummed and debated leaving. Just as the show was starting they came to our family and said they had seats for 4 in a better location. So Brian sent us and we followed the girl to the front row. I had the 1st seat right off of the stage. It was awesome. I wish Brian would have followed us down. There was enough room for him, and he had the camera. Bummer.

In France, we ran into Sleeping Beauty. And there was no line at all to see her.
(For my cousins....she looked just like Jennifer, and talked just like her too!)

Morocco

In Japan looking across the water to the "big ball."

There was an authentic Japanese drum show going on while we were in Japan.

The "tourist" picture in front of the EPCOT icon.

United Kingdom (do you know how hard it is to get pictures without people..)

Italy

Sunset over the water

The palm trees and tiki torch before the firework show.

The amazing firework show finished off the night!

Animal Kingdom

We started the day at Animal Kingdom on the Kilimanjaro Safari. Not only was it amazing to see all those animals like you would if you really did do an African safari, but the ride was lots of fun too with bridges breaking under the truck and trying to rescue elephants from poachers. They said that the range land for the safari is big enough to fit all of the Magic Kingdom park and still have 30 acres for parking. It was huge. I'm glad that we didn't have to walk the whole thing.

They also had areas where the kids could learn about conservation.

And beautiful green gardens to walk through.

And amazing murals.

There was a dinosaur area that we weren't real impressed with, but these dinosaurs were scary!
The dinosaur ride was one of our favorites...no fastpass needed. We rode it twice!

And Expedition Everest (Matterhorn) was also a favorite. Zak didn't ride this one, but he was very willing to wait for everyone else to ride it.

We loved Animal Kingdom. Our favorite show was there too. There was an amazing show using the Lion King animals and theme that came highly recommended, so we took the time to see it, and it was well worth it. I think I have pictures from the day that we went back and saw it again.

Magic Kingdom

We started out the Disney World part of our vacation at the Magic Kingdom. I knew that the kids would love every minute of it, and I wasn't as sure about the other parks. This was the perfect choice. We got so excited about being there, that we forgot about the whole FastPass thing. By the time we stood in line for Big Thunder Mountain for about 45 minutes, we decided to be a little smarter, and take the time to get a FastPass. The day from there turned out awesome. Between FastPasses and short lines, I don't think that we stood in line for more than 10 minutes the rest of the day. We really lucked out. We did all of the park except for Tomorrowland in just this one day, and even did a few of the rides twice because we were able to walk right onto them without a line at all.

Aladdin ride

Aladdin and Jasmine....we are terrible parents. we wanted to see the park, and weren't willing to wait in ridiculously long lines to see the characters. So we snapped shots as we walked by....with someone else's kids usually in the photo instead of ours.

On the Jungle Safari cruise, the driver asked Les to come up and "drive" the boat. We were in some very dangerous waters at this point, and Les did a good job to keep us safe. He was all smiles, and as far as he is concerned, he drove the boat!

After Les was done, she also invited Zak to have a turn.

Rafiki didn't have a line, so we did get a picture with him!

The kids at Cinderella's castle.

Dumbo...seems like I have a picture like this at about the same age...

We tried pulling the sword from the stone, but had no luck.

I was amazed at the rides that Zak did. I was surprised that he did ones like Thunder Mountain, but he also put his hands in the air like the big kids do on the roller coasters. He didn't hesitate to go on any rides. And he walked all 10.5 miles with us this day, and every other day. I kept trying to get Brian to rent a stroller so his feet could have a rest for a day, but we didn't, and I'm glad that we didn't. We had so much fun at Magic Kingdom that we decided to go back and spend our last day there too.